CABOT PUBLIC LIBRARY EVENT

Susannah Blachly with Two Shoes Off – Saturday, March 31^st – 7:00 pm

Immersed in the joy of northern New England’s rich musical traditions, Vermont’s Two Shoes Off fuses the well-loved sounds of fiddle, guitar and mandolin with percussion and fine vocals, bringing to the stage a blend of old time jamming, Celtic melodies, American song-styles and world-beat rhythms. With original writing as their foundation, Two Shoes Off offers a fresh approach to traditional music that is by turns fun, funky and deeply moving. Two Shoes Off members include Susannah Blachly, George White, Dan Haley & Carter Stowell.

Kathleen Hoyne

Anne C. Walker

Co-Directors

Cabot Public Library

PO Box 6, 3084 Main St

Cabot, VT 05647

802-563-2721

cabotlibrary@yahoo.com

Here's what we learned from the press conference held by VSP Maj. Ed Ledo. A Waterford, Vermont couple have been arrested and will be arraigned at 11 a.m. in St. Johnsbury. Here is a brief report from Seattle PI.

According to Ledo, Melissa was strangled. The police went last night to the home of Alan and Patricia Prue, in Waterford, confiscated evidence and subsequently arrested them. Maj. Ledo said the quick resolution to this case was due to a information from Melissa's family, friends, and St. Johnsbury Academy, and the cooperation of State and Local Police, the FBI, and the Sheriff's Department, along with help from many other local departments.

I will post more information as we get it. Meantime, details of the abduction and the discovery of Melissa's body are outlined on WCAX

We've been thrust into reality again today - the ground is white, the temperature a mere 30 degrees, and there is no sun shining through the cold gray clouds. We're seeing some snowflakes from time to time, but nothing significant. I can still see open water in the channel (see far left in the picture), but there's also lots of white indicating that the shallows at the head of the pond froze over during the night. We had a low of 22 degrees, but the water must have been cold after not much warming yesterday.

Our road was frozen, so in much better condition this morning, although Fred said it was very slippery. The mud holes have been filled and except for the Danville end, which still has not been worked on, we can reach Route 2 without difficulty.

Fred checked the pallet and clock and there was little change at 7 a.m. The pictures he took show some of the open water from yesterday was frozen over again this morning. The pallet looks to be well locked into the ice.

I had an e-mail from Homer Fitts this morning. Homer is watching our Ice-Out from his home in Barre this year. Having watched the ice go out many years right from his deck when he lived here at the pond, Homer has seen it all and usually has a pretty good idea of what to expect. Here's what he wrote today:

HI FRED AND JANE,

THIS IS THE BEST YEAR EVER FOR ICE OUT INFORMATION FOR THOSE CHECKING THE BLOG. WE APPRECIATE ALL YOU ARE DOING WITH THE PICTURES AND THE INFORMATION. MARGARET AND I CHECK IT REAL OFTEN DAILY. NEVER DREAMT THAT THIS MUCH INFORMATION WOULD BE AVAILABLE TO EVERYONE.

YESTERDAY MORNINGS PICTURES WITH THE JUGS IN THE AIR HAD ME THINKING SOMETHING MIGHT BE MOVING. I WAS HAPPY AT NIGHT IT HAD NOT STOPPED THE CLOCK. WE ARE PRAYING THAT IT LASTS UNTIL APRIL 1st TO MAKE IT EASIER FOR YOU THAT ARE INVOLVED.

HAVE SPENT MOST OF MY TIME RECENTLY WORRYING AND WONDERING ABOUT MELISSA JENKINS. SHE SURELY WAS A SPECIAL FRIENDLY PERSON. I KNEW HER FROM THE CREAMERY, NORTH DANVILLE ON THE 4th OF JULY EVENTS AND THE LAST TIME I SAW HER WAS AT THE ACADEMY GYM AT GIRL'S BASKETBALL.

NOW I CAN ONLY WISH YOU THE BEST RESULTS FROM THE 2012 ICE OUT.

