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.

Spring in New Hampshire

My father has this annoying little ditty that he feels compelled to repeat each spring:

"Spring has sprung, the grass is rise, I wonder where all the flowers is?"

This, apparently, encapsulates the total wisdom my family has accumulated over the ages, to be passed down from generation to generation. So as my grandfather annoyed my father with this, so too, in the timeless way of generational baton passing, must my father regale me with this gem - accompanied, of course, by a few uncontrollable chuckles and snarfs. We live hundreds of miles apart nowadays, but the wonders of modern technology make it very easy for my father to nevertheless carry on this tradition. The phone rings, I see the number on the caller ID, and it's roughly April, so I know it's coming. Alas, who am I stand in the way of family heirlooms? I answer, and grimace.

But it is indeed spring, and things are indeed springing, including the crocuses in my front garden. These little guys are pretty hearty, having poked up a bit early only to endure a thick frost for the effort. I also note the irises are coming up as well, though they haven't flowered yet. (I'm completely sympathetic. I myself am a wake-up-at-the-crack-of-noon type of guy.) All of this is to say that with spring and new beginnings, I want to take this long-neglected blog in a new direction. I am going to take some of Robert Frost's poetry on a regular basis and use it as inspiration to talk about some aspect of life in these New Hampshires. Now, I am not an English major so don't expect some deep analysis about how Frost used mackerel as a symbol for his sexual frustration or anything like that; I'll just use it as a starting point to wander off and talk about some interesting tidbit about New Hampshire that I've noticed. Frost is ideal for this kind of thing because, well, I just plain enjoy his poetry, but also because Frost himself was really an urbanized southern New Englander who tried hard to become a rural New Hampshirite. His quest to fit in to the unique culture of this state included, according to the guides at the museum in his former farm in Derry, NH, secretly listening in to his neighbors' party phone line conversations for hours to try to nail down the New Hampshire accent. So I sympathize with Frost; I love this state and call it home, but will never be a true "native." (Frost, BTW, eventually moved to Vermont. Quitter.)

So that's the plan. I'll give it a whirl, and see if I end up having my home fire bombed by horrified English teachers or if I'll be sued by Frost's surviving relatives.

A Christmas Song Can't Be Wrong, Can It?

There is a side to New Hampshire that really is like what you see in the popular Yankee magazine or Yankee Candle and all that very romanticized, sentimental New England stuff. Christmas is a HUGE deal up here in New Hampshire, and New Hampshirites take their Christmas decorating very seriously. (Check out this video from the local news that made big headlines when someone swiped an inflatable Santa from a New Hampshirite's front lawn.) Imagine my surprise then, given all this, when my wife decides to roast some chestnuts and our neighbors looked at us like we offered them some nummy squirrel brains. Now, as a wee lad, my father used to get me a small white paper cup of roasted chestnuts from corner street vendors in the main town for our region of New York state, and I know years later you could still buy the same on the streets of New York City itself, although admittedly, there the chestnuts tended to have a carbon monoxide flavor, courtesy of the buses and yellow cabs. I mean, come on people, even Wayne Newton sang about roasted chestnuts by the fireside! Chestnut trees are native to New Hampshire, although a blight many years ago put a big dent in their numbers. A few weeks ago while in Portsmouth on the ocean, we watched a couple collecting their own scallops and shucking them by the dock; what's so strange about picking up chestnuts and roasting them? You'd think a tradition-crazed state like NH would be all over the roasted chestnuts thing, but no, I'm afraid roasted chestnuts in New Hampshire have been surpassed as a Christmas tradition by the likes of marshmellow peeps. In a futile attempt to restart a good old tradition, I offer this page for a recipe. Enjoy.

New Hampshire = Not Summer

We really do have summer in NH. Sometimes. Well, for about 3 months each year. But in those three months it can get downright hot here, and with the nearby ocean you also get hyper-humid air, which mixes nicely with the often 90 degrees + temps to cook us like lobstahs. This is why getting a spot on the Hampton beaches during those months is as iffy as cell phone coverage in NH. This year June was extremely rainy and New Hampshirites went around complaining they had fungus growing in their armpits, but then came July and the killer heat. The fungus went away, but so did about two-thirds of our bodies' water mass. A surprisingly large proportion of New Hampshirites still have an English ancestry, so what you got here in July and August was a bunch of embarrassingly pasty-white, sweaty and dehydrated -- and irate -- Yankees.

