Pedestrian Musings

Association Meeting, Sat. March 6 - 10 am

2010-02-25T04:41:00.000-08:00

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)

* * *

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

* * *

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.

* * *

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

Garbage & Recycling

2009-12-05T06:06:00.000-08:00

Granville Village Council has recently voted to go to a “single hauler” plan for trash pickup, which begins Jan. 1.

If you are already on Big O, the chosen contractor for the village, this won’t mean much complication, although if you’re on Waste Management, you’ll need to shift to Thursday pickup, i.e., Wed. night.

For everyone, the trash bill will come along with your village water bill (our nearby neighbors who are not on village water will be billed separately). The amount will be $14.65 a month, with Big O now managing a three year contract with both the village and the township. Senior citizens will qualify for a 10% discount on top of this rate, which is lower than residents are paying now for either company now serving the neighborhood.

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 contract.

Due to the effects of Murphy’s Law, 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. 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.

Giants In Our Land

2009-02-16T17:08:00.000-08:00

Thanks to a person in Iowa who loves geneaology, i got this transcript of an obituary from Goshen, New York, reprinted in the Newark Gazette, one of many bygone competitors to the Advocate.

Jonathan Benjamin's son and daughters and sons-in-law were many of the very earliest European settlers in Licking County; his daughter Lilly married a John Jones related to my beloved Chaplain David Jones, who built the first cabin in Granville Township, had the first European descent child in this area, and on October 22, 1802, the first of that era to die a few weeks after her baby's birth. Note for the Village Green version of this post: all of this took place just north of the marker at Newark-Granville Road and Galway Drive, right across the road from our neighborhood. Lilly was buried there, then exhumed and buried in the then-new Sixth Street cemetery in Newark, and a few years later exhumed and brought back to become one of the first burials in Granville's Old Colony Burying Ground in 1806.

Nonetheless, Jonathan and Margaret Benjamin came and homesteaded what is now the area around Union Station and Infirmary Mound Park, already married some 43 years, and celebrating their 76th wedding anniversary before her death. But Jonathan's story was not quite over, and it went back into a vast expanse of early American history, before he was buried next to Margaret near Granville's Main Street, just visible over the stone wall of the Old Colony Burying Ground, under a now towering oak tree, one possibly planted at Margaret's feet by Jonathan himself.

I've told that version of their story before, but this is a glimpse of the regard in which he was held at his death at 103 -- i'll simply reprint this as transcribed from the original news story:

OBITUARY- Jonathan Benjamin

The Independent-Republican
Goshen, New York
Vol. 5, No. 17
November 26, 1841

[May have originated with the Newark (Licking Co., OH) Gazette.]

DIED

Revolutionary Soldier, -Died in Union Township,
Locking [actually Licking] Co., Ohio, August 26, 1841, Jonathan Benjamin,
in the 103rd year of his age. Father Benjamin was
born in Goshen, N.Y., October 14, 1738. At the age of
16 he enlisted in the army and served his time as a
soldier true to his country. Was married March 10,
1759 to Margaret Brown; moved to Pennsylvania in 1774
or 75. In May, 1777, the Indians broke in upon his
family and family connections, and killed and took
prisoner three entire families, his only son escaping
to the fort. Among the prisoners taken by the Indians,
was his brother-in-law, Ezekiel Brown, late of
Delaware co., Ohio. After being driven from place to
place by those savage tribes, and enduring extreme
suffering for some 5 months, he removed to Maryland in
the fall of 1779, thence to Pennsylvania in 1782,
thence to Maryland in 1897 [should be 1797], thence to
Western Virginia in 1799, thence to Licking, then to
Fairfield co., Ohio in 1804, where he resided until
his death. [Error- Fairfield Co. first, then moved to Licking Co.] In
1810 he joined the M.E. Church, and
remained an acceptable member ever since. In 1835 he
lost his amiable wife, with whom he had lived through
all the sufferings and privations of a piety [pious?] life, for
the almost unpresedented period of 70 years. He was
the father of ten children, and is known to have 77
grandchildren. He lived to see and embrace a child of
the fifth generation, and that a decendent of his
seventh daughter. For the last 30 years, Father
Benjamin has sustained a good religious character, and
in his last years took much pleasure in telling his
bright prospect of happiness beyond the grave. After
an illness of five days, he departed this life without
a struggle or a groan. - Newark Gazette

Homeowners' Association Meeting, and More!

