Recently in Americana Category

This post comes from the Weekend Pundit archives, in this case back in October 2002. I have made a few minor edits, mostly grammatic, though one change was more along the lines of "this sounds awkward so I'll change these three words." The post below was actually part of a much larger post covering a number of topics, a precursor to my regular Thoughts On A Sunday posts.

This one was near and dear to my heart, dealing with seasonal visitors opining how great it would be to "live out in the country." The problem is that quite often they don't have a clue what that entails.

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Have any of you urban or suburban dwellers out there have ever wondered what it would be like to live out in the country? I hear this quite often from visitors to this state. Usually it's from someone spending a week or two of their vacation time at the lakes, up in the mountains, at some campground in one of the many forests, or at one of the ski resorts. All they've seen or experienced of New Hampshire (or Vermont, Maine, or upstate New York) in the limited time they're here is what is aimed at the tourist trade.

Many have no concept what it means to live someplace where pizza parlors and Chinese restaurants don't deliver; where the nearest convenience store might be 20 miles away down a dirt road; where winters can be harsh and deadly; and where you haul your own trash to the dump. There are no Starbucks, Taco Bells, or tofu burgers. The closest thing to a Sak's Fifth Avenue is the L.L. Bean outlet store in one of the shopping meccas in the heart of tourist country.

Most have never experienced cabin fever after being stuck inside for a week or more because of the brutally cold temperatures and heavy snowfalls in the winter. The same can also be said of mid-spring - the black flies are out in force making any time spent outside uncomfortable to an extreme.

Few are cut out for small town life, where everybody knows your business. For some of us hardy Yankees, it's no big thing. But for others it can be quite trying. Up here, neighbors watch out for neighbors, even if that neighbor lives on the other side of town.

Some people have trouble with the concept of town meeting, where the residents of the town gather once a year to decide how the town will or will not spend their tax dollars. It can be a very personal thing, town meeting. Though it is local government at its best, people also have to contend with egos, feuds, and the ubiquitous anti-flatlander mentality. Most new folks make the almost fatal mistake their first time speaking at town meeting by starting their remarks with, "Back where I come from....". Most folks at town meeting could care less about where you come from or what you did there, unless you're going to use the reference to show how something the town is thinking of doing is a bad idea. Then they might let you get away with it. Maybe.

Something many others moving to the country end up learning the hard way is this: Never piss off the Town Clerk, the Road Agent, or the Police Chief (assuming the town actually has a police department). Getting on their bad side can make living in a small town an extremely uncomfortable and frustrating experience.

One thing anyone wanting to move out to the country will have to get used to is guns. Lot's of folks around here own guns for hunting, protection, or just plain plinking. By association, they'll also have to get used to the various hunting seasons. Getting all misty-eyed about the Big Bad Hunters out stalking Bambi so they can carve him in to venison steaks will earn you no points up here. It's more likely to get you talked about.

And one other thing: You are expected to take responsibility for your own actions. It's not 'society's fault'. It's not because your mother didn't breastfeed you. It's not because you ate too many Twinkies. That kind of pseudo-psychological BS won't fly out here in the sticks. Folks out in the country don't have time for it. We're too busy making a living, raising our kids, working on our homes, and paying our taxes.

If all of that sounds appealing to you, then we'll welcome you with open arms. Otherwise, don't even think of moving to any place like this. You'll hate it.

Sunny just cracks me up! I found her by way of Maggie's Farm.



She reminds me of a young Catherine O'Hara.

At first I thought it was just me, being an older and much more experienced driver. Not that I am a curmudgeonly driver who loafs along at 10 to 20 miles per hour under the speed limit just to be safe. On the contrary, I tend to be one of those driving just above the speed limit and often get impatient with drivers who can't make up their minds about what they're going to do.

Lately I've noticed that drivers in general have become more aggressive, less attentive, and prone to doing more stupid things. Like I said, at first I thought it was just me, perhaps lapsing into that aforementioned curmudgeonly behavior. But after a discussion with a number of co-workers at lunch earlier today, I knew others had seen it too.

