The Boston Bombings

Some say the world will end in fire, Some say in ice.

From what I've tasted of desire

I hold with those who favor fire.

But if it had to perish twice,

I think I know enough of hate

To say that for destruction ice

Is also great

And would suffice.

- Robert Frost

Massachusetts and New Hampshire do not always get along. To those in Massachusetts, New Hampshirites are hicks and anything north of the Massachusetts-New Hampshire border is considered exactly like deepest, darkest Africa. Nice maple syrup, beautiful fall foliage, but utterly lacking anything in the way of civilization. In response, New Hampshirites have invented a term to describe their southern New England neighbors: Massh*les. Massachusetts had its Puritans but New Hampshire was historically a great mixture of religions, and some fleeing persecution by Puritan extremists made their way to the great New Hampshire wilderness. Add in New Hampshire's 0% sales tax, which means that a lot of Massachusetts people do their shopping just across the border, and, well, let me tell you what it's like getting a parking space in southern NH. Feeling the love?

In truth, however, the two states are joined at the hip. Many New Hampshirites work in Massachusetts, particularly in Boston. I myself was in Copley Square in Boston with some New Hampshire-based colleagues on business just a week before the Marathon - a not uncommon circumstance. Indeed, Boston is really the unofficial capital of New England, and the entire region - New Hampshire included - looks to Boston's news, economy and sports teams for inspiration. As I've noted once before on this blog, dissing the Red Sox in a bar anywhere in New Hampshire will earn you a fat lip as surely as if you were in Boston. Ask just about any New Hampshirite to meet you in Boston, and they'll show up at any street corner, park, bar or subway stop in the city without checking a map.

In turn, New Hampshire has traditionally served as vacation central for Mass*les, so that many Massachusetts citizens have childhood memories filled with summer camps in New Hampshire's Lakes region. In the summer, New Hampshire's slim coastline is chock full of Massachusetts people who seek the sandy (and cheaper) beaches, while during the autumn northern New Hampshire is just as filled with Massachusetts tourists and their cameras, soaking in the explosion of colors in scenic small New Hampshire towns. People like Aerosmith's Steven Tyler and the late comedian George Carlin all grew up spending summers in New Hampshire, so that while they may not admit it, most Massachusetts people have fond memories of this state.

This close relationship between these two New England sibling states became apparent when the bombs went off in Boston during the Boston Marathon last week. The news rippled across both states quickly and on both sides of the border, people were making frantic calls to find relatives known to be in or watching the race. Emergency personnel from both states also quickly responded, and New Hampshire police and fire people were present in Watertown when the second suspect was finally apprehended. Here in New Hampshire this week, you can't poke your head out the window without seeing some sort of fund raiser for the bombing victims, and "Boston Strong" shirts, signs and bumper stickers are everywhere.

This doesn't mean that we still won't shake our fists at deranged Massh*le drivers - and all drivers from Massachusetts are mentally deranged, which no doubt has been proven in countless scientific studies - but in the end, when the chips are down, we're like the family you can't choose and we do the right thing.

Pahk the Cah

There was a mild earthquake late last night centered just north of the state capital, Concord, registering a 3.1 on the Richter scale. Most people think of California or South America when you mention earthquakes, but the reality is that the northeast is also riddled with fault lines, which occasionally stretch and groan. There's a reason the country's largest earthquake research center is at the largest SUNY University in Buffalo, N.Y., not in San Diego. Now, often when you see Midwesterners describe what the tornado sounded like before it hit their trailer park, they reference the loudest noise they know, a train, and compare the tornado to that. This being New Hampshire, however, one woman in the local WMUR news interview compared the earthquake to "a herd of moose stampeding through her front yard." She went outside the next morning and fully expected to see a pathway of moose tracks across her lawn. The local news told her otherwise.

When Americans visit New England, they fully expect to be treated to the 'New England accent,' in which a loud but flat-mouthed local says something like, "I didn't know wheh to pahk the cah." In truth, this is really a Bostonian accent. Other parts of New England have their own peculiar accents, like New Hampshire and Maine, which are fairly distinctive. (Mainers all talk like Milton Berle.) Worse, though, in part because of a large influx of dirty, rotten stinkin' foreigners (like me) and modern mass communications (TV, radio, internet, etc.), the truth is that few native New Englanders, including New Hampshirites, have any accent at all, instead speaking the common, bland middle-American English you hear on the nightly news. Still, while a dying breed, you still hear flickers of the New Hampshire accent in everyday life, especially as you get further from the coast and southern New Hampshire. One local celebrity, one Fritz Wetherbee, has taken up the crusade to save the New Hampshirite accent and has put out a CD of lessons, though this was done tongue-in-cheek. Some Bostonisms have permeated the whole region, however, such as "wicked" (e.g., "That was wicked good!") or "spitting" (e.g., "It's spitting rain out."), evolving into general New England expressions. Unfortunately, however, MacDonalds and Star Bucks will likely win, and we'll all end up sounding like Katie Couric. Until then, however, I'll be outside in the cah.

