Fort Kent Community High School - Warrior Yearbook (Fort Kent, ME)

Page 21 text:

time, you run into the same trouble you won't be so self-conscious about it. When you get into an embarrassing situation don't be- come panicky and run away. You'll only make your failure that more conspicuous. And there is the danger that you develop the panic habit. Running away is an easy way out. If you are being humiliated or made fun of, stick it out. Make a stand. It may hurt in the beginning, but the next time it will hurt much less. Marcella Vaillancourt A Happy Ending lt was a bright sunny day. Jane jumped out of bed determined to go for a walk in the woods with a crowd of girls and boy-4. She did not want to go at first but when she was told that Harry was going, it had changed her mind. Harry was tall and a good-looking fellow. He was not a football star or a basketball player, but that did not bother ,lane in the least. She hurried downstairs singing, 5'My Dreams are Getting Better all the Time. She was going to have fun today. She would have a chance, maybe, to talk to Harry and maybe get a date. Who knows? As usual, when things are planned in ad- vance, there's always something that comes up and spoils everything. She was just start- ing to prepare her lunch when she saw her father coming up the walk. He looked tired. Father home from office as early as this? Why he had not left more than an hour ago, thought Jane. Was there anything wrong? Sho ran to the door and cried, Father, but it was too late, her father had fallen on the steps. She hurried to the phone to call a doctor, shouting to her mother at the same time. All her hopes of going with the crowd had gone. It did not take long before the doctor came. He looked at the body which was still lying on the front walk. He looked at ,lanes mother, than to Jane. They started crying. but the doctor announced that he was not dead, he had had a heart attack and should not have walked all the way from the office. They brought him in on the sofa and it was not long before he was insisting that he was all right. Jane telephoned Mary to say that she would not be able to go with them. She felt disap- pointed because now her last chance of talk- ing to Harry was gone. She was thinking of all this when she saw a boy coming down the street carrying a rake, shovel and several packages. He looked a lot like Harry but it was im- possible, because Mary had said that Harry was going. Maybe he had changed his mind. Sure enough! that's what had happened. Didn't you go with the crowd? asked Jane as he came along. No, said Harry, I thought I'd better be starting a victory garden. Won't you join me?, he asked, after Jane had told him what had happened. He didnit have to ask her twice. She was already in the shed looking for her father's rake. Wasn,t it wonderful how things had happened, she thought happily, as she walked by Harry's side. Lucille Blanchette '48 Self-Conscious Sue Sue worked in a department store after school. She was an intelligent girl and the manager had put her to work at the hosiery department. To his surprise Sue asked to be transferred after a few days but gave no rea- son. The manager changed her to the station- ery counter, but again after a couple of days she asked for a transfer. Finally., at her own request she wound up as a stock girl, carry- ing boxes and merchandise from the store- room to the sale counters. She had worked her way down from sales-girl to working in the stock-room, but at last, she seemed con- tented. Her mother became worried. In school Sue had always been an ambitious girl. She could not understand this sudden change in her daughter. Maybe something was wrong with her mind? So she took her to a doctor. An examination soon showed that Sue was not sick and that there was nothing wrong with her mind. The story behind the volun- tary demotion in the store was simple. Sue was self-conscious about her hands. She was a pretty girl, but her hands were not much to look at. They were red and plump. and her fingers were stubby. Sue had tried creams and message, but they had not done much good. In school her hands had not bothered her much, hut behind a sales count- er it was a different story. And instead of learning how to live with those hands of

Page 20 text:

Literary . . . EDITORIAL T0 THE GRADUATES Soon we will be veterans of four years of combat duty with Math, Languages, Science, Commercial Subjects in the service of our officer, the Intelligence. A few of us will be going on with this great army and become teachers, professionals. But the great major- ity of us will soon register for life long serv- ices and enroll in the great army of the em- ployed. This Army, as other armies, is coni- posed of leaders and followers. Both have a vital part to play in this world. Some people have the qualities of a leader, they can in- fluence a group who will follow them. On the other hand, the followers are not people who just ain't got what it takes. Rather, they are people with different kinds of tal- ent, and because of it are often more under- standing than leaders. To be able to accomp- lish something, leaders need followers and fol- lowers depend upon leaders. The idea can be compared to officers in the army and their soldiers. The officers plan the attack of a certain battle lineg they are the leaders. Then the soldiers by applying those plans fight the enemyg they are the followers. Thus by cooperation and by use of the talents of all kinds of people we can make the world a better place to live in, thus making our own town better. Soon we will be the voters and public officials of America, of our town. We have learned to cooperate at school. Four years of basketball, baseball, participa- tion in Clubs, Student Government, Class Elections, and even in our Class Rooms have shown us what cooperation means. It took a great deal of effort to be active and still get fairly good marks. Perhaps every- thing seemed hard at times but it made us realize our motto Through trials to triumph. Irene Babin '43 Legendary Lore of the St. Iohn Valley The first natives of the St. John Valley were the Malicite Indians, one of the tribes of the Abnakis nation. The principle ham- lets of the Malicites were Meragoneche fSt. Johnl, Aukupag flfredrictonl, Medocter fwoodstockl and Madoueskak. It is a gen- eral belief that the Micmac family occupied the St. John Valley and were driven away by the Abnakis. Although the Malicites were far from the Iroquois, the latter came on different occu- sions to start bloody struggles. The most famous of these war-like expeditions was when the Iroquois came from Upper Can- ada to exterminate the Malicites. They reached the St. John River and began their battle by attacking a small village of the Madoweskaks, the worthy Pemmyhaouet, the great chief of the Malicites, with about 100 warriors of his camp, organized immediately for the defense of the fort. The fight which followed is the most memorable mentioned in the Indian Legends. The great Pemmyhouet fell during the combat and his son was mor- tally wounded. As soon as the defenders fell, wives and daughters took their places. lt was only after a struggle of several days, that the courageous women were obliged to surrender their fort. The wild Mohawks found two women crouching in a corner of the fort, begging for death as a deliverance. These women were Necomah. the affianced wife of the chief's son, who had just died of his wounds. The Iroquois, delighted with their success, resolved to go and fight as far as the lower valley, and being ignorant of the navigation of the St. John River seized the two women and took them to act as guides. Vlfhen night came, the canoes were entrust- ed to the care of Melobiannah only, Necomah having died of grief. Melobiannah, weeping over the loss of her lover and grieving about the misfortunes of her nation, nourished in her heart the Indian revenge. She resolved to sacrifice her life to avenge those whom she loved and at the same time save her people from the disaster which awaited them. She directed the flotilla toward the deadly Grand Falls. If there were a simple cure for self-con- sciousness most every person would want to get it. Unfortunately there is no such remedy, although a cure exists. It may not be quite as simple as a teaspoonful of medicine, but it isn't very hard either. Most self-conscious people worry all the time about the impression they make on oth- ers. They try hard to fix fhings so nobody will notice their little defects. But by fussing about their weak spot, they only draw peo- ple's attention to it. It is important for vou to expect to get in- to embarrassing situations. And when they come, laugh. Laugh at yourself and the next

