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Punkin’

By Brian Filed in Life Tagged with , , , , October 13th, 2008 @ 1:40 pm

Yesterday we were looking for some destination to justify a leaf-peeping expedition for the afternoon. It’s nice enough to drive the back roads and enjoy the scenery, but we are always happier if there’s something at the end of the road worth visiting. Last year, our trek took us to a tiny little gift shop at the top of a twisting, muddy rutted road near Greenville, New Hampshire and from there to the peak of Pack Monadnock, the baby brother of Mt. Monadnock. But we didn’t want to repeat ourselves, and so Bridget scoured some websites looking for ideas.

What she found was this: Yankee Siege, a massive iron trebuchet that lives on a farm in Greenfield, New Hampshire, about an hour’s ride from our house. The Yankee Siege is the current World’s Champion of the international Punkin’ Chunkin’ Competition held annually in Delaware. Every fall, as they practice hurling ten-pound pumpkins to warm up for the competition, the Yankee Siege team opens their field to the public to come and watch.

Well, the drive, which was pretty much straight up Route 3 to Nashua and then across State Highway 101, wasn’t all that scenic, I’m afraid, since most of it consisted of the Nashua malls, but the destination made it all worthwhile. We got there around 2:30 just as they were about to fire off a shot. The crowd was actually pretty large; about as many people as you might find at a small apple-picking venue. At one end of the field is a mock-up of a castle, complete with stone walls, and at the other is the absolutely massive trebuchet.

The base of the trebuchet is over 50 feet tall, and with the complete throwing arm reaches 63.5 feet in height. It is capable of launching a payload of up to 300 pounds and uses almost 6 tons of counterweight ballast. That’s a lot of power to hurl a medium-sized pumpkin, and they hold the world record distance at 1702 feet. Unofficially, they have gone over 2000 feet, and they hope to achieve that in competition this year.

They do several throws over the course of an afternoon, about once every half hour, to accommodate the visitors. In between, there is time to explore the castle, get up close to the trebuchet, check out the other things they have on display, and, of course, spend money on snacks and souvenirs (I got a t-shirt!). They also operate a farm stand, where we bought a large pumpkin. Now, if I only had a trebuchet!

Unlike our unhappy apple picking experience last weekend, we all had a blast watching the trebuchet, riding in an ox-cart, and enjoying what scenery we could on the ride. I will definitely want to go see this awesome machine in operation again. Here’s a video I shot using my digital camera of the trebuchet in action:

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A Cinderella Story

By Brian Filed in Blogs Tagged with , , , , May 13th, 2008 @ 2:12 pm

If you grew up in New England any time in the last 50 years or so, there’s a pretty high likelihood that you paid at least one visit to Story Land in Glen, NH during the summers of your childhood. The theme park has been a fixture of New England vacationeers since 1953, predating Disneyland itself by a couple of years. I first visited Story Land when I was about 10, if I recall correctly — a little old for a park that’s squarely aimed at the younger kids, and so I only went a couple of times.

We took Charlotte there for the first time in 2004, not too long after my heart surgery. Not much had changed in the 30 years since the last time I had visited, but that wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. There were a few new rides and one whole section of the park that was a recent addition (plus obvious signs that there were more additions to come), but the basic attractions were all still there. The one of greatest import to Charlotte that summer was Cinderella’s castle. She was in the full throes of her Disney Princess phase that summer and the ONLY thing in the park that she wanted anything to do with was the castle and seeing Cinderella “in person”.

Though we did visit one other time, the group consensus at our house is that Story Land is pretty much a been-there-done-that for us, and not in the same league of cherished family traditions as York Beach. Nevertheless, I was completely intrigued and fascinated by this post at The Smart Set by contributor Meg Favreau. She worked at Story Land as a teenager and was one of the girls who got to be Cinderella. She doesn’t say what year her story took place, but she talks about one of the newer attractions and mentions the Internet, so it stands to reason that it was within the last 10-12 years. I have always wondered what it was like to have a summer job at an amusement park, so that alone would have been enough to recommend this article to you, but the tie-in to Story Land AND the fact that she was Cinderella make it a must.

