Cold

Every winter, you just know it's coming. Yes, it's winter and this is New Hampshire, so you know it's cold, and for the most part that's OK. Keeps the snakes and the bugs small. But in mid- or later January, you just know it's coming and there's no way to really prepare for it: it's that mid-winter arctic blast that shows up and hangs around for a week or two before going away, leaving us with the more normal winter temps of mid-20s or 30s, with the odd 15 degrees at night here and there. I really wasn't ready for it this year, so when it finally came, it really snuck up on me. (Is 'snuck' really a word? Am I supposed to say 'sneaked'?) Anyway, sure enough, earlier this week the temperature dove down to the minus degrees. Let me tell you about the joys of starting a car and scraping it at 5.30 in the morning -- in the dark -- when the temperature is -22 degrees Fahrenheit. For our Canadian readers, you'll be interested to know that 0 degrees Fahrenheit is -18 degrees Celsius, and that both the Fahrenheit and Celsius scales actually converge at -30 degrees. To illustrate what that temperature is like, a fellow New Hampshirite sent this video into the local news of this person tossing a cup of boiled water into the frigid air so that you can watch it freeze literally as it hangs in the air, before it hits the ground.

Now, this isn't North Dakota or Siberia where they'd snear at a mere -22 degrees Fahrenheit, but still -- it's best to sip one's hot cocoa inside. Seriously, don't lick any metal poles until at least next week.

New Hampshire Comfort Food

One of the advantages of being cooped up in your home for months on end in the winter is that you start getting a little creative with your cooking. New Hampshire Yankees have centuries' worth of winter inspiration for a lot of great comfort food recipes. Now, with our modern comforts and technologies we're not so cooped up anymore but this has only provoked competition as some Yankees have emerged from their winter cocoons early to discover their neighbors have also been fiddling in the kitchen. Some of the cleverer among them have organized formal competitions. Just such wise souls exist at the New Hampshire Dairy Farmers Association, who organized a macaroni & cheese bake-off today in the state's capital, Concord. Mac & cheese is, I think, the ultimate comfort food and the prospect of going from booth to booth in the ballroom of a Holiday Inn, spoon in hand, and sampling dozens of different macaroni & cheese recipes is very close to my idea of heaven. I wasn't alone; long lines snaked around the hotel lobby. There were traditional takes and more adventurous recipes (e.g., with apples, or Caribbean spices, maple syrup, potatoes, different cheeses, etc.) All in all it was a fun event and three winners will be announced, based on both a panel of professional judges and popular votes.

Living with Nor'easters

This is not South Carolina. You might be momentarily fooled in the summertime if you visit the Hampton beaches chock full of tanned, scantily-clad young folks, on a blazing hot summer day with the temperatures hovering around 100 degrees and the humidity at 80%+, but I'm here to tell you, this is not South Carolina. Now, there are those who prefer South Carolina and there are those who prefer New Hampshire; I've made my choice clear enough by voting with my feet. For one thing, though I live in a swamp -- We'll explore 'Swamp Yankees' later -- the bugs here are pretty small, and any encounters in the garden with local snakes does not have the potential to end with a fatality. ("Man mauled to death in garden by 8 inch garter snake!") Up here the quaintly-named palmetto bug is more bluntly called a cockroach.

Another indication that you are not in South Carolina around here is those very cyclical winter storms known as Nor'easters, massive swirling storms that park off the coast and, sucking up moisture from the ocean, dump it as snow in the form of furious blizzards that can rage for days. Unfortunately, like everywhere else in the country, the local news (which is not local in ownership) has slid into increasing fits of sensationalism so that every snow storm is the storm of the century, the weather forecasts are preceded with dramatic graphics implying certain imminent doom, and the meteorologists speak like they were delivering the declaration of war against Japan in 1941. Nor'easters have been a regular feature of New Hampshire life since long before there was a New Hampshire, however, and folks take them in stride. I remember one news broadcast which featured a very excited reporter standing on a street corner during a snow storm, his arms flailing as he described scenes of utter chaos caused by the storm -- all the while, in the background behind him locals calmly passed by and went about their business. The moral of this story is that if you live in South Carolina, you're probably used to your 3 inch-long palmetto bugs and maybe even give them names, and you are careful to wear snake guards when walking in tall grass or in the woods. Well, in New Hampshire, you learn to take the fire-and-brimstone weatherman with a grain of salt, and be sure to be stocked up on plenty of beer and bread for the storm.

