Transcript

4.23.26 · Smithsonian Magazine

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Speaker 1: Welcome. This is Rebecca Shore for Radio Eye, and to
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day I would be reading the Smithsonian Magazine dated April
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May twenty twenty six. As reminder, Radio Eye is a
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reading service intended for people who are blind or have
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other disabilities that make it difficult to read printed material.
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Please join me now for the first article titled follow
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in the Footsteps of the Founders and have a drink.
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Where they planned the revolution over a few beers. Taverns,
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public houses, and inns served as meeting places before the
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war and unofficial headquarters during it. Some still stand, including
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these nine where you can raise a glass and Memory
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of the Founders by Noah Letterman. We held our meetings
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at the Green Dragon Tavern, Paul Revere wrote in a
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letter Careful that our meetings should be kept secret. Soon
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to be Founding fathers and other patriots, like Revere, found
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great value in the American public house was a place
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to trade stories, to learn of critical world events, and
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to strategize. They railed against British tyranny, plotted protests against
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loathsome policy, and read aloud from Thomas Paine's Common Sense
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or from the Declaration of Independence while sipping Toddies at taverns,
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militia's recruited soldiers, held military tribunals, stored military supplies and rations,
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and hosted patriot groups like the Sons of Liberty. Most
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taverners supported these gatherings at their establishments because they often
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felt the crushing British tariffs on raw ingredients for spirits
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or on printed goods like playing cards. Revolution would be
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a boon for business. Today, most colonial era taverns are gone,
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but as our country turns two hundred and fifty, a
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few stalwart pubs remain, holding the hopes and stories of
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the revolutionary Americans who fought to form a democratic nation.
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As we celebrate America's independents, consider lifting a foggy beer
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stein at one of these taverns. Right Tavern, Concord, Massachusetts.
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In October seventeen seventy four, the first Massachusetts Provincial Congress
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met in Concord. Samuel Adams and John Hancock began the
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process of separating the thirteen colonies from Britain, made plans
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to redirect the people's taxes from the crown to the
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provincial Congress, and established the idea that the government's power
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came from the will of the people during and after
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the meeting. Some reportedly went right next door to mister
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Taylor's tavern now Write Tavern, to celebrate these bold steps
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by getting sloshed. On April nineteenth, seventeen seventy five, in
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the wee hours of the morning, having been warned of
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approaching Redcoats, colonial militia men gathered at the tavern to
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plan their maneuvers and then left, ending up in the
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nearby hills. Later that morning, seven hundred British regulars rode
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into Concord to capture the colonist's stockpiled weapons. The Red
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Coats then commandeered Wright Tavern as their headquarters. Today, a
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replica of a line engraving by the colonial artisan Amos Doolittle,
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hanging just inside the entrance depicts the British gathering before
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the tavern. When the Red Coats met the militiamen at
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the North Bridge, about a mile down the road, both
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sides fired, resulting in the first casualties for the Crown.
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Six decades later, Concordinative Ralph Waldo Emerson would refer to
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the instigation of that skirmish as the shot heard round
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the world. By seventeen ninety three right tavern had ceased operations,
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and over the next two centuries the building had dozens
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of other uses. It was a bakery, a whig manufacturer,
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and a kindergarten where one hundred and ninety five kids
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signed the eighteen sixty four Little People's Petition to President
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Abraham Lincoln calling for enslaved children to be freed. Today,
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it is a museum open to the public Fridays through
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Sundays and also hosts private events. In the fall, tavern
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service will return so that visitors can enjoy colonial era
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drinks like stone fences, rum or rye mixed with applejack
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and hard cider, and flip a rum cocktail made with molasses,
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spices and a raw egg that was once cooked into
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a froth with a hot poker from the fireplace. Wright
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no longer uses the hot poker France's Tavern, New York City.
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Many of the original gray yellow bricks of France's tavern
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hold firm with their original eighteenth century oyster shell mortar
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along Broad Street in Lower Manhattan. When Samuel Francis purchased
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the tavern in seventeen sixty two, he marked his establishment
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with the sign bearing Queen Charlotte's lightness, and the public
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called it the Queen's Head Tavern, but inside was despised.
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During the seventeen seventies, the Sons of Liberty met at
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France's to plot out New York's tea Party protests, Adams
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and Hancock visited to devour oysters, and the New York
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Provincial Congress used Frances to host meetings and one court martial,
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as well as parties, including a barn burner on June eighteenth,
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seventeen seventy six, with George Washington in attendance. They made
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thirty one toasts, drank one hundred and nine bottles of wine,
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and paid ninety one pounds equal to around twenty six
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thousand dollars today, plus sixteen additional shillings for broken wine glasses.
