Category: History

America the Beaver

heidi08 Friends of Martinez Beavers, History July 4, 2017

I can’t believe yet another fourth of July is here without us standing watch over kits on the footbridge where 1000 people cross on their way to the fireworks. Being without kits or beavers sure changes the entire feel of summer. But the good news is that busy beaver author Ben Goldfarb is coming to talk Martinez today, after interviewing our beaver buddy Damion Ciotti in the foothills yesterday We’re making him brunch with decidedly immigrant themes, then Jon’s walking around the beaver ghost town, and I’ll try to tell the story and not to get sidetracked. Wish us luck.

Yesterday I heard from illustrator Deborah Hocking in Portland that the charming bookmark she is designing for the festival pro bono was completed. Feast your eyes on this little wonder made out of the talent of her fingers and the goodness of her heart. We’ll give them free at the event, kids can put them in their nature journals and adults in the books they buy at our silent auction, and we’ll have extra to tuck in any thank you note for years to come.

Martinez bookmark front — Bookmark Front

Thank you SO much Deborah! I love that little cycling beaver, and having a view of our creek on the back really reminds me of how lucky we once were, sigh.

Now I’m hoping this reminder of the respect your founding fathers had for beavers gets you started on your celebratory day. Wishing us all six dollar bills soon!Not sure why the beaver is eating a palm tree, or where exactly in colonial america one was growing, but maybe he wasn’t as gifted an artist as he was a kite flyer?

Oh and just in case our current state of political affairs has you feeling particularly doomed, just remember this criticism by E.P. Whipple of our 17th president which will make you realize we’ve all been here before. He was describing Andrew Johnson in 1866. Pause at any sentence in this monumental paragraph and you will be stunned by the similarities.

“Insincere as well as stubborn, cunning as well as unreasonable, vain as well as ill-tempered, greedy of popularity as well as arbitrary in disposition, veering in his mind as well as fixed in his will, he unites in his character the seemingly opposite qualities of demagogue and autocrat, and converts the Presidential chair into a stump or a throne, according as the impulse seizes him to cajole or to command. Doubtless much of the evil developed in him is due to his misfortune in having been lifted by events to a position which he lacked the elevation and breadth of intelligence adequately to fill. He was cursed with the possession of a power and authority which no man of narrow mind, bitter prejudices, and inordinate self-estimation can exercise without depraving himself as well as injuring the nation. Egotistic to the point of mental disease, he resented the direct and manly opposition of statesmen to his opinions and moods as a personal affront, and descended to the last degree of littleness in a political leader, — that of betraying his party, in order to gratify his spite. He of course became the prey of intriguers and sycophants, — of persons who understand the art of managing minds which are at once arbitrary and weak, by allowing them to retain unity of will amid the most palpable inconsistencies of opinion, so that inconstancy to principle shall not weaken force of purpose, nor the emphasis be at all abated with which they may bless to-day what yesterday they cursed. Thus the abhorrer of traitors has now become their tool. Thus the denouncer of Copperheads has now sunk into dependence on their support. Thus the imposer of conditions of reconstruction has now become the fore- most friend of the unconditioned return of the Rebel States. Thus the furious Union Republican, whose harangues against his political opponents almost scared his political friends by their violence, has now become the shameless betrayer of the people who trusted him. And in all these changes of base he has appeared supremely conscious, in his own mind, of playing an independent, a consistent, and especially a conscientious part.”

It’s up to us now, let’s create a new Hope for beavers

heidi08 Beaver Art, Beavers, Friends of Martinez Beavers, History June 28, 2017

One of the things I’ve learned over the years about trying to change folk’s minds about beavers is that people don’t change their minds about beavers. All the science data from Michael Pollock or all the facts from Dietland Muller-Swarze doesn’t actually translate into policy changes regarding beavers unless another important organ is altered as well.

Hearts.

That’s why the intelligent, heartfelt, observant, tear-inducing writing of Hope Ryden’s Lily Pond was so powerful. She told a story as a compelling, factual and feeling woman who read her history and was gradually was touched by beavers. And I defy anyone who read through her book to ever disdainfully call them ‘rodents’ again.

Hope Ryden, Wildlife Protector and Photographer, Dies at 87

Hope Ryden, whose lifelike photographs of North American beavers, coyotes, mustangs and other wildlife helped elevate them into poster animals for conservation campaigns, died on June 18 in Hyannis, Mass. She was 87.

The cause was complications of hip surgery, her brother, Ernest E. Ryden, said.

An English major who later developed a passion for photography during breaks abroad as a Pan Am flight attendant, Ms. Ryden, in 1961, joined Robert Drew & Associates, a noted documentary production company, where she and her colleagues were in the vanguard of cinéma vérité filmmaking.

By the early 1970s, she had become a full-time naturalist and animal-rights advocate, publishing books for adults and children lushly illustrated with her own photographs.

Her advocacy was credited with encouraging Congress to pass legislation in 1971 protecting the populations of wild horses and burros in the West; their numbers had dwindled to an estimated 17,000 in 1970 from a peak of two million. She also helped persuade New York’s Legislature to name the beaver the official state mammal in 1975.

