Woodstock CT Café

Currently the Villager is delivered to our mailboxes by saturation mailing. Why would they opt out of saturation mailing for a mailing that will cost them more? They will be increasing their costs by mailing the Villager to specific addresses. Why would they do this? Think about it.

By ‘coincidence’ we received the Putnam Town Crier for the first time in a long time by saturation mailing. Are these two events connected? On a personal level I found the current Putnam Town Crier more readable. I won’t be checking the YES box.

The Woodstock Fair has ceased being a non- profit entity as the property is leased for all types of activities.  They should be taxed as all other businesses are.  Will it happen? No.  Also the parking lots of the Miller’s and Young’s are businesses and should be taxed.  Will it happen? No.  The Hebron Fair contributes $1,000,000 to the town from their proceeds.  Will the Woodstock Fair do the same? ….
(Part of a comment by ‘Here We Go Again’ under “Allan Walker Testifies…” Admin)

The Woodstock Fairgrounds and surrounding parking areas

The news is chock full of kids all over the country going on shooting sprees at their schools.  Something has changed in the behavior of today’s student.  I completely agree that parenting plays a huge role in this.  But I do not feel it is liberal to say that children who do not feel safe can learn unhindered.  We are fortunate in that we do not have this problem in our community yet.  I think that integrating character and values into the community is a lot cheaper than metal detectors, video monitors, and hiring police officers to patrol the halls.  We’re nowhere near needing that yet.  That day could arrive in the future if more parents fail to do their jobs.  I say it’s far cheaper to talk about honesty and responsibility for a few minutes.  

I said nothing about the school being responsible for taking children to plays, providing breakfast, or dental care.  I believe the last two are federally funded programs and not something the town pays for.  I wasn’t responding to you on a National level.  I thought your initial comments pertained to the local/town situation.  And no, I’m not sure that these programs are needed everywhere.  I think they are only needed in the poorest communities where children are truly suffering.  In those cases, I don’t see why there can’t be joint support between a local church and the community to provide breakfast to neighborhood children before the school day begins.  Read the rest of this entry »

The Rise and Fall of the Connecticut Textile Industry: Technology, Community, and Environment, 1820-1990
Thursday, March 27, 7:30 p.m. at the Woodstock Town Hall, 415 Route 169 (big room downstairs), Woodstock, CT
with Dr. Jamie H. Eves, professor of environmental and history at UCONN. The history of textile mills, communities and the environment in eastern CT, from their heyday in the early 19th century to closure in the late 20th century, illustrated with materials and artifacts from the Windham Textile and History Museum.

Free and open to the public.  See www.woodstockhistoricalsociety.org for more information.

Doug Zimmerman
Program Chair, Woodstock Historical Society
www.woodstockhistoricalsociety.org
860.974.3020

see calender of budget meetings

Student Highlights

“Character Counts” is a program at the elementary and middle schools to improve school climate and foster citizenship and personal integrity. The program focuses the students on six pillars of character: Trustworthiness, Respect,
Responsibility, Fairness, Caring and Citizenship. In connection with this initiative, “Trustworthiness” assemblies were held at Woodstock Elementary School on February 7th and 8th.  Teachers and peers selected a student from each classroom who has demonstrated outstanding trustworthiness. These students were honored in front of an audience of the student body and parents and were presented with a certificate from Mr. Toth.  The principal spoke about the numerous ways that trustworthiness had been exemplified throughout the school in the recent month, and also defined and gave examples of “fairness,” the next character pillar of focus.  Students from the three multiage classrooms performed skits about trustworthiness. 

They demonstrated a real-life situation confronting a student, and acted out how the student could respond in either a
trustworthy or a dishonest way.  After each skit, the audience was asked to decide whether the student had acted honestly or dishonestly.  Finally, the entire multiage group presented the word “TRUSTWORTHY” to the audience, giving each letter a sentence that described the trait, and leaving the audience with a powerful message about living honestly. 

