Portland...  On the Move |
Issue 74 ~ News from your Town Hall ~ March 2000
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Education By: Thomas Danehy Students at Portland Middle School are working diligently on several fronts. First in academics, the students are reveling in their achievements on the most recent administration of the Connecticut Mastery Test. Their scores from the October 1999 test show overall improvements from the same students’ scores two years ago. Sixth graders showed gains in reading and writing. Spectacularly, our eighth graders showed tremendous gains in all three sub-tests: reading, writing, and mathematics. We are proud of their work and all the effort they put into taking this test. Teachers at Portland Middle School are also working hard to assess present programming to augment areas that need improvement, to maintain excellence in programming, and to develop scheduling arrangements that facilitate interdisciplinary teaching. Their work has proved to be interesting and fun. Ten teachers visited middle schools with reputations for excellence around the state. From their visits, teachers were able to discuss the virtues of the programs they saw, cull unnecessary changes, and develop a program unique for our middle school. We will be meeting with parents over the next few months to describe new schedule modifications that allow for longer instructional periods and greater diversity and variety in both subjects and programs to meet the needs of our students. In the upcoming weeks, students will be involved in the following events that broaden the scope of the classroom: |
The student council is looking for community service agencies that may be interested in having student volunteers come to learn about their agency and how it helps members of our community. Please add to our overall programming for students in our middle school. If you are interested in helping, please call Tom Danehy at 342-1880. |
Update|
Things change. Nothing ever really stays the same, even when we think it does. The new replaces the old, and soon becomes part of the landscape. Relationships evolve. Businesses come and go. Each graduating class makes room for the next. New year. New century. New millennium. One president steps down to make room for another. Good-bye Seinfeld! Hello Allie McBeal! Today’s technology is practically defined by change. As soon as you learn what’s state-of-the-art, the art branches off to something else. In the blink of an eye we’ve moved from telephone to radio to television to cable TV to satellite dish to cell phones! Yes, even Portland is in the process of change. The results are certainly apparent from when I first came here 37 years ago. Back then, who would suspect that the Portland Bakery would someday be a pizza parlor, and our old hang-out at Dairy Queen would move across the river, only to return at a different location? The Agricultural Fair, so popular back then, eventually disappeared. What’s that you say? That’s right, the fair is coming back also. But, what of the popular Downtown Festival? Is that lost forever? Who ever thought that the welfare system would change so drastically? Or that the fate of Central School would ever be decided? Most of us believed that the bridge repairs would never be completed – but they were! We even have a Burger King in town! I remember admiring the corn fields alongside Rose Hill Road. Now there’s a baseball field, a dozen houses and three golf courses! What about the tobacco fields, and busing-in workers from out of town? One of those tobacco barns is now a medical building, and the field beyond is filled with new housing. That was a shocker to me 7 years ago, when I came back to work in town. You can’t stop change. Indeed, the Portland we reminisce about 30 years ago was far different from the bustling river town of the mid-nineteenth century, when ship-building was popular and immigrants came to work the quarries. The very center of town shifted from the Gildersleeve area to where it is today. Unavoidable though it is, facing change can be a fearful experience sometimes. We think nostalgically of the past, when things were supposedly better, and resist the great unknown that looms before us. How will change affect us? Will we be able to fit in? The way we face change depends on who we are and our own ability to evolve. Yes. People evolve. You are not the same as you were ten years ago. What you become is really up for grabs. Resist personal change and you become stagnant, something fixed, not really alive. | Not alive? Is that too harsh? Think about it. When you continually adhere to a self-made image of yourself, you limit who you are to that image. You are not experiencing and responding to life directly, but through a fixed representation, which defines you. The image decides your every move, your every choice. When you hand over the direct experience of life to an image, have you not surrendered some of life itself? Perhaps an easier way to think of this is provided by structural grammar. Which do you prefer to be? A subject (I)? Or an object (me)? See the difference? "Me" is fixed. It is an object which does not act, but is acted upon. "I" is a subject. It directly experiences and partakes in his or her environment. Change is difficult for objects that are fixed quantities. It requires modification, a continual threat to someone whose image naturally resists change. Subjects, however, respond directly to their surroundings. They are accustomed to change, which imbues them with the vitality of new experiences, new challenges. This is life-affirming. A certain amount of security can be found in the changeless monotony of routine, building walls to hold in the old and keep out the new – the security of a prison cell, where freedom is sacrificed. A better alternative is to incorporate what is best from the past into the direction where things are going. We’re trying to do that in Portland. We are trying to reclaim our history while enhancing economic growth. We are gaining public recognition for the quarries that contributed so much to our past. We are publishing articles to increase historical appreciation. Work on the Callander House museum is well under way despite early set-backs, promising to be a welcome asset to our overall goals. Our new and beautiful Town Hall is almost ready for use, resurrecting Central School. The old Town Hall will soon begin renovations, preserving another brownstone landmark to keep Main Street beautiful. The National Parks Service has assigned John Monroe (from the Rivers, Trails and Conservation Program) to help us develop plans for the brownstone quarries and riverfront area. He is holding regular meetings with officials and townspeople to formulate what we want. The public is invited to attend. Thoughtful change offers us the opportunity to preserve the past. Thanks to organizations like PRIDE, Economic Development and Strategic Planning, a healthy momentum of change is being activated in Portland. It is important to become part of change, to welcome it. What’s the alternative? To be left out? Catch some of the excitement. Try to envision the possibilities. Let’s greet the future together! |
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Attention all Seniors! from Beth Morrissette 
Portland Visiting Nurse Association invites the surrounding communities to a Mammography Screening, on Friday, March 10th, 2000. Appointments required! Most insurance accepted. Medicare co-pay is $13.56. Women without insurance are eligible for a free mammogram. Call 860-342-3300. |
Tips  From the Dog House brought to you by: Charlie Jarzabek Pets are Good for your Health Studies by the National Institutes of Health in Washington, D.C., have shown that owning a pet can be good for your health. Here’s why:
Charlie Interested in the Future of the Portland Quarry? John Monroe, of the Rivers & Trails, National Park Service, will be holding our next quarry meeting on Monday, March 13th at 7 PM at the Portland Library.All people who are interested in the future of the Portland quarries are invited to attend. We are especially interested in energetic people who want to get involved shaping the direction of our town. At some point, we will hold a day-long Open House to invite and generate new ideas and opinions. This will come before the design workshop (known as a charrette). Design professionals need your input before they start sketching future goals. |