Settling Westchester: The Value of Place

Capitalism, Nature, Socialism

Volumn 10, Issue 3, 1999, Pages 81-88

  Chapman, Robert ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 0009592998     PISSN: 10455752     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/10455759909358875     Document Type: Article

References (15)

1. Westchester County is situated in the southeast corner of New York State just north of New York City, contiguous to the Bronx. As of 1995, with a per capita income of $25,584 and a median household income of $48,405, Westchester is the eleventh wealthiest county in the nation. Total land area is approximately 290,000 acres (450 square miles) of which 16 percent are dedicated to open space - county and municipal parks and nature preserves. Currently open space is on the decline, a victim of rampant residential growth.
2. Regrettably, I have lost the source of this wonderful quote; I use it undocumented because it is wonderful.
3. Or as the ancients said of "beauty," "solo mentis contuitu vix comprehenisibilis" (the mind in solitary comprehension can scarcely comprehend it). Hence, the supreme homage we can pay to nature is silence.
4. Native American place-names clearly demonstrate the importance of tying place to a particular activity. Anitaash Pond, near New London, Connecticut, meant "rotten corn," referring to a swampy location; Abessah, in Bar Harbor, Maine, was the clam bake place; Wabaquasset, in Providence, Rhode Island, was where Indian women could find rushes for making mats. See William Cronon, Changes in the Land (New York: Hill and Wang, 1983), p. 65. Westchester, too, has its Indian place-name counterparts. Nappechamack, in Yonkers, was the trap-fishing place, Quaroppas, in White Plains, the place of white marshes, and Senasqua, now Croton Point, the mound of shells. See the following for excellent time-slices of Westchester: Alex Shoumatoff, Westchester: Portrait of a County (New York: Coward, McCann & Geoghegan, 1979); Harry Hansen, North of Manhattan: Persons and Places of Old Westchester (New York: Hastings House, 1950); Alvah P. French, ed., History of Westchester County, vol. 1 (New York: Lewis Historical Publishing Company, 1925).
5. Native American place-names clearly demonstrate the importance of tying place to a particular activity. Anitaash Pond, near New London, Connecticut, meant "rotten corn," referring to a swampy location; Abessah, in Bar Harbor, Maine, was the clam bake place; Wabaquasset, in Providence, Rhode Island, was where Indian women could find rushes for making mats. See William Cronon, Changes in the Land (New York: Hill and Wang, 1983), p. 65. Westchester, too, has its Indian place-name counterparts. Nappechamack, in Yonkers, was the trap-fishing place, Quaroppas, in White Plains, the place of white marshes, and Senasqua, now Croton Point, the mound of shells. See the following for excellent time-slices of Westchester: Alex Shoumatoff, Westchester: Portrait of a County (New York: Coward, McCann & Geoghegan, 1979); Harry Hansen, North of Manhattan: Persons and Places of Old Westchester (New York: Hastings House, 1950); Alvah P. French, ed., History of Westchester County, vol. 1 (New York: Lewis Historical Publishing Company, 1925).
6. Native American place-names clearly demonstrate the importance of tying place to a particular activity. Anitaash Pond, near New London, Connecticut, meant "rotten corn," referring to a swampy location; Abessah, in Bar Harbor, Maine, was the clam bake place; Wabaquasset, in Providence, Rhode Island, was where Indian women could find rushes for making mats. See William Cronon, Changes in the Land (New York: Hill and Wang, 1983), p. 65. Westchester, too, has its Indian place-name counterparts. Nappechamack, in Yonkers, was the trap-fishing place, Quaroppas, in White Plains, the place of white marshes, and Senasqua, now Croton Point, the mound of shells. See the following for excellent time-slices of Westchester: Alex Shoumatoff, Westchester: Portrait of a County (New York: Coward, McCann & Geoghegan, 1979); Harry Hansen, North of Manhattan: Persons and Places of Old Westchester (New York: Hastings House, 1950); Alvah P. French, ed., History of Westchester County, vol. 1 (New York: Lewis Historical Publishing Company, 1925).
7. Native American place-names clearly demonstrate the importance of tying place to a particular activity. Anitaash Pond, near New London, Connecticut, meant "rotten corn," referring to a swampy location; Abessah, in Bar Harbor, Maine, was the clam bake place; Wabaquasset, in Providence, Rhode Island, was where Indian women could find rushes for making mats. See William Cronon, Changes in the Land (New York: Hill and Wang, 1983), p. 65. Westchester, too, has its Indian place-name counterparts. Nappechamack, in Yonkers, was the trap-fishing place, Quaroppas, in White Plains, the place of white marshes, and Senasqua, now Croton Point, the mound of shells. See the following for excellent time-slices of Westchester: Alex Shoumatoff, Westchester: Portrait of a County (New York: Coward, McCann & Geoghegan, 1979); Harry Hansen, North of Manhattan: Persons and Places of Old Westchester (New York: Hastings House, 1950); Alvah P. French, ed., History of Westchester County, vol. 1 (New York: Lewis Historical Publishing Company, 1925).
8. See Aldo Leopold's, "The Land Ethic," in A Sand County Almanac (New York: Oxford University Press, 1948).
9. New York State Water Quality 1992, prepared by New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, August 1992.
10. The Westchester Children's Databook (Pace University - Dyson College of Arts & Sciences, 1994), pp. 101-126.
11. New York State Air Quality Report 1996, published by New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, summer 1996.
12. Cited in G. Tyler Miller's Environmental Science, fourth edition (Wadsworth Publishing Company, 1993) p. 15.
13. have borrowed this concept from Benjamin R. Barber's worthwhile book, Jihad vs. McWorld (New York: Times Books, 1995).
14. George Eliot, in In the Mill of The Floss understood and articulated well the important consequences of childhood attachments to the world of nature: "We could never have loved the earth so well if we had had no childhood in it."
15. Leopold, op cit., pp. 224-225.