Heroes and Freedom

Heroes and Freedom

Yesterday was town meeting in Monkton,Vermont

And the other towns across the state.

We managed to vote absentee,

Fred took the ballots to the often closed town office.

Yesterday,

I thought about going,

Then couldn't, wouldn't, didn't go.

I ended up at the doctor's office, my home away from home.

The 20 dollar copay worth it.

No matter the circumstances,

I decided 

I couldn't go.

Oh yes, the catch 22 of New England town meeting.

Fashioned after Quaker town meeting,

Separation church and state?....nah, it's too quaint. Must be preserved.

Using military Roberts Rules

And

 we are all peaceable,

Until we are disagreed with.

Aye, nay, pass, fail.

The voters present voice vote millions to be milked from taxpayers,

Like myself,

It still didn't motivate me to face those people,

Those people who vote,

Proudly, loudly.

While I cannot.

No character flaw ,

I was learning,

Insisting to myself,

I am only  one.

If the meeting makes me sick,

I learned long ago I am not alone in any emotion.

Someday it Will change,

Not yesterday.

I listened instead to the leader of Israel

And

Heard his message,

A Heroes' message.

The Hero,

Maligned by select crabby politicians

And

Their mouthpieces,

Teaching me

 the lesson  of keeping calm,

Deliberate,

Not a speck

Of ambivalence,

While delivering basic information

And the plan of action.

My plan of action

Was to first heal my wounds,

Visible

And

Invisible.

The town report sat on the kitchen table.

I didn't even peek at it  this year.

Never looked up the corrections posted somewhere.

I am done with town meeting,

The quaint community lunch

The polite conversation,

The dagger eyes

I remembered from a past life.

No more yeah and nay

And you can't

Or we won't

Or

You aren't from around here are you?

My oblivion will cost me

Freedom.

The freedom to vote, one person,

One vote.

The taxed vote.

It will be up to the future residents

Of

 Monkton,Vermont,

To find their heroes,

To plot their own course.

For me, resignation fits my mood.

So if 10 percent decides the affairs of the town,

Eventually the 90% will rebel.

I will be heading south.

Meg 3.4.15

Pondering Town Meeting

Pondering Town Meeting Day

(Oh I know it's Valentine's day....I posted this on front porch forum, local listserv)

MARY GERDT,  CEMETERY RD

I have written several articles, my viewpoints, on town meeting. I moved here from the Land of Lincoln in 1981. I finally started attending town meeting and have stopped again. It is an archaic bygone dinosaur process. Civility expected? Wish I had attended town meetings from long ago. Social media a threat to democracy? No, I feel it is the level playing field. In the auditorium with people looking at me, I freeze up, just as I did on stage as a girl. Why did I have to ask to have my name added to a map of properties when I have owned the property with my husband for years? It took all the sap out of me to speak up. I will not subject myself to Robert's (Civil War) Rules again. The town officers up on stage, above the fray. Most people silent, concerned, taxed to death. Let's get modern and run some polls. Allow people to virtually participate When convenient for them. Explain the budget, explain the changes. Explain why they need something that costs money. Put up a video. Anything else is excluding those who cannot attend, for any reason. One vote, one person. My articles: http://traveloguefortheuniverse.blogspot.com/search?q=town+meeting

Revisiting Vermont Property Tax rules, sinkholes

Tis the season for town meeting planning.
In Vermont, there is quite a system of taxation...learn all you can.


Revisiting some old articles I wrote about Vermont Property taxes and the practice of selling owners' lien to pry from their hands that scrap of Earth their heart occupies.
Let's get real.
There's no place like home.
Our dream, our ancestors had a dream.
They worked, paid.
We worked, paid.
Then those people tried to take our farm.
9 months late. Narrowly averted.
I was more embarrassed than anything at first.
I missed it. I owned property for 20 years and no one told me it was for sale.
It was in the print version of the newspaper that I read on line.
It sounds selfish I know, but it bothered me the indigent clients I worked with looked at me like, whoa, girl, do you need help??? I was hopping around carefree,
Should have been a warning.

First the link http://traveloguefortheuniverse.blogspot.com/search/label/Halls%20of%20Shame

Then a painting I did...

My nightmare

Finally a movie of our property, our lives.

Town Meeting Day Blues

Town Meeting Day Blues

Went to bed last night,

Dreamt out of the blue,

People came together,
Not just a few.

Each stood up,
Said a word,
Then on to the next,
Til everyone was heard,
Not just the best.

