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Daniel Peppe holds the end of a partial femur of an 18 million year old elephant ancestor.
Photo provided
NORTH CANAAN, Conn. — Dr. Daniel Peppe, a North Canaan Elementary School and Hotchkiss alum, is a professor of Geosciences at Baylor University in Waco, Texas.
When he is not teaching both intro and graduate level courses, he can be found conducting research across the globe. In short, his work focuses on the evolutionary processes of plants and animals in response to climate change. Having conducted fieldwork in the U.S. Midwest, Australia and Abu Dhabi, Peppe has settled for Eastern Africa.
While in graduate school at Yale University, Peppe lived in the forests of Uganda with his wife, who at the time was researching chimpanzee behavior. It was there that he was put in contact with a geologist in Kenya who was looking for an extra set of hands at a fossil site.
Over the past 20 years, he has continued his work in East Africa, collaborating with both local and international geologists. Each trip lasts about a month and involves moving from site to site.
“The work I do is like building a puzzle, I have all these pieces that need to be put together,” Peppe said.
To build the puzzle of what the landscape looked like in Africa 15-20 million years ago, his team uses paleobotany and ecological methods. The “pieces of the puzzle” range from climate patterns to plant and animal communities. Once put together they provide the team with a reconstructed version of the ancient ecosystem. From there, Peppe can estimate how the ecosystem impacted the natural life that once inhabited it.
A recent focus of Peppe’s work has been on C4 plants, which refer to warm-season grasses.
With his team, he set out to answer the question “when did C4 plants evolve in Kenya and why?”
Unbeknownst to him, the data he would later find would completely shift the timeline of African geology. Peppe’s team found that these plants, which are imperative to interpreting the evolution of mammals, including humans, could be dated back 10 million years earlier than previously documented.
This finding then led to their second breakthrough. It was previously claimed that traits and characteristics of apes had developed through their reliance on dense forest as habitat.
However, coupled with the earlier dating of warm-season grasses, Peppe’s team was able to connect apes’ evolution to both types of vegetation.
Peppe’s passion for nature started long before his academic career. Growing up in the Northwest Corner “really had an impact,” he reflected. As a kid he worked his way from Cub Scout to Eagle Scout. His Eagle Scout project was making trail signs for the North Canaan Greenway.
Despite far flung adventures, Peppe still reveres the Northwest Corner. “I think a lot of people overthink where we live,” Peppe said. “It is full of interesting geology.”
When at Yale, his class went on a field trip to the Falls Village Falls, a place that he associated with childhood memories, not coursework, like fishing in the Blackberry River and hiking Mt. Riga.
“I love what I do,” Peppe said. “I get to be outdoors, working with people, discovering new things.”
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Time to register is running out for the hotly contested NorthEast-Millerton v. Amenia Free Libraries’ Fourth Annual Battle of the Books set for Saturday, July 27 at 4 p.m. at the Undermountain Golf Course at 274 Undermountain Rd., Copake.
Golfers my register until Wednesday, July 24 at the course or at undermountaingolf.com. The $70 fee includes a two person, nine hole scramble with prizes and a dinner of hamburgers and hotdogs. Limited carts are an additional $5 per person. Profits will be divided between the two libraries.
Check to see if registration still is open.
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A different breed of dog lover
Jul 24, 2024
Lee Sohl and therapy dog Freddie.
Photo by Mia Barnes
SHARON, Conn. — Whether volunteering at schools, visiting prisons, or at her home in Kent, Lee Sohl can almost always be found with a dog.
For the past 32 years Sohl has served as animal control officer in Kent. She has since added on three other towns serving as the ACO in Sharon for 10 years, Salisbury for seven, and most recently Cornwall.
Her and her husband, Jim Sohl, who is also ACO certified, live with 14 dogs of their own.
Originally from Westchester County, New York, Sohl fostered her love of animals from a young age. Dogs became the subject of her artwork and she said, “By age 12 I had read every dog book in the Chappaqua Public Library.
As she gained more experience, the number of animals in her care grew. She revealed that at one point there were 50 animals in her house, ranging from llamas and pigs to ferrets and chinchillas.
Sohl was asked by the First Selectman in 1991 to take over as the town dog warden, and having had experience working at the Kent pound, she agreed. For the past three decades she has been fielding calls, answering questions, and searching for dogs while also balancing her full-time job as a reading interventionist and assistant principal at Kent Center School.
The work of an ACO, though seemingly animal centered, involves a significant amount of human interaction. Aside from dogs that Sohl herself finds roaming, the majority of the reports come from community members.
Most cases fall under one of two categories, nuisance (biting or barking) and roaming. The ways in which Sohl responds vary from case to case.
Above all her goal is to educate the owners, whether that be through a reminder of the licensing mandates or tips on how to handle disobedient behavior. “The people here are animal lovers,” emphasized Sohl after stating that she tries to limit her ticketing to “frequent flyers” and formal complaints.
