I'm like a parent who refuses to give up on his kid. Sure he'a made some mistakes, gotten sidetracked, but he deserves a second chance. Don't we all.

Anyway, here it is, the new Birdman edition with new cover. It's only 99 cents on Kindle. Here's the foreword, which you can preview anyway on the Amazon site, so it's not like I'm giving it away. Take a chance, support a local writer, save some trees, find some meaning in your crooked, twisted life. I mean, what are you waiting for? Download it now!

Foreword – Second Edition

It has been almost a dozen years since Billy Kagan, aka Bert Smith the Birdman wandered the Irish hinterlands seeking his soul. Much has changed. The Celtic Tiger has come and gone. The world seems to have survived the passage into a new millennium, albeit semi-fractured in its consciousness and its ability to carry on.

It is instructive to look back on the world Billy was watching in those wild-eyed days.  We seemed to be perched on the edge of a yawning chasm, pursued by the ghosts of our former misdeeds, and uncertain of a future providence. Nowadays, a new generation looks to the birds, “perchers, songsters, blown by the wind and content to sit in the early and late days of the lingering sun, faith in perpetual sustenance, sharp-eyed observers of the moribund and settled,” as the waves of creative destruction crash down again on the rocks of these shores.

It is time to bring Billy forward on the bridge he foresaw being built, bypassing the architecture and snares of the old city, into a new land of opportunity. This electronic edition of Birdman is for the reader who knows that sometimes you have to step back in order to move on.

Anthony Caplan

Anthony Caplan is a writer, blogger, teacher and homesteader in New Hampshire. He is the author of the novels Birdman, French Pond Road, and the forthcoming Latitudes - A Story of Coming Home, due out at the end of June from Hope Mountain Press. Find out more about him and his work at http://www.anthonycaplanwrites.com. 

A World of Hurt

I've got other things I should be doing. There are a couple of lambs who need some bottle help to survive, about an acre of vegetable beds to dig. I'm on my spring vacation. I should be sleeping, by all rights, but Michael is off this morning to D.C. with the school trip and was up at 3:00 am banging around like a little elephant downstairs. Did I say elephant? I'm sorry Michael. No offense.
The people in charge are an insult to elephants, actually. Elephants would never do to their own kind what the current batch of legislators in the NH House want to do to this state. Taking lowball revenue estimates, adding cuts to tobacco taxes, gambling taxes and others, they are now proposing a budget half a billion dollars below the governor's already austere plans. The idea, in essence is to take us back to the 1950s by way of meeting a ginned up so-called fiscal emergency. Gone is the pretense that this is about job creation or economic recovery, or even living within our means, although that is the line they will continue to hammer to the uninformed. This is all about unraveling a social fabric that was largely built, ironically, by Republicans.
Democrats have only been in the majority for four years in New Hampshire in the last 150, and this is the reaction we get. Twenty five percent cut out of the state's Department of Health and Human Services for poor families, children, disabled and mental health services. When asked about what kind of burden this would place on towns, who are the social safety net of last reserve and always have been, this is what Kenneth Wyler, R-Kingston, chair of the House Finance Committee and chief architect of the House budget had to say. "You just stop taking in the door everybody who is a little worried." (NH Business Review, April 8, 2011)
Talk about setting them on an ice floe. It brings to mind the crucial difference between Republicans and Democrats voiced in 1984 by Mario Cuomo, and I believe it is worth repeating, in the interests of finding our long repressed Democratic gonads. Yes, Barack, I'm talking to you. What's the difference between Democrats and Republicans?

"It's an old story. It's as old as our history. The difference between Democrats and Republicans has always been measured in courage and confidence. The Republicans -- The Republicans believe that the wagon train will not make it to the frontier unless some of the old, some of the young, some of the weak are left behind by the side of the trail. "The strong" -- "The strong," they tell us, "will inherit the land."

We Democrats believe in something else. We Democrats believe that we can make it all the way with the whole family intact, and we have more than once. Ever since Franklin Roosevelt lifted himself from his wheelchair to lift this nation from its knees -- wagon train after wagon train -- to new frontiers of education, housing, peace; the whole family aboard, constantly reaching out to extend and enlarge that family; lifting them up into the wagon on the way; blacks and Hispanics, and people of every ethnic group, and native Americans -- all those struggling to build their families and claim some small share of America. For nearly 50 years we carried them all to new levels of comfort, and security, and dignity, even affluence. And remember this, some of us in this room today are here only because this nation had that kind of confidence. And it would be wrong to forget that."

The foolhardy elements in the Republican budget are many and noteworthy and have sparked wide-spread outrage. even among business leaders, although falling on mostly deaf ears, it seems. But here is one example - cuts to vocational and training centers across the state, which concerns me in my workplace, not that I teach those proud, unruly kids who ride the bus to learn auto tech and cooking and drafting and hair styling. I don't, but I see them in the halls. Those kids in their Carharts and work boots and the faces of a long distant agricultural heritage, they don't take Spanish, they don't take AP History. But I can recognize a people when I see them and that's who they are. They are New Hampshire, and cutting the vocational programs is cannibalism, preying on our own children. Not even elephants.

Everything Fights

As the reality of post-Massachusetts backlash sets in, we turn inward this week, choosing to focus on the pleasures of hearth and home state rather than the absurdity of the national or international stage. After all, you're supposed to write about what you know, and increasingly it is obvious that I don't really know what country I'm in. The state to our south that produced Thoreau and Harvard has now come up with the poster child for the triumph of ignorance and bad taste, Scott Brown from Wrentham who drives a truck. Apparently that is all he needed to say to win.

But New Hampshire and it's winter pleasures - I know a thing or two about that, and here's a largely undiscovered trove for you - middle school wrestling tournaments. It's not for everyone, but as an immersion in what makes us tick, regardless of party allegiance, it's second to none. You get 200 kids and their parents and guardians singing the national anthem and then sharing bleachers for six or seven hours in a sweaty, stinking gymnasium. You get a cross section of physical types and facial hair, although this year I have seen a diminished evidence of lavish moustache and goatee to go along with the economic downturn. You get to talk to people you haven't talked to in about a year, the mother of a child on your kid's team separated from her husband, now with new boyfriend sporting obnoxious sweatshirt with the name of some California college emblazoned on the front. Then outside, getting some fresh air on a break from the action, the owner of the town pharmacy tells you she's looking at losing 40 percent of her business as the municipal employee's association negotiates for mail order contracts with some national retail chain. You get kids wrestling their hearts out, developing skills, resilience, and a respect for themselves, each other, and the coaches and other adults who cheer them on. You get all this, and at the end of the day, if you're lucky, you get to go home, you and your kid, to a dinner and reports of ice storms coming that might mean no school Monday and more time to write. Awesome.

First snow

Here we are in front of the barn posing for the X-mas card. It's snowing and today I stayed home from work to get some stuff done on the local energy committee, writing the minutes and thinking about what we're actually trying to get done there. I'm also organizing a renewable energy forum in january with a professor at the local college, and today I did some telephoning around to get speakers for it.

The one car broke down, water pump seized up and last night it wouldn't start in the cold and after jump starting it and racing it down the road to Bradford suddenly the belt stopped shrieking, the lights did something funny and I knew something was not right. So today I had a chance to pick Eve up at dance class, see her do a cartwheel for Miss Dee Dee and then take Michael to his wrestling practice in our remaining vehicle.