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It was also the site of perhaps the biggest party
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to celebrate Evacuation Day November twenty fifth, seventeen eighty three,
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when the British left New York City after more than
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seven years, marking the end of the war in the
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birth of a Nation. That evening, New York's Governor George
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Clinton gave a public dinner at France's tavern. General Washington
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joined in thirteen toasts to the new Nation, to lost heroes,
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to America's future as an asylum, to the persecuted of
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the earth, and to the hope that this day will
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be a lesson to princes. Nine days later, France's tavern
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hosted a more lacrymose occasion. The Patriot spy master Benjamin
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Talmadge recalled the lamentations that followed Washington as the latter
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left New York to return to Mount vernon such a
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scene of sorrow and weeping I had never before witnessed,
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and fondly hope I may never be called to witness again.
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To day, visitors to France's tavern can toast like Washington
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with the punch cocktail of rum and whisky flavored with peach,
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tea and lemon juice, a nod to a time when
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fresh ingredients were rare. Ye Old Centerton in Pittsgrove, New Jersey,
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Brian Good and his wife Joe Anne where chefs who
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had worked at some of New York City's most famous restaurants,
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including Le Bernardine and Jean George, respectively, But when the
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Twin Towers fell in two thousand one, they sought a
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new start outside the city and moved to the town
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of Elmer, in one of the most rural parts of
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New Jersey, and in two thousand three bought ye old
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Centerton Inn in nearby Pittsgrove. Built in seventeen o six,
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the two story inn was a stop on the stage
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coach route from Bridgeton, New Jersey to Philadelphia, where travelers
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came for pints and a bed. Based on an eighteen
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o three deed, we can determine that the original eighteenth
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century rooms comprised the bar area, the dining room behind it,
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and the second story. The inn may have held munitions
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for the Continental Army. Brian Good recounts the legend that
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Patriot militiamen once killed two loyalists here and buried the
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bodies under the fireplace, but there's no way to substantiate things.
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He laments Middleton Tavern, Annapolis, Maryland. Traveling from Virginia to
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Philadelphia was arduous in the seventeen hundreds, but meetings of
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the Continental Congress in the North required Southern delegates to
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leave their plantations and make the long journey to trim
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many hours and miles off the ride. Horatio Middleton's ferry
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out of Annapolis, Maryland, offered a short cut across the
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Chesapeake Bay. While Middleton claimed in an ad in the
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Maryland Gazette that he keeps the best entertainment as good
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boats and hands as any that crossed the bay. Boats
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crossing the bay weren't so reliable. One ferry carrying George
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Washington ran aground twice, nearly costing the president his life.
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Another boat got stuck while ferrying Tench Tillman, one of
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Washington's aide de camp, while he carried surrendered documents from
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British General Charles Cornwallis north to Philadelphia. As a ferry owner,
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Middleton needed a tavern where customers could gamble and drink
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while waiting for passage. In seventeen fifty, Middleton purchased a
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sturdy building erected on a stone foundation with brick walls
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and oyster shell grout. The construction helped the tavern survive
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a nineteen thirty eight hurricane and two fires in the
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nineteen seventies. In November seventeen eighty three, Annapolis became the
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nation's capital for the better part of a year, and
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the tavern would have been busy with associates of Benjamin Franklin,
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one of whom once requested that debtors meet him at
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the tavern to make speedy payment. Middleton's bustled with members
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of the Maryland Jockey Club, the Freemasons, and the Tuesday Club,
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a social organization comprising the city's self styled elite, such
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as Middleton's son Samuel. According to Tuesday Club records, raucous
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members visited Middleton's to sing, dance, brisk jigs, play music,
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and drink good rack, punch and claret. Today, guests can
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eat like colonists, enjoying daily rockfish offerings and oyster shooters,
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served with cocktail, sauce and Natty Beau beer, a Maryland
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favorite dating back to the first Cleveland administration. Whitehorse Tavern, Newport,
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Rhode Island, built in sixteen fifty two, This tavern served
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in its early days as the meeting place for the
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Rhode Island Colony's General Assembly, as well as the city
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Council and the Criminal Court. By seventeen o two, William
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Mays Junior, a notorious pirate who'd proud the Indian Ocean,
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succeeded his father as innkeeper and received a license to
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sell all sorts of strong drink. Six years later, the
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businessman's lunch was supposedly invented there, as councilors began dining
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at the tavern and charging meals to the public treasury.