This was brought home to me this afternoon after work as I was making my way to the local BJ's for my usual bi-weekly purchase of bulk items. In the stretch between work and BJ's I came across eight different drivers who were pushing the limits on safe and/or courteous driving.

The worst offender was a young driver, likely in his teens, who had a tough time maintaining lane discipline. In one two mile stretch he crossed over the double yellow line into the oncoming lane a half dozen times and darn near ran off the road and onto the shoulder at least 4 times. I don't know if he was texting or fiddling with his iPod, but something sure as heck was distracting him. Another thing: he couldn't keep his speed where it should have been, varying between 20 miles per hour below the speed limit to 10 above. I finally managed to ditch him at the traffic lights at the junction of one of the state highways. He went straight and I turned right. (It was there that I found out he was a young driver. At first I thought he might have been elderly or drunk and incapable of operating a motor vehicle. But it turned out he was just dumb.)

My second memorable encounter occurred on my way home from BJ's. It was at three different sets of traffic lights between BJ's and a stretch of highway that bypasses downtown Laconia that a driver laid on his horn if the cars in front of him didn't move the microsecond the light changed to green. Mind you, it wasn't that there was a two or three second delay after the light changed before the first couple of cars would start to move, causing this guy to hit the horn. He started on his horn the instant the light changed. Farther up the road he would pass cars in front of him, sometimes forcing them to take evasive action to keep from being run off the road or hitting his car. At the next light the same thing would happen: light changes, horn starts blaring, jerk starts trying to pass traffic as soon as there's even a smidgen of space for him to force his way in.

Ironically, once we got to one of the local malls he pulled into the mall and raced up to the drive-up window lane at the Dunkin' Donuts. Was he really that desperate for a caffeine and donut fix?

About 4 miles from home I came across another driver who seemed to think it was necessary to swing wide in the opposite direction of the turn they wanted to take. It's one thing if they were towing a trailer and needed to make a wider than normal turn to accommodate the additional length of the trailer behind them, but this wasn't the case. They were driving a Jetta.

Three times I saw this driver make the wide swinging turn. (Unfortunately they appear to live somewhere in my neighborhood which is why I saw this action more than once, though I didn't recognize the car.)

I've seen more incidents of incipient road rage, rudeness, impatience, and outright stupidity in the past six months than I usually see in six years. I wonder what's been causing this?

Though spring is still a few days away, spring cleaning has already started here at The Manse. While the ground outside is still too soft and mushy to do much in the way of yard work, there's been plenty to do inside, including scrubbing the floors, cleaning windiows, and making a few repairs in the mudroom. (One of the coat hook boards came off the wall when an overenthusiastic WP nephew decided to toss his coat onto one of the hooks rather than placing it. Apparently the board carrying the coat hooks was held in place using drywall anchors rather than being screwed into the wall studs.)

Now you may wonder why I've mentioned this. It's simple.

The contractor who built this house must have been schizophrenic.

The Manse, as well as the homes on either side, were built by a contractor who is presently enjoying a stay at one of our fine state institutions...as an inmate.

The Manse shows signs of the same kind of personality as the contractor. Some things were really well done and the craftsmanship shows. Others leave you scratching your head wondering what the hell they were thinking when they were building this place. (I seem to recall that I've covered this subject some time in the past, but no matter. It's still kind of interesting.) Some examples of this dichotomy:

There are aforementioned coat hook boards. The rest of the mud room is well done, but they were too lazy to use a stud-finder to put the mounting screws into the studs.

Another mudroom issue: the door leading to the front is solid metal. The door leading to the rear has glass to let light in. Both the front and the back door should have glass (at least that's what was on the plans I saw). Glass on both doors would let the maximum amount of light in during the day, doing away with the need to turn the lights on when the sun is up. (The back door only lets light in only during the late afternoon or early evening, depending upon the time of year. Otherwise it's dark in the mudroom.)

The arrangement of the light switches is strange. Generally, when someone turns on the closest switch just inside the door of a room, it turns on the lights, either ceiling lights of a lamp plugged into a wall socket on the other side of the room. Not in The Manse. Instead, in more than half the rooms the switch turns on the ceiling fan. I guess they figured the ceiling fan was far more important than lights.

