Thursday, October 26, 2006
Tuesday, October 24, 2006
Boo.
Hey, I miss you all too! We are like pieces of a puzzle, is what I think. We all just fit together and get each other, and how rare is that? It's a beautiful, special thing.
In Vermont news, it is goddamned.freezing.here. Seriously, as of next week we might as well move into caves, as it will be dark when we go to work, dark when we come home...yay! Nothing like a little seasonal affective disorder to make the world seem bright. I'll just use the flourescent lights over my cube at work to keep me positive...oh, wait. That won't do at all.
I re-invited Jen to blog, and hope she joins in. I am planning on sending an email to Linda soon, this weekend. I feel the need to tread lightly in that area, because her life is such a mystery to me, and I don't want to misspeak or assume things. Like I wish for all of us, I hope she is healthy and happy, and that she is living true - whatever that might mean for her.'
Hey, I'm doing NaNoWriMo starting next week, if anyone is interested to join. The idea is to write 50,000 words of a novel from November 1st to November 30th. Let's see what kind of utter shite I can come up with!
In Vermont news, it is goddamned.freezing.here. Seriously, as of next week we might as well move into caves, as it will be dark when we go to work, dark when we come home...yay! Nothing like a little seasonal affective disorder to make the world seem bright. I'll just use the flourescent lights over my cube at work to keep me positive...oh, wait. That won't do at all.
I re-invited Jen to blog, and hope she joins in. I am planning on sending an email to Linda soon, this weekend. I feel the need to tread lightly in that area, because her life is such a mystery to me, and I don't want to misspeak or assume things. Like I wish for all of us, I hope she is healthy and happy, and that she is living true - whatever that might mean for her.'
Hey, I'm doing NaNoWriMo starting next week, if anyone is interested to join. The idea is to write 50,000 words of a novel from November 1st to November 30th. Let's see what kind of utter shite I can come up with!
Monday, October 16, 2006
A Girl Went Missing
A week ago this past Friday, a UVM student named Michelle went downtown and hung out with her friends at the bars. She headed up Main Street at 2:30 AM, walking with a man she had approached so she could use his cell phone, as her battery had run out. The security camera hanging from Perrywinkel's Jewelers (which used to be Bard Home Design) recorded images of them walking together, chatting - no signs of distress or struggle. It was a walk we have all taken dozens of times - hundreds of times.
The next night, Michelle didn't show up to go for dinner wth her parents, who were visiting for Parents' Weekend. They reported her missing, and so began a week of searching, waiting, praying and worrying. With each passing day the odds that she would somehow turn up alive became less likely, and on Friday the 13th, the fears were realized when her body was found alongside Huntington Gorge in Richmond.
Michelle was just like all of us when we were 21 - well, she was cooler than me, but...the thought that a young woman went downtown and didn't make it home is so unreal to me. It's a horrible tragedy, a terrible loss of life and the end of whatever lingering innocence existed in Burlington.
From the Washington Post:
Student in Vermont Was Outgoing and Lover of Outdoors
Autopsy Pending on Arlington Native
By Brigid Schulte
Washington Post Staff WriterSunday, October 15, 2006; C06
As a college student, Michelle Gardner-Quinn bounced around. She attended American University, Antioch College, the University of Virginia, Hampshire College and Goucher College outside of Baltimore. It was only this fall that she transferred to the University of Vermont and figured out how to merge her love of environmental studies and Latin America with her love for the outdoors and hiking, skiing, camping and snowboarding.
Six weeks after arriving in Burlington, she disappeared. After her body was found Friday off a rural road near the university, friends and family who knew her growing up in Arlington struggled to make sense of their loss. They knew the 21-year-old as more than a missing young woman whose face had been plastered for the past week on television screens and newspapers across the country.
"She had just come into her own, knowing what she wanted to do," Yasmine Rassam, her older half sister, said yesterday. "She was just really, really happy."
Burlington police disclosed few developments in the case yesterday, as an autopsy report was pending. Police were questioning Brian Rooney, 36, a construction worker who is in custody on unrelated sexual assault charges. He was observed on a video camera, police said, walking with Gardner-Quinn before she disappeared Oct. 7.
Gardner-Quinn, a senior at the university, was last seen in the early hours that Saturday walking back to the dormitories after celebrating a friend's birthday. Police believe she borrowed Rooney's cellphone to call friends because the battery in hers had died. She was not seen alive again. Those details of her case are known.
