Taunton River Journal
Brought to you by Glooskap and the Frog
Take a kid fishin
I wanted you to see what real courage is, instead of getting the idea that courage is a man with a gun in his hand. It's when you know you are licked before you begin but you begin anyway and you see it through no matter what. You rarely win, but sometimes you do.
Atticus Finch
To Kill A Mockingbird
Who are We
We are a small group dedicated to re-establishing natural connections and restoring indigenous species through out the Taunton River watershed. Our activities include stream assessments and cleanups, fishery restoration and selective dam removal projects. We also manage to have a good deal of fun exploring the nooks, crannies and forgotten places of the watershed. Where despite human encroachment natural treasures abound in the most unlikely of places. From the ravaged basins of the Salisbury Plain and Matfield Rivers, which stoically serve as sluice ways for the city of Brocktons sewer water. To the ancient dunes of Wapanucket. Where along the shores of pristine Assawompsett Pond you can walk in the footsteps of the People of the First Light, and look out upon something of what they saw a thousand years ago. This website has been created to share these explorations with you. We hope you will delight in some of what you see and be disturbed by some of it as well.
I never gave our rivers much thought until I forgot myself in them.
"If the doors of perception were cleansed, everything would appear to man as it is, infinite. For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things through the narrow chinks of his cavern"
William Blake
Lessons from Dad and those peculiar grownups!
Check it out!
The Farm at Stonehill
Cool paper about Wampanoag agriculture
River Perspective : Outside in, Inside Out
Sit with me by the Fire HERE
Water, our most abused and fundamentally vital resource. Despite all the abuses we have and continue to bring upon our water, it rises to the sky, falls to the ground, and returns to us like this.
Is there a more forgiving substance? Will it always be so?
Taunton River below Rt. 104 Bridgewater
Can we do better? Should we?
Update of Brockton Sewer Plant Upgrade
As Punishment for being very, very naughty the City of Brockton had to do this.....
Columbia Gas & Salisbury Plain River
Alternate spelling of Social Injustice
See
Brockton Massachusetts
Learn
1% For the Planet hmmmm.......
Sewer Plants of the Upper Taunton and its Tribs
Follow your nose to
Narragansett Bay info HERE
Wampanoag Commemorative Canoe Passage
Getting by with a little help from their friends
Mill River (Cohannet)
Achieving the Impossible
Weweantic River Revisited
Is it time to look into Weweantic with fresh eyes? What does Weweantic have to offer us? What do we, in 2007, have to offer Weweantic?
The sickening slaughter of migrating adult female American eels at "Green" Hydro Dams throughout New England is now underway. Photo's and Details
Citizens petition to list the American Eel as endangered under the U.S. Endangered Species Act.
Sifting through the ashes of Eden
Sea-Run Brook Trout Coalition
The good news is, Rainbow Smelt laid millions of eggs at Weweantic this spring. The bad news is most of them are dead.
Step Inside the Smelt Shack
if you dare
This spring we invited you to swim upstream with Nemaskets adult alewives. We now invite you to swim back down with their babies.
NEW
Aquatic Macro Invertebrate Survey Page
New scientific evidence confirms people look scary to fish
Our Public Comments on EOEA Report of the Water Policy Task Force
Swim with Nemaskets Alewives... HERE
Caddis Art and other spring trickle explorations
NEW
Taunton River, "a silty old river, its always been that way?"
Not Hardly----- HERE
New photo sequence of leaping Atlantic Sturgeon. We need to have these fish back in the Taunton River.
For a different perspective of alewives and blue back herring visit our new photo gallery of herring climbing the ledges of Ticonic Falls on the Kennebec River in Waterville Maine.
Freshwater Mussel Art
Good info our good friend the leach HERE
Meet Our River Heroes
Follow these links into our Taunton River Watershed
Exploring Cotuhtikut Great River
Taunton River Facts Matfield River Salisbury Plain River
Help Riverways Click Here
Native Fish Species of Cotuhtikut
History and Lore of our Great River and its tributaries
Food for thought -- (Freshwater Mussels)
Brockton Wastewater Treatment Plant
Salisbury Plain & Ahquannissowamsoo River Photo Gallery Click Here
New July 2003 Photo Gallery Of Brockton's Ongoing Illegal Discharge into Trout Brook Click Here
Public comments submitted on the proposed Expansion & upgrade of the Brockton Sewer Plant HERE
What does the EPA and Ma DEP think of Brockton's Advanced Wastewater Treatment Plant in June of 2003? Click Here
Public Comments on Brockton Sewer Plant Comment Info Here
River Prose -- Enter at your own risk
Human Impacts on Taunton River Nutrients & Flows HERE
Table comparing Taunton River nutrients to those in other area rivers HERE
Please join the Ahquannissowamsoo (Matfield River) Stream Team INFO HERE
Nemasket and Ahquannissowamsoo (Matfield R) historic fisheries HERE
Become a member Good Eggs (Links)
We will be adding much more to this site in the near future, stay tuned.