SPOILER: Being Cinderella isn’t exactly a fairy tale.

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Quote Of The Day

By Brian Filed in Links Tagged with , , , , April 29th, 2008 @ 3:46 pm

Slate has a new piece by our old friend Christopher Hitchens which addresses whether or not John McCain is nucking futz. Hitch plays it a bit cagily, but for the most part seems to say that he, too, goes along with the conventional wisdom that McCain is a loose cannon and who the hell knows what might set him off. After all, McCain is the guy who called his wife a cunt in front of campaign staffers, and has been known to get physically violent and verbally abusive with his peers.

But the quote I wanted to share isn’t even about John McCain. It’s about former Republican senator from New Hampshire Bob Smith, who is probably best remembered by people outside of New Hampshire as the guy who quit the Republican party after his own failed presidential bid in 2000 and tried to run as an independent, then went back to the Republicans with his tail between his legs in order to claim a juicy committe chairmanship. He lost his re-election bid in 2002, but made noise about running for President again as an independent.

Aaaaaaaanyway, this was Hitchens’ appraisal of Smith:

He combines the body of an ox with the brains of a gnat. Indeed, if his brains were made of gunpowder and were to accidentally explode, the resulting bang would not even be enough to disarrange his hair.

Well, given the amount of plaster he has to use for that combover, it’s no wonder.

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Live Free Or Die!

By Brian Filed in News Tagged with , , , , , , , , , February 14th, 2008 @ 2:28 pm

Betty Hall is a state representative for Hillsborough, District 5, in the New Hampshire state legislature.

She’s 87 years old and has been a state rep for 14 years.  She recently introduced a bill to the legislature calling for the impeachment of George Bush and Dick Cheney.  The bill will have its first public hearing next Tuesday.

To that end, she has also announced that she is joining a hunger strike being organized by a women’s political action group called Code Pink.  She says that she will fast until Congressman John Conyers begins impeachment proceedings in the U.S. House Judiciary Committee, and is ready to die for the cause.  “I’ve had a good life. I can’t think of any better way to end it,” she told a blogger from the group AfterDowningStreet.org.

According to this blogger, the pressure on Conyers from the public is at an all-time high.  His office’s phone lines are swamped, the fax machines are all but unreachable, and he’s receiving so much e-mail that his official Congressional e-mail address is bouncing all incoming mail.

Conyers has agreed to meet with a representative of the fasters, and has indicated that he’s willing to begin inquiriess into impeachment, which is a very small first step, but at least it’s more ground than he’s been willing to give to date.  Resultingly, it appears that Dennis Kucinich reached a deal with Conyers not to reintroduce his impeachment bill to the floor of the House in exchange for the official inquiry.

Representative Hall has apparently decided that her state’s motto is more than just a tag line on a license plate.

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The OTHER New Hampshire Primary

By Brian Filed in Links Tagged with , , , , , , , January 10th, 2008 @ 1:01 pm

In this primary, the black candidate did win, there were no last-minute crying jags, and ALL the candidate supported torture (of mice).

Nin, the cat who lived in the weather observatory high atop Mount Washington in the New Hampshire White Mountains, recently retired at the advanced age of 17, so the fellows who work at the observatory (and apparently have plenty of spare time) decided to let the Internet choose which one of three potential pussycats would be the new resident feline.

Marty The Cat

The winner, with a whopping 53% of the vote, was Marty.

I think it’s only fitting that the winning cat’s name should be Marty. Those of us who grew up in Northern New England will unquestionably remember Marty Engstrom (YouTube link), who gave the weather report live from the observatory on WMTW Channel 8 for many, many years.

Marty Engstrom

It might not be quite the same as the Bush-Clinton dynasty, but having a “Marty On The Mountain” is a bit of a New England tradition.

