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                                        News & Events, February 2011
 
Dear Friend,
The Friends of Mount Auburn is pleased to present the February 2011 edition of our
electronic
newsletter. We invite you to join our email list to receive this mailing on a monthly basis.  To
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In this issue
Senator Charles Sumner: A 200th Birthday Celebration
Wildlife at Mount Auburn Cemetery: The Red-tailed Hawk
Friends of Mount Auburn February Programs
February History Highlight: Stranger's Tomb
Horticultural Highlight: Pinus bungeana
Person of the Month: Benjamin Franklin Roberts
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Senator Charles Sumner, a 200th Birthday Celebration


 

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's annual birthday celebration honors his friend Charles Sumner. The event will feature a talk by Professor John Stauffer about the poet's relationship with Senator Charles Sumner. Also included is a presentation by students from Cambridge's Haggerty School. Reception and wreath-laying at Longfellow lot to follow.

Saturday, February 26th at 10 a.m in Story Chapel.  Free.
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HawkWildlife at Mount Auburn Cemetery: 

The Red-tailed Hawk 

By Robert H. Stymeist

The Red-tailed Hawk is a year-round resident of Mount Auburn and is probably the most commonly seen bird of prey across North America. This is the hawk that you see often along the highways. The Red-tail is one in the family of hawks called buteos, which are distinguished by their long and broad wings and fanned tails when in flight. Red-tailed Hawks can have variable plumage, though all adults have reddish tails; the young bird's tails are brown and banded. Many veteran hawk watchers at Mount Auburn can tell each individual apart and have even given them names. The Mount Auburn Red-tails are not shy and can be easily approached; they often will sit for a long period of time watching squirrels and when the right moment comes - dinner is had. The Red-tail is often mobbed by crows even though they are really not interested in them as prey items, but instead they are looking for small mammals and squirrels.

Red-tailed Hawks begin thinking of nesting in the winter months and have been seen as early as mid- January in the Cemetery working on nest building. Nesting Red-tails prefer a tall tree with good aerial access to the site though the Red-tail has adapted to urban life and nesting can be anywhere such as the famous nest on a building last year opposite the Fresh Pond Mall. At this time of the year a visitor at Mount Auburn may witness some courtship behavior such as high circling. The male circles above the female often with its legs dangling and they may touch wings, the female sometimes will turn over and present her talons upward. Other courtship flights include tilting where the bird tilts side to side while circling and then you might see a sky plunge where the bird rises in altitude then dives steeply at a high speed and at the last moment shoots back up- this should impress his mate!

Though nest construction can begin in winter the actual nesting will occur later, some folks believe that by placing greenery like conifer twigs alerts other hawks that this is their "hood" and they should look elsewhere to set up territory. Birding behavior is a year-round spectacle- so keep your eyes skyward this February and enjoy our Red-tails!!

 

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Join us from 9AM to 12PM on Saturday, February 19th for the Great Backyard Birdcount - a free drop-in program for families.   During this program, we will engage in a variety of hands-on activities to aid children with bird identification.  Mount Auburn's drop-in family programs are designed to allow children and their parents, grandparents or other favorite adult to develop a greater appreciation for Mount Auburn in a fun yet educational manner. Activities are ongoing in Story Chapel during the hours specified.

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Friends ProgramFriends of Mount Auburn February Programs  
 

From history to horticulture to notable figures, our February schedule of events offers something for everyone:

 Visit us online to see our entire schedule and register for any of these upcoming programs.  

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Stranger's TombFebruary History Highlight: Stranger's Tomb  
  

When it opened in 1829, the Tremont House was unique in the nation.  It was a hotel of many firsts including the first to offer indoor plumbing.  Wanting to be innovative in yet another way, they decided to erect a tomb at Mount Auburn for out-of-town guests who died while staying there.  At that time, transporting remains was difficult and not commonly done.  The hotel purchased a private lot (Lot 324) in 1833 on Hawthorne Path and erected a pentagonal tomb of Quincy granite.  The six -foot - tall structure had 36 horizontal cells to be sealed with marble tablets bearing the names and dates of the deceased.  With only a few interments the tomb was eventually taken down and the remains were interred in the lot below.

