Day: April 29, 2016

I’m happy to report that the Round House Cafe has raised more than $37,000 in its two week gofundme campaign to purchase the building where the cafe has been for the past three years. The landlord is putting it up for sale. People come into the cafe every day with checks, even cash.

The campaign has rallied the town and focused its attention on the need to keep the community we have.

All across America, community has been bleeding out of rural communities, threatened by the exodus of good jobs to the cities,  abandoned by the economists and politicians as inefficient, ravaged by companies fleeing overseas and by trade agreements that benefit some but not others.

The farms are dying off and the box stores are smothering Main Streets all across America. My town is fighting back, it has a wonderful and successful independent bookstore, an beloved old vaudeville house functioning as a theater, arts and education center and now, a much love cafe, already the heart and soul of the town.

Tonight, the Dread Resistors band performed their Reggae music at the Round House on Friday’s regular pizza night, the cafe was packed, the music was wonderful, everyone around us was telling us how grateful they are that the Round House is there, and how desperate they are to have it stay.

If you have helped Scott and Lisa Carrino by contributing to this campaign, thank you. If not, you still can. If you can’t or choose not to, then thanks for reading this far, your consideration is appreciated. The money will go for a down payment so Scott and Lisa Carrino get buy the old bank building and get a mortgage. It’s a great start. Community lives here, and we will fight for it.

If we can do it here, you can do it there. The Round House Building Campaign.

In the deep woods today, the sun came out suddenly, trying to break through the thickening forest canopy, the trees all beginning to bud. This beautiful old maple stood out from all the others, I saw a conductor conducting the symphony of the forest, calling the other trees to sing, to whisper in the wind, share the sun, bow and bend to the wind. When I closed my eyes, I could hear the beautiful music.

Somehow, this photo looked iconic to me, almost like an old movie set in the outdoors, the dog searching the horizon in front of the old hickory bark. I don’t know what makes a photo work or not work, I just look to see if the images touches me, and I take the picture. We were out in the deep woods, and I loved the tree coming up out of the wall, and then Fate entering the photo to scan her world.

With the monochrome 7D, the whites are more pronounced, the shadows are a bit darker, the detail of the trees and the shadows and curves are more visible. Subtle but important changes, and very beautiful to me. Country roads are a seminal element of life here, even as towns use federal money to pave them. More and more the people here are righting for their country roads, they help define us.

Turn left a thousand feet from here,

just over the next rise,

beyond the birch tree,

fallen across the path.

Come walk with me,

along the old stone wall,

humbled now, covered in fallen twigs,

and leaves, broken in parts,

but still proud, a testament

to lives lived, and hard work done.

The stone wall is strength to me,

it doesn’t mind the cold or heat,

the snow or ice or wind.

It is all the same thing.

 What, I wonder, did the wall contain,

whose boundary was it?,

how many hands pulled

these stones and piled them

so many hundreds of years ago?

how many cows and sheep did it keep

from wandering?,

how many pastures guarded and marked?

It whispers to me, sometimes,

saying “look at me, remember me,

but do not pity me,

I will be here long after you are gone.”

Come walk with me to see the stone wall,

reach out to touch it, feel the spirit

rush into yours.