Courtesy of Let s Grow Kids From left: Chris Nelson, Keegan Albaugh, Kyle Dodson, Rachel Whalen and Michael Seaver Chris Nelson is the kind of person all families would love to have caring for their children. An experienced and enthusiastic early childhood educator, Nelson runs Mountain View Child Care in North Troy. The 10 children enrolled there spend weekdays on her 100-acre property.
Their curiosity drives the curriculum. A conversation over the correct color of a cow once launched a yearlong focus on farm animals. The kids’ fear of bees inspired a beekeeping project; Nelson got a hive and some beekeeping suits to show them how honey is made.
Mapping birds feeding habitats Last October, I signed up my family, with great enthusiasm, for the Cornell Lab of Ornithology s yearly citizen science survey, Project FeederWatch. The premise is simple: You watch birds and report what you see. I paid the $18 fee and received a cool poster and some simple directions in the mail. I went out and bought birdseed and a bird feeder, which I set up outside our kitchen window. The only part I remember from the directions is this sentence: Even if you only count once all season, your data are valuable! Guess what? We still haven t submitted a single tally. Life has been overly full lately.
Netta Engel Tudhope
Netta Engel Tudhope, lovingly referred to as “Billie” by friends and family and “Grandma Booie” by her grandchildren, passed away peacefully on March 5, 2021. Billie was born on March 23, 1932, to William Engel and Netta Engel. She grew up in East Williston in Long Island, N.Y., where she graduated from Roslyn High School. Billie earned her nickname from her tomboy style her mother struggled to get her inside for piano lessons because she was busy playing baseball.
Billie’s family vacationed during summers in North Hero, Vt., where she met Doug Tudhope at the Town Hall Dance. She later studied dental hygiene at the University of Vermont before marrying Doug in 1951. They then moved to Richford for nine years, where Doug had his first teaching job. At only 19, Billie coached the cheerleaders of the school and updated their uniforms with a design based on her own high school uniform.
Last weekend marked the one-year anniversary of the first confirmed case of the coronavirus in Vermont. This eventually led to a statewide shutdown and 208 deaths due to COVID-19. It’s been a long year but now, there is hope. Across the state, Vermonters are receiving vaccinations to protect them from the virus. Gốc Văn Trần turned 93 in July of 2020. Like many older Vermonters, he has spent the last year in isolation, stuck inside. In 2016, Gốc moved from Gia Kiệm Thống Nhất Đồng Nai in Vietnam to Colchester to be closer to his family.
Section of the mural at Vermont Law School In July 2020, Vermont Law School announced that it would remove from its campus a large mural that had incited controversy among students and faculty for its portrayal of slavery, African Americans and the Underground Railroad. Eight months later, the mural remains. Its removal has proved complicated and could be a test case for an obscure federal statute regarding visual artwork.
Thomas McHenry, then-president and dean of the South Royalton law school, initially announced that the mural would be painted over. Sam Kerson, the artist, objected. The plan was amended to give Kerson a chance to remove the mural. But carpenters determined that removal would require the work to be cut in pieces, constituting destruction.