Insight: A Whisker Wonderland

By Ed Pierce
Managing Editor

In putting up this year’s Christmas tree, one ornament caught my attention and brought tears to my eyes. It was a small silver frame containing the photo of a beloved family pet who although she is no longer with us, can certainly not be forgotten, especially during the holidays.

Gracie (2001-2017)

Gracie became part of my family by accident. She was a companion to the husband of a woman who worked for the same newspaper in Florida that I did. The husband had cancer and had died, and the woman was flying to New Jersey the day before a hurricane was about to strike our city in October 2004. She said she was allergic to cats and was going to take the cat to the animal shelter and leave her there before her flight.

At the time I was single and had no pets, so I thought I’d take Gracie home and avoid her going to a shelter before a storm hit. She was 3 years old at the time and was quiet, gentle and loving. She was grey with tiger stripes and had beautiful blue eyes. Every day when I came back to my townhouse after work, Gracie was there waiting for me and slept at the end of my bed at night.

I bought her a package of rolling plastic balls with small bells inside. In the middle of the night, I stepped on one of them and it broke, but to my amazement, Gracie picked up the bell in her mouth and brought it to me. After that she would play fetch with the bell if you threw it across the room.

Then I met Nancy and the following spring we were married and she moved to the townhouse, bringing her part-Corgi dog, Hunter, who didn’t care for cats.

To keep them apart, we put up a baby gate at the base of the stairs to the second floor, and it worked for a while until Hunter spotted Gracie one day sitting on one of the steps. He jumped over the gate and chased Gracie into our upstairs bedroom. Returning home from work, I saw the baby gate was down. and there were no animals to be found on the first floor.

I ran upstairs and saw Gracie sitting on top of Nancy’s dresser peacefully. Seeing the dog charging up the stairs after her, Gracie had darted under the bed, only to be pursued by Hunter who was crawling sideways after her. But Hunter was too wide and he was lodged sideways under the bed frame. All I could see of him was his tail wagging from underneath the bed. I lifted the bed frame off him and returned him downstairs and reattached the gate. From time to time after that, Gracie would sit on the stairs and make sure Hunter would see her. He would bark and she would run away as sort of a game between them.

When Hunter died, we had moved to a larger home and adopted a rescued female Pembroke Welsh Corgi named Abby. Like her predecessor, Abby liked to chase and growl at cats, so she stayed at one end of the house, and the baby gate separated her from Gracie on the other end. Gracie didn’t seem to mind very much and would sleep in the sun all day on the bed or sitting next to me as I worked in the adjacent room on the computer. At that house, Gracie developed an odd habit of sitting under the bathtub faucet and licking the drips after someone took a shower.

Eventually I accepted a job offer and we all drove to New Hampshire from Florida. Gracie rode in a cat carrier in the back seat, separated from Abby by a stack of blankets. Both pets were sedated for the trip, and it didn’t seem to faze them.

Gracie always seemed happy when the Christmas season arrived because it meant she could play with ribbon used to wrap gifts and she had her own Christmas stocking which Santa filled with assorted cat toys and treats.

After Abby died and we moved to Maine, Gracie didn’t know what to make of our new puppy, a lab mix named Fancy. Gracie was apprehensive of yet another housemate but appreciated that Fancy was housed in a dog crate when Nancy and I went to work and she had the run of the entire house without a baby gate up.

Eventually Fancy and Gracie became friends or at least they came to tolerate each other. Nancy has a photo of the two of them sitting together in the same chair in our living room.

In September 2017, Gracie wasn’t eating much and was feeling poorly, so we made an appointment at the veterinarian to see if anything could be done to help her. Nancy and I went into the house to put her in the cat carrier to visit the vet, but we found Gracie on the floor by the bathroom, and she had died at the age of 16.

I once read somewhere that the greatest gift we can give a pet is our love but the greatest gift they leave us with is their memory. <

Tim Nangle: A Holiday Reminder – You have new rights when canceling subscriptions

By Senator Tim Nangle

As the holiday season arrives, many of us are thinking about gifts, family gatherings and ways to stretch our budgets at the end of the year. It’s also the time of year when many of us sign up for free trials, holiday discounts, streaming bundles or app subscriptions – sometimes without realizing how long that we’ll actually keep them.

