As a newcomer to New Hampshire, I feel I ought to find out as much about my new home as possible. I’ve already written about my discovery of President Franklin Pierce, and today I want to focus on another notable New Hampshirite. Actually, there are a bunch to choose from, among them Robert Frost, Nathan Hale, Sarah Silverman, Mary Baker Eddy, Daniel Webster, John Irving and Alan Shepard. But my subject today is Horace Greeley, born in Amherst in 1811 and two centuries later still a highly regarded journalist, reformer and anti-slavery advocate.

But, of course, what most of us know about Greeley today starts and ends with his coining the phrase, “Go West, young man.” Only Greeley may or may not have uttered or written the phrase. Greeley himself denied that he did so, though it shows up in an 1865 commentary in his newspaper, the New York Tribune, in which he wrote “Go West, young man, go West and grow up with the country,” a ringing endorsement of the nation’s burgeoning westward migration. Greeley said later it was someone else who spoke those words, which he only borrowed. In other words, be leery of history, especially those things of which you’re absolutely sure about.

If you happen to know something else about Greeley, it might be that he once hired Karl Marx as one of his newspaper’s correspondents (no kidding). Actually, Marx and Friedrich Engels were European correspondents for the Tribune, though Engels usually wrote in Marx’s name. Greeley founded the Trib in 1841 and it became the greatest newspaper of its day under his editorship. He was passionate, committed, intelligent and generous — in other words, totally unlike any newspaper editor these days. His paper was readable, far-reaching and a trend-setter. And we haven’t really seen anything quite like it since Greeley died in 1872.

Under his leadership, the Trib was outspoken in its opposition to slavery, making Greeley an enemy to most everyone south of the Mason-Dixon line. But he also bitterly opposed prostitution, tobacco, gambling and capital punishment (the latter also made him highly unpopular in many places). He also championed free public education and, of course, the westward expansion.

Later in his life, he was an unsuccessful candidate for political offices including the presidency, but his opposition to Abraham Lincoln’s re-election in 1864 pretty much doomed his hopes. He had mental troubles near the end of his life and was for a time largely forgotten or ignored. As far as I can determine, his relationship with New Hampshire throughout his life was minimal. His home in Amherst still exists though it is in private ownership. Interestingly, the address is on Horace Greeley Lane. Other than a plaque there noting his birth, his native state apparently doesn’t acknowledge him anywhere else.

It’s a grim new year for some 1.3 million American men and women who are out of work and out of luck. They are the jobless workers whose umemployment benefits ran out a few days ago because Congress ran out without considering their problems. Yep, our Congress took off for the holidays and did not approve extending benefits to those Americans who can now try to get by with anything up to $300 a week less than they had before to buy groceries, pay mortgages and obtain their medicines. A well-paid Congress didn’t think they mattered. And lest you think that Republicans especially care, consider this comment from a representative of the Cato Institute, a Republican think tank in Washington. “It’s tough love,” he said. “But this will, we hope, serve as a motivation for those people to work harder to get a job.” This, from a smug, well-dressed, six-figure income Republican advocate, is a reminder that hypocrisy knows no ethical or moral boundaries.

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Harold Simmons died last weekend. Does anybody care? Frankly, I’m not sure, for he was a man whose life amply illustrates the difficulty of attempting to assess the quality of anyone’s life. First, Simmons provided funding for the Republican-backed Swift Boat Veterans for Truth attack ads against Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry in 2004. Those ads distorted the legitimate record of a war veteran and helped account for his defeat (though in fairness Kerry had plenty of other issues that did him in). Simmons gave tens of millions of dollars to Republican candidates, and strongly opposed President Obama, whom he labeled “the most dangerous American alive” Really. He said that without even a hint of hyperbole. So he was a creep, right? But — he also gave significant amounts of money to a children’s hospital and to several arts and educational organizations. And he even made donations to some organizations (like Planned Parenthood) that espoused views he opposed. So what are we to make of him? I honestly don’t know, except to remind myself once again that it is impossible to truly know the heart of another.

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Report: Four out of five Americans believe Alex Rodriguez is the name of an illegal drug.

Fact: U.S. Senator Ted Cruz of Texas wants to drop his Canadian citizenship. No kidding. This true American is actually half Canadian.

Survey: 65% of Americans say they will make at least one New Year’s resolution. And 34% admit they will likely fail by watching Fox News anyway.

