A Goat And A Dog Are Mayoral Candidates In Vermont, But Not As Strange As It Seems

Sammy the dog is campaigning to unseat Lincoln the
goat as mayor of Fair Haven, Vermont

The Town Meeting ballot in Fair Haven, Vermont has a really hot issue on its hands.

Should residents re-elect the incumbent mayor, a Nubian goat named Lincoln, or should they oust the mayor in favor of Lincoln's opponent Sammy, a town police dog.  

Yeah, everybody across the nation is laughing at this news. After all, as a lifelong resident (so far!) of Vermont, I know it's a quirky place. We even have lots of bumper stickers that say "Keep Vermont Weird."

The whole thing is fun, but it's a lot more wholesome and meaningful than it seems.

Fair Haven doesn't have a real mayor, like many cities do. In Vermont, the town of Fair Haven has a panel called a Selectboard, which makes the decisions for the community. Selectboards are basically City Councils in communities that are too small to be actual cities.

The closest thing Fair Haven has to a real mayor is a town manager. Again, many Vermont towns, including Fair Haven, have town managers that carry out the policies that the selectboard puts forth.

By the way, I referred to a Town Meeting is Vermont's version of an annual election. Residents gather to discuss the issue. Then they either do voice votes from the meeting room, or they go to the ballot box to vote.

I just needed to give those of you who are not familiar with Vermont this Green Mountain State civics lesson so you understand the background as to what's going on.

All this isn't to say the Lincoln the Goat vs. Sammy the dog mayoral race in Fair Haven isn't important. It definitely is.

That town manager I referred to, in Fair Haven named Joe Gunter said this about Mayor Lincoln who was first elected to a one-year term last year:

"Originally, we did it as a fundraiser to replace the playground behind the school, but it really turned into a small civic lesson for children. 'Come out and vote. Get involved in the town.'"

This year, children, and everybody else in Fair Haven now have a model political fight on their hands. It's a continued civics lesson for the community.  Without the pain of the usual partisan idiocy and pain.   This idea should spread.

That's not to say there's no political salesmanship involved in the Lincoln Vs. Sammy election.

Sammy's political spokesman, Fair Haven Police Chief Bill Humphries, offered this defense of his candidate, as the Burlington Free Press reports:

"Sammy has promised to release her tax returns and recuse herself from all police business that might come before the town to avoid any conflicts of interest....Humphries has also tried to soothe the concerns of Fair Haven's feline population, which has a long history of hostile relations with canine police officers."

The Burlington Free Press continues:

"Sammy touted her achievements, such as tracking down missing persons, uncovering thousands of dollars of ill-gotten cash during a suspected drug trafficking stop, and serving as the school resourse officer for a time."

Lincoln the incumbent goat mayor has her own record of accomplishments. She did raise the $3,200 needed or the playground equipment, after all.  Lincoln's campaign manager, Chris Stanton wants Fair Haven voters to ask themselves, 'Under Mayor Lincoln, am I better off today than I was a year ago.?"

It will be fun to see the outcome of this election. More fun than the usual political drudgery we're used to.

My Annual Darlene Love Christmas Greeting

Darlene Love and Jason Derulo perform this year's "Christmas (Baby
Please Come Home." on "The View"

Every year, because Christmas is the season of tradition, I do my annual Darlene Love Christmas greeting.

Here's the recap: My favorite holiday song is Christmas (Baby Please Come Home) made famous by Darlene Love way back in 1963.

She sang it every year from 1986 and 2014 on the David Letterman show. When that went off the air   she moved to "The View."

It's now nice every year when Darlene Love comes on that show and puts a temporary end to the hosts' constant bickering.

This Christmas  is a bit different for me than recent ones.  Usually, I have to stay in Vermont while my husband travels to South Dakota to be with family.  Normally, I can't go, as since I work for a retailer, I have to stay to the bitter end at Christmas. No holiday trips to South Dakota for me!

Except this year. A generous boss at work gave me some time off, so I've joined husband Jeff in South Dakota this year. So it's beautiful chaos for me as numerous in-laws, nieces, nephews wander in and out. And I'm with my husband, so I don't have to whine about baby, please come home.

Of course, this means I'm not with family in Vermont, so you can't have everything.

On "The View" this year Darlene Love was joined by Jason Derulo for this year's rendition. Here you go and Merry Christmas!

Time To Revive The Blog!!

I blow off steam by gardening and writing silly things like this blog
The willow tree on my property decided to blow off steam on
November 1 by falling over and crushing my husband's Jeep.
We all have our ways, dont we?

I've had a long hiatus from this here blog thingy because I just got too busy. I know that sounds like an excuse, and it is, but there you go.  Hard to believe the last post here was on July 4.

It's been an active few months, both with work and lots of stuff to do outside of work.  It involves lots of garden work, lots of extra time spent at my other job as we went through a systems upgrade, fun things like Jeff's retirement, parties to honor that and a hot air balloon trip.  

There were a few minor disasters along the way, like a storm a few weeks back that toppled my beloved willow tree onto Jeff's Jeep, crushing that vehicle beyond repair. The same storm cut off electrical and cable service, and heat to our house, briefly, so there's that.

Now that winter has set in early, it's time to jump in the saddle again. I don't know where this will lead, and frankly, I do this blog just as a release, because I like to write, even if I'm sometimes not good at it. And to vent. And to expose both really good and really bad ideas to whoever reads this.

Good ideas need to be celebrated, and bad ideas need to see the light of day so that maybe people won't repeat them.  I know that humans have an unlimited capacity to be dumb, so I am a bit of a pollyanna when it comes to trying to shame people into stop being stupid. Besides, I'm perfectly capable of being totally idiotic, too. That's life, I guess.

Sometimes, while watching the news over the past few months while I was blowing off this blog, I sort of missed blowing off steam here in this blog thingy. But for most of my hiatus, the weather was warm and pleasant. I have lots of gardens to enjoy. So I would always cool off, both physically and mentally, among the flowers, plants, shrubs and other plants I'm lucky enough to have on my property.

Sometimes, when I am writing, I can do a quick throwaway piece that just shows off a social media meme, a funny video, or one of the zillions of quirky people this good Earth holds. Sometimes, when I have the time, especially on a cold winter day when all I want to do is hibernate inside, I do a deeper dive, which has its own pleasures.

I'm not a great writer. My brain is weird, though, which is actually a benefit.  I do hope some people get a bit of pleasure, or at least some type of emotion when I write something and you see it, like here.  If not, thanks for indulging me and allowing me to blow off steam.

Bad Spring For Vermont Covered Bridges And Stupid Truck Drivers

The extensively damaged covered bridge in Lyndon, Vermont.
An oversized truck barreled through the bridge in May. 

This spring was not good for Vermont's famed covered bridges. Two idiotic truckers made sure that was the case.

Back on May 16, a moronic truck driver blasted through the Millers Run bridge, built in 1878 in Lyndonville, breaking angled roof supports, damaging two main vertical beams and shattering parts of the bridge's north side.  

Police said the driver told them she was making a delivery and GPS directions said to go across the covered bridge.

As if GPS were God and she couldn't tell the truck was bigger than the bridge.

As a side note, I guess that's why truckers continually get stuck on the narrow winding Smugglers Notch pass on Route 108 in Vermont. Numerous signs tell trucks not to go up, but GPS says go, so they go. Human-created warnings be damned.

Engineering studies are going on now to figure out how to fix the bridge. The trucking company whose driver is responsible for the damage looks like they will pay for the damage.

As you can see by the video at the bottom of this post, the truck driver cruised on through, wrecking the bridge and then kept right on going, as if that was the normal thing to do.  The truck driver, Jolene Godfrey, 43, of White River Junction, was on a delivery run for Upper Valley Produce.

Just a day or two after the bridge in Lyndon was trashed another truck driver trashed another Vermont covered bridge, this one in West Woodstock. 

The truck, with a trailer carrying equipment exceed the bridge's height limit and damaged the interior of it. At least this time, the truck driver owned up to it, stopped immediately and cooperated with police.

All this is nothing new.

Last summer, another trucker damaged the Cornish-Windsor Covered Bridge over the Connecticut River on the Vermont-New Hampshire border.

Once again, it was GPS. Nizeyimana Silas, 31 at the time of Nashua, New Hampshire, drove through the bridge, which has a posted nine foot, two inch clearance, according to the Valley News. The truck is three feet taller than that.

Cornish Police Chief Doug Hackett had to tell the Valley News the obvious: "Following your GPS doesn't mean you don't have to follow posted signs. You can't use the GPS as an excuse.... At some point, you have to look at the road, look at the signs, look at what's going on around you."

Please, folks. Stop relying on your GPS. It lies to you.

Here's the video of the Lyndon bridge being damaged by the oblivious trucker:

Vermont City Marathon Scenes

Runners make their way up "Heartbreak Hill,"
which to most of us is Battery Street
in Burlington. The  Taiko Drummers helped
push people up the hill

I briefly had time to check in last Sunday - yes a week ago - for the Vermont City Marathon in Burlington, Vermont.

There's always a few scenes and moments that are pretty cool.

Any one person will miss most of the quirky momets, but everybody will catch at least some. This post has just a few photos of the scenes, just for fun.

Dude with a huge
beard runs in
the marathon.

Runners make their way down Pine Street
in Burlington Sunday during the
Vermont City Marathon

Dude caught running the marathon barefoot 

A spectator and his dog watch the marathon
proceedings in Burlington this past
Sunday. 

Awesome, Odd Fosse Choreography And 1960s Cool On Video Fascinates Me

A scene from Bob Fosse's choreography of "Rich Man's Frug 

There's extra attention these days on the legendary choreographer Bob Fosse given that televised series on FX called Fosse/Verdon.

The show involves the life of Fosse and his romantic and creative partner, the dancer Gwen Verdon.

As my mind tends to wander into unexpected corners, I recently heard a snippet of the song "Rich Man's Frug" from Sweet Charity, the 1966 musical by Neil Simon and choreographed by Fosse. (It was later made into a movie released in 1969.

I was very young in the mid and late 1960s, and I always admired what to my mind were the sophisticated adults in the room. Or more accurately, not in the room, but out there in the world, somewhere. In some alluring city that was not West Rutland, Vermont, where I was.

I'd see glimpses of televised variety show performances from shows like "Sweet Charity" and others during the rapidly changing 1960s. Even as a five or seven or eight year old, I could feel the fever of that era, even if I didn't fully understand it.

These were exotic people doing exotic things in exotic times. There was precious little of that in the small Vermont town where I grew up. As an adult, I love the little town of West Rutland. Back then, not so much.

All those feelings about the worldly matters I craved came back to me when I looked up Rich Man's Frug and found this 1960s, very awesome Fosse choreography to that song from Sweet Charity. The video is simultaneously dated and so modern cool and wonderful that I can't resist.

It might be the best Fosse number I've seen. I love the odd physical movements, the fake air of snootiness on the faces of those dancers, the humor in all that athleticism.

Here's the video.  Totally worth the watch:

Maple Sugaring Time In Vermont Gives Us Another Reason To Hate Squirrels

A maple sugar maker shows some tubing chewed up by squirrels.

Trees are tapped in Vermont and the sap is flowing in sugarbushes as the annual maple season in the Green Mountain State is in full swing.

Yay!

It's all good news except for one thing: Squirrels are interfering with this maple enterprise.

People think squirrel, chipmunks and such are cute and I suppose they are.

They are also a nuisance, as anybody who tries to keep their bird feeders full for the birds and not the rodents. And as any gardener can tell you whos perennials are wrecked by squirrels.

It turns out maple producers in Vermont and elsewhere have had it, too. As has been widely reported in Vermont by the AP and others, squirrels are battling to prevent us from enjoying this year's crop of maple syrup.

Sugar makers rig plastic taps and tubing which lead the sap from sugar maples to holding tanks. The contents of those tanks are boiled down to make maple syrup. However, squirrels have been busily chewing up the tubes, apparently in an evil plot to divert the sweet sap to themselves.

As the AP reports, that forces sugar makers to work long and pricy hours repairing the lines and seizing the sap back for us humans:

"That means producers must go out into sometimes deep snow to find and replace the camaged lines that transport the sap from the maple trees or other chewed or missing equipment, which producers say can be time-consuming and expensive."

The squirrels apparently know how to make things particularly tough.  They try very hard to scatter the damage, making things all the harder. The AP again:

The trouble is the squirrels could take one bite of tubing and move another 100 feet where they take another bite, making the damage hard to find, said Lyle Merrifield, who is president of the Maine Maple Producers Association.

Clearly, squirrels are out to get us. 

Giant Middle Finger Greets Visitors To Westford, Vermont

Ted Pelkey's middle finger lights up the
skyline of Westford, Vermont 

Vermonters by and large have a reputation for civility. We might not be the warmest people on the planet- we're New Englanders, after all. But we tend to shy away from big public confrontations here in the Green Mountain State.

For the most part, anyway. One exception is in Westford, Vermont, where a giant wooden middle finger on a 16-foot pole greets travelers passing through this pleasant northwestern Vermont town.

As Boston.com and numerous other media outlets have noted, the middle finger along Route 128 in Westford is not meant for you. Unless you are on the town's Selectboard or Development Review Board or a few of the other town's leaders.

The owner of the property with the middle finger, Ted Pelkey, says he put up the 700-pound wooden middle finger because he's fought a ten-year battle to get permits so he can build a garage on his property. He wants to move his truck repair and monofilament recycling business from Swanton to his Westford property.

The town says no. He can't do that.  Westford officials say he hasn't give them enough detail on what he plans to do with the garage, how big it will be, and other details. Pelkey says some town officials have a vendetta against him. He apparently has a pretty negative history with at least one member of Westford's Development Review Board.

"I've been put through the wringer by all these people, and it's just not right....I haven't been treated fairly at all,"  Pelkey said.

Fed up, Pelkey and his wife commiserated in a bar one night. He said, "Hey, I want to get a statue made of a middle finger, and I'm going to put it up on the lawn," he told Boston.com

And so he did. The whole thing cost Pelkey about $4,000, but he thinks it's worth it.

There's not much anyone can legally do to make Pelkey take the middle finger down. There's a strict billboard law in Vermont, which seeks to get rid of visual clutter along highways by banning businesses from putting up billboards along highways to advertise their services.

But Pelkey's middle finger is not advertising a business, which means it does not fall under the billboard law.  Towns like Westford can enact sign laws more stringent than state law, but Westford has nothing like that. On top of all that, Pelkey's middle finger is political speech, which falls under First Amendment protections.

So the big middle finger remains up in Westford, glowing in the nighttime floodlights along Route 128.

If you ever drive through Westford, just remember it's notbing personal toward you. It's just somebody in town really has an axe to grind.

Two Viral Reasons Why I'm A Proud Green Mountain Boy

Madelyn Linsenmeir, shown here with her son Ayden, died
of an opiod overdose recently. The obituary her sister wrote
has gone viral. 

Two incidents originating in Vermont went viral in the past week, and both cases make me incredibly proud to be a Vermonter.

This is true even though one of the incidents involved a tragedy, the other basically focused on a national crisis

MADELYN ELLEN LINSENMEIR'S OBITUARY

The more viral of the two incidents regarded the death of Madelyn Ellen Linsenmeir, 30, whose obituary described how her addiction to OxyContin affected her and her family, and ultimately killed Linsenmeir.

Part of the blunt, loving and heartbreaking obituary read as follows:

"It is impossible to capture a person in an obituary, and especially someone whose adult life was largely defined by drug addiction. To some, Maddie was just a junkie - when they saw her addiction, they stopped seeing her. And what a loss for them. Because Maddie was hilarious, and warm, and fearless, and resilient. She could and would talk to anyone, and when you were in her company you wanted to stay.

In a system that seems to have hardened itself against addicts and is failing them every day, she befriended and delighed cops, social workers, public defenders and doctors, who advocated for and believed in her 'til the end."

The obit also said that using drugs "is not a choice or a weakness. And chances are good that someone you know is struggling with it, and that person needs and deserves your empathy and support." 

It now seems that practically everyone across the nation has read that obit. It asked for donations to the Turning Point Center, which helps addicts in Vermont. The Turning Point Center is now being swamped by donations and messages.

Adding more to all this was a Facebook post by Burlington, Vermont Police Chief Brandon del Pozo.

