Wendy Williams - Science Journalist & Author

Kraken on Martin's Booklog - Bittersweet

2012-01-24T08:24:00.000-08:00

A truly touching blog from Martin's Booklog about Kraken, explaining that it was one of the final books read by a young woman who was dying with some unexplained illness.

Kraken — Wendy Williams

January 17th, 2012

Kraken
Wendy Williams
223 pages including index
published in 2011

This was a bittersweet pleasure to read. As an homage to Sandra I wanted to read some of her favourite books and writers this year and Weny Williams’ Kraken was one of the last books she was really enthusiastic about. I had gotten it for her as part of an Amazon order in June of last year, when it still looked she was going to beat her illness and to cheer her up in hospital. Once she had read, she was keen on me to read it too to see what I thought, but I never made the time to do so, having so much else to read. It’s something I regret now, as I would’ve liked to discuss this with her, but at the same time it is nice as well to be able to read a book that reminds me so much of her. Sandra loved squids, octopuses and every kind of cephalopods; they were her favourite animals and any book on them that was any good had her favour.

For the complete blog post, please click HERE.

Mimicing the mimicer...

2012-01-05T11:31:00.000-08:00

Click HERE to read more about this fascinating creature!

Happy Holidays!

2011-12-24T04:31:00.000-08:00

Happy Holidays!

Thanks to all for their support of my books and future research projects.

I’m sure that the “red devils” amongst the green kelp forest in Monterey

look very Christmassy.

~ Wendy Williams ~

Cuttlefish Bones in Art

2011-12-14T10:29:00.000-08:00

Cuttlefish – at least, their cuttlebones -- are everywhere. Most of us know about cuttlebones in bird cages, but few of us know how they’ve helped improve human beauty.

Take a close look at your jewelry. If it has an interesting pattern of ridges in it, it might have been produced using the "cuttlebone casting" method, practiced since at least the sixth century. Cuttlefish have a cuttle bone that helps them adjust their buoyancy. The bone has alternating layers of hard and soft material which imbues the cast jewelry with its characteristic appearance. For more, check out http://www.kjartworks.net/Informationaboutcuttlefishcasting.html

Wendy's Interview on KPCC

2011-12-09T07:18:00.000-08:00

The squid: So misunderstood

Nov. 30, 2011 | By Molly Peterson | KPCC

Click HERE to listen to the complete interview.

The word “squid” calls to mind enormous, mysterious attackers, the menaces of campy horror films. A science writer who speaks Wednesday night in Long Beach about squid, including some Pacific Ocean dwellers, seeks to tell more of that animal’s story.

These creatures called cephalopods — sea animals with prominent heads and feet — may not have spines. But they’ve been the backbone of Nobel Prize-winning research in marine science, biology and neurology. Writer Wendy Williams says that discovery astonishes her.

There’s a hundred years of research that’s gone on to study how human neurons function by studying how they function in the squid, because they’re basically the same cell.

The same — but in squid, nerve cells are much, much bigger. That’s great for medical research into questions like Alzheimer’s disease, Williams says. The part of the neuron that acts as a nervous system transmission line is an axon, and in a squid, that part’s much bigger too.

That axon is sometimes as thick as a pencil lead. So you can see it and handle it and study it.

Those same squid that reveal so much for medical research can elude marine scientists. Over a decade or more in Southern California, 5-foot-long Humboldt squid have attacked divers and washed up on beaches.

Suddenly these huge numbers of jumbo squid arrived on the California coast and began swimming in large numbers on the coast, and some all the way even to the coast of Alaska.

In her new book, Williams also writes about her travels with Stanford University researchers, who’ve been tagging and tracking the squid to try and learn their patterns.

It’s a great mystery. No one really knows why they came. And it turns out that this year there are not really many of them on your coast at all. So suddenly they’ve somewhat disappeared. They come and they go, and no one really knows why.

To study squid is to embrace mystery, Williams says. She named her book for a mysterious sea monster, a legend of Scandinavia, a giant creature with a head and arms that would wrap around ships and pull sailors to their deaths. She’ll talk about “Kraken: The Curious, Exciting and Slightly Disturbing Science of Squid” Wednesday night at the Aquarium of the Pacific.

Click HERE for more from KPCC.

Wendy's Next Event:

2011-11-30T15:54:00.000-08:00

Aquarium of the Pacific
Long Beach, CA

Thursday Dec 1, 2011
7:00pm - 8:30pm

If you're in the Long Beach area tomorrow, don't miss Wendy's next book talk for Kraken at the
Aquarium of the Pacific. Click HERE for more information and to buy tickets in advance.

Squid Adapt After El Niño

2011-11-29T08:57:00.000-08:00

Gilly, one of the scientists in Kraken, has a daring hypothesis about Dosidicus.

Cephalopod Science in the New York Times

2011-11-27T06:20:00.000-08:00

Here is an article from the New York Times called

"Cloaks of Invisibility, Switched in a Flash" discussing the science of camouflage.

Octavia the Octopus!

2011-11-18T09:32:00.001-08:00

Before Wendy's book talk at The New England Aquarium on November 3rd, Wendy got a behind the scenes tour by Wilson Menashi, a volunteer at the Aquarium. First stop, Octavia the Octopus! Below is some footage of Wendy and Wilson feeding Octavia alongside her starfish friend.

Review of Kraken on BrainBlog

2011-11-14T13:38:00.000-08:00

Read Anthony Risser's review of Kraken on BrainBlog by clicking HERE.

Fantastic news about Kraken!

2011-11-08T16:19:00.000-08:00

Amazon editors have named KRAKEN one of the 10 Best Books of 2011 in the category of Outdoors & Nature! Congratulations Wendy!
For more on the great news, click HERE.

A little Monday humor...

2011-11-07T11:14:00.000-08:00

Great turnout at The New England Aquarium

2011-11-04T14:57:00.000-07:00

What a great night at The New England Aquarium! There was a huge turnout, and a big thank you to everyone who joined! Stay tuned for info on Wendy's next event at Aquarium of the Pacific in December.

Tonight's Event & The Monterey Bay Expedition

2011-11-03T08:18:00.000-07:00

Don't miss Wendy discussing her book "Kraken" tonight at The New England Aquarium! You still have time to register, and can do so by clicking HERE.

Below is a video from the actual Monterey Bay Expedition that Wendy describes in her book.

Wendy also has a new YouTube channel! You can expect to see lots of videos of her current and future projects, as well as other related videos and news. Check it out HERE and subscribe!

Wendy's Next Event:

2011-11-02T07:27:00.000-07:00

New England Aquarium
Boston, MA

Thursday Nov 3, 2011
7:00pm - 8:00pm

KRAKEN discussion and book signing

Just how smart are octopuses? What do humans and the giant squid Architeuthis have in common? How did the blanket Pacific octopus become adept at tool use? Aristotle pronounced the octopus "stupid." For millennia, people agreed. But now it turns out that cephalopods—the ancient mollusk group octopus, squid and cuttlefish—have amazing talents that we humans just didn't understand. And some of those secrets, once unlocked by scientists, have even helped save humanlives. Award-winning science journalist Wendy Williams, author of five books, explains how.

To register for this event, please click HERE.

Tonight's Event & "The Ocean Doctor".

2011-11-01T13:21:00.000-07:00

If you're on Martha's Vineyard this evening, don't miss Wendy at the Vineyard Haven Public Library talking about her book "Kraken". Click on the link below for an earlier interview and podcast with Dr. David E. Guggenheim, "The Ocean Doctor", discussing the book and everything that is curious, exciting, and slightly disturbing about squid!

http://oceandoctor.org/kraken-up-close-and-very-personal-with-the-giant-squid/

Cape Wind Project in the News...

2011-11-01T05:39:00.000-07:00

The saga continues....
http://www.businessweek.com/ap/financialnews/D9QLJJ3G0.htm

Wendy's Next Event:

2011-10-28T09:28:00.000-07:00

Vineyard Haven Public Library
200 Main St. Vineyard Haven, MA

Tuesday November 1, 2011
7:00pm - 8:30pm
Location: Program Room

Wendy will be on hand to talk about her latest adventures with your favorite cephalopod: the squid. These critters of the deep were once thought monstrous and demonic, and are now presented by Wendy as charming and kindly brains of the sea. Wendy's latest book, Kraken: The Curious, Exciting, and Slightly Disturbing Science of Squid, seeks to balance out all the bad press squid octopus, and their kin have garnered through the ages.

