4342 miles for freedom

launch of the free state observer

2006-02-26T11:23:00.000-05:00

I'm relocating this blog to http://www.freestateobserver.com , a new website providing an insiders' view of liberty activism in the Free State of New Hampshire. Please update your bookmarks and follow me there!

when it rains, it pours

2006-02-19T18:55:00.000-05:00

It's been a rough week for your intrepid reporter. Last Sunday I was snowbound by the biggest snowstorm of the season, lasting from before I woke up until well past dark. The next day, the weather reverted to unseasonably warm, so that the 16.5 inches of beautiful snow we got disappeared quite rapidly. On Friday it poured, which destroyed what little snow was left. Meanwhile, I've had the worst toothache of my life, on and off (mostly on), all week. It was the first Valentine's Day since splitting up with my husband. I had to work overtime every day. And the biggest project I'm assigned to at work is rapidly turning into a shitstorm of legendary proportions. Meanwhile, a friend sent me an angry, expletive-laced email commenting on a few of my personality flaws. I think I set a new personal record for quantity of alcohol consumed; if only drinking were an Olympic sport, "I mighta been a contendah!" Despite all that, I found time to speak with a PR consultant about a possible magazine interview on women and guns, which would get the FSP some much-needed publicity. And I have been working feverishly on the next incarnation of this blog, which should be ready for launch within the next week; stay tuned! On a more positive note, I was gruntled to be elected to the FSP's Board of Directors. Crafty strategic move on the part of the voters, or blatant example of the tyranny of the majority and democracy run amok? Guess you'll have to decide that for yourself.

"What an incredible Cinderella story, this unknown comes outta no where to lead the pack, at Augusta. He's on his final hole, he's about 455 yards away -- he's gonna hit about a 2-iron, I think. Oh he got all of that one! ... This crowd has gone deathly silent, the Cinderella story, outta nowhere, a former greenskeeper now -- about to become The Masters champion. It looks like a mirac -- It's in the hole!" - Bill Murray, in a manically brilliant improvisational moment

only fools rush in

2006-02-12T09:11:00.000-05:00

There have been numerous attempts to form libertarian "intentional communities" i.e. getting a group of libertarians to move to the same general area, whether it be a town, a county, an island, a state, a floating structure, etc. Some failed before they even got started; some went down in flames; and some are just getting going. The Free State Project is definitely in the third category, and in my opinion has already resulted in the formation of a legitimate libertarian community in New Hampshire. The wedding I attended this weekend demonstrates this beautifully. Background info: About a year ago JR, an FSP participant, early mover, tireless liberty activist, and all-around cool guy, hooked up with AB, a lifelong native of NH, a total sweetheart who works with disadvantaged youth, loves to cook, is always willing to lend a hand, but please don't try telling her what to do because she is a Yankee through and through and it's just not gonna happen. (She can also handle a deck of cards like a Vegas dealer.) I met JR before I even moved to New Hampshire; when I made a scouting trip here, he drove 60 miles to attend a Monadnock Porcupines meeting that he knew I would be attending, to "lobby" on behalf of Manchester. The Monadnock group lobbied on behalf of the Keene region; the Seacoast Porcupines group leader lobbied on behalf of the Seacoast. It was like the Dating Game: three men I had never met before all urging me to move to THEIR town! I wound up moving to Manchester, and through a combination of joint political activism, a shared love of sci fi, and an inability to defeat AB at poker, came to consider JR a friend. Even so, when I received an invitation to his wedding, I was surprised; I haven't been to that many weddings. Actually, since moving to New Hampshire, I now have a far bigger and more active "social circle" than I've ever had in my life; not a month goes by that there isn't a party, a BBQ, a dinner party, a poker game, a group outing to the movies... It's really nice. And I got all this without having to get up early on Sunday morning, pay membership dues or wear a fez. Prior to the wedding, I had many unanswered questions: who else was invited? Would I be fed? Was it going to be a religious ceremony, a civil ceremony, or neither? I had no idea about the religious leanings of the bride and groom. I knew that some libertarians are opposed to government sanctioned marriage. The ceremony was to take place in an Elks Club, but I had no idea what that means; I have a vague sense that an Elks Club is a fraternal organization where guys sit around wearing antlers. The day arrived. I carpooled with another guest, a Free Stater who was lucky enough to have already been living in NH when it won the state vote, so no move was required. He has been a libertarian activist in NH for a good 25 years now, and has many stories to tell. Arriving at the Elks Club, it immediately looked like it was going to be a fun evening: there was food, a bar (which guests were visiting before the ceremony even took place), a dance floor, and libertarians everywhere you looked. Seriously, there were probably more libertarians at that wedding than at most state LP conventions. Some people were formally dressed; others weren't. The ubiquitous cute little kids scampered around. The ceremony, which turned out to be civil (i.e. legally binding) but not religious, was short and sweet. JR's coolness quotient escalated in my book when I realized that the man performing the ceremony was the chair of the New Hampshire Libertarian Party (apparently he's a justice of the peace)! The best man, another FSP early mover, toasted the bride and groom. The newlyweds danced their first dance (to Elvis' Can't Help Falling in Love). All official business then out of the way, we were free to eat, drink, dance and make merry, which we most certainly did. A DJ spun popular tunes and coordinated various games, and everyone was a good sport about participating. Male relatives of the bride performed a surprisingly realistic Chippendales-style strip-tease. The highlight of the evening had to be the command performance of the Village People's YMCA by four high profile FSP early movers: SC as the construction worker; VS as the Indian chief; CP as the traffic cop (and can that guy dance! who knew??); and most comically, RK as the cop. It was hilarious. All in all, a wonderful evening.

schoolhouse rock

2006-02-04T19:50:00.000-05:00

When I was a kid, Saturday morning was one of the highlights of my week. My mom would usually buy something sugar-laden and unhealthy like cinnamon rolls or fruit-filled Danish pastries, and I'd wake up extra early to get in a good solid morning of sugar buzz and cartoons. Bugs Bunny was my favorite, always sticking it to the man and delivering a well-timed smartass remark. I also enjoyed Schoolhouse Rock episodes, which were little musical cartoons designed to be educational. And they actually worked! I still know all the words to the Preamble of the Constitution, although I have an embarrassing tendency to sing them. I know the purpose of a conjunction, as well as several other grammatical constructs. And I remember the sad little bill stuck in committee, hoping to one day become a real live law. I've been thinking about that little bill a lot lately, because I've been participating in the New Hampshire Liberty Alliance's bill triage team and reading bills 'til my eyes bleed. Basically, the team reads every single bill going through the New Hampshire legislature, rates each one as to its pro- or anti-liberty qualities, and tries to mobilize activists to lobby for or against particularly noteworthy ones. There are 1031 bills this session, so you can imagine the effort involved. There are about 30 of us working on this, most of us recent transplants to the state as members of the Free State Project. After a day at the office, my coworkers go home and watch Friends reruns or American Idol. I go home and read the latest "masterpieces" coming out of the House Committee on Environment and Agriculture, as well as the Senate Committee on Environment and Wildlife. Frankly, it's a bit demoralizing; there are so many bad (by "bad" I mean anti-liberty, pro-big government) bills, and a few laughably stupid ones, not to mention the ones that make me want to pound my head against my keyboard in frustration. And this is in New Hampshire; I shudder to even think about what's going through the California legislature right now. We are so few in number here; we can't fight them all. In fact, we can't fight more than a fraction of them, hence the use of the term "triage", which means sorting the ones who can be saved from those who are goners. I console myself by imagining myself in my favorite David vs Goliath scenarios from various books and movies (the ones in which David WINS, obviously!): Luke Skywalker and the Rebel Alliance vs Darth Vader and the Galactic Empire... Malcolm Reynolds and the crew of Serenity vs the Alliance and the men with blue hands... Mad Max vs western Australia... Harry Potter vs Lord Voldemort (ok, it remains to be seen who's going to win that one, but my money's on the Boy who Lived). At any rate, my point is that, while it sometimes looks grim, it's not hopeless. That's not the fat lady singing; it's just a bill, only a bill, sitting there on Capitol Hill....

seasick

2006-01-28T08:40:00.000-05:00

People sometimes ask me if I miss California, and my response is generally "no, not at all". That's not entirely true; there are things I miss, or remember fondly. But it doesn't really make me sad, because there are an equal or greater number of things in New Hampshire that I have come to love. So far I have run into very few things I enjoyed in California that I haven't found a decent surrogate for here. First on my list would have to be Carl's Jr., my favorite fast food burger chain. Apparently there used to be one (just one!) in NH, but it must have closed down in the not too distant past; one month it was listed on the corporate website, and the next month it wasn't. I'm embarrassed to admit how many times I drove all the way out to the seacoast and cruised the streets of a particular town, desperately seeking a Bacon Guacamole $6 Burger, before figuring this out. The closest Carl's Jr (or Hardee's, as they call it on this side of the Continental Divide) is now in New York State. Woe is me! Burritos. God told Jose he would "rain bread from heaven". He provided Burritos, a new food that appeared with the dew each morning as large, white, round pieces of flat bread, filled with a variety of spicy, succulent fillings and rolled into a convenient, easy-to-carry log shape. The Californians were to gather each day the amount of Burritos they needed for that day. No more, no less. Each day God would give them that day's burritos. They were to trust Him each day for the very food they ate. On the sixth day, He would provide two day's burritos, so no one would work to gather them on the Sabbath. If one of them was mistrustful, and tried to stock up, their burrito would melt or rot away, or the salsa would lose its picante quality, or the tortilla would tear and spill out the contents, making an inconvenient mess. The Californians steamed, grilled and prepared the burritos several ways. They tasted sweet, like bread stuffed with marinated pork and grilled peppers. Exodus 16 3/4 San Francisco Bay, as viewed from the Marin Headlands, or the peak of Angel Island, or the 22 Fillmore cresting the hill. Provides all of a soul's daily beauty requirements. The sea. The other day, while sitting at my desk at work, I was inexplicably overcome by a wave of longing to go to the beach. When I lived in San Francisco, this could be accomplished quite easily by either hopping on a 5 Fulton or my bicycle (San Francisco is only 7 miles wide). Or if I was feeling really spunky, I could hop in the car and drive down to Santa Barbara, Los Angeles or San Diego for a WARM beach. New Hampshire does have an ocean front, 18 whole miles of it. I had hoped to live near it when I relocated. While I have lived in a lot of different places, most of them have been close to the ocean. I was even born on a U.S. Naval Air Station; I credit the fact that I am the child of not one, but two, naval officers, and grew up in a household so clean you could serve soup out of the toilet bowl, with making me the reactionary Madisonian I am today (I refer to Oscar, not James). But since I found a great job in Nashua, I didn't wind up living in the Seacoast region after all. Must make the trek out there soon; I am dying to see a beach covered with snow.

