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Town Hall

Town Hall is an unassuming little building, but a lot takes place there. Downstairs is where Betsy, the Town Clerk and Treasurer, conducts business. And bimonthly Selectboard meetings are held in the meeting room next to the town office.

ILM Town Hall


Upstairs, the ILM Historical Society houses their archives. The Stone Museum isn't quite as climate-friendly for old documents and photographs, so they're filed here. I've had the pleasure of sifting through the museum collection on several occasions. You would be surprised at how much history fits into 17 square miles.
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Sourdough Bread

These are the sourdough loaves which reminded me of why I dislike baking bread. Cakes are cheerful and eager to please, while breads sit dully on the kneading board and pout, "What do you want?"

Sourdough Bread


These were supposed to be fluffy white loaves of sourdough, but they refused to rise any measurable amount, even with both bubbling starter and fresh yeast in the dough. I baked them anyway and they came out dense, but chewy inside. Good for one day, but hard as a rock after that. Even as bread pudding, the centers of the tiny bread cubes refused to soak up the custard.

Why does bread fight you every step of the way?
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Things You Should Know About: Elevator Buttons

elevator.jpg"In most elevators, at least in any built or installed since the early nineties, the door-close button doesn't work. It's mainly there to make you think it works.
Nick Baumgarten, Esquire Magazine"
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The Pile

It's certainly cheaper to throw all of your household garbage into a large pile in your backyard than to pay for a trash hauling service. It also means that a few decades later, the new owners of your property will have a fine mess to deal with; an acre-wide, man-high pile of wood, debris and refuse.

Burn Pile

Yard Junk

Yard Junk


We found a U-bend, an axle with two tires attached, several buckets, Ball jars filled with mysterious brown goo, an old tractor, a disc plow, various pokey things that look like medieval farm implements, the head of a pickaxe, heavy metal gears, the hood of a car, piles of rebar, large screws, a well pump, concrete building footers, brown glass medicine bottles, a kidney dish, a hot water boiler, ten thousand asphalt roof shingles, barn siding, and several unidentifiable pieces of machinery.

Anyone have a trash bag?
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Banana Bread

Banana BreadI secretly love it when at least two bananas get overripe in the fruit bowl.

This particular recipe calls for a sour cream/baking soda mixture that fizzes up and gives the bread some lift. I like to sprinkle some brown sugar over the top before baking to give it a sweet, golden crust.

There's nothing better than a slice of this with some butter and a cup of tea.
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Earth Day

We planted ninety trees in our backyard this weekend. Fifty are along the back edge of our property and forty are heeled in near the garage and will be moved later.

Evergreens


The forty near the garage are a mix of different evergreens (fraser fir, balsam, etc.) which will someday be Christmas trees. (They look large because Trevor got down on the ground to take the picture. They're actually just a few inches tall.) The fifty in back are sugar maples for syrup-making in about a decade.
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Pinecone Bird Feeder

Pinecone Bird Feeders


Trevor and I gathered pinecones from under our evergreens and made pinecone bird feeders. We get a lot of birds on our island -- we'll see if any are interested in this type of seed. Trevor hated the old-bacon smell of the lard/oatmeal mixture, so I had to do that part. He rolled them in birdseed afterwards and we hung them in the trees.
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Isabella Tiger Moth

A couple of months ago, Trevor created a little terrarium in a mason jar for a scouting project. His parsley, oregano, and basil have been growing happily (if leggy) in there ever since. A few weeks later, he found a woolly bear caterpillar defying winter hibernation with a walk in the field and put him inside as well.

I fully expected the little guy to die in there -- who knew if woolly bears ate pizza herbs? But sure enough, we came downstairs one day to find that Barry the Caterpillar had spun himself a little brown cocoon in the warm corner of the jar nearest the candle I keep burning in the kitchen.

The other day, I saw a flutter in my peripheral vision. Barry had emerged as a lovely orange-ish Isabella Tiger Moth. He stayed inside for 24-hours to wait out a cold, rainy day, then we released him into the backyard.

Isabella Tiger Moth
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Umbrella Play

Trevor had a friend over the other day after school. I said to them, "It's too bad it's raining or you two could play outside," and before I knew it, coats were on and they were out the door.

Kids in the Rain


I had to at least make sure that we didn't send the young lady home soaking wet, so I convinced them both to take an umbrella outside. You'll notice in the photo that neither umbrella is in a position to protect anyone from the rain. Hey, I tried.
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Slush Ice

Slush IceMost of the ice on Lake Champlain has been melted or pummeled away by the action of the waves; however, the edges of the shore are ringed with sheets of rustling slush ice.

