Time is the owner

This is the view from our back yard.  I am fond of this tree and have campaigned to have it stay.  So far so good.  If it was hardwood, well, it would be in my woodpile by now.

The mountain in the back is Mt. Mansfield, highest in the state and also where Stowe ski area is.  At night you can sometimes see the glow of the snow cats grooming up at the top.  Often the mountain seems to have its own weather system and the peaks are surrounded by clouds, while it is clear everywhere else.

We have a pinch over 20 acres, which sounds funny.  You can’t really own land.  You can agree with your government that you have the rights, including paying property taxes, on a certain bit of turf, and you can use the land.  Either take care of it or trash it.  Divide it up for others to take a turn or give it to the State or an organization to “preserve” it.

But you can’t get rid of it.  Land was there before you came along and it will be there when you are done.   I guess you can create land, like Palm Island in Dubai.  You can also dig a huge hole and take all of the goodies away as they do in open strip mining But the realtiy is that surface can be added or taken way, but you can never take it all.

You can alter it with waste, poison it for other living things, or leave it be.  Nature will claim it and do with it what it wants. Time is the real owner, as it is with most things.

Lamoille County Legislative Breakfast charges entry.

Sorry for the little picutres, but this is what I could snag off google images.  Susan Bartlett Senate: Chair Appropriations, Rich Westman House: Chair of Transportation,  Shap Smith, Speaker of the House, Peter Peltz, Not sure what committee he is on, and Floyd Nease, Majority leader.

What do they all have in common?  Lamoille County, Vermont

This morning there is a legislative breakfast in town.  Considering that the Session just started and the Governor has called for tremendous cuts, and Speaker Smith is looking for 150 MILLION in bonding power to pull Vermont out of a “economic downturn”  This should be interesting.

What also interest me is that there is now a Fee for the breakfast.   10 bucks, unless you bring canned food for the food shelf and then your cost is reduced to $7.00.  Who benefits?  River Arts, a publicly/ privately funded non-profit and Lomoille Valley Chamber of Commerce.  Who is the looser?

Citizens that would really like to hear what these legislators have to say, but don’t have the extra money to go.

There will be other legislative breakfasts through out the winter, one in Elmore in a couple of weeks that will be free to the public,  but I gotta say that this first one is pretty important.  It is the only one scheduled prior to town meeting in March.

Town meeting is when the citizens will vote on town spending budgets and projects, when we all look at our property and school taxes smack in the face and vote yea or nea.

Frankly,  by putting a charge on the breakfast, citizens that are being effected the most by the economy will be less likely to come.

I get that under writing  the breakfast is needed, but couldn’t organizers have found a different way to go?

EDIT:  Heidi Scheuermann is the Stowe representative and Linda Martin is the Wolcott/ Hyde Park representative.  Appologies to both for not getting a mention this morning.  Turns out that if folks showed up and said that they were not going to have breakfast, that they didn’t have to pay.   I paid, but didn’t stand in line for coffee or breakfast and was not given that option.

Good Times

First ski this season.  We got a good snow this week and today was just brilliantly beautiful.  Bub got a pair of snowshoes for Christmas, so he was much better equipped for the trip down to the beaver meadow.   It is so very different in the winter then in later summer. 

Best to go down in the winter, you can really move around on the meadow.  In the summer the grasses are on pretty fragil bog like ground.  Moose, deer, fishers, and the like all come to call.  In the winter, very few signs of activity.  Some tracks in the woods, but in the open, not much other then a few mice holes near the abondoned beaver lodge.

When we fist moved here, the beaver were active and the meadow was under water.  Now just a brook runs and a small pond by the oldest lodge ridge. I imagine that it has been that way for thousands of years.  A meadow, then a pond with beaver, then they leave and the pond goes back to beaver meadow.  Endless cycle like the winter and the summer.

Bub said that we should come down the old logging road, then cut down though from one end and make our way north to the other end, back track and go the easy way up.  The more direct way is through the woods, and I wanted a challange.  Bub laughed as I went down trying to get over two trees that were down.

