Association Meeting, Sat. March 6 - 10 am

Village Green Homeowner's Association
Annual Meeting
Sat., March 6th, 10 am
Burton Morgan Lecture Hall
Denison University
(building directly connected to main parking garage)

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Once a year, we have a meeting for all homeowners in Village Green to review the maintenance and upkeep work for the common areas, and set the dues for the coming year. We’re glad to have a new spot to meet this time up on the Denison campus, in the lower level lecture hall in Burton Morgan, which is directly connected to the main parking garage. Just drive up the hill, veer left under the Welsh Hills room after you pass the chapel and Beth Eden house on your right, and go into the parking garage. The main level opens directly into Burton Morgan Hall, and you can take either the stairs or the elevator down one floor to the lecture hall.

Keep in mind that with the new village contract, if you want to recycle, you simply need to call Big O -- 345-2086 -- and let them know you would like a bin. Both recycling and yard waste pickup are included in the village trash contract.

Wednesday night seems to often be a windy and rainy night, and Big O’s recycle truck usually comes around 6:30 to 7 am on Thursday. While the trustees of the Homeowners’ Association encourage recycling by all our households, we also strongly suggest that you make sure to secure your recycling when you set out your bins as most do late on Wednesday night.

Keep in mind that with the first snow falls, it’s our obligation to keep the curb area around the mailboxes, and where the trash & recycle bins go, cleared for access by these public vehicles. Please respect, when parking on the street, the need for your neighbors to have clearance or you can lose them their mail delivery and trash pickup.

The trustees will contact residents if on-street parking of multiple cars becomes an obstacle for public services, and of course all trailers, boats, or hitched vehicles must be garaged or on a village approved pad behind the residence.

Questions? Call or e-mail Jeff Gill, trustee president, 587-4245 or knapsack@windstream.net

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Shoveling Snow With Buddha
-- Billy Collins

In the usual iconography of the temple or the local Wok
you would never see him doing such a thing,
tossing the dry snow over a mountain
of his bare, round shoulder,
his hair tied in a knot,
a model of concentration.

Sitting is more his speed, if that is the word
for what he does, or does not do.

Even the season is wrong for him.
In all his manifestations, is it not warm or slightly humid?
Is this not implied by his serene expression,
that smile so wide it wraps itself around the waist of the universe?

But here we are, working our way down the driveway,
one shovelful at a time.
We toss the light powder into the clear air.
We feel the cold mist on our faces.
And with every heave we disappear
and become lost to each other
in these sudden clouds of our own making,
these fountain-bursts of snow.

This is so much better than a sermon in church,
I say out loud, but Buddha keeps on shoveling.
This is the true religion, the religion of snow,
and sunlight and winter geese barking in the sky,
I say, but he is too busy to hear me.

He has thrown himself into shoveling snow
as if it were the purpose of existence,
as if the sign of a perfect life were a clear driveway
you could back the car down easily
and drive off into the vanities of the world
with a broken heater fan and a song on the radio.

All morning long we work side by side,
me with my commentary
and he inside his generous pocket of silence,
until the hour is nearly noon
and the snow is piled high all around us;
then, I hear him speak.

After this, he asks,
can we go inside and play cards?

Certainly, I reply, and I will heat some milk
and bring cups of hot chocolate to the table
while you shuffle the deck.
and our boots stand dripping by the door.

Aaah, says the Buddha, lifting his eyes
and leaning for a moment on his shovel
before he drives the thin blade again
deep into the glittering white snow.

“Shoveling Snow With Buddha” by Billy Collins, from Sailing Alone Around the Room: New and Selected Poems. New York: Random House, 2001.


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In The Alley by Ted Kooser

In the alley behind the florist's shop,
a huge white garbage truck was parked and idling.
In a cloud of exhaust, two men in coveralls
and stocking caps, their noses dripping,
were picking through the florist's dumpster
and each had selected a fistful of roses.

As I walked past, they gave me a furtive,
conspiratorial nod, perhaps sensing
that I, too (though in my business suit and tie)
am a devotee of garbage &; an aficionado
of the wilted, the shopworn, and the free--
and that I had for days been searching
beneath the heaps of worn-out, faded words
to find this brief bouquet for you.


"In the Alley" by Ted Kooser, from Valentines. (c) University of Nebraska Press, 2008. Reprinted with permission