Above: The Twilight Zone logo, via Wikipedia.

As reported by Michael Ryan for The Daily Mail last week, the Greene County town of Lexington is in limbo after last month's election.

Candidates for the town's five-member town council are in an unusual tie: The final count shows Democratic incumbent Lynn Byrne and Republican challenger William Pushman are deadlocked at 165 votes each.

According to the Daily Mail, nobody expected this: 

It appeared a winner would certainly emerge, given the odd number of absentee ballots, but one ballot was left blank and Byrne and Pushman each received 8 additional votes, producing a very rare situation and possibly launching the rural community into a governing Twilight Zone.

The article reports that Greene County Board of Elections rules dictate that where there is no clear winner, the seat is considered a vacancy that can be filled by appointment as of January 1, 2012.

Photo of dogwood buds by Flickr user *Psycho Delia*. Published under Creative Commons license.

The signs of spring are all around us, faint but definitely present. Seeds are sprouting and new life is stirring.  After far too much time spent dormant, the time for growth seems finally to have come -- overdue, perhaps, but heartedly welcomed by most everyone.

Clearly I’m not writing about the weather, or anything related to the seasonal calendar. My snow shovel is out of the garage and parked on the front porch, kept handy for the storms that surely await us here in the Catskills, as we lurch into December with winter at our doorstep again. No, I'm using Spring as a metaphor for something different, something totally unrelated to the Earth’s annual journey around the Sun.  I’m referring to life in the Catskills, and some faint warm winds of change that I’ve been feeling blowing through these parts of late.