Keeping Color Alive

tart by selecting the best specimens. Pick a sunny day and collect only dry leaves. Avoid leaves with any damage, because these imperfections will be accentuated when the leaves are dry. Try to find at least four or five leaves from each species so that you’ll have a good representation.

Within a half hour of collecting, place each leaf between two layers of paper towel or blotting paper … If you wait much longer, the leaves begin to dry out and lose color. The trick to keeping the colors sharp is to remove the moisture as quickly as possible. Gently put the leaf (with its paper) between the pages of a large book … Keep at least 10 pages between leaves, and don’t put in too many; use a second book if you have a lot of leaves.

Stack at least five more books (at least five pounds of pressure) on top, and let them sit for 10 days or more. Keep the books in a dry room (no humidifiers). For best results, change the blotting paper after the first few days of pressing. —

We Were Right All Along

strengthened by use.”

—Ruth Gordon Jones (born October 30, 1896, in Quincy, Massachusetts; died 1985 in Edgartown, Massachusetts). Although most famous to today’s audiences for her performance in the 1971 cult classic movie Harold and Maude , Ruth Gordon enjoyed a 70-year career as both a stage and film actress and as a noted screenwriter.

OF ’38

compiled by Julia Shipley

9/21/1938 date when the most powerful hurricane on record hit New England mph speed at which the storm zoomed from Long Island up through New England

25,000 homes damaged

26,000 automobiles destroyed

430,000 logging truckloads’ worth of downed timber

10,121 miles of road cleared by the axes and handsaws of the New England Forest Emergency crew

FIVE billion $: adjusted cost of infrastructure repairs

186 mph strongest hurricane land gusts ever recorded

600 estimated lives lost in New England

ONE lighthouse keeper perished: Walter Eberle, swept away when Rhode Island’s Whale Rock Light collapsed

Fifteen

million acres (three times the size of Massachusetts): footprint of the storm’s damage

32–52 years: projected wait until the next catastrophic hurricane hits Rhode Island and Cape Cod

Read more: Thirty-Eight: The Hurricane That Transformed New England by Stephen Long (Yale, 2016)