Tag: New England
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Now Where is That Hammock
It’s ten a.m. on Sunday morning and the much-vaunted snow-pocalypse has begun its reign of terror. A steady fall of small snow flakes are descending out of a gray sky. The temperature has soared from a low last night of two degrees Fahrenheit to a current balmy twenty degrees. I’ve announced to Camera Girl that I intend to skip snow removal altogether today and save my efforts for Monday when the lion’s share of the snow will be on the ground. The current predicted accumulation for Sunday through Monday is ten to fifteen inches of the white stuff. All in all, that’s not horrible. The snow blower is 24 inches high. Now, even fifteen inches will slow the work way down but you have to look at these things in the right way. I’ll abandon the bottom driveway for the next few days and start off with a path for my car to get out on the top. Then I’ll clear the entire top driveway and adjacencies and slowly work on the bottom driveway in a strategic fashion. And the wind will play an important part in that operation. Fifteen inches of snow isn’t a monstrous height but if wind forces me to dump off the snow right next to the row I’m clearing, it will quickly end up as three feet before very long.
And this is the sad reality of life in New England. Aspects of snow removal become the focus of your every waking hour. Equipment maintenance and repair, severity of the weather, work and chore scheduling, current health and injuries. It’s all very, very tedious and boring. But completely unavoidable. That is unless there is some plan for escape! But I know that will never be. I’m bound by the heavy chains of family responsibility. They’ve got me.
And that’s why Jake Barter is such a comfort to me in these times of tribulation. Jake resides on an island paradise somewhere in the South Pacific. Lying in a hammock beneath coconut palms he sips a cool drink while balmy zephyrs maintain a perfect seventy-eight degrees. And if by some miracle the temperature reaches eighty-two, he need only spring from his berth and swim about in the warm clear ocean for a few minutes before returning to his rest where he awaits the mellow sound of a dinner gong announcing the beginning of a feast concocted of pork, coconut, honey and spices, fit for the king that he is.
Oh, well. Maybe in my next life. But for now, I’ll count my blessings. The roof hasn’t collapsed under the weight of the snow. The propane tanks are full enough for even a two-week power outage. I have plenty of DVDs to keep me amused during the “weather crisis” and Camera Girl assures me we have enough food for the next few days at least. And tomorrow, my marketer has informed me begins the efforts to advertise “The Sniper.” I had assumed it would happen when the publication occurred on Wednesday. But you know what they say about assuming.
Well, we shall see. Today Amazon has it listed as:
Best Sellers Rank: #144,617 in Books
#599 in Technothrillers (Books)
#14,261 in Science Fiction (Books)
It would be nice if each of those numbers was shortened by a zero or two.
Now where is that hammock?
Guest Contributor – Ed Brault – 01NOV2025 – Goin’ South
We moved from Burlington, VT, to Charleston, SC, 13 years ago, and never looked back. It took about six months to realize we were spending $1000 LESS per month . House payment (a real HOUSE, not a condo), gas, electricity (we bought an all-electric house and I feared the worst, and was VERY pleasantly surprised). I did a little research and found SC power is around 12.9 cents/kWh, while Vermont is 21.5 Mapped: The Average Cost of Electricity by U.S. State
Groceries, pet supplies, home repairs, etc. were all lower. the Charleston cultural life is as vivid and varied as Boston or NY. And perhaps more culturally balanced. Museums, sport arenas, the Galliard Playhouse, North Charleston Performing Arts Center, are always booked with everything from rock concerts to Broadway plays, The Sound of Music just opened for an 8-day run, and Jeff Dunham will be turning Walter and Achmed loose just before Thanksgiving. The SC Aquarium will be kicking off its annual Christmas program with light shows, music, and yours truly —among others —as SCUBA Santa!
And not a bottle of hot sauce in sight!
We’ve had snow twice since we moved down here, the first time literally a year to the day we moved in. We played it smart and stayed home until it melted off. The way you drive in snow in Carolina is YOU DON’T! We Damnyankees may know how, but the locals have not got a clue!
Overall, I will take Southern Living over Vermont. We don’t get Leaf Peeper Season here on the coast, but a short drive up towards Clemson gets you into some nice color. And I definitely do not miss having to dig my car out of a snowdrift at 5AM in double-digit-below-zero temperatures. I saw it as a sure sign of civilization when I drove past Lowes and Home Depot in November, and there was not a single snow-blower or even shovel on display!
Stay warm, my friend!
The Sourest of Grapes
Today I heard an hilarious argument as to why it is cheaper to live in New England than in the South. The main points of the thesis are that the infrastructure and services available here more than make up for the exorbitant cost of living. So, for instance, whereas the cost of owning a car in New England (insurance, mechanic’s charges, taxes) are much higher, because the roads are so much better your car will last much longer. When I heard this, I was thinking about what road salt does to the frame of a car in New England every winter. And then I thought about my recent drive on I-95 and the craters there that I drove over.
Next up was the world class medical care available in this region of the country and nowhere else. Now, it is without a doubt true that some very fine doctors and hospitals exist in places like Boston. But it is also true that there are plenty of really mediocre medical centers and even terrible ones up here. And I have experienced both so I’m not sure I believe that this is a slam dunk. I guess if your health is extremely poor this might carry some weight but I have heard of good hospitals sprinkled around the country and in addition if someone is in desperate need of specialized care like a knee replacement or something I’m guessing you could travel for the procedure. So, let’s call this a 50/50.
But the final point was the best. The overarching reason to live in New England is “the culture.” That one I think made me snort out loud. Apparently going into Boston or New York City to see “Hamilton” or some other masterpiece of middle-brow pomposity is supposed to make up for ridiculous real estate prices, outrageous utility and fuel bills, failing schools and colleges and an, in general, overregulated existence. And once you add the prevalence of increasing violence and squalor in the urban centers to the equation what exactly is there to extol about this region of the country?
But the participants in this New England pep rally nodded their heads and agreed that no sane individual would even think of packing it in, selling off the family home and buying a bigger house for half the price in a place where you can walk around in February in a light jacket and snow is an oddity that you hear about in stories about Santa Claus.
Well, I guess heaven (or hell) is where you make it. I will admit that we’ve had a beautiful fall with balmy weather extending almost all the way to Halloween. But eventually you have to pay the piper and the wind has been blowing pretty hard and the leaves have been stripped from a lot of the trees (except the oaks). So even these people making believe they live in a wonderland know the awful truth. After Christmas is over, the really awful stuff will begin. Even with the milder winters we’ve been having, there are four months of bleak, cold weather waiting for us; January, February, March and April. That’s a bitter pill.