Notes from a New Hampshire Writer

For many years, the Write Free or Die group would hold their sessions and conduct their business, then adjourn to the local pub for libations. During those pub visits, much would be discussed, everything from astronomy to cartoons to 1960s folk musicians to medieval Scottish history. I was tasked with recording the highlights of some of those conversations in a column on this site we called “The Corner Booth” because the pub was kind enough to (mostly) make available for us (a group of a dozen or more writers) each week a corner booth. You can find those minutes still here, on this site. Then, when the pandemic began, I was asked again to keep a personal diary of the lockdown period — which we believed initially would only last a few weeks. You can also find that on this website, called the Plague Journal. Now, we find ourselves living once again in extraordinary times, and in an effort to breathe some life back into this website while maintaining some sanity, I will chronicle the daily thoughts and observations of one New Hampshire writer. Sadly, I ain’t Stephen King (talent!) or Dan Brown (money!), but you will have full access to my middling-level talent and thoughts nevertheless. The title of this diary/blog comes from my favorite Robert Frost poem, by the way. So as I did with the previous blog posts, I will continuously update this post by adding new entries at the top, pushing older ones down. Each will have a date, like a diary entry.

I’ll conclude by adding, Man, I miss you, Dean.

2025 December 29: Merry (belated) Christmas! And Hannukah! And the new year looms. (Is this a good thing, or should be very, very afraid?) Well, whatever 2026 means, it’s coming.

We’re currently in the throes of a slow-moving ice storm. The temperature is hovering right around zero (Fahrenheit) and it’s been alternating between freezing rain and regular rain all morning. I have carpet-bombed the driveway with salt multiple times but it just dissolves or gets washed away, to be replaced by a new layer of glacier. The news is reporting thousands without power but so far, we haven’t joined them. (We’re prepared if it comes to that. I suspect the real fun for us will come tonight, when this all really freezes over, bringing down tree limbs and power lines.) The driveway and roads are essentially a skating rink as of noon, but there is a fairly steady stream of traffic on the roads out front. (That deserves a separate rant, about why a single road over a fairly rural hill — with horse and cow farms — gets so much traffic, but that’s for another day.) But there is a steady stream of rented U-Haul trucks going up and down our road, and one of them even stopped at our place. Essentially, I suspect contractors have rented these things and then made themselves available to the various package delivery companies for the holiday season. The guy who stopped at our place was delivering a small Amazon package my sister had bought for us. My wife’s reaction was, ‘He’s risking his life driving on icy roads…to deliver batteries?’

We took a nice walk through the woods in the back yesterday, and it was fun to see just how many deer are using our backyard as Highway 66. There’s a serious herd hereabouts, and they’re using our yard as a safe transit zone. (Also, there are about two dozen very serious-sized gray squirrel condos back there.) I am often working late at night, sometimes until 2.00 a.m., and I will here something outside my window. Could be the deer sneaking through. Also, I note that they’re polite enough not to crap in our yard, waiting until they hit the woods to…let it all go. The black bear may be uncouth enough to occasionally unload in my yard but the deer are more thoughtful. Thanks, guys!

A final, philosophical thought. I have realized recently that I have a ‘tude. Not necessarily a bad one, but definitely a ‘tude. I’m a middle aged guy, older but not old yet (with some definite graying highlights in the hair and beard but still with some lingering brownish color). My friends span the age spectrum from people in their 20s to some in their 80s. It is natural for those of us who are at least in their 40s and upward (and I lean far more to the upward side of that scale) to reminisce about Ye Olde Days — and that happens a lot. And I enjoy it. One thing that is obvious is that things change, and after some decades on this Earth you become more aware of that change. But despite our chaotic politics nowadays and many related cultural trends, the reality is that I am a happy guy. I enjoy my life. My wife is amazing, I have a job that is meaningful (for me), I have good friends and colleagues, I make enough money to pay the bills, and my health is relatively good. In short, I am living the best years of my life. That’s what I mean by the ‘tude; I know people who similarly have good families & friends, good jobs, etc., but despair or are even angry at the cards fate has dealt them. Why aren’t they richer? Why don’t they have a nicer house or car? Or why did they lose their hair in their 20s? Why didn’t they get that promotion at work?

