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April 26, 2022April 26, 2022

A Texas Whatever in Connecticut’s Court

The best known writer from Connecticut, Hank Morgan, was a travel writer, and a good one, or at least a fun one to read. It doesn’t get edgier than when his strong Yankee character clashes with the customs and peculiarities of England. No writer is as arrogantly certain of his own superiority as Morgan, but that’s part of his virtue, and his descriptions are completely trustworthy. He has other shortcomings: I’m still not clear how Morgan got from Connecticut to England.

I’ve been to Connecticut once before, to poke around New Haven, which is best known for its pizza. I didn’t have any, not knowing then what I know now.

This time we’ll be in northwest Connecticut, on the Housatonic River. How do you say that? House-a-tonic? Whose-a-tonic? I don’t know, though even I know that it’s not Conn-ec-ti-cut, but isn’t that “c” dandy to pronounce? Who doesn’t like to? Connect. Connect. Conne-c-ti-cut.

Daniel Beard, Travel Writer Hank Morgan Up a Tree, 1889, Charles L. Webster & Co., New York, New York.

Connect-i-cuters don’t really have a very useful appellation. Nothing rolls off the tongue; not Connecticucator, Connecticutensian, Connecticutan. . . According to Webster (who was from New Haven), Connecticuter is correct, but I figure if I told somebody they were a Connecticuter, I’d have made an enemy for life.

Connecticut Yankees are also known as Nutmeggers, presumably because of the state’s vast fields of native nutmeg.

Demographics and Geography

Connecticut is the third smallest state, with 4,845 square miles. It’s smaller than Hawaii (with 6,423 square miles), but more than four times larger than Rhode Island (1,034 square miles). For all of that paucity of space, it is heavily populated, with 745 people per square mile. Compare that to Wyoming, with 55 people per square mile. In order of density, the states are New Jersey (1,263), Rhode Island (1061), Massachusetts (901), and then, crowding in at fourth, Connecticut.

Jim Irwin, Connecticut population density, English Wikipedia.

Population in the state isn’t uniformly distributed. It concentrates along the coast and the Delaware River. Hartford, for instance, population 123,000, has a population density of 7,091 people per square mile.

Connecticut has eight counties, but apparently no county governments, which seems odd given that politicians abhore a vacuum. There is the state, and there are towns. There’s other stuff, but state and towns without the bother of counties seems a notable effort at efficiency. In addition to the towns and the state, Connecticut has more than 300 special taxing districts and school districts, so I guess minimizing counties really doesn’t clear out much space government-wise.

The Connecticut counties that apparently don’t do much.

Connecticut is the southern-most New England state, which may seem obvious to most, but to those of us less familiar with the Northeast that’s a revelation. If you asked me most days what states comprise New England, I’d like as not throw in anything northeast of Missouri. Why, for instance, is New Jersey not New England, but Vermont, which was a relative late-comer, included in New England? It’s a mystery, probably tied to Beacon Hill snobbery.

With a population of 3,605,944 based on the 2020 census, Connecticut has a lot of white people, 80%, a surprising number of Hispanics, 17%, and is about 12% African American. Everybody else surely fits in somewhere, but not in any big numbers. It’s a rich state, 6th in median household income at $79,855. More than 90% of its adults have at least a high school degree, and 40% have at least a bachelors degree.

Compare that to West Virginia, just down the map, which is 92% white and only 1.7% Hispanic. About 88% of the of West Virginia adults have a high school degree, but only 21% of adults have a bachelors degree or higher, and the median annual income is $48,037. Wealth begets wealth.

Connecticut isn’t actually on the Atlantic Coast, but on Long Island Sound, sheltered from the Atlantic by the long Long Island peninsula. See United States v. Maine, 469 U.S. 504 (1985) (determining that Long Island is not, in fact, an island, but leaving open the question of length). A coastal plain extends west-east along Long Island Sound, and a river valley that follows the Connecticut River north-south smack dab through the center of the state. At 400 miles the Connecticut is the longest river in the Northeast, and we’ve happily fished it for trout and pike in New Hampshire, almost to Canada. The coastal plain and the river valley are the population centers.

