As we are heading toward the Winter Solstice on December 21, Grange Lecturer Carl Etnier, working with Merry Shernock, our Treasurer and Rental Agent, has arranged for Patty Manning, a trained cultural interpreter, to present a Grange Program to share Native traditions surrounding the solstice, from 5:00 to 6:00 PM.  We welcome all vaccinated people to join us in the Hall, and everyone to join us via Zoom for this “hybrid” meeting.   Check the bottom of this article for info about the Zoom link.
Patty Manning is Wampanoag.  She says her teachings have been passed to her from Lakota tribal elders Grandfather Henry and Grandfather Dion, and also from Lakota tribal members Marian and Chubb Whitemouse.   Patty has been employed by the State of VT as a cultural interpreter at the State Parks and at the State Historical Center.  She has also made presentations at a number of schools and camps.
Patty also worked for six years at the Dawnland Center, a non-profit center for native people, where she conducted many ceremonies, as well as teaching with other staff, and helping to run three powwows a year.   Patty and her family also sang with a drum group which performed at powwows; she also led a drumming workshop at the VT Folklife Center.
Carl will also be speaking with Patty on his show “Relocalizing Vermont” on WGDR, 91.1 FM, on Thursday, Dec. 2nd from 9:30 to 11:00 AM.   You can also stream the station from:  https://www.centralvermontcommunityradio.org/

Brief Grange meeting  4:30 to 5:00 PM

As usual before our Programs on the first Saturday of even-numbered months, we’ll have an informal discussion of how the Grange is doing, including a monthly financial statement, discussion of winter plans for snowplowing, heating–and our new “Room Air Filter Boxes”–see the article below for more info.

 

FCCGH end-of-year fundraiser begins!

The RAFBs described above were financed by the Friends of the Capital City Grange Hall, Inc., the 501(c)(3) charitable corporation that helps the Grange to plan and run projects, raises funds for improvements, and applies for grants to help finance them.  Every year, like many other charities, the FCCGH sends out a fund-raising letter to people who have donated before.   This year’s campaign began with letters sent out last week–and a few checks have already come in!    If you feel left out because you haven’t gotten one, don’t worry!   You can donate anytime by using the PayPal link on the Grange website:  https://capitalcitygrange.org/donate/.  Or send an email to the Friends to learn more:  fccghvt@gmail.com.
Donated funds will be used to finance projects we do ourselves, and to match grant money for large projects–like the replacement of the Grange Hall dance floor in 2012, the new bathrooms in 2015, and the insulation and wall/ceiling floor surface upgrades completed in March, 2020!  We hope you can help us get ready for our next big improvement–which we hope will be a professionally designed ventilation system to improve air quality throughout the Hall.

Speaking of improvements…

…alert readers may have noticed that the picture of the RAFB in the kitchen above looks a little different than their memories of the kitchen…there’s a reason for that!   We had a great crew of volunteer painters from the Unitarian Church of Montpelier choir show up on Nov. 11th to repaint the kitchen walls!   In return for being able to rehearse in our Hall while theirs was being renovated, Sue, Sarah, Anne and Nancy scraped, cleaned and painted the concrete and sheetrock wall surfaces.   It makes a big difference in the look and feel of the kitchen!

Thanksgiving at the Grange!

We are pleased to be the home, for quite a few years, of the Thanksgiving celebration for an extended family from Berlin.   They find our cafeteria provides the room they need to share a big meal and socialize.   The kitchen provides room for meal prep and space to clean up.
Because this is a Berlin family, they qualify for the free rentals we offer to Berlin residents, but they always “pass the hat”, and have given us substantial donations after every use!  We appreciate their generosity.  We also appreciate the COVID protocols they have adopted this year, requiring vaccination or a negative test before the holiday meal for all attendees.
The last photo was taken during setup this Thanksgiving!