But alas, those days are behind us and we can go back to our tweads and wool sweaters. We have entered that season in New Hampshire known as "non-summer". There are two other seasons, spring and autumn, but those both last about twenty minutes each. Sometime after August, you'll just hear a popping noise outside and if you're quick enough to run to a nearby window, you'll see the trees have all changed colors and dropped their leaves in one dramatic gesture. It's very pretty, but you have to be quick. Once the leaves have hit the ground, the scenery changes from stunning reds, oranges and yellows to a sort of brown-gray hybrid. That's the official color of non-summer, a dull non-ending streak of of brown-gray that uniformly wraps the landscape with the exception of the many evergreen trees, but even they try their best to blend into the scenery, at least as we get closer to Christmas.

Anyway, we have entered that part of the year -- lasting some eight months, give or take -- called non-summer here in New Hampshire but non-summer has a surprise it likes to spring on you. (No pun intended there.) Non-summer is allowed, just about any time it wants, from its inception in September until May, to suddenly and inexplicably dump lots of white stuff on us. That's right, non-summer is snow season, and it is going to make that point again this week -- just before Halloween -- when even here in southern NH, we're expecting 2-4 inches. This time non-summer has been nice enough to give us a little heads up (via the local news, WMUR), which provokes a mad rush to get porch plants and garden hoses indoors, but there have been a few times when we were caught off guard, with unpleasant consequences. That mad scramble is upon us now, so if you'll excuse me, I have to go find the car window scrapers in the basement.

Spring in New Hampshire

It is early May and I can finally say with certainty that the snow is gone. We did have a snowstorm in later April that dumped several inches of the white stuff on us, but it didn't stick around long. Now, flowers are blooming, the trees are green, the Merrimack River is bulging with melted snow and spring showers, the Forsythia bushes are screaming bright yellow, and I've been squawked at by the blue jays who have moved back into our yard. I know parts of the country to the west have gotten more than their fair share of rain recently, but our rainy days have been interpolated by enough dry, sunny days over the past few weeks that even our bedrock-ridden granite surface ground has been able to soak it all up. There was some flooding up in the northern-most counties where snow was still a couple feet deep in the mountains but for the most part, this New Hampshire spring has been decidedly pleasant. In fact, for the first time since I've moved here, I've repeatedly seen a rainbow out my home office window. Not a bad start to the year, and we're looking forward to our first warm-weather outing to the coast. Portsmouth, here we come!

New Hampshirites in Tights!

There is a comedic scene in Mel Brooks' 1993 film Robin Hood, Men in Tights in which local villagers joining Robin Hood's Merry Men are forced to line up cafeteria-style to receive their official Merry men uniforms which include, among other articles, large green plastic eggs containing green tights. They hen cut to a scene of the Merry Men emerging from their changing rooms in their new green tights and doing a song-and-dance number about manly-men in tights. Very funny stuff, typical Mel Brooks.

Well, imagine my surprise recently when I found myself purchasing panty hose. Now, these weren't for my wife and I haven't taken up any strange habits that might provoke a divorce. Believe it or not, they were kind of hard to find. My neighbors had all also decided they needed them. The local news even suggested them, not in their fashion segments -- which is good because I am NOT shaving my legs -- but in the weather.

