I speak, of course, of the city's dead, who number, conservatively, in the tens of thousands.

"As we don't have accurate records in some of the smaller satellite cemeteries, it's hard to say how many people are buried in all of them but Pine Grove Cemetery has 40,055," said Chuck DePrima, Director of the City of Manchester Parks, Recreation and Cemetery Department.

Okay, maybe that wasn't the main reason, but that's not to say I don't love me some circular intersections. And with the exception of the roundabout near Mississippi's Jackson-Evers International Airport, such intersections are sadly lacking in Dixie.

But here in New England they are quite plentiful. Manchester, NH, has two of these intersections, my favorite being the Massabesic Traffic Circle, around which I can't resist making at least two laps each time I have the excuse to go anywhere near the eastern edge of the city.

My wife just rolls her eyes whenever she's with me, but it's just too much fun:

The city's other circular intersection, of course, is the much larger Amoskeag Rotary, only a small portion of which will fit in a picture:

After being in existence nationally for a mere two years, Scouting came to Manchester, NH, in 1912, when the local YMCA chartered two troops. By 1920, when the Manchester Council was formally presented with its charter, the city boasted 10 troops containing 256 scouts.

And 90 years later, Scouting in Manchester, NH, is still going strong. According to Greg Osborn, Massabesic District Director for the Daniel Webster Council (which covers most of New Hampshire, including Manchester), the local Scout program currently serves 757 city youth with the assistance of nearly 300 adult volunteers. The breakdown is as follows:

• Cub Scouting – 11 packs, 300 youth, 91 volunteers
• Boy Scouting – 12 troops, 206 youth, 175 volunteers
• Venturing – 5 crews, 97 youth, 17 volunteers
• Exploring – 4 posts, 154 youth

After a 15-year absence from the Boy Scouts of America, I was brought back into the scouting fold myself several months ago when I organized Manchester, NH’s newest Cub Scout pack to serve the elementary school-age boys living in the affordable apartments owned by the local nonprofit for which I work.

A U.S. Senator from Maine, Muskie was the front runner for the 1972 Democratic Presidential nomination. He was also hated by William Loeb, the über-conservative former owner of what was then known as the Manchester Union Leader.

Loeb, whom Hunter S. Thompson referred to as a “neo-Nazi” in his tome Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail '72 — which is perhaps the best political campaign reporting, ever — is alleged to have had a hand in forging and then publishing what is known as the “Canuck letter” during the 1972 Primary. Printed on the paper’s op-ed page, this letter to the editor “claimed that Muskie had made disparaging remarks about French-Canadians” — a group that at the time made up about 40 percent of the population of Manchester, NH.

After the publication of this letter, the paper then attacked the character of Muskie’s wife Jane, alleging that she drank, used off-color language and told dirty jokes on the campaign. It was this latter incident that really set Muskie off.

In what is charitably referred to as an “emotional” speech, Muskie laid into Loeb on Saturday, Feb. 27, 1972, calling him a “gutless coward,” while standing atop a flatbed trailer parked in front of the Union Leader’s former Amherst Street location. Today, the building is home to Manchester District Court:

Writing in the Washington Post, David Broder reported that during the speech Muskie “broke down three times in as many minutes,” while the Boston Globe’s reporter noted that the candidate wept “silently.” For his part, Muskie said he did not, in fact, cry. What appeared to be tears, he said, were snowflakes melting on his cheeks, which were flush with anger:

To break up this ice, I usually hit up my boss – a Mainer – once a season for use of his ice chisel:

After borrowing the chisel a couple of times now, I feel guilty asking for it again. I don’t want to be a freeloader. But I also have no interest in buying something I only use once a year, even if I could get one for $35 or so. It just seems wasteful.

That’s why I’m intrigued about new web platforms like Rentalic that enable neighbors to rent seldom-used items from another, items ranging from ice chisels to cupcake carrying cases. I would love to see such a service here in Manchester, N.H.

But it turns out I was wrong.

