Snowshoeing in the Second Dartmouth College Grant. (Lee Caldwell Photo)
‘The only bad weather in New England is when we don’t have any.’
— Donald Hall
The late poet Donald Hall observed that New Englanders love to complain about the weather. If there is nice weather, conversations focus on how bad it will be or how bad it was in the past.
“Enjoy this warm spell, because pretty soon it’ll be an icebox here,” they’ll say. Or “Winters aren’t like they used to be. I remember when it was 40 below and we’d have to walk two miles to school.”
Despite those complaints about the weather, New Englanders know how to make the best of it. An article in the January issue of The Laker describes one of those options: getting out on a snowmobile trail. We interviewed the president of the Sandwich Sidehillers Winter Trails Club, which maintains 25 miles of trails for snowmobilers, nordic skiers, and snowshoers to use. Theirs is just one of the many clubs making it easy to get outside and enjoy the winter.
We spent the weekend in the North Country, hiking the Magalloway River Trail in Wentworth’s Location and doing some snowshoeing at the Second Dartmouth College Grant. Coming after an eight-inch snowfall, the trips provided a nice glimpse of nature’s winter, with animal tracks and the distance calls of birds to punctuate the otherwise silent landscape.
Hiking along the Magalloway River Trail in Wentworth's Location. (Tom Caldwell Photo)
Sherman Adams Building may charge a fee
Speaking of the North Country, Mount Washington is a popular attraction, due in part to its reputation for having the world’s worst weather. Since the Mount Washington Auto Road opened in 1861, and the Cog Railway in 1869, visitors have flocked to the mountain, and one of its attractions has been the Sherman Adams Building and the Tip Top House.
For those who don’t remember, Sherman Adams was a New Hampshire governor who served as chief of staff for President Dwight D. Eisenhower until a scandal brought him down — he had accepted the gift of a vicuña coat. (For further background, a vicuña is an Andean animal that is a close relative of the llama (remember the story about the runaway llama posted on Jan. 1?) Coats made from its silky fur command high prices, and hence the scandal. However, it is not the scandal but Adams’ 18-year political career that is the focus of the building on Mount Washington.
The New Hampshire Department of Natural and Cultural Resources, which maintains the Mount Washington State Park, may start charging a fee for visits to the Sherman Adams house as a result of a budget shortfall, according to the Union Leader. A subcommittee of the Mount Washington Commission will take up the matter of admission fees when it meets on Jan. 8.
The Price of Publicizing U.S. Atrocities
When Julian Assange published classified documents on WikiLeaks that exposed war atrocities committed by the United States, including a 39-minute video of a U.S. Apache helicopter firing and killing more than a dozen Iraqis, including two Reuters journalists, he became a hero for journalism but an enemy of the law. For the last 10 years, he has successfully fought extradition to the U.S. to face up to 175 years in prison for violating the Espionage Act, but it has taken a toll on his mental health.
Today, a British judge rejected a request for extradition to the U.S., citing a psychiatric assessment that Assange would likely commit suicide in the harsh conditions of an American jail. The judge expressed confidence in his ability to achieve a fair trial in the United States, and indicated that the charges against him had merit, but she said Assange “faces the bleak prospect of severely restrictive detention conditions designed to remove physical contact and reduce social interaction and contact with the outside world to a bare minimum.”
The U.S. plans to appeal the decision.
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