Winter 2024

Winter arrived for a couple of days this January and we skated one day on local pond ice

My Uncle Donny passed away and I drove my parents over to Geneseo, NY for the funeral. I have 30 first cousins on the Ehmann side and I enjoyed catching up with some of them. 

Harriet Tubman's home in Auburn, NY was made a Park site during the Obama administration, and we stopped there for a pit stop on the way home

Caroline's Science Olympiad season kicked off with a tournament hosted at MIT. This meet is famous as the hardest of the season and brought in 72 teams from around the country, including 8 of the top 10 teams from last year's National competition. Caroline competes with a partner in the Ecology, Forensics, and Forestry events. She scored #1 in Ecology and #1 in Forestry

Each event is scored individually, with the top team earning 1 point and so forth down to #72. Top 6 teams in each event receive medals, as color-coded above. The lowest sum of all event scores determines overall winner. This year Lexington finished #10, and one place above their Massachusetts rivals. 

Next was a tournament at Columbia in NYC. I drove down there and after the 6AM drop-off I made the most of my wintry Saturday in Manhattan. At dawn I jogged the length of Riverside Park and back. Here and everywhere else in Manhattan, the parks were in excellent condition.

Next I took the subway down to Wall Street and visited Trinity Church to see Alexander and Eliza Hamilton's graves

African Burial Grounds NM was established after a 17th-century cemetery was discovered during excavation for a federal office building in the 1990s. After much negotiation, the park site was established on a corner of the precious downtown property.

The Stonewall Inn, site of a 1969 uprising for LGBTQ+ rights, is in Greenwich Village and commemorated by this park. 

Further uptown is Theodore Roosevelt's birthplace, or rather a reconstruction of the townhouse where he was born.

Among the artifacts are the pocket items that saved his life from an assassination attempt in 1912. On the way to deliver a speech, he was shot in the chest, but the bullet was slowed by his speech manuscript and eyeglass case. The bullet still entered his body and as this was his Bull Moose phase, he continued on to give the speech while bleeding, and finally sought medical attention afterwards.

and this is the cartoon that inspired the creation of Teddy bears

Continuing walking north for another 102 blocks I reached Grant's tomb, the largest and most austere mausoleum in North America. One of my friends is a history buff who has walked all the way (in installments) from Boston to NYC on the Post Road. He extols the virtues of walking and after a full day on my feet I can appreciate it, too, in contrast to my usual, more high-throughput, motor-powered tourism.

Back at Columbia, Caroline and her partners had crammed for their events

and she remained the Queen of Forestry

Caroline's secret weapon is the Forestry binder, a self-compiled reference material of the trees of North America

The team finished #2 out of 49

At Brown University's event, Lexington finished #3 out of 50, yet behind both of the teams from their rival

The final event before the state championships was at U Mass, where LHS finished #1

Erin ran indoor track for LHS in the distance events of 1-mile and 2-mile

Their team finished 4-1 in the league and Erin qualified to run varsity in the postseason

At the league championship, the top 8 finishers in each event score for their team. Erin ran a personal best 12:23 to finish #8, earning a crucial 1 point that contributed to their 87-87 tie for overall 1st place

Next was the Division 1 all-state meet, where Erin ran in the 2nd and slower of the two heats. Usually she is chasing someone but this time she ran her own race as the leader

Her PR of 12:19 was good enough for #13 overall and the #2 freshwoman

Tessie prepared a poster about women of the American Revolution

Tessie's Valentine acrostic 

In January Heather suffered a painful gallstone attack that led her to the ER, where they found stones in the gall bladder and blockages in her bile ducts. Her recommended treatment was removal by surgery and until then she was on a no fat diet.

This red-tailed hawk has no such restrictions and she brought down a bunny right outside our kitchen window. I love that winter camouflage on her plumage

By the next day, she had completely cleaned the carcass