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Pelham~Windham News


Pelham~Windham News of 366 Days


Volume 9 Number 32 February 24, 2012 16 Pages


Leap Year: A Year


by Doug Robinson A leap year consists of 366 days, as opposed to a common year, which has 365 days. When the year is a leap year, the month of February will have 29 days, instead of the usual 28 days in the calendar. The Gregorian calendar has also been referred to as the Western calendar, or Christian calendar. The calendar was introduced by Pope Gregory XIII (after whom the calendar was named, on 24 February 1582). He believed that the calendar used by Julius Caesar (known as the Julian calendar) was in error. During Leap Years, we add a Leap Day,


an extra – or intercalary – day on February 29. Leap Years are needed to keep our calendar in alignment with the Earth’s revolutions around the sun. “It takes the Earth approximately 365.242199 days (a tropical year) to circle once around the Sun writes www.timeanddate.com. If we didn’t add a day on February 29 every four years, we would lose almost six hours off our calendar every year. After only 100 years, our calendar would be off by approximately 24 days.”


History has taught us that Julius Caesar introduced Leap Years in the Roman Empire over 2,000 years ago, but the Julian calendar had only one rule: any year evenly divisible by four would be a leap year. This led to way too many leap years, but didn’t get corrected until the introduction of the Gregorian calendar more than 1,500 years later.


About.com states that “Persons born on


leap day, February 29, are called “leaplings” or “leapers.” However fun it may be to rib them for enjoying 75 percent fewer birthdays than the rest of us over the course of their lives, they do have the special privilege, between leap years, of celebrating their nativity a full day earlier if they so choose. It was once thought that leapling babies would inevitably prove sickly and “hard to raise,” though no one remembers why. “Ironically, notwithstanding the fact that


the whole point of adding an extra day to February every four years was to align the human measurement of time more closely with nature, in days gone by folks apparently believed that monkeying with the calendar like that might actually throw nature out of whack, even hampering the raising of crops and livestock. It used to be said, for example, that beans and peas planted during a leap year “grow the wrong way” - whatever that means - and, in the words of the Scots, “Leap year was never a good sheep year.” “In keeping with the theme of nature gone


awry, a whimsical tradition dating back at least four centuries (and still trotted out at four-year intervals by newspaper feature writers) holds that leap years confer upon women the “privilege” of proposing marriage to men instead of the other way around. The convention was (in literature, if not in reality) that any man who refused such a proposal owed his spurned suitor a silk gown and a kiss - provided she was wearing a red petticoat at the moment she popped the question.”


Te 2011-12 Windham High Wrestling Team – Division III State Champions


by Chris White After a long day of wrestling, the Windham


Jaguars came out on top of the field at the New Hampshire Division III Championships held


at Pelham High School last Saturday, February 18. Not only did the Jaguars earn their first wrestling state title, but they also recorded the first state championship for an athletic team in


the three-year history of Windham High School. The Jaguars accumulated 161 points for the


tournament, as they cruised to the title. Plymouth finished a distant second with 129 points.


continued to page 8- Windham Division Champs School Board Unanimous in Not Recommending Amended Budget


by Barbara O’Brien Windham School Board members are in unanimous agreement not to recommend the proposed 2012-2013 operating budget as amended at the February 10 deliberative session.


Prior to the deliberative session, the opposite


was true. School board members had been in unanimous agreement to support their proposed


operating budget. What changed their minds, however, was the $563,000 amendment that was added to the bottom line budget for next year; money intended to pay for step increases for teachers. The amendment, made by a Windham resident from the floor of the auditorium, was subsequently passed by the majority of voters still in attendance at the late night session. As amended at the deliberative


Medeiros Wins


4th Consecutive State Wrestling Title


by Marc Ayotte The Division III state wrestling tournament was held this past


Saturday, February 18, in the Pelham High School gymnasium. As the tournament’s host for the second year running, Pelham was one of 16 schools that descended upon the friendly confines of the Snake Pit to take part in individual and team competition. The Pythons, with 72 points, used four strong individual performances to finish in sixth place in the team competition. Windham High, who will host the D-3 state tournament for the next two years, ran away with this year’s top team honors with 161 points; outdistancing second place Plymouth (129) and third place John Stark Regional (109.5) But the highlight of the tournament came when Python senior Josh Medeiros capped-off a tremendous 38-7 regular season by winning his fourth straight individual state title. Medeiros joined former Python great wrestler Bob Blinn, who dominated the 189-weight division from 1998 through 2001, as the only two wrestlers in Pelham High School history to garner the individual crown in all four years of their wrestling careers. Unlike Blinn who won all of his titles in the same weight class, Medeiros captured the title in three different divisions, the most recent coming in the 120-pound classification.


continued to page 8- Medeiros Wins


session, the 2012-2013 operating budget stands at a total of $44,390,524. School board members expressed their


individual opinions not to support the amended budget during their first meeting following the deliberative session. On February 20, the vote was 5 to 0 not to recommend the final proposed budget to Windham voters.


continued to page 8- Amended Budget Windham Wrestlers Capture Division III Crown


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View past issues and our other papers online.