He said he had a "problem" with the Linsenmeir obituary and here's why, as del Pozo wrote on Facebook:

"A family member with a talent for expression wrote her the honest and moving obituary she truly deserved. It went viral. It's being read across the country. It's in People, the Globe, HuffPost, and the Daily News. My problem with it is that it's a much better obituary than the rest of us deserve."

"Why did it take a grieving relative with a good literary sense to get people to pay attention for a moment and shed a tear when nearly a quarter of a million people have already died in the same way as Maddie as this epidemic grew?

Did readers think this was the first time a beautiful young, beloved mother from a pastoral state got addicted to Oxy and died from the descent it wrought? And what about the rest of the victims, who weren't as beautiful and lived in downtrodden cities or the rust belt? They too had mothers who cried for them and blamed themselves."

The entire Facebook post by del Pozo, is a must read, just as Linsenmeir's obit is.

Vermont has been hit hard by the opiod epidemic.  In 2017, 107 people died of opiod-related causes, the vast majority of them being overdoses, says the Vermont Health Department.

There's plenty of blame to go around for the opiod deaths in Vermont and the rest of the nation. There are some real efforts to combat this. But it's not enough. The Linsenmeir obit, and to a somewhat lesser degree del Pozo's Facebook post, has got the whole nation talking about and confronting the opiod epidemic. At least everybody is tweeting about it, if nothing else.

The obituary was written by Linsenmeir's sister, Kate O'Neill, who told NPR: "Our hope also now lies with policymakers and politicians and the people who can make the change necessary so that these deaths stop happening. Let's put our money where our tweets are."

Once again, Vermont leads. Compassionately.

LAMOILLE COUNTY, VERMONT'S MUSICAL CAMPAIGN DEBATE

Vermont House candidates Zac Mayo amd Lucy Rogers are competing
against each other. But they ended a recent debate by
performing a duet with each other. 

Up in Lamoille County, Democrat Lucy Rogers and Republican Zac Mayo are aggressively competing against each other for a seat in the Vermont House.

Recently, Rogers and Mayo had a debate at the local library. The back and forth was reportedly respectful, and both candidates seemed to have the smarts and the goods to be decent legislators

But what happened at the end of the debate shocked locals. And that event was so shocking, it's now nicely jarring people across the nation. This, too, has gone viral.

Both candidates asked the moderator for a bit of additional time at the end of the debate. They didn't say why they wanted it, but the moderator basically shrugged and said OK.

Rogers and Mayo then began moving tables off to the side. She brought out her cello, he brought out his guitar, and the two candidates from opposing parties performed a duet in very nice harmony.

The song they chose was "Society" by Eddie Vedder. The lyrics challenge materialism and greed and excess competitiveness.

CBS Evening News picked up on this story and broadcast it to the nation in their "On The Road" segment. CBS reported there wasn't enough tissue to go around in that library for the teary-eyed audience when the candidates did their performace.

That's because politics is getting worse and worse. Lord knows it's all noise and bitterness and attack ads and hate and vitriol. Rogers and Mayo gave us, and the nation a needed political salve, a needed other way.

I don't live in Lamoille County, so I can't vote for either one of them. I'm not sure which one has political opinions most closely match my own. But whoever wins, Vermont will be well-served.

Or, as CBS said, the election has already been decided. It was a landslide victory for civility.

Here's the video of the CBS report:

SNL Has White Supremacists Moving To Vermont In Scary, Weird Scenario

A Saturday Night Live sketch a few weeks ago skewered
Vermont's whiteness. Funny, but unsettling

A few weeks ago, Saturday Night Live had a skit about a Neo-Confederate meeting that had us Vermonters especially unsettled.

The video featured a group of white supremacists having a meeting somewhere in the South.

The group leader wants to establish their own white settlement, a "our own place for our own people" with "an agrarian community where everybody lives in harmony, where every single person is white"

A member of the meeting raises his had pipes up: "Yeah, I know that place. That sounds like Vermont."  That's a definite laugh line, but geez.

The leader says he doesn't understand. He's talking about a place where even the people who wash the dishes and pick the fruit are white.

"Oh,  yeah, that's Vermont," the man responds. The leader grows suspicious of the man, especially when he says he's from the North. But the guy's white supremacist creds remain in place when he quickly explains he's from Boston. The whole group is satisfied with that.

"I'm talking about a place where a white man can take things he grew from the ground and trade things with another white man, who grew things from the ground."

Replies the northerner: "That's a farmer's market and they're all over Vermont."

Pretty soon, the groups is deciding that Vermont sounds like just the ticket. It's a place where "The leaves change color but the people never do."

In the end, it's settled. They're going to Vermont.

That's a bit chilling.  Especially since racism does seem to be alive and well in Vermont. Just take the recent case of Kiah Morris. She had been Vermont's only black legislator. She dropped her re-election campaign, then resigned after receiving racial threats.

Her house was broken into and swastikas were painted on trees near her property. The Vermont Attorney General's office is investigating.

Yeah, we're not always the liberal, welcoming place we want to think we are. In any event, I hope that white supremacists don't regard SNL as a documentary.

Here's the video:

Vermont's Best Mugshot Of The Year

A teenager, home alone in the southern Vermont town of Marlboro, called police at around 3:30 this morning saying there was a strange man in the house, sleeping.

Which led to Vermont's best mug shot of the year, as you can see in this post.

According to NECN and other area media outlets, the strange man in the house turned out to be Sean J. Barber, 43, of nearby Wilmington. Police said they found Barber sleeping in the teen's house, in a clow costume, drunk and possessing cocaine.

So I guess he's in trouble, given the trespassing and drug possession charges he faces.  Definitely a sad clown look, don't you think?

Plus the embarassment of the mug shot, of course.