If there are more then one set of lights that are controlled by a series of switches on the wall, you'd expect the closest switch would turn on the closest lights and the farthest switch would turn on the lights farthest away. Nope, not in this house. (This is certainly the case with the switches just inside the kitchen next to the mudroom entrance.)

Then there's the 'phantom' switch. It's next to the triple light switches at the front door. In all this time I haven't been able to figure out what it's supposed to control. I've taken off the cover to see if it's even connected to the house wiring and it is. But in the seven years we've resided in The Manse we haven't been able to figure out what it's supposed to do. (After talking to friends and family about this I think that everyone's home has at least one phantom switch.)

Staying with the electrical system theme, there's the outside lights. The two lampposts at the top and bottom of the driveway and the floodlights on the side of the garage all have the same flaw: they have to be plugged in to turn them on. There are no light switches. (No, the phantom switch doesn't control the outside electrical socket into which the lampposts are plugged.) The lampposts do have light sensors on them, meaning they'll turn on automatically when it gets dark out. But we don't use them all that often. In fact they're on primarily during the winter when BeezleBub and I are clearing snow from the driveway at night. The floodlights are usually on for the same reason. (The floodlights are plugged in inside the garage, but it's a tight squeeze between the wall and the trusty F150, making it difficult to reach the plug at times.)

Another quirk: the plumbing. While the plumbing system is exceptional - PEX tubing running to both cold and hot water plenums, each tube with its own shutoff petcock - the routing leaves something to be desired. In two instances the plumbing contractor could have done a better job of routing some of the tubing. In the master bathroom it is not uncommon for the water lines to the shower and bathtub to freeze during below zero nights. Occasionally the lines to the sink also freeze up. It wasn't until we suffered our little water leak debacle last year that we discovered the tubing had been run along an uninsulated exterior joist below the bathroom.

Then there's insulation. There's plenty in the walls and the attic/eaves/roof. There was none along the rim joists (that's where the frame of the house meets the foundation), something I took care of the first year we were here. But after our water leak debacle, we found there's none between the first and second floor, something that has become de rigeur since the 90's. I think the only reason we hadn't noticed it before is because the second floor has thick wall-to-wall carpeting. (That could also be the reason the contractor didn't put any insulation in between floors.)

That's just a few things we've found that are quirky about The Manse. I could easily go on another few hundred words describing the schizophrenic nature of this house before I even got to the dumb/weird things around the outside. Maybe that's a topic for another post.

Town meetings have been in full swing since late last week here in New Hampshire. Many take place this week, this coming weekend, and next week.

It is American democracy writ small.

My little town had its town elections today, where our townspeople elected some town officials, voted on the the town and school budgets, and approved or disapproved various warrant articles that dealt with everything from buying a new fire truck to funding some non-governmental agencies to changing how the town sets up default budgets to imposing a property tax cap.

This election has probably garnered more voter attention than some I've seen in the past. I had to wait in line for a voting booth to open up, as did a number of other townsfolk. When I voted (just after work) over 1400 ballots had already been cast and there was still a couple of hours left until the polls closed. The parking lot outside our middle school, the town's polling place, was rapidly filling up as I left after voting.

It will be interesting to see which warrant articles passed and those that didn't.

One last thing -

As the saying goes here, "If you didn't vote at town meeting, then you have no right to complain about how things turned out."

Just sayin'....

The candle that has burned in one window of The Manse for months now will be carefully removed and packed away.

The WP Niece has returned from her tour of duty in Afghanistan and is now with the WP In Laws in Fort Bragg, North Carolina.

Her e-mails and pictures kept us up to date on the goings on in the small Afghan village where she and two other Army women made their home. Despite the preparation by the Army before they deployed, the culture shock was still surprising to her (and to us).

But now she's home.

Thank god for her safe return!

This guy reminds me of a not-quite-as-well-spoken Pat Condell. He's just a regular guy who's "mad as hell and not gonna take it any more."


He brings up a number of good points. Ironically he mentions the Howard Beal rant, which is just as germane today as it was back in 1976.

