Habit. Suspicion. Stinginess. A genetically distant tinge of inbred insanity. The aesthetic is a little weird and out of time. The kind of isolation that can lead to madness or genius and you won't know which it was in a New Englander, until the bodies are discovered. And when they're not, you always still wonder if they're out there somewhere. Lichen covered statues and solitary feeling parks, places and objects that I imagine might be creepy to non New Englanders, feel like home to me.
Stubbornness. New Englanders are so, damned stubborn. Don't care how everyone else does things. Don't care if there's a faster, more efficient, cheaper way. This is how it's done, was done and is going to be done forever and ever, Amen. Same problems year after year because everyone is a stubborn hold-out who can sit in the freezing rain with their arms crossed and able to win a staring contest: "I can just put on another fisherman's sweater and do this all day. I can live on a crust of stonehearth bread (because of course it is) and a cup of black tea for four days, without faint. And then I'm chopping a cord of wood because you'll need warming and I'll have to save you because that's just what's the decent thing done. Fie, fie and bah."
The most hard-living, suffering rich people on Earth. Layered pauper threads. Patchwork quilts made out of old patchwork quilts. Frugal to the point of teeth-chattering, damp corridors misery. You turn off those lights in every room but over some corner desk in some corner office you happen to be using. New Englanders actually use the candles Midwestern transplants give us for decor and festivity and freeze the ones we want to keep for when -- not if but when -- the power goes out. We have oil lamps. Most of us remember seeing a parent or grandparent use them at some point in our childhood. Most of us have family members who have hobby farms or craft hobbies. We have the aunt who can use a loom. The cousin who can blacksmith. The uncle who builds dories. Any activity that's mind-numbingly laborious and archaically repetitive, we have it going on in New England. We build stone walls around things for inexplicable reasons. Who is going to steal a tree? If you intend to, not in New England, you are.
Utter devotion to historical preservation even if December wind is blowing through the space in the old leadlights that has been there since the house settled after a flood, a century ago. But not like Maryland or Kentucky renovations, where everything is glossed-up and replaced with reproductions or fixed in a way to make these places presentable to political social circles. No. You take some old wood you pulled off an old shed, piled in an old barn and you patch repair like it was done in 1805. And any old wood you're not using, you give to the neighbor who is always looking for more old wood. Plug that bucket and then tape that bucket and then shellac that bucket because damned it, you're not buying a new bucket. New England stingy bastards will battle over a nickle, while there's a virtual Fort Knox of gold bars in the root cellar.
There's a reason why Brit programming does so well here. Stoney, foggy, gray places feel cozily like home. My favorite days are when it's gray, foggy, quiet and damp. Usually late November when everything is gunmetal silver boughs, tracing silver skies, dark gray water, gray-brown or faded green fields, with a couple of crows thrown in for interest. I always love when Hollywood tries to make scary house "horror stories" because they often come across as mostly comforting to New Englanders.
On another thread, we were talking about cinematography and somehow "The Secret Garden" (1993) came up and I mentioned seeing it as a child and finding the grays and greens of its palette comforting. The scenes that were meant to evoke a sense of loneliness, discomfort and isolation to audiences, felt mostly welcoming to me. I remember thinking, "Ooh,what a nice and cozy room" even though it had a background audio of the wind blowing through the house:
