Woodstock CT Café

“Hyde is showing this next Friday at 7PM for free.
Spread the word and attend if you can.
Give feedback on whether we should consider our own showing for the spring.
Well worth seeing but even greater value comes from the community discussion that follows afterwards.”

Dear Friends,It’s been an incredible start to the school year.   Thousands more have seen “Race to Nowhere” this month, and as a result meaningful and positive change is taking place in schools across the country. And this is only the beginning!   Over the course of the coming months we’ll be rolling out a number of campaigns to support you as you join people all over the country to transform education and reclaim healthy childhood in your community.You can help us get started today by spreading the word and recruiting others to join you.  Check out our new interactive tool and share it today: When I first set out to create Race to Nowhere, I wanted to spark a meaningful conversation about how our pressure-cooker culture is resulting in an array of unintended consequences that are negatively affecting our children and our future.    In the last year the film has inspired many parents, teachers, students and administrators to come together to act and make lasting changes in many areas including school schedule, homework, testing and ranking practices and policies.      We all agree: our children’s current and future health and preparation shouldn’t be sacrificed because of the narrow way we have come to define success.  We need to pay more attention to helping our youth grow creatively, physically, socially and emotionally and we need education practices and policies that are innovative and reflect the latest positive research on teaching, learning and child development.   We look forward to working with you and your communities in the coming months to forge new pathways for a healthier childhood and successful future. Be sure to check out the list below for screenings coming up in the next 10 days or to schedule your own screening and receive our Educational DVD Tool Kit including the film to keep for future use, click here.   Thank you,   Vicki Abeles and the Race to Nowhere Team

Herman Cain said “Don’t blame Wall Street, don’t blame the big banks, if you don’t have a job and you’re not rich, blame yourself!”… “It is not a person’s fault because they succeeded, it is a person’s fault if they failed.” I think he actually meant “…OR you’re not rich…”

I am repelled by this statement either way (“and/or”). The question here is ‘What does it mean to succeed or fail?’ If one chooses to become a teacher, a tradesman, a town Selectman, a college Professor, a farmer, an aspiring author or artist, and many other choices for a procession, you probably won’t get rich (there are always exceptions). Becoming rich should not be one’s preeminent goal in life. Becoming rich and becoming a success are not synonymous. If “rich” is synonymous with “success”, then we are teaching the wrong subjects in our schools.

I came out to get in my car Saturday morning only to find this trash at the foot of my driveway (picture 1).

A few years ago I and others in Woodstock complained bitterly and repeatedly about unwanted Reminders thrown at our property. The only time this has happened since cessation of the Reminder’s assault was last winter when one was thrown on top of a six foot pile of snow next to our driveway out of reach.

So I thought, if this is a one time occurence I’ll just forget it. Then as I drove out of our driveway I found the next Reminder (picture 2) at the west end of our property. We live a quarter of a mile east on route 197 from the intersection of 197 and 169. As I drove further west on 197 towards the light, I found 5 more reminders (pictures 3, 4, and 5) thrown willy nilly out of the delivery man’s car. When I returned to my house, I noticed another Reminder on the edge of the road in front of our neighbors to the east, and on the way to the dump on Woodstock Road there were more.

Either Reminder, Inc. doesn’t care as long as they can say how many ‘receive’ the Reminder or they have a rogue delivery man who should be fired.
Read the rest of this entry »

Note the fancy muffler.

from the Norwich Bull

“Dr. Jeffrey Gordon, chairman of the department of medicine at Day Kimball Hospital and a board-certified hematologist and oncologist, said breast cancer is ‘very much one of the few cancers (for which) we do have readily accessible screenings.’

Gordon said he follows American Cancer Society guidelines, which recommend women begin having mammograms at 40. He said some guidelines recommend the screenings start at 50, but he feels the sooner they begin, the better.

‘There are a lot of women in their 40s that we do find breast cancer,’ Gordon said.

But for women who have a family history of cancer, especially breast cancer, Gordon said, screenings may be recommended to start sooner, or extra steps, such as magnetic resonance imaging or genetic testing, may be performed.

But the best preventive measure starts in the home, Gordon said, adding that he always encourages women to perform monthly self-exams.”

from John

For Businesses and Academic institutions, websites are essential for promoting business relationships with clients and wanna-be clients, and fundraising. Virtually every college and university has pages for every faculty member which I explore often in my own profession. I can provide examples from Woodstock’s own citizenry in Professors Charles Super (Chairman of the DTC) and Sara Harkness (member of the BOE). Typically for college and graduate school faculty, these websites display the academic backgrounds, qualifications, biographical sketches, and accomplishments such as publications and funding sources. One can see that Professors Super and Harkness have and continue to have productive academic careers which may attract undergraduate and graduate students to UConn interested in “Human Development and Family Studies.” Good high schools and private schools also have well developed websites for the purpose of attracting students, fundraising, and displaying accomplishments, like for example, Pomfret School.

