New Hampshire Weather

We like to think of our weather as being local and self-contained, which is another way of saying we often forget we live on a big ball and that our weather almost always originates somewhere else. An odd but seemingly often-forgotten thing about New Hampshire's weather is that it is heavily influenced by two factors: the first being the Appalachian Mountains which ripple through the state, and secondly, the Atlantic Ocean which forms an important part of New Hampshire's nubby little ocean-front shoreline. These two factors make themselves most apparent in New Hampshire's weather in the winter when storms blow up the coast but are held just offshore by pressure systems unable to cross the inland mountains, and rotate counter-clockwise so that the prevailing winds come from the northeast rather than the more usual southwest -- hence, a Nor'easter storm -- which can dump lots of rain or snow on New England. However, the ocean in particular becomes important, as we're about to learn again this weekend, apparently, when one takes the macro view and realizes that New Hampshire isn't really all that far, in global terms, from the Caribbean. This fact is important to New Hampshirites this week because Hurricane Earl, a category 4 hurricane with 130 mph+ winds, may be coming for a visit. A hurricane in New England? Aren't hurricanes only in the tropics? For the most part, yes, but most hurricanes form in the Caribbean and get jostled around a lot by both internal and external forces which put them on a meandering course like a drunken monkey, but on occasion, one manages to wander straight up the U.S. coast, and a tiny few have even made a beeline for New England.

In September, 1938 exactly that happened as a category 5 hurricane (they didn't name them in those days) followed the U.S. coast northward, crossing Long Island causing lots of flooding and damage before making landfall in New Haven, CT and continuing northward (by now as a category 3 storm) up the Connecticut River valley, which forms most of the border between New Hampshire and Vermont. It continued into Quebec, where it finally petered out. This hurricane managed to kill 600 New Englanders and damage some 25,000 homes. The Monadnock region of New Hampshire was utterly devastated by flooding and post-storm fires about which fire departments could often do little. To give you an example of that flooding, I was shocked once while picking vegetables at an outdoor fresh vegetable market located on the side of Temple Mountain near Peterborough, NH when I turned around and saw an official historical sign indicating that during the Great Hurricane of 1938 (as it's now called), this sign stands at what was the high-water mark for the flooding. Let me repeat; I was standing on the side of a mountain reading this, with a beautiful vista view of the valley below.

For now, it appears Earl is likely to stay a hundred miles or so off New Hampshire's coast, giving us some rain and higher winds but nothing quite like the experience of 1938. Still, the reality is that it is a short, straight line from the Caribbean to New England, and that sooner or later, another powerful storm will indeed someday waddle up the coast and dump heavily on New England.

The Many New Hampshires

We exist on a fairly flat plain, in the sense that our lives are constructed on a pretty horizontal basis. People in Denver will disagree, but for most of us, we live within a fairly narrow range of elevations, and get all excited when we go up small hills and our ears pop. It becomes apparent just how limited our lives are in that regard when we fly a commercial plane or head for the hills -- the big hills.

That's what I did yesterday, taking the Cog railway up Mount Washington in northern New Hampshire, about a two and a half hour drive from my home in southern New Hampshire. At the base where we boarded the train -- which was already substantially up the side of the mountain -- it was 77 degrees and sticky. (This meant that it was at least 5 degrees warmer at home in southern NH.) Everyone was in short-sleeve shirts, many in shorts, with sunglasses, sun-tan lotion and a few with embarrassing Hawaiian shirts. Despite being repeatedly warned, such is human nature that we were nearly all shocked when we reached the summit after a 40 minute train ride and discovered a temperature of 46 degrees with winds of 50 mph (or more)... and this was a fairly mild summer's day on the summit. Visibility went from clear for literally hundreds of miles (during which you could see not only much of northern New Hampshire but also parts of Maine, Vermont and Quebec) to almost zero visibility with swirling clouds completely enveloping the summit...and all this happening in minutes. (Please see my video above, which was preceded and followed by moments of completely open, blue skies.)

