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Every year on Labor Day weekend, a bunch of us go camping - usually in Vermont. This time among other things that we did (most of the time seems to be spent preparing food, eating, it and cleaning up) we went to Hildene. The mansion was built by Robert Todd Lincoln and was the Lincoln family home for many years. In addition to being the son of the president he was the Chairman of the Pullman Company, which was a huge manufacturing company in the early 20th century.

The house is very nice - well furnished of course. The exhibit was supposed to include a Lincoln stovepipe hat but the sign said it was being shown somewhere else. In addition to the house there were lovely gardens, a small railroad museum with a very fancy pullman car, and a shed with interesting tools.

Click here for pictures:

Last weekend we went on our usual Labor Day camping trip with a bunch of friends. It was in Vermont - at a State Park on the Connecticut river which had not much damage. The river had been up almost 25 feet, but most of the camp site was about 50 above river level.

We went to the Vermont State Fair and in several pavilions that had cows, rabbits, and other wild life. We espied several digestive system diagrams - some drawn by children.

This poster had the definition of a cow. In summary it says:

In brief the externally visible features are: two lookers, two hookers,
four stand uppers, four hanger-downers and a swishey-wishey.

( Cow Definition )



This one was of a cow (the fine print is hard to read).
( Cow Digestive System )
This of course suggested the well-known cow's stomach diagram drawn by Bernie Greenberg to illustrate a new page control locking system for Multics (drawn in 1976).

( Multics cow's stomach )

Behind the Bread and Puppet Museum was the Paper Maché Cathedral - also called the dirt floor theatre. It was about to be used for a wedding; guests were gathering while we were there. I'm sure we could have stayed if we wanted to.





( Wedding program and food )

( Back in the museum )

On Labor Day weekend we went camping in Vermont as we usually do. This time we went to Island Pond which is near Canada. Much of the time is spent preparing food, eating, and cleaning up but we took to trips, one to the Bread and Puppet Museum and the other to Canada to the Magog Food vendors festival.

We had three adjacent campsites on a hill overlooking the pond through the trees.


There were 11 of us. This time we had 3 adjacent sites and we designated the middle one as the food site and the other two for tents. This camp ground is a private one and wasn't as nice appearing as the ones in State Parks that we usually use but one feature was that there was a water spigot at each site and one of them had electricity - useful for Chris and his CPAP machine. This time a couple of people decided to set up a salon in one of the sleeping camp sites which disrupted some of the togetherness that we usually have and meant that we only had two tables for community dining and food prep where we really need 3. Only at some meals did we all sit together. One big advantage of this arrangement was that one of the two who was an extreme cigarette smoker wasn't hanging around the common site while smoking.

Dinner once night featured grilled fish, grilled steak, corn, and Jeff's special apple crisp. The next night's dinner featured fish stew, sausages, green beans, and salad. Smores and sacrificial marshmallow gods were part of the after dinner activities.

This camp site also had sewerage hookups in some locations and there were a number of RVs there that stay all summer - I asked at the office and they said that some people keep their RVs over the winter. It was a pretty quiet site with not too many kids running around. There were a few dogs on leashes. We had no dogs but this one at the Bread and Puppet Museum would have been nice and a lot less trouble since he doesn't need to be walked or fed nor are cleanup bags needed.

( Ignatz, a somewhat aloof dog )
At the end of the trip we compute each person's share and split up the left over food - there was lots of this. We always resolve to pare down the food list but never do.

( Not a wood-fired laptop )