STONE WALLS

Stone walls were erected at times for boundaries, of course, between landowners but also to get the stones in another place on farms so the land was cleared of the rocky terrain and made somewhat agricultural. As a boy, I used to climb onto stone walls and not just over them...and attempt to walk along them, often spying snakes wriggling and 'snaking' through the stones, sometimes large slabs and other times just rocks........some the walls have been destroyed by vandals and others who take the rocks for their own landscaping purposes.....the modern, manmade ones look nice, but there is something about an old, heavy weatherbeaten rock......sort of like what my face is getting to look like, perhaps...

OLD CHARACTERS: YANKEES, PRESIDENTS, ETC

New England and the Eastern part of the US, the northern part mostly, is notorious for its assorted characters: political, religious,philosophical, poetic, and other categories that fit most of the possible human types and descriptions, ancient and modern......there are LINCOLN IMPERSONATORS, one of whom I am fairly acquainted with in the area, and varous historical programs often use actors to tell life stories of the deceased personages in various towns, all done,of course, in the grave yards on their grave sites, if known. One great New England Institution is THE TOWN MEETING that some want to demolish and allow little space or time for actual discussions and meetings,etc. another institution of rural American going down the tubes, as the moderns say....

COUNTRY STORE WISDOM

Vermont, and I daresay, its twin, New Hampshire,have numerous country stores, around which much social life and various, sometimes serious, discussions took place, especially with the US Post Office being in the same store with the storekeeper often being the Post Master, but that has, save for a few rural communities, changed with the Postal Service shutting down operations they consider unprofitable, a notion that did not exist until the 1970's and which Nixon put into place, of course. The Power of the Post Office has steadily and surely diminished ever since and some predict its ultimate demise! But this blog is not about the Postal Service but about Vermont topics.