Veterans Day

When I first moved to New England, I spent a year or so in Massachusetts before moving to the paradise that is New Hampshire. You can imagine my surprise one day while living in Massachusetts when I was given off work on April 19. Dumb enough to look a gift horse in the mouth, I inquired why we were being given the day off, and was told it was Patriot's Day.

Now, I come from a region that also has a football team but one which is more prone historically to losing -- quite unused to winning, in fact -- so I felt a tingle of bitterness that a region like New England with its more successful football franchise could be so arrogant as to actually have a public holiday for its football team. Fine, I declared, I'll take your day off work, but don't expect me to hang any Tom Brady posters around my home, I gruffed. After some embarrassed glances -- you know the kind, when you realize there's a hopeless fool in your midst but you don't want to humiliate them in front of a crowd -- I was taken aside by some coworkers and informed that while they did indeed feel the New England Patriots deserved a public holiday, that no, Patriot's Day was in commemoration of the 1775 Battles of Lexington and Concord.

The Battles of Lexington and Concord were, of course, the opening battles of the American Revolution, as the British forces occupying Boston launched an early morning raid inland to arrest a few dissident leaders and the gunpowder rumored to be stockpiling in towns surrounding Boston. Of course, as everyone knows, the raid went disastrously awry when the raiding party stirred the local militias, brushing them aside at Lexington but being surprisingly rebuffed at Concord and harassed all the way back to Boston, losing more than 200 soldiers on that long road back to sniping American farmers hiding in nearby woods and homes. Worse, the raid resulted in outright war.

Patriots Day is not celebrated in New Hampshire, only in Massachusetts, but those two battles set the stage for the next battle, the American siege of British-occupied Boston and the Battle of Bunker Hill. The Battle of Bunker Hill -- Breed's Hill, as purists will quickly point out -- was the ultimately successful British attempt to drive American forces from the one of the highest heights around the city, but the battle took such a toll on British forces and in any event didn't end the American siege so that the British abandoned Boston altogether. This was a major American victory, though it is overshadowed by the fact the British forces that evacuated Boston then sailed south and seized New York, humiliating newly-appointed General Washington so much with his rudimentary attempt to defend Manhattan that Congress almost fired him. Oops: win some, lose some. Anyway, those American "forces" that laid siege to Boston in 1775 were in fact a motley collection of New England farmers and untrained militia, not a real army in any sense. New Hampshire militia and their later famous commander, General John Stark, played a crucial role in the battle, helping to prolong the British agony in seizing the hill.

What does all this mean? It ultimately means that today, on November 11, 2010, I can write these words as a free man. Veterans' Day is actually based on the end of World War I, whose armistice ended the fighting at the 11th hour on the 11th day of the 11th month (in 1918), but we've set it aside as a day to remember all veterans. I salute all veterans, past and present.

Some New Hampshire Haiku II

The season's first snow
Studded tires howl on the road
Look out for frost heaves

The Juice in New Hampshire

So let's say you're looking at a squirrel. Now, you're probably thinking, "OK, there's a squirrel. Happy little squirrel. Kinda cute. Hope he doesn't have rabies." Well, there may be a lot you don't know about that squirrel. What if, for instance, his girlfriend just dumped him? Or his mother-in-law moved in? Or he's living next to an old folks' home that plays Johnny Matthis music all day long? The fact is that you may actually be looking at a clinically depressed squirrel. How can you tell if your squirrel may be having emotional problems? Well, I don't know to be honest. What I do know is that at least a few squirrels have decided they could no longer take it and, after chittering the squirrel equivalent of "Goodbye, cruel world!", committed 切腹 (heri keri). This often involves throwing themselves into traffic, but a few take another route -- frying themselves in the electric transformers dangling overhead on phone poles. Now, this would be just another personal tragedy for some squirrel family, were it not for the fact that squirrels crisping themselves in electric equipment have a tendency to short out the transformer, causing electrical power outages for the rest of us -- ironically transforming their personal problems into larger community issues. When said toasted squirrel is a resident of New Hampshire, there is yet a further dimension to this tragedy because with so few roads -- think about it -- New Hampshire also has fewer electric lines, making us particularly susceptible to kamikaze squirrels. One such emotionally-crushed squirrel once knocked out half the grid in southern New Hampshire. No kidding.

