New Hampshire Haiku

Cold November rain
Will turn to December snow
but what about Spain?

(Picture from here.)

Winter in New Hampshire

Technically it's still autumn, but if I told you I live in New Hampshire, and you know it's the very last week of November, you will probably make some assumptions about the weather I am currently experiencing. Indeed, an acquaintance told me about the soft, fluffy snow in her yard, the first blanketing snow of the season. She lives in New Mexico, however. In New Hampshire this season, we're expecting a big storm on December 1st -- a rain storm, with temperatures in the 60s. Now, to be fair, some of the higher elevations in the western regions like the Monadnocks have had an inch of snow on the ground earlier this month, and the White Mountains way up north are indeed probably very white right now -- look, check for yourself -- but in the central and southern part of the state where most New Hampshirites live, we got nada. And keep in mind that when I say "southern part of the state", I don't mean the part that borders Alabama. Southern New Hampshire is north of places like Buffalo, Detroit and Chicago in terms of latitude. Of course, the wee bit of Rockingham County that touches the ocean will likely be a bit warmer than the inland areas and stay snow-free for a while longer, but still... I think I'm developing a case of snow-envy.

Picture from here.

Meditations on Why New Hampshirites Don't Use the Turn Signal

I have a theory. New Hampshire has traditionally been a Republican state. Heck, it voted for Nixon...twice. But New Hampshire Republicans have tended to be old-line Republicans, who believed strongly in fiscal conservatism. As far as social issues were concerned, they applied the old Yankee beliefs about a man and his castle, which meant essentially that if something didn't happen in a blatantly public place (i.e., the town square, post office, etc.) then it was nobody's damned business. However, in recent years New Hampshire's political landscape has undergone some radical shifts with many Massachusetts lower middle class folks (read: "Democrats") flooding the southern part of the state, while other political groups like the supposedly Libertarian Free Staters (who behave more like anarchists) moving from all over the U.S. to Keene, New Hampshire to try to hijack the state and transform it into their version of an ideological paradise. This, compounded by the country-at-large's recent slide into ugly partisan mudslinging, has left many New Hampshirites feeling somewhat uneasy and imbalanced. Now, every four years when a presidential election is underway, New Hampshire gets overrun by baby-kissing, hand-shaking, perpetually-smiling liars who never wander more than twenty feet from a camera, and we're used to that. It's kind of like the cold you get every winter; you put in a few miserable days, but it eventually goes away and you just shake it off. However, this new political imbalance in New Hampshire is here to stay and they all want to change the state, re-shaping it into their own respective ideological image.

This is why, I suspect, New Hampshirites don't use turn signals while driving. I think it's because they are so politically shell-shocked that they are terrified that any directional indication towards the left or right will be mistaken for a political preference, and they'll immediately be pounced upon with placards, slogans and petitions.

Ok, it may need some work, but it's a theory. Work in progress.

They're Everywhere!

Once when our office manager wanted to warn everyone of a threat in our parking lot (in the form of a low-hanging but large hive, dangling precarious from a tree), she sent around to the whole office an e-mail telling us to beware the wasps. In my typical mischievous way, I immediately responded to my boss that OMG she's right! We're surrounded by White Anglo-Saxon Protestants!

I originally hail from an old industrial region, one well-packed with immigrants from colorful places -- the kinds of people that proper society uses the term 'ethnic' to describe -- and indeed, I am descended from just such peoples. (Have you noted my funny, decidedly non-English name yet?) In fact, it was only after moving to New England that I actually met someone named 'Smith'. Of course I'd heard the name a billion times from history and on television, but while I'd known 'Schmidts', I'd never known a 'Smith' before. When I met my first Smith here - by now, I know several of them; this is New Hampshire, after all) -- I joked with him, asking if when he and his wife registered at a hotel as 'Mr. and Mrs. Smith', if they got dirty looks from the staff. American television is filled with lots of characters with bland, English names, but I can probably count on one hand all the Smiths, Joneses, Coopers, Greens, and Millers I knew growing up. DeMarzios, Przybilaks and McInerneys were dime-a-dozen where I come from, but English names were actually fairly unusual, something I didn't realize until I moved to still remarkably WASPy New England. Now, to be fair, New England's industrial centers have also attracted their share of immigrants so that Portuguese is as likely to be heard in Boston or Providence as English, but once you get away from the urban centers -- and in New Hampshire, that's easy to do -- you enter WASPland. Sort of reminds me of the ever-duplicating Agent Smith from the Matrix movies....

