Chrissy and I drove to Keene, NH today. Keene reminded Chrissy and me of Bedford Falls, the place where the old Jimmy Stewart movie “It’s a Wonderful Life” was set. Like so many places around here, it is really cute. The area around is features ski trails and white water rafting. It seems like a fun place to live, although probably not exciting for those uninterested in either outdoor activities or looking at historical buildings or antiques.

The yellow building in the picture is a museum for furniture and antiques from the houses of the local elite from the nineteenth century. Keene was a mill town. Factories were set up to make textiles. They took advantage of the waterpower of the Connecticut River. Chrissy was looking forward to going to the museum, but it was closed for some kind of meeting. It shows the mindset of these little towns. They close things when they feel like it. This is like another movie, “Mr. Deeds Goes to Town.” He comes from a little town called Mandrake Falls, NH and brings these small town values to New York. This was a good movie with Gary Cooper as Mr. Deeds. Recently the movie was remade with Adam Sandler playing Mr. Deeds. Naturally, Sandler brought all his nasty, dumb humor to the role and ruined all the subtlety and charm. I hate Adam Sandler movies.

On the way back we passed Franklin Pierce’s. He is the president that I usually forget when I am trying to think of the list of presidents. He didn’t do much memorable, but he is remembered locally because he is the only president born in the state of New Hampshire. New Hampshire is tiny state and the Piece’s hometown is a tiny place called Hillsboro. They don’t have many famous people around here. The house is better than most of the houses I have seen from the period. The rooms are large and they look comfortable. Franklin’s father built the house in 1804. He built it originally as a tavern. That is probably why the house was so nice. They needed the rooms for dinning rooms and guest apartments. The house was closed, but as we walked around outside a woman pulled up who was a curator. She let us in and gave us the tour. I guess if you live in Hillsboro, you don’t want potential visitors to miss your town’s attraction.

The drive is beautiful. New Hampshire is generally very beautiful. We are becoming accustomed to pretty scenes and don’t notice them too often. This part of New Hampshire is called Currier and Ives Country after the scenes that appeared on the 19th Century prints.

Posted by Broadnax at 06:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Our time in New Hampshire is almost through. Yesterday we sold our house in Londonderry. I feel sad about moving, but we never really bonded with the place. I guess we will have to hit the road again searching for the home we never found. Now we are back in the Towne Place Inn in Manchester. There is symmetry. This is the same place we started and I will drive the same road to take the boys to school, only now I won't continue on to Tufts. We are off to Virginia on June 19, stopping along the way in West Point. The Fletcher School experience is quickly receding into mythological memory. My computer crashed the last day of classes. It is courteous of the old machine that it waited until I didn’t really need it, but I lost most of my records. It goes to show that you should back up. I don’t think I lost anything I can't replace. I remember most of the “big ideas” and they may even improve by being rethought.

I spent most of yesterday watching the Reagan funeral. What a big affair. He was my hero, a great man. Ronald Reagan’s clarion call to fight communism is one reason I went into the Foreign Service. We shall not soon see his like again. I think the outpouring of respect caught the establishment by surprise. Many of our intellectual elite liked to think of him as an amiable dunce. I always believed that history would be kinder to him than were contemporary pundits, but I am surprised how fast history is catching up with the old man. The thing I find surprising is how some memories are also changed. Dozens of pundits talked about the end of the Cold War. The ones on the right gave Reagan his proper share of credit for ending it on our terms. Those on the left said things like, “the Soviet Union was falling by itself, as we all knew.” I started the Foreign Service in 1984. I can't recall even one mainstream pundit who thought that the Soviet Empire would disappear anytime soon. On the contrary, many thought the democracies would have to make serious accommodations to communism. World communism seemed on the assent back then. Reagan was one of the only ones who saw the weakness in communism and for that he was derided as an “amiable dunce” or “reactionary fool” by the chattering classes, the same ones who now see the collapse of that benighted system as obviously known and forgone. I don’t really believe they have forgotten, since many have left written records, but they are covering, trusting in the notoriously short public memory to put them retroactively on the right side of history. I admit to some fault. I voted for Jimmy Carter in my first election (1976). It was a youthful indiscretion, but I am proud to say that I came to my senses and voted for Ronald Reagan in 1980. Mine was probably one of the few votes for him at the Webster Street polling place deep inside the “peoples republic” of Madison, Wisconsin. I am convinced if Jimmy Carter had been reelected in 1980, followed by Walter Mondale in 1984, we would still face the Soviet Union today, or worse it would have gone down in a bloody mess and taken us along. Defeatists and pessimists don’t make good leaders, no matter how intelligent, honest or admirable, and I do admire Jimmy Carter. He was much smarter in the academic sense. He had success at Camp David and started deregulation. It is just that overall he is a much better ex-president than he was a president. Maybe he should have just jumped to that step. Enough on politics.