       We have already started our campaign for the 2022 Town Meeting, to get a vote for full exemption for another 5 years.  At our Oct. 2 meeting, we had a good discussion of how to do this.  The first step is to get petition signatures (110 minimum needed, we aim for 200) to make sure our full request is on the ballot without editing.    We gathered a few using a table at the Montpelier Farmers’ Market, and a few from petitions left at local farm-stands since then, but it is clear that we will need to actively solicit signatures using personal contacts, and going door-to-door after that.  If you know even one or two people in Berlin, please get them to sign a petition for us!   We will be happy to send out petitions to anyone who can help us!  Just email me:  swartztim15@gmail.com.
Once we get the signatures, we’ll also need to campaign among Berlin voters to make sure they know that the Grange and the Hall are a real benefit to the Town of Berlin–both in direct services to Berlin residents like the “free rentals”, and in hosting the wide range of community functions that (in normal times) keep our Grange Hall jumping.  Please join us to keep our campaign up and running!

State Grange Resolutions

We’ll also talk about the votes the State Grange Annual Session made on the Resolutions submitted by numerous Community Granges.  Carl Etnier, our Lecturer attended the Friday session along with me.

New Fiber internet connection

Consolidated Communications has connected optical fiber internet to our building, and by the time of the meeting, I hope to have a new set of “mesh routers” installed, to provide excellent, fast WiFi to to the entire building.   We will also have new, VOIP phone service.   This will allow us to cut our ties to “First Light”, which raised our cost for DSL internet + phone by 80% earlier this year.

Just Food Hub–tasty fundraising for the Grange!

This new, “anti-profit” organization, formed this year by long-time dance community member Sue Morris set up a booth at the Sept. 4 outdoor concert.   They distribute pre-orders of Equal Exchange and other fair-trade and locally sourced products.   If you order through their special Grange link:  https://capitalcitygrange.justfoodhub.us/, not only will you be able to pick your order up at the Grange Hall on the First Saturday of each month, but they will donate 30% of their proceeds to support the Grange!  Sue came (virtually) to our October meeting, and the Grange members voted (happily) to accept their generous offer.   You can order until Nov. 28, for a December 4 pickup between 4-6:00 PM.  Orders will be accepted every month on a similar schedule.       *****************************************************************
Please join us on Saturday either in person, or via Zoom to hear more about all of these developments, plus the ventilation options described below by Merry!

If you come to the Hall, please bring an extra layer to wear!   We will be opening some downstairs windows and using our exhaust fan to make sure we have plenty of ventilation.
We will also ask any unvaccinated people who attend in person to stay masked.No potluck this month–between the desire to limit unmasked exposures, and the expected small number of people who will be at the Hall, this seems like the correct choice for this month.   We are eager for infection levels and rates of transmission to go down, and allow us to socialize over food as we have enjoyed so much in the past!

By Grange Rental Agent Merry Shernock

       The President of CCG #469, Tim Swartz, and I, working with members of the Friends of the CCG Hall, have been evaluating for renters of the venue various means of reducing the risk of transmitting COVID-19 and its variants.   There are lots of choices out there–how much do you want to spend?   After over a year of deliberations, we have come up with two strategies to get the most benefit for what we can afford to spend.

Exhausting/Ventilating–potentially virus-laden air is exhausted from the space, and replaced with fresh air from the outside.   The ceiling exhaust fan installed this summer does this well when combined with open windows.   The down-side of this method becomes obvious when outside temperatures drop.   To mitigate this, for users of the upstairs Hall, some tempering of the cold air can best be accomplished by opening windows in the back of the Lower Level, so that outside air travels through heated space before it gets into the Main Hall.   We recognize that this will increase our heating costs–and may not make it really comfortable once real winter temperatures begin. The following image shows 2 windows opened in the back “alcove” of the Lower Level:

Option 2–Filtering–heated room air is recirculated through MERV-13 filters that can remove up to 85% of particles .3 to 1 micron in size.  Virus particles vary in size, but are typically .3 to .5 micron.   We are working on building 2 sets of 4 “Corsi-Rosenthal Boxes”, one set each for upstairs and downstairs.   You can read about them here:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corsi-Rosenthal_Box.

