Sunday, October 21, 2007

Weekly Planner: Five Questions about School


In honor of Family History Month, the 24/7 Family History Circle site has listed a set of "challenges" to assist people in writing their own personal history.

I want to thank Apple's Tree for the inspiration since I am new to blogging and looking for different aspects of working with family history. Please make a visit - it is a great site!

The first topic is School Memories. I realize that it is already the last half of October so I'll have to get through these and the other challenges pretty quickly!

I attended schools in the Liberty Central School district in Liberty, New York.

What was your favorite subject in school?
Probably what was originally called History and was called Social Studies when I attended. I have no idea what they call it now. Probably some PC term.

In what extra-curricular activities did you participate? Sports? Drama? Music? Academics?
I really didn't belong to any clubs in high school - I was pursuing an Academic course of study and very involved with Advanced Placement courses for Spanish and honors courses for English, Social Studies, Physics, and Calculus. See, I am functional as well as decorative.

Did you go on field trips, and if so, what was your most memorable field trip?

The best field trip was in my senior year and it was part of the honors Spanish course. We went to see the Pablo Picasso exhibit at the Modern Museum of Art in New York. This was one of the first blockbuster art shows after the King Tut exhibit in the mid 70's. MOMA was the location for Picasso's painting Guernica which is now located in Madrid at the Reina Sofia Museum.

What teacher influenced you the most?
Miss Marguerite Mauer. She was the Spanish teach for me in all of high school and she was much loved by everyone. She had been at LCS since the earth was warm and was the first teacher to bring Spanish as a high school subject to Sullivan County, New York. She was funny, full of bad jokes and puns ("Como esta usted, Senora De La Vaca? Muuuuuuuuuuuuy bien!") and really was the impetus for me to stick with Spanish as one of my majors in college.

Did you buy a lunch at school, or bring one from home? What kind of lunchbox? What was your favorite lunch?
I couldn't afford to buy lunch at school - that was for either the rich kids or it was free for the poor kids. Somehow I fell right in the middle and it was the brown bag crowd for me. I really didn't have a favorite lunch but right now I am wondering how in hell I could eat all those boloney sandwiches with mayonnaise that sat in my locker all morning and not get sick! Nowadays most mother's are hovering over their kids with some anti-bacterial wipe or something.

Photo
Me in 1968 - I think this was my first grade photo from St. Peter's Catholic school in Liberty, New York.

1 comment:

Charley "Apple" Grabowski said...

Thanks for the compliment! If you had visited during the summer you would have thought the site was abandoned.

A trip to New York in high school must have been great. I was in my 30's before my first trip there. I still haven't been to the MOMA because my fellow travelers in the past had only shopping on their minds. Next time I go alone and see what I want to see. (But I'm still paying someone else to drive the bus - it's scary there!) I was married before I saw the falls and now I think nothing of heading that way for the day. I've never been to Gettysburg. Or Liberty for that matter, but I bet growing up there wasn't too different than it was here in CNY. I wish I'd had cousins living near by.