Big snow storm today and town meeting. We left after the library article passed because the roads were getting sketchier. After that portion of the meeting would follow the articles on roads and fire department, discussions we could just replay from last year. In Troy Brian won his election for selectman; in Unity Penny lost hers. The man who won in Unity is all about not having Pride events in town. But we will, of course, have Pride events in June. No town money is needed for that. "Last gasp," Ron says. Online, more people should have the forebearance of Scot: "Condolences Penny. If Mr. Wakefield does hold the beliefs that he wrote and that I heard him say in person I truly hope that he can learn more about his larger community. It’s going to be on all of us to watch to see if his less inclusive ideas don’t influence town business. It’s not a position that should be colored by bigoted beliefs. Sometimes change IS good and I encourage all that have negative opinions of “other” people or groups to open their heart and accept them with love. Simple."

The water level is at the top and the wind blew hard for 48 hours. This usually happens in November, but having messed with the space-time continuum, here we are.

When we repeat the same words and phrases that appear in the daily media, we accept the absence of a larger framework.
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(And yes, there is a conspiracy that you can find online: It is the one to keep you online, looking for conspiracies.)
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If you retweet only the work of humans who have followed journalistic protocols, you are less likely to debase your brain interacting with bots and trolls.
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For resistance to succeed, two boundaries must be crossed. First, ideas about change must engage people of various backgrounds who do not agree about everything. Second, people must find themselves in places that are not their homes, and among groups who were not previously their friends. Protest can be organized through social media, but nothing is real that does not end on the streets. If tyrants feel no consequences for their actions in the three-dimensional world, nothing will change.
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the seduction by a mythicized past prevents us from thinking about possible futures.
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The danger we now face is of a passage from the politics of inevitability to the politics of eternity, from a naive and flawed sort of democratic republic to a confused and cynical sort of fascist oligarchy. The politics of inevitability is terribly vulnerable to the kind of shock it has just received.

I am still sorting out what made this theater reopening event feel so deeply weird to me. The surface fact are terrific: the ELC has the energy, the fundraising capacity, and the community building instincts to do a good job on running the theater as a public venue. I am used to being emotionally oblivious to the bad players in the near world so the presence of the little man and the foundation lackey didn't bother me much. The big band music was wonderful; more of that, please. Real musicians playing real instruments in real time; that's always the thrill. As usual I was sitting by the rail surrounded by people I know and like. Maybe it was a reel dimly in consciousness of the hundreds of performances I've been to there. This mashup of past memories and present experience was only heightened by someone in the past dating someone in the present. Oh no, breakthrough of past into present. Time travel rules broken. Now something in the present will be weirdly different, like lake icing in March, or mastodons in the back yard.

Because I was a participant and host in the One Small Step Story Corp thing, I went to a coffee hour last week in Belfast where people from The Civic Standard were talking about how they bring groups of people in Hardwick, Vermont together. Their genius thing is to pair their liberal group with the local American Legion. We may be able to replicate that here. I wish there had been more time for individual networking like asking Stephanie Wade to help me start a blogging thing for kids, or figuring out what Mattie Bamman does.

I submitted a grant application last week the Sara Trunzo way, hours before deadline; it's an AARP grant to refurbish Triplet Park into a simpler green space with nice benches and freshened up landscaping. I have another ready to go to STK for more bookcases. What else is out there? I want the library to do a music series this summer; looking for grant source for that.