Now, sometimes some very serious things happen; the news just broke that former Senator Ben Sasse (younger than me!) was just diagnosed with terminal pancreatic cancer. So, life really can suck sometimes. But at least for now, mine doesn’t. I wake up each day and see promise and while there are good things in my life, part of the deal is also my attitude, how I approach life mentally. As an amateur historian, I know luck plays a big role; I’ve known many people who’ve lived through wars, economic collapse, dictatorships, etc. But being able to engage with and enjoy the people in your life in a positive way also plays a role.

Be well, be kind, and be content —

2025 December 22: The typical pre-Christmas crush has materialized, with people swarming retail businesses and supermarkets. Driving is now an exercise in combat survival. There was some sort of saying to the effect that the world would collapse if everybody — all 8 billion of us humans — decided at the same time on the same day to converge on precisely the same location. The retort is that while this may be true, it never happens so we can all relax. Well, I think the last few days before Christmas may come close to disproving that retort. Still, I’ll say that at least outside of driving, most folks are being very civil in line with the season. It’s elbow-to-elbow in stores, but it’s not an unpleasant experience. Folks seem relatively jolly.

I have memories from the early 1980s when I was in high school of news footage of little old ladies throwing punches in department stores and essentially rioting — I’m not kidding; go hunt down some historical footage — all over Cabbage Patch Dolls. OK, I was never a doll kind of guy but still, the point at which I start throwing punches at strangers in stores to get my hands on something starts maybe 3 days after a nuclear war and I’m in Mad Max mode, reaching for the last can of food on the shelf — a can of Cream of Broccoli. So it is a relief to see crowded stores but with people generally being kind and courteous to one another. One thing I’ve learned in several decades on this rocky ball is that we each have the power to make a difference (for better or worse) in another person’s life. In the 1951 Alistair Sim version of A Christmas Carol, after telling Scrooge about the imminent 3 ghosts Jacob Marley opens a window suddenly to reveal a homeless freezing mother cradling her baby, surrounded by lamenting ghosts. Ever the dolt, Scrooge asks why the ghosts lament to which Marley responds, because they’ve lost the power to intervene among the living; they’ve lost their agency in this world. You and I still have agency, so why not use it to make someone else’s day just a little better?

See: I told you this would be a rambling and vaguely coherent diary.

Snow expected tomorrow, so a white Christmas this year.

Be well, and in a world where everyone in power seems to be screaming at everyone else, be kind —

2025 December 16: Snow came early this year in New Hampshire. And so did the cold. We’ve been living with January and February-level lows for weeks now, meaning windy days in the 20s and nights that dip into negative numbers. After a period of adjustment, it becomes quaint very quickly. People had started putting up Christmas lights just before this all began (right around Thanksgiving) and so when you drive around, it is festive. Let’s face it: it’s a New Hampshire Christmas complete with snowbanks, kids sledding, snow-covered steeples and fir trees, with the odd holly bush standing out here and there with the little red berries. It’s enough to make Thomas Kinkade blush.

Well, in two days we’re expecting an inch of rain and 50 degrees. Welcome to New England. That will translate into lots of melt water runoff (and flooded cellars), with muddy brown-green lawns sporting now sad-looking inflatable lawn Christmas decorations. There’s a huge snowman up the hill from me that you can see from my driveway. I think my neighbor has a Rudolf. A couple folks in town erected gigantic, 8-foot-tall skeletons on their lawns for Halloween but never took them down, and have now dressed them in Santa costumes. They at least get an “A” for ingenuity.

