Author: WCPS

WCBOE

The Purple Herald

SEPTEMBER 2010

Volume 1, Issue 1

Special points of interest:
STREAM HEALTH IN YOUR BACK YARD
DEBT CRISIS
OBITUARIES
FROM THE TREES
INFLATION
CASUALTIES
FUNNY FARM
JUPITER TRIP?
WEATHER

Inside this issue:

WITNESS TREE	2
OBITUARIES	3
CASUALTIES	3
DEBT CRISIS	3
COMICS	4
HANDLING	2
SPORTS	4

Stream Health in your backyard

Dirty, cloudy water with a murky substance floating in a small area of a water source. There are no visible animals swimming around. The plants on the waters edge is yellow green and not vibrant. Instinct tells me, this water source is unhealthy and sick and needs help.
A stream study that investigates the unseen factors of this water source will reveal the Antietam Battlefield stream house pond, is actually very healthy!
What invisible factors make a stream healthy? Common stream factors are temperature, dissolved oxygen, turbidity, pH, and macro invertebrates.
Dissolved oxygen is the amount of oxygen available for the animals in the water to use and a score of 7 parts per million (ppm) will support growth. The water source we tested was a 8.5 ppm.
Another factor we tested, pH, is an indicator of acidic or basic and anything from 6.8 to 8.2 is healthy and our water source tested at 6.5, yet another indicator of good health contrary to physical indicators.
Temperature will vary however, the colder the water the more dissolved oxygen it will hold. Our temperature was 20 degrees Celsius.
Turbidity is the measure of water’s cloudiness. IT is caused by soil, debris, plankton, and other microscopic organisms.
Based on the factors we tested at Antietam Battlefield, the stream is healthy.

Antietam Battlefield Creek

Battle of Antietam: Sharpsburg
BY LINE HERALD TIMES

Nothing on their quiet, country roads could have prepared the small, nondescript community of Sharpsburg for the autumn of 1862; a time when its name would be unwillingly wed to ghastly images of inconceivable carnage. Although estimates vary, most center on about 23,000 total Americans, Northern and Southern, killed, wounded, or missing during this one day of fighting. The United States National Park Service estimates that, when taking into account those who likely perished later of wounds received on this field, the count of those who lost their lives because of this single day of battle could exceed 7,000. No other day in American history produced a greater number of casualties. If the battle lasted about 11 hours, 6am to 5pm, that meant on average one casualty inflicted every 1 1/2 seconds. Of those casualties, one man would die for every 5 to 6 seconds of conflict.

The Purple Herald

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How much can you handle? By: Nick Green

McClean—General for Northern Army troops

You complain and moan and groan about all that weight from the homework the teachers assigned today. Have you ever imagined being a civil war soldier carrying their life's belongings around?
A foot soldier would carry an average of 80 pounds. A Civil war soldier would take a pack with him that contained eating utensils, he may also carry a game like checkers or cards or chess, most soldiers that could write carried a journal, they carried a little bag that was a sewing kit. He had an extra pair of socks, if he was lucky. A lot of soldiers carried a Bible, or a book of poetry. Perhaps, again if they were lucky, they had a picture of a loved one (wife, mother) They would sew a tag into their clothing identifying themselves in case they got shot. The U.S. Government issued their uniform and weapon, although many soldiers who were from the northwest at that time preferred their own weapon.

What did it see? Translated by: Joe SMith

Witness tree visited by my group at the Antietam Battlefield

BANG! BOOM! BOOM! AGGGHHHHHH!
Screams of pain, and moans of agony this is all I remember from that fateful day of September 17, 1862.
The day started out cool and quiet, but I felt my leaves rustle in the slight breeze that was barely moving the fall air.
Men were walking in lines past me, you should have seen the look on their faces. Some men were scared and young, just young boys, very similar to my young sapling state. Others were determined to fight for their country and values, no matter what opinion others had. Others were clearly there because it was the ‘right thing to do’ not because they wanted to or had an opinion of this event.
Off in the distance the smoke continues to billow meeting the clouds, what appears to be high in the sky. Something is going to meet these young men down the road and I was to have a front row seat for it—if I’d only knew.
It all started with a yell, a loud shrill shriek, and from there the mass chaos. Men running, bullets flying through the air, smoke rising and clouding the sky. Guns and cannons exploding with massive booms that rattled my limbs and leaves.
Slowly the men lay sleeping across the field instead of the yellow-green grass, slowly fading the in fall weather, I see a sea of gray and blue mixed with brown, black, and yellow spots dotting the land.
These men would never wake and the ground would take on a red tint over the next few days. A total of 23,100 men lost their lives that day while I continued to fall into a greater depression. My leaves turned brown, eventually withering away and dropping to that red ground. I didn’t speak much or nor do I remember much from that winter.
The next spring, I blocked it out and bloomed fresh and bright, knowing I needed to go on and bring bright greens to push the memory of that awful day to the lower limbs and allow the new to bloom and remind everyone to go on and forward.
**As transcribed by the author from the point of view from the Witness Tree**