I took some pictures of the area around our now former NH home. They are about a month old, so they are springtime pictures, but still applicable.

Our street

The lake and dam from down the hill from our house. The Army Corps of Engineers created the lake about 20 years ago by damming a couple of streams. They still maintain the small dam. The water is clean. On a calm day, it reflects the sky and the neighboring trees like a mirror. The lake view is one of the reasons we got a good price for our house.

Path to the lake. This looks like a postcard. It is surprisingly beautiful. I sometimes forget that.

Road on top of the hill from our house.

Big white pines near the house

Posted by Broadnax at 06:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

We drove through mostly pine forest. I am continually surprised how much forest covers this state and most of New England. Portsmouth, NH was about a half hour drive down Hwy 101. It is a pleasant little city. The highlight is a place called Strawberry Banke. This is the original downtown. At one time an arm of the ocean reached up here and it was a seaport. Over the years it silted in until the city filled in what remained. It became a working class neighborhood and after that a non-working class neighborhood. I think the politically correct term for a neighborhood of welfare recipients in this case is leisure class neighborhood. In addition, in this land of forest and streams, I think we can call the homeless “outdoorsmen”.

No matter the terms, by the 1960s, the neighborhood was blighted and the Federal Government wanted to tear it down and build low-income housing. Local residents didn’t want this to happen, so they got together to buy and restore the buildings. They did a good job and now the area around looks solidly prosperous and well painted. We did talk to one outdoorsman. He told me that some sort of food stamp coupons were worth $100,000.00. He once offered to trade one of these coupons for a Canadian $2.00 bill, but the fool wouldn’t take the trade. He seemed more prosperous than outdoorsmen in Washington, since he had his possessions strapped to the back of a bike, instead of in an old shopping cart. Still, I don’t know whether to believe this guy. When we met him, he was fishing change out of a fountain. I figure he should get a job at Strawberry Banke playing a street person from the blighted neighborhood of the 1960s.

Strawberry Banke is not like Williamsburg, where all the history centers on one era. The buildings here are restored to various times in the life of the neighborhood. One house, for example, half is from the late 17th Century, while the other half is a working class house from the 1950s. They have a Jewish immigrant house from 1919, complete with a Jewish housewife (Mrs. Shapiro) who tells the story of her family and how they came to America from Ukraine. Living history also included the wife of a governor at the governor’s house and a woman at the grocery store. They all did a very good job of assuming the roles.

Posted by Broadnax at 06:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

We visited the home turf of Thoreau and Emerson in Concord, MA. Actually, we spent a lot more time with Louisa May Alcott, who wrote “Little Women”. They all lived near each other and interacted on a regular basis.

“Little Women” was Chrissy’s favorite book when she was a girl. I suppose there are men who have read it voluntarily, but we were not the target audience. I did enjoy touring the house, however. Louisa’s father was named Bronson. He was an interesting guy who came from extreme poverty. His father was probably illiterate, but Bronson taught himself. I never knew anything about him, but evidently he influenced many people besides his famous daughter. Emerson’s essay on the American scholar is supposed to have been based on him. In his house was educated a local artist who went on to sculpt the statue of Lincoln in the Lincoln memorial. Thoreau was a frequent guest. All that said, the man was obviously weird and probably hard to live with. He didn’t support his family well, and they were always poor until Louisa May made big money from “Little Women” and her subsequent writings.

Louisa May never married. According to the guide, her mother and father had different personalities. I think that is docent code for family conflict. That, and her father’s remarkable inability to earn a decent living for his family, may have soured her on the opposite sex. If a movie were made about Louisa May Alcott as an adult, Glen Close would certainly play her. I am not fond of Glen Close, but you have to give Louisa May Alcott credit. She supported her whole family, on to the third generation, with the money she earned and never seems to have complained about anything. She traced and paid all her father’s debts, which were many, sent her high-strung little sister to art school in Europe and paid for the family house, which we visited.