girls will be girls

2006-01-22T08:42:00.000-05:00

Female members of the Free State Project are just like other American girls: we talk about our relationships, bitch about our weight, fall in love, break up, get married, get divorced, have babies, go shopping, go to the gym/yoga class, nurse broken hearts, despair over our credit card bills. Some of us are married, some have kids, some have close personal relationships with Jesus, and some of us aren't/don't. In addition to all of that, we write legislation, campaign for our friends, run for public office, lead liberty-oriented organizations ranging from dozens to thousands of members, stage public acts of civil disobedience, serve time in jail for standing up for our beliefs, run liberty-oriented websites, and organize freedom-themed events ranging from 1 to 7 days in length. Yesterday I spent the entire day with some of my fellow female early-movers to New Hampshire. It was a prototypical female Porcupine day: first seven of us went to the Wilson Hill Pistol Club in Manchester to take an NRA Basic Pistol course, taught by another FSP member. Then we peeled off our dirty T-shirts, slipped on feminine tops, and headed over to the Derryfield Country Club to hook up with several more female Porcupines to throw a combined bridal shower/bachlorette party for the fiancee of another FSP member. Here are some of the topics discussed:

my new boyfriend is awesome
my old boyfriend is driving me crazy
I have *got* to lose this weight
I wish my boyfriend would lose weight
I can't believe how much weight I have gained!!
I love the teachers (FSP members) at the Montessori school my kids attend
I got married last month!
my daughter is getting married!
I'm getting married next month!!
renovations on my house are *not* going according to schedule
we're going to let the gender of our new baby be a surprise
my low-carb diet
can I address the state House of Representatives with my four young kids in tow?
I'm the state coordinator of the Second Amendment Sisters, and we need more strong women leaders
I'm working on the schedule for PorcFest, the largest annual gathering of libertarians in the world
my homeschool bill is currently sitting on the Governor's desk, waiting to be signed into law

Yep, that about covers it.

no sleep 'til manchester (Day 9)

2006-01-19T20:03:00.000-05:00

Free State Project migration Day 9 - Thurs. 5/26/05 At every other motel I'd stayed at, I appeared to be the last one to leave in the morning; but in Niagara Falls, the parking lot was still full when I left at around 9:00AM. I'd read about a place that offered a hot breakfast for only 99 cents, but I got a little lost downtown and never found it, so I settled for Starbucks. Holy Toledo. It cost $9.00 for a mocha and a pastry!! And since I hadn't bothered to convert any currency, I just gave the clerk a ten and let her keep the change. That has got to be the most expensive mocha of my life. The town of Niagara Falls is very touristy, but not nearly as gross as Keystone, South Dakota. I checked out the Hershey store, just for the heck of it. I was very excited about riding the Maid of the Mist by the waterfalls, and it was worth every penny. It was an incredible experience. Going by the American Falls (which are smaller), I was giggling uncontrollably. But going by the Bridal Veil (the more impressive, Canadian falls), I had difficulty breathing. I may even have suffered a minor heart attack; I had a pain in my chest afterwards. It was epic. I have recurring nightmares about tidal waves, so it was kind of freaky being at the foot of an enormous wall of water. Crossing the border back into the U.S. was significantly easier than crossing into Canada, oddly enough! I showed the guard my passport. He said "What is all this STUFF?" I said I was moving. He asked from where and to where. Then he said "OK!" I half wish I'd worn an Arab headdress, just to cause trouble. Crossing New York took a good chunk of the day. I cannot believe how much the toll road cost: over $12.00!! Escape from New York: At one point I was running low on gas, but I figured it was no problem, I'd wait a while so I could combine stopping for gas with a bathroom trip. But I misjudged how far apart the rest stops are on the Interstate. My warning light for no gas came on, and I was nowhere near a rest stop. That woke me up. I decided that discretion was the better part of valor and exited at the first opportunity, right before making it to the Massachusetts Turnpike, which wound up taking me into the village of Chatham. I stopped at a gas station, started to fill my tank, and the pump cut off after giving me a mere $0.47 worth of gas. What the hell?! I hung up the gas nozzle and spoke to the clerk, who said I could try again. But the second time, my credit card didn't work at all. The clerk said I could fill my tank, and then come into the office to pay. So I did that, and in the office, when he tried to run my credit card, it said I was over my limit. I was embarrassed and confused; I didn't think I was at my limit. Later on, when I had time to tally up my trip expenses, I found that I was NOT over my limit, not even close; I still don't know why the bank refused the charge. Bastards! Fortunately I had enough cash on me to cover it. I crossed the border into Massachusetts. Hooray! I could almost taste the free air of New Hampshire! But it started to rain for the first time in days. The traffic became terrible, the worst of the entire trip. At one point it was at a standstill. There was road construction; there were breakdowns; there was standing water on the freeway (which was very frightening). And there were a hell of a lot of Dunkin' Donuts at the rest stops; I was clearly approaching New Hampshire! I exited at what I thought was the rest stop at the border, hoping to take a photo of the "Welcome to New Hampshire" sign, but either there wasn't one or I just couldn't spot it in the dark and the rain. I remember very clearly the song that was playing on the radio, though: "Kickstart My Heart" by Motley Crue. Ah, the music of my youth! I was listening to Rock 101.1, a New Hampshire hard rock station, and they were talking about how they were having a big outdoor rock concert, with fireworks, for free, in Manchester that very weekend. My own personal Welcome party! I had forgotten to charge my cell phone the night before and its battery had died, so I didn't know if anyone was trying to check up on me and I couldn't let anyone know that I'd finally made it to New Hampshire. I made it to Manchester, and it was a good thing I'd visited the city recently because I got off course in the dark and the rain but knew how to get to my final destination. I stopped at one of the many, many Dunkin' Donuts in town for a celebratory Boston Creme, then continued on to my new home.

no sleep 'til manchester (Day 8)

2006-01-18T19:50:00.000-05:00

Free State Project migration Day 8 - Wed., 5/25/05 I spent this day driving through the "Rust Belt". And let me tell you, parts of it were pretty rusty. Definitely the ugliest day of driving of my whole trip. There was nothing attractive about the state of Indiana, as far as I could tell (to be fair, I only saw a small part of it). I was pleased that a Guns N' Roses song came on the radio as I was crossing it, though (Axl Rose and Izzy Stradlin' both come from Indiana). Michigan wasn't so bad. I've known a lot of cool people from Michigan, for some reason. And you've got to love a state with a town named "Kalamazoo". I headed north at Ann Arbor and bypassed the greater Detroit area. Michigan had more roadkill deer than I'd ever seen in my life. I sent loving thoughts to Michael Moore (just kidding) as I passed Flint and headed east towards Canada, which I had never been to. The border guard asked me a lot of questions; I was a bit surprised. Maybe he saw my boxes of STUFF and thought I was smuggling something. I was shocked to find that the speed limit signs all switched to metric in Canada; fortunately, my speedometer lists kilometers as well as miles, or I wouldn't have had a clue. I tried to follow the speed limit, but that was apparently considered uncool; absolutely everybody was passing me. But for some reason I was really stressed out at the thought of getting a ticket in another country, so I continued to drive slower than average. Western Ontario was amazingly empty. They have different fast food chains there. I passed a couple of good-sized cities, but there was no traffic to speak of. I didn't arrive at my destination of Niagara Falls until 10:00PM. My motel (the first one that wasn't a Motel6) was disappointingly ratty; I'll bet it was nice when it was new, but my room had not been well-maintained. I had a coffee maker in my room, but was only given DECAF. The outrage!! The air conditioner was a joke; I blasted it all night long and the room never cooled off. The motel restaurant was closed for the night, so I ate leftovers from Chicago that I'd had unrefrigerated in my car for 24 hours, hoping they wouldn't kill me, then went to sleep.

no sleep 'til manchester (Day 7)

2006-01-17T19:32:00.000-05:00

Free State Project migration Day 7 - Tues., 5/24/05 Milwaukee is a large city; I felt intimidated dealing with the traffic. It was the first bad traffic I'd experienced since leaving the Bay Area, and I'd gone by some pretty large cities. I went on the free tour of the Miller Brewing Company, which was pretty fun, and provided lots of free beer at the end; more than I felt comfortable drinking in the middle of the day right before getting back in my car, actually. I had gone to Denny's for breakfast beforehand, officially because I didn't want to go on the brewery tour on an empty stomach, but secretly because I was thinking about how awesome their pancakes had been a few days before! The tour guide at Miller noted that the brewery is "just like Willie Wonka's Factory...only, it makes BEER!" I had scheduled minimal driving on this day, because I wanted to give myself plenty of time to sightsee in Chicago (well, a day, anyway). But the traffic was terrible; it took me twice as long to get there as I had expected. There were very aggressive drivers on the freeway. I parked in a garage downtown that ended up costing $23! I had planned on going on a Duck Tour; the one in Seattle was great. But I failed to find the tour company at its designated location; after asking a few people for help, all of whom were rude and unhelpful, I borrowed a phone book in Starbucks and called the company. It turned out they weren't operating "this year", but had failed to note that on their website. Bastards! By this point, it was after 3:00PM. I decided to take a double-decker bus tour instead, since I had seen one of their stops close by. It was very entertaining, and the weather was beautiful. The only bad parts were when we were hit by the wind off the lake; it was like a freaking hurricane. I had to close my eyes and put my fingers in my ears! After the bus tour, I went to the John Hancock Observatory for the obligatory Ferris Buehller moment. Then I ate dinner at the House of Blues, a restaurant opened by Dan Akroyd and the late John Belushi. The food was excellent and they were going to have live music later in the evening, but I was alone and didn't want to linger that long. I had planned on reading a magazine while eating, but it was so dark in there, I couldn't even read the menu! I spent the night in the suburb of Arlington Heights; I figured my car full of STUFF would be safer there than if I stayed closer to downtown.

no sleep 'til manchester (Day 6)

2006-01-17T06:56:00.000-05:00

Free State Project migration - Day 6, Mon. 5/23/2005 Everyone in Sioux Falls is ancient! I mean, I had noticed in Coeur d’Alene that there were an inordinate number of people of retirement age, but in Sioux Falls, everybody was downright elderly. I visited the Falls downtown, which are in a nice park, and felt out of place because I didn't have a walker. I noted that the state penitentiary is right in town; how convenient! I walked around downtown a bit; it was very pleasant, and had numerous places to eat al fresco, but there didn't appear to be any European-style cafes; I had to order coffee in a pizza parlor, and they had no fresh milk or cream, just that disgusting non-dairy creamer stuff which I refuse to imbibe. But I did spot a Starbucks on my way out of town, so I stopped and had a second coffee there. I proceeded to drive across Minnesota, which is boooooooring! It was all farmland (at least along I-90). The billboards that peppered the SD landscape dropped off precipitously. I did spot the first Dunkin' Donuts in Minnesota (I was watching for it). I stopped off in the town of Blue Earth to view their 60' statue of the Jolly Green Giant (no explanation was provided). Minnesota redeemed itself in my heart by providing one of the highlights of my whole trip: the Spam Museum in Austin. It surpassed my wildest expectations. I didn't know it was coming; I was driving through the town of Austin, which I had never heard of, and saw a highway billboard that said, in fairly small letters, "the Spam Museum". And in huge block letters, it said "Come On... It's Free". How could I resist? I exited the freeway and doubled back to find the place. I highly recommend it!! A friendly security guard offered to take my picture in front of the museum, which features a statue of pigs (Spam is made of the other white meat, in case you were wondering). The place is huge, with lots of displays about the history of spam and the various incarnations of its marketing strategy. There's a very entertaining 15-minute film that features people who are really into spam. There's a guy who wears nothing but Spam-themed T-shirts. There's a women's quartet that sings only Spam-related songs. I'm not making this up. I think my favorite part was the Congressman from Austin who forced his fresh-faced aides to cut up Spam into appetizing cubes on toothpicks to serve at a Congressional committee meeting. Mmmmm... Spam! I was completely alone in the theater, but laughed my head off. There was also a cool gift shop with a lot of clever Spam-related items. The Hormel marketing team is clearly not above playing with their own image. I crossed the Mississippi River and went for a walk alongside it. Very relaxing. Wisconsin is noticeably greener and has more trees than Minnesota. I spent the night in Milwaukee. They have non-white people in Milwaukee! I don't think I'd seen any since California. No, that's not fair; I saw exactly two black people in Montana. The Motel6 was quite possibly the scariest Motel6 I have ever stayed in.