Mr. William Briggs thoughts on the destruction and demise of the Alewife in Taunton's Mill River in the 1600's
It is very strange and matter for lamentation that those who complain'd for want of fish were so much derided and scoff'd at as contemptible persons. Strange that any of mankind should slight & despise such a noble and bountiful gift of Heaven as this is of the plenty of this sort of fish afforded to Americans for their support; nay, 'tis very sinful that instead of rendering thanks to our Maker and Preserver for the good gift of his Providence for our support, that wee should despise them.
Yes, a stagnant pool, though but a few feet wide, hatched by the sun, is an immense world, an inexhaustible mine of observation to the studious man and a marvel to the child who, tired of his paper boat, diverts his eyes and thoughts a little with what is happening in the water.
J. Henri Fabre
It is not enough to be busy; so are the ants.
The question is: What are we busy about?
Henry David Thoreau
Glooskap and the baby
Now it came to pass when Glooskap had conquered all his enemies, even the Kewahqu, who were giants and sorcerers, and the M’teoulin, who were magicians, and the Pamola, who is the evil spirit of the night air, and all manner of ghosts, witches, devils, cannibals, and goblins, that he thought upon what he had done, and wondered if his work was at an end.
And he said this to a certain woman. But she replied, Not so fast, Master, for yet there remains one whom no one has ever conquered or got the better of in any way, and will remain unconquered to the end of time. And who is he, inquired Glooskap? It is the mighty Wasis, she replied, and there he sits; and I warn you if you meddle with him you will be sorry.
Now Wasis was a baby. And he sat on the floor sucking a piece of maple sugar, greatly contented and troubling no one.
As Glooskap had never married or had a child, he knew little in the way of managing children. But he was quite certain, as such people are, that he knew all about it. So he turned to the baby with a bewitching smile and bade him come to him.
The baby smiled again, but did not budge. And the Master spoke sweetly and made his voice like that of a summer bird, but to no avail, for Wasis sat still and sucked his maple-sugar.
Then the Master frowned and spoke terribly, and ordered Wasis to come crawling to him immediately. The baby burst out crying and yelling, but did not move for all of that.
Then, since he could do but one more thing, the Master turned to magic. He used his most awful spells, and sang the songs which raise the dead and scare the devils. And Wasis sat and looked on admiringly, and seemed to find it very interesting, but all the same he never moved an inch.
So Glooskap gave up in despair, and Wasis, sitting on the floor in the sunshine, went Goo Goo and crowed.
And to this day when you see a baby well contented, going Goo Goo and crowing, and no one can tell why, you will know it is because he remembers the time when he overcame the great Master who had conquered all the world. For of all the beings that have ever been since the beginning, the baby is alone the only invincible one.
Thinking Like a Mountain
A deep chesty bawl echoes from rimrock to rimrock, rolls down the mountain, and fades into the far blackness of the night. It is an outburst of wild defiant sorrow, and of contempt for all the adversities of the world.
Every living thing (and perhaps many a dead one as well) pays heed to that call. To the deer it is a reminder of the way of the flesh, to the pine a forecast of midnight scuffles and of blood upon the snow, to the coyote a promise of gleanings to come, to the cowman a threat of red ink at the bank, to the hunter a challenge of fang against bullet. Yet behind these obvious and immediate hopes and fears there lies a deeper meaning, known only to the mountain itself. Only the mountain has lived long enough to listen objectively to the howl of a wolf.
Aldo Leopold
A Sand County Almanac 1949
Though you might hear laughin', spinnin',
swingin' madly across the sun,
It's not aimed at anyone, it's just escapin' on the run
And but for the sky there are no fences facin'.
And if you hear vague traces of skippin' reels of rhyme
To your tambourine in time, it's just a ragged clown behind,
I wouldn't pay it any mind, it's just a shadow you're
Seein' that he's chasing.
Bob Dylan
If you try to do right without being self righteous good things will happen.
Each life we touch is a journal. Aspire to be a positive entry in each.
I am in a dark room now, black. Painting with words a scene I cannot see. With light will come meaning.
© 2007 mus epod