It has been cold again today - not quite as cold as yesterday and Thursday night, when the temperature slipped down to zero - but it's remained pretty much in the high teens, low twenty's all day, with snow flurries.  Welcome to December!

If you've checked the Rossi's web cam lately, you'll see the pond is closing in.  I think that may be slushy ice beyond the white along the shore, but I can't tell for sure.  I'm amazed it hasn't frozen solid, being this cold.

Woody hasn't been outside for a few days now.  He ventures into the garage sometimes, but only for three or four minutes, to check things out, I expect, then he's back inside.  He still pays a lot of attention to the television whenever it's on.  We haven't figured that out yet.  He never used to even glance at it unless he heard a cat meow or a bear roar.  Recently he's taken to watching intently and seems to prefer basketball now that there aren't as many politicians on.  Sometimes he gets frightened if there's a wild animal, like an elephant or big cat - and especially if he sees a bear on the screen.  Dogs he couldn't care less about, and he's only mildly interested in the cow with the shower cap on being part of somebody's family.  We expect that when the weather gets warm again, he'll lose interest altogether, but in the meantime, we're often entertained more by our cat watching TV than we are in watching it ourselves.

Yesterday I ordered a book on line and it came in the mail today!  I couldn't believe it.  That's quick service, even though it came only from a book store in Manchester, Vermont, it would usually take longer than that.  It's an fairly old book titled North of the Nulhegan, by A. W. Stone, better known to me as Archie Stone, an educator and author born and raised in Cabot.  Archie made quite a mark for himself in the 1920's and 30's as superintendent of schools of the Northeast District, now commonly known as Vermont's Northeast Kingdom.  The Nulhegan River runs through that area. 

Archie was also an essayist, poet and raconteur.  One of my favorite poems by Archie is "The Tote Team,"about the horse-drawn wagons that carried goods over the hills in the early years on trails through woods and crossing streams, over corduroy roads and through mud ". . . and up the road, and into the woods with the swaying load -- tramp, tramp, tramp . . . through the weary day /  For men must work, and men must eat, and horses must sweat on steel-shod feet /  Jim and Colonel, and blaze-faced Bill / Molly and Dinah, and star-faced Jill; / a sorrel, a roan and a dapple gray / a black and a white and a blood-red bay."

He writes of the river, log jams, weather and trees in an easy rhythm that brings the time and his stories to life. The last poem in the book is "Ticonderoga."  It is longer than most of the others, and as I scan it (I haven't read this one), I see mentioned Seth Warner, Ethan Allen, John Brown, Gershom Beach and Peleg Sunderland.  Here's a history lesson waiting for me in verse.

My book is signed: "Archie Wilfre Stone," and it was published in 1930.  Archie Stone died in 1946 at age 68.  He is buried in Durant Cemetery in Lower Cabot, next to his wife, Gertrude A. Kenerson.