The Alcott house was built first in the 1600s and later extended and improved. It is a pleasant place, but the ceilings are very low and the floors badly warped. In fact, the place is crumbling. Powder beetles, which have a diet a lot like termites, have eaten most of the supporting pillars. Besides that, Bronson put some of the house on the dirt – no foundation. Direct contact with wet earth is not good for wooden structures. I guess the house lasted long enough for his purposes. The place is being restored by some society created specifically to do that, probably consisting mostly of earnest old ladies with a lot of money. I have no doubt they will succeed.

I enjoy such houses because of the personal insight you get into the people’s lives. In the Alcott case, I was impressed on how contemporary the family seemed. Sure, they did a lot of things we no longer do, but they had similar problems, hopes and dreams. As I wrote, Bronson was weird. He imposed tasks on his family and made them all vegetarians. From all indications, however, they didn’t really listen to him. It sounds a lot like a modern sitcom, maybe Frazier with five kids. Bronson also dreamed big. He built “The Concord School of Philosophy” next to his house. It is sort of a fancy barn with a big lecture hall. It is unheated, so classes were held only in summer. His faculty consisted of himself, but he printed up programs and managed to get most of the famous people who passed through Boston to come out and give lectures. A freelance university - you just couldn’t do anything like that today, but it is easier to start a dot com.

The picture below is one of the fine New England stone walls behind the Alcott place.

Walden
After the Alcott place, we visited Walden Pond, where HD Thoreau wrote the famous journal about his life in the wilderness. It is not wilderness now, and it was even less wilderness then, when the area was heavily farmed. You can walk from Concord to Walden in about a half hour and there were always people around even in Thoreau’s time. Thoreau was kind of going out to live in the local park. I am sure he was a local curiosity – strange old Henry living next to the lake. It is as if I found a guy along one of my running trails who thought he was living in the wilderness because there were a few big trees and a couple of fierce chipmunks prowling nearby. If Thoreau was really looking for wilderness, he could have easily found it in 19th century America. The truth is that Thoreau didn’t like wilderness, at least how we would use the term today. The one recorded time he came in contact with the real thing was during a visit to the State of Maine, when he complained that it was too lonely up there. His quest for the simple life was obviously a hobby. But like Bronson Alcott, he dreamed big and left a lasting mark.

Walden pond is bigger than I thought it would be, even if not so big. I bet I could swim across it. Chrissy doubts my bold claim. In fact, some people were swimming, although they were wearing wet suits. Didn’t look that hard. Where we saw the lake, there was a beach with sand brought in from somewhere else. These little mud-bottomed lakes don’t naturally have sandy beaches. It reminded me a lot of Lake Harriet in Minneapolis. Bunches of teenagers were loitering around. I bet the place gets even more popular with them when the sun goes down.

Thoreau’s Wilderness
I listened to a lecture by a forester from the University of Massachusetts called “Thoreau’s Country”. He pointed out the Massachusetts looked much less like wilderness in Thoreau’s time than it does today. In those days, farming was inefficient (although organic) and a lot more acreage had to be under the plow or in pasture. It leads to an interesting dilemma for preservationists. What do we preserve? If we leave the land alone, it will quickly be covered with forest, but heavy forest is not the landscape that Thoreau, Emerson or Alcott would recognize. Of course, farming with the old methods is not economical and the upscale local communities would object to the pungent presence of pigs, horses and cows needed to keep the fields from becoming forests. (Maybe horses would be okay. Upscale people like horses. Grazing horses are picturesque; running horses are graceful, but cows are a stretch, especially on the graceful running, and pigs have none of these redeeming characteristics.) He guy also said that modern people don’t really understand where their resources come from. In Thoreau’s day, people knew some of the local trees were for fuel or furniture and today’s pig was tomorrow’s pork. When food and fuel comes from far away, people can delude themselves about nature being a big park full of benign creatures that are to be seen but not touched.

Thoreau’s Tool Shed
Back to our trip. We saw a reproduction of Thoreau’s cabin. The real thing has long since become compost. That is Chrissy with Thoreau’s ghost in the picture in front of his cabin. He really craved Coca-Cola, but water was all we had. Thoreau’s place was much like a shed for the lawnmower.

Posted by Broadnax at 06:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

We finally got to the place where the American Revolution began. Lexington and Concord are now Boston suburbs (they were Boston suburbs back then too, but it took longer to get around) and some of the most pleasant towns I have seen and especially so on this pleasant day in May. There are many very big trees, flowering bushes and beautiful homes. Concord and Lexington are connected by bike and hiking trails, a nice place to live, although I am sure the local conservation committees are stricter than even the most confrontational condo boards.

