We have snow on the ground and sun in the sky, but it's about 20 degrees colder than "normal" for this time of year.  According to the weather people, that is.   The air is fresh and crisp, and as long as one is dressed accordingly, it's really quite nice to be outside.

We've had two people contact us today to tell us the picture I posted a couple days ago of that we first thought was a bald eagle, but then decided it was more likely an osprey, was definitely an adult bald eagle.  I'm happy to know that.  We haven't seen all that many bald eagles in flight - or at least, not that we've known were eagles - so I'm posting the photo again - of the bald eagle!

I took time today to make that slide show I mentioned yesterday.  Fred took the pictures on Saturday.  He felt adventurous, I guess, and followed the path below the dam along the penstock to the brook far below the dam.  I really liked the pictures, and thought some of you would, too.  I love to get to those out-of-the-way spots like this one, too, but sometimes having someone else do the hard work of getting there (and in this case, climbing back out) is almost as good as actually being there.  I hope you enjoy his pictures.

I also want to thank the folks who have come up with some very interesting old photos of West Danville.  One on-line friend that I hear from every year regarding Ice-Out tickets, sent me a link to this site, Northeast Kingdom Genealogy.  It has a few photos I had not seen, and none of Cabot - so perhaps I can contribute some to the site. In the meantime, Patty Conley has sent another batch from the Danville Historical Society, and some of them need a little repair work, so I'm working on those today.  

The sun is behind the hill now, time to lower the shades to eliminate the cold drafts off the big windows.  It really helps a whole lot.  We are very impressed with what the insulated shades did, even the short time we had them last year, to cut our fuel consumption.  Not only that, there's no draft off the windows when it gets really cold outside.  My problem now is that I have the window quilts I made for all our our windows - an experiment before we spent the money for manufactured shades - that we no longer need.  Hard to figure out how to recycle something like that, and it's unlikely anyone else would want them.  Oh, well, I'll hand onto them - maybe they'll be a useful sometime in the future.