Colby-Sawyer College has named Jacob Feinberg of Center Barnstead to the
fall 2016 Dean’s List for academic achievement. Feinberg is majoring in
biology and is a member of the class of 2020.
To qualify
for the Dean’s List students must achieve a grade-point average of 3.5
or higher on a 4.0 scale while carrying a minimum of 12 credit hours in
graded courses.
Congratulations to Arianna Libenson of Barnstead who was named to the
dean’s list at the University of Vermont.
To be named
to the dean’s list, students must have a grade-point average of 3.0 or
better and rank in the top 20 percent of their class in their respective
college or school.
Nicole Rott
of Barnstead was named to the Dean’s List for the Fall 2016 semester at
Rivier University in Nashua, New Hampshire. Rott, a senior majoring in
Elementary Education and Special Education, earned this status by
maintaining a term grade point average of at least 3.5 on a scale of
four.
Congratulations!
Barnstead Historical Society To Hear About Ash Splint Basketry
Join the
Barnstead Historical Society on January 26 and learn about ash splint
basketry of the Wabanaki people with Neil English.
For
thousands of years the Wabanaki, “The People of the Dawn,” consisting of
the Penobscot and the Passamaquoddy Indian tribes of Maine, and the Mic
Mac and the Maliseet Indian tribes of the Canadian Maritimes, took
splints from the brown ash tree and fashioned those splints into work
baskets, storage baskets and berry gathering baskets.
From 1840
to 1940 some of the Wabanaki basket makers shifted their attention to
“fancy” baskets that they wove specifically for sale to the tourists who
frequented the grand resort hotels of upstate New York and New England,
and a cottage industry was born. The basket makers would weave their
baskets throughout the long winter and then transport themselves and
their completed wares by carriage, canoe, steamship or train to the
grand resort hotels just as the tourist season opened. There, they would
set up canvas tents, welcome their new customers and weave additional
baskets on demand. They were paid very little for their wonderful work
but the proceeds were enough for the basket weaver’s family to get by
on.
Returning
year after year, the tourists would seek out the basket maker whose work
they were fond of, forming a lasting bond between weaver and purchaser.
The souvenir baskets were carried back to the cities at the end of the
summer to adorn over-stuffed Victorian parlors and bedrooms and, despite
their fragile nature, have survived to this day in significant numbers.
While
searching for his roots, Neil English became aware that his great
grandfather was, indeed, a Penobscot Indian. While visiting the
Penobscot tribal headquarters on Indian Island in Old Town, Maine in
search of genealogical information, English was first exposed to a small
Penobscot Indian basket exhibit. That was the impetus for English to
throw himself whole-heartedly into both collecting and leaning as much
as he could about the ash splint basketry of the Wabanaki.
A pot luck
dinner will be held at the Town Hall,along with viewing of some of the
baskets from Mr. English’s collection, at 6:00, followed by his
presentation at 7pm. For more information, call Denise Adjutant at
269-5871.
Oscar Foss Memorial Library News
New Hours!
Thanks to
the feedback from our patrons and our community survey, Oscar Foss
Memorial Library has new hours! We hope that our more consistent
schedule and longer days will make it easier for everyone to use the
library. Our new schedule is Tuesday & Wednesday: 10am-6pm, Thursday &
Friday: 12pm-8pm, Saturday: 10am-1pm, Sunday & Monday: closed. You can
find the new hours on our website, or pick up a bookmark at the library.
Please call
the library (269-3900) or visit our website (oscarfoss.org) for
more information about any of our programs or events. There is always
something happening at the Oscar Foss Memorial Library! Library hours
are; Tuesday & Wednesday: 10am-6pm, Thursday & Friday: 12pm-8pm,
Saturday: 10am-1pm, Sunday & Monday: closed.
Letter To The Editor
I find it
comical that Mr. Jandebeur ends his rant with “Keep your biases to
yourself,” when in fact that is exactly the opposite of what he is
doing. One thing my students are taught in my classroom is, if they
have nothing nice to say, then they shouldn’t say anything at all. I’m
glad you know 2+2=4, but unfortunately common courtesy and common sense
were not something that was taught to him.
I openly
invite Mr. Jandebeur into my second grade classroom. My students do in
fact know how to do math, but they also know that they are loved and
cared for. I can assure you that takes me going way past my
“contracted” hours. Not all my students have those “parents”
or “churches” to go to that you speak of. But you know what? Those
students know that they are safe and loved the second that they walk
into my classroom.
My students
also reach out to their community to help. This year for Thanksgiving,
they donated their prize money to help a local food shelf buy turkeys
for needy families. This was all their idea. And honestly some of them
probably spent their Thanksgiving at that very shelter. They then
hosted a bake sale and raised over $200 to donate to the Laconia Humane
society for the Holiday season. They put together all the
advertisements, they ran the bake sale, and you better believe they knew
how to count money, give change and then add a total amount at the end.
There are
many students lives that are a living hell at home and those 6.5 hours
they spend at school with teachers that devote their lives to them are
some of the best hours that they may have in their day. So
my suggestion to Mr. Jandebeur? If you have nothing nice to say then
don’t say anything at all.
My best,
Ashley
Black
Barnstead