It was a bit disconcerting to return to the base and the balmy 77 degrees, with all the tourists eager to take the train ride standing in line patiently and fanning themselves in the heat, while we dismounted from the train wind-whipped, our hair looking like Don King's, and wrapped up in our summer clothes like a bag lady in some alleyway. It was an amazingly educational experience, especially when you consider that a contingent of people have to put up with that mountain-top lifestyle year-round for our meteorological needs; Mount Washington has hosted some sort of weather service team since the late 19th century, and indeed you can visit some of their earlier digs while you're up there. It just goes to show you how easy it is to nudge us out of our comfort zone....

A Numbers Game

New Hampshire is beautiful. It's one of the reasons I live here. However, that beauty is indicative of a certain...trait. It's best if we just roll out the data:

1 Manchester 109,877
2 Nashua 87,039
3 East Concord 42,605
4 Concord 40,687
5 Derry Village 34,539
6 Rochester 30,317
7 Salem 29,549
8 Dover 29,061
9 Merrimack 26,726
10 Hudson 24,474

These are the populations of New Hampshire's 10 largest "cities". It don't get no bigger than these in this state. Now let's compare the same list from Massachusetts:

1 Boston 589,141
2 South Boston 571,281
3 Worcester 177,216
4 Springfield 152,227
5 Lowell 103,469
6 Cambridge 101,382
7 Brockton 94,881
8 New Bedford 94,083
9 Fall River 93,000
10 Plymouth 90,615

My gentle readers, New Hampshire is still overwhelmingly a rural state.

The Booze Business

Funny thing about alcohol in New Hampshire. You can buy beer and wine in grocery stores here along with your cat food and toilet paper, but any harder stuff requires you to deal with a monopoly: the state. In 1933 when it became clear that Prohibition was about to end, New Hampshire mandated that all liquor in the state could only be sold in state-owned stores. I suspect this was in part inspired by the fact that New Hampshire shares a border with Canada, which meant that a lot of illegal smuggling of Canadian liquor led to a dramatic increase in crime, so the state wanted to make sure these criminal gangs couldn't leverage their already-existing supply chains and distribution networks to stay in business. Just a guess.

In any event, these laws still stand so that today, if after a long day at the office you're a-hankerin' for something to obliterate your memories of it all, you must indeed stop at a state-owned liquor store. While not a connoisseur of liquor, my understanding is that prices are actually quite reasonable and even competitive. An odd thing about these liquor stores, however, is that they're almost all located at rest stops along major highways. Now, for all the Live Free or Die! bluster, it is illegal to drink and drive in New Hampshire (.08% blood alcohol level will land you in court here), and we also have the usual open container laws. Now, you can of course purchase your liquor quite legally and drive home without opening it -- which is exactly what the state expects you to do -- but still, it seems an odd message to send that state liquor stores are not conveniently located in major urban shopping centers, but instead you have to drive miles out of your way to highway rest stops for the stuff. In the video I posted in early July by the Super Secret Project, "Granite State of Mind", they acknowledge this oddity:

"Dont drink and drive here, listen to what I say
even though we put our liquor stores right on the highway..."

New Hampshire Seasons

If you don't like New England weather, don't worry, it'll change in a minute anyway -- so goes the old saying. Actually, I've heard that saying applied to just about everywhere I've ever lived, or visited for that matter. I'd like to meet the guy who first started that one, and ask what region he originally meant. It was probably something like Sandusky, Ohio.

Anyway, southern New Hampshire apparently drew the short straw when it came to topography. While northern New Hampshire gets all the press for being the romantic mountainous country, great for skiing and hiking and scenic getaways, southern New Hampshire ended up with the less romantic swamps. Mind you, some states like Louisiana and Georgia can somehow make swamps seem romantic, but with the picturesque hilly country just to the north, with all its exciting outdoor activities and made-for-wine-dinners scenery so close by, well, what can southern New Hampshire do? Old New Hampshire farmers who tried to eke out a living in these swamps were derisively called "Swamp Yankees" by their northern brethren, and were seen to be both impoverished and whiny. Neither a native nor a farmer, I do not qualify as a genuine Swamp Yankee but I'll defend my swampy homestead nonetheless. Indeed, driving up my long driveway, you could be made to believe if only for a few moments that you were in fact in Louisiana Bayou country. Sadly, when you reached the end of the drive, there was no Cajun food awaiting you. Still, I love my swampy corner of New Hampshire all the same -- although how one gets swamps in a state made of granite is still a mystery to me.