For more information, please contact:
Betty Burton 508-696-4211

Cape Wind...and a Chuckle

2011-10-25T19:27:00.000-07:00

It's a new day, and a new look...for the blog that is! And what better way to celebrate than with a good laugh! Here is a little walk down memory lane:

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart

Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c

Jason Jones 180 - Nantucket

www.thedailyshow.com

Daily Show Full Episodes

Political Humor & Satire Blog

The Daily Show on Facebook

Vermont’s spectacular geology has long natural history

2011-09-21T18:25:00.000-07:00

Providence Journal

01:00 AM EDT on Wednesday, September 21, 2011

By Wendy Williams

MASHPEE, Mass.
In early August, driving in northern Vermont, I took a wrong turn and ended up heading west on one of the state’s less-traveled back roads. I was looking for the “world’s oldest coral reef,” but instead I ended up wending my way through the lush Green Mountains, Vermont’s part of the Appalachian Mountains, which run most of the length of the eastern United States.
The driving was, by necessity, slow. The road snaked around golden hay fields and through small villages, twisted in and out of stands of hardwoods and ran next to the massive doors of an old cow barn.
However enchanting it all was, I was impatient. The extra driving time (I hate sitting in a car) irritated me. Finally, I approached the ridge line, from which I would drop steeply into the valley below. I’d been in this valley — the Champlain Valley — many times before but I’d never approached the region from a mountain ridge.
At the ridge’s crest I saw below me one of the most majestic and dazzling sights I’ve ever seen: Hundreds of square miles of water glittered in the soft, northern, mid-afternoon sun. To the north and south lay green valley farms. To the west, across Lake Champlain, rose the Adirondacks. In the lake were numerous islands. I was looking down at a water system that includes rivers and many other streams and swamps as well as the big lake, with its many shallow bays.
It’s one thing to know that fact by studying a map and quite another to see it. The view was breathtaking. But the geology behind the scenery impressed me even more. About 450 million years ago — dinosaurs were still gazillions of years in the future — the stupendous valley glittering below me did not sit halfway between the Equator and the North Pole, on the 45th parallel, as it does today.
The region that would become the valley was almost 20 degrees south of the Equator. The region was very hot and gradually cooled to just plain hot. It was on a supercontinent that geologists call Laurentia, a smaller companion to the mass known as Gondwana.
Most of the planet’s land mass sat below the Equator. The Appalachians had started to form about 10 million years earlier, on their way to becoming perhaps the highest mountains the planet has ever had. And had I been able to stand at this ridge back then, I would not have seen any land below me but rather would have looked over a continental shelf covered by shallow and very warm (by our standards) saltwater.
During those eons ago the Cambrian Explosion of new life forms was done with, closed out by one of our planet’s many mysterious extinction events. The atmosphere was filled with much more carbon dioxide than we have today. And there was almost no ice cap to speak of.
Conditions were ripe for innovation. What appeared was a new ecosystem: the community reef. Before this era, during the Cambrian, sea life was plentiful. But there was no real community system, no build-up of layers of life.
In fact, it was in this valley below me where the eco-concept of community living may well have begun to take hold. I had read about a Harvard scientist, Percy E. Raymond, who in 1924 called the ancient reef in the valley below me “the world’s first coral reef.” I had also read that you could walk on this ancient reef and look at the fossils of animals that lived here so long ago. With an eagerness that bordered on childishness, I drove down into the valley and over several bridges, onto the Isle La Motte.
The Chazy Reef, as it was named in the mid-19th Century, extends from what is now Tennessee to what is now Quebec. Scientists study the reef in many different locations, but it’s easiest for the layperson to visit by heading for this small island a few miles south of the Canadian border. It’s on Isle La Motte that the long-buried layers of reef gently tilted up fairly recently in geologic time and made the reef accessible. Here a curious layperson can walk the land and see the ancient history for herself.
On the island, a small preservation trust maintains a series of short walking trails that lead visitors to various fossils in the rock. Kind people have placed signs to point out some of the more important sites. Sometimes hard-to-see fossils are encircled by tiny stones, like mini-Stonehenges. Peer inside these stone necklaces and you’ll see many kinds of prehistoric life.
These ancient layers held many, many life forms that have long since disappeared from our planet — strange Stromatolite mounds, created by a group of bacteria that appeared on the Earth even before the Cambrian explosion; squids that look in some ways like our modern squid, except that they lived in long, straight, conical shells; giant sponge communities that grew mound-like in the shallow warm water. Vermont geologist Charlotte Mehrens calls these Chazy inhabitants “the usual cast of characters in the Middle Ordovician.”
These things all grew and died, grew and died over the ages, and compressed by the pressure of accumulating strata, became limestone. Over 450 million years, these rocks became so hard that 19th Century Vermonters quarried them, polished them and marketed them as a kind of marble (technically, they’re not) to construction companies that built, among other modern marvels, Radio City Music Hall.
It’s a remarkably vivid display of geological and biological history.

Wendy Williams is a science writer. Her most recent book is “Kraken: The Curious, Exciting and Slightly Disturbing Science of Squid.”

Bill Koch in the Village Voice

2011-08-25T19:05:00.000-07:00

More press about the Cape Wind arch-enemy. Check out this story in the recent Village Voice

Kraken Does Nantucket

2011-07-20T18:24:00.000-07:00

Wendy joined a very special group of authors in speaking at the historic Nantucket Atheneum on July 13th. The spirits of Emerson and Thoreau seemed to hover in the background. Thanks to the Atheneum for their invitation and hospitality.

The Times of London reviews Kraken

2011-07-05T18:23:00.000-07:00

Simon Barnes reviewed Kraken on July 2nd in his Into the Wild column. Wish we could share it with you but web access is restricted. We're very happy and proud that this venerable paper chose to review the book.

Kraken Goes to Harvard

2011-06-22T18:22:00.000-07:00

This from today's Boston Globe -
Interesting squid facts to digest
Wendy Williams will explain how squid and humans share some basic biology at tonight’s Summer Nights at the Museum. It’s all in “Kraken: The Curious, Exciting, and Slightly Disturbing Science of Squid’’ by the Cape Cod-based science writer. Wander around the museum where volunteers are available to explain stuff. 5-8 p.m. (7 p.m. talk; additional Summer Nights on July 27 and Aug. 24). $4.50, $3.50 students and seniors, $3 ages 3-18. Harvard Museum of Natural History, 26 Oxford St., Cambridge. 617-495-3045,www.hmnh.harvard.edu

Kraken on Deep-Sea News

2011-06-02T18:22:00.000-07:00

Another great review on a great site. Deep-Sea News has a review by David Manley. To read the review and explore this great site click here. Also check out the mechanical monsters on this French site.

Crackin' the Kraken Code

2011-05-27T18:20:00.000-07:00

Wendy was a guest on a T-Wise Podcast produced in Ontario Canada recently. Dr. Joe DeGiorgis joined her for a great discussion of the book and a lot of the science written about in Kraken. This was a far-reaching and stimulating session. You can watch and hear the podcast at VROC - Virtual Researcher On Call here.

The Geeky Octopus and the Jock Squid

2011-05-24T18:19:00.000-07:00

The Washington Times ran a review of Kraken yesterday click here to read it.

Space Kraken in Orbit

2011-05-16T18:17:00.000-07:00

The Space Shuttle Endeavor blasted off this morning at 8:58am delivering bobtail squid to zero gravity. For more on this squiddy mission, see this at WIRED

Squid go into space, for the sake of humanity - New Scientist

2011-05-14T18:14:00.000-07:00

Check out the article about squid destined for space. The story features both the bobtail squid and Dr.Margaret McFall-Ngai, both written about in Kraken.
Read this fascinating story at the New Scientist Web site and more about the science in chapter six of Kraken.

WIRED Kraken

2011-05-07T18:13:00.000-07:00

Brian Switek reviewed Kraken for WIRED this month:
"Williams’ book is not a comprehensive tour of squid natural history. Instead, Kraken is as an exploration of how we perceive squid, octopus, and cuttlefish. Only a handful of species – primarily the giant squid, the Humbolt squid, the longfin inshore squid, and the Pacific giant octopus – receive much detailed attention. These relatively familiar cephalopods act as molluscan ambassadors for the rest of their kind, and Williams uses them the draw out the general characteristics that make these creatures seem so strange."
Read the rest of the review at WIRED

Mollusks in the Desert?

2011-05-02T18:11:00.000-07:00

I just received this great informative email from Nick Waters:
Hi Wendy,

I greatly enjoyed your book 'Kraken'. You synthesized so much into a highly readable tome. Thank you for expanding my horizons.

I've only one itsy bitsy bone to pick. On page 20 where you describe mollusk diversity:

"Mollusks live in every one of our ecosystems, except the desert, which is too dry for these moisture-loving animals."

Not so!

I'm researching the ecology of the Phoenix Talussnail, Maricopella allynsmithi, which lives in the Sonoran desert, Phoenix, Arizona. This species, along with other local snail species, including Sonorellasuperstionis taylori and Eremarionta rowelli hutsoni, live among extremely arid rocky slopes. These species, as well as another snail group studied in Israel, thrive in arid environments.

These snail species are tolerant of extreme moisture loss and possess the ability to store metabolic waste products. They seal their shells to stones with a calcium glue, which hardens to concrete-like strength, then produce a series of paper-thin inner seals to minimize moisture loss. They can aestivate for many months, even over a year. I have revived snails which regained 40-60% of their mass before becoming active. During the dry hot summer you can fry eggs on their rocky cover above, and half a meter to 1 meter below in the 80-90 F range the snails are aestivating. It isn't an easy life. Many die due to extreme dessication, parasitic flies, hungry rodents, and centipedes.

Warm Regards,
Nick Waters
You can see images of the snails at this Flickr Link

Cephalopod Symphony?

2011-04-25T18:09:00.000-07:00

When Wendy gave a talk at Gibson's Books (great store!) in Concord, New Hampshire last week, she was asked a question she couldn't answer.
As always, she promised to find the answer.

Here it is:
Question: Do cephalopods have "voices" or make communication sounds?