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By seventeen thirty, new owners trotted out the tavern's new sign,
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an image of a white horse. During the war, in
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seventeen seventy six, the owners left Newport when British troops
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and Loyalist allies turned the white Horse into their accommodations. Today,
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you won't see much of a rabble at the White Horse.
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It's now an establishment for Newport's upper crust. Red Fox
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Inn and Tavern. Middleburg, Virginia. In seventeen twenty eight, using
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local fieldstone, Joseph Chen built Chen's Ordinary, a tavern in Middleburg,
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midway between bustling Alexandria and Winchester on the Ashby Gap
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trading route. Being dead center gave rise to the town's
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name Middleburg when it was chartered in seventeen eighty seven.
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George Washington was Chen's cousin, and when the first President
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rolled through town to visit family, he might have stayed
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at the inn, or at least had a drink. There
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Chen's Ordinary became the Beverage House in eighteen twelve. In
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the Civil War, it served as a Confederate hospital during
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the eighteen sixty three Gettysburg Campaign and the headquarters for
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General J. E. B. Stewart, who hatched battle plans upstairs.
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To day, visible square nail heads in non uniform with
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floorboards appeared consistent with eighteen hundreds design. In nineteen thirty seven,
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the property was revamped and expanded to become the Red
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Fox Inn, a more luxurious property surrounding the original tavern,
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which became popular with the Kennedys. Jackie Kennedy Onassis frequented
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the inn during her fox hunting outings. Griswold Inn, Essex, Connecticut.
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Beneath a domed ceiling made of horsehair and crushed clam shells,
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the Griswold Inns Tavern boasts a large and handsome collection
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of maritime art. In the other rooms, there's an antique
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firearm collection and a rich history of chaos and gaiety.
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The tavern room began as a schoolhouse in seventeen thirty five,
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but graduated to become a tavern in eighteen oh one,
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though not before townspeople watched the building roll down Main
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Street on logs pulled by a team of oxen to
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the tavern's current location. Owners maintain that the Griswald Inn
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has been in continuous operation since seventeen seventy six. Although
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none of the famed Revolutionary rabble rousers are known to
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have visited the Griswold Inn, the tavern does have a
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musket that had in its barrel a note from a
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father to his son encouraging Junior to take up arms
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and join ye ranks of Ye Washington. The Griswald Inn
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was commandeered by the British during the eighteen fourteen raid
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on Essex, a site of Temperance Movement protests, the banners
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still hang inside. It was also where Frederick Law Olmsted
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as rumored to have celebrated his commission to design Central Park.
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Pirates House, Savannah, Georgia. The Pirates House consists of a
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number of conjoined historical buildings, including the Herb House, which
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is considered the oldest standing structure in the state of Georgia.
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Built in seventeen thirty four on the site of the
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Trustees' Garden, the first public experimental garden in the colonies
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where colonists grew cotton and peaches. The herb House served
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as the gardener's accommodations. The Pirate's House started operating as
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a tavern in seventeen fifty three, its haint blue shutters
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and doors ostensibly ward off ghosts. In the mid seventeen hundreds,
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legends tell pirates began using tunnels under the tavern to
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kidnap unwary and bibers, including per one legend, a local constable.
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Pirate associations continued in the next century, It said Scottish
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writer Robert Louis Stevenson's visit to the Pirate's House helped
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inspire his eighteen eighty three novel Treasure Island. Pages from
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an early edition of the novel are on display in
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a tavern chamber known as the Treasure Room. And Finally,
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A Man Full of Trouble Philadelphia. During the mid twentieth century,
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many buildings in Philadelphia's Society Hill were raised amid a
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fever for redevelopment. Up went skyscrapers and modern brick homes.
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But just off the corner of Second and Spruce Streets
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sits an odd, little standalone building with tilting brick walls.
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While Philadelphia is estimated to have had more than one
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hundred taverns during the colonial period, A Man full of Trouble,
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founded in seventeen fifty nine, is the only one surviving
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from that time. For the second one and half of
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the twentieth century and into the new millennium, the property
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languished in despair, serving as a museum of the Revolution
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and later as spartan housing for visiting scholars and students
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from the University of Pennsylvania. Dan Wheeler, an attorney and
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real estate investor, bought the building in twenty twenty one
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and opened it to the public in December twenty twenty four.