no sleep 'til manchester (Day 5)

2006-01-13T22:17:00.000-05:00

Free State Project migration Day 5 - Sun 5/22/05 I was very excited about visiting Devils Mountain, and set my alarm clock to get there good and early. Crook County is beautiful; best wishes to Boston T. Party and the Free State Wyoming. I hope they get things going so that I have an excuse to visit the area again! Devils Mountain is quite impressive; I can see why some people are inspired to pray there. It has a sort of magnetism. I walked the paved trail that encircles it, taking lots of pictures. I wished that I had more time to loiter and hike some of the other trails in the park. I noted lots of porcupine paraphernalia in the National Park Service gift shop, and bought several items. In fact, you can see a lot of evidence of real porcupines living in the area; they like to nibble the bark off of trees. [obligatory reference to Close Encounters of the Third Kind] After leaving Devils Tower, I stopped for gas. When I started up my engine again, my car radio wouldn't work. I was quite annoyed, as I had planned on listening to it for most of my drive. But a little while later, it spontaneously started working again! I am not making this up!! This is the only time it has ever done this. [/obligatory reference to Close Encounters of the Third Kind] I drove over the border into South Dakota. Thoughts on South Dakota: hot, flat, lots of wild turkeys hanging out by the freeway, more billboards than I've ever seen in my life. I stopped in Sturgis and got a souvenir for a motorcycle-obsessed friend. I stopped for BBQ for lunch on the way to Mt Rushmore. The pace of life is very different here; the wait staff talked slowly, and moved slowly; I felt this insane urge to snap my fingers in their faces and shout BIPBIPBIP! They were friendly, though. The BBQ was a bit disappointing, though, and their hot sauce was weak. The town of Keystone, which is where Mount Rushmore is located, is revolting. If you were trying to design a town that incorporated every possible variety of tourist trap and Fat-American-In-Bermuda-Shorts cliché, you couldn't do a better job than that town. They also charge $8 to view Mount Rushmore, and don't honor National Parks passes (which I had). It is impressive, though. The gift shop has everything you could possibly think of with dead presidents plastered on it. One question: Teddy Roosevelt?! It was a long, boring drive across South Dakota. Aside from the wild turkeys scaring me with their suicidal tendencies to loiter on the freeway, the only notable thing was the advertising for Wall Drug. I know nothing about the place; I assume it's the drugstore in the town of Wall. But there were so many billboards for it, it was freaky. I'm talking dozens! And some of them said bizarre things like "As featured in the Wall Street Journal". I couldn't tell if this was Great Plains humor or what. I refused to give in to their advertising onslaught, so I missed experiencing the epic Wall Drug. During the day, I crossed into the Central Time Zone, where TV shows are on an hour earlier than they are in the rest of the country. That's kind of weird. I stopped at a rest stop alongside the Missouri River and took pictures of it and the Lewis and Clark Memorial Bridge at sunset. A mosquito spoiled the moment. There's another river in SD called the Vermillion River, which I thought was a lovely name. I spent the night in Sioux Falls.

no sleep 'til manchester (Day 4)

2006-01-12T18:30:00.000-05:00

Free State Project migration Day 4 - Sat., 5/21/05 I continued on across eastern Montana, which is much drier than the western part. I stopped at a state park featuring a Prairie Dog Village. There was nobody else around, but I went ahead and did the honorable thing and wrote them a check for the $2 admission fee and dropped it in the box. I think I was robbed, though; those prairie dogs saw me coming and ran and hid from me and my camera. The wind was absolutely howling, too; I guess they get the same wind in southeastern Montana that Wyoming is famous for. Close to the Wyoming border, Montana became pretty again. Northern Wyoming is beautiful, with rolling green hills, tons of deer, and cool red highways. I visited the western part of Wyoming last summer and thought it was horribly ugly (except for Yellowstone, of course), but eastern Wyoming is quite nice. I drove through Sheridan, which is a lovely town. It has all the charm of Cody, but seems less fake and touristy. I saw two prairie dogs chasing each other through a parking lot downtown! I spent the night in Gillette, which I was expecting to be ugly but wasn't as bad as I had thought it would be. All the customer service people in town were teenaged girls and some of them were kind of rude, though. I ate dinner at Applebee's, which was packed.

no sleep 'til manchester (Day 3)

2006-01-11T18:52:00.000-05:00

Free State Project migration Day 3 - Friday, 5/20/05 Armed with several brochures and maps of the Spokane area, and ready to finally do a bit of sightseeing, I woke up to heavy rain. I was also feeling a bit under the weather and didn't enjoy lugging my suitcases down the stairs and loading them back into my car without letting them touch the wet ground. I didn't want to waste the opportunity, though, so I planned on driving to the Riverfront Park downtown and walking around a bit, rain or no rain. I had assumed that there would be highway signs indicating how to get there, but I was mistaken; I drove right on through Spokane and never figured out where to exit the freeway to go downtown! I wasn't excited enough about it to double back, so I just went on. The photos in my tourist brochures were very nice, though. Spokane seems like a decent city, and I hope to go back one day and do it justice. I hadn't realized how close Spokane was to the Idaho border; I crossed the state line very quickly. The only stop I made in Idaho was Coeur d’Alene, which is a cute little town that appears to be very vacation-oriented. I stopped in the visitors’ info center and the man working there was very friendly and helpful. I gave him the 15-second FSP spiel, and he said he'd check out the website. The lake is beautiful and has a cool floating boardwalk that goes out into it. It has benches, picnic tables, and these random ladders and towers that seem to serve no purpose other than to possibly provide a slightly elevated view of the lake. There was absolutely nobody else on the boardwalk, except for maintenance workers, all of whom were white. (In fact, I did not see a single non-white person in the Idaho panhandle. And I was looking!) The walk along the boardwalk was very peaceful and did me good; I'm sure my cortisol levels dropped lower than they'd been in days. In fact, I became so relaxed that I felt the urge to lie down and take a nap. Uh oh; cortisol levels TOO low! Must... find... mocha. I went into a mall downtown that was shockingly high-end; I was wearing rain-sprinkled sweats and felt way too grungy to even set foot in any of the stores. I ogled a king-size bed throw made of real coyote hides in a store window; it was reasonably priced at only $8800! I found a coffee stand, bought a mocha, then hit the road again. Continuing across Idaho, I stopped at the Silver Mountain ski resort in hopes of riding "the world's longest gondola". Sadly, I was there between seasons and it was closed. There was such a layer of black fog on the mountain that the gondola line appeared to disappear into it, like the Nothing in "The Neverending Story". The Idaho panhandle is beautiful, and quite narrow; I made it to Montana in no time. Thoughts on Montana: beautiful! big! expresso readily available! more trailers and manufactured homes then I've ever seen in my life; don't they actually BUILD any houses there? I stopped at a cute little drive-through expresso shack that was amazingly well-stocked; it had every possible variation of caffeine. I asked the nice old lady who brewed me a righteous Mexican mocha if it was true that you can drink and drive in Montana. She looked at me in amazement and said SHE certainly never heard that before. Oh well; I was really looking forward to cruising down the freeway at a legal 75 mph with a beer in my hand. I passed a billboard for a restaurant that served "Rocky Mountain Oysters". Farther down the road, I passed another billboard inviting me to the "Testicle Festival". Must note that on my Palm Pilot for next year. I had planned on spending the night in Billings, but it became obvious that I was going to have to stay up really late to make it there that day. Did I mention that Montana is big? So I stopped in Butte instead. Butte is apparently famous for being home to the largest SuperFund site in the U.S. Parts of it are pretty ugly, but the downtown area is actually pretty cute, in an old Western sort of way. I treated myself to dinner in one of the best restaurants in town. I had a local microbrew, the name of which escapes me now, but it was something like a "DeerKiller". to be continued...

no sleep 'til manchester (Day 2)

2006-01-10T22:14:00.000-05:00

Free State Project migration Day 2 - Thursday 5/19/05 I woke up at 8:00, which is late for me. There was a Denny's right next door to my motel, so I went there for breakfast. I had the Meat Lover's Breakfast Bowl, which was on sale and turned out to be an insane quantity of food: two batches of hash browns, eggs scrambled with sausage and ham, three buttermilk pancakes, two sausage links, and two slices of bacon. I ate myself into a pancake coma, then went back to my motel room. I tried to catch up on some email, but my Internet connection was giving me fits and hanging up on me repeatedly. I finally gave up in a foul mood, and hit the road at 11:30AM. I stopped at a gas station and reveled in the experience of having someone pump my gas for me (an Oregon state law). I headed north to Portland, but didn't stop there; I've been there several times, anyway. I crossed the bridge into Washington State and elicited more Simpsonesque war-whoops. Several miles later, I realized that that was not what I was supposed to have done; I was once again off course. Oops! I crossed BACK over the bridge into Oregon (feeling very sheepish about the war whoops) and headed east via the Cascade River Valley. I suspect it was lush and beautiful, but all I could see was sheets of rain on my windshield. It was hard to hear my radio, it was so loud. Multnomah Falls looked pretty cool, but I was not motivated to examine it more closely, considering how hard it was raining. I continued on eastward, eventually passing out of the northwest rainforest into dry country. I headed north at Hermiston and once again crossed over into Washington State. In eastern Oregon I passed through the State of Jefferson. I'm so sad that it appears to be a dormant organization; I would love for the FSP to network with those guys! There's a strip of highway that has been adopted by the State of Jefferson, and a barn proclaiming the territory as Jeffersonian in huge block letters on the roof. I also passed some cool scrap art: a life-size cow made out of metal, and a huge dragon. Southeastern Washington is butt-ugly. The towns of Kennewick and Pasco appear to be nothing but one enormous truck stop. I was amused by the feminine touch of painting the bridge over the Columbia River LAVENDAR, though. The drive north through Washington to Spokane was nice. I finally had some pleasant weather, and there were hardly any other cars on the road. I took the opportunity to floor my car for the first time since I bought it and was disgusted to see it max out at 105. But perhaps that's due to the dense gravitational pull of all my STUFF loading it down. I arrived on the outskirts of Spokane earlier than I expected, around 8:15. It wasn't yet dark and was a lovely mild spring evening. I thought about going to look for some decent slow food for dinner, and logged onto the Internet to try to find something promising. But I was overcome by a wave of fatigue and decided to just stay in and eat a PowerBar. I caught up on some email and went to bed. to be continued...

no sleep 'til manchester (Day 1)

