And undercover exclusive about the Faculty judges on the bench slide at Winter Carnival, taking bribes of chocolate and promises of turning papers in on time.

But that’s all been covered this week already, so I’m going to do another Public Service announcement Glog.

Next weekend (9 days from now) Friday 3rd, Gould will be holding their annual auction. This is a yearly drive to raise money for the phenomenally unique 4 point programs here at Gould.

This years auction items include, a night at the Opera, a two night stay at the Samoset in Rockland ME and beautifully hand blown glass. To name but a few.

I’m pretty sure Ms Manning will be producing some famous Chocolate Cheesecake, and I will be doing another 2hr Private Snowboard Lesson valued at $25,000…..!

Also this year, Ms Davies has made a lovely wall quilt, commemorating Gould’s 175th  year of operation, pictured below.

To learn more about the 4 Point programs click here.

To browse, buy or sell you can go to the Gould Auction site here

So bid now and bid often, and help the Sophmores cook beautiful food, the Juniors stay warm and the Freshman fly to faraway lands.

All the Best

The Davies’s's’s's’s's

No, this isn’t part of our regular school routine (although that would be kinda awesome), and

This is WINTER CARNIVAL, the “most anticipated event of the year”, according to many. Its a chance not only to sleep in and have no class, but also for the four teams (Holden, Davidson, Gehring, and Day Students) to test their strength, speed, and skill against each other and see who comes out on top.

The classic Winter Carnival events include the sled race, the tandem ski race, the amoeba race, the obstacle course, and of course, what competition wouldn’t be complete without tug-of-war. Each team takes about 15 minutes at each event, trying to get the fastest time, the most laps, or the most style points. The faculty help out too, tallying points, running the stopwatches and keeping the peace.

Here’s a video of some things that you may or may not expect to see at Winter Carnival. Enjoy!

(Sorry most of the clips are of Day Students, but I had to stay with my team!)

Until next week guys,

-Izzy

Greetings, my funkadelic friends!  Last night kicked off Winter Carnival, with an appearance from those funkalicious cats from the planet Funktar- Motor Booty Affair!  It was “Ladies Night”, and they were “Lettin’ It All Hang Out” in the Bingham gym.  You know what they say, “a picture is worth a thousand words.”  Well, here are a few thousand words on last night’s big event:

Nice color combo, Doug!

Look out, ladies...

The Dancin’ Queens…

Words fail me...Gettin' their groove on!

A great time was had by all- thanks Gould, for putting on this righteous event!

-Love,  Mr. Big Stuff

Mr. "Big Stuff", writing for Doug this week. Stay funky! DISCO LIVES!!!!!

I Honestly can’t wait to go out in the woods. This morning started to scare me though.

I woke up to my alarm, at the daily 6:20am start, which gets me up and to the mountain on Sundays, Tuesdays and Thursdays and gets me to school with some time for a shower on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Saturdays don’t have a spot on my iPhone for an alarm, because even if I set an alarm, it would be so early I would never hear it. (Thanks Mom and Dad, you guys are the best super-early morning alarm clocks a kid could have!)

Anyways, it was -20 degrees fahrenheit out. I kinda murmured a short “I don’t want to ski through that…” to my parents, and they turned off my alarm and told me to go back to bed. Meanwhile, they texted my coach that I wasn’t going to ski because I was tired from my race yesterday (I got 29th, moving up in the world) and it was wicked cold out. He said that was perfectly ok, and that he would see me tomorrow. Talk about serious adaptability.

However, I don’t feel our coaches and program directors get enough recognition. They create workout plans painstakingly tailored to our teams needs, designed to make us stronger and more ready for the season. They check in on us, take us to new places and make sure we are pulling our own weight during the summer, a time which they could be taking off. They find time to kick us into shape during the fall, and then coach us during the winter.

But coaching is something that most people would not understand. They might think they simply tell us to go straighter, or attack the course, and clean our boots at the top so we don’t accidentally fall out of our skis. However, they also drive us to the races, every Saturday and sometimes Sunday, completely devoting their weekends to us. They miss Football games on occasion, and sometimes even drive us to races during the week. Sure, they talk course tactics as well, but they also set our courses. They fix broken gates, and drag the gates to wherever they need to be. They free ski with us, and just generally make sure that we are skiing to our full ability. I have even heard rumours that the Nordic coaches WAX THEIR KIDS SKIS. Talk about devotion.

It is not only the coaches that make our programs run, but the directors. They make sure that we are caught up on school work when we miss a lot of school, and they get homework for us while we are away. They make sure that we have hill space along with the Bates ski team, along with the J3′s and any other colleges who need training space. They make sure that everyone gets wherever they need to be at any time, and fill in as coaches on occasion. They make sure we all have the right amount of gates, at the right time and can train for as long as possible. They also make sure we are all having fun!