Watching People Watch The Eclipse Was Part Of The Fun.

People watch Monday's solar eclipse at Burlington,
Vermont's waterfront park. 

Up here in Vermont, we didn't get a total eclipse of the sun yesterday. Just a partial one.

It was still neat, but of course not as wild as being in a total eclipse.

The most fun up here was watching people watch the eclipse.

I went down to Waterfront Park in Burlington to find a festive atmosphere as the eclipse got under way.

It was a hazy day, with smoke from Canadian forest fires giving a brassy hue to the light. As the eclipse progressed, obscuring up to 60 percent of the sun, the hazy blue sky took on a grayish tint.

A woman looks through a hastily made contraption to
view the solar eclipse Monday in Burlington, Vermont.

The brassy light became kind of a sickly yellow tan.

Sounds awful, but it was fun, as people in the park peered through eclipse glasses or watched the spectacle through home-made cardboard contraptions.

I didn't have either of those things, so I was content to duck under some trees, and watch the dappled sunlight that passed through the leaves of the trees form crescent shapes as the eclipse developed.

There was some of the inevitable price gouging. Somebody was selling eclipse glasses for $20 a pair at Waterfront Park.

As you can see from this post, people had a lot of fun. It was an excuse for an impromptu party.

An entrepreneur sells eclipse glasses
for $20 a pop in Burlington Monday

Scroll down for a couple more photos.  

A man enjoys the view of the solar eclipse,
safetly behind special glasses, at Waterfront
Park in Burlington, Vermont Monday

Be An International Citizen By Buying House In 2 Countries: Vermont/Quebec

This apartment building straddles the U.S./Canadian
border in Vermont and Quebec. If you want it, it's for sale. 

Imagine waking up in Canada walking just a few feet to the bathroom to brush your teeth in the United States.

You can do that if you buy a 3,000 square foot apartment house in the fine village of Beebe Plain,  Vermont.  The same house is also in Stanstead, Quebec, Canada.  (Beebe Plain is a village within the town of Derby Line, Vermont.)  

Confused? Don't be. It's a rare building that straddles the international border Vermont and Quebec. The building is for sale for a low, low price of $109,000, but it's a major fixer-upper that probably needs three times that much money to renovate.

Plus, there's the whole international border thing. Border officials, especially on the United States side, have gotten a lot more pickier over the years about who crosses the border and when and why.

"In the day it wa a normal and natural thing,' Brian DuMoulin told the Associated Press. He grew up in this house. When he was a kid, nobody thought twice about crossing the border over and over again in one day. "Now it stresses everybody out," DuMoulin said.

This is the state of affairs now in Beebe Plain, Vermont/Stanstead, Quebec, according to the AP:

"Residential streets that used to be open were blocked by gates. The back doors of an apartment building straddling the border iin Derby Line village have been locked shut. The street next to the Haskell Free Library and the Opera House, deliberately built in both countries, is blocked by flower pots, although Canadians are still allowed to wak ot the library's U.S. entrance without going through a border post."

Plus, as you can imagine, border agents might be suspicious of people who want to move into the apartment house that staddles the border. (The current owners are in their 70s and inherited the building, but now want to move to Ontario to be closer to their grandchildren.)

The apartment building, currently vacant while it awaits a buyer, is monitored.

Border agents try to know the people who live in the house and let them move back and forth across the border if they stay in the house or its tiny yard. So no need to show your passport if you really, really have to urgently move from the kitchen in the United States to the bathroom in Canada.

Despite the renovation costs and the border stickiness, several would-be buyers have expressed interest in the building. So if you want it, better hurry up and make an offer.

New Culture Of Denying Refugees Into U.S. Alive And Well In Vermont

Rutland, Vermont just said no to Syrian refugees,
following the lead of Donald Trump 

My hometown of Rutland, Vermont has been getting national attention recently over the intense debate there over whether to allow Syrian refugees to resettle in that small city.

Vermont has welcomed refugees from a variety of places over the past few decades, but as the Trump crackdown on refugees continues, it's affecting Vermont in a lot of ways.

If events this month prove anything, Vermont might be moving away from its embrace of refugees, too.

The debate over refugees has been pretty loud in Rutland right from the start. Vermont is generally quite liberal, but Rutland is kind of on the conservative side, at least by Vermont standards.

So the idea of Syrian refugees arriving there has gotten both lots of support, and lots of opposition.

Rutland Mayor Christopher Louras had aggressively championed the arrival of Syrian refugees in his city.

Make that former mayor.

Louras  was up for re-election on March 7 - Town Meeting Day - and his principal opposition came from David Allaire, a member of Rutland's Board of Alderman, who was against settling refugees in Rutland.

Allaire trounced Louras in the election. Allaire got 51 percent of the vote to Louras' 34 percent. Other candidates got small margins.

"I got smoked. Clearly I got smoked....It was a good old-fashioned political drubbing," Louras admitted to VTDigger, a Vermont news site. 

Part of Louras' problem was he never recovered from the fact that he was not particularly forthcoming to the public when the deal to bring Syrian refugees was being hashed out early last year.

But I'm convinced, and many others are, too, that just the idea of Syrian refugees in Rutland made many Rutland residents squeamish, to say the least.

Louras also told VTDigger:

"I think it just demonstrates that Rutland is still, as I said during the campaign and even before the campaign, Rutland is still a microcosm for the national conversation on refugees and immigration. I think the vote reflects that."

That Rutland is a microcosm, as Louras suggested, has certainly attracted plenty of national attention.