2006-01-09T22:02:00.000-05:00

(Or, One Weird California Girl's Quest for Liberty) By request, I'm posting the travelogue I kept as I drove across the country from Oakland, California to Manchester, New Hampshire. Free State Project migration Day 1 - Wednesday, 5/18/05 I am notoriously bad with directions, and I managed to get off course within my first 1 1/2 hours of driving. I trundled right past the connector between I-80 and I-5, and wound up getting a little closer to Sacramento than I had intended. At least it gave me an opportunity to send more hateful thoughts towards the Capitol. I found the right road eventually, and went hell-bent for Oregon Territory. I was really looking forward to crossing the state line. It rained very heavily; at one point, I pulled off the road to wait out a blinding shower. There's not much to say about the drive through northern California; it's very long and boring, and it rained most of the way. The area around Lake Shasta is very beautiful, and if I hadn't been so pathetically behind schedule (I had planned on doing 8 hours of driving that day), I would have stopped and taken some pictures. Mount Shasta is so spectacular, it never fails to cause me to almost drive off the road. I stopped for coffee in Shasta City and was surprised to find an elderly Asian immigrant manning the quickie-mart. I guess there's no reason why immigrants can't live in the boonies just as well as in large cities, but it struck me as odd. Does Mt. Shasta remind him of Mt. Fuji? I'll never know; I unloaded my last gold dollar from Vegas on him, and hit the road again. I finally FINALLY reached the state line at 8:14PM. Homer Simpson-esque WOO HOO's resounded. Unfortunately, I still had hours of driving left before I got to the motel at which I'd reserved a room, and it was now too late to cancel my reservation. I stopped at McDonald's and had a "Tillamook". This is a hamburger with cheddar cheese and bacon. But don't you just love how they make it sound Oregonian by calling it a "Tillamook"? I didn't get to my destination of Eugene until after midnight. I had to choke down a lot of coffee and candy, and bite my fingers periodically, to remain conscious. Fortunately, I found an excellent radio station (Mike 93.7, IIRC) that provided lively tunes of my youth. to be continued...

resolutions

2006-01-06T19:17:00.000-05:00

It's a new year, and a new me! Well, not really. New hair color, new name (I've embraced my inner WOP and have readopted my maiden name), same occasionally bad attitude. Like many people, I set lots of hopeful and uplifting New Year's Resolutions for myself, most of which I've managed to blow in the first week of 2006. I split them up into two sets: one personal, and one political. I'll spare you the details of the personal list, since this is supposed to be Friday Jones' diary, not Bridget Jones' Diary. Suffice it to say it consists of a fairly typical girlish mix of self-improvement goals related to the thinness of my skin, the venom of my tongue, the health of my liver and the breadth of my ass. ("As God is my witness, I WILL fit into size 4 Dickies agay-an! " [/Scarlet O'Hara mode]) I'll post the political set, which quite honestly I'm feeling a bit shy about doing right now, in hopes that doing so will push me to work harder at achieving them: 1. Earn a Lights of Liberty award. 2. Earn a Golden Porcupine award (given to those who recruit three new members to the Free State Project ). 3. Become an active member of my local political party, the LPNH. 4. Write in my blog a t least once per week. (That goal forces me to do more than watch videos and tease my cat.) 5. Buy a gun, learn to use it, and become responsible for my own self-defense. 6. Adopt an alternative currency. Free Staters are wasting no time in the new year working for greater liberty in New Hampshire. The Merrimack Valley Porcupines are meeting tomorrow, and we have quite an exciting lineup of speakers, if I do say so myself. The NHLA led a tour of the state capitol/legislative training session this week when the legislature opened for the new session. Since I'm a wage slave, I couldn't go, but I look forward to hearing how it went from someone who did. The NHLA bill triage team is hard at work, reading every single bill that has been submitted to the state House of Representatives, and rating it for its pro- or anti- liberty qualities. I'm part of the team, and have been diligently monitoring my chosen committees. I naively volunteered for the "Environment and Agriculture" committee, thinking it would relate to parks, food, and fluffy woodland creatures, all of which I'm in favor of (as long as they're paid for by user fees as opposed to involuntary taxation). What I've discovered is this committee deals with, well, sheep. Tracking the sale of sheep. Sheep diseases. Pasteurized milk. And oh yes, the pumpkin has been proposed as the new state fruit of New Hampshire. Ah well... I do my duty as a footsoldier in the battle for liberty.

i made the move (Part IV of IV)

2005-12-31T16:33:00.000-05:00

Emotional state for first 30 minutes: kept repeating "Oh God" over and over like a mantra. Emotional state for rest of the day: erratic. There was laughter, there were tears, there were moments of blinding panic. There were moments of telling myself to get a grip and remember that I had been waiting for this day for a long time. There was a moment of telling myself this might well be the biggest thing I ever did, and it would make a great story, and damn I'm cool. That was a good moment; I liked that moment. I am notoriously bad with directions, and I managed to get off course within my first 1 1/2 hours of driving. I wound up getting a little closer to Sacramento than I had intended. At least it gave me an opportunity to send more hateful thoughts towards the Capitol. I found the right road eventually, and went hell-bent for Oregon Territory. I was really looking forward to crossing the state line. I kept a travelogue of my drive across the country, and took a lot of pictures. I went north across Oregon and into Washington to Spokane, then headed east across Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, South Dakota, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Ontario, New York, Massachusetts (which featured the worst traffic of the entire transcontinental journey), and finally, NEW HAMPSHIRE! I’ve been here two months now, and I can honestly say that, so far, I love it. It’s beautiful, people are friendly, traffic is like a pleasant dream, the architecture is amazing. I’ve met lots of other Free State Project participants, who are an amazingly affable, upbeat and politically active bunch. If you want to fight for liberty, and be surrounded by others who do as well, New Hampshire is definitely the place to be. Hope to see you here soon. ##

i made the move (Part III of IV)

2005-12-30T18:28:00.000-05:00

My original plan had been to leave California on Tuesday, May 17, loading up my car the day before, shrieking "Hasta La Vista, Baby!!" in the general direction of Excremento (the state capital) and hitting the road. Sadly, it didn't work out that way. My STUFF (see George Carlin, Theory of: ) seemed to multiply as I packed, so that while the stacks of boxes increased, the quantity of unpacked STUFF remained static. Has a physicist ever studied this phenomenon in depth? I see real Nobel Peace Prize potential here. So on Monday I was in a flurry of packing. My mother stopped by to give me a goodbye hug, and mentioned in passing "Don't go to Yosemite". Actually, that was exactly what I was planning to do. Apparently the melting snow pack was flooding the park and visitors were being evacuated. Now would appear to be a good time to rethink my game plan, from scratch. I pushed my date of departure back to Wednesday May 18. On Tuesday I started loading my car, and it became painfully obvious that there was no way everything was going to fit! Things that had appeared indispensable suddenly became… dispensable. I packed and purged. The STUFF still wasn't going to fit. I would have to make another "one last trip" to my storage shed Wednesday morning (it's not open 24 hours). May 18, Judgment Day, dawned dark and very rainy. This is unusual for the Bay Area in mid-May. I took the last load of leavable STUFF to my storage shed in driving rain, getting the interior of my car quite damp. Some of the boxes were visibly deteriorating. I said teary and painful farewells to family and friends, all of whom had jobs they needed to get to. So I was actually alone for the final loading of my car, which was just as well; I was pretty stressed out. And as the hours ticked by, and it continued to look like there was no way everything was going to fit, I felt increasingly panicked. I wound up leaving behind things I had intended to bring. But after a while, I just didn't care anymore; I wanted to get out of there. At 1:00PM, the power went out, and I had to finish loading my car and walking up and down the stairs in darkness. If I were looking for some kind of cosmic sign to guide me one way or another, I think that would have been a doozy. Fortunately for the Free State Project, I'm not too hung up on cosmic signs! I finally finished loading my car, choked down a bit of cold Zachary's Pizza for fortitude, drove out of the garage (lucky for me someone had used the manual override on the garage door, or I would have had to stay there and see just how long the power outage lasted), and waved goodbye to the high 'scrapers of Oakland, California. Death or Glory! Free State or Bust!! Live Free Or Die!!!

i made the move (Part II of IV)

2005-12-29T19:31:00.000-05:00

Election season rolled around, and like other members of the Libertarian Party, I watched my party’s candidate receive a negligible national vote count. But what really disturbed me was discovering the systematic way in which the LP was excluded from mainstream media, preventing many Americans from even being aware that they had more than two choices. Somehow this one thing made me feel more politically insignificant and powerless than anything up to that point. The LP seemed futile. It ALL seemed futile. I really can’t explain what happened next; just one of those mysterious inner tipping points was reached. Nothing had changed within the FSP, or within New Hampshire (unless you count the embarrassing fact that it was one of only two states where the LP presidential candidate wasn’t even on the ballot); but something had changed in me. Perhaps, like the Grinch, my heart grew three sizes that day. My new motto became “If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em”, and I rejoined the FSP. And about a month later, I announced to family and friends that I’d be moving to New Hampshire “after the thaw”. It has been a challenging few months. Not only was my family not supportive of my decision to move to New Hampshire, they actively tried to dissuade me. While I knew a few other Free State Project participants from the northern California local group, and had seen Jason Sorens speak at a convention once, I didn’t personally know anyone in New Hampshire except through my online interactions. I had no job leads and so little money left that even making the security deposit on an apartment would be challenging. I hadn’t lived anywhere with snowy winters since I was 6 years old. All of my friends were in the San Francisco Bay Area. But I felt that time was of the essence. I want to see “Liberty In My Lifetime”, and let’s face it, statistically my life is half over already. If it was going to happen, I needed to get busy making it happen. After analyzing my various relocation options, I finally decided to just do it as simply and cheaply as possible. I’d take what fit in my car (a Subaru Outback), and leave everything else behind in storage in California. I settled on a plan to drive fairly directly and quickly across the U.S., but following a northerly route so that I’d get to see several states I’d never been to before and do a bit of sightseeing along the way. I made a second exploratory trip to the Free State in April 2005, and met some other early movers for the first time. Luckily, I had amazingly great weather the entire week I visited; in fact, I got back to California tanner than I had left. I met with two Porcupines who had bought houses in Manchester and had rooms to rent. I figured that was the logical place for a city girl like me to land.

i made the move (Part I of IV)

2005-12-28T21:26:00.000-05:00

It's the holidays, I have a cold, and I'm ticked off that Santa didn't bring me what I most wanted for Christmas, due to its release date being pushed back to March: the Elder Scrolls IV Oblivion . (Code faster, you dirty rat bastards!!) Therefore, this blog is showing reruns. What follows is the original version of an essay I wrote back in July entitled "I Made the Move". This version is significantly longer than the one that was previously published on the FSP website. Enjoy!

I Made the Move!