Good and bad,
Big and small,
Every size imagined,
Every height,
No matter how tall.

The people said
How they felt of the taxes,
That took their life savings,
That threatened their species,
And all could listen,
Consider each story,
The hardships, the pains.

Instead I saw the faces,
terrified to speak,
or voting in a great chorus,
afraid to stand out.

Others spoke,
so smooth like silk,
Others trembling voices like mine,
at the door of Oz.

I am staying home today,
Voted absent,
Paper votes.
Leaving the verbal spar to those
with intact neuroimmune systems.
Mine is plum worn out.

sorry,
my dream did not come true
and not all poetry rhymes....

adding a painting too
called
Big Red goes to Town meeting...

 

January Thaw Redux

January Thaw Redux
and Monkton Chronicles

 a giant wind from warmer places pelted the house and melted snow all day yesterday,
the second thaw of the month.
now going back to freezing for awhile.

on the town front, trying to spread the word:


monkton chronicles 1.31.13

Monkton Town Meeting Concerns

We received a message in the grapevine stating that town fathers are
going to vote the 1 million dollar new town hall bond issue at town
meeting instead of letting everyone who has to work for a living come
in and vote it up or down using Australian ballot. Has anyone else
heard this? Posting here, in Monkton, anywhere. Decisions this big and
Taxes this big must not be decided and raised with such tactics.

who to tell??
mary...I am thankful I have readers all over the world,
who perhaps can send some freedom vibes our way.
notes: in Vermont town meetings there can be voice vote and also polling for some big issues and candidates (all day) by paper ballot.
many people have to work and cannot attend the meeting but vote on paper or absentee.



 

Ex Parte Communications and More Town Attorney Shenanigans

Ex Parte Communications and More Town Attorney Shenanigans


I really like this link above that is part of my core curriculum for understanding town politics,
rules and procedures. Sometimes people throw around terms. Law is particularly
snarly with such words, and strings of words: Latin, English and the like.
of course medicine is similar but i can speak and feel comfortable in that world
i understand the order, the protocol logic
Some things are common sense and they are also rules of law.
At the end of the day, with infractions and Shenaniganzas, the common man or woman can do little to affect town fathers' behaviors.

Friday finds us in extended stick season in Vermont at the height of darkness...
Today is a week, 7 days before, you know, the end times and when the daylight gets longer again.
The end times could be an event or just a shift, a schizm, a bump in the road.
As I have surmised before, end times or not, we are always suffering, sustaining, rejoicing and accepting changes, always and for ever.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

More sides of town meeting day

Yes, I know some people may read the title,
sigh & flip back on
animal planet or desperate housewives re runs.

believe me I am doing this to help the future voters in Vermont to be better informed.

I did a little research, never done, re: the traditional town meeting.
Interesting...
Robert's Rules only around since post Civil War c.1865 or later.
He was a military man.
Vermont towns were chartered 250 years ago.
Likely the early genuine source Monkton town meetings were guided by Friend's, Quakers.
Maybe I was in the right meeting, only the wrong year?
In 1820 as a woman I could not have voted. I could however, have elbowed Fred
to ask about changing an article.
I bet the meeting rules of yore would have recognized a Change as an Amendment.
And each voice could have felt free to be voiced.

Here is a good article about town meeting...


http://www.palisadeshudson.com/2012/03/vermonters-buy-into-a-constitutional-mess-of-pottage/

Monkton Chronicles...

Monkton Chronicles update link...

Monkton Chronicles.Town Meeting 2012

Monkton, Vermont Town Meeting

Monkton Chronicles

March 6, 2012

by mary e. gerdt

all rights reserved 2012

My first rough draft was eaten by Google. Perhaps a conspiracy theorist would call it the next generation of social engineering. A realist would blame my inability to press “save” early & often enough and using the wrong version of something. I took it as a sign to, well, start over.

I wanted to start with a photo looking out at Monkton on Town Meeting Day 2012.

town meeting day monkton,vt 2012

For my first 25 years in Vermont, I had to work on town meeting day,

Or take a vacation day. In Monkton town meeting is on a March voting Tuesday during the day.

My initial plan was not to go to town meeting. I felt a release of anxiety with that plan.

A day for myself. We had voted absentee. At the only few town meetings I have been to,

I did not like how people voted out loud, others were looking at you or them, judging, frowning, questioning, holding to the Rules.

