Happy Spring!
I think Spring has finally arrived! Yesterday was a super nice day and today is looking even better. A nice stretch for the whole week!! Couldn't ask for more.

We had to go to Burlington yesterday for my eye appointment. It was unexpected - I have been going to Berlin for a long time, but with the Corona pandemic going on, things got changed around temporarily and Dr. Kim needed to see me in the Shelburne office. Since nobody had called to reschedule, I got a little nervous and called them and it happened they were just beginning to figure out the scheduling in order to get the Berlin patients in at Shelburne, so they asked if I could be there by 2:30 and that was that. When I got there I waited in the car (we were a little early) until my appointment time, then went into the building - mask on. A nurse took my temperature and I went up to the office. There was no one else there, the waiting room was dark, no receptionist, just the doctor and about three assistants.  One assistant was assigned to me and I was told we would be only in one room - which is different than the normal procedure where I would normally be shifted between two waiting rooms and at least three other rooms. It all went very smoothly and I got a shot in each eye and was out of there in just under 30 minutes! I felt absolutely safe - everyone had masks and wore gloves, and I had sanitizers with me for after I'd left. Dr. Kim told me that they were still in the process of perfecting their procedures but he wanted to be sure everyone was safe. He said things would be very different for a long time, he thought. I always dread going for the shots, but this time I had been worried for a while about how I could feel safe this time because there are normally so many people in the waiting rooms and milling about. Not anymore! They were having no more than four patients at a time - each assigned one assistant and one confined to one room. Dr. Kim was in scrubs and I suspect he changed for each patient, although he didn't say that. What a different world we live in today.

Tom Dente sent me this article from the New York Times: Click Here
That is an amazing thing to do, to remember the flu epidemic of 1918. It's surprising how people really didn't want to talk about it - it seemed that some were almost embarrassed to admit that a member of the military had succumbed to flu; the honor was to die in battle, not of illness. Human beings are irrational sometimes.

It is wonderful that Brian and Karen Zecchinelli, owners of the Wayside restaurant on the Barre-Montplelier Road cared enough to install the memorial bench in Hope Cemetery in 2018 in memory of Brian's grandfather, Germinio Zechinelli and over 100 granite workers like him in Barre who died of the 1918 flu epidemic, along with millions of other people throughout the world. Barre lost almost 200 people to that pandemic, more than any other town in Vermont. Part of that was because so many worked in the quarries where there was little or no protection for workers, and many of then were already battling silicosis and other lung diseases brought on by breathing stone dust.

We had a call from Sheila Calevro on Barre Avenue this morning. Sheila has lost part of an aluminum dock at the cottage. It may have floated off with high water and she is anxious to know if someone has spotted it somewhere in the big pond. If you have seen it, please call her, 802-249-2757. She said her cell phone sometimes doesn't work well here at the pond, so if you don't reach her, she will be at home this evening and the cell will reach her there.

Nancy Buttura sent these photos after she spotted this plane land here last Sunday. She said it taxied over towards the Craige cottage on the west shore.  We heard it as it took off and watched it come off the pond headed towards Walden. It was a very nice day for flying, I expect, and fun to have the plane land on Joe's Pond.  Thanks, Nancy for capturing these pictures and sharing them with us.