Navigating Health and Horror: Uncovering the Fields of Infectious Diseases, Haunted History, and Climate Change

Speaker 1: 0:03

music. Hey, welcome everybody to another edition of the ICRV Radio podcast. This is a podcast that will tour the various content areas on ICRVRadiocom, where we have fresh programming every day that celebrates our towns and villages, our history, our culture and all the life interests that make the Connecticut River Valley so special. We like to say that we make local matter and we do it by showcasing the amazing resource we all have in the knowledge that abounds in our area museums, libraries, college campuses, historical societies, state parks, and the list goes on. Hey, in this episode of the ICRV Radio podcast, we discussed some seasonal standards. We're going to start talking about health and you know it is flu season, after all. We got the fall safety challenges to talk about. We're going to talk about ghosts. It is Halloween month, so we're going to talk about ghosts, but we're going to do it in a special way, with the state archeologists, talking with our resident folklore authority. We're also going to journey to a historic homestead in the area that you may want to check out. We are going to appreciate some of the famous writings from area literary greats. We talked new books to be on the lookout for. We share some memories from area museum curators. We're packed with stuff, and we're going to end with a fascinating and important update on our natural habitats and some of the challenges and threats to it that we should all be aware of. Hey, but we're going to start with Pathways to Good Health.

Speaker 1: 1:46

We had a visit from our friends at Middlesex Health.

Speaker 1: 1:49

Dr Alina Filizov is the chief of infectious disease at Middlesex Health and she wanted to remind us for sure of the threats and precautions that we should all be aware of relative to the flu, flu seasons coming up, but also COVID right, that gets all the headlines still in the headlines.

Speaker 1: 2:06

She also wanted to add the third one, rsv, and she also wanted us to be aware that there's a whole bunch of other stuff going on, as the playbook for her and her colleagues is constantly being updated because of threats that actually don't get the headlines but for sure need their attention. And here's Dr Filizov to fill us in. One of the things that we talked about was the fact that there's a playbook for people on the front lines, such as yourself and your colleagues. There's a playbook for something like COVID happening. Can you put a handle on how much that playbook has changed since 2019? Does it continue to change and is there any reason for that playbook actually to be exercised? Are you feeling that we're always going to be confronted with this type of a viral attack, just don't know when, don't know what?

Speaker 2: 3:09

Very good question. Very good question. And that's on the mind of Department of Health, local in the country, and it's on the mind of infectious disease and epidemiologists in every hospital. And that's because there is during these days people are traveling, people have all kinds of interesting exposures all over the world and nothing that is local to one country really stays in that country. It binds to end up in another place. So sometimes that place is just an adjacent country and sometimes its place is somewhere like us.

Speaker 2: 3:52

So playbook is really sort of the right framework of how we think about anybody who's coming in with unexplained illness. So in the emergency room we have a way to triage patients based on their symptoms, based on their travel history, and then appropriate precautions are taken into play Because we have to. In addition to the flu and RSV and COVID, we worry about Ebola, we worry about other bioterrorists, sort of presentations of different illnesses and since we luckily do not see these infections every day, we have to keep those in mind and exercise response to those commonly and frequently. So the frontline workers remember how things would look, how they would sound, how the patient would present. So these people will be in danger and we can isolate the case and treat the case appropriately. So that happens all around the country every day. So every time somebody comes in and there are some key features that they report to the triage nurse, we activate this protocol where certain things have taken place and then infectious disease is contacted, infection prevention is contacted, epidemiology is contacted and we stratify by risk whether this is somebody who requires all hem and death or this is somebody with a likely routine illness and based on what we see and based on the global warming and spread of really significant infections.

Speaker 2: 5:40

Our work is not getting easier every day, and we're not even talking about things that are coming overseas. As you know, in the last few months we've had a rush of Vibrio infections in northeast because of warming waters. Now those present in a pretty scary way as well. So we have to keep our differential diagnosis broad to make sure that those patients are treated promptly and fast and with good responses. Based on recent years, including this years of avian influenza in poultry, we always worry about secondary illness in farmers and those who have exposure to domestic animals.

