A high point of summer in Cornish
Last Friday would have been the first day of the Cornish Fair, canceled in 2020 for obvious Covidic reasons. From the time I was a member of the Happy Homemakers 4-H Club in the 1950s when I competed in as many categories as possible to display the carrots or flowers I grew or cake I baked or to show Brownie, my Jersey calf, the fair has been a high point of the summer.
Now a grandmother, I have welcomed for the past several years three granddaughters who travel 3,000 miles to join us in August. They and their grandfather concocted scarecrows that took months of planning, much debate and high drama over the construction. Entering their crafts or baked goods at the Cornish Elementary School were part of the excitement that climaxed after the judging to see what they might have won. They visited all the animals, took the carnival rides and let a McNamara creemee drip down their chins.
But driving onto the fairgrounds is strange now. The grass mowed and green grows around the buildings and where the Ferris wheel would turn. The barns are empty and silent. One can’t help but think that last Friday, with its sun and blue skies, would have made a perfect opening day of the fair.
Helen Davidson
Plainfield
Beatriz Pastor is ready to legislate
Beatriz Pastor has my enthusiastic endorsement for the New Hampshire Senate. She is without question the best candidate. She is an experienced legislator who served six years in the N.H. House, from 2008 to 2014, earning the reputation of being an effective legislator and passionate advocate for her constituents. From her position in the Science Technology and Energy Committee, Beatriz spearheaded groundbreaking legislation in energy efficiency and broadband deployment. She supported, among many other core Democratic agenda issues, Medicaid expansion, affordable high quality health care, equitable and adequate school funding, women’s health, voters’ rights and gun violence prevention. She will be ready to legislate and advocate for all her constituents in District 5 from day number one. Please support Beatriz Pastor and vote for her in the Sept. 8 primary.
Mary Jane Mulligan
Hanover
The writer represents Hanover and Lyme in the N.H. House.
An alternative way to teach
I spent 34 years teaching elementary school, the last 20 with grades two and three. After retiring in 2009, for several summers I tutored children whose parents felt the need for either remedial or more advanced lessons to supplement the previous year’s instruction. I quickly learned that, with intense one-on-one instruction, I could teach a school day’s lessons in an hour. Children departed with reading or written assignments to reinforce and practice their learning at home.
A child’s average public school day is seven hours. Subtract 40 minutes for art, physical education or music (those subjects are valuable, but hey, we’re in a pandemic), 25 minutes for lunch, 40 minutes at recess and we’re left with 5¼ hours. Let’s say conservatively that 15 minutes is spent on “show and tell,” and an hour on silent reading, writing in journals and seat work, including math worksheets or reading comprehension questions. That leaves four hours of instruction. What children learn and retain in that time varies. Many need extra help.
Some local schools are looking at new HVAC systems that cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, while others are renting or buying tents for outdoor instruction. Some schools are offering in-person, full-day instruction, while others are presenting a hybrid model that combines remote learning and some in-person instruction. Arguably, whenever more than a few students congregate, they can’t be kept 6 feet apart, and teachers don’t feel safe. A teacher friend of mine just quit for that very reason. Therefore, I propose another solution.
Let’s say a classroom has 20 children. Hire two permanent subs (for example, experienced retired teachers like me) at $100 per day each, to teach with the regular classroom teacher on opposite sides of the classroom for seven hours a day. Each child would receive one hour of intense one-to-one instruction daily. If a school has 20 classrooms and effects this model for two months, the cost would be $160,000, far less than tent rentals and ventilation systems.
No proposed model is perfect, and mine requires parental juggling, for sure. But from my years of experience, I can tell you without a doubt, that one-on-one, intensive, individualized lessons are best.
Cathy Lacombe
Grantham
In regard to the recent interest in Lebanon in electric vehicle charging stations, you’re not thinking big enough. All Upper Valley towns should be making the shift to electric vehicles, not for the sake of being green or for attracting customers but because it makes great economic sense.
Tesloop, a car rental company in California has a fleet of Teslas, most of which have in excess of 300,000 miles on them. Operating maintenance is averaging 5 cents per mile, most internal combustion vehicles are above 25 cents per mile. City vehicles, especially Upper Valley police cruisers, should already be in trials. Westport, Conn.’s police department is running a Tesla Model 3, and they figure the payback is in the 19-month range. They also figured they saved $2,500 by utilizing the Tesla onboard cameras rather than installing department cameras (turns out Tesla’s cameras are better). The town of Enfield is designing a new municipal building for police, fire and EMS and I have been encouraging them to install dedicated charging stations for future police and fire electric vehicles. You can’t test a Tesla if you don’t have charging infrastructure, sort of like the chicken and the egg. I have mentioned Tesla several times, not because I own company stock (I wish!) but because their technology is decades ahead of any legacy manufacturer today.
Gary L. Hutchins
Enfield
Guns are already heavily regulated
First off, between federal, state and local (city) we have hundreds of gun laws, restrictions and bans that have the ability to put a person in prison for well over 25 years.
Anybody in the United States that legally purchases a firearm has to go through a mandatory background check. This means local, state and federal authorities know who you are, where you live and what type of firearm you purchased. Every firearm has its own unique serial number.
You have to be a U.S. citizen 18 years old, to purchase, or have in your possession a firearm.
You cannot have a criminal record to purchase or have in your possession a firearm. The penalty is mandatory prison.
Fully automatic (machine gun) weapons are illegal for the average person to own or modify to become fully automatic.
If you have been convicted of drugs or using drugs that are deemed illegal by the U.S. government you cannot purchase firearms.
That is only a snapshot of laws and restrictions. Unfortunately the news media or some politicians do not seem to mention any of the laws or restrictions to the American public. Nor do they mention criminals obtain their guns illegally, stolen, smuggled in from another country, etc.
Whenever there is a tragedy involving a firearm, the politicians and news media immediately call for more gun laws. What is interesting, the ones calling for more laws come from states/cities with the strictest gun laws/restrictions in the United States. They also have the highest crime rate.
Drug dealers directly or indirectly kill approximately 70,000 people a year. In addition, over 70% of crime can be linked back to drugs. I do not recall these same politicians calling for more action.
David Morrie
Claremont