Guest post by WUWT moderator Mike Lorrey
Up here in northern New England, we like our tall tales. Stories of the humor, wisdom, and idiosyncratic thought of the yankee farmer stretch across the ages. This one you may have heard before, but it fits in with the current predeliction of our government climatologists habits of relabeling and redefining things in order to fabricate a public perception that things are getting warmer than they actually are….
Tink Fitzhew was a tough old codger. As knotty and wiry as those gnarled stumpy trees you see dotting the peaks of the White Mountains, much like his father, grandfather, and other ancestors going back to colonial days, when the family farm had been granted by the Governor of Massachusetts (yes, Maine was originally part of Massachusetts until the Great Compromise of 1820 in which Missouri was admitted to the Union as a slave state, with Maine being created as a free state to balance things out again in the US Senate) to his highlander forebears. Tink knew how to wring a living out of the thin stony soils of his farm. The rock walls around the edges of each of his fields was testament to the back breaking crowbar work that generations of Fitzhews had wrought to remove most of the rocks from their land. Every spring, however, a new crop heaved up through the frost laden soils. It was said that granite was really the only crop that grew well on that farm, other than maple trees and grazing grass.
In the winter, one fought to survive. The jet stream blew frigid arctic winds and snow down onto his farm with abandon. The barn needed to be boarded inside and out, and the farmhouse had a “bundle room” without windows, next to the central chimney, in which the family and farm hands eeked through the coldest part of winter. People got cozy like that. It was said that more marriages began or ended in the bundle room than anyplace else.
By the time Tink was near on retirement age, his kids were grown and moved away, the wife was dead, but he still managed to eek out a living with a small herd of Holsteins, though he’d always considered them to be closer members of his family anyways. Each had a name, and once you got to know them, their own personalities, though they, like Tink, weren’t very long on conversation unless you whet their whistle first with a good amount of mapleshine or applewine.
It was about that time that the US Geophysical Survey was surveying that area of the country, and while that area of New England had been surveyed as far back as the early 18th century, it wasn’t always by the most sober of individuals, nor did they have the benefit of satellites or aircraft back in the day.
Tink knew his farm was near the state border. How close it was, though, he didn’t know exactly. The whole town had long been in dispute as to which state it was supposed to be in in the first place, and his farm was on the edge of town. Many towns along the New Hampshire border had been chartered by the colonial Governors of both NH and Massachusetts, just as many in Vermont were chartered by NH and New York in conflict. Just which state one lived in was an issue of debate for many. There are even records in Britain of Revolutionary War POW lists that listed American prisoners as originating from Kittery, New Hampshire, Berwick, NH, etc. (some are online today) However Tink had always followed convention and voted in Maine since that was what the grant deed said.
So it was with some sense of excitement that Tink held when he saw the USGS surveyors coming up his drive one day, stopping at his porch.
“Mister Fitzhew?” one surveyor queried.
“Ayup, thets me,” Tink replied.
“Well sir, we’ve completed the survey in this area, and we have some rather startling news for you.”
“Oh, really?” Tink asked.
“Yes, it appears that your farm isn’t actually *in Maine*. You sir, are a resident of New Hampshire. Isn’t that great?”
“Well I’ll be, isn’t that sumthin?” Tink said in hopeful resignation, “I nevah could stand them Maine wintahs.”
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How about some Bert and I for an encore?
Hmmmm… I read the article twice but I think I must have missed the punchline somewhere.
To recap: Tink’s farm straddles the NH/Maine border and for many years there was a long-standing dispute as to which state it officially belonged to. Then, at some point, the USGS visited Tink and informed him that his farm was located in NH, not Maine. End of story.
…and this is interesting because?
I love it! It reminds me of a quote often attributed to Abraham Lincoln.
“If you call the tail a leg, how many legs does a dog have? Four, calling the tail a leg doesn’t make it a leg.”
Nicely done, Mr. Lorrey. Very nicely done.
Good Story!
An enjoyable tall tale 🙂
Nice story – even this aussie laughed 🙂
Hmmmm… I read the article twice but I think I must have missed the punchline somewhere.
The first time I heard that one it was Polish vs. Russian winters.
Nicely done. It is through narrative that we humans make sense of our world and often ourselves.
Sometimes, with dry humor, it’s an acquired taste.
Daniel H says:
July 19, 2010 at 8:12 pm
I will take your comments seriously, although when dealing with this subjcet, it is often difficult to discern if something is sarcasm/irony or a belief.
The punch line is in the “I neveah could stand them Main wintahs”. The thought is that, on the average, Main winters are much worse than New Hampshire winters are ……on the average.