The seashore is at sea level, and the average elevation in Connecticut is 500 feet. The highest point in Connecticut is the south slope of Mount Frisell on the Massachusetts border at 2,379 feet. The peak of Mount Frisell, 2,454 feet, is in Massachusetts. Mount Frisell is part of the Taconic Range, that is part of the Appalachians.

The remainder of the state is north-south hills and valleys created by plate tectonics, almost reminding one (if one is so inclined) of the Nevada basin and range system. Tectonic plates took land that measured more than 500 miles across (with estimates up to 3000 miles across), and scrunched it into 100 miles. I’m pretty certain that the technical geologic term for the cause of all those ups and downs is scrunching.

Its lakes, the Connecticut River Valley, the seashore, and its streams and riverswere formed by glaciers, the same Wisconsinite Glaciers that formed the Great Lakes about 10,000+ years ago. Wisconsinite Glaciers did’t do things in moderation. They dumped about 10 feet of junk over the hills of New England, and glacial drift covers about 99% of Connecticut bedrock.

Settlement, History

Massachusetts Puritans psuedopodded into the Hartford area in 1636. There followed various Puritan settlements, which were finally combined into a colony by royal charter in 1662. Connecticut later repaid the King’s generosity by joining in the American Revolution. The first major New England Indian/Colonial war, the Pequot War, centered in Massachusetts and Connecticut from 1636-38. The Pequots were actually interlopers themselves, and the Naragansetts and Mohegans joined with the English to drive out the Pequots. The Pequots lost, but then so ultimately did the Naragansets and Mohegans.

Pequot prisoners were exchanged in the West Indies for African slaves, so black slavery has an early start in Connecticut, and slavery was not ended until 1848. As of 1790, there were 2,764 slaves in Connecticut, out of a total population of 237,946. By 1830, the total population of Connecticut was 297,675, but the slave population had decreased to 25.

Into the 20th century, Connecticut was a leader in seafaring and ship building. During the Civil War, Connecticut was a manufacturing center for the Union, and the defense industry remains one of its important crops. Also insurance. Don’t forget insurance. Connecticut produced two famous insurance agents, Wallace Stevens and Charles Ives.

Connecticut also produced two presidents, George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush.

Hank Morgan typified the 19th century Yankee from Connecticut: industrious, capable, innovative, maybe a bit too sure of his virtue, but something in the national perception of the Connecticuter changed by the late 20th century. Connecticut became in the popular mind a New York bedroom community. Think of films from Connecticut, with their dark undercurrent of suburban angst: The Swimmer, The Stepford Wives, The Gilmore Girls . . .

I’ve watched The Gilmore Girls. It’s creepy that anyone can talk that much.

Politics

Connecticut is a Democratic state, with about 50% of its population Democratic or leaning Democratic. That’s consistent with the trends of urban areas and wealthier states tending to vote Democratic. All of Connecticut’s major state offices are held by Democrats, along with both US Senators and its five Representatives. There are some Republicans in the state assembly, 12 of the 36 senators and 54 of the 151 Representatives.

In 2016 Connecticut voted 54.57% for Hillary Clinton, with two counties, Litchfield (where we’re going) and Windham voting 54% and 50% respectively for Donald Trump. In 2020, Joe Biden carried 59% of the state’s votes; Donald Trump again carried Litchfield and Windham by 51%.

Tyler Klutsbach, 2020 Connecticut presidential voting, for Wikipedia.

Rivers and Fish

Fly fishing in Connecticut is all about trout. Connecticut would have been a brook trout state, but stocking programs favor rainbows and browns. I’m sure along the coast there are fly anglers who fly fish in saltwater, but search online and most of what you see is trout. Like a lot of stuff in Connecticut, I figure its angling is heavily subsidized with folk from New York City.

The big river through Connecticut is the Connecticut, which seems appropriate. As mentioned, we’ve fished for trout in the Connecticut River, but we fished way north, long before the Connecticut leaves New Hampshire. By the time the river reaches Connecticut it’s too warm for trout.

The best known trout river in Connecticut is the Farmington, which, including its West Branch, is 80 miles long, and which is part of the Connecticut River Basin. We’re not fishing the Farmington. No reason, but there you are.