Fairly busy streets now surround Lexington green. I am sure it was very different in April 1775 when British soldiers encountered Captain Jonas Parker and 75 armed Minutemen. The soldiers came to disarm the colonists. In sort of a proto NRA action, the colonists would give up their guns only when pried from their cold dead hands. The British obliged, killing 8 Minutemen and injuring 10 others. We think of it as a war between Americans and the British, but there were no Americans at that time. British colonist militia faced British troops. When Paul Revere rode out, he didn’t say, “the British are coming.” That would have made no sense to the colonists who still thought of themselves as British, albeit disgruntled progeny of Albion. He just told everyone that the regular troops were on the way. I am sure the colonists were surprised when some of them got shot by their own king’s men. The price of protest had risen sky high. (By the way, the best book to read about this is a novel by Howard Fast called “April Morning”.)

Chrissy and I followed the same route as the British troops from Lexington to Concord and stood on North Bridge, where the Concord battle took place. By the time the British regulars got to Concord, the colonists were ready. This time armed militia had gathered from the villages and farms and this time they inflicted casualties on the British regulars. The colonists might not have been soldiers, but life on a frontier had made them extremely warlike - and able marksmen. As the British regulars retreated toward Boston, everybody came out of his house to shoot at them. It was a hard road to travel. Now the area around it is tree covered. In those days it was mostly open fields and farms, which would have been almost bare in April. There was nothing to conceal marching troops in easy to see red uniforms. On the other hand, the roads and fields were lined with stone walls providing cover for the snipers, who would shoot and run off. They knew all the shortcuts. The fighting on that April day is shrouded in a historical mist. Nice old ladies at historical societies smile when they describe the British retreat with the colonists in hot pursuit. It seems like a game from our distance, at worst hard-hitting game between the Yankees and Red Sox, but it was deadly nasty business all around, a civil war beginning and a world turning upside down.

Nice houses in Lexington above

CJ in Lexington

By the rude bridge that arched the flood, Their flag to April's breeze unfurled, Here once the embattled farmers stood, And fired the shot heard round the world. – Concord Hymn by Ralph Waldo Emerson

JM at North Bridge in Concord and with Minute Man statue. Notice the new haircut. When you are going bald, embrace it.

Posted by Broadnax at 06:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Even though I will be working just a few miles outside Boston, I don’t think I will spend much time in the city itself. That is a shame, because it is a beautiful city. I think it would be nice to get to know it a little at a time, exploring it on foot, seeing it in its various moods and seasons. When you work in the central city, you get that opportunity. That is how I got to know Washington and Krakow and that is why I still like those cities so much. Unfortunately, I will remain a tourist in Boston. Well, we made our first visit.

We did not have time to do too much, and the kids were unenthusiastic about lingering at historical monuments. We mostly followed the “Freedom Trail” where so much of America’s history took place. Below are some photos.

The boys always like fountains. This is on top of a parking garage. According to the display inside, this was once an ugly above ground parking garage, until the locals got together to make put it underground and landscape the top. It is an excellent example of how things should be done.

The monument to the starving Irish. Much of Boston’s population came from Ireland during the great potato famine in the 1840s. Plagues around the statues tell the story. On the right are the starving Irish on the old sod. In back of CJ are the upstanding citizens they became after coming to America.

Amazing street acrobats. They play rap music and jump up and down. They are great athletes – like Jackie Chan, but they have to make it on the first take or hit the pavement.

I caught this guy in mid flight. He flipped over five people without a net. Before the big stunt, they came around for money. I gave a couple of dollars. It was worth it.

Daniel Webster, the great orator. I read “The Devil & Daniel Webster in HS. It was the shortest book on the reading list. Webster is actually a New Hampshire man. I bought my commuter car at a dealership on the highway is Nashua, NH is named for

Massachusetts state house. It stands in front of Boston Common, which is a very lively and pleasant park.

The cemetery in the center contains the graves of famous people such as Paul Revere and John Hancock. It is a small graveyard, but full of the dear departed and tourists.

George Washington on Boston Commons

CJ liked this. It is nobody famous.

Posted by Broadnax at 05:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I went to the big orientation, although most of it does not apply to me. My status is different. Officially, I am faculty. I have a shabby office and can park in the faculty lot. I can audit classes, but not take them for credit unless I pay the big money tuition. This is fine with me. I perceive that some of the classes would be very hard for me. My fellow students look like a high achieving bunch. The average age is 27 and I think I am the oldest person in the group. Fletcher treated us to a picnic lunch. Everything was fine, except there was no Coca-Cola.

