Grange Notes by Tim Swartz, Grange President (with everyone’s help) May 2, 2024
Saturday afternoon Grange meeting: planning for the future…and enjoying the Cheesy Cooking Contest!
We’ll be starting at 4:30, as we welcome all the contestants and their dishes including 1-2 cups of cheese…since that’s the only requirement for being part of the contest, we’re very excited to see how many kinds of recipes people have come up with. Since some of them are likely to be hot, we’re going to have to do the judging as the first part of the meeting! We hope that many of the entrants will bring enough to share at the Community Potluck, which of course starts at 6:00.
As announced in the Grange Notes, the contest organizers have recruited a couple of local luminaries as judges: State Representative Anne Donahue, who represents Northfield and Berlin, and retired English teacher, principal and Executive Director of the Kellogg-Hubbard Library Tom McKone. We’re always happy to honor people whose work keeps our local institutions going. For this contest, the most momentous responsibility they will shoulder is to evaluate the variety of main dishes/appetizers/sauces/
Once we have concluded the contest, we’ve got Grange business to take care of. Much of this will involve planning for the next few months, which will feature some fun activities at the Grange Hall! These include:
As announced in the Grange Notes, the contest organizers have recruited a couple of local luminaries as judges: State Representative Anne Donahue, who represents Northfield and Berlin, and retired English teacher, principal and Executive Director of the Kellogg-Hubbard Library Tom McKone. We’re always happy to honor people whose work keeps our local institutions going. For this contest, the most momentous responsibility they will shoulder is to evaluate the variety of main dishes/appetizers/sauces/
Once we have concluded the contest, we’ve got Grange business to take care of. Much of this will involve planning for the next few months, which will feature some fun activities at the Grange Hall! These include:
- June 1: Sing-Along! will be the “Program” for 5-6:00, following an annual tradition. Grange meetings have always included group singing; a fondness for the singing binds our membership together. Matt Nunnelly, our Grange Musician will be leading many of the songs. Do you have a list of songs you’d like to have us sing? Bring them on Saturday, and we’ll make sure we have song lyrics available for June’s meeting. We’d be happy to have more people who want to lead and accompany singing–let us know!
- July is typically a month when we don’t have a formal Grange meeting, since the first weekend is always a holiday weekend. Later that month, we’ve been invited to bring some contra-dancing to the Grange Family & Junior Camp, at the Grange Center camp in Brookfield. Can we pull this together?
- August 3rd will be the date for our next Grange barbecue/potluck dinner! We like to cook some burgers and other grill items, to go along with dishes that people bring to share, and then eat at outdoor tables. Last year, the Senior Jazz Ensemble played for us, and we got about 100 people! Time to do some planning to organize and publicize this fun event.
- On August 31st, the Montpelier Contra Dance and the Friends of the Capital City Grange Hall will be finishing up the annual Challenge Fundraiser, which raises money for the FCCGH to use in financing more improvements in the Grange Hall. We’ll hear about plans for the final dance, and what the Friends are planning for upgrades.
- Looking beyond summer, our September Grange Meeting happens on Sept. 7th. This is a rare year when it doesn’t correspond with Labor Day weekend, so we don’t have to move it to the 3rd Saturday. We’ll be having our biennial elections of Grange Officers–please think about joining the ranks of the people who keep our Grange going!
- We’ll also be reviewing our capitalcitygrange.org website, our costs for maintaining it, ways to improve the site, how to get more input and how to spread the word through it.
We hope that you will join us, not only for the cheese contest, but to help us keep the Grange going, growing, singing, eating and laughing together!
Route 12: finally getting repaved!
Anyone who drives Rt. 12 south of Montpelier knows that the pavement has been deteriorating for a long time. There’s been a bumper crop of potholes which keeps growing. This spring finally marks the long-awaited resurfacing of the stretch from the Montpelier city line (just north of the overpass) to Northfield–8 miles. I happened to be at the Grange Hall (hanging the sign for Saturday’s meeting) when the pavement grinder was completing the final pass on the north end of the work area. People like Merry and I, who live in Northfield, are already experiencing a smoother ride on Rt. 12, with the various patches and potholes ground off. We look forward to the laying of even smoother new pavement, which should start very soon!