Friends said the world should know more. That she played the cello. That she loved nature, photography and travel. That she spent hour upon hour last summer sitting in a swamp in Brazil to survey giant otters. That she was never happier.
Gardner-Quinn, they said, was good enough to play select soccer. She swam on a team, worked as a lifeguard at the neighborhood pool for years, and was known for her jokes and crazy antics. She sang in her church and high school choirs, her clear, earthy alto a thing of beauty.
Her life, people said, made a difference.
Ian Willson, 22, was in a rut a few years ago. He said he would not now be in college without her push. "To me, she was one of the most inspirational people I've ever met," he said. She was independent, funny and "eccentric in an awesome way," he said. "She made friends wherever she went. Easily."
Gardner-Quinn's family remained in Burlington yesterday, awaiting autopsy results. Her parents had been waiting to meet her for dinner on a parents' weekend that Saturday and reported her missing when she did not show up. They had spent the next week hoping that their daughter would be found alive.
Rassam, 39, a lawyer and human rights activist, said remembering Gardner-Quinn's life helped keep crushing grief at bay.
"My sister was just a joy to everyone she was around, that she touched," Rassam said.
She grew up in a beautiful, wooded area of North Arlington. Her favorite place to go as a child was the woods near her home. Those woods and the family's garden instilled in her a love of nature. As she grew older, Rassam and friends said, that love became a passion, particularly as she learned about global climate change, rain forest depletion and other threats to the natural world.
Rassam said she remembers coming back from the Peace Corps and sharing stories and photographs with the young Gardner-Quinn. From then on, Gardner-Quinn wanted to travel, too.
On her MySpace account on the Web, which she last checked the morning before she disappeared, Gardner-Quinn's motto was "squares are unhealthy." Her favorite things, she wrote, were "green things. clouds and stars. music. life. learning and relearning. exploring." She described herself this way: "Can I travel with you?"
Already, she'd traveled to Europe with her parents and visited Rassam when she was studying in Cambridge, England. In her college years, she also spent a semester in Costa Rica, living with a poor family and studying and writing about the environment and poverty. She'd spent an intensive three weeks in South Africa and another semester in Brazil.
She was driven, friends said, followed her own inner compass and was incredibly bright. She met Willson, whom she later dated, at a summer camp for gifted children. In Arlington, she thrived at H-B Woodlawn Secondary Program, a school where students choose their own classes and guidance counselors and call teachers and the principal by their first names.
Gardner-Quinn set her MySpace account to the music of an alternative group called "13 & God." On her page, the group sings about a vision of a girl as a ghost, blowing up globes and setting them on clouds. "Without an atmosphere there is no chance at life and with no chance at life . . . I don't exist."
"Even though she's gone, we feel like she's with us," Rassam said. "She's always going to be with us."
The next night, Michelle didn't show up to go for dinner wth her parents, who were visiting for Parents' Weekend. They reported her missing, and so began a week of searching, waiting, praying and worrying. With each passing day the odds that she would somehow turn up alive became less likely, and on Friday the 13th, the fears were realized when her body was found alongside Huntington Gorge in Richmond.
Michelle was just like all of us when we were 21 - well, she was cooler than me, but...the thought that a young woman went downtown and didn't make it home is so unreal to me. It's a horrible tragedy, a terrible loss of life and the end of whatever lingering innocence existed in Burlington.
From the Washington Post:
Student in Vermont Was Outgoing and Lover of Outdoors
Autopsy Pending on Arlington Native
By Brigid Schulte
Washington Post Staff WriterSunday, October 15, 2006; C06
As a college student, Michelle Gardner-Quinn bounced around. She attended American University, Antioch College, the University of Virginia, Hampshire College and Goucher College outside of Baltimore. It was only this fall that she transferred to the University of Vermont and figured out how to merge her love of environmental studies and Latin America with her love for the outdoors and hiking, skiing, camping and snowboarding.
Six weeks after arriving in Burlington, she disappeared. After her body was found Friday off a rural road near the university, friends and family who knew her growing up in Arlington struggled to make sense of their loss. They knew the 21-year-old as more than a missing young woman whose face had been plastered for the past week on television screens and newspapers across the country.
"She had just come into her own, knowing what she wanted to do," Yasmine Rassam, her older half sister, said yesterday. "She was just really, really happy."
Burlington police disclosed few developments in the case yesterday, as an autopsy report was pending. Police were questioning Brian Rooney, 36, a construction worker who is in custody on unrelated sexual assault charges. He was observed on a video camera, police said, walking with Gardner-Quinn before she disappeared Oct. 7.