(H/T Parkway Rest Stop)

By way of Facebook comes this photo which I believe correctly illustrates what many people think of my home state.


Click on picture for larger image

It seems it's a video end-of-the-week trend, this time with an unusual music video.

I have no idea how much preparation went into the production, but it looks to me like they spent a lot of time considering the amount of set up required and the unusual means they used to make their music. If nothing else it's quite clever.


Very cool.

Deb told me about this this morning and then showed me this video of a dad showing his 15-year old daughter the consequences of her actions, in this case badmouthing her parents on Facebook.

Apparently Dad is an IT professional and after spending a few hours and a bunch of cash updating her laptop he found her Facebook post. To say he wasn't amused is an understatement. Apparently this video has gone viral and is making the rounds, both on Facebook and in the media.



I discussed this with one of my co-workers and he thought the guy went overboard. But then my co-worker doesn't have teenaged daughters...but he will in a little over 6 years. I think then he'll change his tune.

Do I think he went too far? I can't say. But if this wasn't the first time she pulled something like this, and according to what her dad said it wasn't, then maybe his course of action was the right one.

It's town meeting season in New Hampshire, with many towns holding their town and school district meetings over the next 6 weeks or so. (It depends upon the town calendars and whether they hold traditional town meetings or what are called SB2 town meetings. More on that later.)

Ours started at 7PM last night. There were 29 warrant articles to discuss, mull over, and/or amend. While not the largest number of warrants articles we've seen, it was still a goodly number.

We finished at after 11PM.

I wish I could say the voters spent the 4+ hours going over each article in detail, showing due diligence and carefully shepherding our constitutional obligations. But I can't.

Instead, almost 2 hours was spent on what I must derisively call "How many Angels can dance on the head of a pin" triviality. The lost 2 hours dealt with only three of the articles, and two of those were moot.

One article dealt with the purchase of a new fire truck. That topic in and of itself was no trivial matter. Instead, it was an amendment to the article that, when broken down, didn't do anything any differently than the original, merely changed some language. The proposed language would not change the process or the amount of money spent, nor would it change the plans of the Fire Department in any way shape or form. Yet we spent almost an hour debating an amendment (as well as a follow on amendment) that, in the end, was defeated.

Then there were two petition warrant articles. (Any registered voter in town can get an article placed on the warrant through petition. All that's required are enough signatures of other registered voters on the petition to have it added.)

The two petitions, while they may have had the best interest of the taxpayers at heart, were horribly flawed. Both violated the constitutional separation of powers, laid out in both the US and New Hampshire constitutions. (The articles dealt with personnel policies, something exclusively the purview of the executive branch, in this case meaning our Board of Selectmen.) This meant that at best they were advisory articles and could not be enforced. These two articles were debated and amended ad nauseum. It surprised me how much time and effort went into debating two meaningless warrant articles. You'd have thought this kind of effort would have gone into debating portions of the budget, something that has a direct effect on all the taxpayers in town. But no, all of this energy and emotion went towards something that was trivial.

I wish I could say this was an unusual case, but in all my years of going to town meetings in the towns in which I have resided, I have seen this kind of scenario played out again and again.

Welcome to Town Meeting!

Tonight is our School District Meeting, where we will do the same thing, but this time dealing with our school system and how much we will spend to support it. Hopefully we won't be dealing with the trivialities seen at town meeting...but I'm not holding my breath.

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There are two forms of town meetings in New Hampshire - the traditional "everyone shows up and votes on the warrant articles" town meetings, and SB2 town meetings. (SB2 means Senate Bill 2, the legislation that created this alternative form of town meeting.)

In SB2 towns there are actually two different town meeting sessions. The first is called the deliberative session, where voters will meet to go over the articles in the town warrant. They can approve them for inclusion on the town warrant as written, or amend them and then approve them for inclusion. But they can't vote them up or down until the second session.

The second session is Election Day, generally a month later. Voters will elect their town officials and vote on the articles in the town warrant.

Our little town is an SB2 town, which means we won't actually vote on the warrant articles until next month.