In any event, there is one peculiarity about swampy southern New Hampshire: In early August -- in fact this year, on August 1st -- you may be driving along on a hot summer's day, with let's say a temperature of over 90 degrees with humidity at 75%, and though visions of a nice, cool pool dance in your feverish brain, well, imagine your surprise when you drive by a stretch of swamp and see a bunch of trees already turning color, with a few of them already a bright, screaming fire engine red! Swamps in New Hampshire harbor floral critters known as Swamp Maples (Acer rubrum), which are the earliest trees to change color in the autumn -- indeed, some get a head start in late summer. This can be quite disconcerting but the buggers are everywhere so that by mid-August, sometimes whole swamps will be outlined with bright red fall colors. We are currently at that stage now. Now, as a lover of autumn and winter, these swamp maples are harbingers of happiness for me after toasting and sweating through a long, humid New Hampshire summer, but understandably for the more sun-inclined, seeing trees turning color already can be quite distressing.

Well, summer's had a good run and it's almost over, but a consolation of having these leafy banshees portending the coming change of seasons is that they also give out good brown, gooey stuff -- which we'll explore more later.

BTW, the picture above came from this website here.

Taking New Hampshire for Granite

Sorry for that pun; it's one of the most abused ones around here, and I'll probably get wacked in the back of the head for it. And I'll deserve it too.

That said, New Hampshire really is the Granite State, and a short visit here will quickly clarify why: the stuff is sticking out of the ground everywhere. Top soil is virtually an unknown commodity here, at least until you buy some from your local gardening center. Quarrying granite was a fairly obvious business venture for the first European settlers and still today, we have granite mines and carving businesses all over the place in this state. New Hampshire granite was apparently used in the construction of the Library of Congress in Washington D.C. and the Brooklyn Bridge. Stone walls were also kind of an obvious by-product of farming here in New Hampshire, given that you're literally tripping over the stuff the moment you leave the pavement here. Mind you, Vermont could have also been called the Granite State, but they went with "Freedom and Unity" instead -- which is ironic if you consider that Vermont achieved its independence by first seceding from New Hampshire (avoiding being annexed by New York in the process) and existing as a defacto independent country for fourteen years until the U.S. finally decided to recognize Vermont as a state in 1791.

Anyway, Vermont granite and history aside, any discussion of granite in New Hampshire must bring us to a very bitter subject: The Old Man of the Mountain. Remembering that we humans are the same animal that looks up at cloud formations and sees bunnies and horsies, it should not be surprising that when the first European settlers ventured into the White Mountains of northern-most New Hampshire, they saw a pile of granite slabs hanging off Cannon Mountain and declared that they saw the head of an old man. Over the years, the Old Man of the Mountain became a lucrative tourist site for New Hampshire but even more importantly, the old bugger somehow worked his way into New Hampshirities' cold, stony granite hearts, and he became a symbol for the state. Today, state roads signs and announcements often have the unmistakable outline of the Old Man. This all became a problem in the spring of 2003, however, when Mother Nature (in the form of ice, which acts like a crowbar) and vibrations from growing traffic on a nearby highway colluded to knock the Old Man down, and the granite formation collapsed. The reaction across New Hampshire was outright horror, and still today, more than seven years later, the bitterness is palpable. The state has toyed with a few different schemes including even rebuilding the Old Man with artificial materials, but ultimately settled on an artistic park nearby (ironically alongside the road that helped destroy the Old Man) memorializing the Old Man.

A Harvest of Hampshires

You know the scene well: A bunch of cold, seasick and half-starved dark-clad English folk wade ashore in November, 1620 ultimately to found "Plimouth Plantation", with only about half the colonists surviving that first winter, to be saved the following year by crucial aid from the local Massasoit Indians (of the Algonquin Wompanoag Confederation) -- from whom Massachusetts Bay colony eventually took its name. The result for the English colonists was salvation while we Americans got Thanksgiving out of the deal. The Massasoit -- well, they got screwed.