I joined the Free State Project way back in February 2002, as a “glass eater”, meaning one of those zany people who committed to any of the ten states then under consideration. Anything had to be better than California! Alaska was my first choice, but sadly, very few Porcupines were with me on that. My second choice became Wyoming, after reading a lot of excellent information that was posted by other FSP participants on the discussion forum. However, numerous other FSP’ers felt that New Hampshire was the best choice, and we engaged in many heated arguments in what has come to be known as the “Great State Debates”. We laughed, we cried, and some of us kissed good manners goodbye. But it was only because we all cared passionately about the selection of which state would become the Free State. When New Hampshire was selected, I allowed myself about 24 hours to wallow in the bitterness of defeat, then made plane reservations. I made my first exploratory trip (I had never been to New Hampshire) over Thanksgiving weekend, mere weeks after the state announcement on Oct. 1, 2003. My introduction to the state was less than glorious. I had been overconfident in my estimation of how easy it would be to find an open restaurant on Thanksgiving Day; I wound up “enjoying” a magnificent feast consisting of Dunkin’ Donuts, salted peanuts and Slim Jim pepperoni sticks. It was also too late in the season to see pretty foliage, and too early to see pretty snow; I just saw a lot of rain and leafless trees. I spent the rest of the weekend exploring the larger cities while freezing my butt off (did I mention I’m from California?) and marveling at the mysterious way in which NH natives could stand outside in sleety rain, without jackets or umbrellas, without their knees knocking together. Despite the fact that it wasn’t exactly love at first sight between me and New Hampshire, I couldn’t wait to make the move. However, family and school obligations held me back. In the spring of 2004, feeling trapped in a job I hated, I made the risky decision to quit my job and enroll in grad school full-time. This gave me more free time to engage in that beloved libertarian pastime: arguing online with other libertarians about the best way to restore liberty in the U.S. Matters reached a head in the summer of last year when, completely disillusioned and disgruntled over various management decisions within the FSP, I formally quit... [to be continued]

the shortest day

2005-12-21T19:08:00.000-05:00

This time of year the days are very short and many of us are extra busy shopping, baking, visiting family and friends, sending out cards. resting merrily, wassailing, bringing figgy pudding... What with all of that, AND moving, and all the Free State Project activities going on, I'm a holly jolly wreck. Last Saturday we had a Holiday Party/Meet N' Greet, partly to welcome a new arrival from Kentucky and partly just because. There was a mountain of food, profuse quantities of alcohol, and a squirming pack of... ferrets. Twelve of them, to be precise! I had been to this house several times and had no idea that the owners run a ferret rescue organization in addition to all of their political activity, and have a basement full of one of my favorite creatures. I was enthralled. Sunday was the second annual U.N. Flag Burn in Robin Hood Park in Keene. I didn't attend myself (flag burning's "not my bag, baby"), but about 20 others did and apparently had a lot of fun making a political statement while roasting weenies on pitchfork tines. There are some great photos of the event. After the burning, the Free Staters adjourned for a birthday party for one of the participants. Last night, there was another birthday party at Jillian's, an enormous bar in one of the old mill buildings by the river in Manchester, with numerous pool tables, big screen TV's and video games. There was a surprisingly large turnout considering it was a weekday evening. One person came directly from manning the polls for a special election in Londonderry, where the candidate who had attended the FSP eminent domain rally at the airport won! I managed to sink two pool balls, which, if you're familiar with my athletic ability (or lack thereof), is reason for merrymaking and tidings of great joy. After the party, I loaded yet more boxes into my car, mostly filled with books. I have a personal policy of moving all my books myself every time I move. I think of the pain of lugging all the boxes as a form of penance, or an incentive to cut back on my purchasing. Didn't work. In fact, on the way from Manchester to Nashua, I stopped at Barnes & Noble and bought another one. I had to, though. There is one book that I read every year, "The Dark is Rising", by Susan Cooper. It's a classic tale of the eternal struggle between good and evil, and I'm embarassed to admit how many years I've been reading it. My worn copy is back in a storage shed in California, and, acutely aware that it was Midwinter's Eve, I felt compelled to obtain another one.

On this, the shortest day of the year, and a chilly one here in the Free State, I leave you with a poem by Ms. Cooper, who lives not far from here in Cambridge, MA:

The Shortest Day

By Susan Cooper

And so the Shortest Day came

and the year died

And everywhere down the centuries of the snow-white world

Came people singing, dancing,

To drive the dark away.

They lighted candles in the winter trees;

They hung their homes with evergreen;

They burned beseeching fires all night long

To keep the year alive.

And when the new year's sunshine blazed awake

They shouted, revelling.

Through all the frosty ages you can hear them

Echoing behind us - listen!

All the long echoes, sing the same delight,

This Shortest Day,

As promise wakens in the sleeping land:

They carol, feast, give thanks,

And dearly love their friends,

And hope for peace.

And now so do we, here, now,

This year and every year.

Welcome Yule!

"Best Place to Live in America"

2005-12-18T08:41:00.000-05:00

For many years I've enjoyed reading Money Magazine's annual "Best Places to Live" issue. I guess it feeds my "grass is always greener" bent, and it's comical to imagine myself living in some of the places it rates very highly. Who would have thought that, because of the Free State Project, I'd wind up actually living in one of those unfathomable locations. Since Thanksgiving I have been gradually moving from "Manchvegas" to Nashua. Nashua is the only city to have been rated "Best Place to Live in America" twice. And it's very proud of that fact; it's printed right there on the "Welcome to Nashua" highway sign. I've been getting some grief from other Free Staters about my decision. As people on both sides of the political spectrum will tell you, Nashua is pretty different from the rest of New Hampshire; some people don't even consider it to BE New Hampshire. It's right on the border with Massachusetts, and is filled with stores and businesses situated here to take advantage of NH's lack of sales and income tax, while still being within commuting and shopping distance of Massachusetts residents (commonly referred to in these parts as Massholes). Although I work in Nashua, most of my coworkers are Massachusetts residents, and *they* give me grief because they think NH is a godforsaken wasteland that doesn't plough its roads properly. Both factions tell me there's nothing to DO in Nashua. I think they're all full of it! I'm now closer to Boston, making it more feasible to go down there for evening entertainment. I'm an easy 20-minute drive from Manchester, where a lot of Free Stater activity takes place. If the price of having better ploughed streets is instituting income tax, I'll take the streets as they are, thanks very much. Nashua has a great, sales-tax-free, mall, and a zillion restaurants, and a charming downtown with several outdoor dining options in the summer. And for a renter such as myself, it has a lot of apartment complexes to choose from. It must be said that NH is a very WHITE state, ethnically speaking, but Nashua is definitely less white than the rest. There are many south Asian immigrants who come here to work for BAE, Oracle and numerous other high tech/biotech companies. They say that some apartment complexes smell so strongly of curry, it'll make your nose bleed. Whatever... spice is the variety of life, right? NH also isn't particularly gay friendly. But Boston is far more cosmopolitan than any place in NH, and being closer to it may improve things on that score. I can tell you that, at my company holiday party (which, by the way, it's OK to call a CHRISTMAS PARTY here beyond the city limits of PC-topia), Patti brought her domestic partner, Maria, while Jeff brought his better half, Ricky, and as far as I could tell, no one batted an eye. It's clearly possible to be openly gay in the Free State.

absolute zero

2005-12-17T21:01:00.000-05:00

Southern New Hampshire reached absolute zero* this week; actually, a couple of mornings ago it was -7 F. Last Friday we had the first real snowstorm of the season, and yesterday we had an icestorm. I can now add scraping my windshield to my list of life experiences. The weather is, far and away, the most common excuse I get from people who otherwise think the Free State Project is a great idea, but who refuse to move to New Hampshire. As a person who spent the past 25+ years living in the San Francisco Bay Area, I approached New Hampshire weather with a certain amount of reasonable trepidation. Many people in California warned me gleefully that I would hate it here. What's weird is that, now that I'm here, natives also keep warning me gleefully, or even a tad vindictively, that I'm gonna start hating it real soon now. Thoughts on summer weather: not nearly as bad as I was expecting. Yes, it's hot and humid, and there are mosquitoes. When I first arrived in the state, my hair started falling out in handfuls. I was rather concerned for a while, but I now think I was just shedding. The mosquitoes weren't nearly as bad as I feared; in fact, I was more bothered by them in California! Almost all buildings are air-conditioned here. There were just a few days that were quite unpleasant, where some sort of evil temperature inversion turned the sky dark and dirty-looking while it was stiflingly hot and humid. But most days were, in my opinion, quite pleasant. There's also a palpable feeling of happiness in the air when there's a break in the heat, which happened several times during the summer. Everyone is smiling, cruising around with their windows rolled down. Thoughts on autumn: people said this was not a good year for foliage, but it still looked pretty nice to me. Scuffling around through the fallen leaves provided a guilty, and NOISY, pleasure. The trees looked like they were on fire: red, orange and gold. The smell of wood smoke lingered in the air. Everybody had pumpkins and scarecrows in their front yards. The squirrels scampered like they had a purpose: those nuts had to be hidden, pronto! The chipmunks' cheeks were so bulging with seeds, they looked like they'd mutated. And they were much too focused on the task at hand to bother running away in fear. The nights were cool, but the sun was still warm. And locally-grown apples were so full of flavor, it was hard to believe they're good for you. It was easy to see why fall is many people's favorite time of year here. Thoughts on winter thus far: the human body's ability to adapt is really amazing. I wear the same clothes I wore in the Bay Area, for the most part, only now I wear them when it's in the 20's and 30's outside rather than the 50's and 60's. On days like today, in the upper 30's with bright sunshine, a coat seems like overkill; I just wear a cotton sweatshirt or a wool sweater. When it gets below 20, I do put on my parka, a hat and gloves. The one thing that is bothering me is the dryness; my skin is splitting and bleeding, and I have to make myself slather on lotion multiple times a day. Winter in New England does make you pay respect to Mother Nature, I'll give it that. It takes far more thought and advance planning than I'm accustomed to. It takes time to mince across an icy parking lot without falling on your ass, time to let your car engine warm up, time to scrape ice off your windows, time to drive far below the speed limit on icy roads. You never know when you're going to have to crunch through a bit of snow, so waterproof shoes or boots are a must. Is any of this a big deal? Not to me! If this is the small price I have to pay in order to live in a place that offers me far more freedom and the hope of more to be achieved, I'll pay it gladly. I still think snow is pretty. Sue me!! * I know I'm misusing the term absolute zero. However, due to a quirk in my education, I never had a physics class. I'm combining that excuse with the standard "poetic license" cuz, hey, I just like how it sounds.

fly Manchester

2005-12-12T21:23:00.000-05:00

In case you don't know, you can fly in and out of New Hampshire without dealing with the nightmare that is Boston traffic. Manchester has a perfectly good airport featuring daily transcontinental flights. It was also the site of a protest that took place immediately after the Merrimack Valley Porcupines monthly meeting. What prompted the protest was that the city of Londonderry (which is right next to Manchester) is using the power of eminent domain to force 70 city landowners to sell some of their property to the airport. As you probably learned in first grade, it's not NICE to take stuff that doesn't belong to you, and that's pretty much what eminent domain is: government taking stuff that doesn't belong to it. To draw public attention to this situation, and to show support for the abused landowners, the founder of the New Hampshire Underground organized a protest. We let the airport know in advance that we were coming. In response, we received an amusing list of requirements in order to peacefully exercise our First Amendment rights at the airport. They included such things as "activity must be carried out a minimum of six feet from the outermost entrances of the passenger terminal and must occupy only one-half the width of the sidewalk and allow unrestricted access to the building", "Each location may have up to 8 picketers for a total of 16". and "please provide me with a copy of any handouts that you may be passing out". In the immortal words of Dr. Evil: riiiiiiiiiiiiight. The Undergrounders very politely responded that we did not intend to leap through any silly hoops. A good 30 Free Staters, including 6 of the affected Londonderry landowners, converged in front of the airport and braved a chilling December breeze until past sunset, waving signs and handing out informational fliers to passersby. Not only were we not seriously hassled by the airport guards (of which there were an insane number, in my opinion), we were told by at least one guard that he supported our cause! The protest made the front page of the Concord Monitor. Free Stater Russell, aka the "Unidentified Flying Objector", who has previously been arrested at the Manchester Airport and spent a weekend in jail for refusing to show identification to board a flight, returned to the airport completely unintimidated. In addition to exercising his First Amendment rights, he wanted to exercise his Second. Not being a gunny kind of guy, he decided to "openly carry" a large pitchfork. Needless to say, this caused several security guards to raise an eyebrow, and at least one to chatter excitedly into his walky-talky "There's a protester out here with a.. PITCHFORK!" This issue had probably never come up before in the history of the airport, and despite causing a bit of a ruckus, no one could come up with a good excuse for taking the pitchfork away. I carpooled to the airport with Katherine Albrecht, founder of CASPIAN and author of the critically acclaimed book Spychips. On the way home, she regaled us with tales of the creepy things done to her by some of the businesses that she has gone up against in her battles for consumer privacy. I have met so many brave and inspiring people through the Free State Project; it's quite amazing.

