Free State Observer

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.

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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:

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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!

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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:

1. to keep in touch with my legions of adoring fans… er, sorry… to amuse my friends and family
2. to chronicle all of the new experiences I’m having in this, my first year in the Great White Northeast
3. 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.

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