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The BKO News Briefing: New Hampshire Primary Edition

By Brian Filed in News Tagged with , , , , , , , , January 9th, 2008 @ 3:05 pm

Carrier Pigeon Carrier

A few bits and pieces I’ve seen today wrapping up yesterday’s New Hampshire primary:

1. Probably the best thing I read this morning was this op-ed at Salon by Glenn Greenwald about a bit of conversation between Chris “Tweety-Bird” Matthews and Tom Brokaw during NBC’s live coverage. It’s Greenwald’s assertion that despite the high-falutin’ Murrow-esque platitudes from Brokaw, it’s Matthews who makes the most revealing statement. The 24-hour news media have absolutely nothing of significance to say, and yet they blather on around the clock about the political horserace, spewing total speculation as “fact” and reducing an incredibly complex situation into nonsensical absurdities such as days’ worth of arguments about the price of haircuts, the color of neckties, and (when it’s Hillary) necklines and crow’s feet.

My own feeling is that the 24-hour news channels have been incredibly destructive to the public sphere of information. In the “good old days” when each network had exactly 22 minutes of news time per day, they under-covered important news out of necessity, and we all longed for more time to permit better coverage. But 24 hours a day times 3 full-time news networks PLUS the traditional half-hour nightly shows and assorted other news programs is complete overkill, and they simply can’t make adequate use of it.

2. One of the important stories coming out of New Hampshire and Iowa is the significantly-increased voter turnout, especially among younger and Democratic voters. Obama’s win in Iowa last week is credited to a 77% increase in voter turnout for the caucuses, which traditionally only attract party die-hards. And most of the people who turned out in Iowa were the demographically-critical 17-25 year-olds, who in turn were predominantly Obama supporters. Last night in New Hampshire. voter turnout was so far above expected numbers that the NH Secretary of State’s office nearly ran out of ballots to send to towns that were experiencing shortages.

High voter turnout is almost always good for Democratic candidates and bad for Republican candidates. Republicans pray for rainy or snowy election days, and the party does whatever it can to limit voter enrollment, to purge voter lists, and otherwise prevent people from voting. Democrats, on the other hand, would send a schoolbus to a graveyard if they thought they could get fifty people to the polls. But even the Republicans turned out yesterday in more numbers than expected; personally, I think they were making sure Mitt Romney got a great big FUCK YOU from our Neighbor to the North. The high turnout on the Democratic side shows that Clinton’s organization in New Hampshire had deep roots and could get the job done when it was needed the most.

What I hope the high turnout numbers mean is that the people of this country have been shocked back into realizing that VOTING COUNTS. That Karl Rove’s dirty tricks weren’t just the usual electioneering shenanigans, but that the nation has been brought to its knees politically by a system that was designed to be easy to rig.

3. Across the pond, British political writer Mick Hume tries to put an outsider’s perspective to what the “Change vs. Experience” meme really means. What he comes up with is tantamount to the old Texas saying “all hat, no cattle”. Our political system was designed purposefully to drive to the middle to prevent single-interest or extremist issues from dominating the electoral process. So “Change” isn’t particularly about any real change at all, merely a reaction to the dissatisfaction with the present keepers of power, which is why Hillary (and even Mike Huckabee) can make a legitimate claim to offering “change” just as much as Obama.

4. TV Newser found itself in the middle of a rumor mill yesterday, posting word that Bill Clinton’s two main campaign advisers, Paul Begala and James Carville, were signing on to the Hillary campaign. They had to post several updates throughout the day as Begala and then Carville both denied the story, and it appears that the blog was being given an insider story as conflict about the two men was going on inside Hillary’s camp. Finally, just about an hour ago from the time I am writing this, TV Newser has posted a firm denial from Begala. No more word from Serpent-Head yet.

5. So the race between Hillary and Obama will definitely continue into MegaTuesday on February 5 and might not be decided by then, even though we’ve all thought it would be for some time. If they stay this close, trading victories and keeping apace in the delegate count, it is possible that the DNC convention might actually be where the nomination is decided for the first time since, oh, 1960. If that’s the case, the Progressive Review says that the convention rules give Hillary Clinton the advantage in being able to put together the number of delegates needed to win. That means Hillary doesn’t need to knock Obama out completely, but Obama better hope he can pull in a few more Iowas than New Hampshires.