down in the valley

2005-12-11T08:43:00.000-05:00

Last Saturday we had the regular monthly meeting of the Merrimack Valley Porcupines. An ally from the Coalition of New Hampshire Taxpayers was kind enough to loan us a P.A. system so that we could hear each other over the sounds of fermentation at Milly's Tavern. Due to a scheduling snafu on the part of Milly's management, only one waitress was scheduled to work when the 40-odd of us showed up at noon. But in the true spirit of DIY, our group leader's girlfriend rolled up her sleeves, went into the kitchen, and started slinging burgers and beer to the meeting attendees (I believe she got a free meal and some tips out of it; I sincerely hope she did!!). Meetings generally include a prepared presentation on a local or statewide political issue, and assorted member announcements about upcoming parties, moves, activism opportunities, and plugs for Porcupine-owned businesses. This meeting was no exception. Upcoming social events include a holiday party, a New Year's Eve party, and a Liberty Ladies shooting class in January. John Babiarz, the chair of the New Hampshire Libertarian Party, spoke about the party's current activities, which include a case to be heard by the state supreme court about the different standards to which third parties are held for ballot access. Babiarz takes it as a good sign that the supreme court agreed to hear the case; it indicates that they sense a possible change in public opinion on the issue. If the LP is successful, it could have far-reaching implications for third parties all over the country. FSP'ers were encouraged to pack the courthouse when the case is heard, as numbers matter to judges. I'll be there!!! Two early movers have started their own business: the New Hampshire Sports and Social Club. The idea is to both give people a way to hook up with others for group sports, and for singles to meet and mingle. I love the company logo: a patriotic-looking guy on a horse, hoisting a beer in the air. The first team sport will be dodgeball. Personally, having people hurl balls in a sincere attempt to brain me is not *my* idea of a good time, but hey, if you're into that sort of thing, check out the club! The most significant part of the meeting for me, personally, was when the group leader announced that he is stepping down at the end of the year to free up his time for other liberty pursuits (of which he has many), and I was foolish enough to volunteer to take his place. So beginning next year, I will be leading the group. Seeing as how I have the social skills of a wolverine (or perhaps I should say a fishercat, to put it in local terms) and despise speaking before groups, you might be wondering why I would do such a thing. Well, what can I say? I believe in the Free State Project, and I believe that it is in my own long-term best interest to have it succeed. I don't know if it will, but I do know that I will have done my best to help it succeed, no matter what happens. I have already done things for the FSP that I never would have seen myself doing just a couple of years ago: appeared on television (twice); approached total strangers to talk politics with them; hung a banner on a busy freeway overpass; organized meetings, and lead discussions, when my preference is not just to not lead them, but to stay home and read a book instead. This is a war of sorts, and all those who are willing need to pick up their arms (there are many types of weapons besides guns) and wield them as best they can.

i love that dirty water (Part 2 of 2)

2005-12-10T13:54:00.000-05:00

On the second day of my Free State Project mini-break, I did the other half of the Freedom Trail, which includes more points of historic interest, churches and graveyards. I wandered through Faneuil Hall, an old market building that is now full of shops selling souveniric kitsch. Interestingly, almost all of the shopkeepers appeared to be immigrants. What is it about shopkeeping that attracts immigrants, or that doesn't appeal to natives? Perhaps it's the level of personal risk and commitment required that scares away the 'Merican couch potatoes, or the inability to save up enough to buy their own business in the first place. I had lunch in the Quincy Market, which is kind of like a mall food court only much more posh. If you're ever there, I highly recommend the cream puffs!! On the way back to the Free State, I took a detour to the infamous town of Salem. I went to the wax museum, which covers the two biggest parts of the town's past: witch burning and piracy. The witch burning eclipses the piracy in most people's minds, but apparently at one point in time Salem was the busiest port in the U.S. I took a guided tour of the "witch museum" (kind of cheesy, but hey, if you're sightseeing in Salem, what the hell else are you supposed to do??); it turned out to be a private tour, as nobody else was there except for my friend and me. Our tour guide, a practicing witch himself and bearing a disconcerting resemblance to Johnny Depp, was informative and happy to linger over cigarettes after the tour. He said that Salem now has an abnormally high percentage of pagans, witches, etc., due to its status as the unofficial Mecca for such types in the U.S. Take THAT, girl-burning Puritanical a-holes!!! He listed some of the ridiculous things that could have got one burned back in the day, and I noticed that most of them applied to me (different colored eyes, own a black cat, lazy eye, weird, antisocial). Hmmmmmm. Back in the Free State, I took a spontaneous detour to the "Shaker Village", having no clue what that meant aside from a vague notion that Shakers were similar to the Amish and they designed furniture or something. It's an authentic Shaker village, although no Shakers live in it anymore; the last one died a few years back. Frankly, I'm still pretty unclear on what they were all about; they seem to have been kind of like a convent, and took in kids who were orphaned or required fostering for whatever reason. Gotta love the free market alternative to government-run social support! I was too cheap to pay for the tour, but maybe if you take it, you can explain what exactly their deal was. My final stop before returning home was a detour off the detour to the "Smoked Meathouse". The Shaker Village is pretty out of the way and requires following some narrow and, at this time of year, snow-covered roads to get there, but the Smoked Meathouse was *really* out of the way. My friend started gripping the dashboard a wee bit too tightly in response to my cavalier attitude towards taking ever smaller and dicier-looking back roads, following hand-painted signs for unidentified smoked meat. But I was having a great time; finally my investment in an all-wheel drive vehicle was paying off! I must admit, the strains of "Dueling Banjos" went through my mind once or twice, but we did eventually arrive in one piece. The smoked meathouse was quite small but had a variety of meats, interesting smoked cheeses, and truly bizarre flavors of locally brewed soda pop. After stocking up on smoked trout, horseradish cheese, and a maple-flavored soda, I headed back for the Porcupine house.

i love that dirty water (part 1 of 2)

2005-12-04T22:10:00.000-05:00

Last weekend I took both a mental and physical "mini-break" (as the English say) from the Free State Project in Boston. Probably the second biggest complaint I hear from would-be migrants to New Hampshire (after the weather) is that there's "nothing to do there". Baloney!! Boston is only a 1 1/2 hour drive from Manchester, or 1 hour from Nashua. Not only does it have every possible big city amenity, it's one of the most historic cities in the country and has lots of free entertainment, in addition to a mind-boggling array of not-free entertainment. I started my adventure by parking in a pay lot downtown; parking prices in Boston are truly heinous. Apparently the city is suffering from the all-too-common misguided policies against building new parking lots/garages, resulting in demand exceeding supply. But once you get on foot downtown, you can cover a lot of ground, sightseeing-wise. The public transit system, the "T", is also excellent, although I never needed to use it on this trip. My friend and I walked half of the Freedom Trail, which passes numerous points of historical interest, including Paul Revere's house, the old North Church (Paul's destination on his historic midnight ride), Independence Hall, from whose balcony the Declaration of Independence was read aloud to the citizens of Boston, and multiple graveyards where such patriots as Sam Adams and Paul Revere are buried. The trail is easy to follow: it's denoted by either a red painted line or red brickwork on the sidewalk. It crosses the Charles River into adjacent Charlestown and splits into alternate end points: Cobb Hill, location of an important battle during the Revolutionary War; and the USS Constitution, an old naval ship that you can board and explore. I've seen the ship before, but had never gone up to the top of the obelisk at the peak of Cobb Hill. The 270 spiralling stone steps damned near killed me. Adding insult to injury, while I was stopped, wheezing for breath, halfway up the tower, a Frenchwoman and her two young children, one of whom couldn't have been more than 3, passed me on the way down. There was no WAY I was going to be shown up by a 3-year-old, so I did eventually drag my lard ass up to the top, where there are excellent views of both Charlestown and Boston. The Freedom Trail goes through the North End, which is Boston's Italian district. Every other storefront seems to be named "Giovanni's", "Luigi's", etc. I had a truly excellent cafe mocha in a small cafe right across the street from one of the several old churches along the trail. That night, my friend and I gorged ourselves at Legal Seafood, a popular seafood chain in the Boston area. I don't even remember now what I ate, only that I ate way too much of it and it was really really good. I do remember what my friend ate, though: a traditional Boston seafood platter consisting of clams, taters and an entire steamed lobster. I happened to have a seat with a good view of the lobster tank, and I was secretly rooting for the more rebellious ones who were attempting to climb out of the tank on the backs of their doomed companions when the cook wasn't looking.

White Thanksgiving

2005-11-30T17:29:00.000-05:00

This year, for the first time in my life, and as a direct result of the Free State Project, I woke up on Thanksgiving morning to a beautifully white world. The first snow of the season began early that morning and continued until around noon. It was a gentle, fluffy snow that "stuck". I took the opportunity to go for a walk to the nearest Dunkin Doughnuts (FYI, if you don't currently eat doughnuts and drink coffee in a truly bizarre assortment of flavors (blueberry?!?), you will begin after moving to New Hampshire. It's a mandatory part of state residency.) Traffic is so light in my residential neighborhood (within walking distance of downtown Manchester) that I was able to walk in the middle of the street. By the time I got to DuDo's, my hair was dripping wet. On my way home, I passed a neighbor who was out shoveling, and we exchanged hellos. He must have found my wet hair and goofy smile curious, because after I'd continued down the street, he called after me "Where are you from?" I yelled back "California!" He said "Ohhh, so this is all new for you! Congratulations!" People keep telling me I will soon learn to despise snow, but at least for that first time, it was magical. (It has since melted.) Here's hoping that you had much to be thankful for this year.

poli sci 102

2005-11-22T20:57:00.000-05:00

Last Saturday I attended the second workshop this year of the New Hampshire Liberty Alliance. To give you an indication of how serious Free State Project participants are about our desire to roll back government in New Hampshire, 20 people spent our entire Saturday crammed into someone's living room, being trained in the nitty gritty of running political campaigns and tracking pending legislation. The workshop was held in the Goffstown home of an FSP couple, two of the very first movers to New Hampshire, and was led by Don Gorman, a Libertarian who has served two terms in the state legislature as well as holding several other public offices. We got to hear in detail what it was like for three Free Staters who ran for political office in the recent elections. The first speaker was one of the chief instigators behind the ballot initiative to institute a budget cap in Manchester. This was the first successful attempt to get enough signatures for a ballot initiative on the Manchester ballot in 20 years! Infuriatingly, the initiative was then deemed unacceptable by the State Attorney General mere weeks before the election. The second speaker ran for City Council in Dover, and came within only 45 votes of winning! And the third speaker ran for the School Board in Concord, a city with a left-leaning newspaper and strong unions. Considering that all three campaigners have lived in the state for less than two years and were running for significant positions with real influence in their respective new cities, their results weren't bad at all. Each candidate learned a lot, and shared some of what they learned with the rest of us. We also got training in the amazing bill triage system that has been developed by a handful of NHLA volunteers (and keep in mind, this organization didn't even exist two years ago!). The web-based software imports data directly from the State of New Hampshire's website and provides a means for NHLA volunteers to track pending legislation and rate it as pro- or anti-liberty. This allows the NHLA to focus its volunteer lobbyists' time and energy on those bills deemed most significant and/or most likely to successfully be influenced. They already have a few successes in stopping pending liberty-unfriendly legislation. Senator Ron Paul, the most libertarian guy in Congress, was the keynote speaker at the NHLA's annual banquet last July. And plans are afoot to publicize their annual legislators report card, in which every single state representative receives a letter grade (just like in school) as to how good or bad a friend of liberty he is, based on his voting record over the preceding year. It's really phenomenal what these people have managed to put together in only two years. It wasn't all work, though; we had food and chat breaks (some even had beer), and those who wished petted the gargantuan 6-toed mutant cat that strolled about. I'm not sure what it means that it picked me out of the crowd to jump into my lap; am I a mutant magnet? After the business of the day was over, attendees were free to loiter on the screened-in porch, enjoying intoxicating liquid refreshments while shooting the breeze about life, the universe and New Hampshire.