Now, before I take my blame-the-squirrels theme too far, it should be noted that we may be seriously misinformed about suicidal squirrels. A friend whose father worked for a utility once told me that when some technical issue came up that was too complex to explain to the general public, they would sometimes attribute power outages to squirrels getting into transformers. Not kidding on that one, either.

So there you have it. A thinly-populated state's power infrastructure is very vulnerable and easily disrupted, and this same state is filled with emotionally-disturbed squirrels. It's sort of like the thorns on a rose analogy, no?

Didja hear about the ice storm in December of 08
I went without power for eleven straight days!

-- Super Secret Project, "Granite State of Mind"

More New Hampshire Halloween Haiku

Kids swarm my front door
Demographic problem
Fewer homes to hit.

Things That Go Bump in the Night in NH, Part IV

My wife called me frantically. It was the middle of the day, and I was at work, which is to say I was a wee bit busy, but her call was urgent. "Tell me what happened at Bretton Woods!"

I always joke that some day, I'll be in a crowded theater and the lights will suddenly be flicked on, and someone from management will come out on the stage, wringing his/her hands, and ask aloud in an urgent tone: "Is there a historian in the house?" OK, I'm only an amateur historian, but still, ya gotta dream. Anyway, for all the wisecracks I get from my wife about "hysterians", as she calls them, I still do get the occasional frantic phone call with a historical question from her. In this case, the urgency was prompted by the fact she had her visiting father with her and they were approaching the Bretton Woods exit at about 70 mph, and needed to make a decision, quick. I informed her of Bretton Woods' grand past as a resort hotel for the rich, and of the famous post-World War II economic conference that took place there which established a global financial system that lasted until the early 1970s. Though the first part probably was the deal-maker, they decided to go for it. Afterward, she related the following to me, which she swears is true. It's actually not that big of a deal, really, but it impressed her, and it's late on Halloween night and I'm short of material otherwise, so here goes:

They took the tour of Bretton Woods, an din the midst of that tour, they discussed some of the hotel's paranormal attributes; like any good self-respecting hotel nowadays, Bretton Woods is apparently haunted. There was a time when being haunted was a bad thing for business, but nowadays, that's just part of the charm of staying in an early-20th century luxury resort. So in any event, the tour guide mentioned while they were transitting from one room to the next some of the hotel's ghost lore, when the group entered a stately conference room. One of the tour group asked the guide a question about one of the ghosts, some lady who met an untimely demise, and just as she finished her question the large, elegant chandelier over the table in the room began to sway several inches back and forth, seemingly without rhyme or reason. The entire group saw it and gasped in unison. I probably would have soiled myself had I been there. The guide apparently sputtered nervously that she had no idea what could be making the chandelier swing.

So there you have it, my wife's NH ghost story. Not very dramatic, but authentic, nonetheless. Have a good Halloween, and try not to load up too much on all the Halloween leftover candy your coworkers will be bringing into work tomorrow.

New Hampshire Halloween Haiku

Staring at North Star
Sniffing hot cocoa, autumn
The pumpkin's on fire.

Driving in New Hampshire, Part IV

I have a theory. New Hampshirites worship Dunkin Donuts -- that much we've established. However, I think this obsession went from quaint, benign trait to life-threatening behavior the moment Dunkin Donuts -- or possibly, some other entrepreneurial soul -- invented cup holders. Now again, this is just a theory, but stay with me here.

This invention, the cup holder, forced New Hampshirites to make a decision, often while doing 85 mph in the midst of traffic. Indeed, traffic may be the important variable here because as the state's population has grown so quickly over the past couple decades, New Hampshirites have suddenly had to start dealing with other cars on the road rather than just the occasional skittish moose. That cup holder was the clencher, though -- it forced New Hampshirite drivers to divide their attention for a split second, a crucial split second. In the midst of traffic on a one-lane highway, with a large one-ton Chevy flatbed with several old engine blocks loosely chained on the back coming right at them in the on-coming lane, and a moose standing pensively off to the side on the shoulder, surrounded maybe by a flock of kamikaze turkeys loitering threateningly at the moose's feet, the New Hampshire driver has a decision to make: the cup holder for a fresh hit of java to help get them through this, or the turn signal.

Folks, I am here to tell you that the cup holder wins every time. Consequently, when driving in New Hampshire, you cannot and should not expect the drivers around you to signal their intention. As far as they're concerned, the fact that they are turning should be heads-up enough for you to discern that they intended to turn anyway, and they make that contention with full clarity, having just sipped some of the bitter black stuff.