Speaker 2: 6:28

So, in a nutshell, this is a never-ending process for us. We want to make sure that we always have the scariest things on our mind to make sure that they never cross the line and they never come in contact with those who are supposed to be safe and supposed to come into the hospital for totally different reasons. And, of course, we want to protect healthcare workers because this is the backbone and making sure that everything else every other patient is taken care of. So, again, long answer to your question. But yes, we are practicing recognizing very scary viruses and not so scary viruses and looking at the COVID pathway so far, I don't think we're going to be done with COVID anytime soon. I think this is something that's going to keep moving in some direction. Hopefully it's going to be something that is moving in a predictable way, or somewhat predictable way, like flu is doing, and we can respond in real time accordingly.

Speaker 1: 7:33

Dr Alina Filazov, and she is the Chief of Infectious Disease at Middlesex Health. Important, important stuff. Hey, also important and on the front lines for us are our area of firefighters. We have a program called 911411, which serves up emergency information stuff that we just need to know about, and this is something while it's a concern all the time but they're just seeing more and more of these incidents and pertains to batteries in electric vehicles. John Planis is the fire marshal in Essex, connecticut, and is also a firefighter in Guilford, but co-host of 911411. Here's what he had to say about these batteries being on his radar screen on a daily basis Electric cars you've spoken about. Oh Lord, are we still having issues?

Speaker 4: 8:28

Yes, yes, Case in point, we had a department recently I think it was last month, I forgot which town 21,000 gallons of water to put this vehicle out. It's 21,000 gallons. They had a vehicle that had reignited after a week of being extinguished. Wow, 11,000 gallons of water.

Speaker 1: 8:51

Wow.

Speaker 4: 8:52

They had it in the salvage yard, yeah, and the car reignited, therefore igniting the other cars, setting them on fire. That was after being with 11,000 gallons of water being poured on this vehicle and it reignited. The problem that people don't understand is that the lithium-ion batteries. When these batteries catch fire, they produce their own oxygen. So what you're seeing is off-gassing, is just. It just gives it what it's off-gassing, it's burning and it's kids. It's creating Its own oxygen to be self-sufficient.

Speaker 4: 9:22

So no, matter, no matter how much water you put on this fire, it's going to reignite or it's going to continue to burn.

Speaker 1: 9:28

Major major Issues there, stuff to be aware of for sure. Hey, if you're a resident of connecticut, then you're you're no stranger to the the fact there's so many of our fire departments, our volunteer fire departments. We broadcast from a village in Essex, iverton, and have to deal with this horn that goes off. I mean it's it's a loud horn that goes off. It's tested at 12 noon, but when there's an emergency, it, it, it goes off and it kind of messes up our air quality. Sometimes our on-air quality sometimes wakes people up at other times.

Speaker 1: 10:06

But we had John plan us in and had to ask the fire marshal what is what is going on with this horn? And I think a lot of people throughout the state might not know the answer to this question. And and this is actually a really good answer, but here's John. Hey, can I ask you Just as a resident and as a business in Iverton I know this is maybe putting you in an awkward situation, for which I apologize, but can, can, can I just run one question by you? Yeah, this village chooses to go old school in the year 2023 and notifying people of an emergency.

Speaker 1: 10:48

By doing the loudest, most obnoxious sound system Possible alarm system, and I know it. It's coded in in terms of what, uh, what, how many blasts of the fog horn, etc. I know it's a communication device and look I, we. We want to be safe, but we also live in the 21st century. We're streaming an internet radio station that if we wanted to do notices, we would do it through text, or we do it through other other platforms that are equally as ubiquitous.

Speaker 4: 11:21

This horn? What is going on the horn? And I see your frustration. The horn in, uh, that's been on the Iverton fire station. It was out of service for about a year so, um, they finally had the funding to fix it and put it back online. For the state statutes in Connecticut it is required to have three notification opportunities or ways to notify firefighters, one of which is a monitor by radio system, electronic by the apps that we have now, and also an actual, audible Uh way of hearing. So in case the two other ways are not, um, you know, able to get a notification out the firefighters, we still hear that the horns are going off.

Speaker 1: 12:00

It's still in the statute, so it is happening in gilford for you in gilford it.

Speaker 4: 12:07

Now you put me in a position where I, we have, we have, uh, no horns in in gilford and but in Iverton and sx we still do. The reason for that is because gilford is a combination department, meaning that they have fully paid staff that are on duty 24 seven. Essex is all volunteer. That's the difference. So, we believe it or not, we used to have it even when we were career. I mean, when we're, uh, you know, combination about when I first joined, when I got hired in gilford 15 years ago, I remember when I first came on they still had the horns going, but back then we only ran with, I think, um, it was six guys per shift, I think it is six or five or six guys per shift. We were kind of like in the beginning stages of getting bigger and bigger and bigger, and now we're at 10 guys per shift with two fire stations that are fully staffed. So, yeah, so that's the difference. When you get into an all volunteer department, it is stressed more to have audible appliances. Okay, and I apologize.