burn, baby, burn

2005-11-15T19:31:00.000-05:00

update: you can watch a 5 minute video of this incendiary escapade at Political Graffiti ! On Saturday I participated in my first ever act of public civil disobedience. Three Free State Project participants decided to publicly burn their social security cards in front of the Concord SSA office. Their reasons for this were twofold: to protest the social security program, and to protest the new National ID policy. They alerted both the local police and various local media outlets prior to the event. However, no police showed up, which was a pleasant surprise. A reporter from a local radio station attended the event and interviewed several people, and a Free State supporter from Vermont videotaped the burning and made some absolutely incredible signs. A total of 18 Free Staters and friends attended, including stragglers who showed up after the burning was all done. My own contribution was to show up dressed as the Statue of Liberty sporting a black eye. As usual, I got lost on the way there, and I have to wonder what various residents of Concord thought when they saw the Statue of Liberty hanging U-turns and cursing to herself up and down Main St. By the time I arrived, the actual burning of the SS cards was over, but I did get to witness and participate in burning some oversized mockups of cards. It was an absolutely spectacular autumn day, sunny and warm, and everyone had a great time. We left a memento behind for the govmint workers to find on Monday morning: a sign declaring Social Security to be the World's Worst Pyramid Scheme, and the charred remains of one of the oversized SS cards. Curiously, the only run-in with cops occured well after the burn, when most of us had convened at a nearby pizza parlor for lunch. A Free Stater who is in the habit of openly wearing a gun was stopped and questioned by a Concord police officer who was in the parking lot for an unrelated reason. By bizarre coincidence, both the Free Stater and the police officer speak... Bosnian. What started out as a potentially unpleasant incident finished with the two gentlemen chatting amicably in... Bosnian. The photo is of me and Lauren Ann Canario, Free Stater extraordinaire who is currently renting one of the private homes seized by eminent domain in New London, CT, and who recently spent two weeks in prison for refusing to leave when denied access to a city council meeting. Lauren is one of the three who burned her SS card.

a river runs through it

2005-11-12T07:41:00.000-05:00

Last Saturday was the monthly meeting of the Merrimack Valley Porcupines, the local group for Free Staters who have made the move to New Hampshire and have settled in the south central portion of the state, which encompasses the largest cities of Manchester, Nashua and Concord. For the past year or more, the meetings have been taking place at Milly's, a bar/club/brewery in one of the converted mill buildings in downtown Manchester left over from the 19th century days when the city was the textile manufacturing capital of the world. Milly's is pretty big, and usually pretty empty in the middle of the day, which is when MVP meetings take place, so we're able to meet there for free and be served burgers and microbrew while meeting! Until recently the only downside was that brewing beer can be a noisy business, and it's sometimes difficult to hear the meeting proceedings over the sounds of enormous vats of microbrew bubbling/siphoning/yeastifying/etc. However, the management of Milly's has recently made a stink about the fact that a few Porcupines choose to exercise their legal right to open carry a gun, and has asked that no guns be brought in. Oh well, that's what the free market is all about, and if enough of us feel strongly about it, we can meet and buy our burgers elsewhere. The MVP meetings have exploded over the course of the past year. Just two years ago, at the first meeting, two people attended (if I have the developing legend correct). A year ago, meetings were averaging around 20 people a month. Now they average 40+. With more Free State Project members making the move all the time, pretty soon we're going to need our own lodge in which to congregate! MVP meetings are very well-organized, with printed agendas, scheduled speakers, and minutes promptly published to the group's Yahoo discussion list. Joel, the group leader for the past year, somehow does a great job of keeping things running on schedule while never invoking Roberts' Rules of Order. Joel's girlfriend, who is a native of New Hampshire and very supportive of Joel's libertarian shenanigans, has been producing the meeting minutes and also put together the Porcupine Directory, which provides names, addresses, phone numbers and personal interests of in-state Porcupines (being listed in it is strictly voluntary). Every meeting provides time for announcements, so that anyone who would like to address a room full of Free Staters/libertarians about their personal project and solicit volunteers has an opportunity to do so. New movers and visitors are introduced and welcomed. Announcements about upcoming liberty-oriented events are made (there seem to be several at every meeting). This last meeting ran a record 2.75 hours (I missed the first half of it, which is just as well; that's a bit too much meeting for me!). Don Gorman, the Director of Political Action of the New Hampshire Liberty Alliance, spoke at a length that only Don can about Porcupines who were running for office in various cities and needed volunteers for their campaigns. Katherine Albrecht, the founder of C.A.S.P.I.A.N. (Consumers Against Supermarket Privacy Invasion and Numbering), spoke about her organization's campaign to keep WalMart from foistng RFID chips on an unwitting public; a protest in front of the Bedford WalMart was scheduled for later that afternoon, and several people from the MVP meeting were inspired to join it by her talk. She has a new book out called Spychips, if you'd like to learn more about RFID chips and the threat they pose to privacy.

signs, signs, everywhere signs

2005-11-08T19:59:00.000-05:00

Election Day, like everything else, is different in New Hampshire. Where I used to live in downtown Oakland, every time I went to vote, the polling place had, at most, one other voter in it. The volunteers seemed so bored, they were desperately happy to see someone, ANYONE, coming in to vote. They'd hand out little stickers as a reward for voting. Not having been rewarded with a sticker for anything since, well, kindergarten, I'd humor them and stick it on my lapel. It did offer a certain childish thrill. In New Hampshire, the destination of choice for the Free State Project, people take election day seriously. In order to get to my local polling place, I had to run a gauntlet of politicians, contenders, supporters and even kids holding signs, or totem poles of signs, despite the fact that is was a dark and chilly November evening. Many of them had been at it since early this morning when the polls opened. The polling place was bustling with activity. Friendly volunteers directed traffic, and ushered me to a red, white and blue bedecked booth where I voted the old-fashioned way, with a felt-tip pen! Then I went outside and held a sign for a fellow Porcupine who was running for School Board. The mayor strolled around, thanking his supporters and cradling a cute baby in his arms (no, really!). The opponent of the guy for whom I was holding a sign walked by and gave me a dirty look. A group of Porcupines and their girlfriends, some of whom had taken the day off work in order to work at various polling places all day long, whiled away the time by debating the constitutionality of various issues of the day. The obligatory box of Dunkin Donuts was, of course, close at hand. But the single biggest difference between voting in New Hampshire and voting in the San Francisco Bay Area is that, 15 minutes after the polls closed, I already knew the results of the election! Anyone who was interested was allowed to linger in the polling place (the basement of a church) while a computer quickly tallied up the ballots cast and spit out the results on what looked like a cash register tape. A sharply dressed gentleman then read the results aloud. If I were back in California, I'd need to wait several days while boxes full of "misplaced" ballots were suddenly located, lawsuits were filed, people huffed and puffed for the news cameras, and I'd finally get to find out that most of what/whom I voted for lost anyway. In Manchester there were three issues on this ballot, and I got what I wanted on all three. Of course, this only pertains to my own ward; I'll have to wait for the other wards to get tallied to find out the final results. The mayoral race was rumored to be close, but several people (including yours truly) gasped audibly when we heard that there was a difference of only ONE vote between the two candidates! Who says your vote doesn't matter??

the agony of da feet

2005-11-06T20:25:00.000-05:00

Election fever has struck New Hampshire. There are political signs EVERYWHERE: on street corners, lawns, freeway on-ramps, in business windows. One local candidate has parked himself in front of the nearest Dunkin Donuts and smiles and waves at passing cars (I'm sorry, but is this supposed to demonstrate some sort of aptitude for the job...?). One morning on my way to work I was impressed to see the freeway on-ramp absolutely lined with small signs for Republican mayoral candidate Frank Guinta. But yesterday, on the same on-ramp, they had all been replaced with signs for Democratic incumbent Bob Baines. hmmmmmmmm Numerous Free State Project participants are running for office, and some of them have a good shot at winning. I spent the afternoon delivering flyers door to door for one candidate who is running for City Council of one of the larger cities. He's running as an independent, but is teamed up with a well-known Republican and his chances look good. He has received financial contributions from so many generous Free Staters and friends, as well as from the New Hampshire Liberty Alliance, that he's actually pushing the limit of what he's allowed to accept without having to jump through obnoxious reporting hoops. It was a very foggy, misty day, and after 2 1/2 hours of trudging up and down people's front steps and shuffling through unraked autumn leaves, my hair was dripping wet, my flyers were soggy, and my feet ached in 5 different ways. But a $2 draft at a local pub (OK, so maybe it was two) and a mountain of 25 cent buffalo wings, along with cheery conversation with my footsore compatriots, did a lot to ease the pain and ward off the damp November chill. The election is only a day away... here's hoping some more Free Staters get their blistered feet in the doors of political power, so they can start rolling back government!

Devil's Night

2005-10-30T20:49:00.000-05:00

They do Halloween differently here. Apparently it's the custom in Manchester for parents to take their children trick or treating on the Sunday evening closest to Halloween. Not only that, but a lot of them go out in the afternoon when it's still daylight. I guess I can understand it if it's a question of cold weather, but today was a bright and sunny day with highs in the mid-60's, so it just seemed WRONG to have the little costumed imps roaming the streets at 2:00PM. I didn't know until recently that the night before Halloween is itself a special day. It's known as Devil's Night, and provides an excuse for young people to play pranks. It's been pretty quiet around here, though, except for the GHOST.... I went for a walk after nightfall. Within two minutes, something dark and furry crossed my path. I assume it was a cat, although it seemed pretty big for a cat. This is the second Halloween where a black cat has crossed my path! About five minutes into my walk, I saw a figure up ahead of me on the sidewalk, heading in my direction. But the person slowed to a halt as I approached, as if waiting for me, which struck me as a bit odd. It was a woman, and when I came up even with her, she said "Hi" in a very sad, forlorn voice. I have no idea who she was. I said hi back and continued walking, quickly. The night felt colder than I had expected (I wasn't wearing a jacket), so I cut my walk short and took the same route back. Five to ten minutes after I had passed the mysterious woman the first time, she was still there, alone, motionless, in the dark. She had turned around so that she was once again facing me as I approached. She didn't say anything the second time, but she didn't step aside for me either, so we practically brushed arms as I passed her. This was just a few doors down from the Stark* house. Could it have been the spirit of a Stark??

Happy Halloween, from the only state with "DIE" in its state motto!