I am looking forward to the year ahead.

This is a replica of “Jumbo”. The famous circus promoted PT Barnum was a benefactor of Tufts (who knew?) He donated money to university and donated his famous elephant, Jumbo, to the university. Actually he donated the hide and bones after an oncoming train hit the mighty beast in 1885. The keeper was leading jumbo and Tom Thumb, a dwarf elephant, across the train. According to the story, Jumbo heroically pushed Tom Thumb out of harms way. A stuffed Jumbo remained in the school’s museum until it was destroyed by fire in 1975. Only Jumbo’s tail remains. It is kept in a jar.

The Fletcher School is located in the middle of the Tufts campus. My office is in the building. Tufts looked a lot like Mariza’s Mary Washington. It is the one blueprint for all those types of colleges. Below are more pictures. I like the big beech tree featured below.

Posted by Broadnax at 05:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

We went to Mount Washington today. It is the highest point in New Hampshire and boasts the most variable weather in the U.S. The highest wind speed ever recorded in the world was recorded on the peak in 1934. For us, however, it was a beautiful day, just a little chilly.

Once again, I was impressed with the beauty of New Hampshire. The northern part of the state is mountainous and almost completely forest covered. What is not covered by trees features neat towns. I could live here for a long time. It is clean and peaceful. Beyond that, there is the intellectual power here of great universities.

Family photo. Mariza has gone to Virginia, so she missed the fun. The boys are really getting big.

Gem pool, just before a steep climb. Notice that Alex is taller than CJ. Espen is hiding in the trees. Who knows why?

A view from the trail.

This is at the base of the hill. There is a cog railroad and a restaurant. The sky was sparkling in the crisp air. It was a perfect day.

This is the Bretton Woods resort at the base of Mount Washington. The allies met here in July 1944 and created the monetary system that helped ensure world growth for a generation after World War II. Most important aspects were exchanged rates fixed to the dollar and the dollar fixed to gold at $35 an ounce. The dollar replaced gold as the world standard. They also created the IMF, GATT (which evolved into the WTO) and the World Bank. It was a momentous meeting. Anti Globalists should hate this place. It was the start of our modern global economy. The dollar remained the “gold standard” until 1973. I don’t remember who caused it to fall. Probably the French or Richard Nixon. The institutions created at Bretton Woods are still with us.

Eating out. This is just an ordinary place. There are so many pretty natural places. This terrace overlooks a crystal clear little stream. Alex refuses to smile. Espen does not know I am taking the picture.

Espen and I jumped across on the rocks. I am getting too old and stiff. I was afraid I would slide off the rocks or miss a jump. I noticed that a family was watching me jump from the terrace above. I think they were hoping I would fall in. Funny, no doubt it would have been, but I selfishly avoided entertaining a crowd of strangers.

Posted by Broadnax at 06:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The kids finally got to do something they wanted. Six Flags, New England is not as nice as Busch Gardens or Universal Studios. It has a much more industrial feel to it, more the carnival, less the garden.

Roller coasters

The most interesting aspect was the “Superman” roller coaster. It was the most exciting roller coaster I have ever experienced and the only one that I found a little scary. My previous favorite was Apollo’s Chariot in Busch Gardens. Superman has many of the same good attributes: you feel like you will leave the seat, it is very high and very smooth riding. In addition, it has a 221-foot vertical drop and it shoots down at 77 mph. Mariza and I waited an extra fifteen minutes so that we would get to sit in the front car. It was worth it for the thrill of looking straight down before going into the fall and seeing everything coming at you. The ride lasts more than two minutes, which is an unusually long time for one of these things. We had to wait for about an hour to enjoy these two minutes, but it was worth it.