The downside of this method is that these fans make noise, even on low speed.   How much that bothers Hall users will depend on what their activity is.

We will be able to pre-schedule the filter/fan system to turn on before a rental, as we do the thermostats, and to run after each rental use to clean the air, at least for renters who prefer this alternative–see below for how we collect feedback. The following image shows A prototype Corsi-Rosenthal box hung in the Main Hall:

• The EXHAUST/VENTILATING system will work fine for very physically active renters, even in winter.   The cooler air, however, will not be so tolerable for meetings, singers, music rehearsals and other less active users.  It will especially affect any events downstairs.  And it will add to our heating oil bills.
• The FILTERING system will keep the Hall warmer and more comfortable for less physically active renters, but the fan noise will be noticeable.  It will save on heating costs.

The exemption starting in 2016 gave us breathing room to focus on improvements in our Grange Hall, to catch up on deferred maintenance, and to expand our community services.   Over the first 4 years, until March 2020, we saw Berlin “free rentals” increase to over the 2 per month which was our promise.    Those uses included many family celebrations (dinners, weddings, birthday parties, baby showers and many more), plus meetings of the “Resident-Owned Co-op” governing Board of the Weston’s Mobile Home Park (just south of the Hall, on Rt. 12), plus meetings of a Berlin church, Berlin Farmers’ potluck dinners, and more.

Of course, when the pandemic hit in March 2020, all of that came to a sudden halt.   Almost Hall rentals of all types were canceled, moved to the parking lot, or greatly restricted–and that has largely continued to the present.   Some windows of low-infection rates have let some activities resume–but rental revenues plunged by 2/3 for the year from April 2020 to March 2021–and have only partly recovered since then.   Generous donations have helped us survive financially, along with great reductions in cleaning services, parking-lot plowing and other expenses.

During the “second surge” of COVID-19 in the winter of 2020, we were facing the end of the tax exemption period in 2021, and asked the Selectboard to put an “Article” on the Warning for the March 2021 Town meeting, asking for a renewal of the full tax exemption for another 5 years.   They had told us that we would not need to get petitions signed to get this set up, given the public health conditions.   To our surprise, the Selectboard edited our request to only cover exemption from Town property taxes, not including the Education portion, and only to cover exemption for one year.   They told us that we could only reinstate our full-exemption request if we did get signatures after all.   With only a week to go before the filing deadline, and infection rates high, we were not willing to risk the health of Grange members, so we reluctantly agreed to live with the limited exemption request, and to plan for a campaign for reinstatement of full exemption at the 2022 Town Meeting.    We were of course very pleased when the Australian Ballot vote (which substituted for the 2021 Town Meeting) approved the limited request by about a 4 to 1 margin!

       Now we need to get started on our campaign for the 2022 Town Meeting, to get a vote for full exemption for another 5 years.  At our Oct. 2 meeting, this will be one of the main topics.  We will need to get petition signatures (over 100) to make sure our full request is on the ballot without editing, and we’ll need to campaign among Berlin voters to make sure they know that the Grange and the Hall are a real benefit to the Town of Berlin–both in direct services to Berlin residents like the “free rentals”, and in hosting the wide range of community functions that (in normal times) keep our Grange Hall jumping.  Please join us to get our campaign up and running!

State Grange Resolutions

Our meeting will also be discussing how Tim and Carl (our delegates to the VT State Grange Annual Session) should vote on the 14 proposed “Resolutions” which will be discussed, possibly amended, and then voted on.   Those that pass will become official policy of the VT State Grange to which we belong–joining many others.   The list this year includes #11:  Public Service Employees Allowed to Join a Labor Union Without Holding an Election, which was proposed by Carl and accepted at our June meeting.  You can see this one, and all the proposed resolutions on the Grange website, at:  https://capitalcitygrange.org/2021-VSG-resolutions/  There are lots of other interesting ideas in the list, dealing with everything from making permanent the policy of allowing Grange members to participate via Zoom or similar services, to supporting “sustainable agriculture”, to allowing nurses (RNs and LPN/VNs) to have multi-state licenses.   Read them all, and let us  know what you think!