Speaker 1: 13:15

That's a. That's a good, pretty pretty good answer to a question I think a lot of us have been wondering about. Hey, uh, we're going to keep it in the community, but it won't be too serious here, because a lot of people enjoy a good read as a way of Just exhaling a little bit and getting a break from the mundane mundane. We do a program called library chat, with area librarians. Sunny scarpa and Cindy hay can come in and share with us things that we should be aware of on on the shelves and in the activities category for area libraries. But uh, in this most recent Edition of library chat they wanted to make us aware that there are some great non-fiction Offerings and, in particular, as we are approaching the holidays, there are a lot of new releases that are out that listeners may find interesting and they wanted to share.

Speaker 8: 14:09

Here are people who have written memoirs that will be out this fall Melissa ethridge, bernie talpin, who is was, elton johns right-hand man, um, patrick stewart, uh, jada pinkett, smith, britney spears, henry winkler and, most particularly, barbara strisand, who's much awaited. She, she said years ago she was writing a memoir, uh, and it's coming out on november 7th. It's called, my name is barbara, and it is purported to be around a thousand pages. Wow, and people are already going berserk about it, of course. Oh, my goodness.

Speaker 8: 14:54

So those are just, those are memoirs. Okay, so those are. Those are books by, by the artists themselves about their lives or career, um, but then then there are biographies, so other people's Work about a famous artist, and there are biographies of and I'm sort of listing them in publication order, but I just, I just want to get these thoughts out there so you understand the bumper crop that's coming biographies of steven sondheim, lou reed madonna, uh, george harrison, johnny cash, tupac chicor, which is getting a lot of attention, and elif, it's gerald, so, wow, so these are all, and all of these are happening between now when we're sitting here talking, and Thanksgiving, or or right after Thanksgiving, of course, all focused on the holiday gift giving season, but it's ridiculous. I mean it's it's. It's ridiculous.

Speaker 7: 15:57

I think my holiday shopping might be done. I'm you see.

Speaker 1: 15:59

I mean, there you go, there is something for we will, uh we'll keep it on the the literary side a little bit, but slide into the kind of culture area on icrv radio where we celebrate area museums. Mark twain house and museum is one of our favorite destinations. Peter ruse is the executive director there and came in to share with us, uh, a little bit about uh mark twain, some of his favorite quotes and why he feels that mark twain continues to live. And it has a lot to do with these, these quotes and and the fact that uh, he considers mark twain to be a humanist at at heart. Uh, and here's peter ruse.

Speaker 6: 16:39

He believed very much in the public school system. He believed in in having a rich education, although he could sometimes, um, uh, be a little vicious about school boards. But um, uh, he, he. One of his quotes is um, In public schools lies the greatness of the nation. And, um, his own children were homeschooled Until they got to high school age and then they went to hartford high school, so they were public school educated as well. One of our favorite quotes is uh, uh.

Speaker 6: 17:10

The difference between the almost right word in the right word is a large matter. It is the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning. He's, uh, he's a humanist, um, in the old sense of the word, and that he is trying to relate to the human condition. And so when I say that he's alive, it's because so many of the things that he said still speak to us today. Um, and I think I might have said before, but I'll say it again, his quote it says suppose I was an idiot Now, suppose I was a member of Congress. But wait, I repeat myself, you know that's alive to us today. Um.

Speaker 6: 17:51

Another one that's a favorite of mine is it's not that there's so many fools in the world, it's just that the lightning ain't distributed right. Um or um, uh. This is a play on a 19th century uh phrase, which is clothes make the man. And he says clothes do make the man. Naked, people have very little influence in society. Um and uh, it's just, it's funny stuff that speaks to you across the century and it's just as alive today as um and. And. So many writers didn't write about the human condition quite the same way, but those that did remain very alive to us.

Speaker 1: 18:27

Abe uh, be on the lookout. Next year, 2024, is the 150th anniversary of the Mark Twain house. So, uh, the special events, one of one of which is the fact that they are teaming up with some amazing uh actors, playwrights and and authorities, and they're they're, uh they're going to bring the voice of Mark Twain back to to life. Uh, more on that later, and for sure, check out the Mark Twain house and museum and all their social media for for updates. Hey, another cultural asset that you definitely want to be aware of is the New Britain Museum of American Arts. Some amazing exhibits on display there.

