Town Meeting Day and All That Happens in a Tiny Vermont Town

Today is Town Meeting Day in Vermont. What a fun day it has been in my shop. It a couple doors down from the town hall which acts as our voting area. It's a nice sunny, cold day here in Vermont; small signs of spring are peaking through barely. I've been busy filling orders all morning, sipping tea and wondering what happened last night at the town meeting. In Vermont all towns used to have their town meeting today, have a pot luck lunch and a floor vote on all the towns matters. Over the years many town meetings have changed to adapt to busy schedules.

My friend Elizabeth came by after lunch. She told me all the funny stories of her town meeting last night. She lives a few towns over. The small town stories, the people lives, friends, enemies, old grudges, neighbors, pain in the ass neighbors, busy bodies that have their nose in everyone's business. The best and the worst of small town life comes out at town meetings. Elizabeth said she got home around midnight. Yikes... Then my other friends, Monty and Sarah stopped by; they were headed to the poles and had a couple of questions on voting. Elizabeth and I chatted with them on the issues. Who was the lady running for librarian trustee?? what was the #20 question? Who is running for selectman? I knew a few of the issues, but not all.

While we were chatting with Elizabeth, Monty and Sarah, Sue stopped in. She is running for Selectman position. Yay for her. We'll cross our fingers, But she knew answers to all the questions we didn't know and more. Great. We seemed to of solved all the town's issues right here in the lampshade shop. We found out all the negative naysayers at the town meeting last night. I know it went late, I saw my neighbors didn't get home till 11. Oh, how guilty I felt for not going, sort of..... After a few years on our school board makes it really hard for me to attend meetings....especially when you know most of the bad actors and naysayers.

Oh, small town life. But it sure was fun to visit with friends today. Once the gang cleared out of the lampshades shop, I put my "BE RIGHT BACK" sign on my door and went to vote. Small town politics. It is nice to see progress in action at the local level.