WELL, WELL, Well, It just happened, I got a call from Editor Cruickshank and he broke down and did it. Yes he got a great buy on some laptops and all the Northfield News staff are upgrading their old reliable Royals to these new Atari 800 Laptops. “State of the art” he claims, I bet Charlie’s Corner can’t claim this big jump in technology. The news is going to roll like never before. I just received mine and it’s amazing, you let it boot up and warm up and in about 15 minutes she’s ready to roll. And to kick off this new entry into the 1970’s I was even given my own email address. That’s right, you can now email me with your ideas, thoughts or transgressions. crumbscorner@gmail.com now exists, just hit the internet and all that shouldn’t be printed will be, news that only you and I find useful will now be written up, changed and may actually amount to something. I can’t wait to receive my first email, who will it be? Who will it be?

4th of July is coming, I knew this press pass was good for something. So far I’ve been invited to 7 different parades honoring the 4th. It all started last Saturday in Waterbury Parades Bar b Ques and fireworks. All comped. I got to hob-nob with Eric Michaels of WDEV fame. We witnessed a fireworks display which proved to be one on the best, thus far in the season. I was invited to partake in chicken wings from the Reservoir in downtown Waterbury. You know we should have a Chicken Wing tasting competition here in Northfield over Labor Day weekend. I love chicken wings, I could be a judge, and we could use this Atari 800 Laptop to do all the technical calculations. Oh but I digress, the parade scene is unbelievable. Saturday coming, 1:00 pm, Brandon Independence Day celebration, this year’s theme, “Games People Play. Food, Fireworks and at the church the infamous game of Barnyard Bingo. (I’ll let figure that out.) Montpelier, 6:00 pm, Parade. Food Dance, and wild environmentalists, I can’t wait. And I have a prime seat for the fireworks. Richmond, always a great parade, starts at 10:30 and if you play your cards right you can even run up to Milton or Colchester for their afternoon affair and Head back to Bolton, hike to the top of the ski area and watch Fireworks displays from Waitsfield, Warren, Milton ,Mallets Bay and Thunder Road. The sight is amazing.

Spent a few hours at the Tunbridge Historical Expo this weekend. If you haven’t been, It’s time you go. But you’ll have to wait till next year. This year’s high point was the Scare Crow building competition and the Puppets on parade. Even the people moseying around in period clothes was amazing. The food was excellent, found a neat little place that the Black Forest restaurateurs run, it was great food, didn’t have chicken wings but, the shish ka bob was good. It was run by a Greek named Nick, very good conversation and well versed in Vermont history.

The Vermont Quilt Festival was at Champlain Fairgrounds this weekend another great event. (Even if it’s no longer in Northfield.) Champagne and Chocolate Preview on Thursday night was stupendous by all accounts. The doors opened to the 34th annual Vermont Quilt Festival at 7:30. Invitees were allowed a preview of contest quilts, special exhibits, and met with contest winners, more than 80 vendor booths were in attendance. All the while attendees were enjoying champagne, ginger ale and mouth-watering chocolates courtesy of Lake Champlain Chocolates (again no chicken wings).

Finally, as you may already know from last week I’m a little perturbed at the Town Manager. When did she decide to think so little of the Northfield community that she would decide that she could ignore the wishes of the town’s people.

Now maybe I’ve got this all wrong, but, I’ve received more positive feedback on last week’s column than I could possibly have dreamed of.

With that said, I’ve got a great idea, a wonderful idea, a wonderful, fabulous idea. Let’s start a scoreboard with crazy stuff the manager has done. We can call it Nancy’s Crumbs, Whenever you hear of something crazy that our manager has done or said you send it to crumbscorner@ gmail.com and we’ll start a Talley sheet.

Now we won’t be able to write about all of them, but don’t let that stop you, we need to hear of them all. I’ve already heard of the trash man altercation, and the letter of reference refusal. This manager can give us fodder for days on end. Let’s see if its’ really as crazy as I hear it is. Every comment will stay anonymous. Power of the press, confidential informants. This is great, this email thing, and my Atari 800. This could prove to be huge, Editor John, I need more space. Till next week, Get out of the house, go watch a parade, keep an eye on the manager and most all, keep the crumbs off the table.

Richard Wobby, Jr crumbscorner@gmail.com