THANKS AGAIN,

HOMER

Thanks, Homer - we do enjoy watching the process Mother Nature puts us through each year, and each year seems to be a little different, although I now find myself saying to Fred, "remember the year that . . . " since we've been involved for a while now. Even before we got involved with the Ice Out, we were living right across from Homer's place, so we had a front-seat view of the pallet. Come to think of it, that may have been why we got involved - because Homer used to take off sometimes for Florida and we were available to help watch the clock.

We want everyone to know the police that are investigating the Melissa Jenkens murder are doing a press conference at 10 a.m. this morning. WSTJ radio in St. Johnsbury will cover it live. I expect the TV stations may also cover it, but we didn't hear any announcement on WCAX this morning. There is some breaking news reported by Don Mulallay on WSTJ - a home in Waterford was searched either yesterday or last night and evidence was found. I expect there will be more on that. Waterford is in the vicinity of where her body was found at Comerford Dam. We hope there will be a speedy resolve to this case.

I'll post any new information here on the blog after the press conference.

There isn't much new to report tonight except that both Molly's Falls Dam and Molly's Pond are free of ice. Historically, Joe's Pond goes out 4-5 days after Molly's, however, this is not a normal year, so anything can happen.

Fred checked the clock and pallet tonight and everything looks about the same. These pictures, taken around 7 p.m., show a little more water around the shoreline, but otherwise not much change. From our house the ice in back of the islands looked quite a lot darker as the day progressed. The ice around the pallet looks pretty solid, but it's hard to tell for sure. It wasn't warm today - may not have gotten above freezing, but with runoff from the new snow coming into the pond and the constant wind, I believe the ice may still be thawing.

The Cabot road crew dumped some material into the mud holes today and then leveled it with the grader, making our road very much better. Everyone heaved a sigh of relief. Early this morning, we had calls from neighbors wondering if they could make it out in any direction. After a few days of being more or less imprisoned by mud, one gets a bit stir crazy, not to mention hungry for fresh food and conversation if living alone and/or not having grocery shopped for a while.

Anyone who has lived on back roads a year or two has learned to keep a good supply of everything on hand, just in case. It may not be mud that prevents "getting out," it could be snow, washouts, trees across the road - any number of things. We consider it part of the bargain we made when choosing to live here. More than a few unsuspecting newcomers have been disenchanted with that choice after a year or two. I remember one doctor who gave it up due to a couple of horrendous mud seasons (and the very next year after the family left, we had one of those "hardly a puddle" seasons); then there was the young wife from Arkansas who slid off the road one slippery morning and came to our house to use our phone, letting loose a string of expletives worthy of a seasoned sailor at the road, the weather, and especially her husband. They parted that spring and we never saw her again. Then there was the couple who winterized a small cottage as best they could and spent the winter in two rooms supplemented by a mobile home. They made it through the winter, but left in the spring, as I recall. Country living is not for everyone, for sure.

At the other extreme, we once had an old fellow from Canada come to the farm to do some lumbering. He wanted nothing to do with living at the house, but built himself a sturdy domed shelter of boughs and bark and spent the winter in the woods, cutting the big evergreens and limbing them for my father and uncle to haul out with horses. Occasionally he would ride out on a load of logs and catch a ride to town for a few provisions, but he seemed content to live in solitude in the woods.

Then there was the young man who was attending Lyndon State College and working on the farm when my uncle owned it. He used scrap lumber to build a small A-frame on the old Bayley Hazen Road near where the Leinoff's house is now. He would walk over the hill to the farm each morning to help with chores, and then head back to his A-frame to pick up his knapsack and hike down to where he parked his old car at the beginning of what is now Chatot Road, and would drive to school. He'd hike back after classes, help with the chores on the farm, return to study by lantern light, and repeat the process the next day. He made it through the winter just fine. He could have boarded at the farm, but chose not to - proving to himself he could endure the elements, I suppose. We thought he'd give it up after a short time, but he didn't. I've often wondered what became of him.