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Volume 1, Issue 1

DEBT Crisis? What debt?
By: Emily Smith

As our country struggles with a debt crisis, do you wonder how we got to this point? Inflation!
Since the civil war the cost of living and cost of daily items has risen significantly from it’s original price.
In dollars and cents, the U.S. government estimated Jan. 1863 that the war was costing $2.5 million daily. A final official estimate in 1879 totaled $6,190,000,000. The Confederacy spent perhaps $2,099,808,707. By 1906 another $3.3 billion already had been spent by the U.S. government on Northerners' pensions and other veterans' benefits for former Federal soldiers.
It was estimated that the confederate money took 60 to 70 dollars to equal 1 gold dollar by the end of the war. Not good.
Staple Prices:
Eggs, 16-18 cents/dozen
Buter, 16-18 cents/lb
Potatoes, 18-23 cents/bush(el)
Hams, 12-14 cents/lb
Cheese, 12-14 cents/lb
Table salt, 20-25 cents/sack
Brown sugar, 7-9 cents/lb
White sugar, 10-14 cents/lb
Coffee, 15-20 cents/lb
Tea, 50-75 cents/lb
Honey, 25 cents/lb
Lemons, 2-3 cents/each
Sweet potatoes, 2.00/bushel
Squashes, 2-3 cents/each
How are those apples?

Obituaries
By: Group collaboration

ANDREWS, ALBERT S. Wednesday, November 4, 1863, Listed in a report of the 148th N Y S V of dead and wounded, under the command of Col Wm. Johnson, was the following: Albert S. Andrews, private, Co. D., head and shoulder, severely wounded.
DAVENPORT, Norman - Wednesday, January 21, 1863
At Union Mills, VA, January 6th, 1863, of chronic dysentery, Mr. Norman DAVENPORT, Company F, 126th Regiment, NYSV, formerly of West Bloomfield.
GOODING, Russell W. -Wednesday, March 5, 1862
At Campbell hospital, Washington, DC, on the 4th instant, Horace R. GOODING of Co. H., 14th Regiment, NYSV. The deceased was a son of Russell W. GOODING of East Bloomfield.
HERENDEEN, Orren Wednesday July 15, 1863
GETTYSBURG - Mr. Levi HERENDEEN had also proceeded to the scene of action to remove his brother, Captain Orren HERENDEEN, who was also killed in that battle. Much difficulty has been experienced by those who have gone tot he filed in getting there. It is to be sincerely hoped that the remains of both these young men can be reached and returned to their friends. Their fate is sad, but their record, is glorious. (town of Farmington)
CORNELL, Mervin Eugene - Wednesday October 15, 1862 Pg. 3
Captain Mervin Eugene CORNELL, killed in the Battle of Antietam, on the 17th of September, ult., was born in the town of Bristol, Ontario county on the 11th day of April 1842, consequently was twenty years and five months old.
When the first proclamation of President LINCOLN was issued, calling upon the North to spring to arms for the defense of our beleaguered capitol, and to put down the then young rebellion, Captain CORNELL was among the very first that responded. Actuated by an exalted patriotism he did not wait for place or power, but with a calm determination and a fervent love of his country, on the 19th of April, 1861, offered himself as a private in a company of light artillery, which was being organized in the city of Cleveland, Ohio, where he was then residing.

CASUALTIES OF THE WAR BY SUZIE MCCARTY

Comic Section

Sports

By BOB PARASILITI bobp@herald-mail.com
11:21 p.m. EDT, July 27, 2011
MAUGANSVILLE —
Levi Taylor is becoming a bit of an adrenaline junkie. The action and events of games give him all he needs to get in the flow. When the early nerves hit on Wednesday, it was two shots and he was good for the whole game
Taylor wiggled out of a first-inning jam and countered with a two-run home run to put himself in the right frame of mind. He settled in to pitch 5 2/3 innings to lift Conococheague to a 8-4 victory over Northern Calvert for the losers’ bracket title in the Maryland 11-12 State Tournament at Maugansville Little League’s Jay W. Stouffer Field. “I had a little trouble early,” said Taylor. “I was having a little trouble getting used to the crowd, but I worked myself though it.” He and the District 1 champs worked their way through it so well, they earned the right to face undefeated Elkton today at 6 p.m. in the championship round of the tournament. If Conococheague wins, it will force a winner-take-all final on Friday.

Weather—today and the future

A Trip to Jupiter? Some day in the future!

(CNN) -- NASA scientists are slightly more than a week away from launching a Jupiter mission they say will unlock key secrets of how our solar system was formed. After almost a decade of building and testing the Mission Juno satellite -- a $1.1 billion spacecraft -- NASA officials placed the craft atop an Atlas V rocket Wednesday. It is set to blast off from Cape Canaveral, Florida, on August 5. Juno will be launched into space atop an Atlas V 551 rocket, one of the world's most powerful, NASA said. Mission Juno will offer unprecedented insight into the formation of our solar system by investigating what lies underneath Jupiter's atmosphere, astronomers said at Kennedy Space Center. Jupiter is known for its violent storms and gaseous atmosphere .Scott Bolton, principal investigator for the mission, said Jupiter -- which is 1,300 times larger than Earth -- holds a key to understanding the solar system because it's believed to be the first planet to have formed after the sun.