LowellDeeds

Today is my first day back from a week long vacation. My wife, who is a tax collector, takes professional improvement courses every August at the University of Mass in Amherst. I usually tag along because I love the area. She goes to school and I well...don't. Although this year I added a little work to my trip. Since Middlesex North will soon be doing E recording I took a class on Electronic Tax Payments. The course objective, which was sponsored by UniBank, was to demonstrate that doing business online is the future. I found it interesting that E recording and Electronic Tax Payments share many similar issues. Consumer confidence and concern for security are just two of these. UniBank sited the popularity of ATM's as proof that the public has taken the "leap of faith" to the online world. I sat with my wife during the class. Of course, she elbowed me every time I whispered to her "we do that at the registry".
Of course, no trip to Amherst is complete without dropping in to the Jones Library. This historic library has two wonderful displays on former Amherst residents, poets Robert Frost and Emily Dickerson. I have been to the library before, but this trip was especially thrilling. On display was the original manuscript of Frost's poem "Stopping By A Wood On A Snowy Evening". Amazingly, the masterpiece is written on a lined piece of paper ripped out of a composition notebook. After staring at it for ten minutes the librarian asked me to move back before I fogged up the glass case. I was hooked. Now I had to find the house Frost lived in when he taught at Amherst College. Success...It is a beautiful Victorian located at 43 Sunset St (the perfect name for a poet's house). I slowly drove by it... I slowly drove by it again...I slowly drove by it for a third time. As I turned my car around for the fourth swing my wife (the tax collector) said "let me out...you are going to get arrested for stalking and I'm not going to jail with you. My reponse is best explained this way..."Two roads diverged in a yellow wood and I took the one "MOST" traveled by"...I headed back to the hotel.