To Fred, a lifelong Vermonter, it was a piece of cake. Natural. He knew how to glide with the questions.

How different we can feel with experience, being an expert, or going through the cognitive motions when they are familiar. What is next on the voting?

Is everybody understanding the 200 pages of town and school budget spreadsheets?

Hurry, the Jell-O salad is melting.

How odd that being an Illinoisan, that I find this town management by the citizens to be

Foreign, haphazard, and dominated by the most vocal. The little people mute in the back.

This morning Fred talked me into going.

I made a few notes in the town report and made some calculations, like the hourly wages of the tax collector and any big concerns, like my dreams of delinquent property tax law reform. I Ink it out, my visualization technique, the first step towards realization. Come on, it is for the children who lined the crowded school auditorium/gym.

The children should not bear costs like late tax penalties and fear of zero tolerance tax sales on top of the high taxes.

If I ever am successful at reform, they might thank me when they or their parents are having hard times.

It was nice to see so many people out to vote. The room was packed.. A few people spoke up.

The agenda moved along.

Still I could not consistently say out loud “yeah” or “nay”, and kept thinking, well that passed,

Or that is OK to pass. Only when I reached a vote I felt strongly about could I muster a “nay,” one of the very few I heard considering the size of the room. I did not hear enough voices for the crowd.
What was it?

I did manage to ask several questions and tripped over Captain Robert’s Rules when I used the word change instead of amendment and was told no you can’t again.

The room got a civic lesson and I got a lesson in how perhaps we need a new system

Of communication besides Robert’s Rules.

It was a wow I am still a flatlander moment and one I will not forget. Always learned better that way anyway.

After the meeting, more moments perhaps better left on the gym floor with the cake crumbs.

I do want to thank the moderator for keeping us all on track and encouraging attendance and participation.

It really was the

Knowing and courage to speak up that I saw as an invisible wall

Between awestruck citizen statesmen, and the more experienced citizen activists

And those oblivious to tax burdens.



Fred looked down at one of the kids and said, “Are you getting all this?” and the kid nodded and smiled.

I was encouraged. The next generation.

(Did I make faces their teacher could not see when she promoted one of her agenda items,

“a teachable moment?”)



It was a relief to get back home to the cats and fresh air and sunny cold March day.

I tried to write a post once for over an hour and it seemed nothing like this one. Then it died.

That is OK. I made it through town meeting and my foreign-er anxiety and my flub at Robert’s Rules and my rant after class.



Can we ever hope to reform this system of yeah and nay and….

did you hear the silent ones? Overwhelmed, perhaps cannot understand

The complex systems or just too tired or beat to fight?



So here is my post of town meeting 2012.

The town hall vote is still pending

But most other things got approved,

The civics class has a paper due,

We exercised a right many people do not have,

6:37 pm, And I am ready to move on with my day off.
taking tomorrow off the blog to let this diffuse into the blogsphere...
mary gerdt, citizen legislator for a day 3.6.12
monkton,vt








For anyone looking to improve your meetings,
some suggestions and facts
from Ohio State U.
http://ohioline.osu.edu/cd-fact/l700.html

Very interesting was the fears that kept people from speaking up.
There are a number of barriers to overcome so you can formulate what to say
while people are looking at you.

Town Meetings, lessons

Lessons in Town meetings,
I was searching for answers why Monkton Chronicles seemed frustrated
about
taxes and criticisms about minutes
like wanting to see town minutes timely and more thoroughly and participate
as fully as i can.
if i do not feel comfortable getting all bully in someone's face or shouting Yeah
at the meeting, my meek nay getting a dirty look, sorry if i am so sensitive,
so if taxes go up-they will-because i could not attend town meeting because it makes me nauseated to see such an antiquated out of date,
intimidating for some process of yelling votes and dirty looks, the 85% of communication
nonverbal. how do i say this? to the world.

Here is a great link to a town meeting that made me laugh and realize I really am better off at home and did my absentee ballot.

http://villagetattler.com/2011/08/14/the-bullies-pulpit-huntingtons-town-board/

oh yes, Happy 113th Birthday Mr. Kuethe. I still remember your rough weathered hands
your kind face and riding on your shoulders home up the hill to my parent's place.

Monkton Chronicles election 2.23.12

Monkton Chronicles

election results

Thursday 2.23.12 Vote

(that's a weird day)

on the

Unified Planning Document

(huh?)

