Annual Letter from Mr. Sternberg
February 2010
| Dear Friends and Family,
This 2010 edition of my annual letter is a bit late. I can offer no good excuse, so I apologize. So here goes, first with a short list highlighting some of my activities and then with a few stories that are sort of related. Some highlights: I sit and sip my dark roasted Costa Rican coffee, and I mentally revisit the events in my life over the past year. Here's a partial list:
Related stories for your amusement: New York State and New England played important roles in my life almost fifty years ago. As a junior in college, I spent part of my summer at Air Force ROTC summer camp at Plattsburg AFB, along the shores of Lake Champlain. Today, Plattsburgh AFB is no more ... the buildings and runways are all civilian. But, back in 1963, I had my first flight in the Air Force's jet trainer, a T-33 "T-Bird," at Plattsburgh AFB. The pilot let me take the controls, and showed me how to do rolls, fly upside down and do loops. Unlike a lot my friends, I did not throw up! Also, needless to say, I was hooked, and went on to become an Air Force pilot. Then after that Summer Camp experience, I hitch-hiked into the Adirondacks, to climb Mount Marcy, and I still vividly remember being alone on the trail following the very fresh black bear tracks in the soft ground as I hiked up to the lake called Tear of the Clouds. Later as Scoutmaster of Troop 40 in Westernville, NY, my scouts and I would camp and canoe in the Adirondacks often. The Chain Lakes were a favorite place to go. The Adirondacks have a rich history that includes being among the very first large wilderness areas to be set aside for future generations, and a place that very rich and famous industrialists built the Great Camps as "healthful" summer homes. Years earlier, while in High School, Lee Erde, my Scoutmaster, lent me a little book called "Woodcraft," by Nessmuck (his real name was George Washington Sears). He wrote for a magazine called "Forest and Stream," now called "Field and Stream." "Woodcraft" was published in 1894; I think Lee Erde's copy was an early one, and I loved it. Nessmuck told the story of his paddling an eleven pound canoe and carrying another ten pounds of gear to camp in the Adirondacks for three months one summer in the 1880s. His canoe the, "Sarry Gamp." was built by a famous small boat craftsman from Maine, named Rushton. The construction technique is truly amazingly fine craftsmanship and unique to the guide boats of the Adirondacks. The Adirondacks fascinate me. I did not hitch-hike to the Adirondack Museum this time. Back in 1960s, I hitch-hiked everywhere because I did not have a drivers' license and my family did not own a car. In 1963, when I first visited the Adirondack Museum, it was a single building along the shores of Blue Mountain Lake. The museum is now contained in twenty five buildings as I discovered this fall. The exhibit of guide boats and canoes in the museum is nothing short of incredible. Nessmuck has a prominent display, and two of his canoes, including the Sarry Gamp are there. The museum also has a fine live display featuring fine woodwork craftsmen who demonstrate guide boat construction techniques. There's a new museum in the Adirondacks now, the Wild Center. It's about five years old, and it features the natural history of the Adirondacks with displays of live animals, fish, etc. I thought it well worth seeing. It's a bit farther north on Tupper Lake. The Wild Center is an excellent environmental education facility. A most interesting part of both the Adirondack Museum and the Wild Center was their use of solar energy. Besides roof top photovoltaic arrays, the Wild Center had solar water heating tubes and panels that are augmented by burning renewable wood pellets in a special outdoor furnace. A ton of wood pellets produces only a pound of ashes ... everything else is consumed to make heat. This very inexpensive technology is evidently in use in Austria. Backing up a little, last summer, was the big centennial celebration of the founding of the Boy Scouts of America, and with my scouts, I participated in the historic events: the Centennial Parade in Washington, DC, and the National Jamboree at Ft. AP Hill, Virginia. During the Jamboree, I purchased a DVD, called the "First Encampment." It's a documentary, produced by a sixteen year-old scout, Blake Cortright, about the first training camp that the fledgling Boy Scout organization conducted in the Adirondacks, at a place called Silver Bay on the northern shores of Lake George. The video was fascinating, and was just the impetus I needed to visit Silver Bay to see the place for myself this past fall. The new Boy Scout organization in 1910 was endorsed by the YMCA, and Silver Bay was the premier YMCA camp back then. It is still a wonderful facility, used by colleges and other groups. I spent several days there, saw the site of the first encampment with its historical markers, and I enjoyed the amazing fall colors. It was really neat for me to visit Silver Bay during the 100th Anniversary year of the Boy Scouts of America. On my way to Silver Bay, I stopped off to visit my friends Josh and Kristeena in Troy, NY. Josh and I were scouts in Troop 77, in the Bronx, and we have been friends for almost half a century. We do not see each other often enough, and I thoroughly enjoyed the visit. I got to see the New York State Museum while in the area too. The museum has a permanent exhibit about the only World War II Jewish Holocaust refugees let into the United States. President Franklin Roosevelt accepted a special request from prominent Jewish leaders to offer temporary asylum to around 982 concentration camp victims. These poor people were sent to live an American military base on the shores of Lake Ontario; it's a remarkable story. Ruth Gruber under the auspices of the State Department accompanied them on the ship from Europe. Ruth Gruber was the journalist and author whose documentary