Speaker 1: 19:05

One of the things that makes this place special one of the many things is that it's one of three museums in the in the entire country that have a permanent shaker exhibit, and this one is notable and to the point where their their permanent collection uh will, uh will kind of issue in new uh takes on on shaker craftsmanship and and artistry. And the second installment in their masterworks series is a masterwork show about Mount Lebanon, new York, which is a special uh um village settlement in the shaker community, particularly uh important to American history uh, and one rich with artifacts. Anyway, lisa Lappie joined us from the New Britain Museum of American Art to tell us the import and why we should just maybe take a second look and take it all in. There's, there's so much depth to to these items, uh, and you just have to pause a little bit and and and take it all in. Here's Lisa explaining.

Speaker 9: 20:07

To someone who doesn't understand the importance of the shaker history to American history. It's just, it's a room full of furniture, you know, just walking by. Oh, it's furniture. If you dive in, read the labels, go to the talks, learn about the shakers, learn about the furniture Absolutely fascinating. They lived an incredible existence, an existence of equality and joy. Um, you talk about aspirational uh society, right? Um, really really incredible to learn about. You know, men and women were equal. They, they lived equally uh, every color, every race. Um, it was a beautiful existence. The, the furniture, the, the, the objects that are um, um uh were created by these. These people are just um exquisite, beautiful to see in person, beautiful to see that they're just as gorgeous today as they were when they were created so many years ago.

Speaker 1: 21:16

And and and truly, there are two things going on. One of the, the items that are on display are a portal through which you could better understand a, a people and a way of life, and then, and then, you can understand the relationship between the way of life and the form of that that their art and their craft took. It's it, it really is. There's a lot going on when you look at one item yes, every little drawer has a purpose.

Speaker 9: 21:46

Yeah, every, every little, you know flat, every, every um detail has a purpose. Nothing wasted, you know nothing, just for ornament. Uh, they're um just just incredible.

Speaker 1: 22:01

Hey, we'll keep it in the culture space for a little bit and tour another museum. We had a chance to sit down and talk with Dr Maragliano, as she is the curator at the museum at the Catherine Heppern Cultural Art Center, and while, uh, you know, usually you would expect someone not to be able to have favorites when they're in a position of of, uh, like hers, but she was able to share with us what her favorite item is in the collection. Uh, and here's the doctor to explain.

Speaker 10: 22:34

So my favorite piece of history about Kate um that we have tied to an object at the museum is we have her letter to Santa Claus from probably around 1912 or 1913. It is the sweetest, tiniest little note she asked um. It tells you everything you need to know about Kate um, because it asks for some dolls, um, some bed clothes, uh, three railed electric train and some batteries, please. So she was interested in girly things, but she was also interested in you know, things that at that time um were really for boys to play with and um, my very, very favorite thing about it is that when you flip the letter over you see where she started writing it dear S T A. I think she realized she was spelling Santa wrong and flipped it back over and wrote it again.

Speaker 1: 23:33

Check out the? Uh, the museum at the Catherine Hepburn culture art center whenever you're close to old Sabre right there at 300 main street. Hey, we're going to kind of kind of do something funky here. Uh, it's Halloween month, uh, you got to be. Everybody's talking about ghosts and goblins and all that, all that stuff, right? Well, uh, we're no different here. On ICRV radio, we did it in a special way though, uh, where it was a special episode of our program, archeology of Connecticut, which is anchored by our state archeologist, dr Sarah sportman. She wanted to talk about ghosts, uh and uh, she wanted to bring in uh noted to folklore authority, internationally noted and followed and read, uh, and, but you can be found also on ICRV radio, uh, professor Steven Jencarella at UMass, amherst, and, and they had a fascinating conversation about ghosts that got into both of their respective disciplines and how they possibly intersected and how, at some point, people are just going to believe whatever they want to believe, but, uh, but they had a great sharing of perspective on this and, uh, let's just get to it.

Speaker 11: 24:42

I'm just, you know, really fascinated by all of these. So many of the sites that we deal with and some of the ones we've talked about on this program um the lost village or bear hack, old new gate prison, um gay city, you know, so many sites have these go stories attached to them and apart from just the cultural trends leading towards more mainstreaming, I guess, of the supernatural and horror and things like that, what are the roots of some of these stories? Is it just kind of a romanticized sort of sadness for the past? Or where does this come from?