Answer, from Smithsonian giant squid hunter Clyde Roper:

"Wouldn't it be great if a GS could pipe something back at a sperm whale? Throw him off course a bit and have a chance to escape. But, I'm afraid it doesn't work that way....so far as we know, and folks have tried hard to find out, squids and octopuses are not able to produce sounds. Possible exceptions, but very unlikely, would be a big octopus moving shells and rocks around while building its den, or squids clicking their beaks together when feeding. These, of course, would not be "natural" sounds produced by any type of sound-making organ, as in sperm whales. So, I think "no" is an answer we have to live with, until and unless some very sophisticated research proves otherwise. "

LA Times on Kraken

2011-04-23T18:08:00.000-07:00

"Williams writes with a deft, supple hand as she surveys these spindly, extraordinary beasts and their world. She reminds us that the known world might be considerably larger than in the days of the bestiary-makers, but there is still room for wonder and strangeness." -- Los Angeles Times

Kraken at Gibsons in Concord, NH

2011-04-23T18:05:00.000-07:00

We had a fantastic event at Gibsons Books in Concord, New Hampshire. Even a Kraken showed up:

Also on hand were many interested cephalopod fans:

And Wendy's first editor from newspaper days!!

Many thanks to Deb and the staff at Gibsons. It was a thoroughly memorable evening!

Wendy and Kraken in National Geographic Daily News

2011-04-19T18:03:00.000-07:00

A great review and interview with David Braun of National Geographic in the National Geographic Daily News today! Read the article here at National Geographic

Britain Digs Kraken

2011-04-18T18:02:00.000-07:00

We've had some great reviews from the U.K. This was in the Suffolk Free Press and the Bury Free Press:
"It is almost impossible not to feel the thrill of discovery as the scientific truth of this so-called "sea monster" unfurls. A natural history book with a difference!" BR

Wendy on National NPR's Animal House

2011-04-16T17:59:00.000-07:00

Lots of fun! - Listen Here

Giant Squid More Sensitive Than Giant Whales

2011-04-15T17:57:00.000-07:00

Scientists have long suspected that intense noise in the oceans harms the hearing of whales and other marine mammals. Now new research suggests that even low-level noise may harm squid. About a decade ago, scientists learned about unusual strandings of giant squid on Spanish beaches. It turned out that those strandings correlated with noisy human activity in the water near by. Researchers learned that the noise destroys hair cells in the squid's hearing organs, and can even cause some neuronal die back.

New From The Ocean Foundation

2011-04-13T17:55:00.000-07:00

Noise and Cephalapods
Bioacoustician Michele André et.al. from the Catalonian “Laboratory of Applied Bioacoustics”has published a paper which examines the impacts of low frequency (50Hz–400Hz) noise on cephalopods – squid, octopus, and cuttlefish. Exposed to surprisingly low levels of sinusoid noise their kinosensory cells were catastrophically damaged.
These “hair cells” or cilia are associated with the animal’s sense of location and balance, and in other animals are associated with sound perception.
What is particularly alarming about these results is that the exposure levels of 157dB–175dB (re:1μPa) is the equivalent acoustical energy level that you would encounter on “band night” in your local pub (95dB –112dB re 20μPa). And unlike the nasty sonar and digital communication signals associated with Navy related strandings, these critters were exposed to fairly benign sine waves.
Given that the typical Navy and seismic survey mitigation practices call for exposures to remain below 185dB re:1μPa (ten times louder than the maximum exposures in the study) there is a high probability that cephalopods world-over have been damaged by anthropogenic noise.
In the paper the following question is asked: “Because invertebrates are clearly sensitive to noise associated with human activities, is noise, like other forms of pollution, capable of affecting the entire web of ocean life?”
What remains to be determined is if the impact is due to some relationship between “particle motion” and “pressure gradient” acoustical energy. These characteristics play into animals sensing sound-source proximity and it could be that the closeness of the lab signals may have different impacts than equally loud exposures generated from further distances.

Squid O' Mania Continues!

2011-04-08T08:34:00.000-07:00

Kraken Book and Kraken Rum get equal billing! Check it out here.

Ted Kennedy's Delahunt Back

2011-03-11T19:04:00.000-08:00

This in today's Boston Globe:

Former US representative William D. Delahunt, capitalizing on his nearly 40 years in Massachusetts politics, announced yesterday that he is taking a new job as a lobbyist for the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe, which is trying to build a casino in Southeastern Massachusetts.

Just two months out of office, Delahunt filed paperwork with the Massachusetts Secretary of State’s office yesterday to register as a lobbyist, which would allow him to be paid to advocate on issues before members of the state Legislature.

He announced that a top client will be the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe, which has been pushing for the right to operate a casino on tribal land anywhere from Southeastern Massachusetts to Cape Cod, covering much of his former congressional district. The tribe has a keen interest in proposals for expanded gambling that are expected to be resurrected later this year on Beacon Hill.

Delahunt, 69, who represented the state’s 10th Congressional District for 14 years, has long supported the tribe’s efforts to build a casino.

“The history of this tribe’s dealings with our government is replete with bureaucracy, impasse, inertia, and sometimes outright hostility,’’ Delahunt said in a statement. “The tribe has rights as a sovereign nation, and more importantly, treating them with respect and helping them achieve self-sufficiency is simply the right thing to do. I am proud to represent them.’’

The tribe, claiming more than 2,000 enrolled members, cleared a big hurdle in its quest to build a casino when the US government formally recognized it as a tribe in 2007.

Mashpee chairman Cedric Cromwell said yesterday that the tribe will turn to Delahunt to represent the group at the state level in the push for expanded gambling, but also at the federal level on issues such as housing and education for tribe members. He said Delahunt worked closely with the tribe in his 14 years in Congress, and that he understands the importance of the tribe’s sovereignty.

“It’s us bringing in Congressman Delahunt knowing how supportive he was in our aboriginal and historic rights,’’ Cromwell said. He added, “Our tribe was fortunate to have him as our congressman, and we are excited to have his voice and continued advocacy on our behalf.’’

Yesterday’s announcement was quickly criticized by a group that opposes expanded gambling in Massachusetts. The group also questioned whether it was appropriate for Delahunt to lobby members of the state Legislature so soon after leaving office.

Under ethics rules governing Congress, a representative cannot contact any former colleague or member of their staff regarding business or policy issues within one year of leaving office. That rule only blocks Delahunt from lobbying former colleagues in the US House, and it apparently would not prohibit him from lobbying before a federal agency, according to the Center for Public Integrity in Washington.

The state has similar ethics laws that would prohibit a state employee or official from lobbying before his former agency or the Legislature within one year of leaving their job. But it would not prohibit the former congressman from lobbying the Legislature, said David Giannotti, an Ethics Commission spokesman.

But, “I would think he’s really pushing the envelope on this,’’ said Kris Mineau, president of the Massachusetts Family Institute, which opposed gambling legislation last year. “I’m sure the attorney general and the secretary of state will be keeping an eye on this, and we who oppose gambling will do likewise.’’

Delahunt, a former member of the state Legislature and a former Norfolk county district attorney, was not available for comment beyond the prepared statement yesterday.

Last month, Washington-based Prime Policy group announced an alliance with Delahunt to advise companies on ways to establish themselves in foreign countries, and to provide foreign businesses with a connection to the US marketplace. Delahunt had served on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, and had chaired its Subcommittee on Europe and the Subcommittee on International Organizations, Human Rights and Oversight.

In working for the Wampanoag, the former congressman is taking on a role once held by Jack Abramoff, the longtime Washington lobbyist who was sent to prison corruption charges in 2006 and whose firm represented the Wampanoag tribe. Delahunt has said that he never talked with Abramoff about the tribe.

But Delahunt received at least $1,000 from tribal members and $2,500 from Herbert Strather, a developer hoping to build a casino on Cape Cod, at around the same time he was urging the Bush administration to speed up its review of tribes, including the Wampanoag request for recognition. In his seven terms in Congress, Delahunt also received a total of $15,500 from casino interests, including $7,000 from Indian gambling interests, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

Cromwell would not disclose the terms of any contract agreement with Delahunt yesterday.

The tribe’s efforts to build a full-blown casino, first in Middleborough and then in Fall River, have been stalled in recent years as gambling legislation has failed in the Legislature.

Cromwell said the tribe will claim its sovereign rights allowing it to operate whatever type of gambling is approved by state law on its own land.

He said the tribe, with Delahunt’s help, would be able to prove it has the historic documentation and aboriginal rights to claim land across Southeastern Massachusetts. But the first obstacle is to have the state approve expanded gambling, an issue that legislative leaders have said they want to revisit.

The tribe spent $155,625 lobbying for gambling last year, and $114,609 in 2009, according to the secretary of state’s records.

“We haven’t changed our focus,’’ Cromwell said.

Michael Levenson of the Globe staff contributed to this report.

Wendy on the Dennis Miller Show!

2011-02-28T19:02:00.000-08:00

Listen in to the Dennis Miller Show today to hear Wendy annd Dennis talk about KRAKEN and CAPE WIND!

It's on the web Here

Squid stories: Love me, love my tentacles - New Scientist Review

2011-02-28T19:01:00.000-08:00

Cephalopods, the group of marine molluscs that includes squid and octopuses, get a bad press.

Mariners of old told of the fearsome kraken, an enormous octopus-like monster that drags whole ships to watery graves; and malicious, slithering tentacles are an ever-present threat to the space-faring heroes of science fiction. In these stories, squid and octopuses appear at best, uninteresting and at worst, evil. In Kraken: The curious, exciting, and slightly disturbing science of squid, Wendy Williams goes some to way to rescue their reputation, celebrating cephalopods in all their wonderful otherness. And there is a lot to celebrate.

Who knew that octopuses bleed blue because of the copper content of their blood? Or that roughly three-fifths of their neurons reside in their arms?