According to the New Hampshire Public Utilities Commission, which regulates such things, there are, as of 2009, some 282 functioning payphones spread across Manchester, NH, including what is arguably the coolest payphone in the city - an old school British phone booth located near the City Hall Annex on Market Street:

Gov. Lynch, whose wife Susan is a pediatrician in Concord, NH, told us that one of the reasons health care costs are so high is that consumers often have no idea how much the same procedure might cost at different medical facilities. But even if we did, and even if the outcomes for a given procedure are pretty much the same everywhere (they generally are, the gov said) there’s really no incentive for those of us with insurance to opt to have that procedure done at the facility with the lowest cost.

Curious to know how Manchester, NH, hospitals and medical facilities compare cost-wise, I researched the cost of several procedures at NHHealthCost.org, a medical cost comparison website run by the New Hampshire Insurance Department and the Commissioner's Advisory Committee on Health Insurance. In doing my research, I chose to look at costs for the uninsured (who often pay more for the same procedure than those of us with insurance) as a general guide.

(I chose not to look at the costs for those who are insured as the many variables involved - insurance company, annual deductible, plan type, etc. - make it difficult to determine an “average” procedure cost.)

On the preventative health side, I found

These legal loan sharks have made depressingly deep inroads in my native South, preying as they do upon the poor. To put things in perspective, there are about as many payday lenders in my small hometown as there are Dunkin’ Donuts in Manchester, NH. And that's saying something.

Maybe my body was craving animal proteins. Maybe the shock of the New Hampshire winter had me craving something more hearty and substantial than a vegetable sub. In any event, I let myself be talked into ordering the above-shown nacho-crusted chicken sandwich on my first visit to the Wild Rover Pub.

And it was, truly, everything Glenn promised: “THE BEST SANDWICH IN THE WORLD.”

But it came with a price. Like Pringles, I found afterwards that couldn’t eat just one meaty meal. The nacho-crusted chicken sandwich was like a gateway drug. Indeed, it marked the beginning of a slippery slope back to into omnivorous dining. So it goes.

In recent months, however, the missus and I have decided — mainly for environmental reasons — that we’d like to give vegetarianism another go. No more steak teriyaki pizza from Olympus Pizza. No more bacon and leek scones at Jewel and Beanstalk. No more duck poutine from Z Food and Drink:

For while it is certainly necessary to give to those organizations, like the New Hampshire Food Bank, that meet people's immediate needs, I feel that giving solely to these types of organizations is a Band-Aid solution in that does little, if anything, to alter the underlying structures that permit our fellow human beings to suffer in the first place.

This is why I'm a big fan of a organizations like Kiva, the world's first person-to-person micro-lending website. Through Kiva, I can lend money - as little as $25 - to cash-and credit-starved aspiring third-world entrepreneurs whose businesses plans have been vetted by professionals. By doing so, I am helping allieve poverty by giving a person the opportunity to achieve economic independence and stability for herself and her family.

And while this is great for Adenike Ajoke, a Nigerian woman who needs capital to buy more sarongs and cosemetics to sell, I can't use the site to help my neighbors here in Manchester, NH, to help themselves by starting their own businesses.

The best I can do is donate (or lend, but the minimum loan is $1,000) to the New Hampshire Community Loan Fund, a nonprofit that lends to New Hampshire individuals and nonprofits that might not otherwise have access to credit, especially through its MicroCredit-NH program, which provides loans of up to $15,000 to micro-businesses (less than five people) owners or aspiring entrepreneurs.

But unlike Kiva, I can't lend money to particular people for particular ventures through any of the Loan Fund's programs - loan officers make those decisions. As such, it lacks the appeal of Kiva: it's not personal.

And while reading about success stories made possible by organizations like MicroCredit-NH is great, I want to personally help someone help themselves here in Manchester, NH, whether it's an immigrant or refugee just off the proverbial boat or the seventh generation American across town.

We already have what we need here in Manchester, NH. We just need to be able to tap into it.