I went to the statehouse today for a grant ceremony (we got 15,000)

[cali]

the money is for our grange building- historic preservation. It was great fun. It was held in the Cedar Creek Room in Vermont's beautiful statehouse. The statehouse is remarkably open. There are no guards at the doors and no metal detectors. You just walk in. In fact, though I saw lots of reps and senators over the 2 hours or so that I was there, I didn't see a single security person or cop.

The Senate and House chambers are the oldest legislative chambers in their original condition in the nation. It's on the registry of National Historic sites. In the summer some of the front lawn is a vegetable garden with all the produce going to local food pantries.

Governor Shumlin wandered around greeting folks and then spoke to those assembled. He went off on repubs and tea baggers and everyone cheered. He talked about how repukes want to cut all federal funding for historic preservation.





http://www.central-vt.com/web/sthouse/index.html
http://dir.groups.yahoo.com/group/Caledonia9/?v=1&t=directory&ch=web&pub=groups&sec=dir&slk=3
http://www.therepublic.com/view/story/94e45eebcde049f6bfa232a1bd406b3f/VT--Historic-Preservation/

[CaliforniaPeggy]

1. Your Governer sounds fantastic...

I wish we could clone him.

[cali]

3. He is a good guy

though I hear from people who know that he's not as good a listener as he should be. The guy I really love at the Statehouse is the Speaker. His name is Shap Smith- and it's a name that I think will become more familiar to people in coming years. He's pretty young and he's the guy that managed to overturn are ex-guv's veto of the same sex marriage legislation. Now that guy is a good listener and is so not arrogant.

(and I've always liked your governor)

[DainBramaged]

2. Congrats!

:thumbsup:

[cali]

4. Thanks!

We were a bit surprised (and thrilled) that we got so much (the grant was on the high end)

[Deep13]

5. Love that small state accessibility.

Sadly, that is no longer how things are in my native state of MA or my adopted home state of OH. I did run into Gov. Dukakis a couple times. Once as part of a field trip with the student group MassPIRG. Another student and I got lost looking for a state rep. and kind of bumped into him by accident. He was coming from the officials' parking lot (now it's a covered garage), shook our hands and said MassPIRG was a great organization and disappeared onto the elevator. The second time I was in Boston to see a John Denver concert and while sightseeing in the statehouse stumbled upon Dukakis addressing the legislature. This was about a week after he accepted the D. nomination for president in Atlanta. The gallery was open to the public, so I went in and caught the tail end of it.

Unlike VT, MA uses a "new" statehouse. The old, colonial one is now a museum in the financial district.

[xchrom]

6. Cool. Nt

[cali]

7. it was cool

made me feel good about government.