Williams introduces us to the violent sex lives of the Dana octopus squid (Taningia danae), whose males slash females with their beaks, opening wounds to insert sperm; to bobtail squid, which contain light-emitting bacteria that mimic moonlight; and to the female giant Pacific octopus, so dedicated to the task of fanning her thousands of eggs that she starves to death in its execution.

These titbits of natural history are interwoven with a compelling historical narrative, recounting cephalopod science (with a focus on squid) from the very earliest sightings to their use in 21st-century neuroscience.

Williams joins scientists at sea, in the lab and in the classroom, as they catch, dissect and philosophise about cephalopods. Though at times these journalistic interludes can seem tangential, written in a chatty style which jars a little with the more expository science passages, they no doubt capture the excitement and interest of research work.

The discussion of cephalopod intelligence, though couched in rather broad terms, throws up some interesting nuggets. How do you test for intelligence in a creature whose lifestyle is so alien to ours? With such dazzling diversity and intelligence, it's easy to see how cephalopods can mesmerise people. Reading Kraken could put you under that spell too.

New York Post Review - KRAKEN

2011-02-20T19:00:00.000-08:00

New York Post Updated: Sun., Feb. 20, 2011, 3:08 AM home
Release the Kraken!

By SUSANNAH CAHALAN

Last Updated: 3:08 AM, February 20, 2011

Posted: 10:13 PM, February 19, 2011

Kraken

The Curious, Exciting, and Slightly Disturbing Science of Squid

by Wendy Williams

Abrams

In 1873, Theophilus Piccot and his assistant Daniel Squires rowed out for herring in Newfoundland’s Portugal Cove when they noticed a mass in the water. Believing it to be debris from a shipwreck, they moved closer. The two poked the mass with a gaff. It moved.

Suddenly, the creature, brought to life, reared its beak “as big as a six-gallon keg” and rammed the bottom of the skiff and, with horrifying speed, shot “two huge livid arms” at them and began to “twine” its arms around the boat.

Piccot grabbed a hatchet and hacked away, severing two tentacles, which were as thick as his wrists. The animal then secreted ink which “darkened the water for two or three hundred yards” and swam away never to be seen again.

Giant squids have long been the stuff from which nightmares are made. In books like “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea” and “Moby-Dick” and late-night TV fare like “Beast,” they reach, wrap and wrangle, unable to be stopped. Chop off one arm, another appears. And, indeed, they seemed formed from a child’s bad dreams, with a beak for a mouth and suction cups instead of fingers. They have been vilified as vampires, monsters and serpents.

But, really, squids aren’t so bad, argues science journalist Wendy Williams in her new book, “Kraken.” In fact, she says, they deserve some credit and respect.

Squids have and continue to contribution to the sciences, everything from neurology to obstetrics — and by doing so, expose their eerie similarities to the human species, down to eye structure and the all-important brain cell, the neuron.

WEEDS OF THE OCEAN

The book focuses on all cephalopods (with a heavy interest in squids), a group of sea creatures considered by one scientist to be “the weeds of the ocean” for their adaptability and proliferation. They live in all oceans except the Baltic Sea and the Black Sea.

They have three basic parts: a mantle, containing vital organs like the stomach; a head with eyes and a beak; and arms and tentacles that encircle the mouth. In most cases, cephalopods have three hearts that pump blue, copper-based blood through the body, more efficient in ocean environments.

They range in size from the giant and colossal squids — which have been reported to be upwards of 46-feet long and more than 1,000 pounds — to the Octopus Wolfi, which is only a half-inch long. Despite the size range, all are predators.

Squids are called decapods, because they have 10 appendages, eight arms and two feeding tentacles (many, but not all, have suckers on their appendages). They also have a muscular tube, called a funnel, that acts as a jet engine, drawing water into the mantle cavity and then expelling it, generating speeds that can range up to 20 to 25 mph. When the squid spots prey, it shoots out its tentacles, injecting the prey with toxins, then shredding or liquefying it before eating it.

Because of their soft bodies, which make them easier prey, cephalopods are practiced in the art of deception. Most have sacs that expel ink to confuse a predator or to lure prey. And they often have the ability to change the color or texture of their skin.

“No group of animals is as sophisticated in this strategy as are the cephalopods,” Williams writes. Not even the chameleon can match the squid’s techniques. It’s so advanced that the military is funding squid studies to make more sophisticated camouflage for troops.

Cephalopods also are considered to be highly intelligent. Their brain-to-body weight ratio places them below most birds and mammals but above fish and reptiles, Williams reports, pointing out that this does not always correlate with intelligence, although it is considered to be a factor.

“Does a mouse think on their level? Probably not. Does a dog? Depends on the dog,” James Woods of the Aquarium of the Pacific explains.

SQUIDS, THEY'RE JUST LIKE US

Despite the many obvious differences between mammals and squids, we share much more than meets the immediate eye, Williams writes.

First and foremost, our shared, highly developed “camera eyes.”

Sure, there are differences. In fact, the squid’s eye seems in some ways to be more sophisticated; they don’t have our blind spot. However, they don’t perceive color, because they lack the three types of cones, but can perceive brightness, because they have light-sensitive structures called rods, like we do.

These shared eye structures have given some evolutionary scientists pause and has added to the study of parallel or convergent evolution.

Furthermore, like the human brain, many cephalopods have various lobes dedicated to specific functions, like memory (although their brain is not centralized like ours; three-fifths of the brain is located in their arms and tentacles!).

And then there’s the all-important neuron, the basic building blocks of our brains, the cells that make everyday life possible. We share this very important and elemental cell with squid, unlike many other sea creatures.

Since the discovery of the axon (a key part of the neuron’s structure) in a squid in 1910, neurologists have made leaps and bounds in their understanding of our own brain.

“Humans have axons that are too thin to see without a microscope,” Williams writes. “But there is one very special group of animals that turns out to have a very thick axon: squid.”

Neurologists continue to slice and dice at the Marine Biological Lab in Woods Hole, Mass., to study what happens to neurons when illnesses like Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s hit the body.

Scientists are also studying the process of neurogenesis, or the birth of new neurons. While humans get most of all the neurons we’ll ever have at birth, cephalopods are constantly growing new cells, creating a whole tentacle if lost to an infection or a predatory bite. Neurologists are hoping to uncover how this process happens — hoping to replicate it (to some degree) in humans.

Weirdly enough, squid science might also be able to help us figure out drug addiction. Cephalopod ink often contains the neurotransmitter dopamine, common to humans and central to our reward system that is involved in drug and sex addiction.

“If we ever come to understand its role in squid ink, perhaps we’ll understand something more about our own predilections for addictive behavior,” Williams writes.

But there’s something else, something that scientists can’t quite put a finger on that makes the squid so fascinating.

As squid expert Clyde Roper puts it: “When you look into their eyes, you know there’s something there.”

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Release the KRAKEN!

2011-02-15T18:58:00.000-08:00

Wendy's new book, KRAKEN: The Curious, Exciting, and Slightly Disturbing Science of Squid is already in the mail to those who pre-ordered!

The ebook version will be available March 1st.

Her speaking schedule from March through June is almost full.

To find out where she will be speaking, go to the KRAKEN web site.

Wind-power jobs crowd horizon as vendor rises

2011-01-26T18:57:00.000-08:00

This by Wendy in today's Providence Journal:

For the past 10 years, proponents and opponents of the Cape Wind project have battled over unproved assertions. Nantucket Sound whales would be harmed, complained the antis. Global warming must be prevented, said the pros.

But as few actual facts existed, the debate has been mostly nonsense.

Now that the 130-turbine, 468-megawatt offshore wind project has its required governmental approvals, the nuts-and-bolts phase is finally under way. And the facts are beginning to come out.

Project opponents, including the Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound, have asserted speculatively that Cape Wind jobs and money will go overseas.

Here’s the truth:

Recently, Cape Wind signed a deal with a small Middleboro firm, Mass Tank. Joining forces with a German outfit, EEW Group, this 50-employee locally owned firm will undertake the challenge of fabricating 130 steel monopiles, each of which may be as long as 165 feet and will weigh several hundred tons.

These massive structures will be driven into the Nantucket Sound seabed. Atop each will be a transition piece into which will be fitted the huge monopoles that will rise so dramatically from the sea to support the turbine blades and machines.

The total steel involved in the Cape Wind deal will be more than 100 million tons.

That’s a lot of steel. And a lot of steel means a lot of jobs. Local jobs.

Moreover, to accomplish this ambitious goal, a seaside fabrication site must be found; New Bedford is high on the list. A building will either have to be constructed or retrofitted.

Hundreds of new employees must be hired. Some will drive forklift trucks. Some will roll steel. Some will weld the joints. And some will just manage projects. This means a whole support staff from office assistants to engineers.

Moreover, if offshore wind finally becomes a reality in this country — after years of silly opposition financed primarily by fossil-fuel money that comes from men like Osterville’s Bill Koch — then Mass Tank could become a truly important national (maybe even international) player in the wind industry.

Recently, I toured Mass Tank with company head Carl Horstmann. In the last 1990s, Carl was an investment banker in New York City. His bank wanted him to go to live in Moscow. He had three kids. Moscow didn’t seem like such a good idea.

Instead, Horstmann decided to buy a business. He liked southeastern New England. It offered beauty, culture, stability. What’s not to like? (Well, winter weather. But that’s another story for another day.)

So he made his home in Marion and bought Mass Tank, a not particularly dynamic business that fabricated fuel-oil tanks like the ones lots of us (including me) have in our basements.

