State of The Shire

[Lloyd Danforth]

Raw Cookies?

[Russell Kanning]

We figure all of us in The Shire are part of the royal family.

[Puke]

The Bishop!

I can see Russell doing this. 

[David]

Radical Teen?  Kira, I presume?  Your signiture should make your folks proud.   

It is fitting that the Shire region have its own subforum.  The Shire has really morphed from a joke, to the name for the independence desire that was first written about a year or two ago by Caleb and Tracy. 
Good job guys.   

[Kat Kanning]

Wow, I hadn't seen it. 

[Raineyrocks]

It's true I did made cookies. I wish you were here Caleb to have one, everyone says there really good.

Raw Cookies?

I believe you Kira aka Radical Teen!   Did you use dates and carob powder?  I love putting Brazil nuts and cinnamon in the blender with a little bit of water and then dehydrating them, there are so good.

[Kat Kanning]

No, she was using nestle chocolate chips and real sugar.

[Raineyrocks]

No, she was using nestle chocolate chips and real sugar.

Oh!  Heck those are even better!

[Russell Kanning]

maybe this idea will never turn into anything .... we will just continue our shire activities in secret

[SethCohn]

It is fitting that the Shire region have its own subforum.  The Shire has really morphed from a joke, to the name for the independence desire that was first written about a year or two ago by Caleb and Tracy. 

Not to make a big deal of it, but "the Shire" name was coined by Chris (with some input from me), way back in 2004, and was never really a 'joke' and was always used in a manner mean to invoke a free place.  Caleb and Tracy and others picked on the term, to mean more specific places (Keene-ish), or more specific freedoms, but others have continued to call ALL of NH the Shire, and nor limiting it to independence or apolitical meanings.

Speaking as a Schnergenberger, this is quite definitive.

(and for those who were paying attention: SCoHN = Schn(ergenberger) the truth is out there, right?)

[Caleb]

Not to nitpick, but David didn't say that Tracy and I began the use of the word shire, he said that we started the Independence thing, which he apparently felt articulated a concept of independence that predated the use of the word shire. I don't think he was right on that, by the way, because for one the two ideas are different, and for two, I think the use of Tolkien's imagery for freedom concepts goes back quite a bit more than any of us.

[SethCohn]

Not to nitpick, but David didn't say that Tracy and I began the use of the word shire,

I didn't say he did... did I? He did say "started as a joke" which is what I was commenting on, for one, and that it's 'morphed' to mean something else.

I think the use of Tolkien's imagery for freedom concepts goes back quite a bit more than any of us.

Agreed.  As the recent Tolkien anarchy thread proved.

[David]

I stand corrected.   
I have heard the shire as a referense mostly as western nh, keene up to grafton, over to parts of vermont.  Of course, this referense was spoken by various folks in those areas, and I am not in the eastern part of the state much at all these days. 
Either way, Ryans idea of a anarcho-capitalist commune is cool.   

[Russell Kanning]

I stand corrected.  
I have heard the shire as a referense mostly as western nh, keene up to grafton, over to parts of vermont.

The Shire takes territory every day, since it expands when people join it. I don't know where its boundaries are. I know for sure it takes in Hobbiton (Covering Canaan, Grafton and parts of other towns) to the North and "Winchester of the Shire" to the South. It ventures into small parts of Vermont and has taken territory as far East as Little Minnesota and possibly Seabrook.

[FTL_Ian]

The only boundaries of the Shire are in your mind, if any.