We visited Kingdom Access TV in St. Johnsbury today. That's where youngest son, Jamie, is head honcho. Kingdom Access used to have space at Lyndon State College, but about a year ago, they moved to the old Purina Mill building that Bruce Ralston had renovated for the St. Johnsbury School to use while the town was constructing the new building. It's a big place, and has several businesses housed there now, with plenty of space for more.

Jamie wasn't in his office when we got there, so Will, one of Jamie's crew, gave us a tour of KATV's office, studio and technical setup. When Jamie arrived, he took us through the rest of the building. Pretty amazing. We had no idea about all that's going on there. It's a perfect setting for community television. It's quiet, clean, bright - a very pleasant work space. We didn't take many pictures there - our efforts pale compared to these pros: www.katv.org

Downstairs, there is a very large space for loading docks for various businesses, and at one end of the building, a company called PortaBrace, whose headquarters are in N. Bennington, Vermont. They make all kinds of specialty carrying bags such as for cameras and other delicate equipment that must be transported. I don't know how many people are working there, but there must have been at least 25 or 30 women at work. This photo shows only a small portion of the work space, and there are administrative offices, too.

We were having problems earlier in the week with our TV reception - not connected to the change over from analog - something to do with the signal. The service man came right after lunch today and after only a few minutes of testing, found out we had some big old poplar trees getting in the way of our signal. Fred grabbed his trusty chainsaw and took out two really tall trees in back of our house. I wasn't sorry to see them down because they were shading the garden by late afternoon, and as everyone knows, it's important in Vermont to get as many hours of sun during our short growing season as possible or your plants don't mature in time to harvest before frost hits. Now the TV is working much better, and I'll be interested to see if we get an hour or so more sun on the garden in the late afternoon, when we have a sunny day again . . . In this picture there's one tree down and the second is just leaning out before it falls.

I don't think Fred was ready to get into working up another wood pile quite this soon, but by supper time he already had a lot of the first tree limbed and blocked.

We've had three inquiries today looking for cottages to rent. That isn't counting the one posted on the Comments page. If any of you have cottages to rent, now would be a good time to let us know. Use the comments page if you don't want to invest in a permanent ad on the rental page. We've encouraged people who e-mailed us to put their requests on the Comments page, so watch there if you have some days or weeks your cottage isn't rented this summer.

I think I mentioned that JPA members will be getting ten Ice-Out tickets to sell this year. We have them ready to go and they'll be at the Annual Meeting on July 4th. If you aren't going to be able to make the meeting, please ask a neighbor or friend to pick yours up for you to save us tracking you down this summer or having to mail them to you this fall. Those of you who are not members of Joe's Pond Association can get tickets at the local stores or by contacting Diane Rossi or me - or you'll find them on the web site within a day or so. Our web master is pretty busy working on his wood pile, but he'll have the 2010 tickets posted very soon for you to fill out and print.

Ted Decker sent this photo of sunrise over Joe's Pond.
He wrote: "It was one of those mornings. 'Red in the morning..........'."

Yep, we got the warning, Ted - more rain and wind. Real summer seems to be a bit delayed this year. But, that is some gorgeous color. Thanks for sending it.