State Senator Tim Nangle

That makes this season a good reminder to pause and take stock of our subscriptions.

Over the years, I’ve heard from many Mainers – and have run into the same problem myself— who shared the same frustrating story: signing up for a service online in seconds, only to discover that canceling it later required jumping through hoops. Phone calls during business hours, paperwork, certified letters or even being told you had to show up in person. These practices aren’t accidents. Too often, they are designed to wear you down and keep money flowing out of your bank account long after you no longer want the service.

That’s why I was proud to sponsor LD 1642 this past session, which passed the Legislature and is now law.

At its core, the idea is simple and fair: if you can sign up for a subscription online, you should be able to cancel it online. No tricks. No runaround. No pressure. Just a clear, straightforward way to say “no” to charges for a service you no longer use.

The new law strengthens Maine’s consumer protection standards in several important ways. It requires clear disclosure of subscription terms before you enroll and affirmative consent before charging for automatic renewals. It requires advance notice before long-term renewals. And, most importantly, for many people, it guarantees that cancellation must be as easy as signing up.

The law also extends these protections to health club memberships, which have long been some of the most difficult contracts to exit. Many gyms allow people to sign up online or through an app but, until now, required members to cancel in person. Under Maine’s new law, that practice ends.

It’s important to note that the law applies to subscriptions entered into or renewed on or after Jan. 1, 2026. That means this holiday season is a great time to review what you already have and sign up for new services or promotions with a clearer understanding of your rights.

If you’re reviewing your bank statements and noticing subscriptions you forgot about, starting in the new year, you’ll have clearer rights and protections. If you’re considering a holiday promotion or trial offer, you can sign up knowing you won’t be trapped later. If someone gives you a subscription as a gift, you’ll have the ability to cancel it easily if it turns out not to be a good fit.

These are practical, everyday protections that help make life a little easier and help families keep more control over their own money. If a company doesn’t follow the rules, Mainers have recourse through the Attorney General’s Consumer Protection Division.

The Maine Attorney General’s Consumer Protection Division offers free consumer information and mediation service which can help you navigate subscription or membership cancellation issues. You can call them at 207-626-8849, from 9 a.m. to noon Monday through Thursday.

You can also write to the Attorney General’s office at Attorney General’s Consumer Information and Mediation Service, 6 State House Station, Augusta, ME 04333

To file a complaint or request mediation, you can also fill out an online form at https://www.maine.gov/ag/consumer/complaints/complaint_form.shtml.

As we head into the new year, I encourage folks to take a few minutes to review their subscriptions, ask whether they’re still worth it and feel confident exercising their right to cancel when they choose. Consumer protection is about ensuring the marketplace is honest, transparent and fair. That’s something worth celebrating this season.

I wish you and your family a happy, healthy holiday season, a Merry Christmas and a new year with fewer unwanted charges and more money in your pocket.

The opinions in this column are those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect the opinions or views of The Windham Eagle newspaper ownership or its staff. <

Andy Young: The underappreciated quintet

By Andy Young

Not everyone needs or wants public recognition, particularly given the judgmental, often brutal scrutiny that comes with it. But if only for their own self-esteem, most human beings desire to be significant to someone or something that will confirm, at least to themselves, that they truly matter.

Were dates on the calendar human, they’d undoubtedly feel similarly. That’s why the five most consistently overlooked, least-appreciated 24-hour blocks of time, the quintet falling between Christmas Day and New Year’s Eve, need acknowledgement.

The weeks leading up to Dec. 25 involve, among other things, trees to trim, cookies to bake, parties to attend, packages to mail, gifts to wrap, holiday cards to send, eggnog (and/or similar libations) to imbibe, football games to endure, and mistletoe to stand under (or steer clear of, depending on who else is lurking in its vicinity).

By the evening of the 25th nearly everyone needs to come up for air. We’re all holidayed out at that point, and as a result the calendar’s next five days become collateral damage.

It’s not fair that the 26th, 27th, 28th, 29th, and 30th of December are annual casualties of holiday season overload. Why should people care more about some random date in February, June, or November any more than they do about these five no-less-ordinary boxes on the calendar? Feb. 29, which only comes along every fourth year, gets more genuine appreciation than Dec. 26 to Dec. 30 do, combined, in a decade of decades!