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....

More New Hampshire Geography

Concord. It's a nice town. How much do you expect you'd pay for a mortgage on an average two-bedroom cape in Concord? Well, that depends of course. Which Concord do you mean?

A strange phenomenon in the naming of some of New Hampshire's towns is what I call the 'mirror effect'. The simple story is that Massachusetts has been exporting people to New Hampshire for centuries, and these apparently unimaginative Puritans named the new towns they founded after the old Massachusetts ones they'd just left behind. This is why there is a Salem, Massachusetts -- where the primary industries are fishing and witch-toasting -- and Salem, New Hampshire (whose primary industry is providing retail outlets for over-taxed Massachusetts shoppers). Mind you, this phenomenon of naming newly-founded communities after the towns in Massachusetts they'd just left behind is not relegated to New Hampshire alone; New York has a Boston, NY which is next to Concord, NY, which itself is next to Lexington, NY. Very original. So when mentioning a town in New Hampshire, especially in southern New Hampshire, be careful to specify what state you mean.

Oh, and I suppose I should 'fess up that Concord, New Hampshire apparently gained its name after a border dispute with a neighboring town in the 18th century, and the name reflected the peaceful resolution reached by the towns. It has nothing to do with the Massachusetts Concord, made famous by an unannounced visit from the British army in 1775.

Some New England Geography

The simple fact is that, except for the farthest northern parts of Maine and possibly Massachusetts west of the Berkshires (which looks towards Albany, NY), just about all of New England is one, big suburb of Boston. Everything revolves around Boston. A northern New Hampshire farmer or a fisherman off Narragansett Bay will just as likely pummel you to death for suggesting the Red Sox are not the greatest team of any sport ever anywhere just as surely as a bunch of drunk Boston College students waiting outside Fenway Park before a game. You'll get an extra kick in the nether regions if you dare even mention the Yankees in that same sentence.

Southern New Hampshire, especially as you get closer to the ocean, has over the past thirty years become utterly overrun by Massachusetts' lower Middle Class fleeing skyrocketing home prices and local taxes. It is quite normal for people to own homes in southern New Hampshire but work in Massachusetts, often driving the 45+ minutes to the '128 Ring' (Route 128) which circumvents Boston. Within that ring are packed like sardines an amazingly dense cluster of towns and businesses. Driving anywhere within that ring is technically considered a suicide attempt, as each Boston driver seems to be operating under the distinct impression that they are the only ones on the road. Cars in Massachusetts are specially customized so that they can only go two speeds, either 5 mph or 75 mph. Add in for fun that at certain times of the day -- which can be understood to mean "whenever they damned well please" in practical terms -- it is legal in Massachusetts to use the shoulders as separate lanes.

Anyway, the region along the ocean coast for points north of Boston are collectively referred to by Bostonians as the North Shore, or, in local parlance, the Nuth Shuh. This used to be a fairly impoverished region of stark, stolid little New England fishing villages -- think Gloucester, the setting for the story/film A Perfect Storm, as well as Salem, Massachusetts, famous for its sense of humor -- but recently tourism and small retail outlets have transformed this region into one of the pricier places to live in New England. A few stern-faced fisherman still persevere, but increasingly, this region is becoming New England's Hamptons.

Speaking of the Hamptons, New England actually has some of its own. North of the Nuth Shuh is a place many Massachusetts folks consider terra incognito, like deepest, darkest Africa, filled with exotic peoples and strange monsters; it is none other than my beloved New Hampshire. Indeed, there is little love lost between Massachusetts and New Hampshire; Massachusetts sees New Hampshire essentially as a living embodiment of the 1972 John Boorman film Deliverance. For Massachusetts folks, when crossing their northern border into New Hampshire, they hear cartoon-ish jungle sounds and wooden percussion instruments. Meanwhile, New Hampshirites refer to folks from Massachusetts as....well, I can't really print it here in full: "M***holes." Can you feel the love?

Anyway, despite all this animosity, New Hampshirites flood Massachusetts all year long for jobs, while Massachusetts people flood to New Hampshire in the summer and fall for vacations. One of their prime targets in the summer are the Hamptons -- the New Hampshire Hamptons, that is, where the beaches are. The greedy state leaders in both Concord and Boston, seeing all this cross-border traffic, often get the dumb idea that they want to put tolls up on their side of the border, forgetting that charging people to cross the state border would hurt their own citizens as much as the other state's, so there's usually an uproar when some budding politician suggests this idea, and it quietly goes away.

That's today's lesson. Next time, we'll talk about why whenever you mention a town in New England, you need to specify the state.