“Social media has made a big difference,” said Sohl when asked about how reports are generated. When Sohl started the job, she had 60 dogs in the pound in one year just for Kent; last year there were 20 dogs across all four towns.
When a dog is reported as roaming, all efforts are focused on identification and reunification. If an animal is licensed or is microchipped, they are almost always guaranteed to return home. In other cases, Sohl takes to the newspaper and various social media platforms. During that time, the dog will stay in the pound in which town they were found for a week before being able to be placed in a new home.
“The pound can be a traumatizing place for most dogs,” remarked Sohl when describing the urgency of her work. “Though the job is part-time, I am working 24/7.”
In the past two years she has increased outreach efforts by bringing her 3 therapy dogs to schools, libraries, nursing homes and most recently prisons.
“Students have a much easier time reading to a dog than a teacher or parent,” noted Sohl. “It takes a lot of the stress off.”
While reflecting on her time as an ACO she stated, “This is a great life with animals and because of them my world has been opened up to new opportunities.”
In the past year she has written, illustrated, and self-published 6 books — each one focusing on one of her 14 dogs. She has already started the creative process for the next book.
“There’s been so many fun experiences,” Sohl reflected. “I get to help these animals while also meeting great people.”
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Louis Dingee spends a lot of time on the road. He regularly drives two hours round-trip from his home in Torrington to Kent, where he volunteers with the Kent Volunteer Fire Department (KVFD).
Louis has been with KVFD since age 14, when he participated in the junior members program after school. By the time he was 19, Louis was a full member, and he’s been with the Department for more than two decades since.
“Getting early exposure to the Department is what drove me to continue,” he says. “They’ve grown to be a family to me. I do it for the Kent community – I love giving back to where I used to live.”
Louis used to live in Kent. In recent years, the local housing market has completely priced him out. Due to his two hour commute, sometimes Louis is unable to respond to emergency dispatches. “In many cases, by the time I’d arrive, I’d basically be meeting them at the hospital,” he explains.
Louis’s dream home is modest. He just needs a garage where he can keep his electrician equipment, and a zip code close enough to Kent so that he can respond to emergency calls. But for now, Torrington is the only financially feasible option.
In fact, Louis’s situation is not unique. KVFD has lost multiple members over the past few years due to the high cost of housing in Kent. One former volunteer found housing in Sharon, and now volunteers at the Sharon Fire Department. A few members moved to New Milford, where they struggle to balance the commute to Kent with work and family commitments.
In some cases, the relationship between affordable housing and volunteerism is less obvious than forced moves, but still impactful. Alan Gawel, Kent’s Fire Chief, has seen more people working two jobs in order to afford housing in Kent. In Gawel’s words, “if you’re working two jobs, where do you find the time to commit to the Fire Department?”
John Russell, the President of KVFD, explains that KVFD’s recruitment and retention issues are especially worrisome because of the Department’s broad remit. KVFD covers not just fire protection services, but also first response, life support, and rescue services.
Four years ago, KVFD could rely entirely on volunteers for 24-hour Emergency Medical Services (EMS) coverage. But in recent years, dwindling volunteer numbers has created uncertainty.
“An ambulance call would come in and we would hope that a member could respond,” Russell recalls. “You can’t provide an emergency service on hope. So we had to outsource EMS coverage to the tune of $320,000 a year. ”
From this testimony, it’s easy to see why Kent’s firefighters support creating more affordable housing. More budget-friendly options would help the Department recruit new volunteers, namely younger residents who could afford to move to Kent.
It would also help retain existing volunteers, who wouldn’t need to move away or take on additional paid work to afford rent.
And of course, there’s a direct budgetary benefit as well. If the KVFD team could return to pre-pandemic volunteer numbers, they could reduce the amount of taxpayer dollars spent on staffing 24-hour EMS shifts.
For these reasons, KVFD is collaborating with Kent Affordable Housing, which secured a grant from the Litchfield County Center for Housing Opportunity to explore the feasibility of developing housing for volunteers.
The collaboration committee has met monthly since January, and an architect has begun conceptual plans for a few units in a small portion of the warehouse space behind the firehouse.
“Our goal is to make it possible for volunteers to live in Kent,” Chief Gawel says of the collaboration.
“I want people to have the ability to respond to emergency calls, go through training, and help with regular duties like fundraising without needing to work a second job or move away.”
Gawel is one year away from his 40th anniversary with the Department. Like Louis, he joined when he was a teenager. And like Louis, his love for the community has kept him volunteering for so long.
“People have a calling for this,” he told me. “I did, my uncle did, and my great-uncle did. I hope other young people will get the chance to live here, so that they can experience ‘the calling’ for themselves.
“Everyone should get the chance to give back to their community.”
Hannah Pouler is a resident of Salisbury.
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