Gardner-Quinn, a senior at the university, was last seen in the early hours that Saturday walking back to the dormitories after celebrating a friend's birthday. Police believe she borrowed Rooney's cellphone to call friends because the battery in hers had died. She was not seen alive again. Those details of her case are known.
Friends said the world should know more. That she played the cello. That she loved nature, photography and travel. That she spent hour upon hour last summer sitting in a swamp in Brazil to survey giant otters. That she was never happier.
Gardner-Quinn, they said, was good enough to play select soccer. She swam on a team, worked as a lifeguard at the neighborhood pool for years, and was known for her jokes and crazy antics. She sang in her church and high school choirs, her clear, earthy alto a thing of beauty.
Her life, people said, made a difference.
Ian Willson, 22, was in a rut a few years ago. He said he would not now be in college without her push. "To me, she was one of the most inspirational people I've ever met," he said. She was independent, funny and "eccentric in an awesome way," he said. "She made friends wherever she went. Easily."
Gardner-Quinn's family remained in Burlington yesterday, awaiting autopsy results. Her parents had been waiting to meet her for dinner on a parents' weekend that Saturday and reported her missing when she did not show up. They had spent the next week hoping that their daughter would be found alive.
Rassam, 39, a lawyer and human rights activist, said remembering Gardner-Quinn's life helped keep crushing grief at bay.
"My sister was just a joy to everyone she was around, that she touched," Rassam said.
She grew up in a beautiful, wooded area of North Arlington. Her favorite place to go as a child was the woods near her home. Those woods and the family's garden instilled in her a love of nature. As she grew older, Rassam and friends said, that love became a passion, particularly as she learned about global climate change, rain forest depletion and other threats to the natural world.
Rassam said she remembers coming back from the Peace Corps and sharing stories and photographs with the young Gardner-Quinn. From then on, Gardner-Quinn wanted to travel, too.
On her MySpace account on the Web, which she last checked the morning before she disappeared, Gardner-Quinn's motto was "squares are unhealthy." Her favorite things, she wrote, were "green things. clouds and stars. music. life. learning and relearning. exploring." She described herself this way: "Can I travel with you?"
Already, she'd traveled to Europe with her parents and visited Rassam when she was studying in Cambridge, England. In her college years, she also spent a semester in Costa Rica, living with a poor family and studying and writing about the environment and poverty. She'd spent an intensive three weeks in South Africa and another semester in Brazil.
She was driven, friends said, followed her own inner compass and was incredibly bright. She met Willson, whom she later dated, at a summer camp for gifted children. In Arlington, she thrived at H-B Woodlawn Secondary Program, a school where students choose their own classes and guidance counselors and call teachers and the principal by their first names.
Gardner-Quinn set her MySpace account to the music of an alternative group called "13 & God." On her page, the group sings about a vision of a girl as a ghost, blowing up globes and setting them on clouds. "Without an atmosphere there is no chance at life and with no chance at life . . . I don't exist."
"Even though she's gone, we feel like she's with us," Rassam said. "She's always going to be with us."
Thursday, October 05, 2006
Burlington Schools in the news
This was in the paper today - it's a pretty hot-button issue. They are still referencing the closing of Adams all those years ago. It's kind of a mess, because the bottom line is the yuppies don't want to send their kids to HO Wheeler, period. Take from that what you will.