The story of the Plymouth Pilgrims is etched into American history and legend. The hardships they suffered, that first horrible winter, their utter reliance on the Massasoit for survival that first year. What a bunch of whiners! Just three years later in 1623, another bunch of Englishmen set ashore at the mouth of the Piscataqua River some 80 miles north of Plymouth, MA and quickly set about founding Pannaway Plantation on the site of what is today Rye, New Hampshire. Having the good sense to arrive in the summer instead of November, the settlers -- with minimal fuss -- set about establishing a fishing and farming community, and within a few years were already exporting colonists further inland up the Piscataqua River to found more settlements. No dramatic stories here.

OK, maybe I shouldn't knock the poor Pilgrims of Plymouth Plantation too much; although only a minority of the settlers were actually Puritans, they were driven by a schedule which was dictated by political and economic factors beyond their control -- i.e., Royal bureaucracy and the desire to get out of England before the king changed his mind and summoned some hangmen. The Pilgrims showed up completely unprepared at the beginning of winter season in New England, a winter which was far harsher than any in England itself. The settlers who eventually founded New Hampshire, on the other hand, were not fugitives, but rather part of a business venture and had the leisure of being able to plan things a bit.

Although New Hampshire was ultimately a Royal Charter colony, it was started and financed by a wealthy English fisherman and merchant, Captain John Mason, who by the way named the colony at first "New Virginia" after the successful English colony started by John Smith down South in 1608. English King James I apparently thought it a bit saucy to name a colony after another American colony, however, so he renamed it "New England". Somewhere along the line, though, New England came to be applied to all of the northern English settlements east of the Hudson River, and Mason's colony took on the name of his home county, Hampshire. By the way, poor Mason financed New Hampshire and its expanding settlements for a decade but died just as he was preparing to visit them for the first time... Hampshire is on the southern coast of England and actually resembles its "New" namesake quite a bit in terms of its economy being very sea-focused, with a fairly rural inland. Its biggest city, a seaport, is Southampton but its second largest city, also an important English seaport, is called....wait for it.... Portsmouth. I suppose there's no need to explain why then New Hampshire's largest coastal city and one-time capital is also called Portsmouth. (Nice webcam of Portsmouth Harbor on the Piscataqua here, BTW.) Indeed, pictures from one city resemble the other to a startling degree, with their common histories of being fishing towns and major ports. (The picture above is from Portsmouth, NH.)

But even the Pilgrims of Plymouth Plantation have something in common with the Hampshires; the Puritans had fled from England to the Netherlands and though they were well-received and allowed to establish their own communities, the Puritans found the Dutch too...tolerant. They lobbied London to be allowed to set up a colony of their own in the New World -- John Winthrop's "City on a Hill" -- and when their royal charter came through, they had to sail back to England to collect it before heading to Massachusetts. This means that they sailed out of Southampton in Hampshire County, England in September, 1620 on their way to their new home.

Les Français dans le New Hampshire

And thank the gods for Google Translate. In any event, wanted to take a look at some of New Hampshire's ethnic composition today. In all honesty, before moving to New England, I had never known anyone actually named "Smith" before. "Schmidt", yes, but "Smith"? Nope. Now I know about a half dozen Smiths. Despite the massive foreign immigration into Boston and other industrial regions of New England, it has still maintained its basically Anglo-Saxon character to a degree amazing to me and unimaginable in places like New York or New Jersey. (At work, the office manager once sent around an e-mail with the subject line, "WASP WARNING", telling us of a large wasp nest seen dangling from a tree in the parking lot, to which I replied to my boss, "OMG -- I just realized: I'm surrounded by White Anglo-Saxon Protestants!") Though huge migrations of Massachusetts folks is rapidly changing this, New Hampshire is definitely among the "WASP-iest" of the New England states, save perhaps for Maine. The major urban centers like Manchester and Nashua are an exception, but outside those areas -- i.e., in most of New Hampshire -- to have New Hampshirites as friends is to have a bunch of Smiths, Joneses and Coopers in your address book.

