Community Dancing with the Stars

Please mark your calendars for Friday, March 20 (I have heard that the event maybe at 7 or 7:30, but I will let you know as soon as they release the time) . Adam will be representing the Laconia Police Department in the annual Community Dancing with the Stars competition. The winner of the competition is based on the audience's vote, so the more friends and family that are at the event the better off Adam is. What the importance of winning? Well, this will be the third year of the competition and for the first two years a Laconia Police Officer won, so there is a bit of pressure. I am not allowed to give any information about what their dance is because there is definitely some friendly competition between some of the other dance couples.

The event is a fundraiser for the Laconia Main Street program and the past few years the ticket price has been $20. The tickets can be purchased ahead of time at area businesses. They are not available yet because they haven't even set the time of the event yet, but if you are planning on attending please let me know, and I can grab some tickets for you. There were 750 people at last year's event so it is important to get your tickets ahead of time.

Hopefully, you will be able to make it to the event! If you know Adam, you know how much he loves dancing in the spotlight!!!

Mt. Washington

During fourth grade students get their first exposure to NH Studies. Every time I start a lesson on NH it becomes more and more evident that my students have no idea what is available to them outside of the Franklin-Tilton area. For example, today I passed around vintage postcards of Mount Washington that my grandmother gave to me to use in class. Three of the postcards were of the Cog Railway, the other three were of Mount Washington. I did not tell the students what the postcards were pictures of because I wanted to hear what they thought. Well, one of the students told me they thought it was the picture of the train that goes through Belmont (we don't have trains in Belmont). Another said they thought it was a train from Chicago (I do believe we are studying NH...did you know Chicago was in NH?) And the kicker...isn't that the thing at Weirs Beach? (No, that would be a boat!)
Thus began a very lengthy conversation about Mount Washington. After explaining a bunch of things to the kids I realized they were really interested in the subject, so I went to the Mount Washington Observatory web site to show the students some recent photos from the summit. Among the pictures were shots of rime ice (which they thought was the coolest thing), sun sets, a fox, and Tuckerman's Ravine. One student asked me if Tuckerman's Ravine was where the sculpture's of the presidents' heads in the mountain was (Yes, we were looking at a picture of the ravine, and I said, "Joe, can you see any heads?"). Anyway, the kids were really excited about it and asked me if I would take them on a field trip up the mountain.
It was really exciting for me to find something that the students were really interested. But it was also heartbreaking when I realized that this "thing" they were so excited about is less than two hours from their house, has endless educational opportunities, but the possibility of them actually having a first hand experience with Mount Washington is pretty much nonexistent.

Cloning Lancelot

This week in between the impeachment of the Illinois governor, President Obama's doings, and the birth of octuplets, there was a news story about a couple who spent $155,000 to clone their beloved dog Lancelot. Apparently Lancelot was a very special dog to this couple, who own nine other dogs, four birds, several cats and sheep. So special that they decided to freeze the dog's DNA when he died in 2008 of cancer, just in case they wanted to clone him.
Now, I am a dog lover, and to this day still have a hard time talking about when we put our family dog, Frebbles, down when I was in high school. Frebbles, an English Springer Spaniel, was a very special dog to our family and losing her was one of the hardest things that we could have gone through. We often talk about how there would never be another Frebbles, and honestly, I don't think I would ever want to try to replace her by cloning her. Frebbles was a very unique dog and trying to create another of her would take away from how special she was. Instead of creating another Frebbles, I bought two English Springer Spaniels with Adam, and my parents bought an English Springer Spaniel of their own. Now our three dogs are not Frebbles by any means, but we love them just the same.
I just think about poor Lancelot's life. For the next decade or more Lancelot is going to be trying to fill the paws of the previous Lancelot, having to live up to the expectations of his owner.
The couple has said that they will love the dog regardless of whether he is exactly like their first Lancelot or not. Well, if they have that attitude, why didn't they just go to a local lab breeder and buy a yellow lab. They would have taken a gamble at whether the dog would have been like Lancelot, but at least they would have saved themselves $154,500 in the process.