Life moves on

A post I started in early November and never published, but is still true.

So many things have changed since Irene. Drive up Thayer Brook Road and you'll find the landscape is unbelievably changed.  Thayer Brook is back where it belongs, going through its culverts and no longer threatening Thelma's and Bruce's houses. But the homes, yards and pastures along the road have been changed dramatically.  The devastation in Bethel, Stockbridge, Rochester, Pittsfield, Jamaica, Queechee, Killington,  Bridgewater, and countless other towns will take months to repair.  Some roads will not be fully repaired  until next summer.  In some places, "restoration" will never be possible. Life moves on, whether we like it or not.

We are still nervous when it rains hard.  Some people who come to the Montpelier contradance are already worried about whether they'll feel safe driving on reconstructed roads when the snow begins.  I think many Vermonters will not feel safe until after mud season next year.  Most Vermonters believe that this past summer - warm and wet, and then Irene - demonstrated that our local weather is really changing.  Even those who don't believe in climate change are willing to say that we have entered a different weather cycle. Life moves on, whether we like it or not.

Fortunes at Norwich are changing.  Across the country, grad school enrollments are down, and so are ours.  The graduate school needs to make additional "continuing education" offerings to improve our revenue, and to move away from offering a single product (graduate degrees), but the university isn't ready to invest in the technology upgrades and marketing strategies that we need if we're going to get away from "all our eggs in one basket".  Life moves on, whether we like it or not.

Thelma has closed the horse barn.   She told us a year ago, which is why Raven moved next door when Berta offered me the space this past spring.  Last week Betsy Kelley put her 30-year-old mare down, since she was unlikely to make it through another winter, and Beth Warrel took her mare Annie home. We still plan to have Sunday coffee, but at 9am, not 8am. Thelma is now an Empty-Nester, and although she says she appreciates not doing the chores, and not having to be tied to home, she misses seeing and hearing the horses.

And we're  also all finding out what it means to be part of a global economy.

Many changes, and life moves on, whether we like it or not.  Except for Netflix, who found out the hard way that if it ain't broke perhaps fixes should not be attempted.