We’ve learned some interesting things since it got really cold and started to snow earlier this month here in New Hampshire. For one, it now seems our American Eskimo breed dog, whom we named Toby back in August, might have a slightly more appropriate moniker if we had instead called him, oh, let’s say, Juan Valdez. That’s no disrespect intended for anyone south of the border, only our belated recognition of the increasingly evident fact that Toby and the word Eskimo seem to have little in common. But to go back to the beginning first……

Allow me to quote from a respected Eskimo dog owner’s guide: “There are few more breathtaking sights than an Eskie frolicking in the freshly driven snow. It will come as no surprise that Eskimo dogs like the cold.” Well, it darned sure came as a surprise to us. Until the latter part of November, I recall, Toby was happy to dash outside for a walk or run or to do his business. We could hardly wait for the cold and snow for our breathtaking experiences watching him frolic outdoors.

As I said, imagine our surprise when we opened the door for Toby to behold the season’s first snowfall. Frolic he didn’t. In fact, he studied the falling flakes for a few seconds, felt the winter chill coming in the door, and promptly turned around back into the house and his comfortable, warm bed. End of the planned walk. When he absolutely, positively had to go out for his constitutional, he did so pretty much the way most cats tip-toe into ground that is either wet generally distasteful. We began wondering if we had acquired a mis-labeled Eskimo dog.

No, it turns out., we had not. Toby is indeed an Eskimo, albeit one who has a genuine appreciation for things warm and comfy (like a pillow near the wood stove). In the last month or so he has made a modest adjustment to the snowy landscape. A couple of times, in fact, he’s taken a flying leap off the porch into the yard, aided by an icy patch that propelled him a bit faster than he expected, causing an amusing mis-timed landing. He’s also discovered that the ruts of tire tracks are a preferred path for outdoor trekking, and that doing one’s business can be safely and quickly accomplished in the snowbank right by the porch, avoiding the necessity of getting into the deep-snow yard.
He also has discovered that when the new snow blower is operating, it clears a very nice route for him which satisfies just about all of his outdoor needs with minimal attachment to actual snow.

So we’ve learned a new bottom line for our sweet, wonderful doggie: he will respond when called by the name “Juan” — do you suppose that sounds something like Toby in dog language? — and that coming back into the house after any outside adventure, no matter how brief, is a terrific excuse to eat. “Gimme’ me some more bacon, folks — I’m back!!”

We just learned that a judge has struck down the state of Utah’s ban on same-sex marriages. That’s not exactly a big headline, of course. Same-sex marriages are already legal in 17 states — New Mexico joined the list earlier this week — and the District of Columbia. The Utah case is especially interesting, however.

Utah’s law endorsed marriage as legal only for a man and a woman. And in defending that law, the state’s attorney general argued that the “traditional definition of marriage nationally promotes legitimate state interests in promoting responsible procreation, and in promoting the original mode of child-rearing.” Apart from an uninspiring over-dependence on the forms of the word “promote,” the attorney general’s argument might be questioned on several grounds.

To begin with, let’s recall that the late legendary conductor Arturo Toscanini once defined “tradition” as “the last bad performance.” True. There’s not always much good to be said for tradition. After all, traditionalists used to take adulterers and stone them to death. In the antebellum South, tradition decreed that slavery was a good thing. As for the notion that the laws denying same-sex partners the right to legally marry “promote responsible procreation,” one could wonder how exactly has man-woman marriage generated responsible procreation? With divorce rates that affect nearly half of man-woman unions, with so many children being raised by single parents, with unwanted pregnancies and abandoned kids, what does the word “responsible” mean? And for heaven’s sake, “promoting the original mode of child-rearing” sounds like a 19th century screed from a Dickens’ novel. Really.

The attorney general concluded his rousing argument by declaring that it ought to be up to each individual state to decide what the law there should be. Well, that seems reasonable, doesn’t it? Let’s think back to that antebellum period again when Congress decided each state or territory could decide whether or not it wanted to approve slavery. That was fair, except for the slaves, of course. And then later, some states wanted to give women the vote, and others didn’t. That definitely should have been left up to the states because the only ones who would have been affected were women, right? So what’s the big deal with denying same-sex marriages if your state wants it? No one’s affected except same-sex partners.