The following students were honored at the event:Cameron Lotter, Christopher Lundt, Stuart Hebert, Blake Kollbeck, Ciri Miller, Hannah Walley, Claudia Plummer, Lee Ann Rauls, Caleb LeBoeuf, Justin McGroary, Allison Kelleher, Sean Seabold, Jesse Viteri, Emma Durand, Emily Prouty, DrewMarshall, Nicholas Klingensmith, Olivia Perry, Meiling Syriac, Lela Miller, Emily Hebert, Jonathan Conover & Mikayla Locke.

Read the rest of this entry »

This bill resides in the Environmental Committee. Inside sources hint that this bill is likely to pass.

AN ACT CONCERNING ASSISTANCE FOR DAIRY FARMERS.

[Statement of Purpose: To assist Connecticut dairy farmers.]

Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives in General Assembly convened:

Section 1. (NEW) (Effective from passage) There shall be established a Dairy Farm Protection account, which shall be a separate, nonlapsing account within the General Fund, for the Commissioner of Agriculture. The commissioner may use said account to make grants to dairy farmers in this state based on the milk production levels of such farmers in any year where the average monthly federal price per hundredweight received by such farmers for milk produced by them is less than such farmers’ costs of production, as determined by the commissioner. Read the rest of this entry »

 ”‘How do you measure success?’ is still up in the air.”

In general, the quality and quantity of education is closely tied to earnings potential. Below are a Graph and a Table provided by the US Census Bureau regarding life-time earning potential and degree of education.

Reference: http://139.225.32.110/admissions/Degree_to_Income.pdf

On March 2nd ‘Hindsight’ pointed out that Bill Gates, Ted Turner, Steve Speilberg, and other notable people were college drop-outs who developed themselves ‘successfully’ in spite of their lack of higher education (see comment 3 under “We owe it to our Students…”). Hopefully one or two Woodstock students will have the same wild success as these notables, but the likelihood of this kind of achievement is extremely remote, perhaps as remote as winning a $100-million lottery. If Woodstock wishes to hinge their children’s success on something as unlikely as winning the lottery – that is, rather than having an optimal school system – Woodstock will continue to sink lower and lower by any global socioeconomic measure. Read the rest of this entry »

WOODSTOCK PUBLIC SCHOOLS – Superintendent’s Office – 928-7453

PRESS RELEASE

The Woodstock Board of Education encourages Woodstock citizens to participate in Woodstock Board of Education and Woodstock Board of Finance meetings during this budget season. Community and parent participation in setting spending priorities for the schools is welcome and critical to a thoughtful and acceptable budget outcome. Meetings of both boards provide opportunities for citizens to express thoughts and concerns regarding educational investment, funding of the town’s combined needs, as well as the allocation between the general government and the education budgets. Key upcoming dates include: Read the rest of this entry »

River changes it course at 530 Route 197

The 1869 map below identifies the “Paint Shop” and “L.M. Dean’s & Co. Carriage Mfg” on Route 197 east across from the H.W. Howell House. These structures are just to the east of a pond that existed in 1869, and still does, that is fed by English Neighborhood Brook. However,  after 139 years due to the heavy rains the part of English Neighborhood Brook that flows from the pond has changed its course in the last few weeks. The brook, instead of flowing along Route 197 down below the ledge, now flows over the driveway to 530 Route 197 and down into a large open field. The pictures below show the view of this dramatic change today (3/9/2008) from the H.W. Howell house described under the map below. The large red barn is likely the location Paint Shop/L.M. Dean’s & Co. Carriage Mfg. The white house may be relatively new. A structure on the map at the location where the pond flows onto 530 Route 197, may have been a mill.


Below, the aerial view shows the locations today for the H.W. Howell House (yellow arrow), the likely “Paint Shop/L.M. Dean’s & Co. Carriage Mfg (red arrow), where the Brook usually flows (green arrow), and the pond that feeds the brook (orange arrow).

