Winter is coming. I once believed the vicissitudes of weather up here in the Northeast made for a strong character. Like the pounding and heating steel makes for a better product. All those ivy-covered institutions of education; don’t they produce a more learned, thoughtful population? With centuries of colonial heritage up here, we are people with roots and legacy, not mushrooms. Right? Now with the coming of November, I’m having doubts.

What the hell are 14.8 million of us doing here?

New England is a land of rock-strewn farms, snow, and barren of precious resources. What the hell are 14.8 million of us doing here? Mid-western farms are bountiful, the southern climate is better, and then there’s cornucopia California to move out. You would think Boston, Portland, Hartford and Providence should become ghost towns. You’d think those winter blizzards would keep out all the riff raft. And yet our population grows.

If we New England Yankees are such discriminating characters, if we’re all so wicked smart, reeking with education and elitism, why are we still here? We go on mindlessly chipping ice, starting our cars with jumper cables, and dress like Eskimos in burqas? Don’t we know any better? It’s as if the pounding seas, a few covered bridges and a Patriots game make everything right. Are we like little kids who are so ecstatic in June when the snowbanks melt that we forget the seven months of winter dreadfulness?

No, it’s none of the above. We stick around generation after generation because we are too damn cantankerous to admit that coming here was a mistake in the first place.

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