If you come to the Hall, please bring an extra layer to wear!   We will be opening some windows and using our exhaust fan to make sure we have plenty of ventilation.
We will also ask anyone who attends, who is unvaccinated to stay masked.No potluck this month–between the desire to limit unmasked exposures, and the expected small number of people who will be at the Hall, this seems like the correct choice for this month.   We can’t wait for infection levels and rates of transmission to go down, and allow us to socialize over food as we have enjoyed so much in the past!

The last few weeks have been busy with Grange events of various kinds–see the photos and articles below for details on our greatly enjoyed, musically successful and also charitably successful benefit concert, our prize-winning display at the Champlain Valley Fair and Kids Trade & Play on the Statehouse lawn.  We’ll be talking about all of these on Saturday afternoon, Sept. 18th, plus more, and we hope you will join us from wherever you are.   There is a memorial service taking place in the Hall that afternoon, plus the ongoing Delta surge in COVID, which make a remote meeting seem like the best option.  The link is in the Grange Meeting “event” on the website Calendar as usual; here it is in any case:
Join Zoom Meeting:
https://zoom.us/j/91846817691
Meeting ID: 918 4681 7691Some more of the topics:

The panorama to the left shows the crowd picnicking and listening to the sound-check being engineered by Peter Macfarlane (in the blue shirt on the left).    We had about 65 or 70 people attend in person, plus another 20 or so on Zoom.   People enjoyed seeing each other at the Grange Hall, some for the first time since contra dances stopped in early March 2020.   Others came to the Hall for the first time–and it was fun to give them a quick tour of our beautiful (but under-used these days) Hall.
The concert started about 7:00, with Aaron Marcus and Joanne Garton of The Turning Stile playing–and dancing!   Joanne is an accomplished Scottish dancer; Aaron is a flatfoot/clog dancer; each performed on the bottom step of the porch, to the delight of the crowd, while the other played!   Their keyboard/fiddle duets were the main attraction, earning lots of applause.  The pictures below show them in the gathering dusk.
Our second act was Atlantic Crossing, another great Vermont band.   Viveka Fox, Peter Macfarlane and Rick Klein played Vermont, French Canadian and British Isles tunes and songs–including several of their own compositions.   Their connection to the sea and sailing is evident–Rick is a licensed maritime skipper, and Peter builds wooden guide-boats and canoes–and it infuses their songs as well.
The evening was capped off by a “big-band” sound as Joanne & Aaron joined Atlantic Crossing, and they jammed together beautifully.  What you can’t see in the darkness behind the porch is a number of couples and individuals who danced in the parking lot–socially distant but with great enjoyment!
We were pleased that generosity at the admissions tent let us pay the bands well–we are happy to provide some income for the very talented folks who bring such joy to us all.
We also welcomed Just Food Hub, the distributor of Equal Exchange food products, who gave out very popular free samples of chocolate, and also sold EE products to audience members.  They were able to donate a portion of their proceeds to the fundraising effort!  Speaking of which….

        We were so pleased that the crowd was generous in their response to our appeal for contributions for the Friends of the Capital City Grange Hall, and the Contra Dance Umbrella.   The FCCGH supports the Grange with planning and project management of Hall improvements like the new doors and new exhaust fan installed this summer; the CDU runs the contra-dance series which–up until March 2020–was the largest event at the Grange Hall, and our highest-paying tenant.   Since then, the CDU has generously been contributing 25% of the usual payments for “dance evenings” even with dancing not safe or practical.   The funds raised will help both organizations, which in turn will help the Grange to survive the pandemic, and thrive going into the future.
Thanks to everyone who helped make this event happen, came to enjoy it (or tuned in on-line) and contributed both in admissions, and to the fund-raising campaign, which matched the $2,000 challenge, making a total of over $4,000 to support the Friends and the CDU!

Promoting the Grange at the Champlain Valley Fair

Kids Trade & Play steps into the sunshine!