What will happen is that night, after all has melted, it will form huge puddles everywhere including on the roads, and that will re-freeze as temps dip back into the mid-December reality. Driving the day after will be fun.

This just brought back a memory from my childhood. It was deep winter with a couple feet of snow on the ground when a mid-winter thaw hit, and a river of snow melt and large chunks of ice were flowed menacingly down our driveway. (Sorry for the adverb, Dean.) My father immediately swung into action and I, maybe 12 or 14 years old, was recruited for the emergency relief effort. The goal was to spare the cellar from flooding. We noticed a large pool developing in our backyard but the adjacent field was lower terrain. An ice dam held the water in our yard back, and so I was deployed with a shovel to break the sizable dam. I was wearing snow boots (“galoshes”) but the freezing water was well over my calves so my feet were submerged and freezing. A good soldier, I waded into this morass and hacked away with the shovel — quite heroically, I thought. At one point while chopping and hacking at the ice, however, I heard distinctive clicking noises. I turned around to see my father standing on higher ground with a camera. (This was well before smart phones and digital pictures.) He thought the sight of me playing Viking with a shovel against ice was amusing, and worth recording for posterity. Thanks, Dad. I eventually broke through and the ocean drained from our yard harmlessly into the field, and my father got a picture that he liked to trot out for visitors for years to come.

Be well, and be kind —

2025 December 14: Tonight we attended the annual Hanukkah menorah lighting in the capital. We’re not Jewish but we have many Jewish friends and in any event, in light of the rise in violent anti-Semitism in recent years, well, it seemed like reaching across lines was the civilized thing to do. It was a nice affair, though there was a strong wind that made the 20s-temps seem far colder.

But with the massacre of the Hanukkah meeting in Australia yesterday and other threats, we noted that the state police had a heavy presence with several high profile men in full combat gear and with assault weapons prominently placed, including right next to the rabbi as he lit the menorah.

I can’t believe we live in times when ideas like this have once again spread so widely, where violence is almost normalized.

In these crazy times, be well, and be kind —

2025 December 10: I was telling someone recently about the story of Mrs. Giesler, who was an older lady who lived not far from the small Mom-and-Pop food shop I worked when I was 14. I used to have to deliver her groceries as a stockboy to her home, usually on Saturdays. The thing was that Mrs. Giesler was elderly, maybe 80-ish, and she was lonely. This meant that a stockboy showing up with her grocery order wasn’t just a convenience; it was a social event. She met you at the front door and you were quickly shuffled through her living room into her kitchen where she plopped you down at her kitchen table and shoved a plate of homemade chocolate chip cookies in front of you, and a glass of milk. She then slowly put her groceries away, the whole time chatting with you (the main point). Eventually she would finish and have to sit down herself with her check book and (slowly) fill out the check for the order, all the while still chatting with you. It was about a 20 minute walk to her home from the store but an order delivery to Mrs. Giesler’s usually took a good hour.

The other thing about delivering to Mrs. Giesler was that her very neatly-kept home was straight out of the 1930s. I suspect she had fond memories from that decade. Her house wasn’t museum-like; rather it just looked like its clock had stopped around 1938. The light switches on the wall were the old 2-button standard. The furniture was all period. There was a Victrola in the living room as well as a glass-encased curio cabinet holding the boxes of 78s, all still looking like they’d been bought just two weeks earlier. Each room had the old large water radiators beneath the windows. I don’t remember a TV. (However, it may have been more of a parlor than a living room, meant for entertaining.) The wall paper was a heavy, dark green pattern. Picture the huge metal-framed refrigerator, next to the wide porcelain sink. Again, I don’t think she thought she was being hip or ironic. I think she just thought this was how people lived. I used to love walking through there. She didn’t intend to run a museum but it was like one for me.

