Seven Days Personals - Introducing: Vermonters

Liberal retired teacher, raiser of organic Angus beef in the Northeast Kingdom and restorer of stained glass windows. self employed, brewer, reader of the natural and historic landscape, funky welder, pastured-out educator, community volunteer, gardener with too much garlic, player with words, viewer of the scene, yet with a handsome compost heap. Come mulch with me in Newport on Lake Memphremagog.
If there is a God, she is good and nurturing of her earth. While I do not care as much for her spiders as I do for her whales and sunrises, she is the best she can be. It is a good earth to be above.
Higher education has some great entertainments, although expensive, but something to do while planning to grow up, and still to do even after not growing up. I think I missed that course. Was it a degree requirement? Hamilton, Syracuse, Breadloaf School of English, UVM, The Tim Byrne School of Glass Restoration and Brews.Road races, a dozen Burlington Marathons, senior mixed hockey, Nordic lake skating, skate marathons. Firewood. Cutting, tedding, raking, and then throwing hay at both ends of the elevator give a strong appreciation of cold beer. Straddling a row of onions or garlic weeding out the interlopers and pretenders. Fencing, then refencing. Exercise comes in many colors. But, if truth be known, keeping beef cattle for most of the year can come down to less than a hour a day, which can be front-loaded to provide welcome days off.
Three cheers for libraries. Fiction, often detective fiction, and history, usually interesting biographies, are my reading poles. Philbrick's Custer, Bunker Hill, and Valiant Ambition, the Aubrey series by O'Brien, Stephan Ambrose, James Lee Burke, Howard Mosher, and Louise Penny. Crossword puzzles at lunch because the books won't stay open.
A democracy needs leaders responsible to those who pay the bills (not those who pay the leaders). Our enlightenment should guarantee health care and education, not just safety for property and big business. Equal justice and opportunity. And a willingness to learn what the other guy or nation is thinking. Hike, bike, white water rafting, cross-country ski, snow shoe, Nordic skate, sunrise/sunset gawkery, bourbon and radishes on the back lawn, horseshoes, Looking for a set of bocce balls. That, and a few Italian phrases so I can sound authentic.