That Round Thing on Your Dashboard with the Needle and Numbers

Yesterday, on Route 93, which for southern New Hampshire -- indeed, most of New Hampshire -- is the main north-south artery, disaster struck in the form of a 40+ car pile-up, creating a traffic jam that stretched for miles in both directions. Now, this hardly compares to the 9-day traffic jam recently reported near Beijing, but when you're late for work or conversely, are after a long day at the office and just want to get home, it's annoying enough. Luckily, nobody was killed and nobody was seriously injured. The byline to this story read, "Bad Weather Caused Major Crash, Police Say."

There were some cultural assumptions built into that statement. New England drivers -- Massachusetts moreso than most, though this trait is apparent throughout the region -- seem to believe that cars are only capable of going either 5mph or 75mph; nothing in between. It just wouldn't have occurred to the drivers yesterday morning on Route 93, who were driving in a long-predicted snow storm (which had actually turned out milder than forecasted), to slow down in white-out conditions. Now, accidents can happen anywhere and they can catch any of us unawares, but did 40(+) separate accidents happen yesterday on Route 93? Of course not; you had drivers who just wanted to get home who chucked caution to the wind and went the speed they'd normally drive in the summer on icy roads in near-blizzard conditions, and were shocked -- Shocked, I tell you! -- to find themselves in an accident. While 40 is a bit unusual, multi-car accidents are surprisingly common in New England, and I am not alone in attributing it to the local mentality that physics (or laws) be damned, people have a right to drive 75 mph regardless of road conditions.

Pots and Kettles, etc.

New Hampshire's economy in the southeastern part of the state is pretty diverse and more or less like just about anywhere else in the country: lots of small- to medium-sized businesses, more service-oriented from financial services to other typical suburban service businesses, and with a good dose of tourism-related businesses like rustic B&Bs or the ski lodges. However, this fairly modern American macramé of economic components does not extend very well to the western and even less so to the northern parts of the state. These latter parts of New Hampshire are often able to capture some of those tourist $$$s through the fall leaf and ski seasons, but tourists are notoriously seasonal (whereas hunger and mortgage payments are not). Particularly for the northern part of the state -- which is easily the most scenic part -- towns tend to be very heavily dependent on a single large (or medium-sized) employer. It is all too common these days to read the news that some paper mill is closing in the north, with devastating results to that town's economy as most locals work at the closing plant.

This phenomenon of the economically-lagging western and northern parts of the state -- as opposed to the southeastern part which is effectively becoming a suburb of Boston and as such increasingly integrating into the Boston-area economy -- has given rise to a strange New Hampshire prejudice: "millrats". I heard this expression a few times before finally asking just what a "millrat" is. Here goes:

In the days before steam and later, oil, propelled our machines, the first major energy source of the industrial revolution was water. With its mountains and subsequent mountain streams, New Hampshire was just made for water power, and the first settlers here immediately set up mills with water wheels next to streams all over the place to do everything from grind grains to cut lumber. Great stuff. Indeed, some of these mills are still standing (some are even still working!) and serve as tourist attractions. However, for all the scenery and quaintness, the reality is that most of these preserved mills are in the lesser developed western and northern parts of the state. As strange as this is going to sound, calling someone a millrat is the southeastern New Hampshire equivalent of calling them a hick from a one-horse town. Some even take this moniker seriously, looking upon "millrats" the same one someone from Manhattan might look at someone from West Virginia. This is pretty funny if you consider that among the top ten largest cities in New Hampshire, the lower end of that list barely break the 20,000 population mark....