Mostly those of us who live here permanently don't have the sort of resolve the logger and student had, and we don't get disenchanted to the point of leaving - we're just somewhere in between. We can take the inconveniences most of the time, but we aren't above complaining after a long winter and extended mud season when we begin to feel we've definitely had enough already.

TEAM “ VT. STRONG”

This is a team of 3 Vermont National Guard Soldiers which will be participating in the:

Red Sox Foundation

Run-Walk to Home Base 9K Run

Sunday May20th cross home plate at

Fenway Park – Boston, MA.

(To raise money for Veterans w/ Traumatic Brain Injury- and their families)

April 14^th at Applebee’s

In Littleton, NH

From 8am-10am

All you can eat breakfast buffet. $10

(Tickets sold at the door)

Please join us – we need your support!!

(They need to raise $3000 to participate)

SFC Jeffrey Durgin

SSG Christopher Haggett

SGT Carolyn Haggett

Any questions please contact:

Rita Durgin – 802-563-2826/802-272-6685

www.runtohomebase.org

I'm a little late with my report this morning - we've been busy on the phone making arrangements for getting some changes made to our heating system. However, Fred was down at the "Clock Site" as usual this morning at 7 a.m., and took some pictures, and I made a slide show.

It looks more like winter on the ice except for the open water around the shoreline. We don't know what that open water is on the right of the flag - it is probably a puddle, but it does seem a little strange. It was cold last night - my thermometer registered a very cool low of 13 degrees over night. It's now up to about 22, with bright sunshine, but still a gusty northwest wind.

I took this picture a little while ago - the shallows at the far left are opening, and although very early this morning it looked as if the shallows in the channel area had frozen over, I'm now seeing open water again, so what I was seeing was probably a skimming of snow on "cat ice" that quickly melted under the sun.

We are feeling a bit more confident that the ice will hold until at least April 1st, but we've been fooled before. One thing we know for sure is that the weather is more "spring-like" than "summery," and will remain colder for the next several days. We may have some rain/snow showers, but none of the abnormally high temperatures like we had last week. This will slow down the melting process, but with high winds, the ice could begin to move around, and that would mash it up so the pallet could drift or sink and disconnect the clock, ending the contest.

Speaking of moving around - Woody is very confused by the quick change in the weather. Last night he was all set for a good prowl outside, but apparently found it a bit too chilly, so he was in and out and pestering all evening. This morning, he's completely worn out, asleep by the fire.

I mentioned switching our heating arrangement. We've had a Hearthstone propane heater for emergency use if/when we're without electricity for a long period. It's a lovely stove, and works perfectly, but we never use it. It's great that Washington Electric has been very reliable ever since we got the stove in 2005. Because we're making other changes, we will now be able to have a wood stove as backup in the basement - a much better fit for us. So we're hoping to either sell or swap the Hearthstone for a medium sized Vermont Castings wood stove. We get the urge to move the furniture around every spring (and sometimes more often!), only this year the move is more involved than usual.

After a cold, blustery day, not much has changed at the Ice-Out flag as near as we can tell. Fred checked the clock and pallet again tonight around 7 p.m. This picture shows what the wind was like - strong and cold, sweeping down the pond. Lots of fresh Canadian air, but without the snow by nightfall. We are still white with new snow - even the hills with a southern exposure.

I've made a short slide show of the pictures Fred took this evening, and I think it pretty much shows that today we may have made a little ice in spots - and certainly we'll make some tonight. The wind went down with the sun, and so has the temperature. We're at about 19 degrees.

It's been a stressful day for many of us here in the Kingdom. A young woman, Melissa Jenkins, went missing Sunday evening, and today a body was found - not definitely identified as Melissa, but generally thought to be her. There isn't much known right now about the circumstances, and if the police know, they aren't saying. I'm sure many Joe's Pond people knew Melissa. She worked at the Creamery restaurant part time for twelve years. Part of the horror of this is that she had a two-year old son with her when abducted. People are understandably nervous, too, because nobody has a clue whether this was random or someone she knew, or if the perpetrator is still in the area. Terrible things like this aren't supposed to happen here. Our thoughts are with her family and many friends tonight.