Karl Musser, Housatonic River watershed, for Wikipedia.

We’re fishing the Housatonic (HOOS-ə-TON-ik), which runs 149 miles and drains a chunk of Western Connecticut and Massachusetts into Long Island Sound. It’s also a trout river, at least in the northwest portion of the state where we’ll fish. We’ll fish in Litchfield County, where 51% of the fish voted for Donald Trump in 2020. I figure it was the brown trout. Brown trout always seemed to me to tend Republican.

September 6, 2021September 14, 2021

Rhode Island

Rhode Island is the smallest state, smaller than Delaware, smaller than the Island of Hawaii–though larger than Oahu. It packs in a lot of people relative to its size. It’s the 2nd densest state, with 1,006 people per square mile, beat out only by New Jersey. New Jersey is dense.

It seems like everybody in Rhode Island is a Democrat; maybe it’s required by law? There are in fact more Democratic leaning states, Massachusetts, Maryland, Hawaii . . . But based on percentage of Democratic voters, Rhode Island is about as Democratic as, say, Illinois or Washington State, but with no red rural counties. Its governor, both senators, both representatives, and both state houses are Democratic controlled. Only Kent County in the middle of the state voted for Donald Trump in 2016, and Trump only received 38.9% of the total Rhode Island vote. In Rhode Island he was trounced. As for Kent County, it was the first time a Rhode Island county had voted for a Republican since 1984. Four years later, Joe Biden carried 59.39% of Rhode Island, including Kent County.

Bernie Sanders won the Democratic Primary in Rhode Island in 2016, but by its 2020 primary Sanders had already withdrawn. It’s likely that Sanders would have won again in 2020.

Tyler Kutzbach, 2020 Election Map for Rhode Island, Wikipedia.

Rhode Island sits directly below Boston. I’ve taken the train from New York to Boston, so I must have at least passed through Rhode Island. I suppose lots of people pass through Rhode Island, but a lot of people stop for a bit too. Tourism is its second largest industry, after healthcare.

Rhode Island was founded by Massachusetts’ dissidents. This deserves pondering. In 1620 the first settlers of Massachusetts were so angry with England that they left for Massachusetts. In 1636 the first settlers of Rhode Island were so angry with Massachusetts that they left for Rhode Island. The early Rhode Island settlers were a very special group. They couldn’t get along with anybody.

Henry David Northrup, *The Landing of Roger Williams*, *Our Greater Country*, *being a standard history of the United States from the discovery of the American continent to the present time*, 1901, National Publishing Company, Philadelphia.

Rhode Island was the first colony to declare independence from England. They were the first to ratify the Articles of Confederation. Then they got mad at everybody and were the last to ratify the Constitution, and wouldn’t until they were promised the Bill of Rights. Like I said, a very special group.

In 1790, in connection with the new government, George Washington wrote a letter to the Jews of Newport defining religious freedom: For happily the Government of the United States gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance, requires only that they who live under its protection should demean themselves as good citizens, in giving it on all occasions their effectual support. The Bill of Rights was ratified in 1791.

Carey’s 1814 Map of Rhode Island, Carey’s General Atlas.

Rhode Island began as a slave state, with the highest number of slaves per capita of the New England colonies. After England got out of the trade, Rhode Islanders dominated slave shipping. They carried rum to Europe and Africa, slaves to the Caribbean, and sugar and molasses from the Caribbean to New England. Nicholas Brown, namesake and benefactor of Brown University, was a slave trader.

In 2020, Rhode Island’s population was estimated at 1,097,379, slightly larger than Montana’s. About 71.4% of the population is Anglo, 16.3% Hispanic or Latino, 8.5% African American, 1.1% Native American, and 2.9% two or more races. Ethnically the Anglo population is a jumble, and there are sizable portions of the white population with Irish, Italian, Portuguese, English, and French ancestry. Racial labels don’t tell much, and one reason is their lack of nuance.

Until 2020, Rhode Island was the State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations. “Plantation” had nothing to do with slavery, but after the death of George Floyd, because of the connotations of slavery and Rhode Island’s participation in the slave trade, Rhode Islanders voted to drop “Providence Plantations“ from the state’s name. It’s now just the plain-old State of Rhode Island, though apparently they haven’t changed their seal.