film I saw in New York City last fall, and whose book about Jewish places in Eastern Europe guided me on my travels in 1999 and 2002. There's even a scouting connection to this Holocaust rescue story. It turns out that a scout leader in the upstate community near the military base organized a Boy Scout Troop among the refugee children, and amazingly, got these "scouts" to testify at a Congressional hearing in support of a proposal to allow the refugees to stay in the USA permanently. By then Truman was the President, and he actually made it possible and legal for the refugees to stay in America. It is just an amazing story. You may be wondering how I was able to take off from my “job” as Scoutmaster for two months last fall. The answer is that my troop is transitioning to a new Scoutmaster! Presently, I am still the official Scoutmaster of Troop 1131 as far the registration paperwork for BSA is concerned, but one of our Assistant Scoutmasters, Rich Wagenaar, is the “Acting Scoutmaster,” and he is doing the "heavy lifting" of running weekly meetings and camping trips. I am so grateful to him for taking over, and I anticipate that he will register as the official Scoutmaster next year. Being Scoutmaster of Troop 1131 here in Virginia is not a trivial undertaking. We have approximately 150 boys in the troop, and a cadre of about fifty registered adults. It's a big job, and I plan to continue to participate and help Rich out in several ways. I have taken on the role of coordinating our Eagle Scout program, and I am running special high adventure activities, like the trip to Costa Rica over the Christmas holiday, and our future trip to Philmont in 2012. Here's the last story in this annual letter: Back in the early spring, my scouts and I visited the JFK Library in Boston. On display in the library is a replica of the desk used by President Kennedy in the Oval Office of the White House during his term of office. The original desk was a gift from Queen Victoria to President Rutherford B. Hayes in 1879. The desk was made from the timbers of the British barque-rigged arctic exploration ship, HMS Resolute. The Resolute was part of the expedition sent in 1852, to search for the Arctic explorer, Sir John Franklin. To find the fabled Northwest Passage, Franklin left England in 1845, on his fourth and last voyage of Arctic exploration. He never returned to England, and starting in 1848, Franklin's wife and others began offering rewards and financing to those who would mount search expeditions. Relics of Franklin's expedition were found, including the graves of three crewmen, and stories about the Franklin party told by the Inuit people were brought back to England. In 1859 a note left on King William Island provided details about the expedition's fate, and additional searches continued through much of the 19th century. Franklin's lost expedition has been the subject of many artistic works, including songs, verse, short stories, and novels, as well as television documentaries. One of my favorite maritime/chantey singer-songwriters, George Kauffman, from Mystic Seaport, Connecticut, sings a wonderful ballad called "Lady Franklin's Lament." In 1981, a team of scientists at the University of Alberta, in a series of scientific studies of the graves, bodies, and other physical evidence left by Franklin crew members on Beechey Island and King William Island, concluded that the crew members whose graves had been found on Beechey Island most likely died of pneumonia and perhaps tuberculosis, and that lead poisoning may have worsened their health. The lead poisoning was traced to badly-soldered cans held in the ships' food stores. However, it was later suggested that the source of this lead may not have been tinned food, but rather the distilled water systems fitted to the expedition’s ships. Cut marks on human bones found on King William Island were seen as signs of cannibalism. The combined evidence of all studies suggested that hypothermia, starvation, lead poisoning and disease including scurvy, along with general exposure to a hostile environment without adequate clothing and nutrition, killed everyone on the expedition. Back to Kennedy's desk, in September 1855, an American whaling ship captain named Buddington from Groton, Connecticut, discovered the Resolute adrift in an ice flow off Baffin Island, some 1,200 miles from where she had been abandoned a year earlier! The American whalers freed the Resolute from the ice, re-rigged the spars and sails, and sailed her to New London, Connecticut. The US government purchased the ship and sent it to England as a gift to her majesty Queen Victoria from the "President and People of the United States as a token of goodwill and friendship." In England, the desk that Kennedy used was made from the Resolute's timbers, and was presented by the "Queen of Great Britain and Ireland to the President of the United States," as the plaque says. The desk was used in the White House by several Presidents, but during alterations to the White House in 1952, it was moved. Mrs. Jacqueline Kennedy discovered it in the White House broadcast room and had it restored to the Oval Office. The original desk toured the world with a Kennedy Library exhibit in 1964-1965, and later was turned over to the Smithsonian Institution. The desk had been in storage for President Eisenhower's administration, and was kept by the Smithsonian between 1965 and President Carter's election; President Carter requested its return, and used it as his desk in the Oval Office as did President Kennedy and others. President Bush did not use it beyond the first six months of his administration. I'm not sure if President Obama uses the desk. This ends my annual letter, despite my having many more stories to tell. My New Years’ resolution is to scan my collection of 35mm slides and start writing “the book” in which more of my stories will appear. I wish everyone the best possible 2011.
With Best Wishes to All,
Philip Sternberg |