A Granite State of Mind....

The "Old Man of the Mountain" succumbed to time and circumstance and came tumbling down on or about May 30th 2003.
Immediately, the State of New Hampshire swung into action empaneling a committee to investigate the pernicious "law of gravitation" and to find just which state legislators backed such a destructive statist socialist proposal.
Meanwhile Joe McQuaid cheerful vulgarian and publisher of the Manchester Union Leader (think of it as a print version of Fox News sans the wit and sophistication) mused on NPR yesterday that "the Old Man of the Mountain Revitalization Fund HASN'T contacted Disney's animatronic people yet...but they will".
A grotesque proposal that must be contemplated in mute silence.
If Joe McQuaid hurries perhaps he can still get Charlton Heston to lay down vocal tracks singing the Declaration of Independence to the tune of "The Theme to Davy Crockett"?
Or perhaps the all animatronic "New Old Man of the Mountain" could be coin operated? Lotsa tourist dollars there and thanks to its network of maddening toll booths N.H. has experience in nickel and diming unwary visitors.
The funds used to defray the extortionate property taxes the local yeoman peasantry cling to like tribal fetishes in a volcanic upheaval.
The Granite State never changes, it is still the same bitter, angry, reactionary wasteland that I found when I got off the bus in Center Barnstead in the summer of 1979.
The notion that New Hampshire may replace an iconic rock formation with a robotic tourist attraction is proof positive that the state can neither preserve what was good and old nor avoid embracing what is new and awful.
New Hampshire could be safely sold to Yugoslavia without doing any cultural or political damage to the Union whatsoever....
To paraphrase General Sheridan; If I owned Hell and New Hampshire, I'd rent out New Hampshire and go to live in Hell.
NOTE TO THE LAITY:
I'm off til monday, but if it all goes to smash and I don't come back...try to remember that I was once an eagle.
:)