Collecting area: Environment

Citizens of Wendell raising barn of Jonathan von Ranson

In 1978, after years of working in the fast paced world of journalism, writing for Life Magazine and later serving as editor and publisher of several New England newspapers, Jonathan von Ranson was burnt out. In the summer of that year, after divorcing his wife Linnea and selling his newspaper business, von Ranson moved from Newington, Connecticut to a property in Wendell, Massachusetts. It was here, two miles off a maintained state forest road, that he erected a tent and began constructing a stone house.

To von Ranson, the quiet serenity of rural Massachusetts offered refuge from the hustle and bustle of his previous life. An advocate of subsistence living, he and his second wife Susan fed and sheltered themselves in the home they built together. Von Ranson established himself as a local journalist by writing for the Wendell Post, a humble town newspaper known for its distinctive local perspective. He also contributed to local publications like the Greenfield Recorder, usually penning op-eds about environmental issues both local and global. A passionate craftsman, his writing in other publications focused on sustainable home-building. Von Ranson’s personal writings, particularly those he refers to as his “unintelligible nighttime musings,” reveal a sensitive and introspective man with a spiritual connection to the land he cultivated.

Von Ranson held various positions in Wendell town government, taught fourth graders homesteading skills, and held workshops ranging from writing to masonry, becoming a pillar of the community in his small rural town. He expressed his environmental, political and social convictions in ways large and small, whether it was reusing paper by typing manuscripts on the back of fliers, or refusing to pay taxes in protest of military spending.

The Jonathan von Ranson papers document von Ranson’s time as a journalist, simple living advocate/homesteader, and Wendell/Franklin County activist and community leader. This is reflected through clippings of many of von Ranson’s articles for Maine, Connecticut and Franklin county newspapers, meeting agendas and correspondence from his various positions in Wendell town government, and schematics for his first stone house built in 1978/1979 and his simple living apartment completed in 2015. The collection also includes confessional hand-written manuscripts, fliers for Wendell community events, von Ranson’s Peace Corp application which reveals a breadth of biographical information, and even self-authored root cellaring guides. Other material reveals his involvement in a myriad of social and political groups dealing with environmentalism, the feminist men’s movement, rural development, policing, and much more.

A collection of t-shirts, gift cards, and posters designed by activist and political artist Bonnie Acker. Each item features an illustration by Acker in support of various issues relating to social change ranging from peace with Nicaragua, to nuclear abolition and from lifting the debt of impoverished countries, to the Burlington, Vermont community land trust.

View of the proposed the Amherst Fields

In May 1971 Otto Paparazzo Associates announced their plans to develop 640 acres of land in East Amherst upon which a proposed 2,200 residential units, a commercial center, and a golf course would be built. Concerned about unnatural growth of the community and about the effect such a development would have on the environment, a group of residents formed the Amherst Growth Study Committee within a few months of the announcement. Despite these concerns, the Zoning Board of Appeals issued a formal permit for construction in December 1971, which the AGSC immediately appealed. Even though the group was unable to overturn the zoning board’s decision, they did achieve their ends, in part, when state and town agencies prevented the project from moving forward due to an overloaded sewage system. More importantly, the group increased public awareness about growth and housing in the town of Amherst.

Records include notes from AGSC meetings, correspondence, and newspaper clippings documenting coverage of the story in local papers.

Ellsworth “Dutchy” Barnard attended Massachusetts Agricultural College, and received his Bachelor of Science degree in 1928. Barnard began teaching college English in 1930 at Massachusetts State College. In the fall of 1957 he took a position at Northern Michigan University (NMU). As chairman of the English department, Barnard presided over a selection committee which brought the first African-American faculty member to NMU. During the 1967-1968 academic year, he led the faculty and student body in protesting the dismissal of Bob McClellan, a history professor. Although the effort to reappoint McClellan was successful, Barnard had already tendered his resignation at NMU and returned to the University of Massachusetts at Amherst for the 1968-1969 academic year. He ended his career at UMass as the Ombudsperson, the first to fill that office. Barnard retired in 1973 and lived in Amherst until his death in December 2003.

Barnard’s papers document his distinguished career as an English professor and author, as well as his social activism, particularly on behalf of the environment. They consist of course materials, personal and professional correspondence, drafts of essays, lectures and chapters, published works, a collection of political mailings, a number of artifacts both from the University of Massachusetts and other educational institutions and organizations, and a number of poems by Barnard and others.

View the Ellsworth and Mary Barnard oral history

Bernard B. Berger served as the Director of the Water Resources Research Center from 1966 to 1978 and was a world-renowned expert on water supply management and the effects of pollution. Berger was born in 1912 in New York City, earned a B.S. in 1935 from MIT and an M.S. in Sanitary Engineering in 1948 from Harvard. Before coming to the University of Massachusetts, Berger worked as a civil engineer for twenty-five years in the United States Public Health Service, where he researched and advocated policy on pollution control. While at the University, Berger served as the United States’ water resources specialist in the executive office of Science and Technology and worked as a consultant to Israel in 1972 on that country’s creation of the Israel Environmental Service, now the Department of the Environment and as a consultant to South Africa on a similar project in 1975. The year after retiring from the University in 1978, Berger earned an honorary doctorate of science. He died on December 8, 2000.

The Bernard B. Berger Papers includes correspondence and reports from his consultancy work with Israel and South Africa. The collection also includes several folders of Berger’s published and unpublished writings, personal and professional correspondence and documents relating to his receipt of his honorary degree and other awards and recognitions.