The major exception to this Anglo-Saxon stronghold are the French: Northern New Hampshire, along with northern and western Maine, were once claimed by l'Empire français or Nouvelle-France ("New France"), as France's 17th and early 18th century colonial empire in North America were called. This is why, for instance, the state immediately to our west today is not known as "Green Mountain", but rather the French version, Vermont. (Colonial Vermont belonged to New Hampshire until 1777.) When English settlers started moving into New Hampshire in the 17th century, they found themselves jostling for real estate with folks named Jacques and Pierre. Oh -- and some Indians, but we'll talk about those later. Today there is still a surprisingly large Francophone community here in New Hampshire, to the extent that the governor found himself in hot water from French groups a couple years back when he updated the welcome signs for the state -- and had left out the Bienvenue au New Hampshire bit. Many of these modern Franco-Americans (yeah, I think of Chef Boyardee too when I hear that) actually derive from a large migration of Quebecois in the 19th and early 20th centuries who moved to New Hampshire looking for jobs in its industrial cities, but wherever they came from, Lyons in 1630 or Montreal in 1910, you're as likely to meet New Hampshirites today with names like Bergeron or Gagnon as Smith or Jones -- and the further north you go, the more likely you'll meet folks with the former names rather than the latter. (I suppose I should mention that Tom Bergeron of "America's Funniest Home Videos" and "Dancing With the Stars", though born in northern Massachusetts, spent most of his early life in New Hampshire.) The first credit union in the U.S., La Caisse Populaire Sainte-Marie -- nowadays "St. Mary's Bank" -- was created by French workers in Manchester, New Hampshire's mills in the early 20th century to help these laborers save and earn a middle class lifestyle at a time when regular banks of the day largely ignored them as too poor.

So, with all of these Franco-Americans and immigrant French-Canadians living here in New Hampshire, the obvious question that immediately comes to mind -- I'm sure you were already wondering this -- is how is it possible that New Hampshire doesn't have its own NHL hockey team then....?

Famous New Hampshirites, Both Living and Otherwise

Today is the 90th anniversary of the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, so I thought we'd delve a bit into New Hampshire's role in that. The 19th Amendment reads:

The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.

Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

In other words, the U.S. decided to finally give half its adult population the right to vote. The odd thing is that this was the second time in New Hampshire's history that women could vote. In colonial New Hampshire, voting requirements were generally tied to land ownership in the community, and these "freeholder" (meaning a free person who owns a minimum amount of land) requirements restricted the vote quite a bit. Among many others, it largely excluded most women from the vote -- but not all. Some women did manage to legitimately acquire property despite the tough restrictions put on them by colonial society, sometimes through inheritance (i.e., the hubby who bought the farm buys the farm) but sometimes by other means as well. These propertied women were often allowed to vote right alongside property-owning men as they were seen as having a stake in the community's affairs and taxes. This was actually true in many colonies in New England and the northeast. Strangely, after the American Revolution as the voting franchise was widening and more Americans could vote, many of the new liberty-loving states realized to their horror that this may result in more women voting, so a wave of legislation washed over the new land in the 1770s and 80s, specifically and categorically denying women the right to vote in any circumstances -- property owners or nay. New Hampshire joined this sad club in 1784. (New York state was among the first to do so in 1777, while New Jersey was the last in 1807.)

New Hampshire produced its share of women suffragists in the 19th century, among them Marilla Ricker (pictured above). Born in 1840, Marilla studied law and became a practicing lawyer in the nation's capital in the 1870s, though her home state would only let her join the state bar association in 1890. Having inherited her deceased husband's farm in coastal New Hampshire, she tried to register to vote (as a property owner) every year for decades in New Hampshire, and was denied every year until the 19th Amendment was passed in 1920. Marilla was reportedly the first woman to cast a vote in New Hampshire in 1920, only months before she died.

Taxes in New Hampshire, Part Deux

Yesterday my wife and I went up to the lakes region of New Hampshire in the central part of the state to attend the League of New Hampshire Craftsmen 77th annual craftsman's fair, held in Newbury, NH. This is a nice event each year where local artists and craftsmen get to show off their stuff,and there are workshops where you can see blacksmiths, glass-blowers, clay potters, stone masons and wood carvers all do their thing. Against my better judgment, we ended up bringing home two wooden gnomes. I once swore to myself that, in defense of my self-respect and all around dignity, I would never, under any circumstances, own a garden gnome, but my wife doesn't ask for much and doesn't have any expensive jewelry expectations like some wives, so how could I refuse her? In my defense, they technically aren't garden gnomes anyway, but I digress.