Josh Medeiros stands above the rest as he displays his state championship medal and bracket; Inside PHS’s Snake Pit, Medeiros captured his fourth consecutive state championship


Pack 610 Scouts for Tables


by Len Lathrop Cub Scouts of Pack 610 in Pelham need your help. They want to replace 40 tables in the Science Department at Pelham High School. This group of 31 Scouts believes they can help, and possibly make PHS a better place for years to come. These Scouts, aged from 7 to 11 will not be High School students for another few years, but that has not deterred them.


Most tables are approximately 30 years old; many are just worn out and have been taken out of use.


If the community can come together to do this, it can make a difference.


This grassroots effort has begun and 13 tables are already pledged. The cost of each table is $264. To help the project along, your Pelham~Windham News has adopted this project and the Scouts who are spearheading it; the Area News Group will buy a table and also provide a name placard that can be mounted on every table with the name of the business or individual that has stepped up to support both this Cub Scout project and the betterment of your high school.


If the projected life of these new tables is 30 years, then they can certainly be adapted to any physical plant change that the town may agree too in subsequent years. The tables were pointed out in the accreditation report, and replacements would move the school forward in the accreditation advancement cycle. Scouts from Pack 610 have found other ways to help, as you saw in last


week’s Pelham~Windham News with the monetary donation that Kenny Pawlowicz, a third grader at Pelham Elementary School, procured from his Dentist at Collins Dentistry for Children. Flir Corporation has pledged 10 tables two tables were pledged by Pack 610 committee members, and The Pelham-Windham News has pledged a


table. Thus the goal of 40 tables is a quarter of the way there. Watch the Beaker every other week in your Pelham~Windham News to see where this project is headed. In addition, several generous community minded businesses have donated gift cards to the pack for a series of raffle baskets, which the boys will be putting together at their pack meeting this Saturday at Raymond Park. Proceeds from the raffle tickets will go to the PHS science department. Suppa’s, Chunky’s, Northeast Pet Center, Salon 38 and the Pinball Wizard Arcarde, Sport Authority, Carrabas Restaurant, Smokey Bones Restaurant , Bien Soigne Day Spa, The Village Bean, Friendly’s Restaurants, Starbucks, The Chatter Box Café, Owen and Ollies Restaurants, Shaws Supermarkets, a tournament fresh water fishing rod from the Bass Pro Shop donated by Shawsheen Air Services, Inc. and the Estate of Jack Cooper, best known for his Cooper Flies, has donated 137 hand tied flies for the Fly Fisherman. The Scouts will make eight separate themed baskets out of these generous donations, including: A “Chunky’s,” basket, “let’s go out to dinner,” “kids,” “fishing,’’ “pets,” a “salon,” and a “coffee and tea,” basket. Raffle tickets will be sold during the fly fishing expo in Pelham on


March 3, and during the Easter Egg Hunt on March 31. Tickets can also be purchased by contacting the pack at pack610nh@gmail.com or by dropping by one of their meetings at the VFW on Thursdays from 6:30 to 7:30 or at the Congregational Church on Fridays from 6:30 to 7:30. The winners of the raffle will be chosen on March 31. “It’s going to be pretty good, people have been very generous,” Lucy


Wilkerson, of Pack 610 said. “It’s been a labor of love, the school needs it—It’s what we love to do,” she added.


40 tables!!


30


20 10


- Pelham~Windham News Pack 610


Corp. To become a table donor and an education supporter, mail


a check, payable to Pelham High School to Dr. Mohr, 85 Marsh Rd, Pelham, NH 03076. You can also make a pledge by sending an e-mail to Pack610nh@gmail.com. For questions, call Lucy Wilkerson 438-5074 or Dr. Mohr at the high school.


Flir


Scouting for


T ables!


Staff photos by Marc Ayotte


Staff photos by Marc Ayotte


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