Board Changes

As summer winds down, the Ashfield History Project reports two changes in its Editorial Board.

Kit Nylen, of Bug Hill, has joined the Board. She brings considerable experience and expertise in publishing, as well as involvement in a number of community organizations, including service as an elected member of the town’s Finance Committee.

Also, in late August, Alden Gray resigned from the Board, effective “immediately.” In his letter to the Select Board, Alden took the Board gently to task for a lack of progress and for the “autocracy” of its leadership, and noted that he had not been able to make the Project a priority in his own life at this time. Happily, however, he did promise to help whenever he could, from his position within the Historical Society.

Meanwhile, the work of the Project proceeds on a number of fronts. David Newell has agreed to work, with others, assembling data relating to the Town’s finances over the past half-century. The public-finance research team will trace the changing allocation of budget resources (proportions spent on roads, schools, town government, etc.), and movement in assessments and the tax rate, as well as other sources of income to the Town.

Another intriguing effort will look at changes in Ashfield’s climate over the pasty half-century. We were delighted to learn that Harriet Sears kept daily records of high, low and mean temperatures and rain-fall, beginning in 1960. Later Russ Fessenden took up that effort, and about ten years ago, the baton passed to Steve Sauter. As a result, we may be able to report the truth, whether convenient or not, about warming in our own neck of the woods. Steve reports that other nearby towns have maintained similar efforts, so we may have some good comparative data, as well.
Board member Grace Lesure has been working on a filing system for the Project’s body of materials. Her initial index will be ready when the Project moves into its new quarters in the basement of the Ashfield Historical Society, we hope sometime early this fall.

by Don Robinson