One recent morning, on the lawn of the former schoolhouse where I work, signs appeared on the triangle green: Save Town Hall. Shortly afterward, with black spray paint, someone altered the signs to: Save Town.

This building has been around since before Archduke Ferdinand was assassinated in 1914. The entire top floor is a gymnasium, the middle floor four classrooms, the basement originally must have housed a coal furnace. After a $14k heading bill one winter for a building largely empty, I urged the Selectboard to consider other options. Oh, the furor that suggestion has now caused.

All summer, walking into the basement, I kept saying, I smell mold, I can’t work in a basement, I can’t think straight, can’t breathe, in a repetition that was doubtlessly whiny and certainly dull. But like the people arguing around this building, the building isn’t stagnant, either. I take my laptop upstairs to the empty rooms, where it’s me and the dusty windows, the paint shedding from the pressed tin walls and ceilings, the beadboard molding higher than my head.

In this wet, wet summer, mold blooms, and I rally the tiny office staff. Let’s move! I grab my jade plant. In a few hours, we’ve moved upstairs into the empty rooms, opening the windows and letting in the sunlight and breeze. I prop open the doors and sweep up cobwebs. Behind us, we leave so much. In our rouge occupation, we women set up housekeeping. I take off my shoes and walk barefoot over the maple floors .

We hire a crew to move the heavy things, and the men walk around remembering when they went to school in these rooms. Art classroom here, lunch there. All day long, with the doors open, the public wanders in and offers suggestions and stories.

A woman asks what we need. I’d like a pair of kittens here, frankly, or maybe a small old dog who wouldn’t mind sleeping on the rug in the sunlight.

Save Town? A question that opens up into a Jacob’s Ladder of questions….. in the meantime, we’re at least moving up into the light….