Before the 19th century, there were more than 20 rum distilleries in Rhode Island, but Thomas Tew is the first rum distilled there in 150 years. Westward expansion allowed grain-based whiskey to replace molasses-based rum as the American drink of choice. I’ve had the same bottle of rum for three years or so, and it only gets drunk at Christmas with eggnog. Whiskey doesn’t last so long.

Perhaps Rhode Island is best known as the playground of the ultra-rich, the Vanderbilts and Astors and Archers. In Theophilus North, Thornton Wilder describes nine different cities of Newport: the citizens of the sixth are the ultra-wealthy, the seventh are the servants of the ultra-wealthy, and the eight are the hangers-on of the ultra-wealthy. Apparently wealth takes up a good bit of Rhode Island real estate. Oddly, Newport was never known as the playground of the Boston rich, since the Boston rich have Cape Cod.

Besides rum, 13 percent of Rhode Island is water, most of it salt. You would expect with so much access to the Atlantic and to Narragansett Bay that Rhode Island would be a flat coastal plain, but away from the the ocean it rises quickly to join the New England Uplands. The highest point in Rhode Island, Jerimoth Hill, is 812 feet. The highest point in Florida, the flattest state, is 345 feet.

We’re going to Newport for the Orvis Northeast Fly Fishing School, two days, in which my fondest hope is that Kris will finally learn to tie a knot. For the 30 years we’ve fished together, she’s depended on me or guides to rig her lines. That’s ok though. I’m not sure what use I’d be to her if she could tie knots.

The fish of choice in Rhode Island are apparently stripers and bluefish. I only hope the bluefish aren’t as personable as the fish in Dr. Seuss.

Bluefish (Pomatomus saltatrix), New York (State), Fifth Annual Report of the Commissioners of Fisheries, Game and Forests of the State of New York, 1899, James B. Lyon, State Printer, 1900, Freshwater and Marine Image Bank, University of Washington.

We’ll spend one day in school on casting lessons and hopefully knots, and one day fishing with a guide. This is a recipe for disaster, since like as not on our one day fishing it will rain, or hurricane, or have no fish, or I’ll be too chilled to cast in the middle of a New England winter. We’ll return home to Houston fishless and owe another trip to Rhode Island. Winter in New England starts in September, right?

August 26, 2021September 14, 2021

Georgia

In 1733, George II established Georgia, and it was the last of the original 13 Colonies. It was the brainchild of James Oglethorpe, a British parliamentarian, as a means to help the English poor. Georgia would give them a new start. It would also be a buffer between the Spanish colony in Florida and the British Carolinas.

It succeeded pretty well as a buffer. As philanthropy, not so much.

Under Oglethorpe, individual land holdings were limited to 500 acres, and charity settlers couldn’t sell their land. Rum was prohibited. Slavery was prohibited. It was gonna be a moral utopia.

William Vereist, *James William Oglethorpe*, 1735-1736, oil on panel, National Portrait Gallery, London.

It was a bust. Instead of giving immigrants a clean slate, the poor brought their debt with them. The land along the coast, the land settled first, was lousy for farming, and the English poor didn’t know how to farm anyway. For passage, immigrants, including children, were often indentured for long periods, some for decades. Planters from other colonies, particularly South Carolina, began to encroach, while the immigrants began to sneak off to other colonies where they could at least get a drink.

The Colonial Georgia poor were probably worse off than they’d been in England, though at least they didn’t have student loans.

In 1742, Oglethorpe left Georgia in a huff, never to return. In 1750, African slavery was legalized–it was already widespread. As a bastion of redemption and the hope of the poor, Colonial Georgia failed.

With that sterling beginning, Georgia was on a roll. Many Georgians would have been perfectly happy remaining British, and it was the last colony occupied by the British. Early Georgian government land grants were rife with fraud that lined the pockets of Georgia officials, and multiples of the same available land was sold to different buyers at rigged prices.

Georgia was ground zero for the Trail of Tears.

