Spring finally arrived last week and with it the first hint of green on the trees. The above photo was taken at 6AM as I left for my Thursday Boston Truck Run. By the weekend the leaves were almost fully out and the temperature was in the 70’s. And only 2 weeks ago we had 4 inches of snow on the ground. Retail opened in VT this week, gatherings of 25 or less are allowed and state parks will re-open on June 26th. Things are slowly moving back towards normal but I do not want to to return to normal if normal means the path we were on to catastrophic global warming. We must remain in a state of crisis to deal with Climate Change. Global Emissions are down as we stay home and drive less.
Lets take some $$$ from the Defense Budget and re-purpose it as a Universal Basic Income; give everyone $1500 a month. Let’s re-consider just what is an essential business and not re-open those that are not. Let’s discover a new way of being which grows out of this sheltering in place. More time with family and friends, less time driving and shopping, Create a Master Plan for Climate Change and re-tool our industries to help us upgrade to a sustainable energy economy. Put America back to work building this new world. There is no need for homelessness and hunger to exist other than greed and to feed and provide shelter for everyone is a basic human right and we need to make this so. It’s time to unite our common humanity, create the common unity that transcends the nation-states which are failing us now. Organize a new political apparatus that works towards these goals. Global Party with representatives from Geographic Areas around the world
Stop funding those that are not serving those goals and start funding those that are. Hack the Political .# POLIhack by ignoring it.
I love all the time at home with my family and if we can continue that with friends rather than running in 4 different directions every day that would be nice.
Ambiana and Jakobi have been sleeping on the screened in porch for a week lulled to sleep by the sound of the creek. Notice the empty space out the door that will soon be filled. See later in this post for details
We bought a 2nd one person kayak for our pond as one was on sale ($150) at Wal-Mart. Ambiana and Jakobi had been squeezing together into the one we had and thought it would be way more fun for each to have their own
Mochi Orbit 56 commences
May 24th marked my 55th birthday. We celebrated low key over the weekend. I madea custard square which is my all-time favorite yummy! The girls decorated the Long House Deck where they presented me with a cake and presents. We had a Van Halen Dance Party on the roof deck and then Colleen and I built a fire in the fire-circle and when the girls tired of playing TANK on the Wii they joined us around the flames as the stars came out and Jakobi did impressions and we played an awesome singing game that brought out the inner punk rocker in Jakobi and allowed each of us to shine. It was the campfire of my dreams and the wish come true I made as I blew out the candles on my cake 2 hours earlier.
Climbing Hobart Mt
For my birthday activity I wanted to climb Hobart Mt which rises up beyond our land to the NE. We set out at noon and reached the summit 45 minutes later.
We should have come a week ago before the leaves for a better 360 degree view but we could still glimpse the Green Mountains and the hills all around us.
We took a steeper route down and got discombobulated in the woods not agreeing on which way we should go and our bearings obscured by the newly sprung leaves and we ended up 1/2 mile down Eagle Ledge Rd coming out behind our neighbor Joe’s house
On the Pond
We hit the pond for a brief swim after dinner. Colleen relaxed in a tube while the girls floated around and then swam from their tube to the floats dock while I took the occasion to circumnavigate the entire pond for the first time
Building Stairs to the Porch
Above is a handy website calculator I use to make my stairs. I have used it for every stair I have built on on our homestead. These are the calculations for the porch stairs.
On Friday I poured 2 concrete footings filling 2 concrete blocks with concrete and then setting posts with big screws in the bottoms into the cement and erecting a small 4×6 deck with 2×6 joists set 16″ on center and planked with 1″ scrap boards we had lying around.
For steps I used three 2x10x12 as stringers and made the steps out of three 2x10x10’s and 3three 2x4x8’s as I should have bought four 2x10x10’s
Colleen did the staining
The Vent Shield to protect the went from damage from snow falling off the roof
We watched Jesus Christ Superstar on Sunday; love this song & dance sequence