Speaker 5: 25:20

Yeah, yeah, I mean, it's one of those things that you know that obviously each place will have a different kind of history and a texture to it. You know, I mean to me there really is a question If the stories, if you can't get the stories, you can't get the history back from beyond the 1960s. My general rule of thumb is this is probable, and I mean this in all seriousness. It's probably bored teenagers looking to legend trip, looking to have something to do. And so Gay City, I think, is a good example.

Speaker 5: 25:51

There is, although, some of the stories I mean there's a dispatched peddler story there that is almost a perfect echo of the Mycarude story in Franklin, of the Bloody Apples, and so in that case you could almost map where stories, if there's an area, say like Franklin, where the story is essential and old, and then you get not exactly the same but a similar idea, similar motif, similar narrative structure out in, say, hebron, where Gay City is, that's not too far. You can see that somebody was transmitting this story, maud's Graves, right, actually, exactly, but that story of witchcraft actually echoes stories that stretch into Western Rhode Island. So you can almost put on a map of where there's a general theme and that's clearly people telling stories, telling stories and then shifting the location of where this thing happened. Shifting the location of where that happened. That's a constant info, core studies, of doing those maps. In some cases.

Speaker 5: 27:09

Those other times, though, I mean those stories will echo because they were essential events in a community and people didn't lose the history of them. So we pretty much know where the Micarood Farm is in Franklin, but there are rival places for it and those rival places have never been able to push out the story and reclaim that space Because, again, although this is something that happened 300 years ago, it still was an anchoring feature in the community and people passed it on for so long from there. So I'm not quite answering the question, because it really depends on the type of war, the type of story that you're dealing with and how, again, even going back to your point, dave, and sometimes tourism, and sometimes a place that is condemned becomes a site for visitations We'll see that down with the seaside sanatorium down in Waterford, right, I mean, there's no ghost stories there yet. There inevitably will be once they do.

Speaker 11: 28:20

No, I was looking online today and I came across a few.

Speaker 5: 28:24

Oh you found some already.

Speaker 11: 28:25

Yeah, oh, it's awesome.

Speaker 5: 28:26

Oh, it's delighted They've started, that's right.

Speaker 11: 28:31

I think the whole ghost story thing is really interesting to me because as archaeologists, like as I said before, we're trying to get the story and in our version of truth, I guess, based on the historical and archaeological data, the physical things we can see and find and learn about the past. But that's one of those things. It doesn't matter if you go to Gay City and do an archaeological excavation and you just find houses and the stuff that people had in their houses and a mill and all this stuff. That's not going to change one way or another whether or not people believe that it's haunted. Yeah.

Speaker 11: 29:04

Yeah, there's not much we can do about that. We can address sometimes who built this, was it Celtic monks or colonial farmers? But we can't deal with the ghost thing.

Speaker 5: 29:16

Yeah.

Speaker 11: 29:17

Geologically it's kind of outside of our yeah, yeah and no, and again.

Speaker 5: 29:21

It's again the beauty of the ghost story. Again, I love them as a. I love them even as they frustrate me. I mean, it's one of the things that I did a lecture just last week in my classes and basically told myself I disappointed up 200 kids in my class because I told them I don't believe in ghosts and they want me to, and part of it's because they do. And even when I explained some unusual experiences I've had and then attributed it to my brain making gaps of judgment or the biochemical reasonings, it's not satisfying. We're never going to get rid of the ghost story.

Speaker 1: 30:04

Fascinating collaboration and the most recent edition of Archeology of Connecticut on icrvradiocom. Check it out. Hey, you don't have to go on archaeological digs to appreciate history. On our air you can actually visit some area historic homes we have a program if these walls could talk. The most recent edition actually treated a historic homestead. It's the Denison homestead in Mystic, 11th generation Denison, bill Denison, who is just a source of great knowledge and so sharp and amazing friend to icrvradio. He took Rebecca Limberry, the host of If these Walls Could Talk, on a tour pointing out a little bit of what makes this homestead remarkable and so special in that you can just by visiting it you can for sure journey back to what it was like when Captain George Denison first kind of settled there in the 1600s. Here's Bill Denison to explain.

