Catholic

On a July Monday in the year of our lord, 2025, Ronnie and Rocinante woke up to a new day, in a strange land. And with all apologies to the natives, it appears they brought the Kanorado weather with them. Average July temps in Derry New Hampshire (no, not that Derry) is between the upper 70s and mid 80s. Today, it’s 92 with tomorrow’s forecast predicting temps up to 96! Fortunately, no one in the Derry Public Library knows it’s Ronnie’s fault… woo hoo!

Anyway, New Hampshire, the Granite State. The first to weigh in on the various candidates making bids to run the most powerful nation on the planet (till it’s not). These loopers are fiercely independent, proving themselves resilient and worthy from the jump.

On January 5, 1776… long, long ago, the cantankerous loopers of New Hampshire decided they’d had enough of old King George. Wham… first colony to declare independence! Nearly half a year before those other guys got around to signing the Declaration. Brave souls, or maybe just impatient.

“Live Free or Die!” It’s what they say.

Established in 1629, named after some place in England… typical. Then came the British troubles. In 1774, before most folks even knew what was what, New Hampshire jumped the gun seizing Fort William & Mary, just like that. Two years later, they had their own government and constitution. First again. No dilly-dallying for these loopers.

“Live Free or Die!” Sounds about right.

Later on, when the big American family squabble happened, the one they called the Civil War, New Hampshire was all in for abolition. Thirty-two thousand soldiers, give or take a few, marched off to fight for the Union. After that unpleasantness, boom… factories everywhere! Textiles, shoes, paper. The Amoskeag Manufacturing Company in Manchester was the biggest cotton mill on the planet. Can you imagine? Then came the French Canadians, by the droves. Now, a quarter of the population has French-American blood. And these days, New Hampshire is rich and smart. Go figure.

“Live Free or Die!” A mantra, if you will.

They’re not big on religion here. Least religious U.S. state, they say. Staunchly libertarian, they won’t be taking orders from priests… they really like their freedom. A Pew survey in 2014 showed that thirty-six percent here were part of the fast growing demographic known as the “nones“. Thirty percent Protestant, twenty-six percent Catholic. Not many Mormons or Jews. They don’t go to church much, these New Hampshirites. Only fifty-four percent are “absolutely certain there is a God,” compared to seventy-one percent elsewhere. Curious, isn’t it? Oh, and here’s a kicker: New Hampshire is the only state to have a woman governor and two women as U.S. senators. There’s another kick in the agates for the patriarchy.

“Live Free or Die!” And make room for the ladies in your ol’ boy network.

Now, before all the European colonizer hullabaloo, the Abenaki tribes were here, minding their own business. Different cultures, different gods, but same language, mostly. People were living near Keene up to twelve thousand years ago! Imagine that. You can commune with the sacred spirits in the White Mountain National Forest, winding through the Appalachian Trail.

“Live Free or Die!” A long, beautiful nature hike.

On Mount Washington, they call it… the “World’s Worst Weather.” Hurricane-force winds every third day. Through the years, more than a hundred visitors underestimated that fury, and now they cant. Little dwarf trees, all matted and gnarled, like angry bonsai. So it goes. And the Old Man of the Mountain, a face carved by nature itself, watched over Franconia Notch for ages. Then, one day in May 2003, poof! Gone. Just like that. And Ronnie thought Kanorado had windy days.

“Live Free or Die!” Until you can’t.

Lakes, ponds, rivers, streams. Eight hundred of the first, nineteen thousand miles of the second. Hard to keep track of all this windy river vertigo. Sometimes state boundaries get bungled. New Hampshire and Maine had a little squabble over the Piscataqua River boundary, specifically some islands. The Supreme Court said Maine owned them. But New Hampshire still says the naval shipyard on Seavey’s Island is theirs. Stubborn, these Granite Staters.

“Live Free or Die!” And don’t tread on me.