Frankly, what we have here is a long-time tradition of discrimination against various groups of people, endorsed by legal means at various times through our troubled history. So while we celebrate the sagacity of our Founding Fathers and the freedoms we cherish in this country, let us take a moment to observe that we have also spent a lot of years denying those freedoms to some of our citizens. Maybe it’s time to go to work on that once again. Maybe that judge’s ruling in Utah is another step in the right direction.

End of year lists seem hugely popular with those who make them and with those who read them. There’s no other way to explain the proliferation of such lists on every conceivable topic (“My Ten Best Winter Potting Plants” is one of the better ones this time of year) except that when I worked at a newspaper, we had lots of space to fill at the end of the year and very little news with which to fill it. Hence the idea of top ten lists, which, when carried to excess, took care of the space problem.

And so, without apology and because I’m an eager reader and ex-professional reviewer, here is my idiosyncratic list of the year’s best books, in no particular order and irrespective of category or anything else that night reek of organization.

1. “Days of Fire: Bush and Cheney in the White House” by Peter Baker (Doubleday): I yield to no one in my distaste for the Bush administration, but I found this balanced and fascinating account of the relationship between the President and his Veep to be perceptive in unexpected ways. Author Baker, a NY Times reporter, shows us a President who earns some sympathy, who increasingly became his own man in the job, and a vice president who remains a dark and unsympathetic figure (include Donald Rumsfeld in that number, too).

2. “The Guns at Last Light” by Rick Atkinson (Henry Holt): The final volume in Atkinson’s trilogy of the U.S. Army’s role in Europe in World War II comes to an end in this insightful, even suspensefully told account that carries us to the liberation of a continent. The author never fails to honor those who deserve it and to tell it honestly about those who fell short, making for a stirring conclusion to his deeply researched story.

3. “Toscanini in Britain” by Christopher Dyment (Boydell Press): An exhaustive and quite exhilarating account of the late conductor Arturo Toscanini’s relationship in Great Britain (where the Maestro gave a series of memorable concerts, mostly in the 1930s and again in the early ’50s). There are enough twists and turns in the proceedings to make this almost a mystery, unraveling the Maestro’s personality and that of the many English characters he encountered, from fans to charlatans.

4. “The Letters of C. Vann Woodward” edited by Michael O’Brien (Yale University Press): Woodward was the pre-eminent historian of the American South, and O’Brien’s carefully chosen letters show us his varied concerns, his profound dedication and insights, and his graceful Southern manner. A quiet and notable tribute to one of the nation’s most distinguished historians, who died in 1999.

5. “Complete Poems of James Dickey” edited by Ward Briggs (University of South Carolina Press): Finally an edition of Dickey’s poetry that can legitimately claim to be complete: it contains all of Dickey’s 331 published poems, authoritatively edited by Ward Briggs.Dickey remains to my mind one of the finest poets of the 20th century, a verdict many in the critical community don’t seem to share, largely because of Dickey’s outsized personality. No matter; read these poems — they will endure.

6. “The Barbarous Years: The Peopling of British North America: The Conflict of Civilizations 1600-1675” by Bernard Bailyn (Alfred Knopf): When the English settlers arrived at Jamestown, their collision with the natives was anything but peaceful. In fact, writes noted historian Bailyn in this revealing, occasionally violent account, the period between Jamestown and King Philip’s War was disastrous for everyone. Just how terrible that was we’ve never known until this striking story.

7. “Bombproof Your Horse” by Rick Pelicano (Trafalgar Square Press): Yes, this is the year I finally got around to looking over this honest-to-pete real book. And yes, the title is correct, only it’s all about equestrian readiness and not military preparedness. Is it one of the best books of the year? Nope, hardly. But it’s surely one of the best titles.

Friday the 13th of December we celebrate — well, a poor choice of words — we mark the 230th anniversary of the death of Dr. Samuel Johnson, 18th century England’s greatest man of letters and a giant among the world’s literary icons of any century.

Dr. Johnson, as he was familiarly known, wrote essays, novels, poetry, prayers, and of course a Dictionary (1755) that was perhaps his most remarkable achievement. He was said to be the most brilliant conversationalist of his age with a rapier wit and an unforgiving intellect. And we are forever indebted to James Boswell, who came into Dr. Johnson’s orbit and from his long and rich association produced the finest, most compelling biography ever written, “The Life of Johnson” (look it up — it makes for unforgettable reading).

