A New Hampshirite Remembers George Carlin

A sentimental favorite of mine among all the great bits by the late, great George Carlin, from "What Am I Doing In New Jersey?", ran:

The most dramatic license plate of all has to be New Hampshire's, which says [solemnly] "Live Free or [Sam Kinison voice] DIE!!!"

Well, I'm certainly not going to move there. I get just a little nervous in any state where they mention death right on the license plates.

On the other hand, Idaho says [goofy old man voice] "Famous potatoes."

I guess those are the two extremes in thought.

It would seem to me that somewhere in between "Live free or die" and "famous potatoes" the truth lies. Probably it's a little closer to "famous potatoes."

For more on Carlin, see Marty Beckerman at Reason; and Kevin Smith.

Granite memories

Since, for the first time in my life, I'm spending the presidential primary season outside the U.S., I've been a bit too detached from it for my customary New Hampshire primary nostalgia. (Lived there until 18, and then summers until 20; stayed registered to vote there all through grad school.) But this Ana Marie Cox vlog about important New Hampshire facts for outsider politicos (e.g. "Dunkin Donuts. Get used to it" and "third-largest legislature in the [English-speaking] world") brought it all back for me.

The disproportionately high number of vets she mentions-- which was especially disproportionately high in my hometown of Portsmouth, which during the Cold War was home to a major air force base in addition to the major naval base it's hosted for 200+ years-- was a major feature of the social and political world in which I grew up. It's been one of the most striking changes between life in New Hampshire and life in academia (excepting, of course, my year at the Australian Defense Force Academy). Almost the only vets younger than 70 I know in the academy are Israeli.

The Manchester nickname "Manch Vegas", which postdates my New Hampshire years, is, as the yankees call it, "humah."