On Sunday after I met the kid from the Academy who was raising money for the Academy Music Department, I went to the Academy website to learn more about the program. I clicked on the “Academics” and selected “Departments” on the dropdown tab but nothing happened. So under “Academics” I clicked on “School Profile” and found a tab for “Faculty and Staff” which produced a paragraph of boo-bab but no information on the faculty. So I went to “The Modern Academy” and found the statement, “The breadth, depth and quality of the Academy’s course offerings places the school at the forefront of secondary education in Connecticut.” Under “Welcome to the Academy” Headmaster Kim Caron states “Our college-like campus, with multiple buildings and beautiful green areas, is situated on the picturesque and historic Woodstock Hill…” In addition, I have often read that the Academy is a ‘semi-private independent’ school. There are a lot of tabs that produce statements like these but there is little information about the faculty and departmental organization – academic backgrounds, qualifications, biographical sketches, and accomplishments. In fact, I would call the Academy’s website frustrating and pathetic. There is nothing collegiate about the website. It’s the worst high school website that I could find.

I am adept at searching for information on the Internet and, although I use a wide array of sophisticated search engines to explore scientific issues for my clients, I combine these with a simple Google search to find informative sites for companies and academic organizations such as the faculty pages shown above to learn basic information about academic scientists and their research programs. This is where anyone would start if they wanted to learn about the Academy, especially international students who, believe me, are more sophisticated than most local high school students.

In Woodstock we have heard from time to time about the Academy’s desire to raise money to fund special programs and build an endowment. Read the rest of this entry »

Amanda did not do the Newscast on October 4th so if you didn’t see her Sept 26th Newscast you missed her.

Amanda Corey graduated from the Academy in 2004. Mariah (our daughter) graduated in 2006. Amanda is Mariah’s roommate down in Virginia Beach. Amanda was a top-notch softball pitcher and got a scholarship to college because of softball. Amanda’s sister, Stephanie, also graduated from the Academy in 2005 and has remained a close friend with Mariah. Mariah is Director of Marketing at FireRescueTV, a new closed circuit nationwide TV service for firehouses (including Canada). She recently persuaded Amanda to do the newscast once a week for FireRescueTV.

See Amanda’s first newscast for FireRescueTV.

(1) Mariah at graduation with her mom.
(2) Mariah and Stephanie.
(3) Amanda, Samantha Stuckey (another good friend and Academy grad who also lives in Virginia Beach), and Mariah.

Samantha’s dad hanged out with me and Bill Loftus at the polls one year .

Click to enlarge

from John

Some weeks I have no clue what to write about at the Café. That’s the way I felt when I awoke this morning. But happenstance and serendipity work together to trigger the need to talk about something I care about. First, I realized that today was the Cafés birthday which I needed to acknowledge so I posted the update Café activity below. Over the course of the last six years we have waxed an waned euphoric but I still had nothing new to report for today. Then it happened, and I now have two stories to tell that I care about – the more positive one first and later in the week, the less positive.

I went to Dunkin Donuts to get a coffee to energize me for some work I was doing on Barber Road. As I entered the DD door I noticed a young kid and an adult standing quietly at a table in front of the store. Their sign said something about the Academy and its Music Department and they were seeking donations for the music department. There was a shiny brass trumpet on the table. As I waited for my coffee my mind wondered back 50 years to my glorious days at Norwalk High (I graduated in ’61) when music played an important role in my life. I too played the trumpet in my youth and was first trumpet my senior year in the high school band and orchestra.

In those years the band was something special at Norwalk High because of the conductor, Mr. Castiglione. He was so cool that everyone at the high school looked up to him, jocks included. He was a top notch trumpet player also. Although he emphasized symphonic we were obligated to play at football game halftimes and march in the Memorial Day Parade in Norwalk. Castiglioni used to brag that in contrast to the football team, the band won all of its halftimes. 

But what was special about Mr. Castiglione was his love of the music we played in concert. I’m not talking about Sousa marches. I’m talking about the works we rehearsed over and over again and played in concerts – pieces from Bach to Saint-Saëns to Beethoven to Tchaikovsky, and the more modern composers in Sibelius, Respighi, and Aaron Copeland. We recorded wonderful music during our Spring Concerts. Mr. Castiglioni said that it helps to have a good math aptitude to be a good musician and I heard somewhere that immersion in playing and listening to classical music actually raises your IQ. I believe this. It did not matter that I did not continue playing the trumpet in college because the music has stayed with me and will stay with me to the end of life. My friend, Bob Swan, who played the French horn in the band and lead violin in the orchestra has spent many years playing for the Chicago Symphony. I can’t tell you which was my favorite – Tchaikovsky’s Romeo and Juliet, Sibelius’ 2nd Symphony, Beethoven’s 5th, or Respighi’s Pines of the Appian Way. Everything we played was equally digested and appreciated, and these experiences led me to admire almost all forms of music from Dylan to Thelonius and even Björk.