Breitbart, apparently Trump's favorite news source crowed:

"While Vermont is generally a refugee-welcoming state, the idea of dumping 100 Syrian refugees into this small city in Vermont that is already struggling economically seemed to defy common sense and logic, even to an area that preferred Hillary Clinton to Donald Trump."

Slate, on the other hand, has a completely different take on what's going on in Rutland, and what happened to Louras.

Says Slate:

"The city of Rutland, which went for Clinton by about 13 points, is 96 percent white. Its population is both aging and shrinking - down to 15,824 in the latest American Community Survey estimate from more than 19,000 in 1970. 

In this, too, it represents America: Cites and towns without immigrants are shrinking. Those that take them are growing. This is true even in the quintessential Sun Belt boomtown Houston, whose white population has dropped by 300,000 residents since 1980, even as total population grew by 500,000. It is certainly true of older cities like Chicago, Philadelphia and New York. 

And it's true of small towns, which increasingly face a choice: stay white and wither, or get diverse and grow. 

Rutland is taking the former path."

Which is too bad. As a Rutland County native, this area of Vermont could have a lot going for it. It'll never be the Vermont manufacturing and railroad hub it was during the early 20th century. But, with the rise of rural tourism and arts, a resurgent back to the land movement of sorts, and an internet age where a creative economy can rise, Rutland has potential.

Rutland also doesn't have to look far away to see how an influx of refugees affected another small Vermont city: Winooski.

A couple of decades ago, Winooski was a down-and-out community on the northern border of Burlington, which is Vermont's largest city.

A thriving textile industry in the early 20th century had died out, just as a marble quarrying and railroad industry in Rutland did the same at about the same time.

Frankly, Winooski was a low-income mess, a place nobody wanted to go to. It was a place Burlington commuters got through as quickly as they could to reach their more upper crust suburban homes in places like Colchester, Essex and Jericho.

Then Winooski started welcoming refugees from all over the world. It was at first an economic decision: The Vermont Refugee Resettlement program figured they could house refugees in Winooski, because the bad economy meant rental prices were low.

And so they came. From Vietnam. Serbia. Bhutan, Nepal. Somalia. Other places.

I won't say this created a utopia. The Winooski school system had to struggle with a huge influx of students who had to learn English as a second language. That was expensive, too. There were cultural differences. Fears that the immigrants would take away jobs from people who had lived in Winooski for decades.

But a funny thing happened.  Winooski turned......vibrant.

Oh sure, part of it was because of a big downtown redevelopment project hatched by a visionary City Council and some developers.

However, much of Winooski's new prosperity came from those refugees. I hate to traffick in stereotypes, but many immigrants tend to be entreprenurial. Interesting restaurants, shops and events sprouted in Winooski.

That attracted interest, and other businesses arrived. Most of them were created by locals who are not refugees, like this really cool Winooski barber shop I now frequent. Other businesses opened because of newer refugees.

OK, Winooski, may have a few too many hipsters nowadays, but that's a lot better than the doldrums the community was in years ago.

Winooski is cool. Rutland could be cool, too.

People are afraid of change, that's just human nature. Plus, we shouldn't change things just for the sake of change.

Sometimes, though, we have to overcome our fears.

Progress in Rutland is stalled now, because of anti-immigrant sentiment both locally and nationally.

As National Public Radio reported, two Syrian refugee family settled in Rutland before Trump shut down that program and before Allaire became mayor.

To be sure, many Rutlanders welcome the refugees.

Says NPR:

"Speaking through an interpreter this week, members ofone family said they felt relieved to be in Vermont. 'At first, we came her and we were surprised bythe very, very warm welcme by the people of Rutland,' one Syrian said. 'The mayor, our caseworker, our host family, all came and welcomed us, and since then, it never stopped, and people have just welcomed us and helped in every way."

That's one part of Rutland. One part of our nation. The ones ready to judge on a newcomer's character, not background.

The other Rutland, the other nation, cowers in fear. Shut the door, and lock us inside, safe from the world.

But that just leaves us more unsafe. What we don't know CAN hurt us, much more than the risks we do know about.

Of course we shouldn't let in everyone and anyone into the United States. We have a long, long history of both embracing and combating immigrants.

It seems we do better durung times when we welome people from other countries.

Yes, vet the hell out of all would-be refugees to the United States. Yes, we don't need or want a stampede of millions of immigrants all at once.

But let's leave the door cracked open, shall we? The nation we save might be our own.

Seems Like Trump Administration Doesn't Want Anybody Who's Not White Into The Country

Manpreet Kooner with her fiance. She recently wanted to take
a one-day trip from Canada to a Vermont spa, but was turned
away at the border, possibly because of her race.

I keep hearing all these disturbing reports of border patrol agents not letting people in this country based just on the color of their skin.  

And that's no matter how safe or unsafe or legal they might be.

Some of this is happening close to home, as I live near the Canadian border in Vermont.

One of the more disturbing incidents occured at the Highgate Springs, Vermont border crossing, which is just a 10 minute drive up the road from my house.

Recently, a Canadian woman from the Montreal area with a Canadian passport tried to get across the border into the United States via Highgate Springs because she was taking a day trip to go to a Vermont spa.

Manpreet Kooner, 30, was born in Canada to Indian parents who had become Canadian citizens. Kooner has always lived in Canada. She has a good job in a science lab at a local college and has no criminal history.

So what's the harm in letting Kooner into Vermont to get her nails done or whatever.?

Kooner, with her Indian heritage, has darker skin than the two white friends she was with when she tried to cross the border into Vermont Sunday, says the Canadian broadcaster CBC.

