We've lost or beautiful sunny days for the time being, but hope to have them back soon.  Today has been cloudy with short periods of light rain.  It's cool (54 degrees) and damp - a day to curl up by the fire with a good book.

I was out early this morning to meet Dave Schilling and his history class from Cabot School.  They will be doing a couple of history tours during Fall Foliage Day on Tuesday, and wanted access to the historical building and its resources, so I met with them from 8:30 to 10 this morning.  They were a great group of youngsters.  I was impressed with how much information they had already put together in only a few days, and how accurate they were; but even more than that, I was extremely pleased they were so interested in what we have at the historical society museum and research center.  It was like they'd stumbled onto a buried treasure.  There were ten students, and every one found something to be excited about.  They took pictures of some of the items on exhibit (but were careful to ask first), found relatives in the yearbooks we have in the reference area, and asked lots of great questions - and actually listened to my answers.  It was a pleasure to meet them and see their excitement.  We made tentative plans to meet again in the spring when they could spend more time there.

It was pretty cold and damp in the building, but nobody seemed to mind.  Upstairs they were impressed with the stage curtain and several other items grabbed their attention.  The boys were interested in the swords from the Civil War era; an old encyclopedia that caught the attention of one of the girls, Dave spent some time explaining the stereoscope - which is in a glass case, so we didn't get it out for closer examination; the old voting booths got some attention, and we actually ran out of time before we'd had a chance to hear all the presentations the students had prepared for next Tuesday's tour.  Today was to have been a sort of dress rehearsal for them, but we had time for only two.  Judging by what I heard from those two, they are well prepared and will give the tourists a great insight to some of our history and early schools.