Parents leave meeting with many questions
By Jill Fahy Free Press Staff Writer October 5, 2006
A public meeting held Wednesday on recommendations that would change the complexion of Burlington's six elementary schools drew a capacity crowd of more than 100 people. Most were wary parents from across the district with a slew of questions. The Burlington School Board chose Edmunds Middle School/Elementary School cafeteria as the site for the first of several forums to gather comments on three proposals aimed at better mixing low-income students with middle-income students from other districts: Consolidate into two types of elementary schools: kindergarten through second grade, and third through fifth grades.Redraw district neighborhoods. Create magnet schools, where some elementary schools would shift to specialized curricula.The recommendations are part of a report generated in the spring by the all-volunteer, board-appointed task force. The report argues that the district configuration of elementary schools is a barrier to student success, and that socioeconomic integration would dissolve that barrier. The School Board in September agreed with the task force's overall assertion. Meeting moderators, including district Superintendent Jeanne Collins, laid out the proposals and cited academic and social challenges faced by students who attend schools mainly in the Old North End, where poverty is the highest. Those in attendance were then invited to write their questions on slips of paper. Task force members attempted to address a few questions, such as how busing will fit into the scenarios and why change the complexion of some schools that are already fully socio-economically integrated, such as Champlain Elementary. The meeting grew tense when moderators said there would be no opportunity for an open dialogue. Most questions of the task force and board will be addressed at a later date. "Right now I feel mad," said Russell Beste, a Champlain parent. "I feel this is a big spin, where they say they want dialogue, but we've had no chance to express an opinion." Some parents said they are on board with the idea of socio-economic integration, but that the recommendations are only skeletons of ideas in need of fleshing out with cost estimates and impact scenarios. Karen Newman, an Edmunds Elementary School parent, said she agrees with the task force premise, but doubts the current slate of forums will help enlighten the public. "Whatever solution we come up with needs to be a solution by people who are well-informed and involved," Newman said. "People need more information to feel they're learning, not that they're being threatened." Kiernan Flynn, a parent of two Champlain students, echoed the sentiment of a number of parents who, while understanding the idea of socio-economic integration, are worried about how any of the recommendations could affect their own children. "The problem is that I also have to be the strongest advocate for my child," Flynn said. "How can I be sure my daughters are getting the best educations they can get?" Bruce MacDonald, another Champlain parent, said he is strongly opposed to sending his children somewhere other than his neighborhood school."I bike and walk my kids to school every day," MacDonald said. "The last thing I want to do is somehow be fragmenting my family." Superintendent Collins said all the questions and comments gathered from each forum will be reviewed by the School Board and incorporated into its final report, a date for which has not been decided. The rest of the public meetings are scheduled for this month.
Parents leave meeting with many questions
By Jill Fahy Free Press Staff Writer October 5, 2006
A public meeting held Wednesday on recommendations that would change the complexion of Burlington's six elementary schools drew a capacity crowd of more than 100 people. Most were wary parents from across the district with a slew of questions. The Burlington School Board chose Edmunds Middle School/Elementary School cafeteria as the site for the first of several forums to gather comments on three proposals aimed at better mixing low-income students with middle-income students from other districts: Consolidate into two types of elementary schools: kindergarten through second grade, and third through fifth grades.Redraw district neighborhoods. Create magnet schools, where some elementary schools would shift to specialized curricula.The recommendations are part of a report generated in the spring by the all-volunteer, board-appointed task force. The report argues that the district configuration of elementary schools is a barrier to student success, and that socioeconomic integration would dissolve that barrier. The School Board in September agreed with the task force's overall assertion. Meeting moderators, including district Superintendent Jeanne Collins, laid out the proposals and cited academic and social challenges faced by students who attend schools mainly in the Old North End, where poverty is the highest. Those in attendance were then invited to write their questions on slips of paper. Task force members attempted to address a few questions, such as how busing will fit into the scenarios and why change the complexion of some schools that are already fully socio-economically integrated, such as Champlain Elementary. The meeting grew tense when moderators said there would be no opportunity for an open dialogue. Most questions of the task force and board will be addressed at a later date. "Right now I feel mad," said Russell Beste, a Champlain parent. "I feel this is a big spin, where they say they want dialogue, but we've had no chance to express an opinion." Some parents said they are on board with the idea of socio-economic integration, but that the recommendations are only skeletons of ideas in need of fleshing out with cost estimates and impact scenarios. Karen Newman, an Edmunds Elementary School parent, said she agrees with the task force premise, but doubts the current slate of forums will help enlighten the public. "Whatever solution we come up with needs to be a solution by people who are well-informed and involved," Newman said. "People need more information to feel they're learning, not that they're being threatened." Kiernan Flynn, a parent of two Champlain students, echoed the sentiment of a number of parents who, while understanding the idea of socio-economic integration, are worried about how any of the recommendations could affect their own children. "The problem is that I also have to be the strongest advocate for my child," Flynn said. "How can I be sure my daughters are getting the best educations they can get?" Bruce MacDonald, another Champlain parent, said he is strongly opposed to sending his children somewhere other than his neighborhood school."I bike and walk my kids to school every day," MacDonald said. "The last thing I want to do is somehow be fragmenting my family." Superintendent Collins said all the questions and comments gathered from each forum will be reviewed by the School Board and incorporated into its final report, a date for which has not been decided. The rest of the public meetings are scheduled for this month.
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