So…..since he is no longer in Main but now lives in New Hampshire, his winters won’t be so cold. But, the joke is that he does not live in the “average” part of either state. He lives in one location and the “typical” weather in that location is not going to change just because of an arbitrary mark on a piece of paper.
The relevance here is that a similar kind of thinking is typical of what the AGW crowd uses to prove their point.
Regards,
Steamboat Jack (Jon Jewett’s evil twin)
Live free or die. [Great post]
Maine or New Hampshah wintahs…either way…only the strong suhvive.
God I love NewEnglanders.
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA
It’s a joke, son.
Kinda like the old Arkansas Traveler line,
“You ain’t very far from a fool, are you?”
“Nope. Just this computer here between us.”
/Mr Lynn
Well done Mike but where did they bury the survivors? 😉
NH and VT don’t have serious border battles because we’re separated from them by the Connecticut River (which also, quite decently, flows through CT). However, somehow the border is defined to be the west edge of the river, not the center line which is the border in most border-licious rivers. There are a few complications thanks to people building dams and Vermonters not paying for bridges (we get their money anyway thanks to no sales tax for most stuff and lower taxes on most of the rest).
Man, what a humorless bunch of @ur momisugly#$%&*@ur momisugly#$%’s congregate here. I might be confusing lack of understanding of ironic expression with the deliberate expression of Socratic irony, but I think not. If a man is not capable of detecting and appreciating ironic expressions how can he possibly theorize anything? Daniel H., it’s a joke, or you are kidding us.
eek
thanx for the laugh. meanwhile there are thousands of “carbon” stories on google in the past 24 hours, all pro emission cuts/cap’n’tax. and, despite all the inquiry whitewashes…
19 July: Nature: Hannah Hoag: Report maps perils of warming
The report, from the US National Research Council (NRC), sets out the consequences — from streamflow and wildfires to crop productivity and sea level rise — of different greenhouse-gas emissions scenarios. It also concludes that once the global average temperature warms beyond a certain point, Earth and future generations will be stuck with significant impacts for centuries or millennia.
Previous assessments tended to tie predictions to specific years or concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. But because no one knows the course of future carbon dioxide emissions, this approach amplifies the uncertainties. The NRC report instead sets out the effect of each additional degree of warming, whenever that might happen. “There are some very important future impacts of climate change that could be quantified somewhat better than we previously thought,” says Susan Solomon, a senior scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in Boulder, Colorado, who chaired the report committee.
For example, the report shows that each 1 °C of warming will reduce rain in the southwest of North America, the Mediterranean and southern Africa by 5–10%; cut yields of some crops, including maize (corn) and wheat, by 5–15%; and increase the area burned by wildfires in the western United States by 200–400%…
If concentrations rose to 550 parts per million, for example, the world would see an initial warming of 1.6 °C — but even if concentrations stabilized at this level, further warming would leave the total temperature rise closer to 3 °C, and would persist for millennia…
“The report says an 80% cut is meaningful,” says Jay Gulledge, director of the science and impacts programme at the Pew Center on Global Climate Change in Arlington, Virginia. “I’ve never seen that stated before, but it is based on the best calculations for the carbon cycle.” …
“There is more certainty [in this report] than we’ve seen before,” says Steve Cohen, executive director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University in New York City. “It is blunt, direct and clear. Unlike the IPCC reports you don’t see any hedge words.”…
http://www.nature.com/news/2010/100719/full/466425a.html
Steamboat Jack (Jon Jewett’s evil twin)
Thank you, I was endeavoring to explain, but have had a couple too many to go through the pain. Luckily, I refreshed to see your comment! Whew!
Weather has no borders. “Climate” is an averaging of the weather that goes on with in man made borders. Hawaii is not a warm climate if averaged with Siberia.
lol
“Well I’ll be, isn’t that sumthin?” Tink said in hopeful resignation, “I nevah could stand them Maine wintahs.”
Sweet, Mike Lorrey!
It’s all about perception; and the hungry carbon crowd are hell-bent on us swallowing the perception that will make them rich and powerful.
Reckon Tink Fitzhew died a more contented man knowing the government men had surveyed his climate to more benign…
I went there to comment, but since there were no previous comments, I didn’t want to disturb their rest and so did not comment. This must be a really powerful, opinion making, industry leading, cutting edge, organ of global warming. They publish a blockbusting article and no one comments.
Gail Combs: “Bert and I was fishin’ in the Bluebird … an’ ’twere re-al foggy.”
I’m a fan too and wish I knew where my old LPs got off too. There are other Maine border stories such as the one about the murder on a fishing boat. The federal government had to get involved because although the boat was on the Maine side, the anchor was in New Hampshire and both states claimed jurisdiction.
Live free or die. [Great post]
As I recall, when it was Russian vs. Polish winters it was “live unfree or die”.