The Norwalk High Band today. The website is just getting started.

So in the coffee house I pulled out a dollar and some change for a donation. When I got outside to the table to met the kid and the adult with him, I was confronted by a young wide-eye high schooler who had everything in front of him and owned a very nice trumpet. I’m not sure if the adult was his father or just a booster (pardon the expression). Enthusiatically the man said ‘you ought to hear these kids play’. He mentioned that the Academy band would be going to Florida in the spring and they need to raise – I think he said – $1200 per band member. At that point I left my one dollar in change in my pocket and pulled out a five, regretting that that’s all I could offer. I could see genuine pride in the kid’s expression so I told him that I could relate because I used to play first trumpet in my high school band. Then realizing that the kid was looking at an old man with white hair, I hesitated and then added “… 50 years ago at Norwalk High”. Read the rest of this entry »

The two articles posted below are two of the first articles published at the Cafe in early October 2005. These were posted by Becki. It took only about 30 seconds to come up with “WoodstockCtCafe.com” and it took a few hours and a cup of coffee in hand for Theron Parlin (2nd pict) and me to launch the Cafe (Cafe home 3rd pict). The idea was to give Becki a medium to express her strong feelings to the town. Then I got involved and stirred up a hornets’ nest.

Today we may have more unique visitors than in past years, but routine visitors to the Cafe return less frequently. The Cafe is a cavernous portal that currently consists of >2000 posts (2021 URL pages exactly; ups now 2022 because of above) and >17,800 comments. Its mammoth size is indicated by the monthly tallies in the left sidebar.  Below are graphs of (1) daily page turns (URL clicks) from October 2nd, 2005 to today (2) daily unique visits for the same period, and (3) weekly visits since January 1st, 2011 to this last week.  A “Visit” is when an individual visitor with a unique Internet Protocol (IP path) comes to the Cafe and then leaves the Cafe for at least two hours before returning to the Cafe. One of the commentors, Debunker, in the two articles below actually contacted Theron who registered the Cafe name to learn who the Admins were, but Theron was no help. Isn’t that right, Debunker?

See the dip in Cafe visitation during the electrical blackout in Woodstock during and after hurricane Irene HERE.

“Lets talk about what we think“

What is Woodstock? It is sixty-some-odd square miles of beautiful real estate. We don’t have a gas station, a full-serve grocery or a main street. We have several “villages”, but they seem more relevant to long-time residents than to the newly arrived. Though the “villages” don’t function as entities, they are quaint and quite distinct. We have one sidewalk and one traffic light. We don’t have many streetlights, though that seems to be changing, not that the town is putting more up, but some people use them as yard lights. Recently more driveways are being paved as opposed to being graveled. We have oodles of trees (and tree-lovers), the result of a change from mainly wood heat 100+ years ago to oil heat and the declining focus on agriculture. We still have a lot of farms compared to other towns but, sadly, those left are dwindling. We have water, lots of water, at least compared to other parts of the country and we have the “green” to prove it. Read the rest of this entry »

…concern about lack of an educational service contract…

It was like a family get-together where you discover that there had been a fight just before you arrived – everyone had on their smiley faces, but their body language said that they were not happy campers. In this meeting it seemed like the Academy representatives were the parents and the representatives of the BOE were the irritated teenage children. This was my impression.

Last night, I attended a meeting focused on the current contract impasse between the Woodstock BOE and the Woodstock Academy Board of Trustees. The meeting was well attended, being called by a group of citizens concerned over the lack of resolution of contract negotiations. The Woodstock BOE was represented by four members, including the Chairman. Woodstock Academy had their Headmaster, Business Manager, Board of Trustee President and between eight and ten Trustees, most of whom live in town. Also attending were many candidates in the upcoming election. Delpha Very represented the Board of Selectmen. Three reporters from various media were taking notes and pictures. Noticeably absent, though, was any representative of the Board of Finance. Read the rest of this entry »

“On Killingly’s first play from scrimmage in the first quarter, the senior running back broke a couple of Woodstock tackles and ran 74 yards for a touchdown. It was the first of three scores for him on the way to 159 yards rushing in Killingly’s 36-20 victory on Friday.”

See the Norwich Bull