These are both taken from the Dog River Crier, Julia McIntire, editor

Julia writes:

"One of the items we would have enjoyed including in the cookbook (Northfield Now and Then, 1974, revised 1978) but did not because of lack of space came from the 1922 cookbook by the Ladies of the Congregational Church. It tells how to clean curtains and says, '…take a white cord, make a small loop in end, measure length curtain; with a second string measure width. Let curtain soak in cold water overnight. If very dirty, soak several times; last time in warm soap suds. If dirt is not removed by soaking and squeezing, an old sheet may be placed over them in a tub of water and they may be pounded (not roughly) with the smooth top of a wash board, turned with the hands and pounded until the dirt is loosened. Water should be squeezed out; curtains shaken carefully, folded, placed in wash bag with a slice of ivory soap, a little borax or ammonia and allowed to boil for an hour; then should be put through sudsing, rinsing and blueing waters. Have a pan with a portion of starch hot (made with 1 t. for a curtain and a little pulverized gum arabic). Starch one curtain and put it quickly on stretcher prepared thus: measure stretcher with prepared string. Place loop over nail head and measure to foot stretcher, tighten clamps. Measure all sides, test corners with a square. In warm room curtains will dry in 24 hours'.

Another item, printed in the Crier, to account for the flu-like diseases in Vermont.

"Apparently 1850 was a bad year, healthwise, in Vermont. An Albion Drury wrote in the margin of a copy of the US Census for that year, his diagnosis of the cause of epidemics in this state. 'The high hills,' he said,

the low land together with the perfumery of the evergreen hills intermixing with the gasses arising from the mineral waters of the valleys continually disturb the equilibrium of the atmosphere, which make sudden changes of temperature and

think this is one cause of fever and inflammatory epidemics which prevail among the mountains of Vermont."