It's been cold today.  We didn't come close to the -15 degree prediction with a low here of -5.3, but on the other hand, the high so far today is only 12 above.  I was out at noon to walk up the hill to Jamie and Marie's and it wasn't bad except a short stretch from our mailbox a little way up Henretta Splain's driveway.  The trees along Jamie's driveway shielded us from the wind, but right on the road by the three mailboxes, it was bitterly cold.  There's still quite a bit of wind outside, and now the sun is dipping behind the trees in back of our house, so the temperature is heading down again, hovering just a couple degrees above zero.

I laughed when I saw the headlines in the Caledonian Record today - "TOTAL RECALL, Petition Circulating To Create A Way To Oust Elected Officials."  I have to wonder why this hasn't happened months or maybe even years ago.  I don't know how long it's been that the St. Johnsbury Select Board has been making St. Johnsbury the laughing stock of the state, but it's been a while.  It is too bad a lovely town like St. Johnsbury has to be in so much turmoil. Perhaps if the recall provision is adopted, just having it available will help to keep elected officials from being bullies.

I stumbled onto a file today that I had started about the time things began to get serious on the Route 2 Project in Danville.  That was probably around 2008.  In the file was a time line I probably posted at some point here on the blog - but perhaps not.  Finding it led me to do some research to bring it up to date, and in doing that, I came upon the diagram that is posted at Danville Town Hall showing the proposed changes.  I found it especially interesting since we are nearing the end of the project and next summer will bring about changes to the Green and finishing touches.   In case you have forgotten, or never knew, the project was first debated in 1980.  Yep, it's been in the works that long.  Right away there were legitimate arguments against placing the new road south of the village, through the village or north of the village.  Of course, eventually that got ironed out and   the first phase, Dole Hill, was voted on in 1982, and passed.  There were other big questions, funding, since costs were climbing even as the debates continued.  Then there were questions on  how to slow traffic through town, Martha Dole's oak tree, sidewalks, overpasses for pedestrians which stalled the project,  but in 2003 AOT received $300,000 which allowed them to move ahead.  The plan was accepted for the road to be improved going through town.  Act 250 permits, home owner bids and securing rights-of-way took literally years, and finally in 2011, the actual digging, blasting, paving, and general disruption began.  Now we're down to mostly finishing touches, as I understand it, including improvements and landscaping on the Green.  Finally, hopefully by the end of next summer, we will see what $6.6 million (more or less) has bought.

I'm going to resist digging too deeply into old files from now on.  During the winter months, I usually have big projects to work on, but right now I don't have a time-sensitive project, so I do have time to rearrange and clean out files on my computer, and that's how I happened on the Route 2 timeline.  I find I've saved some pretty strange things, most of which I've forgotten about, and actually it's probably better that way. 

We finally ordered a cell phone!!  We've resisted, but finally it seems we really need to be more like other folks.  At first we could sincerely say we simply weren't interested in having a phone with us every minute of every day.  Cell phones became popular about the time we were retiring, and after having phones ringing around us and being obligated to answer as soon as physically possible, we appreciated any place without a telephone.  In later years we made feeble attempts to convince ourselves we should perhaps get one, but we had the phone in the car that General Motors provided and that we seldom used, and we reasoned we were usually together either in the car or at home, so what was the point?  

That all changed this past week when we went with our friend, Elizabeth, to meet her son, Michael, coming to visit from Alaska.  Our first indicator was when Michael called to tell us his plane was delayed for at least half an hour in Chicago.  He would call when he took off.  Ok, except we were taking Elizabeth's car and she had neither a car phone or a cell.   No problem, we thought, we'll just go and be there in plenty of time, weather is good, we'll wait at the airport.  So we left, made a leisurely stop at Harrington's in Richmond, and got to the airport a little before 5:30, which was when Michael would arrive if the plane was only delayed 30 minutes.  We asked at the United desk and they agreed his flight had been delayed and would be arriving soon.  We went up to the next level to wait for his flight.  After about half an hour, Fred went to see how much longer the plane would be delayed.  He was told it had landed at 5:30.  Ok, so we'd been right there, and no passengers had arrived at the designated gate.  Now, here's the embarrassing part.  A gentleman had been sitting near us as we waited and chatted during that half hour, and he had just gotten up and was strolling about, probably waiting for a connection to wherever he was going, and then I saw Fred, cell phone in hand, next to that gentleman, obviously calling Michael.  Turned out, Michael had been waiting on the lower level all the time we'd been waiting up above.  How we missed him we'll never know, but then and there we decided we'd best be thinking about having a cell phone for situations like this.  They probably don't happen often, but every now and then when something like that happens, we realize - it's time to get with the times, Fred and Jane!