Since then, under Horstmann’s guidance, the company has grown. But he wasn’t satisfied.

Last fall, after Cape Wind finally received its permits, Horstmann called the project’s Boston offices to offer to build the monopiles. He worked hard, made a good presentation and managed to bring the deal off.

I asked Horstmann if he thought that his participation was risky.

“Yes,” he said.

“Then why do it?” I asked.

“Because we have to grow,” he answered.

As an investment banker, Horstmann had learned a lot about Mideast oil politics. Consequently, he sees offshore wind as a national-security issue.

It’s not just Horstmann who’s going to grow. He has a skilled group of employees who will get to grow too. Once the project gets going, people who are welders now will eventually be able to become managers of welders. Kids out of voke-tech schools will get jobs that wouldn’t otherwise be available.

And imagine the jobs that would have been available to these kids years ago, were it not for the vicious opposition of a small group of very rich people who have made it their primary purpose in life to stop American progress in its tracks.

Wendy Williams is the co-author, with Robert Whitcomb, of “Cape Wind.” Her new book — “Kraken: The Curious, Exciting, and Slightly Disburbing Science of Squid” — will be released in March.

Cape Wind and the Mafia??

2010-12-04T18:55:00.000-08:00

WHAT MORE WILL THEY TRY?

This today from the Cape Cod Times -

A group called Californians for Renewable Energy has filed a complaint with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission challenging a deal to sell power from the proposed Nantucket Sound wind farm.

The 51-page complaint filed Wednesday asks the federal agency to set aside an order issued last month by the Massachusetts Department of Public Utilities approving an agreement between Cape Wind and National Grid for half of the project's power.

Among a list of wide-ranging and, at times, disjointed claims, the group argues the deal constitutes "electric energy market manipulation" and violates the Federal Power Act. Almost half of the complaint — 22 pages — is dedicated to claims that Cape Wind is connected to the Italian mafia.

Cape Wind spokesman Mark Rodgers called the complaint "baseless," adding the "irresponsible 'Italian mafia' claim is false, malicious, and defamatory."

Michael Boyd, president of CARE, said in a phone interview with the Times that his group is a member-based organization that acts on behalf of low-income residents, people of color and native people who are adversely affected by energy projects.

Northboro resident and vocal Cape Wind opponent Barbara Durkin is a member of the group and requested assistance in her fight against Cape Wind, Boyd said. He described the organization as believing in renewable energy, such as solar, but not as sold by traditional utilities. CARE is also a co—plaintiff in a federal lawsuit challenging the decision earlier this year by the U.S. Department of Interior to approve Cape Wind.

"I'm for power in the hands of the people," he said. "The way I get that power back away from these monopoly utilities is one roof at a time."

CARE's complaint asks the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) to impose the maximum penalty for alleged fraud committed under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of $1 million per day retroactive to June 5 or a civil enforcement penalty of more than $175 million. Much of the complaint relies on news reports; analysis by Durkin and former Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound president Glenn Wattley; and summations of alleged conspiracies that include various wind energy companies, Italian crime syndicates and the bankrupted energy company Enron.

"CARE blew the whistle on Enron and now CARE is blowing the whistle on the Massachusetts DPU approval of the Cape Wind-National Grid no-bid contract process," Durkin said.

National Grid deputy general counsel Ron Gerwatowski said the complaint is "completely frivolous."

"The parties that filed it simply don't understand the law in this area and have distorted the facts," he said. "We will file a response within the time provided by FERC rules."

It is not the first time CARE has been accused of filing frivolous complaints with FERC. In 2009, the California Public Utilities Commission argued that CARE should stop wasting limited resources and be disqualified from FERC proceedings.

Anyone who wants to intervene or protest the California group's complaint about the Cape Wind power pact has until Dec. 22 to file paperwork with FERC, agency spokeswoman Barbara Connors said.

Staff will review the CARE complaint and five FERC commissioners will determine any action, she said. The commissioners could decide the complaint does not fall under FERC jurisdiction, could find it is without merit or they could request more information, she said.

Connors declined to comment on whether FERC has authority to dismiss the state Department of Public Utilities ruling, saying that decision will be based on the CARE complaint's merits.

Cape Wind Scales Last Regulatory Hurdle

2010-11-22T18:52:00.000-08:00

Cape Wind News Release

Massachusetts Approves Cape Wind/National Grid Power Purchase Agreement

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

CONTACT: Mark Rodgers 508-237-6312

BOSTON, MA, November 22, 2010 – Cape Wind passed another major milestone today with the approval by the Massachusetts Department of Public Utilities (DPU) of the 15-year Power Purchase Agreement with National Grid to buy Cape Wind’s energy, capacity and renewable energy credits.

Cape Wind President Jim Gordon said, “Massachusetts is now in a position to become a global leader in offshore wind power creating thousands of new jobs and a more secure, hopeful energy future. Today’s approval validates that Cape Wind is a good value delivering clean energy without all of the associated costs of fossil fuels. This long-term contract not only secures an abundant, inexhaustible clean energy resource but protects consumers from rising fossil fuel and environmental compliance costs,” Gordon continued.

The DPU decision culminates a comprehensive six-month review of unprecedented scope, including 13 days of evidentiary hearings with testimony from 15 witnesses, 1,362 exhibits and nearly 3,000 transcript pages. Participation in the case was wide-ranging and extensive, with 14 different active parties.

This DPU approval comes on the heels of significant Cape Wind project announcements that locate the creation of over 1,000 new manufacturing, staging, assembly, construction, and operations jobs in Massachusetts. In addition, Siemens has opened their North American Offshore Wind office in Boston because of Cape Wind.

EXTRACTS OF NOTE FROM THE MA DPU APPROVAL:

“[I]t is abundantly clear that the Cape Wind facility offers significant benefits that are not currently available from any other renewable resources. We find that these benefits outweigh the costs of the project.” P. xvii.

“The evidence in this proceeding makes it clear that the Cape Wind project offers unique benefits relative to the other renewable resources available.” P. xxi.

Cape Wind’s proposal to build America’s first offshore wind farm on Horseshoe Shoal would provide most of the electricity used on Cape Cod and the Islands from clean, renewable energy - reducing this region’s need to import oil, coal and gas. Cape Wind will create new jobs, help stabilize electric costs, contribute to a healthier environment, increase energy independence and establish Massachusetts as a leader in offshore wind power. For more information visit www.capewind.org.

Kraken Kudos

2010-11-20T18:49:00.000-08:00

Wendy’s new book called “luminous” by the University of
Chicago’s ground-breaking paleontologist and best-selling author Neil Shubin (Your Inner Fish).

New Book on the Way!

2010-10-30T18:46:00.000-07:00

Check out the New Book Web Site Here

The Secretive Kochs in the News Again

2010-10-20T18:43:00.000-07:00

A secretive network of Republican donors is heading to the Palm Springs area for a long weekend in January, but it will not be to relax after a hard-fought election — it will be to plan for the next one.

Koch Industries, the longtime underwriter of libertarian causes from the Cato Institute in Washington to the ballot initiative that would suspend California’s landmark law capping greenhouse gases, is planning a confidential meeting at the Rancho Las Palmas Resort and Spa to, as an invitation says, “develop strategies to counter the most severe threats facing our free society and outline a vision of how we can foster a renewal of American free enterprise and prosperity.”

read the rest at the <a href="<http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/20/us/politics/20koch.html?_r=1&scp=2&sq=koch&st=cse">New York Times/a>

Rehabilitating Massachusetts' Anti-Wind Image

2010-09-20T18:41:00.000-07:00

While the state has successfully erected 1-2 turbine projects in various locales, several other small commercial-sized projects have been held up for years by only one or two people in a town. This is occurring even when the majority of town people are on record as supporting a project.
Liz Argo, Cape Cod's most knowledgeable wind energy expert, interviews a state official about how the state hopes to solve the dilemma. Watch the informative interview at

http://vimeo.com/15123123http://vimeo.com/15123123

Decommissioning Power Plants

2010-09-18T18:39:00.000-07:00

Boston Herald ace reporter Jay Fitz is raising concerns over the cost of decommissioning the Cape Wind project -- when (and if) that happens.
J Fitz worries that $66 million is a lot to decommission a power plant, as indeed it is.
Here's a story about decommissioning the Yankee Nuclear Power Plant, which at 620 megawatts is only a bit bigger in comparison:

VY decom fund shows little growth

By JOSH STILTS / Reformer Staff
Brattleboro Reformer
Thursday September 16, 2010

BRATTLEBORO -- The Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant decommissioning fund may not be adequate to clean up the site whether it closes in 2012 or 2032, said Arnie Gundersen, a decommissioning fund analyst and consultant to the Vermont state Legislature's Joint Fiscal Office.

In September 2007, the fund was at approximately $440 million, but after the stock market crashed the fund fell to $347 million.

In the three years since the stock market crashed, the fund recovered quickly, but since March of this year, it has fluctuated between $432 million, in June, and $452 million, in April. By the end of August, the fund had $440 million in it.

State Auditor Thomas Salmon suggested several improvements for lawmakers and regulators to monitor the plant's fund in a management report earlier this month. He proposed to develop a supervising process to entail recurring systematic comparisons of estimates for all components of site cleanup costs.

Salmon said Entergy Corp., owner and operator of Vermont Yankee, and the state have controls in place for managing and monitoring more than $400 million of decomissioning trust fund assets, but the company could benefit from additional guidelines and more routine analysis of the funding status.

