My back yard. Seriously, those guys run through our yard all the time. My wife even nicknamed one "Justine Beaver".

Had one get hit by a car nearby a year ago... At first I thought it was a Great Dane sized dog, but then realized it was a beaver... Didn't realize they got so big!

Didn't it say Larry Nolidays? Who the hell is Larry?

Exactly this. It was worse in the past, though. I remember going to the Registry in Marlborough in the late 70s... They were so slow that the line extended well into the parking lot. After you stood in that line for an hour or more, and got "helped" by an employee, you had to go stand in another ( shorter ) cashier line to pay for your transactions.

Also, the RMV workers were butthurt at the time because Massachusetts voters had passed some economic cutback measures... So, besides being jerks to deal with in person, they absolutely would not answer phone calls. I remember listening to the phone ring for an hour while I stood in line... it never did get picked up.

RMV really did improve their service a few decades back, making it just a pain in the butt to go there, versus the soul crushing bureaucratic experience it was in the past.

What about the town? I'm assuming the water never worked as opposed to stopped working after construction finished. Can the plumbing inspector really sign off on a house with no water?

Actually a lot of it was open fields being farmed by native Americans, at least according to one book I read. The names of towns reflected that... Mansfield, Marshfield, Springfield, etc. etc. was already open agricultural fields when the Europeans showed up. So you probably have to go back 5,000-10,000 years to find a time when it was all untouched aboreal landscape.

Also, my point wasn't that:

>I think it's sad to think of any wildlife habitat as dispensible just because the land had been altered before.

But that it's not a one way path... It's gone from wilderness to open field and back to wilderness before... And in a relatively short amount of time.

Also, if it was a new Walmart these people would probably be shrugging and saying "that's progress". I don't see any of them calling for a halt to all new construction. Just, you know, construction next to their house... Quite literally NIMBY.

While loss of habitat due to construction etc. is a real thing, it's nothing compared to the damage coming from global warming. Entire ecosystems across huge amounts of the country are going to be decimated over the next 100 years. If we can minimize that by converting a small percentage of previously farmed land into solar farms, it's arguably a worthwhile strategy, especially when it will quickly go back to wooded land once we no longer need the solar array.

Hey, I wouldn't want a wooded lot abutting my land to be developed either, but I have to laugh at the guy saying:

>"I was horrified, I like solar energy, I think it is a good idea, but this is not the place to do it," Troy said.

The very definition of NIMBY.

>"Fifty feet from your property line, having a huge power plant go in is definitely not what people want in this neighborhood or what we moved here for," Luallen said.

We could... build a wind turbine there instead! Seriously, a solar array has to be one of the lowest impact things you could have installed next to your house.

I don't have much sympathy for anyone, including myself, if you're pulling power from the grid, but you don't like the idea of having solar installed next door...

Being a local pilot, I can see that most of what is now "beautiful wilderness" was farmland 150 years ago... I'm not saying I don't love wooded land, just that most of it wasn't wooded in the 18th and 19th century. The vast wide areas we see how is a fairly recent thing.

When we have alternatives to solar arrays, it'll go back to wooded land very quickly. Assuming global warming doesn't kill off all the species of trees...

>Why not tear down abandoned buildings and parking lots and put them there? There's a ton of spots of urban decay around the state.

The same reason we aren't mostly doing rooftop installations. Cost. The major cost of solar isn't the panels, it's the installation cost. It's much more cost effective to install on a fairly large space, on the ground, than in many little installations scattered around.

Not saying I 100% support converting green space to solar, just saying it's why it's happening the way it is. There have been some good studies over the last couple years about sharing solar fields with agriculture ( plants and animals below the panels ). I'm hoping we'll go more this way, so the land doesn't have to be dedicated to just solar...

So, when I went to school in Worcester ( many years ago ) they would plow the snow until the snow plowing budget was used up, and then they would just stop plowing. Given that I was riding a motorcycle year round, this presented some issues for me.

I take it they're better on that front now? 🤔

Yeah, my wife moved here from Santa Monica. She never really adjusted to the cold ( or to the streets not being on a grid! ). And Worcester has that winter gale of a wind that just cuts right through you. Oh, yeah, and the snow you mentioned.

You're going to love it here!

Invest in some proper New England winter clothes... Parka, snow mobile mittens, warm waterproof boots.

I went to school 5 minutes from there, and it's rough in the winter. And I grew up in New England. And you'll find you won't tolerate the cold as well as the natives. So I'm not kidding about buying some proper warm clothes...

10 minutes walk to Starbucks, 15 minute walk to Ralph's Diner!

🥳

Ah, many fond memories there... I always stop by there when I'm in town...

I'm guessing this was at Hammonasset?

If Maynard isn't too far, these guys are excellent. I knew him from when he was one of the professors at New England School of Photography. They do outstanding work...

Gallery Seven

True, it's currently -3°C! ( and 100 feet visibility in freezing fog, brrr. )