Ms. Ryden wrote two dozen books on wildlife, including “America’s Last Wild Horses” (1970), “God’s Dog: A Celebration of the North American Coyote” (1975), “Bobcat Year” (1981) and “Wild Animals of America ABC” (1988).

In addition to her books, Ms. Ryden wrote for National Geographic, Audubon, Smithsonian and The New York Times Magazine.In addition to her books, Ms. Ryden wrote for National Geographic, Audubon, Smithsonian and The New York Times Magazine.

Hope changed minds. True to her name. She gave beavers the best chance they ever had to survive in an indifferent and inconvenient world. Grey Owl may have softened things a little, Enos Mills got folks to listen, but Hope made people love them. And that was a game changer.

She was a naturalist of the highest order and wrote many wonderful books on many wonderful topics, but to my mind this was her crowing achievement. The introduction was written by Dr. Jane Goodall. For years Hope was an email buddy and would donate signed copies to the Silent Auction. She always said that the Martinez beaver story made her happy and made her feel as if new options were possible. She was friends with Sherri Tippie and knew the good folks at Beavers: Wetlands and Wildlife. She never stopped caring about beavers even after her amazing 4 years.

I put off reading Lily Pond because I didn’t want to save the Martinez beavers with sympathy in the beginning. I had the crazy idea that just explaining the science would make everyone understand. Silly me! I read it in the winter the year after mom’s illness, and the passage when her matriarch died literally made me erupt in tears. We were driving back from the mountains and I could literally only read a 10 words at a time before I had to put the book down and weep. Her beautiful words were carved across my aching heart; “Oh, Lily! Is this how you leave us?” And I will thank her forever for saying how it felt to watch the beaver heroine you have sat with in the dark for years, suddenly leave the world where she brought so much life.

Hope told stories. And taught me that stories Save Beavers.

Beaver teeth carving: Shigir Idol

heidi08 Beaver Anatomy, Beaver Art, Beavers, Beavers elsewhere, Educational, History, What's killing beavers now? June 17, 2017

Three times older than the pyramids and twice as old as Stonehenge, the statue was originally dug out of a peat bog by gold miners in the Ural Mountains in 1890. The remarkable seven-faced Idol was carved with a beaver jaw and is now on display in a glass sarcophagus in a museum in Yekaterinburg, Russia.

Beaver’s teeth ‘used to carve the oldest wooden statue in the world’

New scientific findings suggest that images and hieroglyphics on the wooden statue were carved with the jaw of a beaver, its teeth intact. Two years ago German scientists dated the Idolas being 11,000 years old.

At a conference involving international experts held in the city this week, Professor Mikhail Zhilin said the wooden statue, originally 5.3 metres tall, was made of larch, with the basement and head carved using silicon faceted tools. ‘The surface was polished with a fine-grained abrasive, after which the ornament was carved with a chisel,’ said the expert.

‘At least three [sets of teeth] were used, and they had different blade widths.

The faces were ‘the last to be carved because apart from chisels, some very interesting tools – made of halves of beaver lower jaws – were used’.

Zhilin, leading researcher of the Russian Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Archeology, has spoken previously of his ‘feeling of awe’ when studying the Idol, more than twice as old as the Stonehenge monuments in England.

‘This is a masterpiece, carrying gigantic emotional value and force,’ he said. ‘It is a unique sculpture, there is nothing else in the world like this. It is very alive, and very complicated at the same time.

‘The ornament is covered with nothing but encrypted information. People were passing on knowledge with the help of the Idol.’ Only one of the seven faces is three dimensional.

While the messages remain ‘an utter mystery to modern man’, it was clear that its creators ‘lived in total harmony with the world, had advanced intellectual development, and a complicated spiritual world’, he said.

The professor has found such a ‘tool’ made from beaver jaw at another archeological site – Beregovaya 2, dating to the same period.

Studying the Idol, he believed the tool is consistent with its markings, ‘for example when making holes more circular’, said Svetlana Panina, head of the archaeology department at Sverdlovsk Regional Local History Museum.

The idol was put on a stone basement, not dug in the ground, said Zhilin. It stood lik

e this for around 50 years before falling into a pond, and was later covered in turf. The peat preserved it as if in a time capsule.

I know I have very specific tastes in news, but that is sooo cool. Of course if there were ready made carving tools all around you would use them, rather than make your own. I’m assuming the fact that there were three sizes of tools means that they were three ages of beaver harvested?

Regular readers of this blog will know right away why it was the bottom mandible and not the top used for carving. I used to think this tusk-beaver from a bavarian crest was so silly -but it actually makes more sense than our modern bucktoothed cartoon.

Despite what the funny-papers tell us, lower teeth are much larger (which is why it’s so rare to get photos of the upper ones). One fine exception to that rule of castor is this wonderful photo taken by my facebook beaver buddy Sylvie Biber. That may not be her real name, considering, but I believe she’s eastern European, living in Scotland, where she took this wonderful photo.