The problem was an odd combination of unusually large amounts of snow, coupled with alternating periods of warming and (re-)freezing during which ice dams formed on roofs, causing water leaks inside New Hampshire homes in February as the warmth of houses melted these ice dams which forced their way beneath tiles. Suddenly everybody in New Hampshire (present company included) had to own a roof rake -- yeah, I'd never heard of one either -- to rake off the bottom 2 feet of snow or so to allow proper ice melting. The local news also suggested taking magnesium chloride -- which is a slightly more environmentally-friendly form of rock salt -- and stuff it into panty hose, tying them tights off sausage-style. We then were told to lob these things on our roofs, aiming particularly for high ice-build up areas like corners and crevasses. Did it work? I don't know for sure, but all my neighbors did it (as well as I), and he ice dams seemed to have melted. and when a few used panty hose fell off the roof, I told me wife she can use them, to further their environmental friendliness by recycling. She, however, was not impressed by my green suggestion.

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.

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....

New Hampshire Haiku V

Low, dark clouds mean snow
TV tells us to stock up
on beer and snow-blowers

New Hampshire at Christmas

New Hampshire is definitely the place to be for Christmas, unless of course you have an allergy to snow and quaintness. This state was just made for Christmas, with its rural New England architecture, idyllic snow-covered evergreen trees, covered bridges that span the "over-the-river-and-through-the-woods" scenery, and a local obsession with antiques and folksy arts and crafts. Indeed, some local entrepreneurs have embraced this dyed-in-the-wool Christmas wonderland by making year-round businesses based on the holiday, like the Christmas Farm Inn, the entire indoor Christmas village at the Christmas Loft (in North Conway, NH), a year-round outdoor Christmas theme park at Santa's Village, and Jingles Christmas Shop. The point is that the American ideal of Christmas looks a lot like New Hampshire.

I think one of the things contributing to this Christmasy atmosphere here in NH is a lingering old English imprint on the local culture, which I've poked fun at before -- the fact that there are still lots of Smiths, Joneses and people with colors for names like Browns, Greens and Whites running around this state. Indeed, while nationally the U.S. is estimated in 2009 to have been 74.5% "white" (self-declared), in New Hampshire that number is 95.3%. Let's face it; there are reasons that neither Rap or Mambo music started in New Hampshire. However, the reality of course in late 2010 is that New Hampshire is a modern state, not some Norman Rockwell painting, and as such it is an increasingly complex and diverse population of people. My Norman Rockwell reference was apt; despite his famous paintings of sugary idyllic scenes for the Saturday Evening Post, he was a strong proponent of racial equality and included racial diversity in his paintings whenever he could get away with it in early 20th century America. I mention all this because we are reminded of the reality that even here in rustic, rural New England, a scene today can take place which reminds us that we are all indeed in this together. A mosque, a synagogue and a Hindu temple in Manchester,NH came together to man Christian soup kitchens today for the poor and homeless so that the Christian workers at these facilities could spend this most important Christian holiday with their families. If that isn't the true meaning of Christmas I don't know what is, and I wish Norman Rockwell were here to paint it.

The picture above was from here.

Why New Hampshirites Don't Use the Turn Signal II

I've got a theory. It appears that New Hampshire has become, in recent years, a more feminine state. I don't mean effeminate, I mean feminine. Simply put, there are increasingly more female New Hampshirites than male. Just look at the map above (from this source here.) Now, I can tell you that from a male perspective, the first thing most guys will say in reaction to this information is, "Cool!" It's just the way men think. Upon hearing this information in fact, most men will immediately begin fantasizing about hordes of desperate young, attractive women pursuing them. We can't help it. But one problem for New Hampshire men in particular is that after being subjected to this knowledge -- and the attendant testosterone-driven fantasies -- for extended periods of time, well, they lose the ability to commit. Why commit? What if there's a hottie just waiting around the corner? Would you commit?

One unfortunate side effect of this behavioral quirk is that this inability to commit eventually extends into other areas of their lives, which explains why New Hampshire men won't use their turn signals: they're afraid to commit. They know they have to turn left, but what if another opportunity suddenly presents itself? Why take the chance? This, I suspect, is why New Hampshire men will drive straight and narrow but then suddenly swerve and turn to one side with no warning, and certainly no turn signal. These poor drivers are a victim of their own abused libido.

New Hampshire Haiku IV

Snowing to the west
Snow to the east and south
When will it snow here?

