News Items

I found out late yesterday that the Cabot Post Office has been closed indefinitely due to "structural damage." I spoke with Betty Ritter, our town clerk, this morning and she told me this happened on Monday and that mail will be handled out of Marshfield P.O. If she had more information, she did not share it with me. I will try to learn more. Our rural service will not change, but it will certainly be inconvenient for people who have post office boxes in town. 

The other bit of news is particularly interesting to Joe's Ponders since it involves Littleton, N. H. deciding to set up an Ice-Out contest in 2025 that is patterned on ours.  There is an article in the Caledonian Record  this morning. There have been contests similar to ours set up in a number of Vermont communities and several states over the years. We used to get one or two requests for information almost ever year - so often that I made up an instruction sheet describing our set-up, and when I got an inquiry I could just attach the sheet. I have no idea if any of those contests are still going, but I remember there was one in Massachusetts that ran for a number of years; and there was one on  an in-ground swimming pool that a grade school did one year, but I don't think that was repeated.

There are contests on Harvey Lake, Lake Memphremagog, Lake Iroquois, and Brookfield by the Floating Bridge, that I know about off-hand. And of course the really big one in Alaska, the Nenana Ice Classic. We had a contact person who used to send a few tickets each year to Homer Fitts, and Homer sent some of ours to him. That contest is HUGE!  The jackpot last year was $222,101, and there were 10 winners. 

Sort of an afterthought - when I measured the rainfall this morning from the past 24 hours, I got 1.49 in. Yesterday morning I measured .40 in.  That's a lot of water in addition to the snow pack that is melting. There are new flood warnings this morning and Route 2 near Marshfield has water on both sides - it was likely over the road in spots last night, but hopefully is past cresting. If you have to travel, beware of the high water and please don't take any chances.