![\"community](\"http:\/\/www.jessamyn.com\/journal\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/10\/IMG_2503.jpg\")
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This was a heavy civic weekend. Complete photo set is here<\/a> or you can click through links to see some. Saturday we had the Passport Program wrap-up which celebrated the people who had been to the most libraries as part of the Passport to Vermont Libraries<\/a> program. I love this program but since I’m gone for a lot of the summer, my attention wanes. This was a wrap-up event and, like many October events in Vermont, was hard to get people to. I brought Jim, one of the other librarians brought her daughter, we decorated and brought cake<\/a> and ice cream for 30 people just in case and wound up with a nice friendly crowd of about 15 including the woman who had been to the most libraries: 192! Truly that is MOST of Vermont’s libraries. We were all impressed. I gave a little slide show with the history of the program and said thanks to everyone and handed out prizes<\/a> and it was a good time. Jim played some tunes on the organ<\/a> that lives in the community room.<\/p>\n Then it was back to Randolph where we found out that there was a soup-a-thon<\/a> going on in Bethel. The way it works is: community members make a lot of soup and you pay a cover charge and there’s all the soup you can eat (plus crackers and bread, plus desserts and coffee and tea). It’s pictured above. I always run into people I know and the money goes to supporting some of the town’s old buildings. Then we went and–I can not believe I am saying this–enjoyed some of the Bethel nightlife. Bethel got a grant from AARP for a thing called the Better Block Initiative<\/a>. They put some pop-up stores in some of the empty store fronts, had an outdoor beer garden and a taco truck, some street games for kids, a temporary bike path, and a lot of great signage telling people what was going on nearby. We enjoyed chatting with people at the record store<\/a> (I bought some records<\/a>) and popping into an antique store that was never open at night. At 7 pm we went to the Penny Sale<\/a> which is basically a raffle for 300+ items and another one of those things which the whole town turns out to. We bought maybe $30 worth of tickets (and some pie) and won a life vest<\/a> worth $32 retail. Good trade. Raised money for the local Rotary and their projects.<\/p>\n Headed home with Jim afterwards to do some bird feeder maintenance, move some heavy items, cook up a dutch baby<\/a> and catch up on some television (new SNL, Pat’s game, Red Sox) with Kevin and Karen<\/a>. Jim headed back to MA on Sunday and I caught up on the work I’d semi-blown off while I was off interacting with my neighbors. I’d do it again.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" This was a heavy civic weekend. Complete photo set is here or you can click through links to see some. Saturday we had the Passport Program wrap-up which celebrated the people who had been to the most libraries as part of the Passport to Vermont Libraries program. I love this program but since I’m gone […]<\/p>\n<\/a>","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[59,588],"class_list":["post-1188","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-uncategorized","tag-bethel","tag-civics","h-entry","hentry"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jessamyn.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1188","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jessamyn.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jessamyn.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jessamyn.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jessamyn.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1188"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.jessamyn.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1188\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1190,"href":"https:\/\/www.jessamyn.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1188\/revisions\/1190"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jessamyn.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1188"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jessamyn.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1188"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jessamyn.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1188"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}