Reprinted from the Original Antique Atlas of :  Windham & Tolland Counties by Ormando Willis Gray

Route 197 runs east-west (left to right) intersecting with Route 169 which runs north-south (top to bottom). H.W. Howell’s house heading east on Route 197 was built in 1832. The picture below shows how this house looks today. The brick is the original house and the porch/kitchen (section to the right) was added in 1931.

If you hear about some whacky woman running around town in a ‘wild’ hat today, fear not, it is only me!

Every year as winter starts to fade and the whispered hope of spring fleetingly taunts us, I indulge myself in a spate of introspection. Why? I do this because it marks the beginning of a new year for me.Yes, today is my birthday. It’s not a national holiday (there aren’t any sales named after me), but it’s a special day for me. I remember, oh so fondly, those first many birthdays of my youth. After dinner was over and the table cleared, my mother would present the homemade birthday cake and make her annual pronouncement that “on a Tuesday morning, ‘however many’ years ago, a great American was born”. She often went into what the weather was like, but never failed to tell me (and each of my five siblings on their particular special days) how absolutely wonderful and eagerly anticipated our arrival had been. Read the rest of this entry »

See the cell tower article in the Norwich Bull . Also see the proposed site plan.

The address of the GREEN arrow is 179 Prospect Street directly north of Wetherell Hill Road. The RED arrow is an estimate of the location of the proposed cell tower in the field directly east of the Wetherell Hill Rd cul-de-sac.

• The western most RED arrow near Route 198 is the approximate site of the proposed cell tower in West Woodstock near Black Pond.
• The southern most RED arrow in the near center is the site of the cell tower at the highway facility in central Woodstock just west of the Bennett Farm.
• The RED arrow furthest north in Massachusetts is a very tall radio tower.
• The GREEN arrow is 179 Prospect Street.
• The RED arrow next to the GREEN arrow is the proposed site for the cell tower in East Woodstock.
• The RED arrow south east of that site is the Transfer Station.
• The RED arrow furthest east is a pristine site, one of the highest in Woodstock, where a cell tower could be located that is not very visible.

See the cell tower article in the Norwich Bull . Also see the proposed site plan.

This is not about schools or politics. It’s about a special oak tree growing next to the Pink House – the one that doesn’t discard its dead leaves in the fall like most other trees in the forests of Woodstock.

In June of 2002 a tree growing in Wye Mills Maryland (Maryland Eastern Shore) was lost to hurricane winds. This tree was determined to be more than 460 years old, a stately tree that was old when settlers colonized North America. Before its demise, this tree was purchased by the state of Maryland in 1939 and declared “Maryland’s State Tree” e.g. “The Wye Oak”. The base of the tree was 31 feet 8 inches in circumference, the tree was 96 feet tall, and the crown spread 119 feet covering nearly a third of an acre.
Read the rest of this entry »

I am an advocate for education for reasons that may not be all that common. I suppose what I should say up front is that I didn’t get a college education. My path has been a circuitous one to say the least. What I did get was a rock solid basic elementary education. My high school experience was different in that I had to change schools after my sophomore year and it was pretty much downhill from there.

I wasn’t one of those self-propelled whiz kids that would do well no matter what, but I was smart. I did fairly well, though from my perspective now, I certainly could have done better had I exerted a bit more effort. Neither of my parents went to college, though my mother did later on when I was in high school. But, that was back in the day, back when the world was a far easier place to negotiate, back when you could support your family with a fairly run of the mill job, back when the world could be navigated with a high school diploma.

My first two years of high school were hard. It was a Catholic, all-girls high school and I was their token poor person. Scholastically I did well enough, but socially it was pretty tough. My parents moved me to the local public high school for my junior year. My experience with public high school was almost harder than the Catholic school had been. I wasn’t the token poor person, now I was just one of the many that didn’t fit in. My problem now was that I wasn’t being challenged at all. My interest waned until I really didn’t understand why I was there at all.
Read the rest of this entry »

Reprinted from the Original Antique Atlas of :  Windham & Tolland Counties by Ormando Willis Gray