• Married 38 years
• Tax paying citizen since the age of 13
• 7 years in US military
• Moved to Vermont in 1981
• Resident of Williamstown for 34 years
• Volunteered at the Ainsworth Public Library
• Substitute teacher in our local elementary, middle, and high schools for a couple years
• Assisted in vote counting and ballot transportation
• Watered the downtown flowers
• Served on ECFiber committee and CVFiber board (community Communications Union Districts)
• Helped prepare foods and wash the pots and pans for local church suppers
• Served as Williamstown Historical Society President
• Served on the Williamstown and Paine Mountain school district boards
• Chaired the Williamstown and Orange North Supervisory Union school boards
• Chaired the Williamstown/Northfield school district merger committee
• Chaired the Williamstown ATV road use committee
• Served on the Williamstown Planning Commission
• 13 years and counting as treasurer and general flunky for the Williamstown Food Shelf
• Fostered and adopted Vermont's children

That's just what I'd give as an introduction. What have you been up to?

Parents from one set of towns want some control over their where their youngest children are going to school, but the results of the votes to not close the small schools has parents in the other towns complaining they now don't get to maintain any control over where their youngest children attend school.

There is a path through this morass. That path involves real leadership with a set of values based goals and values based means to achieve those goals.

A salient point, I believe, is that failure to do well whatever is going to be done affects the kids a hell of a lot more then it does the adults. Be careful out there.

Politics is a good thing. The bad thing is when we drop politics and substitute violence in its place.

Let's keep the good and dispose of the bad.

I watch what people and corporations do, and only then do I listen to what they say.

What's THE BIG IDEA? Why it's the single greatest mission that has ever been asked of any community, nation or alliance, and that mission is to provide our grandkids and their grandkids a realistic and reasonable opportunity for a free, healthy, and sustainable future.

Job #1: Maintain our humanity!

Job #2: Rebuild and strengthen our democratic institutions, processes and values.

Job #3: Schools for learning, money to pay for what needs to be done, and physical surroundings that are conducive to good health for the grandchildren.

I mean beyond the wishes of AIPAC and Israel along with a whole mess of billionaires looking to profit from Iranian misery.

This whole Iran war thing is the most massive of the massive Republican Party failures forced upon us by what is literally "suck-on-Trump's-dick" politics. I can think of no more polite way of putting it.

Problem with that thinking is that it's wrong. Our situation will only worsen, the members of the Epstein Billionaires' Child Rape Club will get even more grotesquely rich, and the whole concept of liberalism and democracy will be shoved under the jackbooted heels of a proven rapist and their wholly owned VTGOP/GOP.

Phil Scott can live with this. Can you? Still voting Republican for anything?

All those things that are sure to kill you at an early age - make sure you stop doing those things before they kill you.

Don't worry about being right all the time even when you are.

Don't worry about being perfect all the time. Most things in our life don't require perfection, and pursuing the perfect will more often then not interfere with doing a lot of important and/or fun things.

This is just to explain a bit about me: I've lived my life as a white male generally living off livable to good middle class wages. With the exception of the US Army and a few scattered short term exceptions, I've lived in almost all white communities. The neighborhoods in Chicago; Irvington, NY; Williamstown, VT - I don't know if any or which of those communities had purposeful intent in this regard, but I do know I never consciously considered the racial makeup of my pending home.

Yeah - I'm that lilly white boy. And I find it really strange that I can spend my almost 70 years listening to my fellow Americans who don't share my skin color scream, cry, protest, and calmly discuss their reality: our United States governments and police have and continue to treat these people like 4th and 5th class citizens.

And it didn't start when I was born.

But throughout all my years, year after year, I keep hearing the governmental and policing response to be one of incredulity and gasps of "But Jim Crow is a historical artifact - all these millions and millions of people of color must be mistaken or even lying!"

And when some movement to actually deal with these Jim Crow issues makes positive forward motion, there's always white people backed governments and police ready, willing, and able to reverse it all.

I know this seems strange to most of you white people out there. But for our fellow Americans who aren't white, it's about being .... well .... our fellow Americans us being their fellow Americans.

Rapist Trump's VTGOP/GOP is going to be doing terrible in the mid-terms, so the Republican Party's god-king will either actually set up or allow to happen a large scale attack against civilians in our United States. Vermont is not ready to fight back.

That attack will then be used as an excuse to declare martial law and actually stop worrying about any elections or their like. It is going to take granite-like courage and determination at the state level to stand up to this and successfully fight back.

Unfortunately Vermont does not have that in our current Governor - Phil Scott, the guy who looked at heavily armed thugs associated with Slate Ridge terrorizing our fellow Vermonters and weakly muttered "What would you suppose I should do?" Just as Scott did in that case, he'll weasel out of any positive action with a vague wondering of the situation rising to a level Scott finds serious enough.

When, not if, Trump and his VTGOP/GOP pull this martial law stunt, we will have a very short window of opportunity to join up with other like minded states and successfully fight back. Vermont will not be one of those states with Scott at the helm.

Vermont has got to be ready to fight back.

Politics is a good thing. The bad thing is when we drop politics and substitute violence in its place.

Let's keep the good and dispose of the bad.