One of my favorite Super Bowl ads from the latest crop:


Of course there was some controversy about the ad with Ford asking GM to pull the ad because they considered it deceptive and untruthful.

Not that the ad would make me consider giving up the trusty F150, but I still liked the premise. (Pay close attention to some of the 'debris' in the scenes of devastation as it pays tribute to just about every recent 'end of the world' movie. It might help if you view it in Full Screen mode.)

I caught the end of tonight's World News on ABC. Since it was Friday their usual last feature is Person of the Week.

This week it was the three mayors of Los Angeles, Philadelphia, and Mesa, Arizona. What is it that moved ABC to select them as Persons of the Week? They want the federal government (specifically Congress) to stop dickering around and do something about America's crumbling roads. After all, the US used to be number one when it came to the quality of our highways and byways. But no longer. We now rate 20^th in the world behind Malaysia and Cypus.

"If they pass the surface transportation bill and America Fast Forward, it will allow us to accelerate the building of that 30-year project in a 10-year period of time, creating 166,000 jobs," Villaraigosa said. "These are the kinds of innovative things that the Congress has an opportunity to do that they haven't done up to now. ... Their failure to address the No. 1 issue in America, the jobs issue, is akin to the captain of the Concordia jumping off the ship before the passengers had been rescued. This Congress needs to get back on that ship and do their job."

I have to admit that I agree with these mayors that our highway system has been seriously neglected over the past few decades. Some states do an admirable job keeping their roads in good shape but they have to struggle to do it, sometimes sacrificing other infrastructure programs to keep the roads open.

But there's something I must point out that the mayors have conveniently forgotten: the ~$800 billion stimulus package put forth by President Obama in 2009. If every penny of that money had gone to fixing roads and other infrastructure they wouldn't have had to try to cajole Congress into dealing with the issue now. We would be almost 3 years into the 10 year rebuilding effort and plenty of people presently unemployed would be working. But no one mentions that out of the entire stimulus package less than 10% went to infrastructure, and not just roads. The rest of the stimulus went to expanding government and lining the pockets of Obama supporters.

Do we really want Congress to drop another trillion dollars on projects that won't do anything but waste taxpayer dollars we don't really have? If we're going to drop a bundle of tax money on roads, then the appropriations will need to be specifically targeted to each state and limited to use on roads only. No "bridges to nowhere", no side projects that have nothing to do with improving roads, and provisions to do away with the Bacon-Davis Act restrictions (saving tons of money in the process).

It's Christmas party evening here at The Manse, with friends of Deb, BeezleBub and yours truly in attendance. Therefore today's/tonight's post might be late in coming.

I promised myself I wasn't going to give any more coverage to the Occupy Wall Street protests, but this was too good to pass up. This came by way of my friend at work, Cathy.

Adam Corolla nails it when it comes to the OWS protesters. As Cathy writes, "This is what happens when you have a generation of 'No one is wrong, no one loses, and we all get trophies.' " (Warning: Strong Language.)



A few highlights of Adam's rant, all of which with I happen to agree.

"They're feeling shame. They've been shamed by life because they haven't been prepared for life. They've had so much smoke blown up their...collective asses, by the time they get out in the real world and they realize the real world doesn't give a f**k about where you're from or about what your mommy said you were, or how pretty you are, or what you do."

"All those lies that were told to you by your parents about how special are and how no one was created like you...doesn't mean s**t when you get to the real world and you're just looked at as Peon #27 who's putting in an application."

"Now your plan is to come back and throw a brick at my window. That's your plan...it's this envy and shame and there's going to be a lot more of it."

"We are creating a group of self-entitled monsters."

Indeed.

It was Thanksgiving dinner here at The Manse, with a good portion of the Weekend Pundit clan in attendance, including my dear brother, his missus, one of this three offspring. (Another of his kids, the oldest, stopped by before dinner to show off his new offspring before heading off to Thanksgiving dinner at his girlfriend's father's home.) Two of the WP sisters made it as well, the oldest with her youngest son, and the youngest with her two girls. The WP parents were also here, assisting with food preparation (Mom made one of the three turkey's we consumed. More on that later.) The WP In-Laws were also here, arriving late yesterday morning.