It’s time to stop ignoring these underappreciated days. According to Nationaldaycalendar.com, Dec. 26 is officially National Thank You Note Day, which makes perfect sense. The 26th has also been, since 1986, National Whiners Day. A Michigan Reverend, Kevin Zaborney, created it, hoping it would encourage people to appreciate all they have, rather than bemoaning what they lack, or focusing on whatever real or imagined shortcomings their existences entail.

Reverend Zaborney also created National Hugging Day, which occurs annually on Jan. 21. And despite an unavoidable COVID-related hiatus, the soon-to-be 40-year-old holiday is still a full-fledged “Day.” However, would-be NHD embracers are urged to ask permission from any and all potential huggees before applying an affectionate clasp. It’s more important than ever on National Hugging Day to respect the wishes of those who, for whatever justifiable personal reason(s), prefer to remain unsqueezed.

Dec. 27 is National Fruitcake Day. Laden with chopped candy, dried fruit, nuts, and occasionally spirits, fruitcake is popular with those trying to gain even more weight over the holidays. This can be accomplished either through direct consumption, or by securing two fruitcakes on each side of a weight bar and subsequently doing three sets of ten bench presses. This builds muscle mass, and remarkably quickly.

Dec. 28 is National Card Playing Day, Pledge of Allegiance Day (Congress officially recognized the pledge on this date in 1945), and National Chocolate Candy Day. President Woodrow Wilson was born on Dec. 28, 1856, 10 years after the day Iowa became the 29th state to join the union.

Not to be outdone by its immediate predecessor, Dec. 29 is also a president’s birthday (Andrew Johnson in 1808). In addition, Texas joined the union as the 28th state on Dec. 29, 1845, 364 days before Iowa.

Besides being New Year’s Eve eve, Dec. 30 is National Bacon Day. It’s also National Bicarbonate of Soda Day, which is convenient for those who’ve overindulged on bacon.

Every calendar year contains 52 weeks, but unfortunately The Windham Eagle only publishes during 51 of them. Next week will be Eagle-less, making it ideal for relaxation, or for trying something new.

Besides whining about fruitcake, that is. <

Insight: A Windy City Adventure

By Ed Pierce
Managing Editor

As Christmas break from college neared in December 1972, I was excited to be flying home across the country and spending some time off over the holidays with my family. But I had no idea that my flight home on Friday, Dec. 8, 1972 would be one of the most chaotic but fun experiences of my life.

State Street in Chicago is decorated for the Christmas season
in December 1972 when Ed Pierce was stranded there
overnight when he missed his flight because of an avionics
malfunction and a crash at Midway Airport delaying
flights into O'Hare Airport. COURTESY PHOTO 
  

A group of us from our fraternity rode to the airport in Albuquerque, New Mexico and six of us boarded a plane at 5 p.m. to Chicago’s O’Hare Airport for connections to other flights heading east. We sat together in the back of the airplane and talked about what our plans were for Christmas and New Year’s and when we would be returning for the next semester.

After sitting there and waiting to take off for about 45 minutes, an announcement was made that our airplane required mechanical repair. We were instructed to stay seated while airline mechanics worked to resolve the issue, and that the flight attendants would bring us complimentary food and beverages while we waited.

Since I was under the age of 21, I was not offered any alcohol but my other five friends on the flight had a few drinks while we were stuck there. By the time the plane took off an hour later, everybody was in a happy mood despite our flight being delayed by almost two hours.

About an hour into the flight, an announcement was made that a United Airlines flight had crashed on approach to Chicago’s Midway Airport, and that all air traffic into Midway was being rerouted to O’Hare Airport. It meant that our landing at O’Hare would be delayed by nearly an hour.

By the time we were finally on the ground in Chicago, all six of us from the fraternity had missed our connecting flights. Somebody had an idea that we should call a fellow fraternity brother nicknamed “Murph” who lived there to give us a tour of the city while we were stuck there overnight. He agreed to pick us up and another new adventure unfolded.