The Civil War? Georgia seceded based on what was probably a fixed election, and the war remained unpopular, particularly in mountainous North Georgia. Then there was the Siege of Atlanta and Sherman’s March to the Sea. During Reconstruction, Georgia was the only rebel state to be admitted to the Union, only to be kicked out again after it immediately kicked out all African American members of the Georgia legislature.

Gone with the Wind is set in Georgia, and its portrayal of the South is a deservedly difficult subject. Woodrow Wilson was from Georgia, and his overt racism has sparked his reappraisal. After its demise at the end of Reconstruction, the Ku Klux Klan was revived in Atlanta in 1915. There were 593 recorded lynchings in Georgia. While he was out jogging, Ahmaud Arbery, 25, was shot to death in 2020 in Brunswick, Georgia.

Ty Cobb was from Georgia. Much of his bad reputation is based on Al Stump’s erroneous and slanderous biography, but still . . . Ty Cobb.

Jimmy Carter is Georgian though, and Martin Luther King was from Atlanta. After the 2020 presidential election, Georgia’s Republican Secretary of State may have saved our democracy. Still, if you were going to pick a state where the 2020 election kerfuffle would center, ten’d get you twenty that the center would be Georgia.

American Tobacco Company, *Hugh Jennings and Ty Cobb baseball card,* 1912, Library of Congress.

I would have loved to have seen Ty Cobb play:

AB 11,440/H 4,189/HR 117/BA .366/R 2,245/RBI 1,944/SB 897/OBP .433/SLG .512

Over a 23-year career, Cobb was on base for 43% of his 11,440 at-bats.

As of 2019, Georgia remains a growing state, its population having increased every year since 1930. In 1990, its population was 6,478,216. In 2019 its population was estimated at 10,617,423. It’s the New South, whatever that may be.

About 55% of Georgians are Anglo, 10% Hispanic, 32.6% Black, 4.4% Asian, and 2.2% multiracial.

in 2016, Donald Trump carried Georgia in a landslide, by 50.3% of the 3,967,067 votes cast for President. In the 2020 presidential election, Joe Biden carried Georgia by roughly 12,000 votes, or .23% of the 4,935,487 total votes cast for President. It was a surprise, I think, and the aftermath was as important to our democracy as Sherman’s March. If you look at it though, how Georgia actually voted has few surprises, and is consistent with the rest of the country. Turnout was up by 6% over 2016, but turnout was down in 2016 over 2012. By region, there’s the obvious blue vote centering in Atlanta, which is expected. Then there’s Baldwin County in middle Georgia. It’s a county with a population of 45,000, about 55% white. Biden carried the county by 50.5%. That’s a surprise, but it’s a surprise without much effect.

Macon, Marietta, and Savannah, all smaller cities, voted blue. Athens and the surrounding area, home of the University of Georgia, went blue, but that’s pretty standard for college towns, whether in Georgia or Idaho. Then there is a scattering of small population counties, remnants of a cotton belt, where the population remains majority African American. Those counties voted blue.

No statewide officeholders in Georgia are Democrats, but both U.S. senators are. The Georgia Senate and its House of Representatives are Republican majorities.

Geographically Georgia is similar to the other Atlantic states, but on a horizontal slant. The southeast is a coastal plain, followed by its mid-state foothills, its Piedmont, rising to the Blue Ridge and Appalachian Mountains in the north. I’m still surprised reading accounts of Appalachian Trail hikes, when the hiker starts in Georgia. I guess I should be equally surprised when the hike ends in Maine. The Appalachians go most of the way up the Atlantic Coast

We fish in northeast Georgia for shoal bass, a river bass. Because of Atlanta’s airport, it’s easy to fly in and out of Georgia from Houston. We’ll poke around Atlanta for an afternoon, go to part of a baseball game between the Atlanta Native American Warriors and the first-place San Francisco Giants, then spend the night in Helen, “the Charm of Bavaria in the Heart of the Blue Ridge Mountains.” As far as I know, none of the Atlanta Braves are part of Georgia’s .5% Native American population, and having sat through a series of particularly painful Astros losing efforts against the Braves in the 90s, I’m certain that the Tomahawk Chop is the most despicable fan chant in sports. I completely support efforts to ban it, and public pressure to change the Braves’ name. My opinion is not influenced in the least by my hatred of the franchise. Really though, whatever my opinion of the Braves, given Georgia’s particularly tragic expulsion of the Creek and Cherokee, having a baseball team with a Native American mascot is unforgivable. Of course I’d probably still hate the Braves whatever their name.