 

*Image: Engraving from Picturesque Pocket Companion, 1839

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Pinus BungeanaHorticultural Highlight: Pinus bungeana 

Look, the trees

are turning

their own bodies

into pillars

of light...              -Mary Oliver                                               


 

One unusual tree that literally may fulfill Oliver's poetic imagery is Pinus bungeana, lacebark pine. This has the most beautiful bark among all of the over one-hundred different species of world-wide pines, which occur primarily in the Northern Hemisphere. Native to China it was named to honor Alexander Bunge (1803-1890), the Russian botanist and explorer who first sighted it growing in a temple garden in Beijing in 1831 (the year of Mount Auburn's founding).

Cultivated in China for centuries in palaces and Buddhist temples, poetically referred to by some as white dragons, individual trees are reputed to be over 800, 900 and 1000 years-old.  The slow-growing lacebark pine's colorful exfoliating bark actually progresses through chameleon-like changes. In youth the bark often exhibits olive green, yellow, reddish-brown and gray mottled hues. Older trees may develop more bark the color of milk interspersed with gray and brown. Mid-twentieth-century novelist Ann Bridge (1889-1974) who lived and wrote from China described a historic specimen: "...over it rose an immense white pine, its snowy trunk and branches shining among the great trusses of dark-green needles. The white pine is the most improbable of trees-too good to be true; it is impossible to believe at first that some ingenious Chinese has not sandpapered its smooth trunk and boughs, and then given it several coats of whitewash." 

The 2 to 4" long evergreen needles occur in fascicles (a close cluster) of threes. Its egg-shaped cones are 2 to 3" long containing seeds 1/3" long attached to a short wing.  In cultivation the lacebark pine may grow 30 to 50' but as a slow-grower we may be providing our children and grandchildren with its true arboreal grandeur, its spectacular bark. No other pine has anything like it.

On your next visit to Mount Auburn look for our lacebark pines growing on Elm Avenue, Magnolia Avenue, Camellia Path, Vinca Path, Sibyl Path, and Ailanthus Path among other locations.

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Please join us at 1PM on Tuesday, February 15th for Conifers: Surviving Winter With Grace - a walking tour with Mount Auburn Cemetery's Horticultural Curator, Dennis Collins.  Mount Auburn's conifer collection is notable for its diversity (nearly 80 different types) and depth (more than 1,500 plants). Fee: $5 members; $10 non-members.
 

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St. John's Public LotPerson of the Month: Benjamin Franklin Roberts 

Originally trained as a shoemaker, Benjamin Franklin Roberts (1814-1887) found his true calling as a printer and abolitionist.  In 1838 Roberts published the Anti-Slavery Herald, the first paper owned, published, edited and printed by African Americans in Boston.  

A decade later, with the help of lawyers Robert Morris, the first African American to pass the bar in Massachusetts, and Charles Sumner (Lot 2447, Arethusa Path), the ardent abolitionist and future senator, Roberts filed a suit against the city of Boston based on "unlawful" discrimination.  Roberts had tried to enroll his 5-year-old daughter Sarah, who had to walk past five white schools before arriving at the "colored" school, in the school closest to their home.  When his request was denied, he decided to sue the city based on the 1845 city ordinance that stated that any child "unlawfully excluded from the public schools" could sue for damages.
 
Morris and Sumner argued that segregated schools were unconstitutional and unlawful because they infringed upon individuals' civil rights.  Despite their valiant efforts, Chief Justice Lemuel Shaw (Lot 3108, Harebell Path) of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ruled in favor of the Boston school system.  Shaw stated that Morris and Sumner failed to prove that the "colored" school was in any way inferior to the white schools and therefore was not violating any child's civil rights to receive a proper education.
 
In response to Shaw's ruling, the citizens of Boston campaigned the state legislature to end segregation in the schools, which it did with a law passed in 1855.  Shaw's ruling to uphold segregation, however, did not disappear with the passing of the new law in Massachusetts and had far more severe effects for the whole nation.
 
In 1896, the Roberts case was cited in the Plessy v. Fergusson case, which introduced the phrase "separate but equal" and legally endorsed segregation in the U.S.  Not until the 1960s was the practice of segregated schools again successfully challenged.

Roberts is buried in the St. John's (Lot 1736, Fir Avenue) at Mount Auburn Cemetery. 

 

*Image above is of the St. Johns Lot.  At a November 3, 1831 meeting it was voted to permit single interments to be made at Mount Auburn Cemetery by people who were not voting proprietors. In 1849, the Trustees voted that "the Superintendent lay out a lot of land one hundred feet wide on Fir Avenue, between Crocus and Mistletoe Path and extending westerly to the fence, to be appropriated to the purposes of a Public Lot...to be named and hereafter known as "Saint John's Lot."

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