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The First Ballot

By Brian Filed in Life, News Tagged with , , , , , , , , January 8th, 2008 @ 4:12 pm

Donna Kaye Erwin

So, apparently there’s this little business of an election in New Hampshire today that has a few people paying attention….

Before Jimmy Carter was the Democratic nominee in 1976, he began his trek to the White House as “Jimmy Who???” in New Hampshire, campaigning long before anyone else, doing more than due diligence by meeting the voters one-on-one. New Hampshire’s primary had been first in the nation since the 1950s, but Carter’s surprise win there and his subsequent capture of the nomination and then the White House turned the curious little election into the Most Important Event in American politics.

So, every four years like clockwork, the news media invade New Hampshire for a few weeks, and inevitably focus on Dixville Notch, the tiny town that opens its polls at midnight on primary day, a good six hours or so before all the others, and since there are only a handful of voters in town the results are known almost immediately. Prior to 1976, this was just a cute photo op for the pages of Life magazine, but these days the news media treat the couple of dozen voters like they were the deciding ballots for the whole election.

As it so happens, I have a personal connection to Dixville Notch. Dixville Notch is the town where The Balsams Resort is located, and my wife’s college friend Donna and her husband Rick are employees of the resort — she is the ski instructor, and he is the musical director. In fact, they actually live at the resort (nice, eh?), and for the past several election cycles have been part of the ballyhoo of the primary.

In the photograph above, you can see Donna casting the very first ballot in Dixville Notch. For a few years now, the polling place for the primary has been at the resort itself (let’s face it, there isn’t much THERE there, y’know?), and most of the people voting are the resort employees who live there. This isn’t the first time that Donna has been The First Voter, either. Somewhere I have a video clip of her from the 2004 election, too.

Rick Erwin

Rick is also part of the act. He’s one of the voting officials. In this MSNBC photo, he’s jotting down the final vote tallies so they can all go home and go to bed like normal people. They’ve got lots of snow up in the mountains this winter, so I’ll bet business at the resort is booming. Of course, all the media people clog the hotels closest to the Manchester airport so they can get the fuck out of Dodge tomorrow morning, but maybe Brian Williams or Katie Couric might stay over and enjoy the luxurious accommodations.

The only unfortunate bit of news I have to relate to you about this is that they voted Republican, more’s the pity.

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Lies, Damned Lies, And Statistics

By Brian Filed in Links Tagged with , , , , , , , , November 16th, 2007 @ 3:55 pm

Alcohol Consumption Per Capita

This map (via) purports to show the per-capita alcohol consumption of the United States state-by-state. In fact, in its full form, it also shows the per-capita consumption of most of Europe, Japan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand. The nice people at that website also very helpfully provide a chart that breaks it down into numbers for you (just below the maps). The conclusion: Luxembourg has the highest per-capita alcohol consumption rate in the world, followed by, of all places, the state of New Hampshire.

Oh, those boozehounds! Those lushy Luxemburgers, those grog-swilling Granite Staters! And they must be having an identity crisis in Ireland because they finished sixth, behind France and Nevada!

But wait…let’s look a little closer at this, shall we?

The U.S. map is based on data from the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, and specifically a report they issued in 2004 on alcohol (ethanol) consumption from 1970-2004. There’s a lot of data on that page, but if you scroll all the way to the very bottom you’ll discover this citation: U.S. Apparent Consumption of Alcoholic Beverages Based on State Sales, Taxation, or Receipt Data. Washington, DC: NIAAA. NIH Publication No. 04-5563 (June 2004).

In other words, they made a direct correlation between the amount of alcohol SOLD and the amount of alcohol CONSUMED.