Return of the forest

We drove down along the Massachusetts turnpike and then I –91. Once again I was amazed how much forest there is in this crowded area. According to what I have read, forest covers more of New England today than almost any time in the last millennium. 100 years ago, more than 2/3 of the land was pasture for horses and cows. Before that, Indians regularly set fire to the woods to encourage game species, such as white tailed deer, and to make it easier to move around in the woods. The forests were the heaviest when the Pilgrims landed in 1620. Smallpox and other European diseases had reached the Indian tribes before the Europeans themselves did. Indian populations along the East Coast had declined precipitously a generation before, and with fewer people to burn the forests, the trees had returned. The Pilgrims did not find a virgin land, as they thought, but they did find a land that had been widowed. Their accounts of the thick forests reflect this anomaly. You can tell what had happened by the types of trees they found. Northern hardwoods and hemlock would have replaced the pines, so famously a part of the landscape, if left undisturbed. The white pine forest peaks about a century after the forest regenerates. That is what the Pilgrims found, and that is what they thought was the natural landscape. The settlers set to chopping the trees for their own purposes and did a pretty effective job of destroying them. The forests reached their lowest point about 1920. Since then, the regeneration has been nothing short of remarkable, although the phenomenon is rarely remarked upon. It happens too slowly to be noticed and seems counter intuitive. As suburbs replace farms, it seems like there would be fewer trees, but think about what a farm looks like - not many trees are allowed to grown on a cornfield. A walk in the woods reveals the situation. You come across stone walls that used to divide farm fields and foundations that used to support houses. Now it looks like virgin forest. Once again nature returns.

It is taller than it looks in the picture. Notice the cars on the top about to go down.

Posted by Broadnax at 05:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

We are looking for houses in New Hampshire and may have found one in a condo community called Century Village. It has most of the things we need and we think it would be easy to rent out, which is a big consideration since we plan to leave in a year. Pictures are below. Tennis and basketball courts are easy walks for the boys. There is a nice pool, but I don’t think we will get much use out of it in the winter months we will be here. The place we hope to buy overlooks a large pond and the roads nearby will probably make good running trails.

Londonderry is a very nice place. It is full of apple orchards and maple trees. Robert Frost’s house is nearby and you can see the birches, pines and stonewalls mentioned in his poems. The town has a Civil War monument that makes me think of Virginia. It looks like the same guys designed it. Of course these boys fought on the other side. The schools, both high school for Alex and middle school for Espen, are good, and New Hampshire schools are good in general. People take pride in their lack of sales and personal income tax. When I asked how the state can get by without the usual taxes, a couple people told me that they do without the socialistic policies of Massachusetts (their words, not mine). The live free or die state does not encourage welfare dependency. There seems to be some rivalry between the states. When we talked to a guy in Massachusetts about New Hampshire, he said, “sure you can live cheaper there, but you will be in New Hampshire.” He obviously did not feel further explanation was necessary. Unemployment is less than 3% in southern NH, but wages are low by regional standards. Londonderry is run by town meeting, in the old New England style. Ordinary citizens are involved in the government. I read the town meeting minutes on the Internet. People bring up whatever they want and evidently feel passionately about some pretty arcane things. The meetings must be more entertaining than television and I look forward to attending the September meeting.

I will also be very happy to be here in the run up to the New Hampshire primary. My guy will run without significant competition, but I will take pleasure in watching the dozens of Democratic dwarfs duke it out in the snow. Maybe I will get to meet them in town meetings. Among these guys, my favorite is Joe Liberman. National newspapers say that John Kerry and Howard Dean will have a leg up since they come from nearby states, but my initial impression is that coming from those states confers no particular advantage beyond a short drive. Unlike its neighbors, New Hampshire went for Bush in the last election, but is considered a swing state by strategists, so it might get some attention from the RNC.

The only downsides of living here are that I have to commute a fairly long way to Tufts (which means buying a second car) and we have to come up with a down payment to buy the house. It takes only about 35 minutes to drive from Londonderry to Tufts on Interstate 93 when there is no traffic (we tested it ourselves), but I can't count on happy state of affairs every time I drive. I also understand that it snows around here. I noticed people have the habit of talking about snow in terms of feet and yards, not inches. This is probably not a good sign. Still, all things considered, life is good. I keep on looking for something bad about this assignment at Tufts, but I still can't find anything serious. After a life spent honing the fine art of complaining, I am at a loss. Given time, however, I will come up with some appropriate sarcasm and figure out the nefarious plan State Department manifestly devised to mistreated me by making me come to a place I think is great and paying me to go to a school that – given my grades, SAT & attitude - would never let me in if I applied as a student.

Below is the pond near our house. Alex wants a little canoe so that he can paddle to a small island in the middle. I suppose he will only use it once or twice, but I think it might be a good idea to indulge him – with an old canoe of course. Mariza is doing the model pose in the picture. The woman in purple is the real estate agent Alina Tobin. She moved from Poland in the 1980s. We didn’t know that about her before we called the office. It is a small world. She was so happy to talk to someone who had been to her home country; I think we saved a couple of percentage points on the commission. She was a very nice woman, very helpful and, as an American by choice, very proud of her new home in New Hampshire.

