Winter comes and goes. A big rain storm erased all the snow and ice and we are free to move about without cleats. A freezing wind creates the usual ice art down at the shoreline. A fire at the church was contained but caused some damage. There is nothing more dramatic (or is it theatrical?) than a fire at night in the middle of town. I walked down from the Depot Store to the scene, then back in the quiet safe darkness. The thrift shop is in a parsonage next to the church so it was unaffected. Trucks from all the nearby towns came. Fire marshals were all over the place the next day because it was the third fire in a week in Unity. Someone was arrested for setting the other two.

Now that we own 38 School Street, we are busy furnishing the AirBnB suites. Packages arrive, we haul them in and assemble. A lot of money goes away quick that way. Mostly we are ordering online. Even huge furniture stores have only a tiny fraction of what is available online. That's one job. The other job is keeping the library project moving: gathering info with calls and visits to nearby libraries, getting the marketing ready on the website and FaceBook pages. I want to have all the language ready for when the local facebook groups get negative about it. I plan to host hearings about it in person and online. Then we have to figure out how to have people vote in a town meeting.

Some years back I went into a dying Walmart in Waterville that was on its way to being Marden's and that had a small McDonald's inside it. I ordered something like a fish burger. They didn't have that or any other things on the McD's menu. They couldn't get those things and so they did what they could: they made chowder. They offered me chowder. I thought of that incident during the Economic Development Committee last night. The select board has no real appetite for economic development because they are afraid of the size of the investment necessary to make an impact. The selectmen basically keep the lights on and the roads passable. Nothing wrong with that. But Unity has a TIF district that generates about a 100 thousand a year and those funds can only be spent on economic development. So Penny, the select board chair, sends this list around before our meeting. These are categories where TIF funds are permitted to be spent. By allocating big amounts to these categories and by stretching the category definitions, they effectively move economic development funds into the general fund for spending on whatever. For example, repairs to the Berry Road bridge could go under Trails because some people consider that road a trail. There you have it, strict rules about allowed TIF spending reduced to chowder.

We will be requesting a good chunk of TIF funds for the library. I talked about that at the meeting last night. An allocation of that size will have to be approved at a town meeting. The select board can approve a special town meeting for this purpose or we can get signatures on a petition that forces them to schedule the meeting. I will be meeting with the selectmen next week to discuss how the relationship to the town might work.

All over the country people are doing turkey day dinners for one or two. Melissa made a lot of leftovers that were shared with friends as drivebys. And all over, people are visiting like we visited with Peter and Jana on the day after TDay. Temps were in the 40s; it was good for about an hour.

The thrift store is going to Plan C. Plan B was putting things outside with a money drop box, but the weather is too rainy and soon to cold for that. Plan C starts out with us returning the inside to a pristine shopping space, cutting off donations, incorporating the outside bins into the inside display. Then we can open for one pod at a time by appointment. In reality though, Maine reported 20 deaths today, and we will probably just close as the post-thanksgiving surge makes it too risky. That works for me because we close on 38 School Street in less than a week and that will be our work of the winter.

Two Christmas miracles for you. One, the bells that were pronounced dead suddenly began working again, playing Christmas music twice a day. And two, we did not lose power in the storm last night while others in town did.