Scenic New Hampshire

When you're northbound on Route 93 in Massachusetts, having come directly from downtown Boston, within about 40 minutes you'll have noticed the buildings have thinned out a bit, and there are more trees. Civilization seems to recede, and the country takes over. Shortly, you come to the Merrimack River which flows eastwards towards Salem and the sea. However, on 93 as you continue northward, you find that you are on the Merrimack River bend, that it has not come from the west but from the north and made a sharp eastward turn. You cross the Merrimack River as you continue northward, and within minutes you encounter the friendly 'Welcome to New Hampshire' sign. Route 93 immediately collapses into 2 lanes, a virtual country road at this point, and gently swerves northward into the Granite State. On both sides of the road you see trees and large outcroppings of granite. The road will rise and fall, providing you as you continue northward with glimpses of the hills and valleys to come. This entrance into New Hampshire is pleasant, rustic and scenic.

However, your initial perception of New Hampshire depends on where you enter. If, for some adventurous reason, you decide to get off on exits 42-48 -- the last exist for 93 in northern Massachusetts -- in Andover or Methuen, and decide instead to catch the smaller Route 28 northward into New Hampshire, into Salem (NH), your first sensation will be.... trees? moose? quaint granite outcroppings? No, tattoo shops. Tattoos are apparently illegal in Massachusetts, and so some -- quite a few, in fact -- New Hampshire entrepreneurs have cashed in and offer their skin-dying (and piercing) services just across the New Hampshire border, giving one the effect of having entered a biker zone. Left and right on the first few miles of Route 28 in New Hampshire, tattoo shops have sprung up like mushrooms after a storm to service drunk sailors and love-struck teenagers...from Massachusetts. So the next time you're in Boston and feel the sudden need to immortalize Mom on your shoulder, head for Route 28 in New Hampshire, and take your pick.

New Hampshire Architecture

If you find yourself northbound on Route 28 in Salem, New Hampshire some day, you'll eventually end up passing a huge, massive, bodacious Walmart. I suppose that's hardly new or unusual, but just past this Walmart, on the same side of the road, you'll see a rusting old historical plaque beside the road near an apartment complex declaring the existence of 'America's Stonehenge'. Now, after seeing this sign, you'll likely look around and puzzle whether the apartment complex is hiding this apparent historic wonder, or maybe it's behind one of the nearby tattoo shops. (<<< More on those tattoo shops another time.) The sign doesn't mention that the actual site of the alleged 'America's Stonehenge' is actually several miles away.

Now, once you manage to find the place and pay for your ticket -- it's a privately-owned tourist site nowadays -- you can trudge up the hill (with complimentary snow shoes in the winter!) to a true mystery. First of all, if you're expecting a bunch of massive stones arranged in some mystic circle, well, I'm afraid your little inner Druid is in for a cold splash of reality. 'Mystery Hill' as it's also (and more aptly) known is really a jumbled collection of stone shelters and pathways built into the side and top of a mountain. The question is, who built them? Now, Americans (with their European roots) have a long history of rummaging in the historical dustbin of their European ancestors out of sheer habit whenever confronted by some mystery, and indeed Mystery Hill has inspired all sorts of theories about ancient Celts, Phoenicians, Greeks, Egyptians and Hebrews somehow traversing the Atlantic Ocean and setting up shop in Salem, New Hampshire. For the longest time it was assumed that the Native Indians were too inept or under-developed to build this sort of thing, but early 20th century arrogance aside, the truth is local Indians didn't build with stone. Why bother, when wood -- a much easier material to use -- is plentiful? Archaeological digs have proven that Indians probably occupied the site for generations, but it seems unlikely they built it. Carbon dating has produced results ranging from 4,000 years ago to just 75 years old. There's also been some evidence unearthed that the local 18th and 19th century farmers are messing with us, that they built the stone works as a temporary shelter for certain seasonal activities. Decades of archaeologists and shucksters have studied the place and failed to come up with a plausible explanation. (Space aliens, anybody?)

Regardless, it's a fun hike on a nice and scenic mountain, so come take a look at a true mystery for yourself. Oh -- and the current owners also keep an alpaca farm, some bring the kids.

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....