Unofficial results from phone call

passed 130-128

(not on the website?)
(what is all the fuss about?)

monktonvt.com

check out unified planning document & minutes from 1.26.12 selectboard mtg

The election results should be contested
and hopefully one of the 128 will protest,
or maybe one of the 90%
who did not vote will protest? (if they did not know)

Either way, I am limited in my ability to fight.
I am not, however, limited so far in my freedom to speak
in my blogosphere.
Hope this will serve as historic record of
a vote
where property owners lost something
and not quite sure what it is yet.
When you read the UPD, the unified planning document
and then you look out the window at monkton,
a rural town of less than 2000 people,

you wonder why we need all these additonal restrictions
on our property.
You wonder who profits from these rules,
who benefits,
who pays.
There is too much fine line, ink and lawyering behind many rules
like gravel extraction.
rocks is about all we have left,
they want to take that away too.
I hope for skeptics to come forward
and stand up
against the strange tactics that got me out to vote on a Thursday,
no crowds, no waiting, parked right in front
one of the 128.

mary gerdt all rights reserved.
the feelings expressed herein are my own,
i am a person,
a woman,
a voter,
not a household couch
(this refers to we got a courtesy postcard re the vote last saturday
before the vote addressed
to my husband only. I asked about this and was told
it was a courtesy and only went to households.--is that like corporations are people? I want my name, the wo-man voter in the house also on the postcard. mary)

Happy Birthday Mr. Lincoln II

Happy Birthday Mr. Lincoln II

[*if there was a fictional or theoretically possible alternative path for Mr. Lincoln,
would it go something like this?]

Abe woke up in the hotel room, air cool and to his liking, with a freshness that
cleaned his mind.
Ah, for a moment, his sleep so delightfully deep, free from the awake world.
Waking can be stressful, and dreaming he felt a lightness, a rebirth so to speak.
The war was over.
Again and again, would every day left in his life start this way?
His shoulder pinched and he winced as a drop of blood came to the surface.
Another reminder of a miracle, that night, at the Ford Theater.
That night Elizabeth their waitress was bringing drinks and tripped over Abe's feet as the gun was raised
and the trigger was pulled. Abe fell forward and the bullet intended for his head glanced off his shoulder, ripping and tearing flesh and bone.
There had been some time elapse now and healing was marginally successful.
He reminded Mary of that often as she griped at his incapacitation.
He was alive, they were alive, and finally in Vermont as Mary had planned.
Their presidential suite at the Equinox was stunning, comfortable and worth settling into.
He may very well die here. Abe agreed to several speaking engagements in exchange
for permanent residency at the hotel. He and Mary left Illinois and Washington DC
for Vermont to escape all the rat races, the assassins, the political animals.
He sipped the local spring water and nudged Mary.
"It is time to vote."
She smiled and slowly mobilized.
December 18,1880.
Women had gained the right to vote.
Abe was 71, Mary 62.
They were feeling their age, but they proudly walked to the town hall
to vote in this historic election.

And yet there is a story perhaps farther fetched and still possible...
as Abe grew accustomed to local politics in Vermont, he started to notice
that while each voter was free to speak up, very few voters actually did speak up
and some did not vote at all.
As he wanted to level the playing field, he practised with
representing local people in their local town political fights.
Could you imagine how hard that was for local elected officials?
pretend monkton chronicles headlines Christmas 1880
Abe Lincoln is up against you...how dare he...he is representing that uppity town citizen
who used to be quiet...
Abe Lincoln came to the town meeting again last night...says that is not how
they do in Illinois..well maybe we should show him what we do to flatlanders...
Abe Lincoln thinks his wife should vote, well nah nah...
Abe Lincoln believe town meeting antiquated in 1880....
So he thinks if he won the Civil War he can tell us how to run a town meeting?

OK, it did not happen,
Abe was assassinated and never made it to Vermont.
Abe's only child to live to adulthood, a son, lived in Manchester and built a mansion, Hildene.
Now all of Abe Lincoln's descendants are gone.
What if events had turned ever so slightly?
Just speculating on another way it might have happened,
Happy Birthday Mr. Lincoln

Rethink Town Meeting?

Great article by Victoria Rose Perkins
It is time to re-think town meetings and the faux control aw shucks chicken, pies
and knitting. Oh yes, and the screaming minorities while others sit silent
like a large percentage of us will do
when in a room full of people.

http://www.helium.com/items/1318921-why-the-traditional-town-meeting-in-vermont-is-no-longer-appropriate-in-the-current-era

Town Meetings to remember

History being made in Bristol, Vermont,
our neighboring town.

