Saturday, January 27, 2024

Winter on the Charles River, Cambridge, MA, USA

 RE: Winter on the Charles River, Cambridge, MA, USA


1. Magazine Beach this week.

2. Misleading self-praise from Cambridge.

A. The con.

B. PART OF the reality.

3. Drone View.


1. Magazine Beach this week.


We have received the following photos and comments from the Charles River:

A crew replaced a broken water pipe (goes to fire hydrant, I believe) on Magazine Beach today, most unusual sight

Ed:  This is the grove of large trees at the eastern end of the Magazine Beach recreation area.  The Destroyed Nesting Area is a few hundred feet to the right.  The brick structure running horizontally beyond the grove is the Memorial Drive overpass which is connected to the BU Bridge by a ramp system on either side of the  bridge and the BU Bridge Rotary under the bridge.  The food mentioned in the next section of this report is below Memorial Drive just beyond the BU Bridge rotary.  Covered by snow to the right of the grove is the primary parking area for Magazine Beach.  The grey shape is a car going from the parking area to the nearest ramp.  In section 3 I provide a drone overview of the area.

I interrupted this fine fellow today (a juvenile Cooper's Hawk) hunting a bunny bigger than himself. He gave me the eye for a while, trying to decide if I might be tasty too.



2. Misleading self-praise from Cambridge.


A. The con.

A city magazine for its voters includes the traditional level con on the environment..

Self-praise was heavily present for its planting of trees.

This is a continuing con game.  The City Manager's name is on the magazine.  Clearly it would have been written by the destructive Development Department.

For years, Cambridge bragged about being a Tree City USA.

The con was and continues to be:

The usual environmental bragging is about class patronage for contractors.

They are bragging about all the trees they are planting.

The usual DEADLY environmental destruction is kept silent, class patronage for contractors.

Cambridge keeps as secret as possible the continuing, outrageous destruction of the environment, which looks like class patronage for contractors in the opposite direction.  

While bragging about paying contractors for saplings, they have long kept as secret as possible the unnecessary destruction of the environment primarily with benefit for contractors, at the same time as outrageous destruction, planting saplings to “replace” mature trees which should not have been destroyed in the first place.

The next step in the destruction will, of course, be “new trees,” WITHOUT mentioning the destruction.

This con is a dominant factor is the outrages on the Charles River.


B. PART OF the reality.

Here is my 29 minute video / slide show on the outrageous destruction of hundreds of trees between the BU and Longfellow Bridges.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pTplCCEJP7o

Here is my CONCISE summary of outrages I have lived through on the Charles River, including very prominently PART of the heartless abuse of the 43 year resident tourist attraction, the Charles River White Geese.

From the official records of the Cambridge City Council:  https://cambridgema.iqm2.com/citizens/FileOpen.aspx?Type=1&ID=3903&Inline=True, pages 2654 to 2713, City Council communication 177, City Council Meeting, 6/26/23.

The real benefit from this summary is that I gave a copy to Governor Healey who through a representative gave me a name at the Department of Conservation and Recreation to whom to provide the report.  That person, would appear to have undone part of the outrages, as stated in detail below.

My report to the Cambridge City Council on the ongoing and increasing destruction of 60 to 65 mostly excellent trees and animal habitat at Magazine Beach on the Charles River.

https://charlesriverwhitegeeseblog.blogspot.com/2018/12/charles-river-state-destruction-plans.html.  Blog version, 12/16/2018, Re-submittal to Cambridge City Council, December 17, 2018.

The City Council has proceeded to play games as secretly as possible, through bizarre SECRET votes on the banks of the Charles River which included “public” review by burying the actions among a large, very varied collection of programs.

My recent report on a reversal of PART of the heartless abuse of the 43 year resident tourist attraction, the Charles River White Geese, thank to intercession by Massachusetts Governor Healey. 12/24/23, following up on the large condensed report of destruction cited above.

https://charlesriverwhitegeeseblog.blogspot.com/2023/12/deluge-on-charles-river-extreme-cold.html.

My report on Cambridge’s destruction of the excellent grove of trees which adorned Cambridge Central Square.  1/5/24.

https://charlesriverwhitegeeseblog.blogspot.com/2024/01/update-on-recent-cambridge-ma-usa.html.  

Coming up, they will, as usual, brag about the “replacements” of these mature trees.

3. Drone View.

We have published a lot of drone photos of the world of the Charles River White Geese, under attack by destructive bureaucrats at the state level and by the environmentally destructive City of Cambridge.

Our source is “From Cambridge to Boston with the DJ Inspire 1 Drone footage,” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sN-OmMzvHhw.

Here is a good drone overview taken from the Boston side of the Charles River, above Harvard’s coming Allston Village campus in planning..


The larger area beyond the Charles River is the Magazine Beach playing fields.  This area was the principal habitat of the 43 year resident Charles White Geese until state bureaucrats and the environmental vile City of Cambridge started their destruction, including heartless starvation of these beautiful and valued birds.