So full and fascinating was his life that, like Boswell, you could write a book about Johnson. And in fact hundreds of authors have indeed written thousands of books about him since his death. Some of them have been quite wonderful (immodest hint — see my book “Whisky, Kilts and the Loch Ness Monster” available at this very site). Rather than recalling a highlight list of his life’s work, however, it might be more fun just to remember some of the delightfully piquant, pointed and perceptive things he said during his busy, often aphoristic-driven lifetime.

a. There is no wisdom in useless and hopeless sorrow; but there is something in it so like virtue, that he who is wholly without it cannot be loved.

b. He who praises everybody praises nobody.

c. Sir, a woman’s preaching is like a dog’s walking on his hinder legs. It is not done well; but you are surprised to find it done at all.

d. What is written without effort is in general read without pleasure.

e. In order that all men may be taught to speak truth, it is necessary that all likewise should learn to hear it.

f. OATS — A grain which in England is generally given to horses, but in Scotland supports the people. (from the “Dictionary”)

g. Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel.

h. Of himself, he declared the lexicographer “a harmless drudge.”

As I’ve suggested, there is hardly a dearth of books about Johnson. And on the web you can locate many quite outstanding sites. Among the best: www.samueljohnson.com

It’s been pretty cold outside this week. But in the coming days it’s going to be much colder, down to zero or lower. Everybody is going to need to stay warm. For some of us, that means throwing more wood in the stove, keeping the heat turned on at night, using more of that precious fuel oil.

But for others, the bitterly cold weather presents a crisis: they lack the money to get the fuel needed to stay warm. For them, the alternatives of wrapping up in old coats or shivering under blankets are weary, incomplete answers. And our government is not helping them out. In fact, a federal program that provides aid to low-income families is being trimmed even more this winter because of the sequester cuts approved by Congress and White House nearly five years ago. That federal program generated $5.1 billion for distribution to the needy four years ago. This year, the funding has dropped to $2.83 billion.

In New Hampshire, according to The Telegraph of Nashua, low-income families received $51 million in aid in 2008-2009. This year those assistance levels will drop below $24 million. That hurts. That means many people will be colder this winter. And adding to the misery is the estimate that home heating costs this winter will rise by nearly 6 per cent. The bottom line: cold and costly, and very troubling for those among us who won’t be getting some of the help they need.

The good news: you and I can help. We can find the organizations in our communities that help families in need and support them generously. And we can let our representatives in Congress that federal heating aid needs to be restored. Anything less is not right. We can help, and we need to get started now.

So it’s snowing for the first time this season. It’s only 3-4 inches maybe, but it’s definitely snow and exactly what our new friends here in New Hampshire warned us about — winter. “Coming from Atlanta you’re going to be in for a big, big surprise,” they have chortled for the last couple of months as fall burst into colors and then faded and disappeared. “Winter’s coming. You’ll see.”

We understand. They’ve been going through this stuff proudly for decades, disdaining those of us who lived our lives in the semi-tropical South, fretting about the occasional inch or two of snow that shut schools, crowded groceries and turned roads into vehicle-swallowing skids. We understand. But we are still surprised, as it turns out.

We were surprised last night just before the snow started when we visited our local grocery, having been out of town for a few days. We expected to encounter nervous crowds, shelves absent of bread and milk (the staples that vanished from Atlanta’s groceries at the first mention of snow) and barren battery displays. What we found instead was a grocery mostly empty of customers, shelves fully stocked, and enough A, AA and AAA batteries to power the New Hampshire grid for at least a week. What’s going on here anyway? We chatted with the manager, who was calmly discussing the coming week’s schedule with an employee. “”I’ll be here until midnight,” the employee said with a resigned smile. “Doesn’t matter whether it snows or not, I’ll still be here.”

We understand all this, I think. We are from the tropics, so to speak, but that’s part of the reason why we’re here now. Given a choice, we prefer snow and cold to heat and humidity. Is that so difficult to figure out? It doesn’t mean we’re any more crazy about three feet of snow than anybody else, but we also remember clearly what two weeks of 100-degree-plus weather feels like. Frankly, we like the cold better. And we are coming to like the attitude of just about everybody we run into, who take it granted that it will be cold and it will snow (if we’re all lucky — after all, a lot of the economy in New Hampshire and Vermont depends on snow) and we’ll all be just fine.

Yes, I know we haven’t met a blizzard and lost power for a week yet. But we have lost power when the temperature hit 100. We prefer the option of bringing in more of that cord of wood and firing up the wood stove. It feels awfully good — even when the electricity is working.