This must have been funny for the corrected: this is the planning commission,
This guy comes in, tries to say he has a voice.
Don't that silly guy know,
Selectmen and correction Planning commission members are Kings....

**warning: the writer of this blog does not condone treating citizens like this,
that is the stuff revolutions are made of...........

corrected after posting: this is the planning commission...

Town Meeting Day Rag

Town Meeting day in Monkton, Vermont
Will be attended by the usual group of
Yellers yelling Yeah and Nay and
some getting a kick out of kicking
the little people with the little voices.

Is it really worth it to attend a meeting of people
Who will give me that look, the ones
Who have ignored my property tax fight for over a year
oh wait, no they didn't ignore me per se, they voted against me.

I have spent 30 years of contemplating what this place is,
How did I get here,
Retro migrating West to East,
Unlike those in the old cemetery who migrated straight down.

When I hear a noise I cannot explain in this old house,
I want to blame it on the restless dead,
Are they saying "Stay" or are they saying "Go"?
Listen harder, was it "Yes" or "No"?

And did the old people struggle through,
never knowing what to do
when the taxes ate their bread
and look there, they are all dead.

Staying home, my vision crystal clear,
I am envisioning a future, I believe it is near,
Where we keep our bread, we keep our farm
Town Meeting is passe,
There will be no more harm.

03.01.2011
mary gerdt
monkton,vermont

Town Meeting,property taxes in vt

02.27.10
i have decided to keep this posted as my road sign until after town meeting. i will not attend and do not feel comfortable there. i am white middle aged, middle income although teetering while i'm tweeting. ms makes me have priorities different than before diagnosis. suddenly i have to pay attention to what stresses me out. the town stopped communicating with me when i questioned why they almost sold my house and why no one had the human_ness to see if i was ok or whether we needed some help. i work in long term medicaid and ask every day to help some person trying to navigate a debilitating and sometimes devastating illness and they cannot accept their disability, how could they? Kubler Ross calls that denial. so when i fail to hire a lawyer or re enter the legal system about the town's actions, don't think i have failed. i have chosen to publish these words i speak and hope others will awaken to the progressive destruction of our assets' value. my dream of home ownership has been littered with battles and my scars are depper because of ms. this i must speak outloud. if people judge me they are welcome to swallow that themselves. i will not react. but when the masses awake to the tax mess that might lead to their homes being taken in Vermont to pay for schools to have laptops, then look to this posting and say, by God she was right. mary gerdt monkton vermont 2.27.10


The new paradigm.
Schools need money and in Vermont must suck the blood of the property tax payers.
When you have run out of blood, they eliminate you.
Such was nearly my lot but we got to be revived just in time.
I fear others will fall prey to the local tax collectors who collect a statewide tax by selling your property.
The rules usually read, anytime more than $250 is owed. Are you scared yet?
I know there are rules about it, I know there are procedures.
I also know this time, especially in the current economic conditions in Vermont, no one should lose their house over 6 thousand in taxes, 9 months late.
I nearly did.
So here is my version of Vermont Town Meeting and property tax.
Next week some Vermont citizens (unless they have to work or do not feel comfortable there like myself) will gather in the age old tradition of town meeting day.
My feeling is of being an outsider, a flatlander. Skeptical but never feeling welcome to speak up. Nauseated actually. Fred was so comfortable. He knew what was going on. I never really did. I guess that is my fault.
With voice voting and over zealous activist screaming, I felt as though I could not vote my conscious,
Nee
I felt it was more like a sermon at times and a church service. My fault.
I felt like glances from audience and those “higher ups” in town up on the school stage. I felt more detached than ever.
Yes, “all the world is a stage”, as was in Shakespeare’s time.
The town report a mysterious document of numbers, how can I audit that? What if I question that?
Who will be angered? Do I have the energy to take this on?
Meanwhile I am still trying to decipher why they picked our property to sell for taxes.
There were several others in our same sinking ship.
We feel fortunate to have had some nest egg, earmarked for my inevitable disability.
There goes that money, but at least we got to pay and stay.
A strange new paradigm for Vermonters.
So I am not faulting schools, only the funding schematic.
I am not faulting town meetings because it is up to me to adapt and choose not to attend.
I am seeking to inform other Vermonters that you must pay to stay and I am continuing my fight to stop the sales of homes in these economic times. The burden is too great.
Mary Gerdt Monkton,Vermont