While the vaccination debate rages on, I thought I would share this early day observation from Margaret “Peg” Woodrich of the by gone days on the Madeline Plains. She compiled a small history, “The Early Days of California’s Madeline Plains.” She wrote: “The teaching methods of those times are long since forgotten. Each schoolroom had in its entry a bucket of water and a tin dipper from which all the youngsters drank, exchanging measles and whooping cough with democratic cordiality.”