Our small town Memorial Day parade

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Historical Society, Memorial Day, parades, postaday2013, small town

This morning at 10:30 I opened the Historical Society for the town; viewing all of its war-time memorabilia before the parade is an important part of our Blandford tradition. We had a nice turn out, at least 35 people looking at the pictures of all of our servicemen, all of the articles written about our townspeople throughout the various armed conflicts, the canteens, the powder cases, the pieces of uniforms from the revolutionary war and the civil war, we have quite a little collection going and everyone is proud of it.

Our parade is very small and nothing ever changes, but I think that it is precisely that fact that makes it so special. We get the fly over’s from fighter planes from Westover Air force base and we get the gun salute from our older veteran’s. I like watching the High School Band, it brings back memories from when the baby boy and the baby girl had their band responsibilities, we went from town to town to participate in all seven hill town parades for Memorial Day. Those days were fun but exhausting for the babies as well as for us. I watched the band members today thinking that I was very happy to pass the baton onto others.

We were very lucky with the weather today; Saturday and Sunday were so cold and wet, a parade would have been miserable. Today we had bright sun, a coolish breeze and the temperature in the low sixties. It was infinitely better than the rain and 40’s of Saturday and Sunday, I can promise you that.

I do appreciate the small town feel of very many things, especially parades.

Recuperating after a long town politicking.

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arguing, budgets, politics, postaday2012, small town, voting

Boy, recuperating after last night’s meeting has not been very pleasant. I have that foggy headache from being up way past my bedtime which makes thinking a slow process. How to explain last night’s town meeting and why it was such a long drawn out argumentative allocation of town money for the annual budget? Essentially, our fiscal history is quite embarrassing, since 2003 our books have not reconciled completely, the past three years have been dismal, the town has been negative free cash for these years, we are broke. The issue at the heart of the economic matter is that the three financial officers, the treasurer, accountant and tax collector, all elected positions of three years, have somehow over a long period of time not reconciled the revenues and expenses to the extent that the outside accounting firm engaged to do a turn over audit, told the townspeople that our books have become inauditable. Last night, the finance committee recommended that the town vote to put monies aside in two separate accounts to be kept in reserve for emergency purposes, there was so much arguing and haggling over the amounts, it got worse. When the subject of setting aside a certain amount of money to be used to have help in recreating the fiscal books from the prior decade, there was a huge resistance at the usefulness of the said project. Yet the towns people weren’t happy with the limited resources that they are left with since our town refuses to accept responsibility and accountability. It is tragic and demoralizing, they have been given a recommendation by the finance committee and by the state’s Department of Revenue to invest in putting their fiscal books in order and the townspeople were arguing against it. My brain started to check out and I have many doodles, some of them quite lovely, to prove the shutting down of any intellectual processes left in my head after driving back from Boston just to attend this illustrious town meeting. Anyway, it is done, my civic duty satisfied and tomorrow I will arise refreshed after a good nights sleep.

The responsibilities of being a small town citizen

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Blandford, local politics, postaday2012, small town

I’m sorry to be so late in writing today but would you believe that our annual town meeting just ended at 12:17 am. It was painful to hear the back and forth over small minutia. I am so tired that I can’t think or write clearly. I promise that I will fill you in on the business of running a small town tomorrow.