Our tour guide “Murph” was working in Chicago as a bartender and had grown up there. He said he would give us an unforgettable tour and proceeded to show us the shoreline of Lake Michigan, and we drove past the legendary Marshall Field’s department store, which was decorated with thousands of twinkling lights for the Christmas season. We parked and walked around the historic Chicago Old Town seeing hundreds of Victorian-era buildings and St. Michael's Church, which was one of the few structures to survive the Great Chicago Fire of 1871.

I marveled when we drove past the construction site for the Sears Tower which was eventually going to be 110 stories tall when finished a few years later. I also enjoyed seeing the Art Institute of Chicago, a building with vast collections of famous American artwork inside.

We kept driving until deciding to stop at a pizza place that “Murph” knew and we had a late evening meal while trying to determine if we wanted to return to the airport or do something else that night to pass the time.

Someone in our group suggested that we should go and hang out at the famous Chicago Playboy Club. We drove there but couldn’t get in because none of us were club members and I was underage. At that point, half of our group continued bar hopping with “Murph” but three of us were invited to go to another fraternity member’s home in the Chicago suburb of Wilmette. Although it was after midnight when we got there, we played cards with our fraternity friend, his mother and his sister, and afterward we all talked for a few hours before finally nodding off to sleep around 3 a.m.

By 10 a.m. the next morning our group had arrived back at O’Hare Airport, and I learned that the next flight to my hometown was at 11 p.m. that night. Rather than waiting at the airport for hours, the ticket agent suggested that perhaps I could get closer to my destination of Rochester, New York by flying to Buffalo, New York about 76 miles away.

Not having many options left to get home, I called my father to pick me up in Buffalo and I boarded the plane.

Outside the airport in Buffalo, I was greeted by my mother, my father and my brother and over the next hour and a half in the car on the way home, I tried to find a good excuse as to why I hadn’t called to alert them of my airline connection issues in Chicago. They told me they had been worried sick about me and were wondering if I had been murdered and could not understand why I had been unable to make a simple phone call to let them know I was OK.

I didn’t have a good explanation for them and agreed that I was wrong not to call or let them know my flight had left Chicago without me.

Looking back at these events 53 years later, overlooking their concern for me was a mistake. But what a time I had. <

Andy Young: Improving vocabulary, inchmeal

By Andy Young

It’s a good thing I was born when schoolchildren were actually required to know how to spell. It’s tougher for youngsters to pick up that ability these days, given "autocorrect" features on electronic devices which remove potentially discommoding composition errors automatically. Young people who spell (and hear) phonetically might assume a shofar was the driver of a fancy limousine. However, a shofar is actually a ram’s horn that’s blown like a trumpet during Rosh Hashanah, and also at the end of Yom Kippur. A shofar is only for special occasions, though. No decent shammash would blow into one during the reading of the weekly parashah, that’s for sure.

I would dearly love to be orgulous about the state of my home. However, like many people of my vintage (those who are coeval to myself), my desultory attempts to downsize by divesting myself of items that I no longer need are almost never effective. I’d like to festinate the obviation of my home’s clutter, but the reality is that I’ll probably have to offcast things inchmeal if I wish to rid my living space of its untidiness.

However, there’s a potentially unexcogitable problem: my parents, like many of their generation, never threw out anything that might someday prove useful. Think empty bottles, plastic containers, sheets of stationary, screws, nuts, bolts, black tape, electrical wire, half-empty bags of concrete, paint cans that might or might not have had paint left in them, and anything else even remotely related to potential home construction (or destruction) projects. I’m guessing this particular trait is heritable, since I too hesitate to discard anything that might someday be of service.

There’s really no way of knowing when some quotidian object that's been doing nothing other than taking up space for decades will come in handy. It’s occurred to me that perhaps the most proficient way to divest myself of all this excess would be to hold a potlatch, which as I recently discovered, is a gift-giving ceremony practiced by indigenous people in the Pacific Northwest. However, there is a shameful dearth of Pacific Northwestern indigenous people in my neighborhood, so that idea is out.

One morning last weekend I awoke shrouded by an unmistakable hebetude but snapped out of it when I realized how fortunate I was to be living above the hadal part of the ocean. My eyes would be utterly useless there, since these areas are located 20,000 or more feet below sea level, and thus are extremely dark. I’ll bet all the ichthyofauna down there are blind.