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The tavern serves drinks from a bar in the precise
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location where one had stood during the Revolutionary War, and
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brought in succession Fermentory, a rural Pennsylvania brewery, to pour
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its farmhouse brews. In the eighteen thirties, William Breton made
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the first known painting of A Man Full of Trouble
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in watercolor. But as you peruse the artifacts that Wheeler
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has gathered in the tavern's second floor museum, including period
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muskets and one of the oldest printings of the United
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States Constitution printed on nearby Front Street. It's easy to
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imagine patriots within these walls, whispering plans for the impending
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war and accompanying this article, did you know the role
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of taverns in Colonial America? Taverns were critical political and
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economic infrastructure in colonial America. As a result, there were
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a lot of them. Colonial Boston alone was home to
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roughly one hundred and fifty taverns around the start of
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the Revolutionary War. That amounted to roughly one tavern for
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every one hundred Bostonians. By seventeen seventy, New York City
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hosted around one tavern for every sixty New Yorkers. Next.
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Cascade red foxes are notoriously reclusive, So how did this
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photographer capture these stunning images of the endangered species. Even
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the scientists who study the animals rarely see them except
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on camera, but Gretchen K Stewart spent a season documenting
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them up close. By Jenny Rothenberg Gritz, you never forget
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your first glimpse of a Cascade red fox for the
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wild life photographer Gretchen K stuart It happened in twenty
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twenty while she was driving up the slope of Washington
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State's Mount Rainier. As soon as she spotted the bundle
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of fur on a snow bank, she says, I knew
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she wasn't a normal fox. The animal's coat was pale, tawny,
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and extraordinarily bushy. She looked so different and so beautiful.
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I instantly fell in love and I photographed her, but
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I was like, what is this fox? An online fox
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hunt revealed very little information. The one short write up
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she could find was on the website of the Cascade's
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Carnivore Project, a non profit founded and directed by the
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wild life biologist Joscelyn Aikins. A photo made clear that
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the animal Stuart had seen was a Cascade red fox.
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Somewhat confusingly, these animals aren't always read. Their name simply
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indicates that they're a subspecies of the standard red fox
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that lives in the lowlands. Only about fifty Cascade red
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foxes have been identified, all of them on or around
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Mount Rainier or near by Mount Adams. Even Akins, who
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had been working to protect them since nineteen ninety nine,
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had rarely spotted one in the wild. Joscelyn told me,
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we really only see them on our trail cameras. If
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we're lucky, recalls Stuart, who took those words as a challenge.
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She just laughed at me, like, ha ha, good luck.
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She didn't think I would find them, but I found
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another individual that summer, and the following year I found
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another too. I became obsessed. Conservationists usually don't worry much
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about foxes. These adaptable animals, in the same family as
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dogs and wolves, live on every continent other than Antarctica.
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The ancestors of North America's foxes are thought to have
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crossed the Baring Land Bridge from Asia, just as early
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humans likely did, but during an ice age that ended
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eleven thousand years ago, these foxes became isolated in separate populations.
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Some stayed in the lowlands and became the ancestors of
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ordinary red foxes that amble through suburban neighborhoods sniffing around
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garbage cans. Others adapted to cold conditions, and as the
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climate warmed, they sought refuge and higher altitudes, like the
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Cascade Mountains in what is now Washington State. They're just
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stuck in these high elevations without the ability to increase
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genetic diversity, Stuart says, they're becoming inbred. Really, they have
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a lot of threats that they face. Some of the
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most dire threats come from humans. Foxes spend three to
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four months raising their kits in dens, sheltered sites, sometimes
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close to human communities where food is more plentiful. In
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June twenty twenty five, Stuart was excited to come across
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a cascade red fox den at a ski resort, but
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she noticed right away that the location had many hazards. Indeed,
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the father ended up being hit by a car. Other
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members of the family died, apparently after ingesting rodenticide, which
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ski resorts often used to prevent deer mouse infestations. Aikens
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says the Washington State government has been working with resorts
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to minimize such hazards, but they are impossible to eliminate completely.
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People want to ski. Aikins said that is a challenge
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for wildlife, as is a road, as is climate change.
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About a month after the dispiriting news about the ski
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resort den, Stuart got a call from Mount Rainier National Park.
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A volunteer had found another Cascade red fox den with
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three kits, one male and two female. Although Stuart is
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a photograph not a scientist. Researchers and park rangers knew
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that she had a special history with the famously elusive creatures.