The slush sounds like shards of glass grinding against each other and the shoreline. Each piece is only a couple of inches across and there are millions jostling for position mixed in with leaves, sticks and sand. It's like an immense lakewater Slush Puppie... which would probably not taste that great.

Slush ice can trick a nine-year-old into thinking it's solid ground -- which will result in water up to your ankles and a quick change of shoes.


Slush Ice
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Driftwood

Slush Ice


This is a happy piece of driftwood on Lake Champlain that will likely be gone in a few weeks when the fishermen start loading boats into the water at the lake access point.

This weekend, the lake level was high enough to splash over retaining walls and flood a few yards on the shoreline. Today, our neighbors across the street -- who are inland, but next to the swamp -- have no grazing fields for their cows on the left-hand side. It's all lakewater, high enough for waves and probably a small boat.

And the water level was a few inches below the road over the swamp yesterday, so it's likely right up to the edge or over today... and rising, says the Burlington Free Press. There's still one other road for the south islanders to get to the north side, and lots of food in the pantry!
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Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town

Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves TownI like Cory Doctorow's ideas. I also like the stories he spins from the raw material of his good ideas. It's his storytelling that I get a little hung up on.

In Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town, there are a mountain's worth of great ideas wrapped up in a solid story. There's a washing machine mother, a brother who rises from the dead, a severed thumb that grows a body, a girl with wings, and free wifi... all wonderful things (none of which are elves and unicorns...). But the devil is in the details and a few of those details niggle at me here.

In Star Trek, Mr. Spock never turns to the camera to offer a 15-minute lecture on how transporters work and why they are good for free society. In this book, we spend too much time in geeked-out explanations of how to blanket a city with free wifi and why it's the Right Thing To Do. Even as a full-fledged nerd I was a little put off by the lectures coming from all over the place; a telecom employee, a reporter, etc.

And then there are the relationships. This is the same issue I found in the wonderful novel, Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom -- the characters taken singly are interesting and multi-dimensional, but the relationships just aren't believeable. I don't feel an emotional connection between people. I read the words that say they care for each other, but I just ain't feelin' it.

As far as the nuts and bolts of the story, there are a few little gimmicks that could be more than just clever tricks if we only knew why they existed. For example, the names of the main character and his family morph constantly within a set of rules that help the reader follow the changes. The eldest son is always called a name starting with "A," the second son's name always begins with "B," and so on. The name changes are not too jarring, but we never know why. Is it a fit of authorial pique or something about the nature of the characters?

Again on the name front, early in the book Alan meets a neighbor whom he calls Mimi as a joke. Her roomie starts to correct Alan, but Mimi stops him and says,"Mimi is as good a name as any." But it's not hers, and we never get to know her real name. Is that important? It's hard to tell, since we never get into the nature of Mimi and why she's a winged creature like a bird, bat, or angel.

Then something happens to the writing about halfway through the book. I'm having trouble putting my finger on it, but the storytelling changes. I had to re-read a few pages to ensure I hadn't missed something. We're knee-deep into a critical part of the story, then we suddenly shift to another time and place. The rest of the book jumps around and we never quite settle back into one coherent story.

It feels as if this book is the first half of a longer novel. We're tantalized with an elaborate alterworld that lives alongside our own mundane existence. I was eager to explore that world and learn even a little bit more about it's nature, but we never quite get in the door. The final "journey to the mountain" near the end of the book had the feel of an elaborate resolution to come -- I was braced and ready for at least some sort of peek at an answer -- but none ever arrived.

It was as if my parents piled all four kids in the car, loaded up with luggage, smiled with a gleam in their eye and said, "We're going somewhere fun today!" then drove cross-country for nine hours and ended up at a ShopRite in a different town.
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ILM from the Air

Isle La Motte


This lovely aerial photo of Isle La Motte was taken by the McEwens as they flew over. The swamp that cuts the island in half is very photogenic from the air.
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Root Beer Float Cupcakes

Root Beer Float CupcakeThis past weekend, I tried to replicate Blondie and Brownie's Root Beer Floatie Cupcakes. It called for a cake mix, instead of a recipe from scratch, but the cake did come out moist without crumbing. (Even though it tasted... boxy.) The frosting was sweet and light cream cheese -- just enough to hold the tiny scoops of ice cream in place.

My only complaint is that for "root beer" cupcakes, (two cups of it in the batter), there was barely any root beer taste. I boiled up some extra soda into a syrup to drizzle over the top to give a little more flavor. Maybe root beer extract in the batter would end up with a better result.