Page 22 text:

her's, she had developed an inferiority com- plex about them. Sue's case is just a simple example of the many things about which people can be self- conscious. Her case shows how self-conscious- ness can become a handicap for a girl, a handicap in work, in love, in social ability. Such a self-conscious person goes through life in constant fear of people, a fear of what people might think, what they might say, or how they might treat her. The dread of be- ing made fun of or being laughed at is con- stantly on their minds. They fret about little things as well as big things. At a little distance from the abyss, some of the warriors who were suffering from sheer exhaustion were awakened by the roar- ing noise of the falls. They asked the young girl the meaning of the dull sound. She told them it was only another branch of the riv- er. It was only a few hundred feet distance from the abyss, when a deadly current was drawing them to the precipice that they real- ized the trickery and jumped out of their canoes but it was too late. They disappeared in the foaling cataract, yelling curses, they could still hear the triumphant shrieks of Malobiannah in which mingled the names of her betrothed and her avenged nation. The Malicite heroine has been celebrated in verses in the Abenakis, French, and Eng- lish languages. Greek History offers nothing greater nor more sublime than that simple and ignored self-sacrificed of this unknown girl of our forests. Theresa Murphy '48 Unraveling The Atom The study of atomic power might be re- garded as something very new, because of its much publicized and sudden appearance, but actually the atom is something which has puzzled and confused such learned men as the philosopher and scientist Aristotle and his student, Galileo, who lived in the 4-th cen- tury before Christ. The atomic bomb is the results of the work of men and women of many different nation- alities who have indirectly contributed to its perfection. For example in the late 17th cen- tury William Crookes discovered that when he sent high voltage -electricity, through a vacuum tube a peculiar set of rays were gen- erated which he called Cathode Rays. I. J. Thompson of Cambridge University studied of negative electricity which he named elec- trons. They are the lightest and most active particles in an atom, by what we know to- day. The next century Roentgen made X-Ray light move by using these electrons to bom- bard metal tragets in a vacuum. Bacquerel. a Frenchman was prompted by that discov- ery, to investigate the physical properties of elements that glowed in the dark. He found that Uranium gave off radiations similar to the X-Rays. All these discoveries started oth- er scientists going, particularly such a famous man, in the scientific field, as Ernest Ruther- ford. He formulated a model of the atom which is surprisingly similar to our present concep- tion. He described the atom as being made of a very small, but very heavy, nucleus carry- ing a positive charge and around this nuc- leus the negative electrons are spaced in var- ious formations. Bohr, a Danish, added to Rutherforifs theory and, said that the electrons revolved around the nucleus of the atom, like the plan- ets revolve around the sun. Rutherford suggested that if the nucleus could be hit hard enough to fracture it, dif- ferent kinds of atoms would be produced. A few years later, he actually accomplished that first artificial transformation. After this first experiment, his only move was how to get a more powerful hammer or projectile with which to strike the atom. Twenty years later Dr. Lawrence of the University of Chicago, invented a cyclotron which is able to acebrate positively charged particles or high as 10,000 miles per second. The Curie family then dis- covered with the help of Chadnick, a new type of particles which had the mass of H2 but carried no charge. Chadwick gave it the name of Neutron. The existence of the neu- tron had been announced by Rutherford 12 years before. A professor at University of Chicago, us- ing a mass spectrometer, something like a Wilson cloud chamber, detected a rare atom of Uranium with the atomic weight of 235, the common had the weight of 238. All radioactive particles disintegrate and while doing this, they give off energy and consequently lose weight. All radioactive ele- ments are recognized by the time it takes for them to disintegrate, this is called their half life. A German discovered a new type of dis- integration which is a complicated process and it is started by bombarding the nucleus of the atom with slow moving neutrons. The substance which corresponds to one which