​The Old Lyme Players will be performing Moises Kaufman and the Members of Tectonic Theater Project’s, The Laramie Project, on November 15 and 16.  The show itself is a collection of real interviews the Tectonic Theater Project collected over a two year period and their some of their own journal entries, then pulled them together to tell not only the story about the brutal murder of Matthew Shepard in Laramie, Wyoming, but also how the residents and the town itself were viewed by the world and how they wrestled with their own identity.
It is a show meant to generate emotions, sometimes not always positive, but with the purpose of reflection about who people are and how society may view them.  It is a show performed with the intent to ask us to evaluate our ideas of tolerance and acceptance within our own communities and the world.
The Auditorium doors of Lyme-Old Lyme High School will open at 7:00pm.  In lieu of a traditional admission, the cast has agreed to ask for donations only.  A portion of the proceeds will be donated to the Matthew Sheppard Foundation, a nonprofit organization founded by Dennis and Judy Sheppard, Matthew’s parents, to run education, outreach, and advocacy programs.  

By: Andre Salkin
Guest Speaker: Frances Bustos O’Connell
André’s abuela, visited Spanish Honors Society to speak on her experiences growing up in an immigrant family in San Antonio, Texas, in the Great Depression-era. She talked of her experiences witnessing segregation, and institutional racism in her community. She also touched on the toll of assimilation, discussing what it was like to be an outsider in her community even though Hispanics were the majority. She also spoke on the unique cultural practices to the Latin community like traditional medicine usage and the food they ate, even generously making and bringing delicious guacamole for the club. 😊 If we wish to think globally, her experiences growing up in such a culturally different context than Old Lyme can offer us a unique cultural perspective into Latin culture, and the strange intersection of the Tejano identity: to be too white for Mexico, but too brown for the United States.

Molympics is friendly competition between HS chemistry students that emphasizes the use of “the mole”, a chemistry variable used to compare molecules to each other. This competition started between a few chemistry teachers spread out throughout the country as a way to celebrate chemistry in a fun way. It is celebrated on October 23 each year, in collaboration with National Chemistry week, since one mole= 6.02 x 1023particles.
Molympics is set up with 5 events that focus on different aspects of the mole using physical tasks, lab skills and through calculations. Each team is measured on accuracy, speed and clear calculations in each event. This year’s events included calculating the time it would take to make 1 mole of tally marks, flipping 6 moles of water in water bottles to determine the number of water molecules flipped, estimating the mass of one mole of a metal, building a tower of rubber stoppers as high as possible then calculating the height of one mole of rubber stoppers and a relay race of 6 sit-ups, 2 sidesteps, 10 pushups and 23 jumping jacks.