One unexpected and fun thing we found there was that the ski lifts were still working. This whole event takes place on the site of what is, in winter months, a booming ski resort. What follows would actually be obvious to most normal people, but I think for a living and therefore do not feel I should have to think on weekends. I was genuinely surprised. We took the ski lift up, and were treated to the sight of the surprisingly narrow ski trail passing by below, hedged in it seemed by thick forest. We waved embarrassed to other riders passing in the opposite direction, and watched as the hard wood trees gave way to evergreens and smaller wild flowers as our mobile seat took us up to the summit. It was a fun ride, and after walking around a bit, we got on the return ride. This is where the embarrassingly obvious bit kicks in; it just hadn't occurred to me that, though we were at a ski resort (albeit in August), that we were on the side of a freakin' mountain. The view on the way back was stunning, a panorama of the entire Lake Sunapee lakes region. This region in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains was once cut by glaciers which later melted at the end of the last ice age, leaving dozens of small, beautiful resort lakes between the hills. I was so taken aback with this sudden picture of beauty that I fumbled with my camera and failed to take a film, instead just barely snapping the picture above. It was a powerful reaffirmation of why I live in this state.

However, that brings us to today's topic, which is that view. New Hampshire is indeed an extremely scenic state, particularly in the autumn but all year round. For someone like me, this state is a bounty of beauty, and no matter which direction I head, I always manage to find something that takes my breath away. However, if you're not careful, you may end up regretting it; in at least some instances, you may find yourself paying for that view. Literally.

As we've explored in a previous post, New Hampshire -- the Live Free or Die state -- does not have either an income tax or a sales tax. As we also explored in that previous post, however, the Piper always gets his due, and the advantage of not having the state pick your pockets is countered by the disadvantage of having your local towns more than make up the difference by taxing the bejeezus out of you. Property taxes in NH are often absurdly high. Desperate to support an increasingly middle class lifestyle, these towns -- which receive very little in state funding, since the state government itself has very little income -- must pay for their schools, roads, bridges, building maintenance, snow plowing, etc. etc. etc. more directly by relying on their residents. In some growing towns, with restrictions on how much they can raise taxes each year, they have become particularly creative, and one by-product of this creativity was, in 2005, the View Tax.

Nope. Not kidding. There is a view tax in New Hampshire, which basically says that if you own a home with a pleasant view, yer gonna pay for it because, according to assessors, that view adds value to your home (even if that value often can't really be realized in a sale of the home). This has created a situation where farms owned for generations were suddenly getting hit in 2005 with tax increases of thousands of dollars because, if you ignored that powerful stench of cow dung, their grazing fields had a nice view. The local media trotted out some of the most absurd stories, such as that of retired engineer John Chandler whose long-owned home on a hillside in the White Mountains -- with apparently a nice vista view -- was hit with a huge "view tax" increase, despite the fact that John Chandler is legally blind and can't enjoy the view he apparently must now pay for. In reality this is a story about a state with a traditionally sparse and fairly homogeneous and self-sufficient population struggling to come to grips with rapid population growth and change, so that large chunks of southern and coastal New Hampshire are really transforming into mere suburbs of Boston. An outdated tax structure is creating these absurd situations, but until Concord decides to fix things, well, be careful about that view from your front room window; it may cost you plenty....