2009-02-08T07:34:00.000-08:00

Congrats to Tanya Hedges for stepping onto the Trustees for the Village Green Homeowners' Association (VGHA); and many thanks to Bill Moore for stepping off after six (or more?) years of service. We had 14 residences represented by 18 people present to plan for the management of common areas and common concerns for the 47 properties in VGHA.

The minutes and budget and 2009 assessment will go out shortly to all; the outgoing trustees determined that we can keep VGHA dues at $170 for one more year (likely not into the next!). Plans are already afoot for the VGHA Picnic this August -- we alternate years with the Great Granville Picnic, which is in even-numbered year Augusts.

There will be some other neighborhood issues discussed that will be posted here in coming weeks, but an item that we missed in covering mail delivery (scroll down and read more below) and recycling concerns -- our VGHA assessment may have stayed the same, but on our property tax bills that just came out, there was a new item on the bottom of the right hand total column, called simply "Special Assessment."

Here at 120 Bantry, that was for $18.09. Apparently, there is some variation on this number, and no one official or unofficial can find out (yet) how this was calculated. It is for the next twenty years, and will go into something called the Muskingum Watershed Conservancy District -- www.mwcd.org -- which seems like a worthwhile purpose and a fair thing to assess for.

But the way it appeared/appears on our tax bill has reasonably triggered many questions, starting with "what th'eck is THAT?" and churches, camps, and not-for-profits are reeling with major, unexpected new bills at a very inopportune time.

If you're interested in some of this, you can see my blog postings and comment discussions, including some very helpful input from the head of the Newark/Heath Port Authority, Rick Platt, at my Advocate blog.

If you got different "Special Assessment" amounts than $12 or $18 on your property tax bill, i'd love to hear about it -- won't use names, but we are trying to figure out how this MWCD special assessment is being applied. Data always helps!

Village Green Homeowners Association Annual Meeting

2009-02-04T10:40:00.000-08:00

Village Green Homeowners Association Annual Meeting, Sat., February 7, at 10 am in the Bryn Du Mansion -- come spend an hour helping plan the next year!

Great Granville Picnic 2008 (mid-August)

2009-01-30T19:57:00.000-08:00

A vision of warmer days once, and will be again -- come to the Bryn Du Mansion on Sat., Feb. 7 at 10 am, and we will discuss the Village Green Picnic this coming August, among other heart-warming subjects. (Granville's is even number years, ours is odd number years, natch.)

Village Green Homeowners Association Annual Meeting, Sat., February 7, at 10 am in the Bryn Du Mansion . . . be there!

Postal Deliveries, and Your Trustees At Work

2009-01-30T16:25:00.000-08:00

Neighbors, for the record i wandered down on behalf of the Village Green Homeowners Association to the Granville Post Office today (Friday, Jan. 30).

I spoke to John, our friendly and attentive postmaster for the village. I shared with him our profound appreciation for the effort the mail carrier on our route puts into helping us build community in Village Green, helping us meet one another by going forth of an evening to re-deliver mail to our neighbors, to whom it was originally addressed.

Along with this, i pointed out how many of my own family and neighbors who, while not enamoured of the Internet and online bill paying or account management, have been given that last impetus towards learning how to do so, due to the erratic and even rare arrival of bills and statements in print form at our mailboxes (or arriving long after original delivery as sheepish neighbors realize they've had bills from a block over on the mantlepiece for a month and more).

So if their business model says discouraging use of the US Postal Service for financial transactions is a good idea, who are we to object? Good luck with that, i said . . .