After a couple of hours of going through my closet I began feeling insatiate, so naturally I began having prandial ideations. When I become esurient my thoughts turn to all kinds of comestibles, like panettone, muffuletta, and even skyr. I’d balk at muktuk, though, and be particularly wary of quenelle and/or yakitori. After all, inadequately prepared victuals can lead to trichinosis or other zoonoses that are a lot worse than mere dyspepsia. And were I to contract one or more of those contagions, it’s possible the sequela that followed would be worse than the disease itself.

Poetry-writing bagpipe players needing a rhyme for squirrel other than curl or earl could turn to skirl, which means to play the bagpipes. I wonder if there was ever a rural girl squirrel who could swirl, twirl, and skirl simultaneously? If I tried to do that I’d probably hurl.

The bottom line: I accomplished almost nothing during my latest attempt at downsizing. But I’m justifiably orgulous over having saved that 2013 “Word-a-day” desk calendar. I knew I’d find a use for it! <

Rookie Mama: ‘Twas the month before New Year’s -- I can’t believe it’s not clutter

By Michelle Cote
The Rookie Mama

“All you can take with you is that which you’ve given away.” – Pa Bailey, ‘It’s a Wonderful Life’

The most valuable and lasting features of our lives are not material possessions but rather acts of love and kindness shared with others.

And there you have it – You’ve heard some semblance of this, I’ve heard this, we’ve all heard it.

Yet we collectively mad dash to the photo finish of each year with resolutions to start the page flip to January fresh and new.

Among habits atop New Year’s resolutions for many remain the inevitable hopes and dreams to declutter, minimize, and let the rampant consumerism take a beat.

My family is ever-aspirational here – We continue to ask ourselves whether certain household items are really so needed. Do we hold dearly to some items out of legitimate sentiment or out of sheer guilt?

Do we really need two whisks?

Clutter makes us cringe, so we toss, donate and repurpose what we can with intention.

Baby steps. Whisk-y business, indeed.

Our Christmas tree may be artificial – and we’re sure proud of it – but our continued goal toward minimalism bliss is evergreen.

Be that as it may, our family tries at a mega-declutter at the beginning of December, rather than January, our early resolution tradition.

Beginning of December purging of items past is the perfect time to prepare for Christmas presents yet to come.

It’s a time to reflect – room by room – and determine what really needs keeping.

The basement uses this refresh year-round, too.

Last month, I tripped over one of my kiddos’ projects askew on the basement floor, tucked away for who-knows-what.

A family heirloom it was not – Rather, what lay before me was a solar system project from the year before. A glittering, sparkling, Styrofoam mess – Styrofoam is the enemy of our planet, yet here it was emulating several planets.

Too big and bulky to neatly store with our boys’ other school-morabilia, there was no real place for it to live.

I breathed deeply and gingerly asked my son if I could throw it away.

Without hesitation, he gave me a response truly out of this world, solar-system-style – ‘Yes’.

Perhaps he realized that this would be part of his inheritance, his dowry if you will, something to explain to his future spouse, if we didn’t scrap this now.

I chalked it up to a win and thanked my lucky glitter-glue stars for it.

Henry David Thoreau once said, “I make myself rich by making my wants few,” and what wise words indeed.

Our memories are in our minds, not in our things, and whatever problems we have today will not be resolved by purchasing more stuff.

As Americans, accumulation is our jam, unwittingly so, and stuff adds up quickly.

But decluttering your home needn’t be overwhelming or daunting.

Schedule regular times to declutter regularly as you go. Embrace empty space.

Follow the ‘one in, one out’ rule – When you bring a new item into your home, get rid of a similar old one.

For example, coffee mugs. Think of the coffee mugs.

Before buying something, ask yourself if you really need it by keeping non-essentials in your ‘cart’ 48 hours to see if they’re truly needed.

Prioritize experiences over material goods. It takes up less space but capitalizes on fabulous memories.

Other tips that are small works in progress include organizing your phone, limiting distractions, cleaning your inbox, and simplifying your wardrobe.

So toss that spare ‘just-in-case’ kitchen item or donate it to someone who could use it.

Over time, this decluttering will leave you feeling content in a way that no amount of coffee cups ever can.

Because in the end, all you can take with you is that which you’ve given away.

Same goes for old school projects.