U.S. Border Patrol was going to let her white friends through, but they held Kooner for six hours. She got no explanation why, and the border patrol isn't talking. Border agents said they don't about individual cases.

A statement from the Border Patrol adopted a policy in 2014 that "prohibits the consideration of race or ethnicity in law enforcement, investigation, and screening activities, in all but the most exceptional circumstances."

Looks like that policy is out the window. CBC said Kooner told them one of the border agents told her, 'I know you may feel like you've been Trumped,' in reference to the current occupant of the Oval Office.

Kooner said the problems started in December when she tried to enter to the United States, and was subject to a random check, which happens to all of us sometimes.

This time the border agents noted Kooner was stopped in December, though there were no red flags in her file, CBC said. 

On Sunday, in addition to being detained for six hours, Kooner was photographed, fingerprinted and told to sign a document withdrawing her application to go into the United States.

She was also given confusing advice to go to the U.S. Embassy in Ottawa to get a visa to enter the United States in the future, but she was told by them to go to U.S Customs and Border Patrol.'

In other words, Kooner has dark skin. Stay the hell out of the United States.

At least it seems that way.

So, if Kooner, a Canadian citizen, born in Canada, with no criminal record, with a good job, no red flags, wants to enter the United States briefly as a tourist and is barred, what about other people?

What if, unlike Kooner, somebody is a Muslim with no criminal record who wants to enter the United States from Canada? There area already plenty of reports of that kind of thing going on.

Draw it to its logical conclusion, do the Trumpsters want only white English speaking people to enter the United States, even as tourists? That seems pretty limiting doesn't it?

I guess there's a crowd of Trumpsters out there who really want to turn us into a whites-only Fortress America.

Your Vermont Caffeine Fix Might Get A Little More Expensive. Blame Lake Champlain.

A tax on coffee in Vermont because people pee
out caffeine? Could happen. 

Many of us Vermonters know that our "West Coast" - Lake Champlain- has some issues.

There's a pretty big pollution problem in the lake, mostly involving phosphorus that is harming wildlife and contributing mightily to some really icky algae blooms.

Vermont is under federal orders to clean the lake up, and the state is scrambling to find the money to do the job.

One state lawmaker has one interesting idea: Adding a tax on coffee.

Here's the logic: People drink coffee. Then they pee. Then (hopefully!) they flush the toilet.

The caffinated pee ends up at the wastewater treatment plant, but the plant can't remove the caffeine from the water. So the wastewater treatment plant discharges the caffeinated water back into the river, which flows into Lake Champlain.

It's hard to believe there's enough caffeine involved to cause a problem, especially when phosphorus is the main troublemaker in the lake. But VTDigger reports that one state lawmaker, David Deen a Democrat from Westminster, says his legislative committee is considering a tax on coffee to deal with the lake pollution.

According to VTDigger, Deen says coffee has become a "compound of emerging concern" in scientific literature.

Currently, there are no reported instances where there's so much caffeine in drinking water to give you a buzz. Levels detected are way, way below those you'd get from your Morning Joe or a your Diet Coke if you're so inclined.

Then again, caffeine is not something that naturally occurs in waterways, so you never know what effect it might have on wildlife.

Caffeine probably has some effect on wildlife, but it looks as it it's not a big a deal as say, discarded pharmaceuticals making their way into aquatic habitats.

Not surprisingly, outfits like Green Mountain Coffee, based in Vermont, don't like the proposed tax because it would make it harder to compete with out of state companies like Starbucks and Peet's

The Vermont caffeine tax is not definite, and it's one of many ideas under consideration to pay for a Lake Champlain cleanup. There's no specific bill yet to be introduced that would tax coffee.

Who knows? Maybe they'll extend this and have you pay a fee every time you go to the toilet for a pee.

You'd sure be in trouble if you didn't have cash or credit cards with you, wouldn't you?

The Most Vermont Style Highway Mishap EVER!

Vermont State Police had to close down part of Interstate 91 in the northeastern part of the state for the most Vermont of reasons:  

There was a maple syrup spill on the highway. 

The area around Exit 27 northbound shut down late Monday afternoon when a 42-gallon drum of maple syrup broke loose from a pickup truck and toppled onto the roadway, police said.

Nobody got hurt, but there was a LOT of anguish over the spill. Vermonters never cry over spilled milk, but they DO cry over spilled maple syrup.

"It's too bad to see someone lose so much perfectly good syrup.....It's depressing," said Newport, Vermont Fire Chief Jamie LeClair.

Unlike some spills you hear of on highways. the Great Vermont Maple Spill of '17 wasn't all that big a deal. After all, maple syrup isn't the most hazardous of substances out there.

Road crews had the whole thing cleaned up within 20 minutes and traffic, such as it is in the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont, was soon back to normal.

"A couple dozen pancakes could have absorbed it," said LeClair, the fire chief. (I am not making up these quotes.)

Besides, most of the snow poured onto snowbanks on the side of the road. Us Vermonters love sugar on snow. We pour maple syrup on fresh clean snow, or if none is available, crushed ice, and go to town.

Alas, the snow on the side of the road was dirty with road salt, dust and God knows what else, so there was no sugar on snow party at the scene of the crash.

Let's just hope the sugaring season this year, which starts soon, will yield a bumper crop to help make up for the tragedy in Newport.

Russian Hackers Hit Vermont Utility: Putin's Revenge Against Bernie?

A computer at the Burlington Electric Department
in Vermont was apparently hacked by the Russians.
The electric grid wasn't touched, but this
still caused a stir.

OK, the headline on this post is ridiculous, I admit it. There probably isn't that grand a conspiracy.