Top Teeth Sylvie — *Beaver teeth: Sylvie Biber*

You can bet I’d chose the bottom ones for my carving!
This also made me remember the research I did of the bay area tribes that lived near Brentwood and Antioch. In their burial grounds archeologists found beaver mandibles buried with the bodies and all their posessions. The paper I read said that no one knew why. Psychologist that I am, I always assumed it was because beaver teeth changed things and what do folks want to change more than death? But maybe they were precious tools, just being tucked away with the owner?

George Bernard Shaw of Beavers?

heidi08 Beaver Chewing, Beavers elsewhere, History, stupid solutions, Who's blaming beavers now?, Who's Killing Beavers Now? June 12, 2017

Perhaps one of you might be able to explain this to me. My head hurts from all the scratching.

Community center to host performance of ‘Beaver Dreams’

“Beaver Dreams,” performed by Lost & Found Puppet Co., will be presented Wednesday at 3:30 p.m. at the Hazleton One Community Center, 225 E. Fourth St., Hazleton. Featuring puppets, a clown and animation, “Beaver Dreams” is a story that takes place on a small lake in the Laurentian Mountains of Quebec, Canada.

It is about the relationship between the beavers living there and the people who vacation there every summer. They both love the lake, but the beavers build dams and the people break them down. They coexist, but not happily. Then one day a threat appears that unites the beavers and the people. To find out what happens, come to see Beaver Dreams.

Lost & Found Puppets has headquarters in both Montreal and Vancouver, Canada.

Now if I was going to write a play about beavers, I’m not sure this is what I’d come up with. Of course I went searching for everything I could find on ‘beaver dreams’ and came up with a lot of pop psychology on what it means if you actually see a beaver in your dream. (Um, in my case that your eyes are closed?) But I guess that’s just me. Then I found that this was an award winning production and here’s the promo.

“Nothing less than brilliant” – Savage Clown

“Brings joy to your life” – Montreal Rampage

“I felt like I was in a forest inside a theatre” – Johanna Nutter (Freestanding Room)

More head scratching. Didn’t Montreal bring us Cirque de soliel? At best, we can say the regional offerings appear uneven. I’m guessing that the singing in this little masterpiece is a voyageur song like the ones written down by Ermatinger that I wrote about a startlingly long time ago. He was famous in the Hudson Bay Company for actually writing down the music that those eager beaver-killers were singing to make the canoeing go faster. Alouette is an old trapping song, so of course I wrote some of my own favorite lyrics. Good luck to beaver dreams.

I don’t think they appear in this fine production, but who knows. Anything is possible.

All the beavers, I kill all the beavers,
All the beavers, they will die for me.

Did you kill them with a knife?
Yes I killed them with a knife.
With a knife?
With a knife!
Oh-oh-oh-oh

All the beavers, I kill the beavers
All the beavers, they will die for me.

Did you kill them with a club?
Yes I killed them with a club.
With a club?
With a club!
With a bow?
With a bow!
With a trap?
With a trap!
Oh-oh-oh-oh

All the beavers, I kill all the beavers
All the beavers, they will die for me.

Busy As Beaver NGRAM

heidi08 Beavers, History May 4, 2017

Thank goodness there’s nothing to cover on the beaver news feed this morning, because I recently came across a fascinating tool that I wanted to share with you. It started because we were innocently wondering about the phrase “Busy as a beaver” for obvious reasons. When was did it start being used and when was it used less?

We were curious because just as many people also say “Busy as a bee“, and the way my particular mind works at the moment I wondered whether the phrase interchange had anything at all to do with the fur trade, and beaver extinction. Did the usage disappear, for example, when it stopped being common knowledge to know the manner in which a beaver worked? And did busy as a bee take over because we still had bees? I’m sure there used to be phrases describing things we were once likely to see every day that dropped out of common use when technology or habit made them obsolete – like iceboxes or parafin.

So idly thinking this I stumbled on the Google Books NGRAM viewer. This searches the text of all the books entered on google and gives you a lovely graph about their occurrence. You can chose the language or the time period according to your interests. Our mystery phrase “Busy as a Beaver” looks something like this:

Bear with me here, but I think even with this silly rough tool you can see that the phrase ‘Busy as a beaver” was in strong use at the height of the East Coast fur trade in 1790, and then dropped off when they ran out of beavers until the 1830’s when the fur trade was driven west and found a new treasure trove to raid. Once they wiped at all those too it was used rarely for a long time, until the late thirties when beaver reintroduction started to make the furry little metaphors easier to see.

Is there a growing field of ecological linguistics? If there isn’t there should be. This was stunning to actually see on paper. Out of curiosity I also checked the results for “Busy as a Bee.” Jon thought this phrase might have been more English and maybe a more thorough analysis would establish this, but the crazy thought that popped into my head when I saw this is that it was pretty much the opposite as the beaver. So maybe when there were no beavers left to be as busy as, maybe they thought about bees more. And maybe when we kill off all the bees with our neonicotinoids they will come up with a brand new phrase entirely?

Here’s what they look like together because I’m just like that:

I made cards to announce the Beaver Festival yesterday for our next couple events and wanted to add something on the back. I thought this was appropriate.