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Volume 23, Number 20
Friday, August 16, 2019
Students help restore WWI trenches in France A safer, easier GIVING GARDEN TALK
approach to gardening
By Everett Bishop Town Times
For 20 days, two area students took a step back in time to 1917. The United States had entered World War I, Europe was divided and trench warfare was becoming a popular strategy.
By Everett Bishop Town TImes
The Durham-Middlefield Giving Garden hosted guest speaker Katy Forline, a massage therapist from Durham, for an Aug. 10 presentation. During the event held at the Giving Garden next to the Middlefield Community Center, she spoke on how gardeners can do chores safely without putting too much strain on their muscles and joints.
Luckily for Daniella Lebron of North Haven and Joseph Viski of Durham, they didn’t encounter any combat. On behalf of the Connecticut State Library, and sponsored by the Connecticut Heritage Foundation, Lebron and Viski participated in the program titled “Digging Into History: World War I Trench Restoration in Seicheprey, France.” They worked alongside a group of peers repairing American trenches in France in order to maintain historical integrity of the site.
Joseph Viski holds a pick axe that had broken while on site. Photos courtesy of Christine Pittsley, project director of the program
Lebron and Viski were two of 15 Connecticut students and 17 French students participating in the program.
“I certainly wished we could have stayed longer. There’s really so much cool stuff there,” Viski said. “I’m such a big history buff and there was so much to see. We found grenades and bullets … I found a bullet that hadn’t been fired but was hit with shrapnel so you could still see the gunpowder inside.”
“Working in the garden is such a great cross training event. You’re squatting, you’re dead lifting if you’re picking up mulch bags, you’re carrying buckets of water. So it is really a workout,” she said.
According to Forline, your body needs five main components when doing any physical chores: hydration and nutrition, along with flexibility, strength and space in which to move. In order to Some of Forline’s tips inincrease flexibility and cluded: widening your strength, Forline recomstance while squatting to mended gardeners try to “keep the lumbar’s natural incorporate yoga poses incurve,” becoming more to their movements as mindful of your lower they stretch and bend in back and “practicing notic- the course of their outing everything” when it door work. comes to how your body is feeling. See Garden, A10
Lebron said she had a wonderful time while in France. “When we were in the trenches I was one of the main students pick-axing and shoveling the trenches,” she said. “We also helped with excavations and wallbuilding.” Lebron said the students’ days would start early in the morning, with the group on a bus prepared to leave for Daniella Lebron with French deputy Dominique Portier.
See France, A15
Guest speaker Katy Forline teaches participants how to safely bend and stretch, in preparation for garden work, at an Aug. 10 event hosted by The DurhamMiddlefield Giving Garden. Photos by Everett Bishop, Town Times