Recent comments in /f/massachusetts

UniWheel t1_j6ee3ow wrote

Reply to comment by Slight-Possession-61 in The Connecticut River valley looking north from the summit of Mount Holyoke in Hadley, Massachusetts 1900 and 2022 by Redbandana325

>Is that the famous Ox Bow?

No. More exactly, it is "an" oxbow, but not "the" oxbow of the area.

In the right kind of soil situations rivers do this - once there's the slightest hint of a bend (and when isn't there?), the water at the outside has to flow faster and so scours more and increases the bend creating a "meander" which can eventually become an "oxbow".

"the" oxbow was like this, but one day in 1840 with people watching the river cut right through the narrow part forming a new channel. Today that oxbow is only really connected at the southern end and is essentially a lake rather than part of the river, and so not an oxbow. (the several times diverted Mill River does drain into it though)

Left to its own devices this one would eventually do that too; though it may not be left to its own devices. If you look at the area overall, Mount Tom, Mount Holyoke, Sugarloaf, Mount Warner and Mount Toby etc are confining. But where exactly the river cuts through all that rich silty floodplain farmland has been variable over geological and even historic time.

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BobQuasit OP t1_j6eax72 wrote

Reply to comment by Academic_Guava_4190 in Giant new building in Foxborough area - what is it? by BobQuasit

Do Amazon facilities have large ground-level windows? I picture them as being more like fortresses to protect Jeff Bezos's wealth against a possible uprising of the peasantry. And why would you have windows in such a place? You don't want people looking in to see workers urinating into bottles and being crushed by robotic machinery, and you certainly don't want the workers to get a glimpse of freedom outside.

Seriously, none of it makes sense to me. There's no parking garage going up nearby or anything like that.

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BobQuasit OP t1_j6eafp1 wrote

Reply to comment by milespeeingyourpants in Giant new building in Foxborough area - what is it? by BobQuasit

The closest major section is a roundabout, sort of. It links Route 1 and 95.

I drove by the place again about an hour ago, and it's a few minutes south of the Foxborough town line. It's at least three or four stories tall, and there are large windows along the ground floor level, many of them arched. That doesn't fit with it being a warehouse, a Costco, a BJ's, or a Sam's Club. Nor does it fit with being a mall! Not that I would expect anyone to be building a mall these days, what with the retail apocalypse and the Emerald Mall (and most others) going down the drain!

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madtho t1_j6e94ui wrote

Reply to comment by NativeMasshole in The Connecticut River valley looking north from the summit of Mount Holyoke in Hadley, Massachusetts 1900 and 2022 by Redbandana325

Sinton, the author of that article, has an amazing book called From Devil’s Den to Livkingwater. It’s about the Mill River in Northampton, but is really a history of the whole region. Incredible book and a must read for any Pioneer Valley resident.

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