But what does virtually every person who lives in New England know about New Hampshire that the researchers didn’t seem to take into account? The giant state liquor stores strategically located on every major highway coming into the state, mere feet from the borders of their surrounding neighbors. For decades, New Englanders (and also more than a few vacationing New Yorkers and even Quebecois) have dutifully driven to the nearest New Hampshire border to buy cheap, tax-free booze. Every weekend you can see dozens of cars from Massachusetts, Maine, Vermont, etc. parked in the lots, loading up their trunks with case after case of beer, wine, and spirits.

So, while living in New Hampshire might very well drive a man to drink, I’m willing to say that this particular statistic is a bit skewed by this intervening variable. Whether the same thing is true for Nevada, I can’t say, but given the worldwide popularity of Las Vegas, it’s a pretty good bet that the numbers for that state are off as well.

So what’s up with Luxembourg?

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Summer Fun

By Brian Filed in Life Tagged with , , , , August 7th, 2007 @ 12:40 pm

Brian and Charlotte ride the log flume
Click here for a larger version

The office where I work had its summer outing at Canobie Lake Park in nearby Salem, NH a couple of weekends ago. For years I have made it my personal policy not to go to company outings, office holiday parties and the like. It’s forced socializing with people I already spend too much time with and their vaguely familiar spouses and/or families. Inevitably, someone you have to see at work the next day makes an ass of themselves after too many drinks, or some corporate HR stooge makes a little tick mark in your permanent record about how much loyalty to the boss you demonstrate, or you find out something you REALLY didn’t want to know about someone you only see twice a year. Somehow, the food ALWAYS sucks, regardless of how expensive the place you go is. Any way you look at it, it’s a recipe for two to four hours of unnecessary grief, and I avoid it like the plague.

So why did I relent this year? Well, partly because the compulsory socializing with the co-workers was kept to an absolute minimum. The people I work with are all nice enough, but see above for my several reasons for not wanting to spend any extra time with them. For this outing, the deal was that everybody would gather for lunch in the corporate catering area, but otherwise you were on your own for the day to enjoy the park. Which leads directly to the other part — free admission to the park. A visit to Canobie has become a regular event on our summer calendar at The (Real) Big Red House, and this way we could do it for “free” (the admission was free; any “extra” items like sno-cones or tchotchkes were out-of-pocket). Given the ever-increasing cost of places like this, it was well worth the half an hour of sharing picnic bench space with my co-workers in exchange for the free rides.
Read more

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Are You Really A Masshole If You Live In Providence?

By Brian Filed in Links Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , July 17th, 2007 @ 12:00 pm

greaterboston.gif

So, I just read this post by one of the contributors at Mental Floss, where she did a little quick figuring to address the question of how likely it is that anyone from a given state in the U.S. will be from that state’s largest city. In other words, if you’re from New York, how likely is it that you’re from New York City?

In the case of New York and NYC, it’s actually almost a 50-50 proposition that a New Yorker is also a New Yorker, if you follow me. But she looked at a bunch of cities and has posted the results for your interest.

Somehow, she left Boston off the list. Tragic oversight, obviously. So here I am to fill in the gaps for you.

The City of Boston’s estimated population as of 2005 is roughly 559,000 people (and you thought Boston was A LOT bigger, didn’t you?). The population of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts was 6,437,193 in 2006. you can do your own math, but the answer is that only 8.68% of the people who live in Massachusetts are residents of Boston.

Which seems to fly in the face of reason, right? Well, that’s because most of us who “live in Boston” actually live in the Greater Boston Metropolitan Area, our grandparents having had the good sense to flee the city decades ago in favor of such charming burbs as Everett, Randolph, and the like.

According to that Wikipedia link, these days the reach of the Greater Boston Metropolitan Area extends to about 30% of the total area of the state and has a population of 4,411,835. That’s 68.53% of the total population of Massachusetts, meaning 2 out of every 3 people in Massachusetts are “from Boston” in the larger sense. If you fold in some of the satellite cities that are also considered part of the total statistical area such as Manchester NH, Providence RI and Worcester MA, the overall population is 7,427,336, or 115% of the population of Massachusetts.

That’s a lot of Massholes.

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