The final part of the puzzle is the Teachers. Without the teachers that we have on campus, many of us could not compete on the level that we do. They are incredibly resilient people, who allow us to go on weeklong trips, miss large amounts of class time if we need to, then work extremely hard to catch us back up when they see us again.

So, to all Teachers, Coaches and Directors, From all of the Gould athletes, THANK YOU! We could not become the student athletes we are today without all of the hard work and effort on your part.

What IS this?

WHERE did you come from?

Honestly, I have looked at this guy for years and wondered about him but never thought to ask. He sits up on the rafters looking down on everyone. Every once in a while he moves just slightly.

So if you have any information regarding this crazy skier man guy person… please let me know. I’m dying to figure it out.

“REACHOUT has proven to be a great way for me to get more involved in working directly with students. Teaching students the value of looking beyond themselves is very rewarding work. Opening their eyes to the needs of others locally, nationally and internationally is what it’s all about.”

We also asked Courtney Colaluca ’13, what Reach Out meant to her.

“It’s more than just a fundraiser; I am involved in the whole process. We had the opportunity to go to the homeless shelter we would be donating to, meet the people, take a tour and seeing how I/we would be able to make a difference. Overall, I get many different opportunities to give back to my community directly. Community dinners once a month, or a toy fundraiser. It really is exciting to help out in the community I live in, but it’s an even greater experience when I get to directly see the difference made.”

You may have seen the Prayer Flags in the dining hall….. They were sold to students and staff at Gould, who then creatively designed and drew on them. They were then sewn onto tape and strung up for all to see. Becky Andreozzi explained to us the story behind the flags.

Flags in Ordway

“The peace flags made around International Peace Day, and the money  raised was used to help with the Darfur refugees still in camps. We are specifically purchasing solar cookers so that the women do not need to leave the camps to get the wood needed to cook. These women are being raped if they leave to get wood.”

Says it all

This past weekend girls and visiting boys were in Gehring tying blankets to go to an orphanage in Mexico. Becky explains more.

“Betsy (Paquette) Lamontagne used to work in admissions and contacted us to help with an orphanage in Juarez Mexico-a very violent city. The orphanage has 70 children. They are in desperate need of hats and blankets. The level of poverty and violence is horrific.”

Making blankets in front of the fire.

Reach Out meets nearly every Thursday evening to plan, plot and come up with ideas for more projects. This week they will be discussing ideas to raise money from Valentine’s Day …. If Hallmark can do it so can they….!
From a secret source I hear they are going bring the romance back to Valentine’s Day at Gould, and will be giving parents the opportunity to get involved.

I did get the opportunity to help this group in the fall, collecting recyclables in Bethel, and I know Helen helped with the Prayer Flags.

Helping is good, and everyone loves to “do good” right…?

Were you a Reach Out member? What was your favorite project? Did you continue to “Reach Out”??
Thanks Reach Out, for leading the way.

The Davies’s's’s

Gould Academy, in spite of its diverse population and its desire to be always a part of the World Community can be, and sometimes is, a very insular place.  It’s not that we are sooooo in love with ourselves that we can’t see beyond our noses (or the tips of our skis), and it is not that we have everything at our fingertips and never need leave our oasis in the western Maine foothills (have YOU ever tried to find a salt bagel in the western Maine foothills?).  Really is it because we are so very busy.

And I mean busy.  We got a letter this week reminding us to fill out our state tax return.  From 2009.  We are so busy that we sometimes forego picking up our elementary school-age kids at the end of the school day because, hey, they just go back again tomorrow, don’t they?

Our students are so busy, doing their classwork, competing in basketball games, saving skiers’ lives, teaching MY kids to ski (they do that when they are at school too), organizing food drives for the local pantry, getting into college, and maybe somewhere in there having a social life- they are so busy that they rarely have any time to actually see what’s happening outside of their field of vision.  When I told one of my students recently that the leader of North Korea died, her response was “When did North Korea become it’s own country?”

That busy.

So I love it when we take time out to see what’s going on in the rest of the world (and by that I don’t mean just the Greater Portland area).  This is what we do every Martin Luther King day.  We spend some time engaged in workshops, lectures, and discussions around issues of injustice around the world.  This year’s MLK day was really great.

