Archive - May 23, 2011
MIDDLEBURY — Addison Central Supervisory Union teachers have agreed to a four-year contract that provides for some modest pay increases and slightly elevates their health care premium payments.
FERRISBURGH — Last Wednesday morning, some 100 students and adults wearing traditional cone-shaped hats stood ankle-deep in a flooded rice paddy pushing delicate yellow sprouts into the clay soil.
No, this wasn’t a tableau from Southeast Asia — it was right here in Addison County at Ferrisburgh’s Boundbrook Farm.
MIDDLEBURY — One of Middlebury’s most active volunteers for child and teen causes is reducing that role in order to take on a leadership position within the legal community.
Emily Joselson, a local attorney, is stepping down from the boards of both the Addison County Parent-Child Center and Addison Central Teens (ACT) after a combined total of more than 35 years of service that saw seismic growth and change within those organizations.
MIDDLEBURY — The UD-3 school board last week began to discuss the concept of installing a turf field at Middlebury Union High School.
At the same May 17 meeting the board agreed to open the boys’ and girls’ ice hockey programs to a limited number of players from other schools.
School board members last Tuesday were told that a turf field at the high school would provide a more stable, weather-friendly surface for multiple MUHS sports teams.
FERRISBURGH — The Ferrisburgh Zoning Board of Adjustment will soon gather to rule on another Champlain Oil Co. application for a Route 7 gas station, convenience store and fast-food restaurant, but both town and company officials expect that decision simply to set up a return to state Environmental Court.
On May 4 the zoning board held a brief hearing on a revised site plan from Champlain Oil (COCO), a South Burlington firm that runs a string of similar facilities in Vermont, including one at the junction of Routes 7 and 17 in New Haven.
MIDDLEBURY — The 21st century is a transformative point in the timeline of the human species. We can either collectively find solutions to the urgent problems of climate change, nuclear proliferation and famine, creating new and healthier industries to profit from, or we will struggle through a “New Dark Age,” caught between the world’s changing tides in our outdated ways of life.
BARRE — The Mount Abraham Union High School track and field team fared well in Barre on Wednesday, when the Eagle girls won a six-team meet and the Eagle boys finished a close second to host Spaulding.
The Eagle girls breezed to a win with 145 points to 88 for the runner-up Tide. Whitcomb (81), Northfield (65), Hazen (49) and Randolph (48) trailed.
Cassie Marion and Brooke Lossman won two events apiece for the Eagles, while Becky Johnston and Natalie May won once each.
Change comes easiest when people understand how they benefit. Motivation is almost in direct proportion to how much they save, or profit, or are made to feel better. Central to all this is the ability to communicate effectively.
That ability, or willingness, will dictate the degree of success Vermont will have with the “smart grid” technology that is about to become part of our lives. We can do the minimum, and accomplish little, or we can use the technology as the necessary catalyst to prompt the sorts of changes that truly make a difference.