Note the GREEN EDGE of the Magazine Beach playing fields.  This is the Starvation Wall  imposed on the Charles River White Geese which is hated by people who love the Charles River and who want to visit it.  ON THE BANKS OF THE CHARLES RIVER, the Starvation Wall made the playing fields as remote from the Charles River as if it were ten miles away.  More importantly from the point of view of these irresponsible government entities, the Starvation Wall keeps the Charles River White Geese from their food for most of the last 43 years, food which these terrible ;people started poisoning in 2008, after it had been pristine for the better part of a century.

The baseball field in the middle of the picture is just below the grove in the above picture.  To its right is an environmentally responsible sewage treatment plant of the Massachusetts Water Resources Authority.  The MWRA brought the distant ancestors of the Charles River White Geese to the Charles River to sound the alarm against trespassers after the MWRA’s guard dogs passed away.

Just beyond the MWRA plant is the BU Bridge, the Destroyed Nesting Area of the Charles River White Geese and the Wild Area.  

The Wild Area has been under attack by Cambridge and its apologists since at least 1986, a few years after the first arrival of the Charles River White Geese. 

The Destroyed Nesting Area of the Charles River White Geese and the Wild Area are the last remaining havens of nature in this part of the Charles River.  They are the thick woods just beyond the BU Bridge.  Memorial Drive is just beyond.  I have been fighting to protect these areas since 1986, with major success as pointed out in the 50 page summary to which Governor Healey has impressively responded.  

Under Memorial Drive just beyond where the BU Bridge reaches Memorial Drive is the vestige of food which Governor Healey has returned to the Charles River White Geese.

Friday, January 05, 2024

Update on recent Cambridge, MA, USA, environmental activity.

 Update on recent Cambridge, MA, USA, environmental activity.


1. Introduction.

2. Technical Correction and related.

3. Follow Up.

4. Recent view of former excellence.


1. Introduction.

A week ago, I praised Massachusetts Governor Healey for standing up to Cambridge and the state Department of Conservation and Recreation in their years long starvation attacks on the Charles River White Geese.

I concluded with a report on tree destruction by Cambridge in Central Square, perhaps a mile from the Destroyed Nesting Area of the heartlessly abused 43 year resident and tourist attraction gaggle.


2. Technical Correction and related.

At the end of the report I added:

“CAMBRIDGE just destroyed ‘eight fine healthy locus trees’ in the heart of Central Square,”

First of all, I included a typo.  The trees were locust trees.  I am not a tree expert.  I noticed the lack of a “t” and figured I could be thinking of a plague of locusts” and let it slide.  I have learned “locusts” was correct.  Additionally, there is a chance that one or more may have been another variety of tree.  Since the evidence has been destroyed, it is impossible to check, so let us be with that notation.

The casual destruction of excellence by Cambridge and the DCR is nothing less than outrageous.  It gets worse when you listen to city councilors loudly bragging of environmental sainthood.

Cambridge received a Tree City USA award for several years.  The game was that Cambridge bragged about a lot of REPLACEMENT trees planted and “neglected” to mention all the trees destroyed by Cambridge.

The most wanton outrage in recent years was the destruction of hundreds of mostly excellent trees on Memorial Drive between the BU and Longfellow Bridges, followed by the ongoing destruction of 65 (number keeps increasing) at Magazine Beach on Memorial Drive, the in season residence of the Charles River White Geese, UNTIL CAMBRIDGE AND THE DCR STARTED STARVING THEM AND OTHERWISE ABUSING THEM.  

Last I heard, the Cambridge City Council had funded the hiring of the woman who poisoned the Charles River to do the planning of the destruction of the excellent MicroCenter Grove as part of the 65 tree destruction.  A few years earlier, she provided the City Council with plans she had agreed to which would destroy that grove.  The poisoning was done as agent for the DCR, with assistance in removed destroyed excellent vegetation from Cambridge.

Planning for destruction, of course, was also with the DCR.

And the Cambridge City Council keeps up its bizarre claims of environmental sainthood.


3. Follow Up.

I have gotten the following comment:

* * * * *

I've passed by the site of the destruction a couple of times now and it just sickens me to see the stumps of those beautiful, healthy trees. There were street trees along with the ones in the raised planters, which tends to give me the idea they may have been of several species. So many street trees dying on the neighborhood streets, and here we lose these fine hardy specimens. You'd think a city as rich as Cambridge could afford to have them professionally excavated and safely moved elsewhere, at the very least.

There are two huge locusts in the yard of my neighbor behind me. One is a black locust, that bears clouds of sweet-smelling white blossoms in June (it looks like it snowed in my yard when the petals fall from the tree) and the other a honey locust that is probably a good 60' tall. Locust wood is exceptionally strong and bug resistant. When I lived on a farm many years ago there was a pasture enclosed by a locust wood fence whose posts the locals told me had been put in during the Civil War, and it was still sound.

* * * *


4. Recent view of former excellence.

Wednesday, I passed by the destroyed excellence in Central Square.

Here are two photos I took as an update: