The BSE Flow No. 8

The BSE FlowCovering Shelburne Falls and Beyond Free

Student-run newspaper of the buckland-shelburne ELEMENTARY school communitY • Shelburne falls, mass.

Vol. 2, no. 4 • dec. 25, 2015

— INDEX —Letters ................................. A2Advice ................................. A3News ................................... A4Community ........................... B1 Alumni ................................. B4 Must Read ............................. B5Comics .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . B7Last Word .............................. B8

Community Clothes Closet

takes donations at Cowell site 24/7

Trinity Church’s Commu-nity Clothes Closet, next door to the West County Food Pantry in the lower level of Cowell Gymnasium, on 51 Maple St., is open on Wednesdays with the food pantry: noon to 6 p.m.

All are welcome to visit and take free apparel.

Organizers ask that do-nors use the clothing drop-off shed, available 24/7 in the Cowell parking lot, and that they place clean cloth-ing in good condition in plastic bags before dropping off their goods.

Third ‘Early Night’ Dec. 31 from 6-8 p.m.

at Cowell GymSpend your New Year’s

Eve with family, friends, and neighbors at the annual party at Cowell Gym.

Early Night, running from 6 to 8 p.m., features hun-dreds of balloons to play with on the floor; tables filled with games, crafts, and activities; and music and dancing for all ages.

Naturally, there’ll also be a New Year’s Eve count-down featuring a silver basketball drop.

Cowell Gym is at 51 Ma-ple St. The Cowell is hosting the event in partnership with the Shelburne Recre-ation Committee.

The event is free. Dona-tions to the gym’s Oper-ating Fund are welcome, and a donation box will be available.

For more information, call Doug Martin at 625-3054 or visit “ShelburneRecreation” on Facebook.

20 Christmas trees donated

The Mary Lyon Founda-tion is proud to acknowl-edge a tree grower, who wishes to remain anony-mous, made 20 families very happy with a delivery of free Christmas trees well in time for the holiday.

The Mary Lyon Founda-tion supports all aspects of quality education in the towns of Ashfield, Buckland, Charlemont, Colrain, Haw-ley, Heath, Plainfield, Rowe, and Shelburne.

Holiday Notes

Expert Advice

Engineering Success

Fearless Fiction

Comics Adventure

>A3 >A4 >B6 >B7

Sixth-graders ‘bank’ on Nature’s Classroom

Arms Library time capsule flung toward future

Friends and supporters of Arms Library put together a special box of memories called a time capsule and

sent it to the future. It might be opened in 50, 75, or 100 years, making it to 2115.

According to Laurie Wheeler, the executive director of Arms Library and a member of its building committee, the box contains things that will help future generations figure out what today’s generation was all about. It was sealed up in the new roof of the library on Sept. 17 around 7:30 a.m. It will be seen next when the roof is opened up for repairs it might need many decades from now.

“A time capsule is a box or metal tube — a container you specially decide you’re going

to put away for the future, and then they’ll see the items we put in there. It’s items that are im-portant to this time right now,” Wheeler explained.

The roof replacement is part of a $670,000 “Put a Roof On It” project that took volunteers three years to complete. The

roof that was replaced was built in 1914 with the rest of the library building. It is made of copper, slates, and very heavy, chalky limestone. You can touch pieces of it in the library. Pieces of the old roof copper will be turned into gifts you can buy.

Contents of the packed time capsule include children’s hand-prints in paint; books, newspa-pers, magazines, and artwork; letters; and a library card.

Fifth-grader Hannah Chase reports downtown news and features for The BSE Flow. We welcome your news tips at [email protected].

ARMS LIBRARY DIRECTOR Laurie Wheeler shows off the goodies bound for the future — possibly as far as 100 years — in a community time capsule, which was promptly stowed within the library’s shiny new copper dome. Roof renovations, years in the making and achived in 2015, were powered by volunteers.

The BSE FlowFlow photo. Inset: Laurie Wheeler photo

Copper roof dome, last open in 1914, bears

our messages for 2115

By Hannah CHASE

SHELBURNE FALLS—When the 30 students in Mrs. Good-man’s and Mrs. Perlman’s class-es board the bus for Nature’s Classroom in spring, they’ll have proud memories of having raised the money for the trip themselves.

Late fall was a flurry of fund-raising: chocolate bar sales, a calendar raffle, art print sales, coffee sales, and a massive, days-long, schoolwide Christ-mas shopping spree. All told the effort is on track to fund a week of environmental education at Nature’s Classroom.

“I’ve heard a lot about it. It sounds really fun, and I’ve had friends in other classes earli-er and they said it was really exciting to go there. We’ll get to do a lot of cool experiments and stuff like that,” said sixth-grader Nathan Leger.

He added, “I’m OK with the outdoors but I really like the idea of doing tons of experiments.”

According to Mrs. Goodman, the goal for the fundraisers is “just a lot of money. The cost is $370 per kid, and the parents are paying, like, $100 of that, so we need to raise $270 times 30.”

Surveying a sea of students picking through the donated shopping spree goods, she called out, “Who’s good at math?”

The answer is a steep $8,100.

Alex Lilly, sixth grader, helps young Oliver Riley ring up gift purchases in the all-school holiday shopping spree. Thousands of dollars are being raised through the spree, a calendar raffle, sales of special Mo’s Fudge Factor chocolate bars, BSE-branded coffee at Mocha Maya’s, and art prints.

We thank our strong family of supporters for eight glorious issues and wish all of us, everywhere, a safe, healthy, and happy New Year.

One student picks out mag-netic fashion figures and a toy mouse and car for $3.

Another considers a stainless steel frying pan, a strainer, and a cheese dome.

“Jewelry? What do you think about that?” asks Mrs. Perlman. “Or this is a lovely jewelry box. Here, look: a Bridge of Flowers T-shirt. What size does your dad wear, do you know?”

Sixth-grader Jacob Pelletier helps his little buddy Charlie Murray buy his dad an antholo-gy of short stories.

“We’ve made $880 just in the first two groups. This is pure profit. Just in bills, not even counting the quarters,” Mrs. Perlman says.

Helpful students wrap gifts out in the crowded hallway. The trip will go on.

— Flow staff

Sixth-graders Nathan Leger (left photo) and Jacob Pelletier (right, assisting Charlie Murray) are work-ing to reach Nature’s Classroom.

Flow photos

A2 Friday, dec. 25, 2015 • The BSE Flow Covering Shelburne Falls and Beyond

Opinions and advice [email protected]

THE BSE FLOW

www.bseflow.comJohn Snyder, publisher

30 Church St., Shelburne Falls, MA 01370; Tel. 413-325-6348;

E-mail [email protected]

Founded in 2014 and published monthly at

Buckland-Shelburne Ele-mentary School, The BSE Flow is the independent, student-run newspaper

of Shelburne Falls. This newspaper, its web-site, and Flow TV are prod-

ucts of an independent after-school journalism workshop serving our school, towns,

families, and neighbors. We practice reporting, writing,

current events, history, design, ethics, language arts,

and commerce.

We belong to the National Elementary Schools Press

Association, the Journalism Education Association, the New England Scholastic

Press Association, and the Greater Shelburne Falls Area

Business Association.

advertise and donate

Support your business or organization via The BSE Flow! We accept print and Web ads for the Flow and underwriting for Flow TV!

RATES: www.bseflow.com CALL: 413-325-6348,

WRITE: [email protected] or 30 Church St.,

Shelburne Falls, MA 01370

write a letter to the editor

The BSE Flow encourages a respectful, family-friendly exchange of views about school community issues.

We welcome your letters to the editor of 250 words or fewer — and community

voices of up to 750 words — at [email protected]

We reserve the right to de-cline printing any letter, and may edit. We cannot print

anonymous letters.For more information, please write [email protected]

or call 413-325-6348.

send in news tips, submissions, suggestions, and

corrections

WRITE [email protected]

contributing editors 2015

Joy BohonowiczAinsley BogelEliza Bogel

Harper BrownHannah ChaseMyah Grant

Areia HeilmanBrooke Looman

Kylie LowellKatie Martin

Bennett SnyderDiana Yaseen

copyrightThe BSE Flow Vol. 2 No. 4 is © 2015 Advance The Story, Shelburne Falls, MA, 01370. All rights reserved. We print at the Daily Hampshire Ga-zette in Northampton, Mass.

Dear Flow readers,Our LEC (Local

Education Council) is an advisory board to the principal. Members con-sist of parents of current students, teachers, and members of the towns of Buckland and Shelburne.

This year’s members are parents Jennifer Martin, Elizabeth Garofalo, Rachel Silverman, and Amanda Kingsley; school staffers Sandra Carter, Kate Dw-yer, and Lillian Black; and community member and Buckland resident Mary Brooks.

A seat is open for a Shel-burne resident as well.

The LEC creates the Family-School Connec-tion portion of the School Improvement Plan.

Some schoolwide initia-tives that have come from the LEC include the school garden, after-school en-richment programs, and the back-to-school Com-munity Night.

[The SIP also covers Effective Instruction, Student Assessment, and Tiered Instruction and

School Improvement Plan stronger with you

Happy to help!• FOR COPIES of the district’s educational

improvement plan, including BSE’s School Im-provement Plan for 2015-2016 and its Action Plan, visit mohawkschools.org and click the tab for Buckland-Shelburne.

• FOR MORE information on the LEC, contact Jen Martin at 625-3054 or [email protected].

Rachel Silverman enjoying Mohawk — we wish her well!

“Thank you for every-thing you taught us and did for us. You taught us new things like how to draw lightning and bubble letters.”

— Moshe Close

“Good luck, Ms. Silver-man. Thank you for teach-ing us.”

— Vincent Gauthier

“I would say Ms. Sil-verman was a very good teacher here and she taught everyone a lot. She taught me a lot. I want her to come back.”

— Ethan Thayer

“I’ll miss her too. She was the best art teacher. She’s really nice. She taught me how to overlap.”

— Mohammad Abdelgawad

Adequate Learning Time. — Ed.]

The LEC aims to re-spond to the needs of Buckland-Shelburne families to help strengthen the relationship between home and school that is so important for our students.

There is always time in our agenda for com-

munity comment, and we welcome input from any member of the Buck-land-Shelburne commu-nity. We just ask that you contact Principal Joanne Giguere first so that you can be put on the agenda.

The LEC meets at the school library at 4 p.m. on the second Monday of each month and fol-lows the open-meeting laws. Sometimes deci-sion-making happens over the course of several meetings, as we carefully consider concerns brought to our attention.

We hope to hear from you.

— Jennifer Martin on behalf of the LEC

LEC seeks family, community voices; Shelburne seat still open

PHOTOS AND REACTION INTERVIEWS BY FLOW STAFFERS Ainsley Bogel, Eliza Bogel, Hannah Chase, Bennett Snyder, and Diana Yaseen.

We thank you, too, Ms. Silverman, and wish you lots of happiness. Some of us will see you at Mohawk!

Get Involved

Letters

“I will miss Ms. Silver-man. I like what she did for us. She always picked creative projects for us to do, like drawing tigers and coloring them in with oil pastels.”

— Myah Grant

“I miss you. You’re awesome. I can’t wait to see you at Mohawk.”

— Madalyn Lilly

Politics matters to all of us — it shapes our livesMy family and I went

to a rally for Bernie Sanders, who is run-ning for president. He

is a state senator from Vermont. It was loud — it was in a big auditorium, the MassMutual Center in Springfield, that seats about 8,000 people. My mom later said 6,000 came.

Bernie Sanders is older than I expected. I thought he was go-ing to be a young man. He had a massive amount of energy but

after a while I got bored and felt like falling asleep.

I saw a lot of signs being passed around. Some people made their own signs. There were bumper stickers and pins.

My mom, my sister, three strangers who became our friends, and I held up letters that spelled out “Bernie.”

I don’t think he saw us — his back was facing us.

A lot of people were cheering. One section cheered, “Feel the

Bern!” Many of his supporters started this cheer by going, “Feel the—” and the crowd cheered back, “Bern!”

He said he wants to be pres-ident because he thinks he can help the community by making four-year colleges and universi-ties tuition-free.

He said if the police do some-thing wrong [police brutality] they should be sent to jail, not just let off the hook.

He also said he is in favor of gun control because guns are dangerous and are used to kill people.

I agree with him. But if you don’t that’s OK. The important thing is to start getting involved in the issues. You can help in your community in lots of ways, even without voting for presi-dent. But the best way to help others is to stand up for what you believe in and care about politics.

Right now the president is Barack Obama, a Democrat, who has served almost two four-year terms, and that’s the maximum. The next presidential election is Nov. 8, 2016.

I think people should care about politics because it’s going to build our future.

— Diana Yaseen, Flow staff

We welcome reader letters re-flecting a wide range of respectful opinions at [email protected].

Moments

As the sunshine comes into my bedroom and wakes me up,

I push off my bedspread and go barefoot into the living room to find my grandfather and grand-mother reading the news-paper and waking up.

When they see me, one of them offers to make my breakfast. I want pancakes with strawberries.

Afterward, we all have places we need to go.

— “Breakfast,” with com-pound words underlined,

by Rikku

“Birch Collage” — Reuben Bassett

Dear BSE families, Just after school ended back

in June I was offered a full-time position as art teacher at Mohawk, and I accepted.

While I am excited about the change and the challenges ahead, I am certain-ly feeling the bittersweetness of it as I say goodbye to BSE.

For five years I have been lucky enough to work in a fabulous school community with an awesome group of creative young people in a beautiful art studio. We have made lots of spectac-ular art happen and I have enjoyed every art show immensely as I see the pride of the faces of students and par-ents alike.

I have grown as an educator here and learned so much from my col-leagues and students. Leaving is not easy. Hopefully it’ll only be a matter of time before I get to teach my BSE gang again at Mohawk. Until then, I thank you all for your support of the arts — and of me over the years. I will always be grateful for that.

Fondly, Rachel Silverman

Asked a bit later how she was settling in at Mohawk, she told the Flow:

I’M TRYING A LOT of new things and learning a ton about gearing art edu-cation toward middle- and high-school students. I miss my elementary school kids a lot, but I’m enjoying the new challenge of creating a rich and mean-ingful art program at the older level.

I realize that my experiences at BSE and Heath have taught me so much about what is important and develop-mentally sound in art education and I am really just building on that and tak-ing my practice beyond the sixth-grade year into what comes next.

I’m also piloting a new course next semester and looking forward to launching more in the future.

I feel excited and grateful to be in this community. The kids aren’t as small but they are still pretty sweet, up for trying new things and exploring different ways art can be a part of our lives. ❦

RACHEL SILVERMAN assists Flow staffer Ainsley Bogel on a feature then in the works for our coverage of the spring Art Show. Ms. Silverman left the elementary schools this fall for Mohawk. Our art shows will continue under new BSE art teacher Rebecca Cummings.

Kylie Lowell photo

THANKS FOR READING THE FLOW! WE ALSO PRODUCE FLOW TV, YOUR LOCAL, KID-POWERED PUBLIC ACCESS CABLE TV WORKSHOP!

FREE FLOW TV: COMCAST CHANNEL 17 AND BSEFLOW.COM

friday, dec. 25, 2015 • The BSE Flow A3Covering Shelburne Falls and Beyond

Dear Confused,Sometimes the tone

of voice isn’t the major thing. Your dad will still love you as much as your brother even if he yells at him all of the time. I bet if you asked your dad, he would tell you that he loves you and your broth-er the same.

My mom and I talk-ed about your question. She recommended I look through a book she has called Touchpoints: Birth to Three (Da Capo Press, 2006) by T. Berry Bra-zelton, M.D. I found this about “valuing individu-als,” which means seeing the worth in each person:

Parents often wonder how to treat each child equally. The answer is simple: You can’t. Each child is a differ-ent personality and needs a different approach. For instance, you might say to one, “You need me to speak softly.” To another, “You always need me to speak angrily.” When they torture you with “You’re always nicer to him than you are to me,” you can say, “You are very different people, which is great. I need to treat you differently. When I speak loudly to you, it’s to make you listen but I am speaking just as lovingly even if it’s louder.”

You might feel better if you talk to your dad. As your brother is older, your dad might be joking around with him in a way that you don’t understand. Your father might have different expectations for you and your brother since you are different ages. For instance, I get to stay up later than my younger brother because I am older. It’s not because my parents like me bet-ter; it’s because I’m more mature. I also get to watch movies that have swear words in them where-as my younger brother doesn’t get to watch them as much. People are dif-ferent and that’s good! If everyone were the same, that would be very bad.

You can’t control ev-erything your dad does. There’s only one person you can control and that’s YOU! Treat your brother kindly and he’ll return the favor.

Tell me how everything goes.

Your friend,Harper

Harper Brown is one of The BSE Flow’s advice columnists and its New York bureau chief. Got a ques-tion? Write Ask Harper, The BSE Flow, 30 Church St., Shelburne Falls, MA 01370 or [email protected]. Please include your contact information and name. We won’t print your name if you ask us not to.

Worried about who’s

Dad’s favorite — and why

Ask Harper

By Harper BROWN

The best and worst parts of being a twin; don’t sweat hand-me-downs — try to appreciate what you have

Sibling vs. Sibling

By Ainsley BOGEL

Dear Harper: I’m pretty sure my dad thinks I’m his favorite. I

feel good and bad about this but mostly bad. My brother is older than me and Dad is always strict-er with him than me and doesn’t joke around with him like he does with me. I don’t know why this is. My brother definitely notices it. What is your advice?

— Confused in Colrain

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Dear Ainsley: I think it’s cool that you and Eliza are twins. I can

tell you apart so easy so I don’t know why people say you can almost never tell twins apart. What is the best thing about being a twin and what is the worst? Eliza can answer too. I think you and Eliza are both awesome equally but for different reasons. I have a sibling but we are not twins.

— Curious KidDear Curious Kid,The best part about being

a twin is that you always have someone to chat and play with. There are some bad parts too, like having to share a bedroom and almost never getting some time completely alone. There are many ups and downs to being a twin but overall I’m glad I’m a twin.

Here’s what Eliza says: “The best part of being

a twin is that you can fool people and make them think that you are the other twin. The worst part is pretty much the same thing Ainsley said.”

— Your friend, Ainsley

Dear Ainsley: I have an older sister who gets the best clothes,

the best everything. And when she outgrows some-thing it’s passed on to

me, even my bike. I don’t want to have her hand-me-downs. I want my own new things. How can I get my parents to understand and support me in this?

— I Am My Own Person!Dear I Am My Own

Person,You have a good point

when you say it is fun to have your own clothes but I also think you should be happy for what you have. Talk with your parents about getting some of your own items but also keep some of your sister’s things that are in good shape and that you don’t mind wearing or using. That way everyone’s happy. I hope this helps!

— Your friend, Ainsley

Classmate Diana Yaseen looks on as sisters Ainsley (center) and Eliza Bogel demonstrate their “twin telepathy” on the set of Flow TV at Falls Cable on Sept. 21.

Flow photo

Preschooler, principal pause to ponder pupsBSE preschool student

Alex Campbell inter-viewed Principal Joanne Giguere in September about her love for Lab-rador retrievers. Ms. Giguere’s chocolate lab, Gunther, can often be seen in the school hall-ways, visiting with stu-dents and staff.

Alex: How many dogs have you had?

Ms. Giguere: A big number, do you want to guess? Nine! I’ve had nine dogs. Gunther is number nine. That’s a lot, isn’t it?

Alex: Yeah! So here’s another one: What kind of dogs have you had?

Ms. Giguere: I have had mostly labs, like Gunther. They come in different colors. They come in black, yellow, and brown, and I’ve had all colors!

Alex: Well, that one that you do have, that’s Gunther, and he’s brown.

Ms. Giguere: He’s brown, and he’s a Labra-dor Retriever. He loves to go swimming, and hiking, and just loves to play. That’s why I love Labradors.

Alex: I’m trying to get a lab. I want to convince my dad to get me two of them.

Ms. Giguere: Two of them! What colors would you get?

Alex: Black and white. Ms. Giguere: Perfect!

They do have white ones. Every now and then you see a white lab.

Alex: Do you have any puppies?

Ms. Giguere: My yellow lab, Emma, had puppies once. They were all over the place! There were

Principal Joanne Giguere fields questions from student Alex Campbell on keeping dogs. He says he would love Labrador Retrievers and would help take very good care of them.

six of them; they were so cute. They were all yellow. I don’t have any puppies right now.

Alex: You should get a girl dog so they can mate, so they can get more babies.

Ms. Giguere: Well, that’s how you do it!

Alex: And then you should keep them!

Ms. Giguere: Keep them all? That would be a lot of dogs. That’s a great idea, I love puppies. They are just so cute!

Alex: Do you have a favorite kind of dog?

Ms. Giguere: I think that’s going to have to be labs. How about you?

Alex: Yup, I’m trying to get one. A playing dog: a lab, so I can play for a long time, for most of my day — play on a bunch of days off with him.

Ms. Giguere: That would be great, I hope you can do that.

Alex: Yup, and I’ll be cleaning up their poop.

Ms. Giguere: Yup, you’ve got to do that. And you have to feed them, and make sure they have water, and sometimes they need baths. And they love to play!

Alex: Yup! The part that I’m really going into is playing.

— Sent in by Flow reader Maya Jalbert, BSE’s speech and language pathologist.

Maya Jalbert photo

Ainsley Bogel writes about sibling issues for The BSE Flow. Got a question about how to get along with your brother or sister? Have

any tips or tricks on keeping peace in the family? Write Ainsley Bogel, The BSE Flow, 30 Church St., Shelburne Falls, MA 01370 or [email protected]. Please include your contact information

and name. We won’t print your name if you ask us not to.

A4 Friday, dec. 25, 2015 • The BSE Flow Covering Shelburne Falls and Beyond

News Tipline: [email protected]

Class Dispatch

Fifth-graders’ Pringles survive mailing to FloridaSHELBURNE FALLS — All eight

thin, crispy Pringle chips students mailed from the post office in Octo-ber arrived safely days later at their destination nearly 1,500 miles away.

According to one student in Ms. Eklund’s fifth grade class, it was fun preparing this precious cargo for a dangerous trip.

“In groups of three we made boxes and we needed to make it so the chips didn’t break,” Bennett Snyder said.

The point of the experiment was to see whether the students in the class could anticipate the many hardships the small packages would face on their journey from the classroom to Ms. Eklund’s cousin’s mailbox all the way in Fort Lauderdale, a city on Florida’s southeastern coast, with a lot of machines, vehicles, drops, and jostling in between.

“We asked, What are the properties of a Pringle? What material is it made of? We passed them around, looked at them with magnifying glasses, and really took a longer look at a Pringle

than anybody here thought we ever would,” Ms. Eklund said.

The students’ conclusion, according to their teacher: “It’s fragile.”

So they figured out the properties of a container that would need to keep something safe in shipping, and trusted their work in cardboard and tape.

All of the boxes arrived safely, Ms. Eklund confirmed days after the mailing.

The work is part of a unit fellow teacher Jacqui Goodman introduced on the properties of materials and objects.

Another part of the unit had stu-dents subject “mystery powders” like salt and corn starch to a variety of tests to identify them, alone and combined.

“It uses their powers of observation to turn their science brains on: to ob-serve, to record, to make hypotheses, and to realize that if their hypotheses aren’t proven — if they’re not true in the end — it’s OK. Hypotheses aren’t

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CHIPS AWAY! Students, left to right: Holly Hicks, Hannah Mack-ie, Gracie Hicks, Hannah Plesnar, Eve Macek, and Diana Yaseen send their groups’ Pringles off with a dash of flair from the village post office. Each chip arrived intact 1,500 miles south.

Rebecca Eklund photos

Apple Maps

always true; it’s an educated guess. You do you best. You do your sci-ence and you figure out what’s true and what’s not,” Ms. Eklund said.

— Flow staff

Bennett Snyder photo

By Hannah Chase

Every day is a new adventure for Olivia Girard, the new employ-ee for the after-school

program. Olivia is very friendly, has

long, light-brown hair, and says she loves working with children. She recently grad-uated from Mohawk High School, where she was on the honor roll, played tennis, and performed in three plays.

She said she enjoyed acting and singing very much. She was the green bird girl in “Suessical the Musical” and had roles in William Shake-speare’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” and in “All Talk.”

Soon she’s going to be studying at Greenfield Com-munity College to learn more about sociology and cultural anthropology.

“Sociology is the study of people; looking deeper into people’s values and beliefs past and present,” she told the Flow.

At BSE she is working with After-School Director Raelene Lemione. Together they look after 12 to 30 kids every day.

Talented Olivia Girard joins staff, helps kids

Eliza Bogel photo

Olivia Girard and her young friend Morgan Raffa make great use of their time at after-school.

Kid signouts can save you $$

Raelene Lemione, Mrs. Unaitis, and Olivia Gerard note that the before- and after-school program is busier than ever.

“With the addition of our preschool pals our room is really buzzing with activity,” Lemione writes.

She asks parents to keep sending in notes on days they would like their child to attend the program — and reminds them to sign their kids out in the afternoon so that she’ll know how much to bill. A full day’s rate is the default.

Many helping hands here!

Many of the activities in the before- and after-school program center on doing good work in the community.

This fall the program held a mitten drive to benefit Community Clothes Closet, based at Cowell Gym, that handed out more than 50 pairs of mittens and gloves to people in the area who need them, Lemione said.

In 2014 the program collected, weighed, and delivered more than 250 pounds of food to the Franklin County Surviv-al Center, she added.

After-School News

TUNE IN FLOW TV, the student-led TV workshop serving Shelburne Falls, on

Falls Cable channel 17 or BSEFLOW.COM. Join in! Underwrite an episode at

[email protected].

SCENES FROM AN OPEN HOUSEMOMENTS FROM BSE’s Open House of Oct. 7. Above left: Octavia Crawford, Arwen King, Grace Crowley, and Olivia Poirier explain tectonic activity of the Pacific Rim. Above: Members of the fifth grade family cheer on learning: Back to front and left to right: Becky Eklund, Bennett Snyder, Heather Loomis, Schuyler and Alex Bogel; Ethan Thayer, Hannah Plesnar, Eve Macek, Elizabeth Snow; Hannah Chase, Ainsley Bogel, Eliza Bo-gel, and Abby Rosner. At right, with a good book: Leah Rosner and Wes Rosner. — Flow staff photos

The BSE Flow • Dec. 25, 2015

BSection

MagazineKid Power — Page B2

Local Motion — Page B3

Alumni News — Page B4

Cheryl Dukes — Page B8

Wanda Mooney CRS, GREEN, GRI, SRES

413.337.8344 [email protected]

Cathy Roberts GRI

413.522.3023 [email protected]

EQUALHOUSINGLENDER

Helping You Makethe Right Real Estate Move

Call Wanda or Cathy today!

Local gardeners say rhubarb works wondersRhubarb is de-

licious in jams and desserts. But

there’s more! Three students working with Karen Eldred on the school gardens thought you should know...

“Rhubarb is a plant. The root and stem (rhi-zome) are used to make medicine. Rhubarb is used primarily for diges-tive complaints including constipation, diarrhea, heartburn, stomach pain, gastrointestinal (GI)bleeding, and prepa-ration for certain GI procedures.”

— Connor Bailey, stalk over shoulder

“Rhubarb is a plant where the root is used to make medicine for stom-ach problems. It helps by being used as a laxative and an aid to balance out the stomach system.”

— Allie Martin, nibbling stalk

“The root and under-ground stem are used to make medicine. In tradi-tional Chinese medicine rhubarb roots are used as a laxative. It is very interesting to learn about rhubarb.”

— Bella Pettingill, with broad rhubarb leaf

(don’t eat the leaf, it’s bad for you) Flow photos

The timing worked out well on a clear day in late September. The fifth grade had plant-

ed garlic. Plans were set for braiding it for sale for next year’s class trip to Nature’s Classroom.

“We had Shelbure Falls Farm and Garden donate the garlic so we didn’t have to buy it. And today I worked with one preschool teacher and cut sunflower heads, and we’re going to line them up by size.”

Timing is the key for success at the school gardens, where retired teacher Karen Eldred and a passel of school and community volunteers tend to herbs, vegetables, and flowers.

There’s a bounty of educa-tion here as well as food for the table. Eldred spent a little time with the Flow to explain what the school’s eight gardens really grow...

Flow: We always see kids out here. It looks lovely.

Karen: Thank you, it is love-ly. Jacqui Goodman’s [sixth-grade] class just came out and we cut up the sunflower stalks and added them to the com-post bins; another preschool teacher came out and we decided what to do with the scarlet runner beans that we planted last year on big poles that a storm knocked over. We opened some up and they were just beautiful. And then we went through what she could do with them, whether it was eat them or save them for next year for crafts.

Flow: Do you plan activi-ties class by class, or...

Karen: It works perfect! The timing was really good today. A couple of clases were expect-ing me, and others I ran into and it just worked. Ms. Funk and I talked about kale — her class is going to harvest kale over the next two weeks and

Karen Eldred and the life of the garden in education

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the kitchen is going to make kale chips.

Flow: How is all this orga-nized? Is this all volunteer effort?

Karen: All these beds are put in by the Garden Com-mittee. We still need parents’ support. I’m here as a liaison, working with families and school and the gardens and the teachers.

I’ll do a little work with the kids in the classroom on what’s going to happen — this is instruction time — and with others it’s just random.

The preschool kids hap-pened to just come out and they had their wagon with them. It was just coincidental. And then we took 15 to 20 minutes and did some instruc-tion with them and cut some sunflowers.

Now I’m doing cleanup, which is hard to teach kids to do. This is fall cleanup and I’m

just waiting for Becky’s [Becky Ecklund’s fifth-grade] class.

Flow: You said you’re looking for more help. What can community members do to help?

Karen: We’re looking for people to get involved. There are always things that can be donated. Right now we’re looking for bales of hay to mulch the garlic with. But we need a parent representative, which is what Emily Crehan was doing, and had been doing for a year. That would involve making flyers and organizing a date for a work crew. We need someone who can help with fundraising and grant writing – that’s a critical need right now.

We also need supplies and stipends. Red Gate Farm sends people down here and they get a stipend, I get a stipend, and we want to add Emily’s position as a stipend. It’s not a salary; it’s not anywhere near the hours that we work but it

recognizes that this can’t be a purely voluntary thing if it’s going to work.

Flow: What are you hoping kids take from all this?

Karen: I want children to understand where their food comes from because children really don’t. I want children to get outside. They don’t get outside anywhere near as much as they should. There’s science involved; there’s math involved. Being able to make connections to the curriculum. Really connecting back to what used to be part of their lives and really isn’t anymore. Chil-dren really don’t know where their food comes from; children really aren’t getting outside and getting dirty. They don’t realize what compost is.

Flow: I’m surprised to hear that. I’d think, living around here, more kids would have a sense of the earth.

Karen: There’s a certain amount but it’s not like it used

to be, where it was part of life. Now it’s if a family chooses to garden and it’s kind of a hobby. And with some families, yeah, they do still grow their own potatoes and can their own food but there’s a lot who don’t. Everybody used to have a kitchen garden and that’s not true anymore.

Flow: Why is it important for kids, for families, to have this sense?

Karen: Well, it’s education-al. It’s lifelong. It’s a lifelong connection to living. If you don’t grow your food, to at least realize when you walk into that supermarket where that potato came from, what the parts of a plant are, that the carrot is actually the root, that you’re actually eating the root... When you’re eating corn you’re eating seeds.

Flow: That’s a great vocab-ulary to have at your dispos-al too, to know how you’re

supporting yourself with the planted life.

Karen: There’s this whole cycle that continues. We can either help it continue or we can asphalt it over. [Laughs]

Flow: So anyone can help in the gardens here? It doesn’t have to be a school parent or a teacher?

Karen: I’d love some com-munity members. A master gardener would be really cool. I’m self-taught. My grand-parents gardened, my mom gardened, I garden. In another lifetime I canned my own food. I worked with adolescents in residential care when I worked as a special-ed teacher and we used to have gardens and chickens and exhibit at the fair. [Those were] hard-core city kids who did really bad things and they’re finding a different part of themselves. Gardens are for everybody. These gardens are for everybody.

Penelope McDonald-O'Neil, “Evil Queen sans makeup,” center, amid a sea of BSE Halloween parade-goers 2015 Kate O’Neil photo

Karen Eldred

Comics — Page B7

B2 Friday, dec. 25, 2015 • The BSE Flow Covering Shelburne Falls and Beyond

Kid Power

It’s fun and important to contribute in the kitchen

Keeping kids fueled for a long day of learning

W e wondered what goes into the school meals program at BSE. One day recently after the lunch rush Flow reporter

Diana Yaseen and adviser John Snyder sat down with Cafeteria Manager Sonya Hamdan to find out.

Diana: Where does the cafeteria food come from?

Sonya: Some comes from the government. Every month we receive a list and can choose from what’s on that list. There might be some ham-burger or chicken, frozen vegetables, canned fruits, lots of things like that, and I’ll order from there. Also I order through a company called Thurston for breads and anything else we need, all the vegetables… The milk and the yogurt come from All-Star Dairy.

Diana: How do you decorate?Sonya: I bought the decorations

myself. The Christmas ones, some of them, Mrs. Shearer brings in from her home. All the Thanksgiving decora-tions are mine that I bring in from home. We lower those three strings and I can hang things from the ceil-ing. I think it makes it more festive to have something over everyone. And then I cut out with my Cricket machine different things to put on the bulletin boards. If I see something on sale that fits the theme I buy it.

Diana: How much food do you serve every day?

Sonya: Today was chicken nuggets and peas and carrots. We served 128 kids and so many adults. That’s why lunch counts are so important, so we know for sure. I have an idea, but

TOP: From left to right: Helpers Vanessa Mills, Josie Tetrault, Tucker Mills, Christy Cress-Bistrek, Dot Giffin, Sonya Hamdan, Gerry Cadran, Jerry Levine, and Roxanne Shearer set the stage and give students full bellies to be thankful for. RIGHT: Cafeteria Manager Sonya Hamdan.

right now we have a lot of kids who are out sick. So we need to have an accurate count. On a day like today when we have a per-piece item, like chicken nuggets or hot dogs, I need to know how many kids are eating so I can do that much — and I always cook a little extra. Kids come in late, or don’t sign up for whatever reason, and we have enough. Every chicken nugget is counted when we put it on the tray.

For the Thanksgiving meal we served 247 [diners].

Diana: And everyone else brings in their own lunch?

Sonya: There are 260-something kids in the school, so the others bring in their own lunch. Buckland-Shel-burne has been a school where a lot of the kids bring their own lunch, consistently, for whatever reason. A third of the kids, anyway. There are some with food allergies, so we eliminated our peanut butter. Now we have SunButter [soy-and-sunflow-er-based]. That way we don’t have to worry about anyone. And a fair amount of gluten allergies. And there are some kids who just like what their mom or dad packs.

Chicken nuggets is one of the most popular lunches, along with bread-sticks, pizza, and French toast sticks...

By Diana YASEEN

Believe it or not, washing dishes for about 200 peo-ple is more exciting than washing dishes for two

or three! You get to use lots of equipment, including a spraying hose and a big dishwasher — you just insert your load and hear a hiss and the machine takes it in and goes to work.

“Lunch workers” are fifth and sixth graders chosen every other week to work with Cafeteria Manager Sonya Hamdan and her assistant, Roxanne Shearer, putting away and drying dishes in the cafeteria.

Pitching In

By Bennett SNYDER

I’ve done this job twice. I look forward to doing it again, even though I have to give up a recess to do it. Here’s how it works:

First the two kids go down to the cafeteria at 11:15 a.m. and wash their hands. Next they volunteer to ether put away or dry the dishes. Once that is decided, they wait for people to clear their lunches and Sonya or Roxanne will put the dishes in a huge washing machine to wash the dishes.

If they put in silverware, the kid putting dishes away gives them back and puts them in

once more. When silverware is washed twice, the “put awayer” puts them on a table and the dryer probably dries them. That process goes on and on until every class, from pre-K to 6, is dismissed by 12:30 p.m.

The dishwasher is quite loud when the dishes go in.

You have to wear gloves and you cannot touch any part of your face during your job.

According to Mrs. Hamdan the work is also very important:

“We love having them here, especially as there are only two of us. The kids do a great job.”

Sometimes, she added, “help-ers come back years later, even after they graduate, and say they remember this as a fun time, and that they miss it. That can bring a tear to my eye,” she told the Flow.

After everything, on my way back to class, I tend to feel proud and my fingers feel wet and pruny.

Students help our community in ways large and small. Let us hear how your student helps or might like to: [email protected].

IT BEGINS with lunch: in this case four chicken nuggets and servings of rice, mixed vegetables, and fruit. Students can also choose the salad bar option, and get milk.

AFTER LUNCH, students empty whatever remains on their trays and leave cleanup to the cafeteria staff and the day’s lunch workers, today Octavia Crawford and Jeffrey Buck.

THERE ARE three lunch sessions covering grades Pre-K to 6, and it all takes place between 11:15 a.m. and 12:30 p.m. Here Jacob Pelletier and Tyler Dubreuil get ready for dismissal.

ONE STUDENT dries dishes and one works on the dishwash-er in the first group, and then they have lunch. When they come back in, they can alternate. They also do the silverware.

CLEANLINESS IS KEY as Octavia and Jeffrey work behind the scenes. In addition to the helpers, Mrs. Hamdan and Mrs. Shearer keep the troops fed, happy, and healthy.

EACH TABLE gets a wipedown after lunch, with a student from each table taking responsibility for the job. Here Gussie Smith works as Ainsley Bogel and Grace Crowley look on.

Sonya Hamdan feeds a world

Provided photo

Flow photos

KITCHEN HELPING: HOW IT WORKS

Diana: Fruit is popular.Sonya: Every month different

things come in that the kids like: frozen strawberries, some cheeses, canned and frozen fruit. This list is for the entire district. I write a wishlist for what I would like of those, as the list is for all the schools in the district. If there are only three of something a school isn’t going to get what it wants. But they’re usually pretty good about making options available.

Diana: How about breakfast? How many people?

Sonya: It seems to be 28 to 30 people. We’d like more. But what happens is that when kids come in they like to play on the playground with their friends. They don’t come in and have breakfast, even though it’s free for everone who has free lunch, or 30 cents for reduced price, and $1. Thirty-six is the highest we’ve had.

Diana: Is there a lot of measuring?

Sonya: There is. Everything has to be measured. For example, when I’m making up the menu, I write down what I would like to do [serve], and

then go back though and put in the vegetable component, the fruit com-ponent, the grains, the meats, because it has to meet requirements — a half cup (this is for lunch) daily, and a weekly requirement. Each kid for lunch must be offered certain mini-mum and maximum amounts.

The difference is that, starting this year, [2015] the kids have to go out with ½ cup of fruit — even if they don’t want it or they don’t eat it. They have to go out.

Vegetables: ¾ cup offered every day. Usually that’s ½ cup of one kind and ¼ cup of a fresh. But it has to be 3 ¾ cup per week.

Meat: At least 1 oz. day. We always serve 2; it can be a little more. But it cannot be more than 10 oz. per week.

Grains: 1 oz. That’s why, today, with chicken nuggets, I had to put a piece of bread on. Because the bread-ing on the chicken nuggets did not count up to 1 oz.

And so forth. If you don’t follow these guidelines, when the state inspects you, you will lose all of your commodities that you order from the government; you will lose all of your reimbursements from the government, which is based per meal.

[Referring to guidelines] Here, this is a minimum of 1 oz. Who would give a kid only 1 oz. of meat or meat alternate?

John: Do you see kids having more energy and focus after break-fast and lunch? Do you see that as part as what you do in terms of being in a school setting?

Sonya: I think you’re right. More so, I think we give lunch to some kids who don’t have any lunch at all: No breakfast, no lunch. There are actual-ly kids in this school who would not otherwise have a breakfast or lunch, and sometimes when they go home don’t have a supper either. So that is a sad fact.

Some kids in years prior have come up to me after the Thanksgiving meal and thanked me because they don’t have a Thanksgiving meal at home, never see decorations at home. It’s not the norm but it’s more common than you might think.

friday, dec. 25, 2015 • The BSE Flow B3Covering Shelburne Falls and Beyond

Local Motion

MARY JOHANSMEYER is approaching 20 years teaching gym in the district. She says she believes the gym is a great place to instill teamwork, stamina, and self-confidence for a hap-pier, healthier life. She looks for new ways to tie other classroom instruction in with fitness.

Flow photo

Snow has yet to fall in our neck of the woods but the great outdoors are lovely all around, and we can

certainly take a walk or enjoy a hike. Sledding, snowshoeing, and cross-country and downhill skiing aren’t far off.

According to BSE physi-cal education teacher Mary Johansmeyer, kids will rise to the challenge of physical fitness and healthy lifestyle choices if given the chance — and clever encouragement.

Flow: We were just speaking with Cafeteria Manager Sonya Hamdan about healthy eating and student success...

Mary: It’s essential. I’m on the Wellness Committee, which is setting our nutri-tional policy for the district. The state came up with this requirement for a committee to oversee nutrition, physical education, and a healthy life-style. I’m on it along with Sue Mitchell, the nurse liaison for the district; Denise Dunbar, the nurse from Sanderson; the other elementary P.E. teacher and high school P.E. teacher; and we’re trying to get the health teacher on board.

The goal is to make sure our kids lead healthy life-styles. We’re looking at health as much as we can, including what the kids eat in school, like at parties. We try to dictate what is allowed for parties. It used to be all what I call junk: good[-tasting] junk, but is it healthy?

We’ll meet monthly and present our recomendations to the School Committee. This isn’t new: We’re just revisiting it.

Flow: What are the kids working on now?

Mary: The young kids work on movement concepts: spatial awareness and basic skills just so I can hook them in to kind of get them excited about moving.

The older kids, I always start out with teamwork so they can get used to work-ing with one another. I just introduced a game called Hover Ball. The kids saw it on TV. I don’t watch a lot of TV. It’s half of a soccer ball and you kick it and it just sort of glides across the floor. It was great for the older kids because I always start soccer later in the fall: the grass is always soaking wet in the mornings and I hate bringing them out in it where their feet are soaking, so I’m always stuck with, How do I teach soccer without being outdoors? This is awesome because we learned our basic skills, and then once we got

By BENNETT SNYDER

Laser tag is a game you can play if you are looking for action and

sweaty armpits. You start out with a suit

and “phaser.” You must have two hands on the phaser or it won’t work. The gun has your code-name on a glowing green tab.

The goal of the game is to shoot as many people in the shoulders, chest, back, and phaser as you can. You start in a dark room and once the ear-petri-fying music starts, RUN, HIDE, AND ZAP!

Examples of code names are: the Borg, Cow Tipper, No Mercy, and Alien.

I have gone LaserBlast at Interskate 91, at Holy-oke Mall, three times and played two rounds each time. Each round is eight minuets and there is no “getting out.” At the end of each round, you get a rank depending on how many people you hit and hit you.

The first time I held a phaser, a smirk of con-fidence bloomed smack-dab on my face. I knew I would destroy everyone, but I ended up in fifth place. It takes practice and I am slowly getting better. I think I need to watch out for competitors from afar.

InterSkate 91 says that you can have your birth-day party or a private party there and take laser tag lessons. At “LaserBlast: Ancient Adventure,” a “single blast” is $6 and a “double blast” is $9.

Parents can surf the Web there on free Wi-Fi while their kids play. Or they can even join in the fun themselves.

For more information, visit interskate91.com/north/lasertag.

Run! Hide! Zap!

Like a challenge? Laser tag just

might be for you

When not blasting foes with lasers...

into game-playing we were able to play in the gym. We have goals. They were ready.

Flow: What’s your goal for P.E. this year overall?

Mary: My goal is just to keep them motivated and excited to move and just want to keep exercising and moving and having fun. We’re always trying to come up with new, fun ideas.

Flow: Many kids say they want more recess. Princi-pal Joanne Giguere points out there are only so many hours available for that, given the requirements on instruction time. What’s your view?

Mary: I feel that recess, or just running and moving, is so important. That’s how kids learn: by doing. If they’re just sitting at the desk all day, yeah, I can teach you by talking, but if you do it, if you learn through moving, you’re going to remember it much longer.

In here a lot of the time I’ll try to incorporate what they’re doing in the class-room, like math facts. The sixth graders are working on it and getting better at their multiplication. They work in pairs: One person is the jump-er and someone else holds the math fact cards. They might get “seven times seven” and have to jump on the answer,

and do as many as they can in 30 seconds. You’ve got to know those numbers, and you’re jumping and it just plants that in your brain. Whatever the classroom is do-ing I try to pick up on some-thing and make it physical.

Flow: How long have you been teaching here?

Mary: About 18 years. I didn’t start until Kelly, my youngest out of four, started first grade. I came back to teach. My degree was phys. ed. When I first got married I taught up in New Hampshire a little bit and then when we started having kids we moved back here. I didn’t want to be a working mom. I didn’t want

Eyes on the prize for health and fitness

to be away from the kids so I did daycare and I took in a lot of teachers’ kids, and our vacations were the same, and my husband was a teacher, so it worked for us around vacations.

Flow: As parents, what are we up against in terms of keeping kids active: screen time?

Mary: Definitely. Kids need to be moving. I just did the pre-fitness test for fifth grade, and just looking at the fitness components I talked to the kids about — abdominal strength, mus-cular strength, upper body strength, endurance, and flexibility — we talk about why each of those pieces are important to be healthy.

In many cases we’re find-ing where we need improve-ment, where we see a health risk. Now I’m going to go over their results with them and send these results home. It shows them, “I need to be outside; I need to be more active.” How many curl-ups can you do in a minute? How many 90-degree push-ups? How flexible is your reach? How fast can you do 2,000 steps? These are our stan-dards. It gives us a measure-ment we can improve on.

Flow: Do you teach the kids how to perform an effective push-up?

Mary: I teach them that from Day One: how to do the exercise safely and effective-ly. We’ll do different things, not just pushups. Pushups are hard. It’s motor planning. There’s a lot to think about, so I always think of addition-al things to do to work on upper-body strength.

Flow: Is there anything else you think parents should know?

Mary: I only have the kids an hour a week. Their suc-cess depends on what they do when I’m not around, though I’m always happy to help. Kids need to be doing more at home. I am seeing that.

John Snyder

My goal is just to keep them

motivated and excited to move

and just want to keep moving and having fun.


Angela Worden-Corey’s ‘Year of the Caitlins’My first teaching

job was at Buck-land-Shelburne Elementary. I

had worked as a one-to-one aide there my first year out of college and was hired the following year to teach fourth grade. This was 20 years ago, and while I might not remem-ber the names of all of the students in my first class I certainly remember faces and personalities.

The 1996-1997 school year was the year of the Caitlins. We had three in the class that year. We also had a class pet, a tiny green lizard, and wrote stories about what he might do at night after everyone went home.

That year we studied units about habitats and African-American history, and proudly displayed our projects when the news-paper came to take our picture.

My fourth-graders loved music — especially the B-52’s — and they loved football, playing marbles, and superheroes.

They also loved books. For our first class read-aloud I chose the novel “Skinnybones” by Barbara Park. There were days when I could barely get through reading time be-cause a part would strike us as funny and we’d all dissolve into laughter.

That year my fourth-graders learned how to write book reports and how to choose books that they’d love to read.

After BSE I taught sixth grade in Turn-ers Falls and earned a master’s degree in special education from UMa-ss-Amherst. Today I’m a special-education teacher in Orange. I work with sixth-graders, and I’ve been here for 15 years.

ANGELA WORDEN taught her first class at BSE, fourth grade, in 1996-’97. Students were Gregory Bardwell, Lindsay Bregoli, Mark Burnham, Erica Clark, Caitlin Connors, Kristoffer Danielson, Katelyn Doty, Casey Dyer, Chelsea Hindley, Philip Malone, Caitlin Miner, Alison Kate-Morse, Philip Nichols, Mathew Pierce, Jennifer Racette, Amanda Schuetze, Meghan Scott, Charles Stone, Maxwell Thaxton, Meghan Wheeler, and Matthew Wright.

A TEACHER REMEMBERS

FIRST CLASS?FOURTH GRADE!

1996-97I’ll always remember

how lucky I was to learn together with this class. My hope for them has always been that they would become even more awesome, bigger versions of the awesome kids that they were in fourth grade.

March 4, 1997 — President Bill Clinton bans

federal funding for any research on human cloning. Warner Bros.

Yearling

HI! THE FLOW wants to hear from alumni of BCS, BSE, Mohawk, Arms Academy, and

other area schools — students, teachers, and staff included. We love stories we

can share with our young readers

and their families. Write alumni@

bseflow.com. Yearbook

Year

bo

ok

Alumni Spotlight

BUCKLAND—Mohawk senior Emma Guyette has just accepted an offer to attend Smith College, where she plans a double major in American Studies and Government or International Relations, with a potential minor in the Study of Women and Gender.

For this BSE alumna, the path forward starts well in the past, and it is a story always in need of discovery, retelling, and relearning.

Here is an excerpt from an interview she gave the Flow this August on her then-re-cently completed two-week summer residential session at Smith: Hidden Lives: Discovering Women’s History.

Flow: What was the allure for you in attending summer at Smith?

Emma: There were four op-tions. I chose history. Discov-ering Women’s Lives. I want to be a history major and I love Smith College. I’m applying for early decision in Novem-ber. I’m applying at Smith and at nine other New England colleges.

Flow: Why history?Emma: I decided that I

might want to be an archivist — they preserve historical and digital paperwork — or maybe go into politics or become a history teacher. I just love be-ing part of something that can change the world. Archivists preserve the world, politicians shape the world, and people who write history textbooks give history personality and bring it to people.

Flow: Is there an aspect of history that speaks to you above others?

Emma: I really like U.S. history — how our country was formed — but then I also really love European history and history in general. It’s so fascinating.

Flow: What’s the passion?Emma: I just love learning

about everything that’s come before me and shaped my life. Especially learning about wom-en’s history: all these women who came before me and gave me everything that I am lucky enough to have today. It’s real-ly important to learn from the past to learn how the future will be shaped. It’s so inter-esting that it’s recorded: what people have done before you. It’s set in stone but you can still interpret it your own way.

Flow: How does under-standing the past shape what we’re doing in the present or what we could be building toward in the future?

Emma: You look at the past so you don’t repeat it. I think that history is a very powerful way of learning from people’s mistakes or extreme failure so you don’t repeat it. It’s really interesting to look back and say, “Oh, nope, that didn’t work.” You know it didn’t work, so let’s reshape it and use it this way. Otherwise you’d just keep making the same mistakes over and over again. There’d be no progress.

Flow: Do you see history as a tool in some way to help

Living, loving history with Emma Guyette

shape the future? Particular-ly through a gender lens?

Emma: Women’s history isn’t taught a whole lot in high school. I know Mohawk is trying to get one [the curric-ulum] in place because it’s such an underrepresented part of history, and that’s what Smith wanted to teach us: all this great women’s history that gets ignored. Women’s voices are silenced a lot. It was taught a bit through a feminist approach but it wasn’t in-your-face feminism, which can scare some people. They don’t understand the movement enough to understand it.

Flow: OK, then what is feminism, in your view?

Emma: I think that femi-nism is equality between men and women, not one being higher-standing than the other — which isn’t everyone’s view.

Flow: Is that how it still is or have things changed?

Emma: I don’t think our history books focus [exclu-sively] on men in history but I would say, in my experience, teachers have been very good at including a variety: Yes, it was male-driven, but look at all these women who also participated.

Summer at Smith put her in touch with heroes

Emma Guyette was one of 25 accepted into Smith’s summer women’s history program. “The girls I stayed with bonded immediately because we had so much in common,” she says.

Provided photo

At Smith we touched the letters, diaries, photographs and manifestos that chronicle personal and political revolu-tions over the past 150 years. We touched the lives of Sylvia Plath and Virginia Woolf, Alison Bechdel and Sojourner Truth. I was so excited!

Flow: Sometimes people think of history as something that’s over and done with and dead in a way, and dry, but I suspect you think of history as being very much alive and interesting.

Emma: I constantly make connections between different historical periods and today, much to my parents’ dismay. Like, I’ll tell them at the dinner table, “So! Do you want to learn about this historical figure?” And they’ll be like, “Probably not.”

I like to connect today to the 1920s. I think a lot that went on then is relevant today in regard to people and how they acted and completely changing from their parents’ genera-tion. WWI was the catalyst for changing that in the 1920s and I think the Internet is what did it today. There are a lot of par-allels. I mean, we don’t have flappers but there’s a pretty big divide between generations. Their parents never did any-thing. When you think of the 1920s you think flappers and Prohibition and crazy, wild parties. But when you think of the generation just before, the 1870s, post Civil War, it’s not like that: It’s very prim and proper … and then their kids came along. Their parents just didn’t know what to do with them. I feel it’s similar to now when everyone’s on their phones and everyone’s on Facebook and their parents are

like, I don’t know what to do with these kids!

Flow: Women weren’t given the vote until they demanded it relatively re-cently and now they’re still not being paid fairly. Social issues are still resonating. Is that what you mean by connections from the past to the present?

Emma: You can definitely draw those lines. You can take slavery and follow it all the way to the present with how a big part of it was how African American people had extreme economic disadvantage even after slavery and have had to work so hard to overcome that and are still not even there yet. So it keeps going. And you can draw other lines. Wom-en’s rights go way, way back. Women are still fighting for equality. In the Sixties it even branches off because women were very empowered then and it keeps going through today. Honestly, I think we’re very close to equality. I’ll may-be see it in my lifetime.

Flow: For young kids, what is cool about history?

Emma: They shouldn’t think of history as something that’s dead and in the past. It was kind of presented that way to me when I was younger, and I was always, “But that sounds like it’s so much fun to learn about.” Why present it like it’s written in stone and not try to think about getting more out of it? Just think of it as something you can use to benefit the fu-ture. And think of it as a living part of society.

My biggest thing is that people touched this 200-300 years ago and now I’m touch-ing it, so it’s like a little bit of a connection to them through just touching the same paper.


World of Egyptian mythology lives on!The ancient Egyptians had

a rich, complex mythology. These stories helped them

try to understand where they came from and how their world worked.

The National Geographic “Treasury of Egyptian Mythol-ogy,” by Donna Jo Napoli and illustrated by Christina Balit, sets the stage for all that would follow:

“In the beginning, before there was time, water spread in every direction, though there was no direction really because there was no up, no down; no east, no west; no inside, no outside. This water lay cold and colorless. A wet nothingness that hummed nunnnnnn. Nun. Nun. This was the cosmos.”

Think about that: nothing but water, everywhere. Pretty crazy right? Well, suddenly, waves started: at first pretty small ones, but then they started to turn into tsunamis all in a rhythm: thump-thump, thump-thump. A heat formed around this pulse, a heart with a thought in it:

“Ah, the first profound disor-der: thought. This single thought rubbed faster and faster until it warmed and finally ignited language. The god Ra sprang into life with a word already in his mouth.

“More bubbled up. Words now crowded his mouth. They trampled his tongue and pushed against his teeth, his lips. He had so many words to enunci-ate. The need hammered at him. From that very need came lungs and a voice box and muscles to make it all move. Ra shouted the first word over and over, and

Parents name favorite books, authors from childhood

W e asked par-ents: Which books did you love to read

when you attended ele-mentary school? Several volunteered their early — and lifelong — favorites:

• The works of John Bel-lairs, Roald Dahl, and Madeleine L’Engle; the “Anne of Green Ga-bles” series by L. M. Montgomery; “The Island of the Blue Dol-phins” by Scott O’Dell; “To Kill a Mocking-bird” by Harper Lee; and “A Tree Grows in Brooklyn” by Betty Smith.”

— Schuyler Bogel

• “Where the Sidewalk Ends” by Shel Silverstein, “The Jun-gle Book” by Rudyard Kipling, “The Baby-Sit-ters Club” series by Ann M. Martin, and the Nancy Drew series.

— Lori Chase Grant

• “Anne of Green Gables” by L. M. Montgomery, “Farmer Boy” by Laura Ingalls Wilder, and “Little Women” by Louisa May Alcott.

— Cindi Jensen

• “A Wrin-kle in Time” by Madeleine L’Engle (and now there's a graphic novel version).

— Marissa Tenenbaum Potter

• “‘The Happy Hol-listers’ had a real innocence I appreciated. What they did was fun, and I liked that the family working together gave it more depth.”

— Amy Maffei

• The Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys mysteries, “Ju-lie of the Wolves” by Jean Craighead George, and “The

Call of the Wild” by Jack London.

— Catherine Maletz

• “The Phantom Tollbooth” by Norton Juster, illustrated by Jules Feifer; the “Danny Dunn Scientific De-tective” series by Jay Williams and Raymond Abrashkin; and everything by Ray Bradbury!

— John Snyder

• “Char-lotte’s Web” by E. B. White, “From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankwei-ler” by E. L. Konigsburg, “The Happy Hollisters,” and Nancy Drew.

— Jackie Walsh

Compiled by Flow staff

those shouts formed lava and spewed forth through the waters of Nun in a fiery explosion. That was the first thing Ra made. A mound of creation that Ra called benben.”

Ra’s words held the power of creation. This myth allowed humans to name things, wor-ship things, and have a theory of how everything around them was made.

Tefnut, goddess of moisture, had two children, Geb and Nut, the sky and the Earth. Knowing where these things came from allowed the Egyptians to know what the Earth and the sky were. It allowed them to explain the existence of the sky and the Earth. Through this story the mortals were able to learn how and when the universe was cre-ated, and they wanted to know more — which was important for ancient scientists. They used this information to further study both sky and Earth, later leading to discoveries that have formed our science world now.

Tehuti is the god of knowl-edge. He is why the Egyptians made each year have 365 days.

He is the one who ensured that mortals can solve problems. He gave people spoken and written words, numbers, reason, and science. Tehuti gave people the tools and ability to understand the world. He ensures the cycle of night and day by bringing Ra across the sky every morning.

‘MYTH’-TIFIED?A myth is a traditional

story, especially one con-cerning the early history of a people or explaining

some natural or social phenomenon, and typi-

cally involving supernat-ural beings or events.

Its synonyms include “folk tale,” “folk story,” “legend,” “tale,” “story,”

“fable,” “saga,” “mythos,” “lore,” “folklore,” and “mythology.”

For the Egyptians, without Tehuti there was no night and day, no sun, no sunsets or sun-rises. They worshiped him for fear that if he got mad the cycle of day and night would be lost forever.

These are the ways that Egyp-tian mythology played a role in ancient Egyptians’ lives.

This is the first in The BSE Flow’s occasional series on world mythology.

These stories started in Egypt at least 6,000 years ago.

This is a good book! Check it out at the library.

By Eliza BOGEL

MOHAWK—Sophomore Ashley Walker is approach-ing her 10th year of volun-teering at the weekly Friday night West County Commu-nity Meal at Trinity Church.

She tells her friends, “The good feeling I get after vol-unteering is indescribable. Oftentimes it’s a struggle for families or individuals to enjoy a healthy, home-cooked meal and good company. I’ve developed memorable relationships with each of the diners, and we treat one another just like family.”

For anyone new to the supper, she promises a warm welcome:

“We’re always looking for more volunteers and work-ers. Feel free to contact me about lending a helping hand.”

Ashley attended BSE from pre-K through 6th grade and says she loved it, particularly the community service aspect.

Asked her views on community service during a break in her lifeguard duties at the Buckland Rec one day this summer, she said participating in BSE’s recycling program, where students took the initiative to go room to room collect-ing recycling bins at the end of every day, made a lasting impression.

“I was inspired by so many people. I looked for ways to contribute to the community ever since, and the community meal is so big to me.”

She credits her elemen-tary school teachers for leaving her with the drive to get involved.

“I loved BSE. Teachers still stay in contact with me. If they see me on the street or something they’ll have the biggest grin on their face.”

At the community meal, Ashely says, volunteers serve 40 to 60 people a week. She puts in four to

five hours a shift. The meals themselves are prepared by different West County groups.

Ashley also gives her all playing field hockey but makes sure to fit the com-munity meal into her sched-ule. It’s tough but I love it. I’ve written several articles [for school] on community service and the community meal,” she says.

Her life plans include joining the Air Force as a critical-care nurse, and she’s taking advanced course-work now to prepare.

Naturally, she’s also focused on doing good right here at home, hoping to inspire kids to get involved where they can:

“I don’t think many peo-ple realize how much the community needs your help — teenagers especially.”

Trinity Church is at 17 Sev-erance St. For more infor-mation, call 625-2341.

Ashley Walker aims to inspire community service

MAP FROM ‘The Phantom Toll-booth’ (Random House, 1961), the classic liberal arts fantasy adventure by Norton Juster, illustrated by Jules Feiffer.

Must Read

Alumni Spotlight

BSE ALUMNA and Mohawk sophomore Ashley Walker (above, with sister Kate) is driven to help others. Volunteering at the West County Community Meal at Trinity Church has been a huge part of her life, as are field hockey, lifeguarding, and scholastics, and she plans to go on to the Air Force as a critical care nurse.

Walker family photo


What If It Were True?

By HANNAH CHASECat Times

GREENSKY HILLS—If you are the Chosen One, the world depends on you! You are our only hope! The world might have as little as one day left!

Local residents screamed in terror as a thief from Screamville — widely known as an evil place that brings doom — first killed hundreds of dogs and cats as he stole the town’s “Cat Eye” jewel. All residents were found killed in the incident.

“Apparently cats are now taking over,” former Greensky Hills resident Jerry Algert told Cat Times. “Now that cats are taking over and slaughter-ing humanity, the world will lose balance and then our precious world will be destroyed.”

Algert, who happened to be away on vacation when

his town was destroyed, said he returned to find he has lost his parents, sister, grandmother, dog, and job as a mechanic.

The thief is in jail but the jewel is still lost. According to magical-item specialist John Parker, the Cat Eye is magical and controls cats all over the world. If any-one takes it, Parker said, “the cats take over and after five days the world will be destroyed. That means we only have one day left to set things right again.”

Screams in the back-ground almost drowned out Parker’s comments to this reporter.

According to Garry Smithman Schnike, a worker in Cat Times, the only way to return the natural balance is to go on

One Day Remains to Save World as Cursed Cats Conquera dangerous journey that takes you on a path and go against cats, “which means you have a 99 percent chance of being killed,” he warned.

He added, “Beware: The cats are armed with scythes, swords, daggers, bows and arrows, and — last but not least — a death-ray machine.”

Anyone who gets shot by the death ray machine will automatically die, Schnike warned.

He said that only the Chosen One can survive this madness. The danger-ous journey will take three days to get to the end of the path unless you’re the Chosen One, who will be known by a huge rain-bow rash on his or her forehead.

The Chosen One is asked to report to Cat Times by calling 555-1908.

‘EASY, KITTY... NICE KITTY...’ Injured Chimpli Zoo Manager Arnold Schwarzenegger addresses reporters on Friday as Army troops search for the final two escaped kittens. “The people should not panic! We will bring back all of the dangerous creatures,” Schwarzenegger said.

By BENNETT SNYDERThe Bennett Times

CHIMPLI—Two vic-tims are dead and sever-al others are hurt after the zoo’s wild kittens escaped Friday. All but two of the kittens have been captured. Officials are conducting a search.

The kittens are wild, venomous, and 80-clawed.

Arnold Schwarzeneg-ger, the manager of the zoo, told reporters, “It was horrible! People had no chance of sur-vival until the military arrived in their helicop-ters with tranquilizer darts!”

Mayor John Chimpli told reporters the escape is so bad because these cats can mistake humans for long play toys.

“Don’t hold any cat items, just for good measure,” he added as a precaution.

Chimpli said that an estimated 1.2 people are clawed by wild kittens each millennium.

Schwarzenegger says that theories of how this happened are the animals’ feeder, Gary Schmidt, opened the gate to feed the kittens but then the felines charged out.

“Another theory,” he said, “is that the key to the gate was carelessly left in the keyhole” and the cats were curious and turned the key to get out.

Schwarzenegger said zoo staff will hire more careful staff and build sturdier gates to prevent this from happening again.

Hunt On For Deadly Zoo Kittens

Following Escape

ABC TV

‘Chosen One’ with rainbow rash sought for quest

DOOMED? The Earth is in peril after a stolen gem leads to near-certain catastrophe. Flow photo illustration

By DIANA YASEEN

HOGWARTS—A stu-dent’s spell exploded Friday, seven days before the Halloween feast, and destroyed a classroom. Sources say the famous wizarding school might be closed forever.

John the Ghost wit-nessed the explosion: “The whole potions class exploded! There were pig feathers everywhere. Ron was finishing an exper-iment for a quiz, and kaboom!” he said.

According to Headmas-ter Albus Dumbledore, nobody was hurt or killed. There were 36 students in class at the time, led by Professor Severus Snape.

Classes are cancelled for at least a year while Snape’s classroom is being repaired. A spokesman for Renalde Repair Company

Hogwarts Closed, Maybe For Good, After Friday Blast; No Injuries Reported

said Hogwarts might be in for many repairs or “might be closed forever.”

Ron Weasley, covered in ashes, told reporters he was still shaken up by the incident.

“I was just doing a potions quiz, and as usual

just added stuff in and hoped it wouldn’t blow up. But it ended up as a colossal problem,” he said.

This is not the first time a student has burned or exploded a classroom, Dumbledore told report-ers. “Once it happened in

February, when the class-room was burned to the bone. In March 16 desks were in flame. In April the walls were dented beyond repair. But this time,” he said, eyeing Weasley grim-ly, “it’s colossal.”

KABOOM! Professor Severus Snape (inset) reacts as he describes the explosion that destroyed his Hogwarts classroom on Friday. A repair company said the school might stay closed.

Pottermore

WE HOPE YOU LIKED these pretend news stories. We had fun developing them as part

of our units on breaking news, story structure, colorful quotes,

and hip headlines. What do you think might happen next

in each of these pieces? Let us know at [email protected].

By AINSLEY BOGEL and ELIZA BOGEL

The Greenfield Bugle

SHELBURNE FALLS—On Saturday, Sept. 12, 2034, a cow was having a nice meal at Sherry’s Veg-an Café on Bridge Street when he had to go to the bathroom.

“I directed him to the hall and told him to take the first door on the left,” wait-er Wren Savoy told the press. “I forgot cows don’t know their left and right.”

Owner Sherry Anderson added, “He must have taken the first door on the right, which leads to the freezers.”

And in those freezers he made a grisly discovery: beef.

The cow was shocked by that discovery and now says he plans to sue the café for false advertising.

Health Department head Andrew Parkhull, who later inspected the café, told reporters, “We

Cow Finds Beef at Sherry’s Bridge Street Vegan Café

also found shrimp and several expired chicken breasts inside. We tend to agree with the cow that the café at least appears dishonest.”

According to Anderson, the beef might have been hanging in the freezer be-cause of employee error.

“It might have been one of my interns. They seem very secretive lately,” she told the Bugle.

According to the café’s attorney, Stephen Schmitt, “the cow has the right to sue the company for $20,000.85, but first this will have to be taken to court.”

Judging from the aggra-vated way the cow said “Moo!” we think he is quite angry at this restau-rant, reported Sharon Brown, a local cow lan-guage director.

Store owners every-where said they are appalled by what appears to be dishonest business practices, as the café promises “There is never any beef on our premises.”

“We agree this is mak-ing a bad reputation for all our town restau-rants, so we will have to straighten this out,” said Tom from Tom’s Seafood by the Sea. “We plan to further investigate this and get our reputation back to normal.”

The cow’s favorite food at Sherry’s reportedly is tomato soup and Caesar salad. He said through an interpreter that he is so appalled at what he found that he swears to never eat those foods again.

The cow’s farmer told reporters, “He seems very disappointed that they let him believe they were actually vegan.”

If you have any inside information on this case, please call the Health De-partment at 555-3657.

UPSET STOMACHS. This cow just wanted to enjoy a simple meal...

Bessie Greenfieldman photo


Melissa Lewis-Gentry, manager at Modern Myths in Northampton, says today’s comics and graphic novels can bring many more kids into the world of reading — and can open up many more types of adventures than did comics of yesteryear. For more information visit modern-myths.com.

Comics!

This dramatic ending was submitted by Hannah Chase

I read a lot of comic books, and I’m sure you do too. Here are some

of my favorites you might enjoy. What are yours?

FoxTrot

FoxTrot (Andrews McMeel Publishing) is written and illustrated by Bill Amend. As of December 2006, FoxTrot was carried by more than 1,200 newspapers worldwide. The strip launched on April 10, 1988.

The first, and my favor-ite, is the FoxTrot series by Bill Amend. It’s about a family of three kids and their parents. The young-est child, Jason, is the smartest kid in his class and constantly getting into scrapes. He is obsessed with computer games, Jurassic Park, and tor-menting his sister, Paige, the middle child.

Paige is really into fashion and all that other teenage girl stuff. There isn’t really much to say about her but she plays a huge role in the comics.

Last but not least is Peter, the oldest. Peter is really into sports and is always trying to get Jason to play baseball — or any other sport — with him, though Jason usually refuses.

Roger Fox, a.k.a. Dad, loves to play chess and golf. There isn’t much more to tell you about him so let’s talk about Andy (Andrea) Fox. She loves to cook but she is still in what scientists might call the experimental phase. She works at home and is really into all that fami-ly-bonding stuff.

Some readers know Fox-Trot from its Sunday strip but it’s also collected into books, and I recommend these for people 8 and up.

Calvin and Hobbes

Calvin and Hobbes (Andrews McMeel Publishing) was syn-dicated from Nov, 18, 1985, to Dec. 31, 1995. At the height

Try these!

By Eliza BOGEL

of its popularity, Calvin and Hobbes was featured in more than 2,400 newspapers worldwide. As of January 2015, reruns of the strip still appear in more than 50 countries.

Calvin and Hobbes, by Bill Watterson, is about a 6-year-old boy named Calvin and his (stuffed) tiger, Hobbes, pronounced Hobs. Calvin and Hobbes form a club in which they are the only members: G.R.O.S.S. (Get Rid Of Slimy girlS). Calvin hates going to school and gets in trouble a lot because of that.

Hobbes is a sarcastic yet lovable tiger who is alive in Calvin’s eyes.

My favorite part in these comic books is when Calvin pretends to be the brave Spaceman Spiff, who is always encoun-tering aliens whenever Calvin is in trouble in the real world.

Calvin and Hobbes are good for all ages.

The Far Side

The Far Side, syndicated by Universal Press Syndicate, ran from Jan. 1, 1980 to Jan, 1, 1995. It was carried by more than 1,900 daily newspapers, translated into 17 languages, and collected into 23 compilation books.

One of my favorite comic book series is The Far Side, by Gary Larson. It’s basically a bunch of one-panel comics that do or do not have captions. The comics are usually based on animals but there are a lot of them based on people too.

I hope some of you will try to find and read some of these if you haven’t before. Let me know what you’re reading and maybe we can discuss that in a future column.

It was always Melissa Lewis-Gentry’s dream to run a comic store. Grow-ing up on the adven-

tures of superheroes such as Stan Lee and Steve Ditko’s Amazing Spider-Man and the angsty, cosmic Silver Surfer, her tastes grew to include the likes of Neil Gaiman’s layered Sandman series and other titles that took their stories — and readers — more seriously.

She worked 10 years in finance then took the chance to follow her dream. She’s been managing Modern Myths Comics & Games in Northampton for nearly a year and enjoys spending her time in a wide, bright, rich, beautiful — and sometimes shadowy — world where anything can happen.

Often that involves help-ing families and libraries help kids get into reading.

“I’m really big into edu-cation and using comics as education. Whether it’s for family members or through the Springfield library system, I provide comics and give recommendations at different reading levels,” she told the Flow.

She also said she’s “real-ly big into having comics where the content crosses any kind of gender stereo-typing,” so kids can feel free to enjoy the adventure without being told it’s for them or not for them.

Asked for her top picks for elementary and middle school readers, Lewis-Gen-try makes a bee-line for a colorful section devoted to all-age readers.

Here are a few of the titles she said kids, families, and teachers have told her they’ve enjoyed:

‘Amulet’Amulet, a graphic novel

series by Kazu Kibuishi published by Scholastic in six volumes since 2008, offers what Lewis-Gentry calls “a lot of life lessons and beautiful, lavish art. It’s not the comic strips you’re imagining from being a kid,” she says.

‘Bone’Bone, a critical and com-

mercial smash, is an inde-pendently published comic series written and illustrated by Jeff Smith. There were 55

Today’s comics, graphic novels educate, inspire, dazzleirregularly released issues from 1991 to 2004.

After being run out of Boneville, the three Bone cousins — Fone Bone, Pho-ney Bone, and Smiley Bone — are separated and lost in a vast, uncharted desert. One by one they find their way into a deep forested valley filled with wonderful and terrifying creatures.

Lewis-Gentry hails this as a new classic especially awe-some for younger readers struggling to read.

“There are a lot of words but you can tell what’s going on with the story [through the art] and it really encour-ages kids to keep reading.

“It’s a fantasy story, a quest. He’s this silly kind of kids’ cartoony creature but he’s going on this epic adventure, meeting drag-ons, fighting monsters, and making friends. There’s a lot of text and a lot of context clues as well.”

Lewis-Gentry cites aca-demic studies that she says show comics engage differ-ent parts of the brain that stereotypical or standard reading does not.

“So people who might have difficulty reading, whether it’s a learning dis-

ability, dyslexia, or anything like that — can read comics and understand the same level of content as someone who’s reading just prose. Books like Bone are really, really great for things like that.”

‘Sisters’Raina Telgemeier delights

with Sisters, her Eisner Award-winning companion to her comic memoir, Smile.

“This is awesome. The art is interesting; it’s about family dynamics; there’s a decent amount of reading level in it; and the content is great,” Lewis-Gentry says.

And her store does sell superhero titles by the shelf-full, as well as games and gaming modules.

“But,” she says, “not everyone is interested in superheroes. And there’s this stereytope that graphic novels for girls have to have princesses in them; that’s gone away. Now there are more expansive options out there. There’s lots and lots of good stuff.”

— John Snyder

FLOW PHOTO


Dear Buckland and West County residents,

Thank you for helping me to be a Buckland Select-man these past four years. My success (and failure) is reflec-tive of your investment in me. Here’s what I’ve learned:

Responsibility=response able. It’s an ironic reality in life that most of our best learning happens when we are least prepared and hard-ly “know” anything. Moving

Cheryl’s farewell message is a recipe for our successFormer Buckland selectman reflects

on lessons learned in serving town

through ambiguity and making decisions despite uncertainty is hard to do.

Decide to choose. Some-times the correct answer is no. Take responsibility for

By Cheryl L. DUKES

the choice – whatever the outcome.

Give the benefit of the doubt and seek first to un-derstand. Relationships matter and caring about others im-pacts our collective well-being. The real work comes in caring for and about unlikable people. Usually we know very little about “those people” because we put our own narrative and assumptions upon them. When we listen to their stories we get different perspectives of our collective reality with a broader understanding of our place in the world and impact on one another.

Understanding=curiosi-ty+empathy+critical think-ing+deep listening.

Apologize and forgive. When we make a mistake affecting another, take respon-sibility, remember the lesson, and apologize in order to grow the relationship, forgive the mistake, and have compassion for the other person.

Be brave. In most of life we do the best we can with what we’ve got. We step in and figure it out as we go. If we are fortunate, we will have people who can assist. If we are cou-rageous we will admit we need help, we will ask for help, and we will receive help.

Be generous. Ask if assis-tance seems to be needed. Sometimes the answer is No, thank you. If the answer is yes, then give cheerfully.

Do the work. Having a seat at the table is OK. If we want to be effective then get in the kitchen. Decide the menu. Cook. Bake. Sweat. Clean up. Serve. The outcome — some people will complain about the cooking. Be grateful and eat.

Transformation re-quires challenge and time. Cake=butter, sugar, eggs, salt, vanilla, and flour. Cream together butter and sugar. Add eggs; mix until incorporated. Add salt and vanilla. Fold in flour. Put batter into prepared pan. Bake at 325 degrees for 90 minutes. Creating batter requires beating together ingredients. Heat and time transform batter into cake.

Gratitude and humility. Be grateful and give thanks.

Sharing the credit matters. Do it often and freely.

Trust and respect are earned and are mutual. We choose to learn, grow, and rise to become our best selves.

Community. Our success as individuals depends on our in-terest in one another succeed-ing and building our collective capacity to prosper and thrive.

Thank you.

The author declined to seek re-election this year for another three-year term on Buckland’s Selectboard. She gives her new title as Curious Human and Buckland Citizen. We thank her for sharing these views — and welcome your letters, too, at [email protected].

Last Word

2016 Buckland Historical Society calendar now for sale, makes perfect gift

BUCKLAND—The Buckland Historical Society offers a beautiful, full color 2016 calendar of Robert Strong Woodward’s paintings, “Heart of New England.”

Woodward was a New England artist from Buckland, 1885-1957. While with us he painted around 600 oils and pro-duced 285 known chalks. Through his landscapes, barn paintings, and window pictures Woodward documented a pass-ing New England.

These calendars can grace your home or office, or that of a friend or relative. The calendars cost $20. Proceeds benefit the Buckland Historical Society.

Purchase online with credit card or check, or at select local stores:

• Andy’s & The Oak Shoppe, 352 Deer-field St., Greenfield;

• Boswell’s Books and Sawyer News, Bridge Street, Shelburne Falls;

• The Buckland Public Library, Upper Street, Buckland;

• https//store.bucklandmasshistory.org.

About Robert Strong Woodward

Woodward was born in Northampton in 1885. At 21 he sustained an accidental gunshot wound and was permanently paralyzed from the waist down.

He settled in Buckland on his uncle's farm and turned to painting. During his career he would lose three studios to fire.

Some of his works were purchased by celebrities George Burns and Gracie Al-len, Jack Benny, Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., poet Robert Frost, and actress Beulah Bondi.

Woodward’s Southwick studio in Buck-land is lovingly maintained — virtually unchanged from how he left it when he died of stomach cancer in 1957.

About Buckland Historical Society

Buckland Historical Society, Inc., is a 501c3 non-profit dedicated to collecting and preserving any and all articles, doc-uments, and relics of historical interest connected with the town of Buckland,

Mass., and to promoting the interest and knowledge of the history of Buckland. Donations are tax-deductible to the ex-tent of the law.

You can join the Society as a support-ing annual member. Members:

• Receive priority invitations to the So-ciety’s exclusive art shows, museum and program events;

• Get priority buying rights to the annual Robert Strong Woodward wall calendar;

• Vote at the Society’s annual meeting;• Get a real, paper newsletter in their

postal box once a year.

For more about Robert Strong Woodward, visit www.robertstrongwoodward.com.

Advertisement

“AT PEACE” (1935-’36). Wood-ward noted, “Large maple out back of Mrs. Griswold’s in November. “

“SLANTING SILO” (1947), Buckland. “Mary Griswold’s gray barn facade and ell and slanting silo with band of trees in full autumnal color to the left. Vivid green mow-ing with suggestion of road as foreground, part of an ap-ple tree, with yellow apples on it, stopping the picture to the right. Sold in Decem-ber, 1949, to Elmer Hallett of Shelburne Falls.”

“THE FARMYARD” (1941), Buckland. “Repainted winter 1941-’42. A small canvas re-painted from a very old one the same size as in Grand Central Art Galleries of N.Y.”

“JUNE CORN” (1933), Buck-land. “Purinton Farm (now Leon Goodnow's) painted from the back of old Stro-hecker House, (now Mr. Wise). Largely exhibited as one of my outstanding canvases. Awarded 2nd Landscape Prize at Albany Inst. of Histo-ry and Fine Arts, 1937. Finally bought by Bartlett Arkell (owner of Beechnut Prod-ucts) 15 West 10th St., New York City, for the Canajoharie N.Y. Museum, but I believe hung instead in his N.Y. busi-ness office."

The BSE Flow No. 8

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