I had a bit of work to do outside The Manse before everyone arrived, scraping down the walkway and sanding the steep incline on the driveway to assure maximum traction for those braving the treacherous slope.

I won't go into the details of our repast other than to say we tried something other than the ubiquitous Butterball-style turkey, in this case range fed Narragansett turkeys. Though smaller than the supermarket turkeys with less breast meat, they were quite tasty, more so than the usual turkeys. (We got these turkeys from Farmer Andy.)

Everyone had a great time!

We didn't have to wait very long, that's for sure.

We got about 6 inches of snow here at The Manse overnight, giving us an opportunity to try out the new Official Weekend Pundit Snowblower.

I have to admit it took a little getting used to because its controls are so different from the previous Official Weekend Pundit Snowblower. For instance, the positions of the traction control and auger control are reversed compared to the old one. Also, the auger control locks in the 'on' position as long as the traction control is engaged. (I see that as both a plus and a minus.) The electric discharge chute controls were positioned so the can be controlled with the thumbs without the need to remove hands from the handles. The old one required me to release the auger control, reach down to a crank to change the azimuth of the chute, then re-engage the auger control, something that was a real pain-in-the-ass at times.

All in all, I like it.

Deb and I had a night out, something we don't have very often considering our conflicting work schedules.

In this case we had a chance to eat out at one of our favorite local pubs, something that's pleasurable this time of year because the only patrons are locals now that the tourists are gone until the ski season starts next month. We didn't have to wait to be seated and the food was delivered to our table not too long after we placed our order. In fact, we were in the pub for less than 45 minutes, yet we didn't feel rushed.

From the pub we returned home briefly before heading back out to see our high school's drama department put on their rendition of The Sound Of Music.

Yes, I can see your eyes rolling at the mention of one of the most performed musicals in history. Between Deb and I we've probably seen it in one form or another dozens of times. (I must make full disclosure at this point: BeezleBub was the crew manager for this musical, did most of the set design, and headed the set construction crew. The sets were awesome. No prejudice showing there. None.)

I wish I could say the performance we saw was superior, but it would be a lie. (Sound of "play critic hat" being put on my head.)

The biggest problem was the casting of the female lead (Maria): she couldn't sing very well. And because of her register, the male lead - someone who we know can sing quite well - was forced to sing outside his register, which made anything he sang sound forced. The singing of the two leads were difficult to listen to and I cringed with every flat note sung by the female lead.

There were a number of others in the cast who would have been right for that role which would have made the performance so much better.

(Sound of "play critic hat" being removed from my head.)

Still, Deb and I had a good night out.

And so goes another fall evening in small town America.

Yes, I know there was no post last night, but I have a good excuse.

I was attending one of the rare gala events in our small town: the opening of our new supermarket.

Well, it's not really new so much as it's in a new location, with more retail space, more selections, a new sushi bar (must be for the tourists as most of us up here at Lake Winnipesaukee prefer our fish cooked), fancy new coolers (the lights turn on in the coolers only when there's someone actually in front of them). There was all kinds of food at the gala, with everything from cheese and crackers to prime rib, lobster bisque, scallops, and clam chowder. Drinks ranged from ice cold cider, locally bottled soft drinks, and coffee. Of course there was also a large selection of desserts. (I hit the dessert table before partaking of the other delightful foods as I live by the credo "Eat dessert first. You never know when something will come up and take you away from the dinner table!")

The gala was attended by all kinds of important folks, like two of our three selectmen (the third selectman and his wife work for a rival supermarket chain so his decision not to attend was unsurprising), members of the planning board (that's why I was there), various business leaders (Farmer Andy and his missus were in attendance, just to name a couple), and civic organization representatives.

The old location closed at 8PM last night and the new one opened at 7 this morning.

I think it will be quite popular, ayuh.

A busy night tonight, so to cheat a little bit here's some more on American quirkiness.

One astute observation:

As you can read here in the comments: "The" United States may exist as a political entity, but for every strange (or quirky) behavior you will find another American who makes fun of it, generally so spot on and convincing that they beat every foreigner who may try the same.

Spot on.