Potential running trails steps outside the door. The scar on the road, I am told, is where they recently laid cable for high-speed Internet connections. This is good, since I hope to telecommute some days.

This is the view from outside the back door. The grass is not on our property, but we can use it. The best of all conditions – use without mowing responsibilities. You can't see the pond on this picture. It is just on the other side of the first group of trees.

Inside. The place is not that big, but should be enough for us. It was built in the 1980s and still has that “look”, which I do not like too much. I actually like the pond and the trees. That is what draws me to this place. Most of New Hampshire is covered with trees, so I figure it can't be too hard to get wood for the fireplace. I do enjoy making fires and I will enjoy making the boys spit wood. I really like to chop wood myself. It was always the service I provided to anyone I visited who had a wood stove. Anyway, it builds character. Chop your own wood and it will warm you twice, said Ben Franklin. CJ can fix house problems, such as the sliding doors. We will have to paint. This is the front room. Below are the potential boys’ bedroom (with loft) and the basement that CJ may make into another bedroom.

Reports have it that the boys don’t look happy in the pictures, so I asked them to smile. Espen complied with a fake smile. Alex made a special effort to look unhappy. But I caught them a couple second later looking sincerely happier. I think they will like this place.

Posted by Broadnax at 05:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Looking for houses.

We have been looking around in Winchester, MA. It is a very nice place, but house are expensive and a little old. It reminds me of my college days - the dumps I lived in then. One time part of the walls of our basement just fell in. I had to put up plastic sheets with duct tape to keep out the cold air. The landlord never bothered to fix the damage. By the time he got around to thinking about it, the winter of our discontent had been replaced by glorious summer and there was no immediate threat of cold air. I moved out before the next onset of cold weather. I think the word to describe most of the apartments we have visited is "funky". I don't like funky. Actually I like neighborhoods were everyone else lives in such houses but I no longer enjoy funky houses with "character". I prefer sunlight and air, and the lack of musty smell.

I love the area, however. In Winchester, you can walk to all the stores. There are several lakes in town. Parks and running trails abound. There seems to be little crime, no litter and no graffiti. If I could find a non-funky house with enough room for the family - one that I could afford - I could be very happy here.

We are thinking of New Hampshire. It is a long commute, but housing is supposed to be much cheaper there and the towns are just a quaint. We are looking in Londonderry, NH. New Hampshire's most famous natural monument was a rock formation called the old man of the mountain. I say, "was" because it collapsed. It hung from the same ancient mountainside since the last ice age and then a couple of month ago it just fell off. Nothing lasts forever. Elvis has left the building. I guess that is something I will never see, not that I planned to anyway, but there are lots of lakes and mountains I will get to enjoy. Another good thing about New Hampshire is that it has no income or sales tax. Government is small and close to the people. I also like the state slogan "live free or die". It is on the license plates. Convicts make license plates. Imagine the cognitive dissonance when you spend your time behind bars stamping plates with the slogan "live free or die" - "live free or die" - "live free or die" - hundreds of times each day. I suppose that adds to the punishment. I don't expect to become a convict and I would consider living in the Granite State just so I could have drive around with such a cool slogan on my plate.

Speaking of driving around, we have been noticing the strange driving habits around here. People drive slowly, but poorly. They are always cutting each other off, sometimes in spectacular fashion. It seems socially acceptable to make a left turn from the right lane or to pull out in front of oncoming traffic. Massachusetts has stronger gun control than Virginia. Do some of these things in the Old Dominion and you may get a quick and painful introduction to Smith & Wesson. You have to drive slowly around here because they mark the roads so poorly. You don't see many signs in general and they don't bother to mark major roads, except on major intersections. How stupid is that? If you are lost you stay lost. On the plus side, people here are tolerant of each other's bad habits. I have not heard drivers beeping their horns as a form of protest. Of course, I have only been in the Boston suburbs so far. I have heard nothing good about traffic in Boston. Maybe conditions are different in the heart of darkness.