I attended workshops on the dirty war in Argentina, the protests taking place right now in Russia and the Arab world, and an overview of the assimilation of Somali refugees into the greater Lewiston-Auburn,  Maine community.  All this, and also performances by the Gould chorus (the South African music was especially great) and a participatory reading of Dr. King’s “I Have A Dream” speech.  Dr. King was one of the great orators in American history, and I still get chills when I hear him deliver this speech.  And having Gould community members recite the speech (me included) is a bit like looking at black and white photos of fireworks to me (pretty, you get the sense of the beauty of it, but something is still missing in the translation).  Nonetheless I was really impressed by the reading of the speech, and I thought it was a terrific way to end the day.  In fact, I have included a link to a short video of an excerpt from the original here, in original 1963 black and white (seems ironic typing that here).

MLK \”I Have A Dream\” speech, 1963

I don’t have much to say this week because it was a lot like last week. I skied every day, and raced on Wednesday, Saturday, and Sunday. I just got back from two long days of racing at Titcomb Mountain in Farmington, ME. It was fun, but exhausting being out in the cold almost all day warming up, racing, and watching other people race. But, you’re probably tired of hearing me talk about nordic skiing, so I’ll refrain from that.

Apparently, while I was gone today, my brother Andrew was busy at home “setting up ma setup.” If you’re confused by what that means, don’t worry, I am too. I’ll have to check with him later on this but I believe that is freestyle skier speak for “building a ramp up to the jib box that I built in the front yard.” If that’s still cryptic to you, I’ll share a video Andrew made which portrays the process that is necessary to set up one’s setup. It is sped up for your convenience and entertainment. You should also know that the soundtrack consists of Dubstep which has been sped up along with the video. Enjoy!

That’s about all I have for this week. We are all looking forward to Martin Luther King Jr. Day at Gould tomorrow. I am presenting a workshop on the recent protests in Syria (A.K.A. best workshop ever!!!). It should be a great day, as always!

Thanks for reading!

-Molly

As you all probably know, I am an avid Ski Racer. I don’t know why I like stripping down to a couple layers of spandex when it’s -10 Fahrenheit out, but if I had to guess, its the feeling of almost total control, going as fast as you can down what most would consider a sloped ice skating rink. Get two runs in, eat a burger and drink some hot cocoa, and you have my idea of a perfect Saturday.

Yesterday was the end of Midterms, another milestone in an experience which I feel is going by far too fast. It sometimes feels like every morning is a minute, every day is an hour and every week is another day (I’m not sure if that last sentence made sense… my time at Gould is going by at Macht Schnell and I can’t seem to slow it down for anything). In a month and four short days, the Junior Class and I will be bundling up and heading into the woods for eight days. I’m actually really excited for that. However, it also marks the end of winter term, my favorite trimester, so it’s bittersweet.

You may be wondering what I meant by my title, up the page a bit. Thanks for being patient with my necessary rambling on how sad I am that it’s midterms. Yesterday, after I had three classes, the USSA ski team packed our bags and our skis to head up to Titcomb Mountain (more of a slope than a moutain), for what may be my favorite race of the year, the Titcomb Night Slalom. Oh, and by that route, there is the famous Marden’s. Thompson had never been, so we just had to stop. Great way to stock up on candy, shinguards, or just buy some silly things for cheap.

We had heard rumours from a kid on the team that there was going to be a jump in the course. However, we thought that he was lying through his teeth, right to our faces. In a slalom course, there is a certain space between every gate, and that space pretty much correlates to how fast you can physically make the turn due to the skis we race on. We believed that if you put a jump in the course, it would be nearly impossible to make any gates after the jump. If you don’t know what I mean by slalom, here’s a video from my new GoPro which documents a day of dual slalom training (Two courses, side by side, the exact same course) pretty accurately.

No, I didn’t win a run. I’ll get them tomorrow during my race at the River.

Long story short (my glog is already running a little long) there WAS a jump in the course. Some highlights of the night were Shane Love’s Massive spread eagle(and finding his way down the course to land himself in the Silver Medal position!), and an iron cross from Jackson Keogh all off of this ProJump:

This is not a jump as any freestylers would call it, but a Projump, as they were first seen in the Pro series of ski races in the 80s. Its about 2 feet tall and landed you right next to the next gate.

Peter Fordyce also grabbed himself some hardware, with a silver medal for J2 men.

Anyways, it was a lot of fun, which I feel is a good thing. Sometimes you just have to challenge yourself a bit, and make it kind of crazy to keep your inner drive going.

Have a Great week!

~John

The mountain went from looking like this:

a little depressing..

To something along the lines of this:

that's more like it.

Okay, maybe it wasn’t that drastic, but, basically WE GOT SNOW!!

Those of you who know me know that I spend my winters on the mountain as a ski racer. The snow is especially exciting for those of us on the mountain because it means no more “variable conditions”.

So, pray for more snow, and here’s Ella and Sarah happy about the snow:

happy faces

have a great weekend everyone!