Bub was right about taking the easier route.  But I like to ignore practicality and defy the odds when ever I can.  But,  I do think that next time I will use snow shoes.  Much smarter.

After the horsing around we came home to the warmth from our wood stove burning the cords we put up this past summer.  Life is pretty good, in spite of all the gloom and doom around us.

Sometimes getting away from all of the stuff and getting back to nature is a good way to put things in perspective.  The beaver meadow will again be green in time.  Winter is not forever, things change, time continues.   This economic winter we are all experiencing should bring closer to us the reminders of what is important.  Not the latest i-pod or the newest biggest thing at the mall.   The greatest things in life are the good times we have with our loved ones, family and friends.  You don’t need a bunch of stuff for that, mearly time to be together.  Good times, as Bub says, good times.

Herbert Hoover and the Problems of Lasting Peace, part 1

I have a ton of old books from my grandmother.  I like old books, the heaviness of the book and paper, the smell and the old cloth covers.  It amazes me how life just keeps coming back around.  The media often reports news as if we are the first generation or people ever experiencing anything.  Media makes any little bit more then what it really is.  Sensationalist in its raw form.

I read several books at a time, not at the same time mind you,  just a couple of books going at the same time.  Like my knitting projects, a couple going at the same time and some get more attention then others.  Books are like that too.  On my bedside table I have a collection of books I am going though.

The Problems of Lasting Peace by Herbert Hoover and Huge Gibson, 1942 is one such goodie.  Seems pretty relevant right now.

The economic machine became infinitely more complicated and delicately balanced.  International transportation and communications, finance, and trade brought enormous interchange and dependency among Nations.  A disruption anywhere in the world brought repercussions in stagnated markets and shocks in the flow of credit and capital, and finally widespread unemployment.

Out of the Machine Age grew a sort of rhythm of production and consumption, partly affected by credit movements and speculation, all of which brought periodic booms and slumps.  In the boom, greed speculation, and waste were rampant; and in the slump, the worker took the brunt in unemployment and misery, the farmer in inability to sell his products so vitally needed by the worker.

The control of finance and credit come to dominate free industry instead of merely serving as its lubricant.  And the making of profit form sheer financial manipulation instead of production of commodities rose to a point of shrieking evil equally in the financial markets of London, Berlin, Paris, Petrograd, New York, Chicago and a hundred lesser centers.

Hoover and Gibson were talking about the forces lead to World War 1.

Sorry to be so glum.  The fighting in the Middle East, the continuing wars,  folks scared about loosing jobs, has led me to this book.

Happy New Year

This is the house that I grew up in. It was built in the 1860’s and is the basic New England big house, little house, barn construction.   There are houses all around and the land is minimal.  What you see is what your get. Front yard with shrubs.  The foundation is stone and the house is cold.

For part of Christmas break,  Lulu and I went down to Dedham Massachusetts on the occasion of my mother’s birthday.   My mother hates being photographed and hates her birthday because it is on December 31st.

Lulu, on the other hand is a complete photo ham.  So is Tookie.

There is so much  junk that bubbles up with Dedham, so much to write about, but probably not a good idea to put it in a blog.  Which is why I haven’t written in a while.  So instead, I will post some great shots of the holidays and our trip.

This year one of  my resolutions is to lose 10 pounds, ( over the whole year) a manageable goal I think.   10 pounds is easy to pick up when you go from doing barn chores two times a day to not at all.  Plus, I haven’t changed my eating habits and I twisted my ankle in fall, which didn’t help.

I do have a membership to one of those 24/7 type workout places and am getting very familiar with the tread mill.

The other resolution is to go back to school and maybe finish a master’s program.   I have signed up for a course at Johnson State college,  History of American Politics being taught by Bill Doyle.  What a treat.    Monday is back to work and routine.  I loved spending time with the kids and having a bit of a break.