The Rumford Meteor » Book Learnin

Local Franco-American Scholar Still Trying To Decide Whether To Claim Mainers Of French Descent Were Constantly Oppressed, Or That They’ve Always Run The Whole State

Aubuchon Connery — Mon, 13 May 2013 13:30:16 +0000

Paul Lessard remembers his late grandmother telling stories about her grandfather serving in the Legislature and becoming the first selectman of Madawaska. His grandmother knew about her grandfather only through oral tradition, and Lessard said it was kind of a family fable. “She was upset he didn’t get enough credit for what he did, and I said, ‘What did he do?’ ” Lessard recalled. “I didn’t want to argue with her, but I couldn’t find anything. Lessard, 63, has since discovered more details about his great-great-grandfather, Olivier Sirois, and some of his accomplishments, including sponsoring a bill that provided funding for an English-speaking school in Madawaska. Lessard will present the findings of his research in one of the display booths to be set up Tuesday morning at the State House for the 12th annual Franco-American Day. The event originally was scheduled for March 20 but was postponed because of a snowstorm. (read more at Kennebec Journal)

Retiring Rumford High School Guidance Counselor Fondly Recalls 40 Years Of Telling Everybody That Got Within 40 Yards Of Him To Go To College

Aubuchon Connery — Wed, 01 May 2013 12:34:22 +0000

RUMFORD — After devoting 50 years to education, including more than 40 in RSU 10, high school guidance counselor Jim Ippolito has decided to retire. “I really enjoy my job. It makes me wonder if I’m making the right decision,” he said Tuesday afternoon from his office at Mountain Valley High School. Through the years, he has counseled or helped guide thousands of students, most toward a college or career path and a few through personal problems. “It’s not a classroom. There’s always something different going on. I could be involved in eight different things during the day,” he said. Ippolito, 72, began his career as a physical education teacher in his home state of New Jersey. After eight years, he and his wife, Jolan, moved to Maine where she had summered and attended college and where they often skied. He began as a guidance counselor at the former Mexico High School in 1972. (read more at Lewiston Sun Journal)

UMaine Police Suspect Graffiti Spree Was The Work Of Homeschooled Outsiders Because All The Words Were Spelled Correctly

Aubuchon Connery — Mon, 22 Apr 2013 15:20:01 +0000

ORONO, Maine — Vandals tagged several buildings at the heart of the University of Maine campus sometime Saturday afternoon, causing $500 to $1,000 in damage, according to university spokeswoman. Someone or some group used a blue permanent marker to leave 14 graffiti tags on the walls inside the Class of 1944 Hall on campus, as well on the exterior walls of that hall, Shibles Hall, and the Collins Center for the Arts. UMaine police believe the tags were made sometime between 1 p.m. and 1:45 p.m., because maintenance workers noticed the damage at 1:45 p.m., but not during a walkthrough about 45 minutes earlier, UMaine spokeswoman Margaret Nagle said Sunday. (read more at Bangor Daily News)

UMaine Fraternity Members Have Apparently Learned To Make Fire. Faculty Fear They Might Learn To Fashion Flint Weapons Next

Aubuchon Connery — Sat, 13 Apr 2013 14:08:16 +0000

ORONO, Maine — A fire Friday evening at the Phi Kappa Sigma fraternity on College Avenue forced the evacuation of about 20 students, according to reports from University of Maine police. Old Town and Orono fire departments responded to a report of sprinklers being set off at the fraternity and traffic on College Avenue was still blocked off at 11:30 p.m. Orono fire Lt. Scott Luciano said that firefighters found a small fire on the third floor, which includes some student living space and an attic. Officials don’t know the cause of the fire, but are currently investigating, he said. (read more at Bangor Daily News)

Taxonomists Trying To Determine What Form Of Invertebrate Would Be Unable To Withstand A Bowdoin Girls Squash, Men’s Tennis, Or A Cappella Group Hazing Ritual

Aubuchon Connery — Fri, 05 Apr 2013 14:24:36 +0000

Another hazing incident at Bowdoin College has prompted the school to impose sanctions that rule out postseason play for its nationally ranked men’s tennis team. Two years ago, Bowdoin voluntarily forfeited its first-ever New England Small College Athletic Conference championship in men’s hockey after school officials discovered a postseason hazing initiation of first-year players and a subsequent attempt to cover it up. Also in 2011, the Meddiebempsters – the oldest of Bowdoin’s six a cappella singing groups — were punished for hazing of first-year students involving alcohol and a scavenger hunt, according to the student newspaper, the Bowdoin Orient. And in 2007, the college determined that members of the women’s squash team and, to a lesser extent, the sailing team had been involved in hazing incidents in previous years. Bowdoin provided few details of the latest incident, which was announced to the college community Wednesday in a letter from Dean of Student Affairs Tim Foster and Athletic Director Tim Ryan. (read more at Portland Press Herald)

