Mayflower is based in New England but their web site says they will move you no matter where you are. They've been around for decades and moved my family between states back in the early '70s so they are on the up & up for sure. Not sure about pricing though, since I was just a kid back then - but they are a solid company. My guess is they'd contract out the pick up if it's outside of the Northeast, but worth looking into.

Oh cool, A few weeks ago we had a flock of evening grosbeaks. They were striking, even in their dull Winter state. Hadn’t seen them before or since.

https://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Evening_Grosbeak/id

Hard to tell - did they have a yellowish tint? Looks like some kind of finch. Gold finch? They lose their gold in the Winter.

Railroads probably a big contributor to the timing of development, which probably also led to road improvements since you'd need to be able to get around once you got off the train. Recently read my great grandfather's diaries, who wrote of hopping on a train from CT to Brattleboro, then up to Ludlow to sell books and magazines door to door for a Summer in the 1890s. He bought a bicycle in Brattleboro and used that to get around locally so roads were probably pretty good by then. He wrote about riding his bike from Ludlow up to Proctorsville. Must have been an absolutely gorgeous ride back then (still is today), though also probably a bit challenging with books in tow!

Vermont has some of the best state park campgrounds in New England. If you can get a water site with a lean-to at a Vermont state park, you'll do well. Stillwater is my favorite so far, but haven't tried them all yet. Love the loon calls at night.

This is the entitlement of the younger people whose families have lived here for generations. They don't know that the older generation earned their welcome. All they know is "this is the way it's always been."

I have Fi and works great in *most* places around Windsor County. But head up to Orange, Caledonia and down to Windham and it's very unreliable. Happy with it for now, but if I need to move around in the future, I may think about switching.

When I was a kid, we lived towards the bottom of a hill on a curve with our neighbors with kids our age directly across the street. The curve was such that when the plow came around, most of the snow was deposited on the neighbor's side of the street. They had a colonial split-rail type of fence along the street and the snow bank piled higher than the fence in a good storm. One very snowy snow-day, a bunch of us neighborhood kids learned that the fence actually provided a decent support for a snow tunnel. We each dug our own forts into the snow bank through the horizontal planks of the fence, and had an epic snowball fight.

Then we realized it was much more fun to connect each of our forts so we could actually talk to each other (at least to our adjacent neighbors). We left archways between compartments to designate boundaries of our "properties". The happy accident, I think, was the arches provided better support for the whole structure. There were 4 or 5 of us, each with our own room that we could sit up in and just about lay down in head to foot inside our own spaces, and also crawl in between. Once our parents realized what we were up to, and always thinking about safety, they made us wall up any entrances on the streetside so that we could only crawl in from the safety of the neighbor's yard. It was the '70s.

The tunnel survived nearly the entire Winter and as time went on, our breath condensed on the inside and iced up the walls and floors. And we poured water on the outside to ice up the outside walls to make them "stronger". We also found that we could enter the room at the top of the hill and slide down the tunnel on our bellies all the way to the end. This was paradise for a kid!

As Winter wore on, parents issued additional rules, like no playing in the tunnel when it was snowing due to the possibility of a snow plow coming by and collapsing the tunnel. And no climbing on top. But that tunnel never collapsed and remained structurally sound until probably late February / early March. That was probably the most magical Winter of my childhood.

A direct route from Boston to Brattleboro then continue up to Windsor, Burlington and Montreal.

Definitely Medford/Somerville/Boston area

You can't just walk into a clinic and get an abortion. You have to make an appointment. Since some states are banning or making the procedure difficult to obtain, some women are forced to travel to other states, which is creating a backlog in states where it is legal. So some women are having to wait until a later stage of pregnancy than they were at when they first made their appointment. Even before ROE was overturned, in many places, you had to wait a week or more for an appointment.

Nobody decides at week 40 that they're going to have an abortion because they just don't want to have a baby. It just doesn't happen. And any late stage termination is due to medical considerations for the mother or the fetus. It's a decision that no state has any business making for a woman.

Yup lots of bottoming out.

Keep in mind property taxes in NH are sky high compared to MA. People in NH say we live in Taxachusetts, but really I think my family in NH pay just as much property tax and meals taxes as I pay in property/income/sales taxes. It's bad up there and they get no services for their money.

I left NH 30 years ago due to lack of jobs with decent pay. My brother, still in NH feels stuck at a job he absolutely hates because there is nothing else with comparable pay. If pay is a big concern for you, stay in MA. Even with the taxes here, chances are you'll be better off financially. That said, the suggestion to try to get into Fidelity in Merrimack might be worth a shot. Great pay, great benefits, great bonuses. Only thing is, there is ALWAYS the threat of layoffs there. They know that you know that someone in India can do your job for much less and that can be stressful. The mantra really was, "Do more with less" when I left Fidelity in Boston. Once you hit the 10 year mark, it seems they do everything they can to make you leave, including moving your office to a different state. But it was hard to leave because... bonuses. You can build up your 401k very easily.

Why would anyone even report this?

Are there any greenhouse/nurseries nearby? They might be able to use it. They probably can't pay much, if anything, but at least you might be able to get rid of it and it would be put to good use.

Ralph's! Used to go there in the late '80s. Glad to see they are still alive

Off the Rails in Ludlow. We went there mostly to eat last Friday but decided to eat there because they had music. Stayed after the meal to watch the show in the bar. Liked it!

NH is the focus of the Free Stater movement. Bunch of libertarians have agreed to move from other states to NH in order to create a state with basically no government. This is real. The ski area thing was part of that. Also they want to remove public funding for schools and hang my mother out to dry as far as health care goes.

MA allows 6 plants per adult in a household. We grew a lifetime supply in just a couple of years.

NH has granite.

Vermont has marble.

30 years ago the cow motif was very popular in artsy-craftsy circles, probably popularized by B&J. I remember a friend of mine who played in bands in Boston had a Holstein pattern on her bass guitar. It was everywhere. Hope you find what you're looking for!

An excellent solution! I can relate. I break wine glasses, but I don't think a similar type of solution would work for that problem. ;)

Well, I am hoping that someone is at least learning something about defending the country. Pretty sure they don't use up expensive jet fuel for nothing. Maybe we could ask them to fly over Canada instead?

That's a great idea! Thank you!