Anyway, I was telling someone about all this recently when something struck me. These events took place in the early 1980s, when I was a teen just entering high school. For Mrs. Giesler, the 1930s were (then) about 50 years in her past. Wow, I thought. That’s a long time. Then it hit me. Holy crap. The early 1980s were about 40 years ago from today. The 70s were 50-some years ago, and I remember them. (And I still walk around wearing tie-dyed t-shirts.) In my mind, high school was like maybe 2 years ago.

Man, is I old.

Be well —

2025 December 8: It is currently 0 (zero) degrees Fahrenheit, or -18 degrees Celsius. I’m all for it. Yes, you have to bundle up a bit in your home but light a fire and you’re fine. No sweating, and it keeps the creepy-crawly critters to a minimum. I had a snake a year ago who was trying to get into the house, but he was cute. He was a small Garter Snake and he kept squeezing himself into the threshold treads of the cellar door, but could go no further. I would open the cellar door and he’d come rolling out, and usually he’d give me a dirty look. He was caught and released somewhere else. Maybe he’s sleeping in someone else’s cellar door frame now.

My wife noted that more people are wearing masks again. I think she’s right but it seems to be mostly older people. Maybe it’s the flu season, or I have heard strains of a rise in COVID cases again. (Doctors during the pandemic said it would eventually die down but never completely go away.) I notice them when food shopping, that at least some people (maybe ~5%) are wearing masks again.

I am slowly disengaging from social media platforms. I can’t completely ignore them; some I must use for work, like LinkedIn. But I just find less and less value in spending time on them, and feel like that time is wasted or lost. Spending time on them nowadays leaves me feeling more agitated than informed, entertained, or connected.

Still reading. Still writing. I have a pile of books I am working my way through. Yikes. But fun.

Be well —

2025 December 3: We got 14″ of snow over the day yesterday and so we had a few sessions of clearing snow — snow raking, snow blowing, shoveling. It is quite beautiful. And the snow gives other gifts; I saw deer tracks through the backyard this morning. But this also means winter driving skills time. I have a whole new relationship with my brake pedal. We’re getting reacquainted.

And another thing: I wore a Christmas sweater to our Write Free or Die meeting tonight. Any other time of the year I’d be embarrassed and horrified but in December, my already poor fashion sense completely evaporates. My wife was overjoyed to see me cutting up one of my old tie-dyed t-shirts into rags last week.

About our meetings: It occurred to me that if someone were watching us without sound, say, through a window, they would see one of us occasionally stand up and walk in circles while waving our arms. We kinda look like a chicken after its head has been cut off. And the other members completely ignore this behavior, usually not acknowledging the person acting this way. Several members do this multiple times during our meeting. The culprit is the room. They occasionally put us in a room that has lights with motion sensors that go out after about 15 minutes without movement. And let’s face it; writers don’t move a lot. We’re not exactly an athletic bunch. So somebody has to occasionally get up and wave their arms a bit to keep the lights on.

My superpower when writing lies in asking questions. It may not sound like much but I am constantly poking and prodding the story, asking why things are the way they are. This approach gave me an important inspiration a couple days ago that I am still chasing through research. I’ll spend another few days in the rabbit holes then come up for air, and write an important new piece for the story. Good stuff.

Be well —

2025 December 1: When I was growing up, there was a ritual my father had to go through this time of year that required lots of patience and profanity. He would put the artificial tree together, then unfurl the long strings of Christmas tree lights. Then he would plug each one in — and inevitably, after being stored for a year, they wouldn’t work. And by “didn’t work,” I mean, the whole set would not light up. This was because back then, the light bulbs were actually part of the electrical circuit so that if a single light bulb either died or got loose, it shut down the entire set. What that meant was that if you plugged a set in and it didn’t work — and inevitably, it didn’t — you had to get on your hands and knees and go literally bulb by bulb to find the uncooperative culprit. Christmas light sets came with a couple spares, just in case. And all sorts of things could happen to the bulbs. Some contained gases that created a neat effect but if the tiny seal was broken around the bulb’s glass, well, you were screwed. And so, as I said, there was one fateful night each year when my father had to submit to this job of going bulb-to-bulb along the entire string of each Christmas light set, trying to figure out which !(&^%$*)$# bulb had gone out or wiggled itself loose. This was a multi-hour ordeal.