Speaker 12: 31:14

Denison Homestead is on the register of historical properties and I was just making this past spring and doing the research. It's the only house as far as Homestead as far as I know is the oldest homestead in the United States where you can stand on the steps of the Manor House and look at every direction and see the original land that was owned by Captain George in 1654. That's incredible.

Speaker 12: 32:02

I've been doing some research and the only house I can find the homestead that is still controlled by the family is an East sandwich-shaped cod and is owned by a family called the Wing family. That one was settled in 1642, and lived in until 1942. So it was very long, but it only has 2.3 acres of land compared to 175 or so that the Denison Homestead has Right. So Ficusufis Road, other than the fact that it's paved, is pretty much the same road that Captain George looked at when he moved into the property.

Speaker 7: 33:00

Which is so fun. That's one of my favorite things about old houses is that element of being able to walk in the places where the original owners and, in this case, your actual descendants, where they walked and see the things that they saw. I think that's just so cool.

Speaker 12: 33:22

I believe I'm an 11th generation descendant of Captain George and there are thousands of Denisons. But if your last name is Denison and sometimes it was misbehave with two ends if your last name is Denison, you are probably a descendant Because, as far as genealogical determines, we're the only Denison that's settled in the country. Really. No, but any Denison is a cousin Mm-hmm.

Speaker 1: 34:01

Oh, I love that Bill Denison special guy and the Denison homestead mystic. You might want to put that one on your radar screen for sure. Hey, switching gears a little bit. We do a lot of outdoors programming on ICRV radio as we try to turn our listeners on to things that they should be on the lookout for in the sky, you know, our feathered friends but also in our natural landscapes, and we have a whole list of state forests that you should check out on our website. So for sure, check out icrvradiocom to learn more about it.

Speaker 1: 34:35

But one of the things that we do on an ongoing basis is make people aware of some of the challenges that our habitats are confronted with, and Steve Gephard, who did 40-plus years at DEP, has a program called Nature's Connections on Our Air and he wanted to make us aware of what was going on to deal with hydrilla, because if not for some creative intervention, there's a fight that is likely lost with hydrilla and that impact can be huge on our area. Here is Steve Gephard to talk about the challenges with invasives and maybe some possible solutions.

Speaker 13: 35:20

A lot of people may have seen, the Corps of Engineers is doing dye studies in the Connecticut River right now and there are certain areas that are turning red. People should not be alarmed. This is a harmless red tracer dry dye. So Blumenthal was able to secure some federal funding we got 6 million and this engages the Corps of Engineers. So the first step, this is still in the study process and maybe I should back up to say, while all things are under consideration, what we're really looking at is the possible use of a fairly innocuous herbicide and that will send shivers up people's spines Herbicides. I can't believe we're doing that.

Speaker 13: 36:09

But one of the things you have to remember about hydrilla is very fragile. You cannot mechanically remove it. First of all, unlike water chestnut, which you can just grab it and pull it right out with the roots and you've got the whole discrete plant in your hand and you can dispose of it. You don't get it all. It fragments and one tiny fragment can grow a new plant of hydrilla downstream, and so some of the reasons I think we're having this problem with hydrilla downstream so quickly is earlier people tried mechanically removing it upstream and it just spread everywhere.

Speaker 13: 36:50

So if you can't mechanically pull it, what are you going to do? So the experimental ag station, which got state funding through representative palms efforts, now has added staff. They're really looking into it and they're going to be researching the use of low toxicity herbicides. But in order to do that, this Corps of Engineers dye test is the first step, because what they want to do is they're putting this dye in certain areas like Chapman's Pond and Hamburg Cove and some areas farther north and studying the rate at which this dye leaves the area. In other words, it's a sort of a hydraulic study to determine the water exchange between the Connecticut River and these inland coves, to see how long it stays there, how much herbicide might eventually have to be applied, and then from there they might develop a proposal on what we can do and literally the details, the nuts and bolts of it to apply herbicides to kill this hydrilla.

Speaker 1: 38:15

Steve if we don't have some sort of creative intervention, we will lose against hydrilla, absolutely. That's an amazing quote from Steve Gephardt and good information to have. Check it out If that connects with you. Check it out. Check out Nature's Connections on icrvradiocom Nature with Ranger Russ. Russ Miller comes in from Megs Point Nature Center in the Ham and Asset Beach State Park to share with us some observations as well. He is a prolific teacher and he decided to use our internet airwaves to share a couple of teaching moments. The first starts with butterflies. Why should we care that there are fewer butterflies in our area? There's something to think about, and Russ gave us the answer. So those people that don't find them as beautiful as others, they might be sitting there going. Well, why do we care if we just had a bad monarch season and if we're seeing fewer butterflies? But we have to care because everything is connected. Can you share with us what the connection is with butterflies in general and why we should care?

