Top Stories for Tuesday October 14, 2008

Tigers Sink Sea Horses 33-22... Big Second Half for MUHS Gridders
By Mike Cameron
    After a valiant, total team effort on the road at Barttleboro the preceding week, loosing by a wisker, the MUHS Tigers were at home this past Friday night October 10th 2008 to host the Burlington Seahorses, a team that they have had excellent success against in recent years.  The Tigers came into this one with only a single win in their division.
    The Seahorses were also in a “down-cycle” with respect to overall numbers of players this year and came into the contest with a no win record.  First year BHS Head Coach Kevin Carney knew he would be facing a rebuilding season similar to the one he faced at Spaulding in Barre several years earlier. Carney fashioned the Spaulding program into a winner one season later and is working to do the same at Burlington.  Like Spaulding, BHS is a team with a proud high school football tradition.
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Combining Different Missions: Three Days of Service at VUHS
By Cookie Steponaitis
    Every year, testing of large percentages of students in each high school in the state must be accomplished. Last year, VUHS looked at those testing days through a very different lens, and decided on a new approach. For three days in October and again in May, parts of the school community are committed to diligently taking state and national tests, performing at their personal best. While three hundred students test, the other four hundred set out on a three day odyssey of a different sort. The Freshman Class spent two mornings in the community raking, clipping, stacking, chopping, organizing and performing tasks for city, non-profit and religious organizations. On the third day they visited Champlain College, the University of Vermont and St. Michael’s College exploring possibilities and beginning the process of seeing themselves reaching for goals past high school. The Sophomore Class completed both testing, one day of community service and one day of college visits. The juniors were testing the whole three days. The senior class took the lead in a new project that brought together the reality of cancer, the devastating effect the disease has on people in Vermont and the fact that teens can mobilize to make a difference about it. The Class of 2009 collected sponsors and walked a total of 18 miles from Vergennes to Porter Hospital in order to make a donation to the Cancer Screening and Prevention Program for Addison County people. Porter Hospital President James L. Daily accepted the donation on behalf of the hospital.
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Around And About Addison County—Orwell
By M. Stuart Parks
    Although Orwell was chartered in 1763 it remained unsettled for the better part of ten years.  In the meantime that part of Orwell that jutted into Lake Champlain became of strategic importance in the War of the Revolution.  Champlain is very narrow here and just across that strait a small peninsula of New York land noses into the water that is the home of Fort Ticonderoga.  In June of 1776 General Philip Schuyler and the American Troops built a huge fortress and called it Mount Independence in honor of the Declaration of Independence.  This fortification was three hundred feet above the Lake and was a complex of batteries, parapets and blockhouses built to safeguard the southern route from the British armies who saw Lake Champlain as the gateway to America from the North. Fort Ticonderoga was in poor condition while the massive new fort on Mount Independence with its twelve hundred troops was ready for action.  In October of 1776, the British fleet, commanded by Sir Guy Carleton, sailed in sight and was so intimidated by what he saw on both sides of the Lake that he turned around and sailed back to Canada.  The rebel army now had time to prepare for future invasion.  [ more ]

Carleton’s Raid on the Champlain Valley
By Jessy Sturtevant
   Christopher Carleton was a fighting man and a leader. He had lived among natives as a young man and had learned their ways. He was liked by all the men under his control. So, in 1778, when Fredrick Halimond, the Governor General of Canada, was looking for a man to lead a raid down Lake Champlain to the Otter Creek Valley, he chose Major Christopher Carleton.    Carleton proved to be a good choice. In July of 1778, a smaller raid on the Onion River Valley (today known as the Winooski River) had failed because of troubles with the Indians. Carleton, however, could understand and work with them.
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