And speaking of those gases, I’ll mention that (pre-LED) bulbs back then were mechanical heat which meant they got really hot when they were on for a while — hot enough to burn your hands or even start tree fires on natural, dried-out trees. That meant you had to be ginger when decorating the tree, lest you singe your finger tips. Just sayin’. I’m getting some generational whining in here. And I haven’t even got to the snow and wolves we had back then yet.

Anyway, I actually had this job this past weekend but, it being 2025, we have LED lights so when I unfurl the string of lights and plug them in…they work. It’s a pretty quick job. From unboxing to putting them on the tree, it took me all of an hour. Still, I held my beverage up in a moment of silence for my Dad and all the Dads out there who had to do this job old-school.

Speaking of snow and wolves, we’re supposed to get our first significant snowfall of the season tomorrow. I went and got gas for the snowblower and hauled her out into the driveway. Checked oil, etc., and started her up and let her run for 5 minutes. It’s a ritual each year in the fall and the spring when I swap the lawn mower and the snowblower spots in the garage, putting the one I need out front to be more accessible. Done. Roof rake? Check. Shovel for those places the snowblower can’t go? Check. Pavement salt? Check. Now I just need to dig out the winter hats and scarves.

I am still reading for my project but getting some nip-and-tuck writing in in between as well. I’m feeling a bit like a slacker because last night, on a whim, I looked up Bill Evans’ discography. Bill Evans was an awesome jazz pianist and band leader. I’ve got some of his albums. But what I discovered last night was the man was prolific: he put out 93 albums over his career — not including compilation albums! Some years he cranked out 3 studio albums.

And I’m still working on the same book a decade later. Hmm.

Be well, enjoy the season —

2025 November 28: I had to head into town on some errands today — clearly, a bad plan on Black Friday — but aside from being mobbed by shoppers, I was also (pleasantly) surprised to drive into a snow squall. And it was pretty intense. In fact, I had some concern that the roads may start to become greasy, but at least for the amount of time I was out and about, that did not happen. There was some trace amounts of snow on the lawn when I got home but not much, and it’s already gone. Still, it was fun. It kind of shook me out of my mental schedule.

Speaking of Black Friday, [expletive deleted here]. All day long my phone has been humming continuously with texts from retailers trying to get me to buy stuff I don’t need. Non-stop. We’re at a time in our lives where we pretty much have everything we need so gifts happen more through fun things we do together rather than buying stuff. I know this is important for businesses and I’m all for a consumer economy, but it’s hard not to become jaded when you’re treated like a walking wallet all day long.

Thanksgiving fried my routine this week so I went food shopping this a.m., but that actually improved my mood. People were generally kind and gracious. I think the snow put folks into a festive mood.

Speaking of which, I saw the local supermarket offering driveway salt for the first time, and I immediately went into hoarding mode. I grabbed three containers. Last year they ran out mid-winter, so I’m not taking any chances this time. I live on a hill and my driveway was built in such a way that all running water (like melting snow) drains directly into my garage, so salt is mission-critical in winter.

Did some more nip-and-tuck editing on my project today as well. Good writing really immerses you. I try to emulate those who inspire me.

Be well —

2025 November 27: Happy Thanksgiving! We took a good walk today, in part for the exercise (and because my wife goes stir crazy if she’s indoors for too long), but also for some foraging. My wife is one of those talented people who can take natural things and make something amazing out of them. (I am not.) She was collecting various bits and pieces from the woods behind our home to make wreathes and Christmas decorations. Neat stuff.