Speaker 3: 39:28

So butterflies are pollinators and we've lost a lot of our bees, which are other pollinators. If we lose too many of butterflies, we're going to get a lot less flowers. There's going to be less ability for them to be pollinated. The really cool thing about monarchs is, as caterpillars, they eat milkweed, which is toxic. So the caterpillar and the butterfly are actually toxic to most things, so there aren't very many things that are able to eat them, so in the food chain it sort of ends with them, because there's not a whole lot of things out there eating them. But they're the ones that are helping to propagate flowers wildflowers from here to Mexico. That's what they're up to.

Speaker 1: 40:20

So Russ went on actually and shared with us another teachable moment that he recently had and it has to do with the salt marsh habitat that he works on and that he gets to enjoy on a regular basis, and how it's moving and encroaching on other parts of the landscape, and the why's and how fast and all those type of questions. Well, here's, russ, with the answers. What are some of the other teaching moments that you're focusing on and that you're making sure happen when you have talk opportunities at Meg's Point Nature Center?

Speaker 3: 41:07

You know, I just had a very good one, and this was with adults.

Speaker 3: 41:12

Again, there's a point at places at Hammond Asset where you can see the salt marsh is trying to encroach it.

Speaker 3: 41:22

It's moving upland and that's a great opportunity to talk about, you know, global climate change and the fact that sea level is rising fast enough for you to come down to the park and I can show you it happening. I've worked at Hammond Asset now I've been there 22 years and only in the last six years do I see salt marsh plants now growing in what was a field. When I started there and six years ago I would have taken you and I would have walked you along a path with grass and a field on one side and the salt marsh off to the other side, and now it is part of the salt marsh. There are salt marsh plants growing and there are no field plants there any longer. So every chance I get I show people those things because you know even people that recognize, yeah, it's happening and it is a scary thing. It's changing our weather, all that kind of stuff. I don't think people realize how quickly it really is happening.

Speaker 1: 42:29

And Russ, can you explain, or do we know the dynamic here? What is going on? Is it the habitat that is moving? Is there something in the construct of these plants that you know, some trigger that says, if we're going to survive, we got to move? What is happening?

Speaker 3: 42:56

It's the natural course of things that should happen over 100 years. That's happening over five years. So salt marshes, the salt marsh plants, grow in a place that's not submerged all the time. These plants can survive being submerged, but not all the time. So the ones that are out at the lowest part of the marshes, they're getting flooded out. They're starting to die off. But the salt marshes are now reaching up. The tides reach up into the field. A field grass can't survive the salt at all, so it dies immediately and then the salt marsh plants are able to grow there.

Speaker 3: 43:38

The salt marsh plants, you know, they like the high tides reaching them and then the rest of the time they're okay, so they're able to grow. And so that's what's happening. It's just naturally moving and as sea level rises and falls. That's what a salt marsh does. It rises up the upland and then it falls down. And if the tides stopped reaching, if sea level were to retreat, all of those salt marsh plants that have now encroached into the field, the field plants would grow back in there, because the salt marsh plants wouldn't get enough salt to survive. They need the salt water to survive. So that's what's happening. It naturally should creep up and down. Now it's changing feet in a year.

Speaker 1: 44:30

That is perhaps one of the most sobering sound bites ever. It says something that should be happening over the course of 100 years is now happening in five years. Hey, sorry, sorry to kind of end on a bit of a serious topic, but you know we celebrate our area every day on icrvradiocom and want it to be around for generations to come. So we got to talk about some of the tough topics as well. Hopefully you enjoyed this journey with us. Check out the cultural assets in our area, Check out the natural habitats in our area. Get up, get out, enjoy and be a part of this special part of New England, the Connecticut River Valley and slightly beyond. You can send us any comments, questions, story ideas, show ideas, criticisms. Even. You can send us to infoaticrvradiocom. Be sure to check out icrvradiocom. Scroll down to the homepage. The featured shows are right there and you can hear the full length shows where these clips were extracted from. You can hear the whole programs right there. Anyway, icrvradiocom, where we make local matter.