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🥶Cloudy and cold, with highs in the 20s. Sunset is at 4:51 p.m.
The snow will be sticking around for a while this week, so we have something special for you today: tips on sledding from two local members of the Olympic luge team.
Zack DiGregorio of Medway told GBH’s Craig LeMoult that his favorite place to try luge is Lake Placid, New York, about a 5-hour drive from Boston. If you’re looking for a more local sledding experience, find a safe hill and “point your toes and keep your head back, is what we tell ourselves,” DiGregorio told LeMoult. “I’m sure that’ll work for anyone.”
Ansel Haugsjaa of Framingham said he suggests lying on your back and going down feet-first, like lugers do.
“I went sledding recently, actually,” Haugsjaa told LeMoult. “Normal sledding, I’ll say. And I was on like a disk sled. It was not good. I was really wishing I could be reclined back. So I think that’s important.” Our GBH colleagues also put together a list of places where you can watch or learn winter Olympic sports in Greater Boston.
Four Things to Know
1. Gov. Maura Healey joined other elected officials in saying that Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem should resign after federal agents shot and killed Alex Pretti, an ICU nurse at the Minneapolis VA hospital, in Minnesota over the weekend.
“It is just an example of how out of control ICE is,” Healey said. “We have people who are clearly untrained who work for ICE ... So my heart goes out to Alex Pretti, to his co-workers, and I really hope Americans take this in and understand the very sad and dangerous moment we’ve reached in this country.” We have more reactions from elected officials here, and some thoughts from Republicans running for office in Massachusetts here.
2. The Cape is getting $3 million in federal funds to help contain PFAS chemicals that leaked from firefighting foam used at the Cape Cod Gateway Airport in Hyannis and the local firefighting academy. Those so-called “forever chemicals” can contaminate soil and groundwater. Bryan Massa, an environmental consultant working with the airport, said the airport has “capped the PFAS-impacted soil,” and “that cap needs to be monitored in perpetuity, basically.”
The airport still has to transition to a PFAS-free firefighting foam, Airport Manager Michael Nelson said. Their first step is getting a new firetruck. “Once we have that one all set up, ready to go, we will start transitioning to the other trucks to replace the foam in those,” Nelson said.
3. The numbers are in: this weekend through yesterday 20.2 inches of snow fell at Logan Airport, according to the National Weather Service.
Roads are more-or-less cleaned up today, but many schools are still closed or have a delayed start. “It was fierce, a lot of snow, blowing snow, winds – but all the preparation, all the planning that both MassDOT and MBTA did in advance paid dividends,” said Phil Eng, interim MassDOT secretary and MBTA general manager.
4. The storm also meant the Red Cross had to cancel blood drives over the weekend. There’s usually a dip in donations around this time of year because of the holiday season, flu, other illnesses and cold weather, spokesperson Jeff Hall told GBH’s Jeff Keating. Now that the storm has passed, Hall said he encourages eligible donors to check out the Red Cross’ website or their local hospitals.
“Across the country, we’ve had probably 200 blood drives so far canceled due to weather. And that really shakes out to about 5,000 units of blood that go uncollected over the weekend. So it’s having a big impact in a really bad time for us right now,” Hall said.
A frozen cannon trail: How a Berkshires mission tested a young bookseller
Here’s a Revolutionary War-era figure you may not have heard about: Henry Knox, a bookseller from Boston who was responsible for leading hundreds of men (and their oxen) on a 300-mile journey through the winter from Boston to Fort Ticonderoga in upstate New York and back, a trip that took three months. GBH’s Chris Burrell caught up with two local historians, Bernie Drew and Rob Hoogs, who are retracing their steps.
It was 1775, and the Battle of Bunker Hill had left General George Washington’s army without much artillery.
“Henry Knox stood up and said, ‘Hey, you know, there’s this artillery that Benedict Arnold, Ethan Allen and the Berkshire militia captured at Fort Ticonderoga six months earlier at New York, 300 miles away. I’ll go get them,’” Hoogs told Burrell. “General Washington presumably said, ‘Cool. What do I have to lose?’”
And so Knox and his troops headed west. It was a cold and difficult trip. They reached Fort Ticonderoga, loaded 60 tons of artillery onto wooden sleds, and headed back to Boston.
Drew and Hoogs have been among the people trying to figure out what path the group took through the Berkshires. They brought Burrell to Monterey, a town east of Great Barrington, where they believe the group stopped at a place called Chadwick’s Tavern.
“We’ve located the old maps, the old roads, the old surveys, the old atlases,” Hoogs said. You can still see the remains of the tavern today: a hole in the ground off the path in Beartown State Forest, where a bit of the stone foundation is still visible.
The group made its way back to Boston and delivered the cannons to Dorchester. And you know the rest: the British fled Boston on what we now celebrate locally as Evacuation Day.
“It was a huge victory for General Washington. All of a sudden now the war moves to the mid-Atlantic states, and the other colonies realize it really is a regional conflict that they need to be involved with. It’s in their backyards and it is more than just these fiery Massachusetts Patriots who are inflaming this,” Hoogs said. “Three months later, the Declaration of Independence is signed.”
Follow along on their walk in Burrell’s story here.
Dig deeper:
-In Boston’s Green Dragon Tavern, revolutionaries brewed their plans for resistance
-Despite scrutiny in life and death, Phillis Wheatley endures as a trailblazing poetess
-Old broadsides and receipts offer hints to America’s Black Revolutionary War soldiers
-These places west of Boston might have a better claim as the birthplace of the Revolution
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