But today, in every mailbox in the neighborhood, after three brutal days of persistent snowfall and snowplow piles re-occurring at all hours near and before our mailboxes, we receive a note. Whether a careful cut out has been crafted from the snow and ice, or two weeks of accumulation are untouched, each and all got the same chastising note from the USPS, informing us that we may have delivery suspended if we do not meet obscure and unclear guidelines for access. If this had only gone to those of us who shoveled slowly if at all, or were just a day behind the plow piles with pick and spudbar, or if this had arrived Monday after an extended period of mailbox neglect, it would have made sense.

When everyone got one, it seemed as if . . . well, i left it to our postmaster to fill in imaginatively what it seemed like to us. He informed me gravely that these concerns would be communicated directly to his supervisor in Newark, who oversees the motor carriers. I asked (politely) if perhaps this had to do with a policy that says you cannot skip a hard to reach mailbox until you give written notice, and on this supposition he could not say; again, he expressed his regret that we had all, innocent and guilty (i had made it clear i was at least mildly guilty, myself), been "put on notice," and repeated that the issue would be raised "at the highest levels," which i assume means in the Oval Office.

I considered pointing out that "no longer delivering mail to this address" didn't actually constitute a threat, under the general circumstances, but thought that a bit much and so said "Thank you," shook the good man's hand, and bid him a good weekend.

He offers all of you the same!

See you next Saturday at Bryn Du (see preceding post), unless i have your mail to drop off. If you have any of mine, we'll have the chili on by 6 pm on Sunday for the Steelers game . . . i think they call it something else on TV.

Annual Neighborhood Association Meeting, Sat. Feb. 7

2009-01-29T07:02:00.001-08:00

Hello, neighbors, and we'll be gathering at the Bryn Du Mansion, just up the street and along Jones Road, next Saturday, Feb. 7th, at 10 am for the annual neighborhood association meeting. We will review the expenditures from last year, the budget for the coming year, the trustees' plans to maintain association dues at the same rate for one more year, and elect a new trustee (there are three of us, and we serve three year terms).

Come on by, or holler questions before or after to trustee secretary Jeff Gill at knapsack77@gmail.com, or 587.4245.

Google Earth Comes (Came) To Village Green

2009-01-29T06:49:00.000-08:00

http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=120+bantry,+granville,+ohio&sll=40.131182,-83.329239&sspn=0.027956,0.074587&ie=UTF8&ll=40.060862,-82.485759&spn=0.006996,0.018647&t=h&z=16&iwloc=addr&layer=c&cbll=40.060787,-82.485794&panoid=fIPUPbhMiQ5bILqRJITN3A&cbp=12,320.8099847948805,,0,3.4061295095305146
This is so very cool; except they skipped Bantry St.! But apparently the GoogleEarth camera van made some laps around Granville this past summer; i hadn't seen Street View for our area when i looked just a few weeks back, so this is all new.

You can tell from the trash bins and the sun that it's a Wednesday afternoon.

Just up the road, on Google Earth

2009-01-29T06:44:00.000-08:00

http://www.panoramio.com/photo/1230368
From up atop Bryn Du Woods, looking west.

John Keats, 1819, "To Autumn"

2008-10-12T18:41:00.000-07:00

"Where are the songs of Spring?" Indeed.

To Autumn -- John Keats

1

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eaves run;
To bend with apples the moss'd cottage-trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
For Summer has o'er-brimm'd their clammy cells.

2

Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?
Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find
Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,
Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;
Or on a half-reap'd furrow sound asleep,
Drows'd with the fume of poppies, while thy hook
Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers:
And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep
Steady thy laden head across a brook;
Or by a cyder-press, with patient look,
Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours.

3

Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?
Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,--
While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,
And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;
Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
Among the river sallows, borne aloft
Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;
Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft
The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft;
And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

Where In Our County Is . . .

2008-10-12T18:37:00.000-07:00

If you want some further Licking County inspiration, click http://flickr.com/photos/10707024@N04/tags/lickingcounty/

This is the kind of stuff you like if you like this kind of stuff . . . if you really know the area, you'll catch the one photo this guy tagged as Licking County that is actually 100 yards outside of our boundaries, into (hint) Knox County.

Wandering Around Village Green

2008-10-12T18:24:00.000-07:00

Testing for our neighborhood association newsletter blogsite!