4000-Year-Old Corpses Get Better Medical Care Than You Do

Aubuchon Connery — Mon, 11 Mar 2013 13:07:47 +0000

CHICAGO — CT scans of 137 mummies spanning four geographies and 4,000 years of history show that hardening of the arteries was commonplace, especially in older individuals, suggesting this key sign of heart disease may be a part of aging rather than the byproduct of eating too many Big Macs. The findings, presented on Sunday at the American College of Cardiology meeting in San Francisco and published in the Lancet medical journal, challenge the commonly held belief that atherosclerosis, or hardening of the arteries — the disease that causes heart attacks and strokes — is a modern plague brought on by smoking, obesity and sedentary lifestyles. “It looks to be the case that this is an ancient condition of human population before the modern world and may in fact have been part of our species’ aging,” said Caleb Finch, a professor of gerontology at the University of Southern California and a senior author of the study. The mummies included individuals from the prehistoric cultures of ancient Peru, Native Americans living along the Colorado River, the Unangan peoples of the Aleutian Islands between Alaska and Siberia, and individuals living in ancient Egypt. (read more at Bangor Daily News)

Bangor Public Library Needs $3 Million Roof Repair To Keep The Rain From Getting On The Book They Keep In There

Aubuchon Connery — Sun, 10 Mar 2013 13:11:44 +0000

BANGOR, Maine — Bangor Public Library’s head of maintenance feels like he’s using his fingers to plug leaks in a dike. “I’ve run out of fingers,” Terry Balden said Friday, standing on the roof that has caused him headaches during the past year. The Bangor library’s iconic, oxidized copper roof and dome are original to the building, which opened in 1913, about two years after a devastating fire left much of Bangor in ruins. The “Great Fire of 1911” took the majority of the original library’s 70,000-book collection with it. (read more at Bangor Daily News)

First Rehearsal Of “As You Like It” By Homeschooled Acting Troupe Took Fourteen Hours Because The Kids Kept Stopping To Correct The Spelling

Aubuchon Connery — Thu, 28 Feb 2013 12:50:27 +0000

Samuel Richards fell for William Shakespeare after an English teacher at Fryeburg Academy encouraged Richards, a budding poet, to study the playwright’s use of words. “She said, ‘Listen to the music of the language,’” Richards recalled. “I stuck on that for a while. I caught from Shakespeare a love of language. I also caught his innovative edge, which is to say I make up words that don’t exist and expect everyone to understand them.” Richards, pastor of the of the East Winthrop Baptist Church, has spent the past 20 years sharing his love of language and the Elizabethan-era writer who is widely considered to be among the best ever at using it, with hundreds of children in the Southern Maine Association of Shakespearean Home-schoolers, known as SMASH. “I teach Shakespeare through performance, so you learn it not just off the page but by acting it out,” Richards said. The most recent production by SMASH, “As You Like It,” was performed last weekend and continues with shows today, Friday and Saturday at Cumston Hall in Monmouth. Almost all the actors and crew members range in age from 9 to 18. (read more at Kennebec Journal)

Police Find Abandoned Backpack Filled With Alcohol And Marijuana At UMaine Dormitory, Immediately Narrow It Down To 8,911 Suspects

Aubuchon Connery — Wed, 27 Feb 2013 16:05:59 +0000

ORONO, Maine — University of Maine police went to Hart Hall for a noise complaint late Friday night and found an abandoned backpack with three bottles of alcohol, marijuana and marijuana paraphernalia inside, spokeswoman Margaret Nagel said Tuesday. “No one claimed to know whose it was,” she said. It didn’t take officers long to determine who owned the backpack since it contained items that listed the owner’s name, Nagel said. (read more at Bangor Daily News)

UMaine Orono Scienticians Are Powerful With The Book-Learnin’ About Chemistering, Jeezum Crow, I Tell You What

Aubuchon Connery — Fri, 22 Feb 2013 13:42:48 +0000

ORONO, Maine — About 150 people inside Hitchner Hall at the University of Maine were evacuated late Thursday morning after a chemical reaction released chlorine gas in the building, according to university spokeswoman Margaret Nagle. Four people were sent to Cutler Health Center on campus for observation, but none showed any obvious signs of injury or ill effects from the gas, Nagle said. A lab manager on the third floor of Hitchner Hall was neutralizing chlorine tablets in a five-gallon bucket in preparation for disposal shortly before noon on Friday. Chlorine tablets are used in laboratories as a disinfectant. The manager added sodium bisulfate and water to the mix, which “reacted and offed gas,” according to the spokeswoman. (read more at Bangor Daily News)