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A few years earlier, she'd partnered with the Cascade's Carnivore
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Project on a public awareness campaign which helped persuade Washington
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State to list the Cascade red fox as endangered. In
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twenty twenty two, When Stuart arrived at the new Den,
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she realized she knew the mother. She'd even given the
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female fox a name, Shadow Aikens, the wildlife biologist, says,
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I always thought of foxes as not being identifiable as individuals.
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With a tiger or a leopard, you can identify it
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by its spots or stripes. But Gretchen was looking at
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subtler things. She was able to say, for instance, that
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one has a notch in its ear. Then we could
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look at the camera traps and say that red fox
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we saw yesterday is the same one or it's different.
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We could get a better sense of how many there
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are across the population. The new Den site was a
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sloping piece of land around several big trees. Its main
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access points were drainage tunnels under a trail, but the
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foxes built their own tunnels, which allowed them to pop
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up all over the place, But during Stuart's first hour
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at the site, she watched tourists thronging around the fox family.
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At one point, the mother tried to bring a meal
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to her kits and was so spooked by the crowds
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that she ran off without making the delivery. When Stuart
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reported this to park officials, they swiftly barricaded the area
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and assigned volunteers to take turns guarding access points from
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five a m. To nine p m. For the next
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few months, Stuart was the only person granted access to
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the den site. She spent long hours sitting behind a blind,
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taking photos and jotting down copious notes documenting how Cascade
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foxes raised their kits in a den. When I'm living
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out of my van up on the mountain, my sleep
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schedule adjusts to sunrise and sunset, Stuart says. I was
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so anxious to be with the foxes that I didn't
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want to waste time heating up coffee, so I would
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just have cold coffee. I ate a lot of snaky stuff, bananas, oranges, apples,
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granola bars, bread with hummus, and I would just sit
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and watch and wait. Male foxes are involved in raising
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and feeding their kits, and Stuart soon realized she knew
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the father too. She'd seen him a year earlier out
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in the back country and named him Crag because he
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was so good at scaling the mountains. He's got a
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bigger white portion on his tail, and he's got longer
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legs than a lot of the others, she says. Stuart
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watched Crag make meal deliveries to his offspring. He brought
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the kits a long tailed weasel, and that was pretty
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surprising because long tailed weasels are vicious, but this dad
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was a fierce hunter. The kits didn't eat the weasel,
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They just played tug of war with it. The funny
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thing was the dad was insisting that the kits play
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with this weasel. They would play with it for a while,
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and then they'd drop it and start playing with each other.
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She said he would go and pick it up and
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bring it back to them and make them keep playing
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with it. Why was the father fox so enthusiastic about
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this morbid version of pop Goo's The weasel parents who
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encouraged their kits to play with dead animals are generally
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teaching them to hunt, though a weasel seemed like an
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unusual choice because foxes generally don't eat them. Maybe a
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weasel was the dad's favorite childhood toy, Stuart speculates, I
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wish I could read their minds. The mother and father
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took turns bringing food, but every now and then Stuart
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got to see the whole family of five together. One time,
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the mom was with the kits and all of a sudden,
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she ran up the slope and scrunched down really quickly.
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I looked and there was the dad. She was being
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really submissive, kind of rolling around, and he was just
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sitting there. The kits got all excited and ran over
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to him. Stuart hopes she'll be able to observe another
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den at the same site next year. Aikens says Stuart's
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work is a testament to how a photographer can integrate
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into a research project. There's only so much we can do,
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she says of her science team. We don't spend hours
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and days at dens. We're covering a bigger geographic scope,
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endlessly collecting scat and setting cameras across the landscape, trying
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to find out how many cascade red foxes there are
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and what their genetic diversity is I tromped through the
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woods at top speed checking camera stations, and Gretchen's like, God,
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you walk so fast. She has complete patience and she
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always has her big lens. And Accompanying this article, did
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you know following the Cascade red fox? Traditional tales from
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local native cultures about clever mountain foxes provide clues about
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where the Cascade red fox lived before Europeans arrived. The
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mountains where the Cascade red foxes reside have a higher
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annual snowfall than any other place in the United States,
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including Alaska, which makes it harder to track the species.
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Camera traps help, however, and some captions from the article.
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A five month old kit from the twenty twenty five
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litter spies a chipmunk. Despite their hunting lessons in the den,
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many young foxes become conditioned to eat leftover human food
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babies first snow. Compared with ordinary Lowland red foxes, Cascade
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red foxes have a smaller build and fur lined feet
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that move more easily across the snow. Kits in the
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same litter can have different coat colors. This concludes readings
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from the Smithsonian Magazine for Today Your reader has been
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Rebecca Shore. Thank you for listening and have a great day.