Please also check the Cavendish VT Facebook page for photo albums of various Cavendish Historical Society (CHS) activities.
December is always a busy month for CHS as
it’s when we do our day long series of workshops at Cavendish Town Elementary
School. This year we featured Poland, and for the first time included foods for
the students to try at lunch-pierogi and kielbasa. As can be seen in the
photograph album, it was a very successful day. A very special thank you to our
volunteers-Angela Assermely, Peggy Svec, Pang Ting and Penny Trick. Svetlana
Phillip’s garnish for the kielbasa was a real hit and our continuing thanks to
the endowment provided by Stein van Schaik who is giving our students an
incredible opportunity to learn about the world beyond Cavendish. 
Over the holidays, we’ve had a chance to talk
to a member of the school board as well
as various people in the community. Again and again the issue of “local
control,” and networking school and community keeps surfacing. So with the new
year, we been considering how CHS might be able to help with this issue.
HISTORICAL
SOCIETIES AS ELDER UNIVERSITIES: Small historical societies like Cavendish’s have
a unique opportunity to be mini “elder universities” where knowledge of a
town’s past and how things have been done are well remembered by board members
and visitors alike. But how we take this incredible knowledge and share it
with the community is an important question. There are various programs for
our elders to participate in “life long learning,” but far less opportunities
for our elders to teach skills and life lessons that took them years to
master.
CHS is fortunate to have the Carmine Guica
Young Historians Program (CGYHP). To help insure that our elders are part of
the teaching process, we are providing CTES teachers-as well as anyone else who
is interested-with a “Cavendish Speaker’s Bureau” list. If you have a special
skill, or an interesting part of Cavendish history to share, or if you are
interested in having a copy of the list, please e-mail margocaulfield@icloud.com or call 802-226-7807
WHAT
PHINEAS GAGE & SOLZHENITSYN HAD IN COMMON: As we’ve been mentioning, 2018 is the 100th
anniversary of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s birth as well as the 170th
anniversary of Gage’s accident. Neither man was from Cavendish, yet their fates
are very much linked to this tiny town. Besides the Cavendish connection and
being historical figures, do they share anything else in common?
They are both incredible examples of resiliency.
Solzhenitsyn didn’t just survive the horrors of the Soviet era Gulag’s and
cancer he went on to write about his experiences, helping to bring the Soviet
era to an end. Gage survived a level of brain injury that no one thought possible.
He not only allowed the medical community of his day to study him, but he
exhibited himself to the world at large being a living example that one can
survive trauma. More importantly, the reporting of his injury made way for a new
understanding of how the brain functions, ushering in the age of neuro science.
More discussion on this topic will appear in
the Winter “Scribbler II,” CHS’s newsletter and there will be a presentation on
this topic in June at the Museum.
HOW YOU CAN HELP
If you can help with any of the following, please
contact CHS margocaulfield@icloud.com; 802-226-7807 or PO
Box 472, Cavendish, VT 05142
• CHS is looking for new board members as well as
volunteers who can help with various activities.