*It was Revolutionary War general John Stark who coined the phrase that is now the New Hampshire state motto: Live Free or Die. The house he lived in for most of his life is just a block from mine.

I found Serenity

2005-10-23T09:37:00.000-04:00

A couple of months ago, I had never heard of the movie "Serenity", or the TV show upon which it's based, Firefly. But at a monthly meeting of the Merrimack Valley Porcupines (the local group for Free State Project members and friends), someone threw out the idea of throwing a "Firefly" marathon video party the night before the opening of the movie. I was surprised by the roar of enthusiastic response to this. Some people mentioned that they felt it was the most "libertarian" TV show ever made. Intrigued, I rented the DVD containing the show's pilot and first few episodes from Netflix. I was hooked!! Over the next month, I proceeded to rent every Firefly disc Netflix had, and to watch every episode in sequential order. Sometimes I'd watch them a second time, with the commentary on. I haven't been so obsessive about a show since David Lynch's "Twin Peaks". You can certainly identify elements of lib philosophy in the show; its primary theme is freedom. The basic premise is about a man who buys himself a beatup old spaceship, hires a ragtag crew of social misfits, and proceeds to try to make an "honest living" as a smuggler. The show is a cross between a space opera and a western, and has a very interesting vision of the future. American and Chinese cultures are the dominant ones, and everyone speaks both languages (Chinese appears to be better for cursing!). Prostitution is legal and even highly respectable, but only if you join "the guild". Settlers live hard lives on numerous terraformed planets on the outskirts of the settled galaxy, a la the Wild West. There are horses, and guns, and nutritious food is worth its weight in gold on the space market. Fresh produce is a great luxury for the spaceship's crew. The cast is uniformly charismatic, the dialog is quirky and often hilarious, and the basic underlying theme is that government, in the form of "the Alliance" is not only unnecessary, it does more harm than good. The crew of spaceship Serenity does their best to avoid it, as it never fails to make their lives unnecessarily difficult. Kind of like America today, eh? The movie is a continuation of the TV series (which, tragically, didn't even last a full season before Fox gave it the ax). I think you could enjoy it without ever having watched the series. I think there were hopes that if the movie did well enough, they might be able to bring back the series. Apparently it hasn't done all that well, though. Alas, pearls before swine. Go see it in a theater quick, before it disappears. The leader of the Merrimack Valley Porcupines and his girlfriend hosted a dinner/video viewing party the evening of the movie's release, and at least 18 of us went en masse to cheer on Mal and his motley crew. Fun times!! Both the show and the movie were created, directed and written by Joss Whedon, famous for his other TV series Buffy, the Vampire Slayer and Angel. He even wrote the theme song of Firefly, which I didn't care for at first but have grown to love. It's in the style of a cowboy ballad, and the words remind me of the Free State Project, and my own adventure out here "on the raggedy edge" of the U.S. Alliance:

The Ballad of Serenity

Take my love, Take my land,

Take me where I cannot stand,

I don't care, I'm still free,

You can't take the sky from me. Take me out to the black,

Tell 'em I ain't comin' back,

Burn the land and boil the sea,

You can't take the sky from me. There's no place I can be

Since I found Serenity,

But you can't take the sky from me...

http://www.fireflywiki.org/img/Ballad_of_Serenity.mp3

true kitten of Zion

2005-10-18T21:22:00.000-04:00

World, meet Ezme. She's a true child of Zion (no holes!), born free, right here in the Free State! Weighing in at slightly under 2.5 pounds, she's in rude good health, has got a purr like a motorboat and a killer instinct (she made short work of the striped mouse). She does make it extraordinarily difficult to blog, though!

concerned taxpayers of manchester

2005-10-17T21:15:00.000-04:00

I just got back from my first meeting of the Concerned Taxpayers of Manchester. Conveniently, the meeting took place in MacNeil's Banquet Facility adjacent to one of my favorite restaurants in town: KC's Rib Shack, so I used it as an excuse to gorge on the "Boom Boom Pladda Combo", which consists of a mountain of pulled pig butt, chicken breast, cornbread, chili and apple sauce, all washed down with a Pig's Snout (a local brew). KC's is very politically incorrect; their menus feature the slogan "We have an agreement with the local health food stores: they promise not to sell anything good and we promise not to sell anything healthy". The waitresses sport naughty black T-shirts that say "Liquor in the front, smoker in the back". The hall in which the meeting took place looks like a converted barn; I don't know if it really is one or not, but it sure looks authentic to me (then again, what do I know about barns?). It has a small hardwood dancefloor that I suspect is/was used for squaredancing. As for the meeting: twenty people attended, and a full 20% of them were Free State Project members. It was really easy to pick them out, too; we were the ones who weren't senior citizens. In fact, I feel quite confident in guesstimating that I was the only female in attendance under age 65. I guess you can interpret that different ways. On the one hand, it's depressing that so few people of my generation (or even my PARENTS' generation) are motivated enough to try to fight against their own taxes. But on the other hand, it shows how much of an impact just a few new people can make. Manchester's the biggest city in the state, and yet it's still a "small town" politically. The old timers in attendance personally knew almost every selectman and school board member. I think it's nice that they choose to attend such meetings rather than staying home to catch the latest episode of "Desperate Survivors" or whatever the rest of the nation is currently watching Monday nights. And hey, I got an award! I received a lovely certificate in appreciation for my help in collecting signatures to try to get a city budget spending limit measure on the November ballot. (We got more than enough signatures to get it on the ballot; unfortunately, the attorney general then shot it down, with the blessing of the mayor and most of the Board of Aldermen. Politics is a dirty game.) Frankly, I hardly feel like I deserve a certificate, I collected only a handful of signatures. But I did almost get arrested doing so, so maybe that counts for extra. ;-)

the spirit of radio

2005-10-16T19:43:00.000-04:00

It finally stopped raining today, which was nice for all the women doing the breast cancer walk-a-thon. There was a serious tornado of a wind, though, knocking over political signs (Manchester is COVERED with political signs right now; New Hampsherites take their politics very seriously) and covering all the lawns with leaves. I just removed my window air conditioner for the winter; the wind was coming right through it and causing a draft strong enough to bang my door against its frame non-stop. No political activism today, aside from exchanging emails with various other Free State Project members. Although I thought about dragging myself to the New Hampshire Libertarian Party's annual convention, which was taking place alongside the national Third Party convention near Manchester, I needed time for mundane activities like going to Home Depot and doing my laundry. I was hoping to catch a matinee of Serenity but failed to locate the movie theater in time. Argh!! Maybe I should invest in one of those GPS gizmos. New Hampshire radio amuses me. Coming from a very cosmopolitan area to a much less urban environment, I would have thought the airwaves would be dominated by country music (which I don't care for), but it's not so. Actually, NH seems to be caught in a time warp, and plays a lot of what I used to listen to back in high school twenty years ago: AC/DC, Def Leffard, Van Halen, Bon Jovi... in other words, 80's hard rock. The biggest local station is Rock101, located in one of the old mill buildings just a mile down the river from my house. They have a very entertaining morning show called the Morning Buzz that I usually listen to on my way to work. But my favorite station, musicwise, is WFNX, which is comparable to Live 105 in the Bay Area only with less chatter and more interesting music. Yesterday on the drive to Vermont I was listening to Rock101 and a rather young and immature-sounding DJ was babbling on and on about how trashed he'd got the night before and how bad he felt now because of his hangover. Just as I was rolling my eyes and muttering to myself that he should shut the f*** up and play more music, he said "But hey, I did it to myself and it's time to pay the price. So I'll stop complaining now." How cool is that?! A rock DJ promoting personal responsibility on the air. I'll have to add that to the ever-growing list of things I love about this state.

peeping and blue-hairs

2005-10-15T18:42:00.000-04:00

It's raining in New Hampshire; you may have heard about it on the news. It's been raining for 8 straight days and isn't supposed to let up for a couple more. The southwestern part of the state is severely flooded; roads and houses have been washed away, as well as a few people. I woke up this morning and had to decide: stay in my warm dry bed nursing a hangover and getting a little extra sleep... or brave the rains and potentially flooded roads for the 100+-mile drive to Randolph Center, Vermont, where I was scheduled to man an outreach table on behalf of the Free State Project? It was touch and go for a few minutes there. But the realization that I could get in some fall foliage viewing during the drive motivated me to do the right thing. New Hampshire is a beautiful state at most times of the year, but right now at high "leaf peeping" season it is really spectacular. Everything is lush and green, with spontaneous little waterfalls trickling down the black granite cliffs alongside the highways, and multicolored trees that remind me of fireworks. My favorites are the ones that are blood red (they're few and far between, though; the most common color this season is yellow). In case you're wondering about the temperature at this time of year, I have only put on a jacket one day so far this fall. Today's outreach activity was at Vermont FreedomFest, held on the campus of Vermont Technical College and sponsored by the Ethan Allen Institute. Sounded like a great opportunity to wrangle up some new members; if libertarians in VERMONT aren't willing to relocate to NH, who will?! Unfortunately, it was a much tougher crowd than I expected. The overall tone seemed quite conservative, and every speaker was a Republican. My fellow activist and I felt dreadfully underdressed in jeans and Free State Project T-shirts. And the average age of attendees must have been in the 55-60 range! There wasn't one single non-white person in attendance (even the one DOG was white.) I received a few pitying remarks from individuals who happened to come by our table; they really didn't get it, and seemed to think I was mildly retarded for spending my Saturday there. Oh well, at least some new people were exposed to the existence of the FSP; perhaps their children (or grandchildren?!) will join later. And the keynote speaker, economist Stephen Moore, was quite entertaining, with many amazing anecdotes of working with Reagan, Yeltsin, and Schwarzenegger. I can't believe I just used those three names together in a sentence.

Welcome!

2005-10-14T20:00:00.000-04:00

I know what you're thinking... the Internet needs another blog like you need a hole in the head. Well listen... this isn't your average blog. How so? Read on. I am a member of a group called the Free State Project, the goal of which is to get 20,000 libertarians to move to New Hampshire. Explore the FSP website at http://www.freestateproject.org for lots more info on that. Why is this relevant? Well, I signed up with the FSP 3.5 years ago. To be honest, it didn't take much effort; I just filled out a form on a webpage promising to one day move to an as-of-that-time-yet-to-be-determined state. But four months ago, I decided to practice what I preach and actually make the move to New Hampshire. To provide a bit of background, I am a 30-something female who has spent the past 20 years plus a good chunk of my childhood in California, so I'm practically a California native. I haven't lived in a place where it snows since I was 6 years old! Furthermore, I moved from downtown Oakland, California, a large, gritty city known for its rap music and high homicide rate. Prior to Oakland, I lived in San Francisco and was the epitome of "Generation X". I now live in a state where the closest thing to a city is only a little over 100,000 people, and roadsigns warn you to watch out for moose. My goal with this blog is threefold:

to keep in touch with my legions of adoring fans... er, sorry... to amuse my friends and family
to chronicle all of the new experiences I'm having in this, my first year in the Great White Northeast
to share my experience with other members and prospective members of the FSP, to show that this isn't just a philosophical exercise. There are REAL PEOPLE moving to New Hampshire every day for their political beliefs! It's true; I've met a lot of them! And we really are accomplishing stuff. And we're having a lot of fun doing it, too. I hope you will seriously consider joining us.

So there it is. If that sounds interesting to you, come back regularly for the next exciting installment in the life of Friday. And if it doesn't, surf in peace.