Not many people, even die-hard baseball fans, know much about Lou Brissie. A wounded combat veteran of World War II, he returned to America and became a successful major league pitcher — in spite of a leg shattered by a German shell and a tight metal brace on that leg that allowed him only to hobble. He pitched for the Philadelphia Athletics and the Cleveland Indians, compiling a lifetime record of 44 wins against 48 losses (most near the end of his career) and appeared in the 1949 All-Star game. With baseball behind him, Brissie worked in his native state of South Carolina. A remarkably resourceful man and a awfully nice one, too.

Here’s how I know about Lou Brissie. In late 1945, he was back home in South Carolina, recovering but still undergoing surgeries. Using his crutches, he walked into a restaurant in small-town Greenwood, SC. I was there, just a five-year-old little boy whose mommy was staying with her sister in nearby Ware Shoals while my dad was winding up his overseas duty with the Navy in the Pacific.

I don’t recall this clearly, but my mother and my aunt repeated the story to me many times. “He came in and sat down at a table next to us,” my aunt remembered. He put his crutches down and looked over at the little boy watching him and smiled a big smile.” My attention was caught by his crutches and his he used them to walk, and he seemed to enjoy my curiosity. My aunt continued:

“He pulled his chair over to us so he sat by you. He asked your name, and about your family, and you said your daddy was in the Navy. He was very interested and said you probably missed him very much and that he would be coming home soon. You nodded, and he reached to his pocket and pulled out a small pin. “He said, ‘I want you to have this so that you’ll know your daddy is thinking of you and will be home soon.’ He pinned it on your shirt and smiled. ‘You are a wonderful little boy, Billy. I know your daddy loves you’.”

Flash forward to today. That little pin was his combat veteran pin, the one he received for active duty in Italy. And I still have that pin. I still have the memory of the occasion although only through the memory of my aunt and mother. And I still have an extraordinary feeling of wonder and surprise at what he did to a little boy he had never met in that long-gone restaurant in Greenwood so many years ago.

I think of that pin often. And I thought of it the other day when I read that Lou Brissie had died back in South Carolina at the age of 89. He will be forever in my memory. God speed, Lou Brissie.

Around this time of year, with the holidays and special days swirling about us, our thoughts inevitably turn to just one thing: How can we best celebrate Franklin Pierce’s birthday this year?

For those of you who may not be from around these parts, allow me to remind you that Franklin Pierce was the nation’s 14th President and the only President to come from the state of New Hampshire. He was a mere 47 when he won election in 1852, becoming the youngest man to that time ever to serve in the White House. His birthday falls on November 23rd, meaning there is always a potential conflict over whether to celebrate his anniversary or Thanksgiving, This year he was honored and a wreath laid at his grave in Concord, allowing everyone time to re-group for the turkey day observance.

But before dining on our Thanksgiving feast, may we pause for a brief moment to recall President Pierce. Born in Hillsborough in 1804, a scant 20 years after the conclusion of the American Revolution, he was active in state politics and served terms in the U.S. House and Senate. He was elected to the nation’s highest office after Democrats couldn’t agree on any other candidate, and he never successfully healed the lingering wounds in his own party. To wit, things went so badly that when the time came for re-election in 1856, his party denied his candidacy.

The biggest problem for President Piece — other than his dour wife Jane, who didn’t think much of the position of First Lady and declined to get involved in the expected social activities — was his friendliness with southern slaveholders. While never endorsing slavery, he walked a thin line between its advocates and northern abolitionists that eventually broke. His view that people in each new territory rather than Congress should decide whether or not to permit slavery led opponents to form the Republican Party, which of course elected Abraham Lincoln four years after Pierce left office.

Pierce also appeared on the wrong side of history during the Civil War when he (oops) denounced Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, and followed that with (oops again) a statement calling the war “fatal” for the Union just days before the battle at Gettysburg made clear the Union victory. After those gaffes, Pierce apparently went home, shut up, and died in 1869.

His reputation has never recovered very much, I’m afraid. In the rankings of US Presidents, Pierce usually shows up near the bottom along with his successor James Buchanan, the obese William Howard Taft, William Henry Harrison (who died after one month in office) and the forgettable Millard Fillmore. Still, he’s our own, so we celebrate him — or at least acknowledge him — every November. At least the occasion always serves as a reminder that we should cheer up because Thanksgiving is close by.