"The decommissioning trust fund growth is tracked by Vermont Yankee, the NRC and the DPS. The combination of those efforts ensures that the fund remains adequate to meet all of our state and federal decommissioning obligations," said Rob Williams, a spokesman for Entergy.

Cleaning the site of spent nuclear fuel and other decommissioning activities is expected to cost between $656 million to $991 million (reported in 2006 dollars).

The decommissioning fund was created through a surcharge on the electric bills of Vermonters. The surcharge was discontinued after Entergy bought the plant in 2002 from a consortium of public utilities known as the Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power Corp., which included Central Vermont Public Service, Green Mountain Power and Public Service of New Hampshire.

Entergy has not made any contributions to the fund but in January it supplied a $40 million "parental guarantee" to ensure the fund would be adequate to clean up the site when the plant ceases operation.

The guarantee was issued after the Nuclear Regulatory Commission expressed concern that there wasn't enough money in the trust to fund the site's cleanup.

"After reviewing the Vermont Yankee decommissioning trust fund last year, the NRC determined there was a shortfall of about $87 million and notified Entergy of that," Sheehan wrote in an e-mail. "Entergy subsequently informed the NRC that it intended to establish a Parent Company Guarantee in the amount of $40 million by Dec. 31, 2009."

The company executed that guarantee and the NRC determined that the guarantee, in combination with continued growth in the fund, would be sufficient to address the shortfall, he wrote.

"NRC regulations assume a very conservative growth rate in decomissioning funds of 2 percent a year," he said. "The NRC will be examining the decommissioning fund for Vermont Yankee and other plants once again next year."

Entergy has applied to the NRC to extend the plant's operating license from 2012 to 2032. In addition to NRC approval, Entergy must also receive an OK from the Vermont State Legislature and the Vermont Public Service Board to continue operation past 2012.

In February, the state Senate voted 26-4 against the continued operation of the plant beyond its current operating license.

The NRC only requires the site to return to a brownfield. As part of its sales agreement with the state, Entergy agreed to return the site to a greenfield, which would cost at least $300 million more than NRC requires.

Josh Stilts can be reached at jstilts@reformer.com, or 802-254-2311 ext. 273.

BUNNY MELLON, OYSTER HARBOR NEIGHBOR OF BILL KOCH, TURNS 100

2010-09-08T18:37:00.000-07:00

A reclusive 'Bunny' Mellon celebrates 100th birthday
Sunday, August 08, 2010
By Mackenzie Carpenter, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
AP
Jacqueline Kennedy and her friend Rachel "Bunny" Mellon step into the lobby of the Colonial Theatre in Boston on Aug. 17, 1961, during intermission of Noel Coward's "Sail Away."

There's an old photograph of her, taken in 1946 in a vast field at the Rolling Rock Club in Ligonier, dressed in good tweeds and a girlish hat, her hand at her throat, looking questioningly at a man at the left.

You can't see her face -- just the curve of her jaw and a strong nose -- but it's perhaps fitting that in one of the few photographs placing Rachel Lambert "Bunny" Mellon anywhere near Pittsburgh, she is turning away from the camera.

Intensely private, immensely rich and, Monday, celebrating her 100th birthday, Mrs. Mellon, widow of the late philanthropist and art collector Paul Mellon (the man at the left in the 1946 picture) has led a remarkable life, if one determinedly lived out of the public eye.

There was a brief flurry of publicity earlier this year when, in a tell-all book, a former staffer to former Sen. John Edwards said the campaign used money provided by Mrs. Mellon -- a staunch Democrat and admirer of Mr. Edwards -- to resettle his mistress, Rielle Hunter, in California, prompting the media to dub her Edwards' "Sugar Mama."

Mrs. Mellon's lawyers have said she had no idea that the money was to be used for that purpose.

Then, earlier this year, it was revealed that she was among a group -- including Uma Thurman and Sylvester Stallone -- who were bilked by a Wall Street investor named Kenneth Ira Starr (not to be confused with the Clinton prosecutor) in a $59 million Ponzi scheme.

Whether she was horrified or amused by this media attention is not known.

Friend of Jackie Kennedy

What is known is that Mrs. Mellon, who lives on a vast, beautifully landscaped estate spanning 4,000 acres -- Oak Spring Farms, in Upperville, Va., complete with mile-long landing strip for the family's private jet -- dwells far from the madding crowd, yet remains engaged and active, overseeing her gardens and having friends over for drinks in the evening.

"I find her to be fascinating," said Sally Bedell Smith, a Washington, D.C-based writer. "She is one of those few famous people like [Greta] Garbo, who magnified her allure in a way, by being so elusive and so private. There are so few like that anymore, but she has been that way for as long as I can think of."

Author of a well-reviewed 2007 social history about the Kennedys in the White House, "Grace and Power," Ms. Bedell Smith described Mrs. Mellon's close friendship with the first lady and her active role in helping to restore the White House, indoors and out.

When Mrs. Kennedy asked her good friend "Bunny" (the nickname dates from childhood, its origins apparently long forgotten by its owner) to redesign the White House Rose Garden, Mrs. Mellon created an outdoor ceremonial space which remains fresh and enduring today.

Lined with crab apple trees and flower beds laid out in the French style, with low thyme bordering hedges, "It has this formal feel which is softened by the beauty of the plants," said Holly Shimizu, director of the U.S. Botanical Garden. "Her design talent to me is the power of simplicity."

After President Kennedy's assassination, Lady Bird Johnson asked Mrs. Mellon to finish her work on the Rose Garden and to design a smaller garden to be named for Mrs. Kennedy. In a diary entry dating to 1964 Mrs. Johnson described Mrs. Mellon as "an easy, unassuming person. I liked her very much."Despite her private nature, Mrs. Mellon shared her own gardens with many people over the years -- from groups of veterinarians to Queen Elizabeth. Indeed, otherwise sensible gardeners start to sound like giddy teenagers when describing their visits to Oak Spring Farms -- at one 1969 lunch for 200 members of the Herb Society of America, there was a big white tent, recalled the society's then chairperson, Betty Rea, "and an omelet man brought down from New York, and round tables and garden chairs and each table had a myrtle topiary, a tiny little-leafed plant, and there was lemon thyme in little pots. It was very simple and very elegant, and she was so gracious."

Who in America in 1969, besides dedicated herbalists like Mrs. Rea, even knew what lemon thyme or basil was, anyway? Or sustainable gardening? Back before anyone could pronounce the word "artisanal cheese" Mrs. Mellon's farm was producing its own well-crafted Colby, Gouda, cottage cheese, butter and milk at its own creamery.

Heir to Listerine fortune

Daughter of Listerine king Gerard Lambert and an heir to the Warner-Lambert fortune (a company now part of Pfizer, the pharmaceutical giant) Rachel Lambert was raised in Princeton, N.J., finishing her studies at Foxcroft School in Virginia. There, young women were taught to ride horses, sleep on outdoor porches -- even in winter -- to build their constitutions, and, most important, make good marriages.

She succeeded. While her first marriage ended in divorce, her second lasted for more than half a century.

Indeed, the Mellons, Ms. Bedell Smith would write in her book, "were the 20th century equivalent of Edith Wharton's van der Luydens, who stood 'above all of them' and 'faded into a kind of super-terrestrial twilight': shy and gentle, the ultimate in discernment, seldom seen on the party circuit," because they didn't need to be -- the world came to them, not the other way around.

If Mrs. Kennedy was a 20th-century style icon, surely Mrs. Mellon was her teacher: educating her about discreet, exquisite, impeccable taste, and like so many women of her class and generation, including Mrs. Kennedy, Mrs. Mellon was schooled in the art of pleasing men. Once, she surprised her husband after a formal dinner at the National Gallery of Art -- founded by Mr. Mellon's father Andrew W. Mellon, and which Paul Mellon chaired for years -- by bringing in a jazz ensemble.

When one elegant, elderly gentleman started assembling his clarinet, the normally imperturbable Paul Mellon gasped: "I don't believe it! It's Benny Goodman! I just don't believe it!"

This private gesture, documented in the Washington Post, was by a woman who, as a gardener, didn't mind digging in the dirt -- but her gardening smocks were made by Givenchy, who dressed her after the great couturier Cristobal Balenciaga retired.

"Nothing should be noticed. Nothing should be noticed," Mrs. Mellon said -- saying it twice for emphasis -- in one of her rare interviews, to Sarah Booth Conroy of The New York Times in 1969. She may have been referring to the soft sand color of her stone house, but it was obviously a dictum carefully followed in every aspect of her life.

Which is why her recent mentions in the tabloids were so jarring -- especially the Edwards debacle, since Mrs. Mellon reportedly hasn't been actively involved in a presidential campaign since the Kennedy administration.

The Edwards controversy may explain why she agreed to an interview in the August issue of Vanity Fair -- to talk about her gardens, which are displayed in lavish photographs, down to the spiderwort growing underneath the antique stone garden chairs.

Horticulture and art

Mrs. Mellon has mostly remained focused on her own gardening interests and, when he was alive, her husband's -- art collecting, philanthropy and raising thoroughbred race horses.

Not, however, anywhere near Pittsburgh.

While her husband grew up here, he moved to Upperville in the mid-1930s, and the Pittsburgh Mellons -- many of whom live in Ligonier -- were not known to maintain close relations with Mr. Mellon or his descendants in Virginia.