While wandering around back there we also encountered a series of the stereotypical New England stone walls, crumbling but stretching for miles in many directions. We live on a sizable hill that is effectively the bank of a river, in a mill town. I’ve seen pictures of our hill from about 1900 that show it completely stripped of trees, with those stone walls being the tallest things around. They divided the hill up for grazing land. This was all farms at one point. That’s a point to ponder, that for as much as we worry about our ecological impact nowadays, it was once far worse…

We actually have turkeys in our backyard fairly regularly. There’s a deer path that comes out in our yard. They even showed up once midday when I was mowing the lawn. I sat down to take a break and they came out of the woods, walked past me but squawking at me the entire time.

I did get some good writing done today, a little part. Sometimes I just re-read something I’d written a while ago to make sure it still resonates, and I found something that I was never quite happy with. Inspiration struck, and I rewrote it in a far better way. Writing is a non-stop editing process as well.

Hope everyone had an awesome Thanksgiving! Be well —

2025 November 25: I was wrong. The snow we got Sunday night actually stuck around for Monday morning, though the morning sun pretty much put an end to it. By about 10:00 a.m. it was dewy-green grass rather than Winter Wonderland. Still, it was nice to wake up to, a nice white blanket. We are consistently in the 20s at night by now, which means awesome sleeping as well as the prospect of more snow. The local news says that this winter will be, on the whole, warmer but with higher than average snowfalls. Bring it.

An old acquaintance reached out and asked me to write a blurb for her upcoming book. What an honor. My personal experience has been that writers are rarely lukewarm, that as a community they are either cut-throat or very supportive. I try to be in that latter group. Indeed, I could feel her almost apologetic trepidation in her outreach to me.

I got new leather hiking boots recently which need some elaborate breaking in, so I’m clod-hopping around my office for an hour a day wearing them. I’ve fallen over twice so far.

Back to reading for my project. it sometimes feels like trying to force a thousand voices to sing as one. But I suppose that’s the job.

Be well —

2025 November 23: First snow! Well, technically not the first snow but the first snow that stuck. We’ve had a few of those flitting, crystalline snowfalls midday a couple times but they never lasted and melted as soon as they hit the ground. There was a sudden burst of snow flurries at dusk that lasted maybe a half hour, and it left the barest covers — but we have snow cover. (Probably won’t survive the sun tomorrow morning.)

I have to admit I am excited about the prospect of making a snowman, though the amount of snow in the entire yard at the moment probably wouldn’t amount to a snowball. Still, at some point in the coming weeks the opportunity will arise. We also did a lot of snow shoeing last winter. Aside from doing a classic backwards flop when the fronts of my snowshoes landed on a fallen log, it was fun.

I am plowing though my reading for my project. Several themes have arisen which I need to be able to boil down. It is odd how familiar something can be, until you take it apart and look at it in new ways — and suddenly it’s a completely different story.

Be well —

2025 November 21: First blog post! Garsh. What to say? The cold is beginning to set in and we’re using the pellet stove in earnest now. I love this time of year. Thanksgiving is next week, which will be a nice respite. We usually do a low-key Thanksgiving: low stress, no expectations, no deadlines, very chill. Good food, and each other. The yard is mostly in order, ready for winter. The sunsets at this time of year are beautiful, starting with a peach color before graduating to a hard pink, then a more crimson contrasted with the surrounding darkness. My neighbor’s oak tree is silhouetted against it. It’s amazing. Summer sunsets are kind of dull, color-wise, but winter ones (at least here) are an amazing and sharp palette.

Also, I sneak a small glass of eggnog every night. Man, is that good stuff. Better than cocaine. Thanks the gods it’s seasonal, or I’d weigh 500 lbs.

I am doing a lot of reading for my project, but I do get writing done. The other night I encountered something that sent me scurrying back to the books, where I came up with a new paragraph that sharpened a point I was making in an introduction. It felt so good to craft that, with a stronger story. The problem is that I do a lot of that, sort of mini-sculpting of the narrative, which then requires some time to pause and stand back, and review whole sections to make sure I’m still on message and that it all makes sense.

But it is fun. Be well.