Brrrrrrr!

 Sunny morning, but boy is it cold! I'm showing 8.5F here at about 8 o'clock with the sun well up; and recorded an overnight low of 4.5F. That's cold enough to frost the feathers of a frog.

When I went through my emails this morning, I found a very nice article about a rescue that Eric Hansen did this fall. Here at Joe's Pond many of us know Eric quite well - some of us may not have met him in person, but we know him by reputation as a state biologist and expert on loons. Eric has helped us with our growing loon population over 20 or so years, and had had a hand in at least a few rescues, or attempted rescues, of injured or abandoned baby loons here. Not all have been successful, but when a loon does survive after being injured or otherwise rescued, it is a happy outcome. Such was this story in the latest Vermont Ecostudies newsletter: Loon rescue.

I have good news about the West Danville history book: It went to the bindery yesterday! That means we should have a book in hand in perhaps a couple of weeks. We are hoping to have it available Christmas week, and I will keep you posted about that. We won't be able to have a huge gathering as we had hoped originally, but we may plan to have a careful "launch and signing" at a convenient spot in Danville so local folks can get them; and they will be in various spots like Hastings Store and the Joe's Pond Craft Shop after that, or available through the Danville Historical Society. All the particulars will be posted here and on various websites as soon as we have the books in hand.

It doesn't seem possible that there are only three weeks until Christmas! I decided not to put up much for decorations this year, but I wanted to at least decorate my mantle. I had a simple plan in mind, and got out my boxes of decorations on Monday.  I began going through the boxes of decorations with the idea I would toss a lot of the old, worn out items; but of course not much got thrown out. I "rehabbed" a lot and most of it ended up on my mantle. I've done a little every day this week, and the result is not good. My simple plan turned out to be too many layers and way more than I'd bargained for. I've decided not to use one whole string of lights, and I'm tempted to take it all down and start over . . . but probably won't. I'll just live with it until after New Year's. It's always nice to get everything put away again. I can always rationalize that I used only a small fraction of what I had available. And it's really just one spot in the whole house . . . and it was fun doing it. So Merry Christmas, and move on.