No one needs that much Styrofoam.

– Michelle Cote lives in southern Maine with her husband and four sons, and enjoys camping, distance running, biking, gardening, road trips to new regions, arts and crafts, soccer, and singing to musical showtunes – often several or more at the same time!

Insight: Wok this way

By Ed Pierce
Managing Editor

Over the weekend, I noticed a social media post that sought comments about foods that were popular at dinner tables in the 1950s and 1960s but are greatly unknown these days.

It made me think about my own family and upbringing and meals or items we would consume then as compared to now. My mother did not work or drive when I was growing up and she took immense pride in planning and cooking family meals for each day of the week.

She was constantly looking for new ways to improve and add to her meal planning and once she sent for a box filled with handy new dinner recipes from a mail-order company in Pennsylvania.

One of those mail-order recipes was for something called “Porcupine Balls.” It was a kind of meatball rolled in white rice and baked.

Another of her culinary specialties was Hungarian goulash, a mix of tomato sauce, macaroni and hamburger. She served it at least once a week and I eventually came to loathe that meal when I arrived home from school and observed her preparing it on the kitchen stove.

My father’s contributions to our meals were usually canned fruit side dishes that were consumed after the entrée dish.

Some of his favorites as I can recall were small bowls of purple plums or mandarin oranges, each doused with a hearty helping of heavy syrup from the cans they came from.

If I balked at consuming the plums, I can still hear my mother proclaiming, “Just eat them, they will keep you regular young man.” I did enjoy plums, but I never liked piling up plum pits on my plate afterward.

When I asked my father if mandarin oranges were grown in Florida, he told me that he had a friend in high school who once received a box of them as a Christmas present that had been shipped to America from Japan. With his answer, I wondered if instead they should be called Japanese oranges and he told me that was a “ridiculous” proposition.

Other meals or food items my mother served us in the past that I’m glad seem to have disappeared include Campbell’s Green Pea Soup, tuna noodle casserole and Jell-O shaped in molds containing celery or onions. Sometimes her Jell-O molds would have fruit cocktail in them, but mostly she stuck to onions or celery, and I never cared for it.

Green Pea Soup didn’t taste bad, but I had to hold my nose to avoid the smell while eating it. Its odor resembled soiled diapers to me.

Try as I might, the dry, mushy disgusting lump on my dinner plate as a 7-year-old called tuna noodle casserole always turned my stomach. No matter what my mother would add to it including lemon juice, extra mayonnaise or bacon bits, it still tasted worse than cat food.

To my surprise, during my basic training in the U.S. Air Force years later, the dining hall served its own version of tuna noodle casserole, and it was the only menu option that night.

Some other foods that would come home from the grocery store in my parents’ shopping cart would be limburger cheese, liverwurst, canned creamed corn, marshmallow fluff, and sardines.

My father once showed me how he would make a sardine sandwich, but I never could get past looking at the fish heads before taking them out of the can to put them a slice of bread and take a bite.

When my mother would ask if I wanted a “Fluffernutter” for lunch, I would always pass on that too. It was a peanut butter and jelly sandwich with marshmallow fluff spread on it. Back then I wasn’t much of a fan of peanut butter and would ask for just a jelly sandwich.

Limburger cheese and liverwurst never really appealed to me as a child. Like Green Pea Soup, it was hard to get past the smell of limburger cheese. No matter how often my mother would try to encourage me to eat liverwurst, which is a kind of spreadable sausage, I never could get past the taste or its aroma. She would put in on saltine crackers or on bread and it was utterly revolting to me.

If I saw her reach for a can of creamed corn from the cupboard to heat up for dinner, it would produce instant upset stomach symptoms in me. To this very day, the sight or smell of creamed corn gives me the chills mentally and makes me want to vomit physically.

I’m sure my mother felt the same way about foods I enjoyed too. Once she visited my home and was surprised to see my wife was fixing some Chinese food on the stove in a wok that we had been given as a wedding present. She told me that ever since she was a small girl, the sight of Chinese food made her ill and she couldn’t eat the meal we were preparing.

All this reminds me of how Mark Twain once described food aversion.

“The only way to keep your health is to eat what you don't want, drink what you don't like, and do what you'd rather not," he said. <