Awards Ceremony for History Book

 I just received a link to the video that KATV did of the awards ceremony last Thursday, for those of you who could not be there. KATV video. If you are interested in getting the book, perhaps for a Christmas gift, contact the Danville Historical Society, 121 Hill St., P. O. Box 274, Danville, VT 05828; or go to book@danvillevthistorical.org.

Today we are reminded that winter is really here - last night we had a low temperature of 3 degrees above zero. That is REALLY cold for this time of year. It is warming up slowly and is expected to reach the 30s by this afternoon. I'm pretty sure the first two ponds have at least a skimming of ice - my little pond has been frozen over for the past several days, except where water is flowing in. It isn't ready for ice skating yet, but it won't be long if these nighttime temperatures persist.

I'm sure hunters in the area are happy to have snow. I'm expect a lot of them were lamenting the lack of snow to aid in tracking their prey. Their wishing got us a reasonable amount of snow, but I bet nobody counted on such a drop in temperature.

I am fussing with my weather station this morning. When I looked at it around 9 a.m. to record the current temperature and wind direction, only broken lines showed on the display. That is never a good sign. Whenever any of the modern gadgets go haywire, my first though is "batteries." So I replaced the batteries in the display unit; then I remembered that there's also the sensor station outside. I'd just been out to collect precipitation data, and had been congratulating myself that I wouldn't need to go out in the cold again until at least after lunch when the mail comes. It's really frustrating when these gadgets don't work, so I bundled up and went to get the weather station. After cleaning the contact points on everything (especially the sensor that had been a haven for who knows what insects for the past many months) and having gone through the re-set process with the aid of a very helpful online video guy, everything seemed to be working. I had a reading from the sensor that reflected the indoor temperature, so I put the sensor back outside. The instructions are to wait 15-20 minutes for the sensor and indoor display to reset. It's been more than that and now the temperature that was showing is gone, replaced by broken lines in most of the data blocks. I guess I'll have to try again. It was a lot easier when there were two of us to trouble-shoot these glitches. I'll give it another try, but thankfully I still have "normal" thermometers for the temperature. The anemometer is another story; I may have to guess at wind direction for a while. I do enjoy knowing what the wind speed is in the winter, and the wind chill temperature. I'll figure it out.

Last night the TV wouldn't work, so I changed batteries in the control - batteries are always my first go-to. Turned out there was some kind of updating going on, so now I have some serious work testing batteries now to find if any I removed actually may still be ok. I'm not going to put them back and take out the new ones, but I have a special container for "batteries that may still have some juice." They will be used in less important gadgets like the mini flashlights I keep in several spots around the house. I even have one I keep in my bathrobe pocket. That's for times I work late on the computer and find myself in complete darkness when I switch off the light in my office. Usually I'm well into the hallway, so it's handy to have a light in my pocket.

These things are all convenient, but sometimes I think back to when we didn't have all that "stuff" to deal with. Somehow we managed to get through the day not knowing the wind chill was way below zero - we just bundled up and waded through the however many inches or feet of snow there was. If we were fortunate enough to have electricity and a radio, that gave us the news, usually early in the morning or in the evening. Otherwise, we lighted kerosene or gas lamps and waited for the newspaper to arrive, a day or more late, but we got along fine without knowing what the rest of the world was arguing about or what atrocities were being committed on other human beings. Life was a lot simpler. We probably worked harder and had less free time, but that wasn't all bad. After chores, we either ate supper and went to bed or used a little free time to knit, crochet, or read a book. We had conversations with family, or sometimes a neighbor would drop by. Farmers went to bed early and got up early. We had neighbors who had a radio in their barn so they got morning news and music by Tex Ritter, Roy Acuff, Gene Autry or Roy Rogers. In our barn, it was no radios allowed; Grandfather Bolton whistled some nameless tune and the cows  softly mooed appreciation as he approached. 

In the spirit of ageism, I came across this short video the other day and thought some of you would appreciate it as I did. Mary Maxwell.