August 12, 2003

Salem, MA

In 1692 twenty people were executed for witchcraft in the famous trials. Most were hanged; one man was crushed by stones. Nobody was burned. By European standards of the time, this was not a big deal, but it was the most famous persecution in America. It all started when a group of girls were playing silly games and listening to scary stories. Soon they started to accuse their neighbors of making deals with the devil. In the climate of the times, they were believed. It was a horrible example of mass hysteria. Most of the people really believed in witches. We went to the witch museum, where the whole thing was portrayed as intolerance, and gives examples of anti Commie campaigns, AIDS crisis and racism. I don't agree with the characterization. The witch-hunts were an example of superstition, lack of due process and maybe mass hysteria. The victims were not members of minority groups and the accusers were not people in authority. Nobody could say the obvious: that there is no such thing as witchcraft. One man who tried - a William Proctor - was himself accused of witchcraft and hanged. The closest modern parallel are trials having to do with accusations of sexual abuse. Today, licensed therapists replace the 1690s witch hunters. You have those famous trials of the 1990s, where children accused various adults without physical evidence. There were some guilty individuals, but it turns out that most of the abuse was created in the minds of the poor kids by therapists with agendas. It was very similar to the witch-hunts in methods. A couple years later, we all see how society was caught up in the hysteria and many of us feel ashamed. We forget that in both these cases the people who perpetrated these terrible injustices thought they were doing good in an evil world, and they did their nefarious deed in full view of the public with the willing support of "the people". It was democratic. The jury at the first witch-trial found the defendant NOT guilty, but changed its verdict after the little girl "victims" wailed and cried and the public demanded the self-evident finding of guilt. It is easy to point the finger of blame at these benighted people of the past and let our tolerant selves off the hook. We can feel virtuous, but that would mean we learn nothing from the past. The real lesson is that we must rely on strong institutions and rule of law, not strong personalities and rule of the politically correct majority.

Modern Salem is a very cute town. We drove on to Marblehead on the coast and Marblehead Neck. That is even nicer. It is a lot like Disneyland. Everything is nice, and perfect and newly painted. I don't think any poor people are living there, at least not after the police have swept through. The kids at the local tennis club all had nice white uniforms. There was an order on the headland. I tried to explain to Alex the difference between old and new money. A century ago, people whose ancestors made their money through war, slavery and piracy (otherwise known as the nobility) looked down on those who made it through commerce and industry (capitalists). I am not sure how it is now. The Kennedys are a big deal around here. Their money comes from smuggling booze and manipulating the political system. I am not sure if that represents commerce or piracy, but no living Kennedy has even actually earned an honest dollar. (You know that more people have died in Ted Kennedy's car than in all the nuclear accidents in the U.S. ) I would be a lot prouder to earn my own money than get it from my father or grandfather. My father, in his wisdom, spared me the former embarrassment, and I have not yet achieved the latter. The old money is mostly gone, or shadowed into insignificance by much larger new fortunes. College dropout Bill Gates would probably not be invited to the ever shrinking circle of old rich, but he probably wouldn't notice the shunning, or care if he did. I suppose going to the right school still makes a difference. You can always tell a Harvard man, you just can't tell him too much at one time. The problem with being of the elite these days is that nobody knows about it anymore except you. In America you can't lord it over others. What a shame.

Chris and John in Salem. CJ is scared of the witches of Salem. I am on the mobile phone trying to get pre-approved for a mortgage from USAA in case we buy something in New Hampshire, which is more frightening in many ways. Notice my new white beard. Last time I checked, it was reddish brown - the old keep getting older and the young must do the same. Now people mistake me for Sean Connery all the time. Notice the close resemblance. Imagine him without the toupee and me much better looking and there is no significant difference between us. Anyway, we both have white beards and that's enough. Mine will be nicer in a month when it either grows in or I shave it off. I am growing a beard to compensate for my general lack of hair, at least that is what Mariza tells me. I just figured I should look more professorial for my new job at Tufts. By the way, I successfully resisted the urge to give myself more hair electronically with "Paint Shop Pro" or just substitute a picture of Sean. Of course I do plan to take a picture of the nicest house in Boston and claim that's where we live - shit I should not have revealed my audacious plan.

An old Salem house. They look nice on the outside, but you know they are funky and smell funny on the inside. Also notice how narrow the place is and you can bet the bathrooms are foul. I like other people to live in such places because they are quaint. I prefer houses that look old on the outside, but have the latest of modern improvements on the inside. A good rule is to never sit on a toilet older than you are or step into a shower that remembers Ronald Reagan. Progress has been made. People who lived in these old houses would not have done so if they had a choice. Old fixtures are the true horrors of a haunted house.

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