New Hampshire has the shortest ocean coastline in the whole darn country, eighteen miles. Blink and you miss it. Hampton Beach, where folks go to get sunburned. And the Isles of Shoals, nine tiny islands offshore. Four of them are New Hampshire’s. Poet Celia Thaxter had an art colony there. And Blackbeard, the pirate, supposedly buried treasure there. Treasure and art. A strange combination.

“Live Free or Die!” For rum, booty, and framing services perhaps?

And New Hampshire has produced an impressive list of notable people: Mary Baker Eddy, who started Christian Science. Robert Frost, a poet who knew a thing or two about lonely roads. Alan Shepard, who went to space. Ronnie James Dio, the flaming heavy metal icon. Dan Brown, who writes those mystery novels. Adam Sandler, Sarah Silverman, Seth Meyers… funny people. So it goes.

“Live Free or Die!” Or at least, take it with a generous sense of humor.

And with that, again we point out the fact that New Hampshire’s average July temperature ranges from the mid-70s to mid-80s. As this entry gets logged the thermometer is in the mid-80s, on the way to a high of 96! Now without sounding like a total narcissist, Ronnie is rehearsing excuses in case anyone were to irrationally put the blame on him and Rocinante for bringing the Kanorado “Dawg Days” all this way north. You gotta admit, it is an astonishing coincidence. On the drive from Burlington VT to Derry, NH, the conditions were gorgeous. Light rain and upper 60s to mid 70s. Ronnie was breathing a sigh of relief for getting away from the punishing Kanorado summer heat, only to find he had apparently brought his customary suffering with him, to the astonishment of the Yankee natives.

PS: There is a silver lining… Ronnie always manages to find one. That being, evening temps cool down significantly so that Ronnie’s able to switch the ceiling fans off around 10 or 11 P.M. as they aren’t needed for the rest of the night. So… there’s that.

Onward through the fog… Rohlfie

You won’t get far…
In the Granite State…
With Shuck and Jive…
They can’t relate…
First to weigh in…
On the Presidential Race…
Live free and chalk it up to fate.

06-FridayThe13-2025:

Ok… laundry day in Waldorf, Maryland. A mere 16 miles from DC-Metro’s “Green Line” to the Federal Triangle. Last weekend, i spent 45k steps perusing the triangle, including a walkabout in the Jefferson Library and the Smithsonian “Portrait Studio.” As well, it just so happened to be Pride Fest and that’s the reason i got so many steps. I had to walk AROUND the fenced-in festival area until such time as they accepted revelers. When they started letting people in, they wouldn’t allow my freakin’ backpack, so i had to ditch it for the Sunday visit.

Anyway… this is No Kings weekend, the 250th year anniversary of the Continental Army, and (more importantly) Donald Trump’s birthday. So, in honor of all that (mostly the naked emperor’s birthday), there will be a festive military parade, as if we had something to prove to our nation’s enemies. By the way, what enemies really need to be intimidated?? The DOMESTIC enemy?? That’s right, President Ass-hat has been demonizing his political opposition for nearly a decade, declaring them the “enemy of the people.” He behaves as if he REALLY wants a Civil War redo. He even re-renamed all of those recently renamed Southern military bases after Confederate Generals.

I would say, “can you believe it?” But we’re WAY past that, we can believe it. It’s no longer horrifying, and i fear a climate of having the US executive branch at odds with half the population they are SUPPOSED to be serving is getting normalized. Seriously, what does he think? That he can politically cleanse the nation till only MAGAs remain

Bleep THAT!!

How this shakes out beyond the political black hole’s event horizon is anyone’s guess. Mine is as good as any, so here are a few plausible scenarios:

