Winter into Spring, a Little News, and an Easter Uprising
. . . I've always thought TV Newscasts had it backwards. It’s a New England tradition that polite conversations begin with the weather, then gradually descend into the gritty news at hand. But TV news does just the opposite, at least in New England. Folks up here are so interested in the weather that the newscasters hold it until last to keep viewers' attention on the news. I'll follow the more polite social tradition, however, and begin with the weather, then sneak in – here and there – the things I really want to convey. . . .
The Spring of Hope: Winter in New England Shows Signs of Thaw
. . . There's a "Southie" accent, a North End accent, a Charlestown accent, and of course the famous Boston Brahmin accent of Beacon Hill. A linguist once told me that the Boston accents evolved from the period of the 1630s when Boston became the geographic and social center of New England Puritanism after the success of Plymouth Colony that I described in "The True Story of Thanksgiving." Some think the Puritans came here just to one day make famous the phrase, "Pahk the cah in Hahvahd Yahd." There's another subtle accent distinction on the North Shore (the "Nawth Shoah") where I grew up, and still another if you head west out to the Berkshires. Venturing north to New Hampshire, where I am in prison, or west to Vermont or nor'east to Maine, you'll hear other distinct variations on the basic New England accent. . . .