I skipped the brown food coloring, but they're still cute as anything with their little ice cream scoops and straw.
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A Book of Bees

A Book of Bees is a lovely little book about bees and beekeeping. It's a quick read -- over in just a couple of sittings -- and there isn't a single thing wrong with it. Sue Hubbell speaks frankly about her experience raising 300 hives in Ozarks Mountain Country. She focuses on the welfare of the bees, not profit. Indeed, she makes it seem like a well-loved hive will overflow with honey.

Be warned though, after you read A Book of Bees you will want a hive of your own.

Our bees arrive next month.
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I am a bathtub.

Bathtub

I started my life as a bathtub. Then I became a cattle trough. Then I was dragged to various spots in the backyard and field for no apparent reason. Lots of mosquitoes hatch in my water. Frogs like to live in there too. The Liloias emptied the mud out of me. The little one likes to sit in me an awful lot. Even when I'm full of ice. I hear talk that I'm going to be repainted red and moved to the front yard as a planter. I'm surprised by that. Can you tell by my expression?
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Sliced Carrot

Sliced Carrot


I love my mandoline. I can get paper-thin slices of carrots that are practically translucent. I can't do that with a knife.

This particular carrot became part of a tray of Lasagna Primavera from Everyday Food. Dave made sure to wait until after I served everyone a piece to mention that he doesn't like lasagna primavera, but he added that this was the exception. Phew.

It was one of the first lasagnas I've made that didn't ooze filling after being cut. I think the no-boil noodles (which I've never tried before) absorbed a lot of the liquid from the sauce. After trying this recipe, I can't think of a good reason to boil lasagna noodles again... ever. Unless these are made from asbestos or something.
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Sunbeam + Cat = Nap

Sleeping in a Sunbeam


Norrin loves him some sunbeam.
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Peanut Butter Cream Cupcakes

Peanut Butter CupcakesThis cupcake is a combination of chocolate cupcake with cream filling and peanut butter frosting. The cake is Double Dark Chocolate from Food & Wine Magazine, the center is piped with a cream filling recipe from Allrecipes.com, and the topping is Peanut Butter Frosting comes from the January 2003 issue of Bon Appétit.

The cake was moist, but not as flavorful and dense as the last chocolate recipe. Once the filling went in, they tended to fall apart. Still tasty, but only edible with a spoon. The filling was more buttercream than I'd have liked, but it was a last-minute addition that I wasn't totally prepared for. I meant to make chocolate cake with peanut butter frosting and filling, but after sampling the frosting, it seemed too thick and peanut-buttery to have it inside and outside. I searched for a lighter, fluffier filling that I could quickly make from the pantry. Next time I might try some variation on whipped cream.
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Money-Back Movie

Superhero MovieThe Liloia family has only ever walked out of two movies. The first was in 1999 when normally-quiet baby Trevor (who used to sleep through any movie we brought him to) insisted on babbling through the entire first 15 minutes of a matinee of The Sixth Sense and we gave up and left for the comfort of the two other people in the theater.

This weekend, we walked out of our second film. Superhero Movie got the axe from the Liloia clan. We even asked for our money back since no other kid-appropriate films were on the schedule. The first ten minutes of the movie were stuffed with inappropriate, vulgar sex jokes. It felt like the film's creators were trying hard to be as graphic as possible while skating under a PG-13 rating by not using sexually-derived words as expletives (a stipulation of an "R" rating).

This is what happens when you make a spur of the moment decision to see a movie on a sunny Saturday without access to your computer. We usually check reviews and parent-friendly movie sites (like Kids in Mind) before picking a movie. We thought a superhero film would be fun... not so much.
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Blu-ray Tomato

Tomato Ad


Vermont doesn't allow billboards next to roads, but they do allow ads on vegetables. I guess tomatoes are germane to the movie Ratatouille -- it's about a mouse chef making food from scratch, and tomatoes were definitely used in the film. But if you've watched the movie, grapes might have been a more appropriate choice.
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Pancake Breakfast

Pancake BreakfastShelburne Farm hosted a 4-H Pancake Breakfast this weekend. Fresh pancakes, seasoned sausages and lots of hot, fresh maple syrup served in steaming clay pitchers. The syrup was so hot that it melted a plastic cup that one young diner poured it into for the trip back to the table.

The Farm was also offering tours of their opeating sugar house, but the boys had worn brand-new sneakers with spotless uppers and no traction, (anxious for spring, I guess), so we didn't climb the hill to the demonstration. Next time I'm doing a proper footwear check before we leave the house.

We stopped at another Shelburne (or Charlotte, it was a back road, so I'm not sure) sugar house, with signs all over town, but they had put their signs out early and weren't boiling sap for another hour. I've been surveying syrup makers and everyone agrees that this year the maple sap is sweeter than usual, though no one can quite explain why.
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