"She had other interests besides the Pittsburgh Mellons," noted Sandy Mellon, wife of Seward Prosser Mellon. She recalls meeting Mrs. Mellon only once, at a Washington, D.C., reception.

For a reporter, doing due diligence on Mrs. Mellon's connections in Pittsburgh or elsewhere is like being helicoptered into Dante's dark wood and getting hopelessly lost while being assailed by the three beasts of "No comment," "I don't remember" and "I'll call you back."

Arthur Scully Jr., who managed Rolling Rock Club and knew the Mellons, recalled meeting Mrs. Mellon in Antigua, where the Mellons had a house (in addition to other residences in Paris, New York, Washington, D.C., and Cape Cod).

What was she like?

"I just don't remember," he said politely.

After Mr. Mellon died in 1999, Mrs. Mellon continued to surround herself with people who shared her interests in the decorative arts and gardening, said David Patrick Columbia, who chronicles Manhattan society online at Newyorksocialdiary.com.

If she were to show up at a glitzy New York party, "most people wouldn't know who the hell she is," he said, but "In what passes for society in New York today, Bunny Mellon stands apart and alone. Actually, when you look at her life, you see that it's the life of an artist, very rich in that respect, with an aesthetic at a very high level."

In recent years her closest companion was Robert Isabell, a New York party planner whom she met when he was advising Mrs. Onassis on her daughter Caroline's wedding in 1986. When Mr. Isabell died of a heart attack at age 57 last year, Mrs. Mellon buried him near her Oak Spring Farms estate.

Besides the White House, she designed the gardens at Mrs. Onassis' summer home on Martha's Vineyard, the Kennedy Library in Boston and Hubert de Givenchy's French country estate, which, the fashion designer told the Washington Post, reminded him of "a delicate piece of embroidery."

"The thing I envy about Bunny," Mr. Mellon told Washington Post writer Paul Richard in 1985, "is that from the age of 5 or 6, her whole life has been occupied by horticulture, by one consuming thing. She had a garden when she was 5. That led her into all kinds of other things -- to trees, to landscape gardening. Everything she does in life -- her reading, her architecture, her love of pictures -- is related in one way or another to this one main interest."

In his own memoir, "Reflections in a Silver Spoon," Mr. Mellon writes affectionately about his wife, whom he credits with "providing my life with a stability and security it had not known before" and notes they met during the war when her first husband, Stacy Lloyd, served with him in the Office of Strategic Services.

After the war, in 1946, Mr. Mellon's first wife Mary died after a severe asthma attack, and in 1948 he married Bunny Mellon after her divorce from Mr. Lloyd. Both had two children from their first marriages.

That marriage was two years after they were photographed standing in a field at Rolling Rock, in the fall of 1946.

She, in the demure cap, is looking past another unidentified woman at him, the man on the left, her face partially obscured.

What was she thinking?

We'll never know, which is exactly the way she wants it to be.

Read more: http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/10220/1077973-51.stm#ixzz0ytxQro7J

What's Next for Cape Wind?

2010-07-28T18:35:00.000-07:00

"This is not the end. It's not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning."
So wrote Winston Churchill after the decisive defeat of Rommel in North Africa during World War II.
I also said this, at a talk at a New York City institution of higher learning, this past June, after Cape Wind executives finally got their required permit from the federal Department of the Interior.

But I may have been wrong.
A slew of law suits opposing Cape Wind have piled up since then, and there's no telling what effect those law suits may have on the project's construction. Some of these suits may well take years to resolve.

One thing's for sure: After receiving his permit, Cape Wind's jubilant Jim Gordon predicted he could begin construction before the end of 2010.

That doesn't seem likely to happen.

An Expert Applies Science To Policy

2010-03-17T18:34:00.000-07:00

From the Providence Journal

01:00 AM EDT on Monday, March 15, 2010

* *By WENDY WILLIAMS*

WOODS HOLE

When William Y. Brown, who took over as the new director of the Woods Hole Research Center on Feb. 1, was studying terns in Hawaii in the 1970s for his zoology doctoral thesis at the University of Hawaii, he saw a rabbit attack a tern on her nest.

When the bird rose up in response, the rabbit rolled the eggs out of the nest and ate them.

Very odd. He wrote about his sighting in The Auk, the scientific journal of the American Ornithological Union.

“To my knowledge, that’s the only known published instance of rabbit predation on eggs,” Brown, now 61, said during an interview in his clean and uncluttered Research Center office.

Brown is not a typical scientist. After he earned his doctorate, he went on to earn a law degree. “I wanted to armor myself to be an environmentalist,” he explained. Thus armed, he entered public policy.

He sure started off with a bang.

After graduating from Harvard Law, Brown, at 30, was appointed executive secretary of the U.S. Endangered Species Scientific Authority. No one really knew exactly what that meant. Would his department just be responsible for providing scientific data to Congress and the policy makers?

Not under Brown.

The American Trappers Association called his first policy initiative “The Pearl Harbor of Wildlife Management.” For the trappers, Pearl Harbor day was Aug. 30, 1977. That’s when Brown’s regulations banning international trade in bobcat fur appeared in the Federal Register. Brown and his small, young and eager staff believed that many states, including Louisiana, were unable to provide sufficient data proving that their bobcat populations were healthy enough to sustain substantial trapping. Therefore, the furs were not eligible for international trade.

Before the subsequent brouhaha was over, Brown was sued by Louisiana, had lightened up on the agency regulations, and was then sued by the nonprofit group Defenders of Wildlife.

In the end, no party got all of what it wanted, but Brown won for the federal government the precedent of the ability to aggressively limit the participation of Americans in the international wildlife trade.

As a result of his policy actions, the hunting and trading of many U.S. animals was banned — an action that many people say helped the U.S. maintain populations of many species, such as the American alligator, that might otherwise have disappeared but that have since made spectacular comebacks.

This made Brown quite popular with environmentalists and conservationists. But he’s not so popular with some other groups.

“I think we did the right thing,” Brown said during the interview. “We jolted the states into action, into finding out what their wildlife was doing.”

When the Carter administration fell to Ronald Reagan, Brown left government and worked for a while as acting head of the Environmental Defense Fund. Then he went to work in the private sector, heading up environmental remediation for, of all corporations, the mega-garbage-collection company Waste Management Inc.

When the Clinton administration took office, Brown returned to Washington as a science adviser to Bruce Babbitt’s Interior Department. He helped bring the problem of coral-reef destruction to the forefront of both public discussion and public policy, and was instrumental in establishing several National Wildlife Refuges that protected several threatened coral reefs. While still in government, he began creating the 140,000-square-mile Papahânaumokuâkea Marine National Monument in the Hawaiian Islands, ultimately established by former president George W. Bush.

Twenty-five years ago, the private nonprofit Woods Hole Research Center was established to facilitate applying scientific research to public policy. The center’s founder, George Woodwell, had gained recognition when his research supported Rachel Carson’s finding (later made famous in her book “Silent Spring”) that DDT was causing persistent environmental harm.

When industry resisted Carson’s, Woodwell’s and other scientists’ research, Woodwell took the further step, somewhat unusual for a scientist, of working to ensure that DDT would be banned.

Woodwell headed the Research Center for many years but is now retired. If the center wanted another leader who was not an ivory-tower academic and who would apply scientific knowledge to public policy, it certainly got one.

Cape Cod-based science journalist Wendy Williams is completing her next book, “The Vertebrates’ Conceit: The Curious, Exciting and Slightly Disturbing Science of Squid and Octopus,” to be published by Harry Abrams Inc.

Salazar Decides to Decide

2010-03-01T18:32:00.000-08:00

Department of Interior News Release:

Secretary Salazar Moves toward Final Decision on Cape Wind

WASHINGTON― Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar today concluded the historic preservation consultation process for the proposed Cape Wind energy project in Nantucket Sound, clearing the way for a final decision on the project.

The Secretary notified the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation that the parties to the consultations have not been able to reach agreement on mitigation actions for the proposed wind turbine farm in federal waters of Nantucket Sound. The Council has 45 days to provide an opportunity for the consulting parties and the public to offer their views. The Advisory Council will then provide its comments to the Secretary, who will take those comments into consideration before deciding whether to approve or deny the project.

“The time has come to bring the reviews and analysis of the Cape Wind Project to a conclusion,” Secretary Salazar said. “It is clear to me that the consulting parties are not able to bridge their divides and reach agreement on actions to minimize and mitigate the Cape Wind Project’s effects on historic and cultural resources. I am asking the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation for their comments and I will then make a final decision on the proposal. The parties, the public, and the permit applicants deserve resolution and certainty.”

Under Section 106 of the National Historic Preservation Act, federal agencies must take into account the effects of a proposed project on historic properties and determine through the consultation process whether agreement can be reached on minimizing or mitigating any adverse effects of the proposed project. Parties may reach agreement on mitigation measures and sign a Memorandum of Agreement (MOA) detailing agreed-upon actions, or may terminate the consultation under Section 106 if one of them determines that further consultation would not be productive. The parties to a potential MOA – the Minerals Management Service, Advisory Council on Historic Preservation, Massachusetts State Historic Preservation Officer and Cape Wind LLC – have been meeting since July 2008 to consider effected sites and since June 2009 to consider potential measures to mitigate adverse impacts on identified historic and cultural resources in and around Nantucket, Cape Cod, Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket Sound.