Still, Vermont, and much of the nation, is talking today about the Russian hack on the little 'ole Burlington (Vermont) Electric Department.

Though the laptop computer that was hacked wasn't connected to the power grid, and the electricity is still flowing in Burlington and beyond  the news does make people nervous.

(The Washington Post last night incorrectly suggested that the hack did get into the power grid, but that's not true.)

I'm not even sure this qualifies as a full-blown hack. BED found the malware on the laptop, which is of course bad, but it didn't infect a bunch of other computers there. Just that one laptop.

Still, if hackers get into the electrical grids, they can stop pretty much everything. Imagine a nationwide blackout that can't be cured in a day or two. (Shudder.)

Even though the electricity still seems to be safe in this instance, a lot of people in the know are sounding the alarm.

U.S. Sen. Patrick Leahy said in a statement:

"State-sponsored Russian hacking is a serious threat, and the attempts to penetrate the electric grid through a Vermont utility are the latest example.......

"This is beyond hackers having electronic joy rides - this is now about trying to access utilities to potentially manipulate the grid and shut it down in the middle of winter. That is a direct threat to Vermont and we do not take it lightly."

This hack all begs the question: Why Vermont? We're not exactly the biggest threat to Russia, though Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump aren't exactly popular in the liberal Green Mountain State.

My wingnut conspiracy theory, which I'm sure isn't true, is Burlington is the home of U.S,. Rep. Bernie Sanders, the former presidential candidate who has not at all been shy about eviscerating Donald Trump. Repeatedly.

Maybe Donald's buddy Vladimir had enough of Bernie's insults. No better revenge that shutting off the electricity (and in most cases heat) in the dead of a Vermont winter, right?

Of course, reality intrudes on this conspiracy theory. Putin and his minions probably have never even heard of Vermont. Hell, for all we know maybe this wasn't Russian hackers, I guess we'll see.

BED assures us the laptop that was infected has been isolated, and they're cooperating with state and federal authorities, so it turned out to be pretty easy to dodge the bullet.

According to The Guardian: this kind of thing may have happened before, and it does not appear that it was in direct retaliation for President Obama's sanctions against Russia for prior hacking during the election: .

It seems people in Burlington are taking this hack in fairly good humor. probably mostly because the electricity is still on during a morning that dipped to near 10 degrees.

"First they came for our elections, then they came for our electrons," quipped my good buddy Shay Totten of Burlington, on Twitter.

Totten also remarked on Twitter: "I wondered why latest @BurlingtonElec bill gave me the option to pay in rubles."

If, for some reason it turns out Trump had any part in the Burlington Electric Department hacking, which I doubt, maybe Burlington should retaliate against him.

After all, the Trump team never did pay Burlington for the extra overtime and costs with his rally in town last January, in which the future president just let the city pay for everything. Maybe BED can convince New York City to shut off the electricity to Trump Tower.

It's just a thought. 

Burlington, Vermont Police Chief Has Perfect Response To Protests On Veterans Day.

Burlington, Vermont Police Chief Brandon del Pozo
got veterans and democracy exactly right in
a statement about anti-Trump protests on Veterans Day.  

I'm going to let Burlington, Vermont Police Chief Brandon del Pozo be my unwitting guest blogger today.

Like many cities across the nation, people in Burlington are holding an anti-Trump rally.  

The march against Trump in Burlington is scheduled for today, Veteran's Day. Some people objected to the demonstration being held on Veterans Day.

Here's how del Pozo responded to that objection today on Facebook:

"There's a rally scheduled today at City Hall Park to rebuke what so many feel is the hateful and racist rhetoric of the United States president-elect.

Some people are upset that it's happening on Veteran's Day, a time reserved for somber reflection on the service and sacrifice of so many everyday Americans. 

But I think it's the perfect day for a protest rally. How do you better honor people's legacy than by using something great they've given you?

Protest on Veteran's Day, Americans, if you desire! It's our right, and it was secured by the men and women who are our veterans. It seems like a more profound way to honor them than simply laying a wreath."

By the way, responding to critics on Facebook, del Pozo assured everyone he'd have the same attitude had Clinton won and right wing protesters took to the streets. He also said he has no tolerance for violence. He just wants to encourage peaceful democracy.

Good work, Chief!!!

Drunk Tractor Trailer Driver Tries To Change Pants While Traveling Vermont Highway

Police said this guy crashed his tractor trailer rig on
a Vermont Interstate highway while changing his pants,
drunk and driving at 63 mph.  

In one of the stupidest traffic crashes I've ever heard of, and one thankfully in which nobody was seriously injured, a tractor trailer truck rolled over and crashed on Interstate 89 in Williston, Vermont this week.

The tractor trailer driver, Allen R. Johnson Sr. was drunk, Vermont State Police said, as he traveled along Interstate 89 at aboug 63 mph. While doing so, he was changing his pants. (!!!)

Of course, when you're changing your pants while driving a tractor trailer drunk, bad things will happen, and he tipped over onto the side of the highway. Luckily he hit nobody else, and Johnson suffered just minor injuries.

It is unclear why Johnson picked that moment to change his pants. There is a rest area very close to the crash site where motorists often stop to take breaks. The rest area has a large parking lot where tractor trailer drivers often park to eat, sleep, or, yes, change clothes.

Not sure why he didn't just go to the rest area to change his pants. And we don't know why it was important for him to change his trousers at that very moment. Not that I'm anxious to find out.

In any event, Johnson was charged with driving a commercial vehicle under the influence and negligent operation.

Sadly, the section of Interstate 89 in Vermont is very close to the site of a wrong way driver crash that killed five teenagers last month.