Here are brief thoughts on recent happenings in Franklin County and the North Quabbin region.
Regardless of whether students at Frontier Regional School decide to pursue a career in science, there’s no doubt now that they’ll have the equipment they need to thoroughly explore the field, thanks to a recent donation from the Massachusetts Biotechnology Education Foundation.
The equipment, which got put to its first test last week in Stacey Chapley’s Advanced Placement (AP) biology class, included 3-D DNA kits and 10 new microscopes. A previous MassBioEd donation acquired other equipment, including miniature centrifuges.
“We’ve only had one class set of microscopes, working microscopes, for three (science) teachers,” Chapley said. “Our budgets are so tight. We don’t have a lot of money. So the generosity of an organization like MassBioEd really helps all of us, and to see the kids really getting down and dirty with the science is huge.”
Certainly, tight budgets are a recurring theme within the Franklin County education system, often meaning that classes need to make due with the materials they have, year after year. While we certainly hope to see rural school funding improve so there is less pressure on our already strained towns to fund the schools through their assessments, donations like this make a huge difference right now.
Thank you to the Massachusetts Biotechnology Education Foundation for seeing value in supporting Frontier’s students. There’s no way of telling how many future scientists those DNA kits and microscopes will inspire.
’Tis the season during which we expect to see people ice fishing on our local ponds and lakes. But there’s something on Moore’s Pond in Warwick right now that’s a bit more unexpected.
That would be Duncan, the “Moore-ish Terrier” poised atop a tree stump that was placed on the ice at the south end of the pond for Warwick’s second Ice Out Contest.
It works like this: residents guess when the ice will melt and Duncan will be “dunked in” the pond. The contestant who guesses the time closest to Duncan’s plunge will win two tickets to Moore’s Pond Beach Committee’s lasagna dinner on April 18.
This is just about too delightful for words, but we’ll try anyway.
First of all, props to Sue O’Reilly-McRae for coming up with a perfect name for Duncan. It certainly made us chuckle, and I’m sure it gave plenty of our readers a good laugh, too.
Secondly, this is simply good, clean fun if we’ve ever seen it. There’s so many other bodies of water in Franklin County where this idea could be implemented, and we hope to see it spread.
To all of the contestants of this year’s Ice Out Contest, good luck.
We hope everyone had a good Valentine’s Day weekend. We certainly know of thousands of area seniors whose holiday was a little bit brighter, thanks to the creativity of students at dozens of local schools.
“It really did warm my heart,” said Catherine Etheridge, 73, of Sunderland, of the Valentine’s Day card she received.
The card donation was organized through LifePath, a social services organization for elders based in Greenfield. LifePath started the card-making program in 2015 as a component of Meals on Wheels. In the first year, about 450 cards were delivered, according to Holly Holloway, a senior administrative assistant at LifePath. Holloway said she expected more than 2,000 card deliveries this year to seniors living throughout Western Massachusetts in Franklin, Hampshire, Worcester and Berkshire counties.
We couldn’t think of a better way to tap into students’ creativity, allowing them to take some time to craft, while also bringing a smile to local seniors’ faces. It’s a win-win, and something we hope LifePath continues to organize for years to come.