GATHERING GROUND REPORT - MARCH 8, 2023
Editor's note: no GG pictures AT ALL this month, so I've substituted this from Vince the Sign Guy * 
Three of us met at the Gathering Ground Last month, Norm, Chet and Bill. Jerry, our normal transcriber was in Canada on yet another Ski week, with a group of friends from HSD (John Lussier, Chris, and Diane Lototski)
Chet mentioned West Springfield was having a celebration for their 250th anniversary. He had a brochure of all the scheduled events for the week's activities. Holyoke was not left out since they have a historical connection. They will participate too.
We then talked about speaking French! Evidently, there is a French connection in Springfield and Holyoke. Norm said when he was in grammar school in the 50's, the fist half of the school day was in English, and the second half in French. Students of Italian families, had the second half day in Italian, and the Polish kids Polish. No Irish?
I talked about installing a 'smart' thermostat that replaced the dumb one. It turns out it needs a 24 volt AC supply line. Something I didn't have.
Difficulty level automatically tripled since I had to buy a transformer, snake the wire through the wall, speckle the hole and paint it!. It took only two calls to the manufacturer to get it working. Nothing is easy.
Another topic was VOIP. (Voice over internet) Norm had it, and he thought it was a good idea, until he went mobile completely. Lots of young people are doing just that. Land lines appear to be going away.
That's it for now.
~ Bill Wills
* A few more nuggets from Vince the Sign Guy. More about him at THIS LINK, or follow him on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/VinceTheSignGuy