During a meeting on January 13, 2010 with the various consulting parties in Washington, D.C., the Secretary set a March 1 deadline for determining whether it was possible to reach agreement on acceptable mitigation measures for the project. The Secretary then traveled to Massachusetts on February 2, 2010 to continue the 106 consultation process, meeting with the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe and the Wampanoag Tribe of Gay Head (Aquinnah) and visiting several of the tribal cultural sites, as well as viewing the proposed project site in Nantucket Sound.

The Department is releasing today a letter that officially notifies the parties that the Secretary has terminated the Section 106 consultation, and is requesting input from the Advisory Council.

Background

Cape Wind Associates, LLC has proposed to construct and operate a commercial wind energy facility on the Outer Continental Shelf offshore of Massachusetts. The project calls for 130 turbines of 3.6 megawatts, each with a maximum blade height of 440 feet, to be arranged in a grid pattern in 25 square miles of Nantucket Sound in Federal waters offshore Cape Cod, Martha’s Vineyard, and Nantucket Island. The projected maximum electric output would be 468 megawatts (average of 183 MW) and serve communities in the Nantucket Sound area.

Review of the Cape Wind project began in 2001 when Cape Wind Associates, LLC applied for a permit from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (Corps) to construct an offshore wind power facility on Horseshoe Shoal in Nantucket Sound, offshore of Massachusetts. Over the next three years, the Corps completed a Draft Environmental Impact Statement along with a separate review and issuance of a permit to construct a meteorological tower for data collection purposes.

After the adoption of the Energy Policy Act of 2005, the Department of the Interior was given authority for offshore wind projects, including the Cape Wind application, and since that time has completed an Environmental Impact Statement and conducted eight official National Historic Preservation Act Section 106 meetings in Massachusetts and Washington, D.C. This is in addition to many other discussions with tribal officials, state officials, the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation and other consulting parties, as well as official public commenting periods conducted during the environmental review and Section 106 consultation process. Over the course of the Cape Wind project review process, the MMS collected and analyzed approximately 75,000 public comments.

U.S. Rep. William Delahunt shells out $500G from coffers

2010-02-27T18:31:00.000-08:00

By Jessica Van Sack | Friday, February 26, 2010 | http://www.bostonherald.com | Local Politics
Photo
Photo by Lisa Hornak

U.S. Rep. William Delahunt blew nearly $560,000 in campaign cash last year - much of it on lavish meals and a family-friendly payroll that includes his ex-wife, son-in-law and daughter - stoking speculation the Quincy Democrat is emptying his war chest and won’t seek re-election.

Nickolai Bobrov, who is married to Delahunt’s daughter Kara, has raked in $47,732 since landing on the payroll as the congressman’s campaign manager in July, including a $10,000 payment that month marked retroactive for “consulting services April-July,” according to campaign finance records.

Bobrov also is listed as treasurer of Delahunt’s Campaign for Change political action committee, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

Kara Delahunt, who recently bought a $620,000 Milton manse with Bobrov, pocketed hundreds in campaign cash as a “freelance photographer,” records show. Delahunt’s PAC also paid her $421 for photography services last month.

Katharina Delahunt, the congressman’s ex-wife, pulled in $48,000 as a receptionist and executive assistant for the campaign, a position she’s held full-time since 2005, records show.

Delahunt, 68, also has dished out sizable sums on expensive meals, including more than $3,000 at Quincy’s Alba Bar and Grill in the first quarter of 2009, and another $7,000 for a confab at the upscale eatery in July.

All told, Delahunt’s campaign committee doled out $558,354 last year, leaving his war chest with less than $570,000, records show. The seven-term congressman raised a paltry $42,000 last year.

Delahunt spokesman Mark Forest said Bobrov is “excellent” at what he does. “He’s a great guy,” Forest said. “Everything is totally proper. Totally legal.”

As for Kara Delahunt, she is “a freelance photographer with an established business, hired for her creative expertise to document events,” Delahunt campaign treasurer Thomas Kiley wrote to the Federal Election Commission last year.

Delahunt told the Herald last week that he was still weighing whether to seek re-election, but Democratic Party sources have privately indicated his departure is anticipated - and expected to draw a host of candidates-in-waiting out of the woodwork.

Tory Mazzola, spokesman for the National Republican Congressional Committee, blasted Delahunt’s big-spending ways.

“It’s this type of unaccountability in government that allows career politicians like Bill Delahunt to get away with such a partisan record,” he said. “If he decides to put this high-dollar family campaign staff to use this cycle, we plan to hold him accountable.”

Regarding Traditional Cultural Properties

2010-02-16T18:28:00.000-08:00

From Today's Providence Journal:

01:00 AM EST on Tuesday, February 16, 2010

By WENDY WILLIAMS

MASHPEE

On Ground Hog Day, Feb. 2, in the town of Mashpee, Mass., U.S. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar met in the pre-dawn hours with the Wampanoag Indian tribe.

Salazar was investigating the world-famous Cape Wind offshore wind project. After a brief office meeting, he and tribal members drove to a private resort beach, lined with large summer homes, overlooking Nantucket Sound, the proposed wind-farm site.

Some of the entourage stood on the deck of the resort’s restaurant, but Salazar, dressed in well-shined cowboy boots, lightly worn blue jeans and a very battered cowboy hat, walked with the Wampanoags’ George “Chuckie” Green and about 10 others to the water’s edge.

There Green, dressed in typical New England gear of a winter parka and warm pants, performed a ceremony that, he says, has been performed there for thousands of years.

The sun was showing off that morning. As the red disk rose over the Atlantic horizon, pillows of passing clouds threw off golden rays. A column of sunlight reflecting off the water looked like a glimmering pathway leading from the beach to far-distant celestial spheres.

Hollywood couldn’t have done it better.

Green hunkered down. He sprinkled grains of something — Green is very private about the ceremonial specifics — into the water.

After a few minutes, the group trudged back up the winter beach.

The event was unique: the cowboy-hatted interior secretary standing in the winter chill to watch the sun rise with a group of American Indians on, of all places, a Cape Cod beach.

Even more unusual is Salazar’s legal conundrum.

If the project were built, 130 huge wind turbines would stand about five miles offshore in between the resort beach and the rising sun.

That, say the Wampanoags, interferes with their religious rights, guaranteed to them under the American Indian Religious Freedom Act of 1978. In April 2008, Green wrote to the Feds about the “significant cultural and religious need for us to have a clear unobstructed view of the southeast horizon.”

Green says the Wampanoags inhabited Horseshoe Shoal, where the wind farm would go, 10,000 or so years ago, as the last Ice Age was receding and the shoal about to be drowned by the meltoff. His ancestors, he asserts, may be buried out there. This brings into play the Native American Graves and Repatriation Act of 1990.

Rather than build Cape Wind, the tribe wants Nantucket Sound, roughly 560 square miles, listed as a “Traditional Cultural Property,” a legal designation created by Congress in 1992 under the National Historic Preservation Act. Some state and federal officials agree that the whole water body is indeed eligible for listing.

No proof exists of human habitation on the now-submerged shoal, although archaeologists have found evidence of trees and grasses. The project developer relocated several turbines to preserve potential archaeological opportunities.

Listing Nantucket Sound as a Traditional Cultural Property does not preclude Cape Wind, but it could add years to the permitting process, already about 8 1/2 years old.

First formally proposed in 2001, the 468-megawatt project received a largely positive environmental review in January 2009. Usually, Interior issues a final permit within 30 days of that event. Debate over the viewshed has now taken more than a year. Salazar has asked parties to compromise, but has admitted that this is unlikely.

Salazar promises a probably precedent-setting decision in April.

The wind industry says that rejecting Cape Wind would discourage other offshore wind development. They are probably correct. Cape Wind’s developers have invested more than $40 million in their permitting effort. Rejection at this point means that raising the massive amount of money required for offshore construction — in Cape Wind’s case, possibly as much as $2 billion — would be a Herculean task.

The administration of Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick, an outspoken supporter of Cape Wind, sent Salazar a letter warning that such a rejection based on Traditional Cultural Property potential could have “far-reaching consequences for bodies of water across the nation.”

Similar controversies exist elsewhere in America. Three days before Salazar’s Mashpee visit, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack visited Superior, Ariz., to sort out a disagreement among a group of Apache Indians, a mining company called Resolution Copper, and town residents. Resolution wants to swap some Tonto National Forest land for land not currently under federal ownership. The company hopes to mine copper on the currently federal site. Some Indians say the forest land, including a cliff called “Apache Leap,” is a traditional site revered by the tribe. Some local non-Indians, hoping for jobs, want the land swap.

The designation of “Traditional Cultural Property” was coined by several government officials, including archaeologist and one-time federal employee Thomas King. In existence for nearly 20 years, its precise limits remain unclear.

Examples of TCPs include the Sandia Sandbars, in the Rio Grande, used by the Sandia Pueblo people for religious rituals; California’s Tecate Peak, near the Mexican border, said by the Kumeyaay Indians to hold special power; and Spirit Mountain, in Laughlin, Nev., considered the center of creation for the Yuman people.

Other non-Indian cultural sites — such as New Jersey’s Pine Barrens and in Florida’s Everglades — have also been nominated for recognition.

King holds training programs on how to apply the designation. He advocates expanding the current list.

A growing number of observers are voicing concern regarding over-reaching. “There are much broader implications to consider here,” William Kovacs, a U.S. Chamber of Commerce vice president, wrote to the Interior Department.

Indeed. It might behoove Congress to take a look at the Law of Unintended Consequences, then clarify exactly what it meant when it passed the Traditional Cultural Properties legislation.

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