New Hampshire Critters, Part 1

Today in our exploration of New Hampshire critters, we'll take a look at one of the state's highest profile critters -- and no, not moose. This one is strangely warm and fuzzy, but definitely lacking in the huggable department. The Fisher Cat is a native New Englander (though it lives all across the northern U.S. and Canada), and every bit as ornery as the most ornery Yankee -- which is probably why it feels right at home in New Hampshire. Clearly, whoever named it was either blind, a liar or just plain drunk; despite its name, it is not at all related to cats, and it doesn't really eat fish either. The Fisher Cat is essentially a weasel on steroids, a mink with a 'tude. (It was actually heavily hunted by the French for their fur in the 17th century, which may explain the Fisher Cat's well-noted poor sense of humor.) Indeed, it is infamous for hunting cats and even smaller dogs. Seriously; in wooded areas, it's not a good idea to leave Boopsie outside in the yard unattended... In fact, there've been documented cases of whole families in isolated farm houses being eaten alive by these things, with neighbors later discovering only gnawed body parts and shredded clothing. OK, I made that last bit up, but a Fisher Cat adult male grows to more than a yard in length, so you definitely will need more than a fly swatter if you find yourself face to face with one. Besides occasionally munching on your pets, they have a reputation for getting on humans' nerves another way: Fisher Cats are infamous for, in the early morning hours, making a long, trailing screeching noise that sounds like someone putting a human baby in a blender. My guess is the buggers do that on purpose after watching the hair stand up on the back of our necks a few times, having heard the sound myself a few occasions while getting the car ready for work at dawn. Of course, for all I know, it may have just been one of my neighbors putting a baby in the blender; perhaps I am unfairly casting aspersions on Fisher Cats. Anyway, ornery Yankees can't help but fall in love with a critter as ill-tempered as themselves, and so the local minor league baseball team is affectionately named the Fisher Cats. So there you have it; in a state made of granite, you get a critter that will probably seldom be seen in your local petting zoo.

Pumpkins in New Hampshire

It's slowly coming up on autumn, and so I figure I should mention the pumpkin thing. My wife, who wasn't born in the U.S., once asked me how to make pumpkin pie. "Well, first you open a can of pumpkin filling...." This answer was not what she wanted to hear; she wanted to make 'authentic' pumpkin pie from scratch. She called a friend of mine who used to do a lot of baking, and his response to her was, "Well, first you open a can of pumpkin filling..." Non-plussed, she turned to the internet and in short order had a recipe for pumpkin pie from scratch, which involved me gutting several pumpkins and handing her the orange goo, minus the seeds. (We bake the seeds.) I did end up with a pumpkin pie for all that work (with home-made whipped cream too!), but it certainly was one of my more labor-intensive pumpkin pies.

Which brings us to our thought for the day, which is what exactly should you be doing with a pumpkin, if not gutting it for pie or carving it for Halloween? (Those two are not mutually exclusive, mind you.) One thought is that you could, well, chuck it. Far. Really far. In fact, while you're at it, you could build yourself a medieval-style trebuchet and chuck that sucker really, really far. (Note: This is not recommended if you want to maintain hospitable relations with any nearby neighbors.) This is the thought process that Steve Seigars, Patrick Seigars, Michael Seigars, and Kathy Seigars -- four self-described "Yankee Farmers" -- apparently went through a few years back in Greenfield, New Hampshire when they built Yankee Siege, a modern day trebuchet designed specifically to lob pumpkins great distances, which they do for enthusiastic audiences all summer long. Not content to simply bombard fake castles (and the odd old pickup truck parked out back in the field), Yankee Siege competes every year in the World Championship Punkin Chunkin -- because they apparently managed to find a bunch of like-minded folks who somehow came to similar conclusions about what to do with spare pumpkins. Yankee Siege has won its category (adult trebuchet)at the World Championship Punkin Chunkin for the past six years. Yet another thing New Hampshirites do well: chunkin' punkins.

Incoming!!!!!!!!!!

Live Free or Die!

That's what it says on our license plates, anyway. This is the official motto of New Hampshire, and oddly enough New Hampshirites take it seriously. It was easier when New Hampshire was composed almost entirely of dour old Yankee farmers and fishermen who didn't need anybody anyway, but particularly since the 1970s there has been a massive infusion of Massachusetts people into Southern New Hampshire, which has really upended many traditional New Hampshire institutions and stereotypes. Now, the motto should more accurately be something like, "Live Free or Die....so long as I can still get the same level and quality of state-run services which I'm used to from Massachusetts, and oh by the way, why are taxes going up so high?"