A new medical waste incinerator for New York city hospitals became the focal point of drawn-out controversy in the 1990s. After proposals to place the facility in Rockland County and downtown Manhattan were scotched, a site in the South Bronx was selected. Even before it opened in 1991, the Bronx-Lebanon incinerator touched off fierce opposition. Built to dispose of up to 48 tons per day of medical waste gathered from fifteen regional hospitals, the incinerator was located in a poor and densely populated area, and worse, raising charges of environmental racism. Making matters worse, during its years of operation, it was cited for hundreds of violations of state pollution standards. A coalition of grassroots organizations led an effective campaign to close the facility, and in June 1997 the plant’s owner, Browning Ferris Industries agreed. In an agreement with the state two years later, BFI agreed to disable the plant and remove the emission stacks.

Gathered by an environmental activist and consultant from New York city, Sam Bishop, this collection documents the turbulent history of public opposition to the Bronx-Lebanon medical waste incinerator. In addition to informational materials on medical waste incineration, the collection includes reports and legal filings relative to the facility, some materials on the campaign to close it, and a small quantity of correspondence and notes from activists.

Access restrictions: Temporarily stored offsite; contact SCUA in advance to request materials from this collection.

A native of Washington, D.C., and graduate of the University of Wisconsin (1970) and Loyola University of Chicago Law School (1973), Norman Blumenthal moved to La Jolla, Calif., in 1976 to accept a position as Chief Operating Officer and General Counsel for an oil and gas exploration company. After twelve years in the corporate sector, Blumenthal entered private practice, shifting focus to the protection of employees, consumers, and securities buyers from unfair business practices and pursuing both class action and individual cases. Among other notable cases, Blumenthal led a class action suit against the city of Escondido, Calif. (Coshow v. City of Escondido, 132 Cal. App. 4th 687), arguing that their decision to fluoridate the city water supply in 2001 amounted to “mass medicating the entire community” without consent using chemicals that were known to be carcinogenic. In 2005, the court upheld the City’s fluoridation plan.

The Blumenthal collection represents the extensive legal and research files employed by the plaintiffs in Coshow v. Escondido and the appeals that ensued, including correspondence, litigants’ files, depositions, exhibits, “expert documents,” research materials and drafts, “extras.”

For years, Mitzi Bowman and her husband Pete were stalwarts of the progressive community in Connecticut, and tireless activists in the movements for social justice, peace, and the environment. Shortly after their marriage in 1966, the Bowman’s settled in Newtown and then in Milford, Conn., where Pete worked as an engineer and where Mitzi had trouble finding employment due to her outspoken ways. In close collaboration, the couple became ardent opponents of the war in Vietnam as well as opponents of nuclear weaponry. The focus of their activism took a new direction in 1976, when they learned of plans to ship spent nuclear fuel rods near their home. Founding their first antinuclear organization, STOP (Stop the Transport of Pollution), they forced the shipments to be rerouted, and they soon devoted themselves to shutting down nuclear power in Connecticut completely, including the Millstone and Connecticut Yankee facilities, the latter of which was decommissioned in 1996. The Bowmans were active in a wide array of other groups, including the New Haven Green Party, the Connecticut Coalition Against Millstone, the People’s Action for Clean Energy (PACE), and they were founding members of Fight the (Utility Rate) Hike, the Progressive Action Roundtable, and Don’t Waste Connecticut. Two years after Pete died on Feb. 14, 2006 at the age of 78, Mitzi relocated to Vermont, carrying on her activism.
The Bowman Papers center on Mitzi and Pete Bowman’s antinuclear activism, dating from their first forays with STOP in the mid-1970s through the growth of opposition to Vermont Yankee in the approach to 2010. The collection offers a valuable glimpse into the early history of grassroots opposition to nuclear energy and the Bowmans’ approach to organizing and their connections with other antinuclear activists and to the peace and environmental movements are reflected in an extensive series of notes, press releases, newsclippings, talks, ephemera, and correspondence. The collections also includes extensive subject files on radiation, nuclear energy, peace, and related topics.

Temporarily stored offsite; contact SCUA to request materials from this collection.

In 1992 after lightening struck the Yankee Rowe reactor in western Massachusetts, concerned citizens organized with the goal of educating themselves and their communities about the potential dangers of nuclear energy. Citizens Awareness Network (CAN) worked to reveal the hidden costs of nuclear power on the health and safety of communites surrounding a reactor, and as a result of their efforts Yankee Rowe was pressured into closing down in 1993. When CAN learned that much of the nuclear waste removed from the site was shipped to a town in South Carolina, the group was outraged that the waste which hurt their community would now be imposed on another community. Once again they were moved into action, this time transforming from a small local group into a regional group with multiple chapters. Today, with seven chapters in five states, CAN continues to uncover the hazards of nuclear energy, proposing instead the use of clean energy produced locally.

This large collection documents every facet of the group, and includes publications, financial records, research files, correspondence, and realia such as t-shirts, bumper stickers and buttons.

Relief program established for unemployed men by President Franklin D. Roosevelt whose main work in Massachusetts through the 1930s and early 1940s was tree planting, fire fighting, insect control, and tree and plant disease control. Contains photographs arranged alphabetically by forest name that depict road building, tree planting, and other developments in the state forests. Includes some images of workers.