Co-sponsored by the Contra Dance Umbrella and the Friends of the Capital City Grange Hall, the Grange Hall will host an outdoor concert featuring two Vermont bands who have played many times for dances.   Since we are not yet able to hold dances safely, this concert will celebrate and encourage donations to match the $2,000 Challenge assembled with donations from long-time supporters.
We’re starting at 6:00 with a picnic outside, in the Grange parking lot, open to everyone of course.   Bring your favorite food and drink for you and your party–it’s not a pot-luck this time.   But it is a chance to see and socialize with friends, people you’ve danced with, and others you will like too!
The Grange Hall will be open for access to the bathrooms and the drinking fountains, but we will ask you to wear a mask indoors–we’re following the VT Dept. of Health recommendations.  We’ll also ask anyone who has not been vaccinated to stay masked–for everyone’s health!
The music starts at 7:00, and will run to about 9:00 PM–live and streaming via Zoom.   You can find a link to register for the Zoom live-stream at:  https://bit.ly/3jKSsAc, plus more info about the bands:

          On the bill:  Atlantic Crossing, and The Turning Stile!  Both bands have played for contra dances at the Hall for many years, and both have strong concert repertoires besides the tunes which get you on the dance floor.
Admission to the concert will go to pay the bands.   The CDU (and the Grange) are committed to supporting our music and dance community by paying bands well–especially in these times when gigs have been few and far between.   Here’s what we’re asking:

         The concert will run to about 9:00 PM with a break to change the setup for the 2nd band.   Peter Macfarlane, who will also be playing with Atlantic Crossing, is providing the sound–and the Zoom live-stream, which will open at 6:30.
There are pictures of the bands, and more info available at the link given above–but we also want to tell you about the fund-raising purpose of this event:

For many years, the Contra Dance Umbrella, the all-volunteer committee which organizes the dances has raised money to keep the Grange running and to improve the Grange Hall, by sponsoring a “Challenge Fundraiser” every fall.    We find a number of generous folks from the dance community, who put up about $2,000 as a challenge for other dancers and Grange supporters to match with their own donations.
Until 2020, we’ve been able to promote this at a month of dances, culminating in a celebratory dance with special decorations and a dessert potluck, and an air of mounting excitement as donations are tallied on a big sign.  Admission to the dances pays for the bands, callers, and the Hall; donations come in on top of that.  We can’t hold dances or the potluck safely, so we’re offering this concert as the big event this year–as we did with a Pete’s Posse live-stream concert in 2020.
The money raised this year will be split between the Contra Dance Umbrella and the FCCGH (Friends of the Capital City Grange Hall).   The CDU has been supporting the Grange with payments of 1/4 of the normal rent for the usual dance schedule through the pandemic–cutting into their bank balance considerably.   The Friends have funded major Grange Hall improvements like:

        This year, the Friends will be working on ways to install a fresh-air ventilation system for the Hall, to make it safer for everyone, even when we can’t open the windows.   There are lots more improvements waiting to happen, and your donations will help make them real!    The FCCGH is a 501(c)(3) non-profit charity, and donations to them are tax-deductible to the full extent allowed by the law.
We hope that if you can, you will donate either online at:   www.capitalcitygrange.org/donate, or by check or cash at the concert, or by mailing checks to:  FCCGH, PO Box 192, Northfield Falls VT 05664.   All donations by check or via the Paypal link at the website will be acknowledged for tax purposes.
Every dollar you donate will help us keep the dances going as soon as we can safely hold them again, and will keep the Grange surviving and thriving as vital part of the community for all sorts of dances, music, meetings, family celebrations, and much more.   The all-volunteer Grange, the all-volunteer FCCGH and the all-volunteer CDU will make good use of all donations for everyone’s benefit!

We’re please to announce that the Just Food Hub, a new non-profit business that sells and distributes food products from Equal Exchange will be selling a selection of their line at the picnic and concert.   And they will have free samples as well!
You can learn more about their dedication to selling fair-trade products from small farmers and the global South at their website:  https://justfoodhub.us/.   A portion of the proceeds from their sales will benefit the Grange, too!