But despite this demographic shift -- which, in the last two presidential elections, has tipped New Hampshire decisively towards the Democrat camp -- any self-respecting New Hampshirite will immediately punch the air defiantly while shouting this motto, Live Free or Die! New Hampshire does not require a seatbelt for adults in cars, or even a helmet for motorcycle riders. Although there doesn't seem to be a large hunting community anymore, there are much fewer gun restrictions than neighboring Massachusetts. New Hampshire is one of only a couple states which does not require Kindergarten for children, you do not need to have a housing inspector check the place out if you're buying/selling a home, and car insurance here is optional. Really. Live Free or Die! Of course, the truth is that most adults wear seatbelts because of the obvious benefits, most New Hampshire kids attend Kindergarten, you'd be an idiot not to hire a housing inspector if you're buying a place, and if you get a loan to buy a car, the bank always forces you to get car insurance. Still, it's the thought that counts. Live Free or Die!

This phrase is attributed to General John Stark, the New Hampshire Revolutionary War hero who supposedly spouted this phrase a lot at veterans' meetings after the Revolution. Now, General Stark is most famous for leading a cobbled force of New England militia to repulse an invasion (actually, a raid) of Vermont by units of British General John Burgoyne's army, then camped near Saratoga, NY. Although the famous battle is called "The Battle of Bennington", in fact it was fought in Waloomsac, NY as the British units -- actually, a bunch of German mercenaries fighting for the British -- were on their way to Bennington, VT. Now, having a detachment of half-starved professional German soldiers barreling down on you while all you have on your side is a bunch of lightly-armed New England farmers might inspire a very different meaning to a phrase like "Live Free or Die!" Nonetheless, General Stark carried the day and captured the Germans, leaving General Burgoyne in the New York state wilderness all the more isolated and that much closer to surrender, so we can take heart that while General Stark may not have been referring to seat belt laws or whether you should wear a helmet while riding a motorcycle, still, we kinda get what he meant.

Of Flowers and Space Invaders in New Hampshire

When my wife and I first drove into New Hampshire, we were pleasantly greeted all along the roadways with a pretty, purple wild field flower. This flower provided a nice aesthetic accent to fields and ditches along the highways, and we thought it so pretty that we decided to dig some up and transplant them to around whatever new home we would end up buying.It looked kind of like some lupine flower, and when we eventually moved here and mentioned this idea to neighbors and friends, they promptly spat their lemonade in cartoon-ish fashion across the room and declared in alarm, "You want to do what...?!?" Turns out we were admiring an insidious, (literally) pinko-commie plant, an invading species that has been rapidly taking over New Hampshire fields and swamps recently. This little storm trooper flower is appropriately known as the purple loosestrife (Lythrum salicaria L.), and the bottom line is essentially that the state of New Hampshire will do exceedingly unpleasant things to us if we in any way try to propagate this species. Interesting.

I repeated this experience a few years later when I admired a bush in the parking lot of my place of employment, particularly because while for much of the year it is a plain-jane little squat, green bush, but as each autumn rolls around this thing turns into a screamingly fire-red ball of leaves. Very eye-catching, very pretty. And very illegal, as it turns out; it's a Japanese Winged Burning Bush (Euonymus alata), which is also busily killing off native New Hampshire plant species.

Apparently there is a quiet little war raging out there beyond our windows, with invading species creeping in and wiping out all the clean, wholesome, native American plants. This shouldn't be surprising, though; New Hampshire has been a major port of entry for species from all over the world for centuries. As European countries established formal relations with the Ottoman Empire in the 15th and 16th centuries, European diplomats in Constantinople were exposed to lots of exotic flower species from the Balkans and much further afield in Asia, and they brought them back home. It was inevitable that some would then be brought here to the New World, and indeed that is exactly the path that the common purple lilac (Syringa vulgaris) took, being brought back from the Balkans in the 16th century, eventually making its way to England, where from it was brought to New Hampshire in 1750 by the royal governor, Benning Wentworth to spruce up his garden. The lilac is the state flower of New Hampshire today.

So this year we planted some black-eyed susans (Rudbeckia hirta) in the garden -- and no one's made a fuss about it yet. I think we're safe this time.