I served on the Lebanon School Board for the past three years. I would like to share with the Lebanon community that, from my perspective, the schools are in very good hands with the district administration team that is in place.
I have worked closely with Superintendent Joanne Roberts, Business Administrator Tim Ball, Director of Facilities Dana Arey and Director of Curriculum, Instruction, and Assessment Lisa Scolaro. I have witnessed the dedication and professionalism of each of these folks, and I find solace in the fact that they are at the helm of our district. Superintendent Roberts and her team have the best interests of the students of Lebanon at heart, and they work tirelessly to make the schools as effective and efficient as possible. All of this while maintaining a high standard for themselves, the staff and the schools, along with the unprecedented challenges of this past year.
It’s been an honor and a pleasure to serve on this board, and I am grateful that my three boys will be educated in Lebanon for many years to come.
TOM HARKINS
West Lebanon
I am writing in response to and appreciation of David Loebel’s excellent Forum letter regarding the planned closure of Paddock Music Library (“Dartmouth joins bush league with music library loss, March 8). I am not primarily a musician — I am an internal medicine physician — but music has played a major role in my life since high school.
Hopkins Center opened in 1962, my freshman year at Dartmouth, a real jewel of a facility and the home of a vibrant arts community, whether music, theater, visual or cinematic. I was a member of the Dartmouth Community Symphony for four years and have frequented the Hop in the years since, whether attending programs, participating in the pit orchestra for several Moore Theater productions, or taking oboe lessons with Neil Boyer for many years.
I have not been a major user of Paddock but have certainly appreciated it when I needed it and have been able to see how it is a critical part of music department life for students, faculty and even community members. The thought that it will be closed, with some contents going to a designated area in Baker and the rest (“low usage”) to end up in an “off-site storage facility” — translation: never to see the light of day — is, as the letter describes, strictly bush league for an institution that until now has presumably been supportive of the arts. My understanding is that no one in the music department was consulted about the “plan.”
Simply put, the college’s music library belongs in the music department. Musical scores need to be carefully preserved and available to those who need or wish to review them — scores on a computer screen are not a worthy substitute for holding the actual score. Music of lesser-known composers needs to be given weight equal to that of well-known composers. I am hopeful that far-flung alumni for whom the music department and Paddock were important will learn of this “plan” and weigh in while there still is opportunity to reverse this decision.
Stephen Jordan
Sunapee
This has been an unusual 12 months for theater. The health risk involved in close, crowded, indoor gatherings has precluded the production of most plays, yet many still yearn to get together to examine the human condition through art.
Winkie would have loved to take advantage of this opportunity.
Winkie Bean was a force for theater in the Upper Valley. As a student, he directed plays. He designed sets. He hosted outdoor, theatrical teas in South Strafford. After graduating from Hanover High School, he studied at Carnegie-Mellon. In May 1983, at age 22, he was stabbed and killed as he emerged from a gay bar in New York City, simply because of his sexual orientation.
His friends, family and admirers put together a fund to help local young people in the arts produce shows, and we are looking for the next recipient. Are you a resident of the Upper Valley? Are you between 12 and 22? Do you have a creative idea for producing a show but could use help with funding it? Contact the Winthrop Bean Award for Theatre Arts to request an application for funding or to find out more about the program (winthropbeantheatreaward@gmail.com).
Over the years we have sponsored student-directed musicals like You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown, Godspell and Little Shop of Horrors. We have funded films like Billy Sharff’s This Is a Door and Julian Higgins’ The Mending Wall. We have underwritten dance productions like Josh Turk’s Dancing Through Life. We have helped with The Youth Shakespeare Project summer program.
Use your creativity to develop a show appropriate for our physically distant COVID-19 times. Get in touch with us. Perhaps we can help.
BILL HAMMOND
Hanover
The writer is president of the Winthrop Bean Award for Theatre Arts.
OK, it’s been a long and hard year. We all need to feel good about something — like when the person in front us pays our toll. So imagine the good feelings to be generated if those who are able to would give all or part of their $1,400 stimulus checks to someone or some organization that will use the funds to help someone else.
If just 1,400 people in the Upper Valley joined this effort, $1,960,000 could be directed to help someone or some organization somehow. No strings, no speeches, no lists of contributors. Just a feel-good moment.
TIM SCHAD
Cornish