Labour Day Parade

True to my word I am getting back to the Parade which was postponed because of Hurricane Irene until today.  Originally the town postponed it to 10am today but agreed to change the time to 2pm when the churches approached them explaining they all have their worship services around that time.  Several congregations actually have floats in the parade.  Maybe that's how we can raise our profile and boost our own numbers; have Bob and Ron, our session, up on the back of a ute, some gospel music blaring, a bass guitar perhaps, maybe a few good jokes at the expense of Reformed folk!

.  We played it safe and handed out helium balloons with a card attached about our church, to passers by.  There were plenty.  The annual parade is the biggest in CT we are told.  It lasted for well over an hour with every community group, organization, business, etc you could imagine.  This is one patriotic town.  The parade began with a lovely rendition of the National Anthem in its entirety after the huge flag you see above was unfurled by about 50 volunteers to which hundreds of people stood solemnly bar a few unruly children.  There were a few WWII era fighter planes that flew over during the parade.  Revolutionary and civil war re-enacters fired off volleys periodically as they walked down the parade route frightening the wits out of dogs, children, even me.  In my defense, if one is busy blowing up balloons, or attaching string etc, one is unaware of when the volleys will be fired.  Comprenez-vous?

Volunteering for a worthwhile cause

Here I am apologizing again for not having posted for such a long time.  A thousand pardons.  The weeks seem to fly by faster than two shakes of a lamb's tail.  In the interim, we have been making hay while the sun shines because the winter is a comin.  The nights are getting nippy.  However, I knew that the minute I got the winter quilt out, the temperatures would climb, and so they did.  Today it was a balmy 82F/28C, perfect for the Labour Day Parade - albeit postponed - which I will mention in due course.

Yesterday Ron and two other men from our church set off at the crack of dawn - 5.30am - in the dark to a small town in upstate NY.  A good portion of this town, 25% or so, was flooded during Hurricane Irene which passed us by.  We heard of a fellow church member in this wee town, Schohare, through the Orthodox Presbyterian grapevine.  He and others were badly affected, being without flood insurance since their town has never flooded, period.  He and his wife were away visiting family when the flood hit so were unable to move possessions to safety. They also spent 3 days waiting to get back home because of the flight delays caused by the storm. {By the way it's Ron here now}The local creek flooded to 26 feet (previous high was 16 feet) so they had 5 feet (1.5 meters) of water in their ground floor. All furniture, electrical appliances, books, musical instruments (grand piano in the family for three generations), huge sheet music collection, etc. etc. were destroyed. The lower storey of Frank's 1850's house (that's him pictured on the right)

had to be cleared back to the framing. ie all the outside cladding was destroyed, the insulation and all interior walls had to be ripped out. This picture was in the underground basement and shows all the old wiring (white) and the new temporary wiring (yellow) that Frank installed so he and his wife could live in the upper floor. We had to rip out all the wiring because the water forced its way inside the plastic covering - even a 10 meter section I stripped the plastic off was wet all the way through. The other thing to notice from the picture is the terrible standard of the wiring! I'm sure any electrician would have fainted clean away at the sight of this fuse box! After a long dirty day the below is what it looks like now.

All neat and done to code! We are planning to come back in 2 weeks to do some more work. Once you see the devastation in the town you look at your lawn and pretty quickly decide it can wait another week to be mowed.

The community spirit is really quite wonderful in the town as well. One of the local churches puts on a (free)hot meal for all residents and volunteers. They have done so every day since the flood hit. Many of the families surrounding the town prepare meals and bring them to town and just drive around the streets handing out the food. The nearest operating restaurant is about 6 miles (9.6 km) away so you can see the need for this sort of support. It was a tiring day but a real blessing to meet and become friends with this very brave and resolute Godly man.