CHS Briefs January 1, 2018

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 100^th anniversary of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s birth as well as the 170^th 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.