Monday is kick-off lesson day for us: it kind of sets the tone for the week. Between finishing the Northern colonies and before moving to the Southern colonies, to l go over Vermont history again. I read to the children outside on the front lawn with the beautiful Green Mountains all around us.

Vermont history fits right in with the study of New York and New Hampshire, just as the state fits between those two states. Today's Vermont arose over a land dispute between those two colonies. We are reading of Ethan Allen and the Green Mountain Boys. They were fighting tyranny and pushy landlords just as Boston was firing its first shots in Lexington and Concord.

The Green Mountain Boys were on their way to take Ticonderoga for the Continental Congress when Benedict Arnold showed up, dressed like a peacock, sent by Massachusetts to take command. The Green Mountain boys wanted to hang him right then, and they wouldn't let anyone but Colonel Ethan Allen command them. Ethan allowed Arnold to march with him at the head of the column, but not as a commanding officer. He was a guest. The rest is history.

Vermont is not Chittenden county, or Burlington where UVM is: even though that’s where the population is, and throws the votes. Vermont is not the activist judicial bench of Howard Dean which gave this country civil unions.

I love God’s Vermont, and the real  Vermonters, rural people who still exude the real character of that Vermont colony, who wouldn’t let rich landlords tell them right from wrong when they could figure it out for themselves. Praise God for those folks then, and bless the same type of folks now!