ONE: Investigators chasing the possibility that Elon and his hacker buccaneers rigged the 2024 election, find a smoking gun that proves Delicate Donny’s posturing about a stolen 2020 Election was merely foreshadowing for everything 2024 and after. Between congressional gerrymandering, the stacking of the courts by McConnel, and Elon’s hacker squad actively changing ballots, we’ll find Harris actually won that election, and the house of cards Delicate Donny built comes crashing down in a whispering whimper.
TWO: The rightward shift of several key demographics was actually a thing. Donny holds on to his Trifecta, and there’s no more democracy. Curtis Yarvin’s wettest of dreams come true, Steve Bannon finally pops like the malignant cyst he is, Stephen Miller laps up the blood, and the upside down is permanently installed until such time as a stout resistance infiltrates the military and stages another coup, setting in motion a constant cycle of banana republic-esque military coup after military coup.
THREE: The mid-term turnout is so overwhelmingly blue that no amount of cheating can stand, and MAGA’s demise is somewhat delayed.
FOUR: California, Washington, Oregon, and the North Eastern New England states secede from the MAGA disunion, join forces with Canada setting off a fierce border war with which Idaho, Montana, and North Dakota desperately lobby Texas, Louisiana, Arizona, and Florida for assistance. A futile effort in the end as Mexico takes advantage of the chaos keeping the southern states too busy to be of much help on the Northern Front.

Yikes…!!

I ask my MAGA friends and neighbors… “is this REALLY what you want? Do you HATE gays, atheists, independent-minded women, brown and trans people so much that you’ll gladly push this formerly respected world power into a zero-sum contest over cultural trivialities?” Seriously, i NEVER got mad at anyone wishing me “Merry Christmas.” In fact, i am prone to throw that greeting around preemptively as a way to bring down the temperature in my ruby red neighborhoods.

As well, i have been propositioned by gay men for what reasons i cannot fathom other than you CAN’T JUDGE a BOOK by the COVER (duh)! Did i get angry?? Of course not. It’s flattering. In one case, i was in a typical top-40 dance band playing a ski-resort gig. Flaming youth! Apparently, i was broadcasting pheromones… it was a compliment. I politely thanked the bar patron for the compliment and let him know i was playing on the hetero team, “straight as an arrow.” He turned his attention elsewhere and that’s that… not rocket science.

At another extreme… in my elementary school days, i was on fire for Jesus and ready for a lifetime of evangelism and missionary wanderings. But something happened as my frontal lobes started developing expanding my worldview past the tip of my nose. I came to understand that all devoted religious followers believe theirs is the best or only path to the divine. Mine also happened to include doctrines about those who do NOT believe, that they would be in for eternal agony if they didn’t, “see the light.” This i simply could not square with what i learned about Jesus’ example, and so i began a spiritual search that ended up somewhere around Tao, Buddhism, QuantumMysteriousness.

Do i now hate those who cling to their exclusionary creeds?? NO… i have Muslim friends, Mennonite friends, Baptist friends, Hindu friends, Catholic friends, Cherokee friends, etc. etc. I tend to regard religion with the same discretion as sexuality, in private, among friendly interlocutors.

Regarding trans people: Do those hopelessly bigoted troglodytes actually believe a person would CHOOSE social ostracization, a lifetime of being regarded as a freak? Anyone who believes a human being (social animals to the core) would CHOOSE exile probably need professional help. I wonder if they’ve ever tried engaging empathetic thought experiments, like walking in the metaphorical shoes of a trans person found in any community. Not in your back yard, you say? Maybe think in terms of bell curves. The numbers may be miniscule but each bell has a tail at the extremes; least and most likely. Can you put yourself in the shoes of the trans person you’ve encountered personally? Did you choose to be that way? Why? Think it through and get back to me won’t you?

Dear MAGA…
Why can’t you be more like Jesus?
Please explain as if speaking to Kindergartners.

If you don’t want to have this discussion in public, please DM me, i will keep your confidence… you have my word.

FINALLY… i’m getting this out in the open because there have been speculations about what may happen to protesters in DC tomorrow. If we have another Kent State or Tiananmen Square and i don’t make it out, i want my MAGA friends to ponder the above questions for my sake. Lastly, i beg you… don’t drag my children into a zero-sum violence choice… Please Please Please??

Cheers and gratitude… Rohlfie

Loopcircus

Loopcircus

This Land: New Hampshire

Below the Earth – Above the Sun: To Whom it may Concern