I want to let folks know first of all, Homer Fitts is okay. If you heard he was taken to the hospital Tuesday night having chest pains, that's true. I heard about it late this afternoon and started checking. It seems when Homer began having pain he called Danville Rescue. They took him to NVRH where he was evaluated and decided he needed to go to Dartmouth Hitchcock or Fletcher Allen. He opted for Fletcher Allen where his doctors are, so Danville Rescue picked him up again and took him to Burlington. I think this all happened Tuesday night.

My sources said as of this morning Homer was feeling chipper as usual, so I decided to call him at the hospital. When I reached Fletcher Allen, they told me he'd been discharged around 2 p.m. Then I called his daughter Ellen, thinking he'd be there, only to find out he'd already come back to Joe's Pond! I finally reached Homer around six o'clock tonight and he told me he was fine, in fact, he said he was "feeling great."

It was his heart, and Homer said it was 13 years ago that he'd had a quad by-pass, and the trouble this time was that one artery was 90% closed. They inserted a stent and that fixed the problem. He said he wished they'd kept him a bit longer because he liked having all his meals prepared for him.

Don't you just love it when this kind of story has a happy ending?


Here's another story you'll no doubt hear more about and read about in the papers tomorrow. We had a weather warning this evening that there were heavy storms in the Williamstown and Orange area with very strong winds. There was a tornado warning and also they said to watch out for possibly damaging straight winds.

The air has been eerily still here at Joe's Pond so far tonight, but I've had the scanner on and crews were out in the Williamstown area cutting fallen trees out of the road and off power lines. I only get the chatter as crews are being directed to trouble spots, and generally don't get much about how much damage there is, but things have quieted down now, at least in the area that my scanner reaches.

This has certainly been an unusual "summer." Some folks who have been here at Joe's Pond and surrounding areas are probably ready to take issue with that term, being that most of us don't think we've had any "summer" at all yet. But 'tis the season, even though it doesn't feel like it. Every night feels like fall, and every day feels like we're in Seattle in the winter. We're getting used to the grayness and the coolness, though. We hail the infrequent bursts of sunshine with giddy pleasure, tumbling out of our soggy homes to take advantage of every fleeting minute of warmth and dispensation of rare vitamin D offered. We're getting used to turning on the heat at some point every day "to dry things out," and most of us have given up keeping lawns mowed and garden weeds pulled. If walking in the rain is romantic, we are the destination spot for lovers.

Yet, things go on about as normal every day. There are folks out on the pond fishing, kids in the pond swimming, bikers peddling along muddy roads, runners dodging the mud puddles - but you won't see a lot of sunbathing going on. I bet the tanning salons are doing a good business this "summer"!

I'm not complaining. I like it cooler. I don't even mind the rainy days. But I do feel sorry for the farmers who can't get their hay dried, the communities that plan summer festivals and the tourists who come to enjoy our views only to find clouds hanging low over the mountain tops and trails too wet to enjoy. I hope they take a deep breath of the clean, fragrant damp air and recognize the smell of clover, evergreen trees and new-mown hay tinged with just a hint of wood smoke.