Notes
from Cardigan Cardigan Mountain School R.F.D. 2, Box 58 Canaan, New Hampshire 03741 603-523-4321 November 1986 There's a dark wintry sky over the campus this morning. Thick Grey-blue clouds are being pushed across the heavens by high winds aloft. We've had our third snowfall of the season and more predicted for later today. Early morning temperatures have been in the .single numbers, and there is a skim of ice now over the whole lake. No doubt about it, Winter is on the way. /
Grad.e s are on I get on that last book report really the calendar which and comments to be recess.
everyone's mind as the 1st term draws to a close: "What did test? How much will it count toward my grade? Does my have to be in by ·tomorrow?" Faculty, too, are looking at _· a llows only three days from tha end of the term for grades completed. We're. all looking forward to the Thanksgiving
Athletic seasons, school calendar and the weather don't always coincide, and there's a two-week hiatus between the end of Fall athletics and the start of Winter sports. The Athletic Department uses this time to gather up the uniforms and equipment, sign up boys .for Winter sports, organize materials and teams . for skiing, wrestling, hockey, basketball, etc. so that they can be off to ·a running start when boys return from Thanksgiving. The time normally used for athletics during these two weeks is filled by the academic departments who have designed some very special afternoon programs entitled this year "Beyond the Classroom". Would you believe your son would sit spellbound for an hour lecture on the history of the trumpet? Visiting trumpeter extraordinnaire Walter Chestnut is a master teacher, natural showman and can make music from anything he can put a trumpet mouthpiece to. Such as? Well, a ten foot piece of .flexible plastic tubing makes no s _o und when you just blow into one end. Put a mouthpiece on it (if you have a trumpeteers lip) and it makes a musical tone. Put a dime store tin funnel in the end, and the tone is amplified many times. curl it up so it looks like a Fr.ench Horn, and real music comes out. Hard to be.lieve until you see it; and he makes it look so easy.! By means of his showmanship, Walter Chestnut really did ta,ke us through the history _of the trumpet with an ex~raordinary collection of instruments . including a piccolo trumpet, cornetto, 4 valve flugelhorn and a 1896 pocket cornet. He started the program with a concert performance of iJerimiah Clark's "Prince of Denmark March" accompanied by- Mr. Finkbeiner on the organ, and concluded with Purcell's "Trumpet TUne'' whi.ch he played with a hand-puppet on his fingering hand. No wonder he held their attention! Do you worry that your Cardigan son spends all his time getting two A's academics and athletics? Based on the princip~.e of a,dults sharing their interest and hobbies with boys, · the club program this fall included a total o f 17 activit i es no t a bad number of choices for a school of 180 boys1 Some were indoor activities (conditioning in the weight room, customized T-shirts in the art room, photography in the da-rkroom, magic and movie); some were outdoor (cabin restora tion, canoeing, mode.I . rocketry, _recreatioi:al , tennis, _street hockey and trap shooting); others •
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provided an opportunity to get off campus (walking, landscape painting, horseback ridi ng, bowling and bike touring). Besides , the .. fun and the learning, each of these clubs is another opportunity for faculty and students to get to k now and appreciate each other in a setting outside the classroom. We don't promote gambling at Cardigan, and we do not sell Tri-State Me9abucks tic k ets at the bookstore; BUT when the Senior class came up with this idea for a fund-raiser, it was too interesting to pass up. It was a raffle called SPREE ' 87 and a $2 ticket bought a chance at the grand prize of $100 in casb which would have to be spent in one hour in Hanover. Runners wo.uld be provided to carry purchases, b ut any money not expended at the end of the hour would revert t ,::> the Senior Class treasury. The Seniors were very active in promoting this; posters were visible all o ver campus; there were frequent commercials during announcement time at lunch; and t h ere was a lot of one-on-one buttonholing as the deadline approached. Lunch Frid ay, November first: the drawing. A hush fell over the dining r0om; the first number was drawn and read aloud digit by digit. Silence as everyone checked the numbers on his ticket. No response; read the number again; still no response and no winner. Draw a second number; ·check your tickets; then a shout - A WINNER! Verify the ticket, and it's true - Senior David Glossberg is IT. Saturday noon with his $100 in cash, some assigned "carriers" and a host of eager advisors, he was off to Hanover for the great SPREE '· 87. Being a Senior and having learned good study habits, David had his purchasi=s p lanned in advance and was able to get rid of $100 in the one hour time limit without any difficulty. Major purchases were a snowboard carrying case and one v i d eo tape. Then he was intrigued by one of Hanover's specialty shops where he c a rried out a variety of wonders such as: a wig, trick soap, dominoes, trick candy, a water rocket and several bumper stickers. The bottom line was that this caper raised over $220 for the Senior Class treasury. Who would think that a math project would stimulate ingenuity and creativity and p r o duce great excitement and wild cheering on campus? For "Beyond the Classroom week" the ~1ath Department ran a contest entitled: The Humpty-Dumpty Classic. Its objective was "to design a container to safely deliver (i,inbroken) a raw egg dropped from the top of the ski jump". There were detailed spe c ifi~ations for the materials that could be used for this container, and weight and size limits for the assembled product. At c ontest time there were 32 entries ranging in weight from 8 grams to the max i mum p ermissible 150 grams and from 10 cm in length to the maximum of 50 cm . Each entry was named, and there was as much ingenuity expressed in the names as in the designs. " Orange Crush" was in an orange soda can; ''minute. maid ' special" - you can guess the main element of this container; "Wright Triangle" was produced by Carlos Wright; "tetrahedron" suggested its shape; and "the topless wonder" was so named because t h e top of its box had to be removed to stay within the weight limit. A fine crowd gathered at the bottom of the ski jump on Friday afternoon to wit n ess the 'Classic' and cheer for their favorite entrant. Twe members of the Math ,f acul t y were detailed to risk egg on their face and examine the containe rs ~pon landing and verify eggs broken and unbroken. (The broken entries were easy to identify - they dripped.) Although there was only a gentle breeze through the tree t o p s, some of the very light entries were caught by the breeze and failed to hit the 4 x 8 plywood landing pad even after a second try. Some of the containers that looked s ure to success landed with a resounding thwack and there was little 1doubt as to the c ondition of their contents. WINNERS:
Grand Prize - David Kahn, ~ost Interesting Design - Ben Misrahi
Both boys are in Math 9-l so the section received the prize - breakfast at McDonalds f o r everyone in Math 9-l.