Free at Last. Free at Last...

If you happen to have read the "Quote Me" piece, which has been featured on the homepage of this site for a shamelessly long time, you are aware of my conundrum concerning the misattribution of inspirational quotations. Thanks to fearless reader, Bill Osmet, the mysterious Allan K Chalmers has come in from the cold. Check out the link. He was a quite an accomplished scholar and a mentor to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Why this never came up on my previous google expeditions I cannot explain. My misspelling of his first name? Improvements in the search engines in the three years since I wrote the piece? Myopia? Whatever it was I'm more than happy to give credit where it is due. I've even found another Allan Knight Chalmers quote I like even more than the last one I co-opted, "A man gets thin if he does not read, becomes inaccurate if he does not write, but most of all loses a profoundness if he does not think."
As Einstein famously said, "I must a little think now."

Spring Colors and Sounds

With cheerful colors finally appearing along the Vermont roadsides it is officially spring. Kubota orange, John Deere green and the the dusty rose of the occasional aging Ford or Massey Ferguson dot the hillsides with the promise of summer. We dragged all the attachments out of the barn yesterday and I took inventory of the broken and missing parts I needed to get everything to work. Lynch pins, shackles, top links and zerks -- a lovely list of alliterative parts my son and I went to fetch this morning. Soon I'll be able to york rake the road, bush hog the buckthorn, and stack the brush. I think what I like best about spring -- besides the weather and flowers if you're into that sort of thing -- is simply talking about it. A person can not say bush hog the buckthorn too many times.

Witness to Catastrophe

According to CNN and other authorities, I am trapped inside of a national nightmare. I'm at O'Hare airport in Chicago in the midst of the airline meltdown, which according to CNN and other authorities, has created a refugee camp of surly passengers desperate to go somewhere, anywhere. I keep looking around for the horror so that I can bear witness to this headline catastrophe. I am in the B Concourse -- United territory -- and it looks like every other Friday morning I've sat here waiting for my ride home. I thought I heard small arms fire coming from the American terminal, but it turned out to be the popcorn machine over by the Starbucks across from the Hudson News stand. You know the one I mean.

A woman over by the window at B3 is reading People. I can tell by the "who are these people?" look on her face that she is not a subscriber. She only reads it in airports and dentist offices. There is a slow but annoying drip coming from the ceiling by the pay phone kiosk eight feet to my right. A parade of people have settled into the seat for as long as it takes to get dripped on and then they move. I should warn them, I know, but I am but an observer here -- reporting on this nightmare. I decide I will warn older people with bad hips, but nobody else.

My flight is delayed 40 minutes. A nightmare? Somehow I can't muster my "Flight or Fight" response to this. I don't get too worked up about this stuff anyway. Travel is all about managing your expectations. Whenever I leave home for a trip -- no matter where I'm going -- I assume I will spend the night sleeping in the back of a rented Celica at a snowed-in truckstop in Erie, PA. These things happen. That way, even if I end up in the back of a Jeep Cherokee at a snowed-in truckstop in Erie I can say to myself, "At least it isn't a Celica". If the truckstop is in Wyoming? At least it isn't Erie. A Motel 6 in Boise? It could be much much worse. And if I actually get to where I intended to go more or less at the time and on the day I wanted to go there -- which is usually the case -- I feel a pleasurable swell of surprise and delight.

Our long national nightmare is over. Somebody call CNN.

Big Foot Bunny Droppings

The myth of the Easter Bunny endures one more season in southeastern Vermont. Like the Big Foot hoaxes in the West, large rabbits that poop chocolate and joy are a well-documented phenom in the Green Mountains.





This picture depicts what it might have looked like had the Shackelton Expedition been a family outing.








With another 6 inches of snow falling as I write, signs of spring are everywhere...but here.

Easter, LLC.

As a Long Lapsed Catholic, LLC, Easter is a celebration filled with guilt, non-resolved resentment, and fear that my non-observance of the past 35 years has condemned by soul to eternal damnation. If this celebration took place in a darker time of year we would all be swinging by the neck from church rafters. But, it's springtime and we somehow muddle through these emotions by participating in the pagan rituals of the season: Easter egg hunts and leaving treats for an imaginary rabbit who brings chocolate idols in its own image -- and Peeps.

As a kid the Easter Bunny would always bring me a bow and arrow set, which by the end of the day had all the rubber suckers removed, the tips sharpened and the neighborhood cats on the run. My sisters got goofy hats that were worn just long enough for the family photo and then strangely disappeared. This oddness at home was amplified at church on Easter Sunday when the priest would wear gaudy robes, the altar boys were tense, and the sour throated choir ladies sang even longer and more painful hymns of little or no application.

Had it made one scrap of sense to me, had anyone bothered to bend down and explain it all rather than twist my ear to sit up straighter on the pew -- I might be a Catholic yet. Instead, I find myself wittling a tip on the end of a toy arrow, scanning the yard for cats and bunnies.

Missing Inaction

I discovered only yesterday that my website has been down since the 12th. It seems my domain name had expired without reason or warning. Who knew these things had a shelf life? In any case, the situation has been resolved and I have purchased the rights to this silly business for the next 20 years. That should cover it.
Sorry for the trouble. Believe me, you didn't miss a thing.

Election Results

With 100% of the ballots tallied, the brownies eaten, and the collapsible voting booths collapsed and stuffed back in the janitor's closet at the elementary school, this blog is prepared to call the open 3 year seat on the Dummerston, Vermont Selectboard for former road foreman, Wayne Emery, who is also the farmer who hays my field.
Today was Town Meeting Day across Vermont and marks the end of my 3 year term on the Selectboard, the last year as chairman. My last act as chair was to present the annual budget to the assemblage of local voters who were kind enough to approve it without too much fuss. If you've never been to a New England town meeting, you should try one. The term "town meeting" has become distorted with over-use as a term for an intimate I-want-to-listen-to-your-concerns staged political event rather than what it is: a legal assembly of local voters empowered to enact laws, raise revenue, and approve town expenditures. When convened the Town Meeting is a parliament of community members governed only by Robert's Rules and a gracious Town Moderator. It truly is democracy at it's best and a real hoot too. Donuts and coffee in the morning. Ham and beans with cole slaw and chocolate pie for lunch. You can put the whole room to sleep in the afternoon just by explaining the figures in the road maintenance section of the budget, which of course, I did.
I loved being a Selectman. I've learned more about roads, bridges, culverts, grand lists, tax rates, open meetings laws, and zoning than is probably good for a person, but what a way to get to know your town. I'll go back to it someday, but I need a little more time in my life for work and my boys and I'm certainly hoping it's less of the former and more of the latter.
And by the way, Barack Obama took Dummerston with 451 votes to Hillary Clinton's 183. I know because I counted them. CNN is calling. I have to go.