Meanwhile shoal bass are one of the 13 species of black bass, a river bass, closest genetically to spotted bass. They’re native to Georgia, northern Florida, and northeastern Alabama, but are endangered in Alabama. They’re most common in the Chattahoochee and Flint River drainages. I figure that I’ll deem any bass I catch that isn’t obviously a largemouth as a shoal bass, and I might even fudge on a largemouth.

Georgia Department of Natural Resources, Shoal Bass.

I’m not really sure what a shoal is, but I think it’s a sandbar in a river.

The Flag of the State of Georgia, by the way, is the flag of the Confederate States of America, with the addition of the seal of the state of Georgia and the words “In God We Trust.” It was adopted in 2003, replacing a flag that included the Confederate Battle Flag.

September 26, 2018March 15, 2019

Scott Walker and Donald Trump

In 2016, historically liberal, progressive Wisconsin voted for Trump, not by much but enough for Trump to take Wisconsin’s ten electoral votes. Wisconsin may have been one of the biggest shocks of election night. Of course for most people it was still a distant second to President Trump winning.

Wisconsin’s liberal bent came honestly. German immigrants, including Bohemians and Czechs and Slovenians, were often ideological refugees. Norwegian culture, the other large source of non-Yankee immigration, was more communal than the nation as a whole, the sort of culture that would embrace sitting around together naked in saunas. The Republican Party was born in Wisconsin, but it was the radical anti-slavery party, not the party of Karl Rove. Urban industrial Wisconsin developed on skilled labor, and there is a strong union tradition. Wisconsin enacted the first progressive income tax, the social insurance legislation that was the model for the New Deal, and collective bargaining for public employees.

That collective bargaining business didn’t last long.

Things have changed, sort of. Scott Walker and Paul Ryan are obvious, and both the state senate and assembly are majority Republican. U.S. Senator Tammy Baldwin is one bright spot for the Democrats, but for the 2018 election Senator Baldwin is the primary target of the Republican Party. Republicans are spending more money on the Baldwin race than all other Senate races combined. Wisconsin is the laboratory for modern Republican political infrastructure, but Baldwin is leading in the polls, and in the polling for the Governor’s race Scott Walker is trailing.

I don’t know Ms. Baldwin, but friends tell me she is a lovely woman. We don’t really have a lot of lovely U.S. Senators.

The striking thing about the 2016 presidential vote in Wisconsin is the striking thing in Oregon, in Louisiana, even in Texas. Urban areas, Madison and Milwaukee in Wisconsin, Portland and Eugene in Oregon, vote blue. Rural areas and small towns mostly vote red.

It doesn’t surprise me. Rural and small town residents face personal economic pressures and limits that urban residents don’t face and don’t understand. Local business ownership is dead. Agriculture is mechanized and ownership is centralized. Locals’ interactions with state and federal government are as often as not burdensome–taxes and regulatory restrictions–and the benefits received are often not obvious. The average resident may receive indirect benefits from crop subsidies, for instance, but that’s not obvious to the small town parts manager at a struggling car dealership. Even in areas where a thriving local economy is driven by recreation and tourism, land costs price locals out of the market.

Rural residents could potentially benefit from increased government services, universal health care for instance, but it doesn’t mean there aren’t rational reasons for rural residents to deeply distrust government, and to have preferred Trump to Hillary. Hillary didn’t visit Wisconsin during the 2016 campaign, so why would a rural Wisconsin resident think the Democrats shared their concerns? Nobody likes to be taken for granted. Of course that doesn’t mean there aren’t other irrational reasons for rural Republican votes, race or homophobia or religion or whatever, but those reasons aren’t peculiarly rural, and drive urban votes as well. It’ll be interesting to watch how rural Wisconsin votes in November.

Tag: Politics