New Hampshire Haiku III

Winter Coming to New Hampshire

November's night frost
See your breath, the clear night sky
Scraping your windshield

Borrow Free or Die!

In 1833, a Unitarian minister, one Dr. Abiel Abbot, got the idea that the town should have shared access to books to give citizens the chance to improve themselves -- remember that in 1833, books were like computers today, full of information and often difficult for rural people to get access to -- and so the town, Peterborough New Hampshire, took up a collection of books and thus established the first free town library. The town website reports that at first, the collection -- about 100 books - was kept in the general store, then eventually town hall, and finally, in 1893, a building was built exclusively for the library, where it still resides today. (However, the website also makes note that a movement is afoot to replace the 1893 library building with one larger and more modern. So much for history.) Dr. Abbot's idea really caught on, not just in Peterborough but soon all across New Hampshire, and then, eventually, across the U.S. 19th and early 20th century America build town libraries to help citizens educate themselves, to make information more accessible for the citizens of a democratic society.

Sadly, in our modern age, in part because of the internet but also in part due to social trends that no longer value education and self-improvement, many states, counties and towns are closing their libraries for budgetary reasons. Indeed, as I discovered when I tried to join the Peterborough Free Public Library, it is only free to the town's citizens -- of which I am not one -- and that for us non-tax-paying foreigners, the 'Free' library in Peterborough costs $50 a year. Ouch. In investigating further afield since, I have found that for many town libraries in New Hampshire -- most of which are still largely local town-funded -- not being a resident will cost you $50 a year to join. Hmm.

Is That Thing Moving...?

Where I come from, there is a town that was famous -- maybe infamous is the right word -- for its flamingos. The town was a suburban setting full of very modest, small two-bedroom middle class homes, and as such attracted a lot of newly-married couples getting started in life but as well many recently-arrived immigrants who had worked hard and were also just getting started on their own personal American Dreams. Somehow, this seemingly-innocent social mixture produced a toxic aesthetic environment in which a lot of these townsfolk came to the conclusion that it was a good idea to stick lots of those pink, plastic flamingos on their lawns -- on purpose! I remember even as a child being astonished by this.

Fast-forward many years later in my life when I'm living in New Hampshire, and we decide we're going to rent a stall in the local flea market to clear out some of the junk in the basement. When you do this sort of thing, it's not a good idea to mention it out loud because soon all your neighbors and friends are "volunteering" some of their own junk to be included in your flea market haul. One friend of my wife's who owned a store dumped a large cache of amazingly crass lawn ornaments on us, and despite my vigorous protests, they were included in our flea market display. There were colorful spinning wind wheels, pointless flags, streamers, faux wind socks, all sorts of stuff that, if placed on my lawn, would very quickly be subjected to unfortunate lawn mower accidents. Now, granted, they were all still wrapped in their original packaging and looked all colorful and shiny and new, but still... Just because I might laugh at a circus clown doesn't mean I want to bring them home. In any event, my wife had the last laugh and I was forced to somewhat re-assess New Hampshirites when, against all my dire predictions, all of that stuff sold out. In fact, there was a bidding war over the last spinning wheel.

Now, I have never been accused of having any taste or decorative sense, but I can't help but cast a wary eye at my neighbors now, just wondering if, given half a chance, they would stick a plastic pink flamingo on their lawn......