Ahern Middle School, Foxboro -- September 14

42° 4' 27" N
71° 14' 18" W
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As the EarthView Team begins its fifth year of geography outreach, it is great to be starting at the Ahern School, which was featured on 10,000 copies of the first official EarthView postcard.

This card has helped us to let many people throughout Massachusetts -- and beyond -- know about EarthView and about the importance of geography education. It includes a link to this blog, which has dozens of articles to help people learn about the geography of their own communities, the geography behind the news, and ways to apply geography to important problems in the world.

We recommend bookmarking the blog at http://BSU-EarthView.blogspot.com in order to check for updates or just to click on the geography computer games.

This year we introduce three new EarthView Wranglers -- the Bridgewater State University students who help us set up the program for thousands of students each year. New to the team are Macee, Brendan, and Amanda, who join BSU geography professors Dr. Hayes-Bohanan and Dr. Domingo and of course the famous Globe Lady, geography teacher Rosalie Sokol of Sturbridge, by way of National Geographic!

When putting the title on this post, the question of how to spell the name of the town comes to mind. Is it Foxboro or Foxborough? As with some other towns in Massachusetts, both variations are widely used, with the shorter version more popular, even if it is not considered official.

In the wider world, the old German word for "fort" has spawned even more variations. If all of them were used here, Ahern could be in the town of ...

Foxburg (Germany)
Foxbury (England)
Foxburgh (Scotland)
Foxborgo (Italy)
Foxburgo (Spain and Portugal)
Foxbourg (France)
Foxburcht (Netherlands)

In reality, the "fox" portion of the name might be a bit different, though the town is not named for the animal itself, but for Charles James Fox (1749-1806), a member of the English Parliament who supported the American Colonies.

And speaking of forts, our visit comes on the 198th anniversary of the writing of a famous poem about a fort -- Ft. McHenry in Baltimore. On 1814, during the War of 1812, Francis Scott Key had spent the night on a ship in the outer part of Baltimore Harbor, watching a battle at Ft. McHenry. The poem entitled "Defence of Fort McHenry" is now better known as "The Star-Spangled Banner."


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The harbor has long been essential to the economic development of Baltimore and the entire mid-Atlantic region, but it also presents a significant barrier to traffic along the I-95 corridor. Over the past half century, three alternatives have been constructed for crossing the harbor, and two are relevant to today's anniversary. The Ft. McHenry Tunnel is the newest alternative, and the largest tunnel of its kind in the world. The Francis Scott Key Bridge crosses the outer harbor, and Baltimore lore has it passes over the site where Key was anchored that memorable night.