Insight: We rise by lifting others

By Ed Pierce
Managing Editor

Even though we all share space on this planet, I’ve found that truly knowing what others carry around inside them is never easy.

That fact was evident for me this past weekend when I accompanied my wife Nancy to a funeral service in St. Albans, Vermont for our sister-in-law Millie Boyd. She had been married for 34 years to Nancy’s oldest brother Will, and they lived in St. Albans.

Over the years we saw Millie when we visited them on trips to Vermont, and she came across to me as a talented artist who was warm and welcoming to us. She wanted to know about us and our lives, and we were never there long enough to carry on long conversations with her about her own life.

On the drive over to Vermont, I asked Nancy how Will and Millie met and I had forgotten that they had met while struggling through issues with alcohol. Nancy told me that both Will and Millie had devoted their lives after overcoming alcohol problems to helping others, serving as sponsors, listening to people struggling as they had, and serving as their mentors.

Until we had arrived at the funeral home though, I was not aware of the full extent of Millie’s life. She was a mother of three daughters, a loving grandmother who taught her grandchildren gardening, and had completed nursing school.

During her eulogy, I heard that in 1988, she fulfilled a lifelong dream and earned a degree from Trinity College in Burlington, Vermont. The speaker said Millie was proud that she and her three daughters all attended college full-time at the same time and graduated by birth order.

I did not know that Millie enjoyed singing classical acapella music with Gigi Scriggins' Morning Glory Singers, and later, the Side Effects barbershop quartet. She had great fun performing for Cardiac Capers, a hospital benefit show, and at other venues in Vermont. I learned that Millie was also involved with The Aphasia Choir of Vermont, a community group founded by her daughter Karen McFeeters Leary, a former speech-language pathologist who is a gifted singer and songwriter. The choir is for stroke and traumatic brain injury survivors with speech difficulties so they can communicate fluently through music.

Millie also was an avid reader and in later years, she discovered a passion for watercolor painting. She belonged to numerous artists' groups, especially enjoying painting and learning with the "Tuesday morning gals." She exhibited her work in Franklin and Chittenden Counties in Vermont.

In fact, I had forgotten that on one of our trips to Vermont to see Nancy’s family, she had given us a painting completed by Nancy’s mother, who was a professional artist. The painting had been hanging on a wall in Will and Millie’s home. It shows Nancy at about the age of 14 and her mother at the lake and now is one of the centerpiece paintings in our living room in Maine.

That led me to remember that Will and Millie were frequent visitors to the nursing home in St. Albans where Nancy’s mother was cared for until her death in 2005.

But the most humbling thing that happened to me during Millie’s funeral came during the “Community Remembrance” portion of her service. 

One by one, people from all walks of life stepped forward to say how Millie had been someone who truly cared about them and had been instrumental in helping them forego dependence upon alcohol and change their lives for the better.

Each one talked about how tough and strict Millie and Will were as their sponsors and yet they felt that the couple always treated them with respect and dignity and most of all with kindness.

I was moved when a man discussed how he had “burned his life to the ground” because of alcohol and walked away from his children when they needed him. He said he saw no point in going on, but it was Millie who had convinced him that he could overcome his problems and start again.

Another speaker discussed how many lives Millie had touched and through her faith in humanity and using her own example as inspiration, had transformed hundreds of lives through her willingness to volunteer on behalf of others struggling with sobriety.

A woman who worked as the only female on a construction crew talked about how kind Millie had been to her and that she continually told her to smile.

Many other speakers mentioned that smiling was the cornerstone that Millie used to calm people’s fears of talking with her and how she felt no matter how hard a day someone might have had that a simple smile showed kindness to them.

Driving home that evening, I told Nancy that it was very humbling to hear all of those speakers talk about what Millie had done for them, how her persistence had led them to turn their lives around, and why they felt they needed to be there to express their love for her.

I carried one big question away from that entire experience that day. When my time comes, as it does for everyone, what do I expect my friends and family to say about me? <

Rookie Mama: Here’s a salute to the snowsuit re-boot

By Michelle Cote
The Rookie Mama

Fiery red leaves sound the red alarm for the clothing reality check in our home, and I want to take a moment to share my textile-themed PSA, which as you can imagine does not stand for “pants, shirts, accessories.”

Octobers are as multicolored outdoors in Maine as they are in my kiddos’ clothing drawers, because we’re wild-eyed with clothing overlapping seasons that truly must be addressed.

Our mudroom is still lined with the boys’ brand new-ish school shoes buddied up next to summer’s muddy Crocs – brightly marked signs of outdoor play all season long.

As we phase through a shoulder season that shoulders burden of many garments – Seriously, we will need more coat hooks – we must take that seasonal self-eval and determine what stays and what goes to the leaf-pile-looking mound of a donation pile stuffed tight in Chewy boxes ready for a Goodwill drop?

Full disclosure, my children really do own more than three pairs of clothing.

Their jam-packed hand-me-down dresser drawers are proof positive of being stuffed to the gills with hand-me-down attire of all sorts.

But as all four boys are creatures of habit, they love to keep a couple of outfits on repeat, so much that if we go one day without running the washer, they’re running wildly and convinced that they have no more clothes to wear.

Oh wear, oh wear, are their clothes indeed?

It really strikes a friendly reminder that perhaps we should sift through it all and pull garments not worn for a long time. This is always rough going – Pulling out forgotten clothes from the backs of closets are like pulling off a Band-aid, but unlike a Band-aid, the pain’s not forgotten quickly afterward.

I’ll gently fold away the clothes they no longer wear and quietly add to a size-marked bin in our basement so they’re ready to be once again loved, worn and torn as boy clothes go, for the next kiddo down the line.

And because ‘tis the season, it’s critical to have your little ones try one last year’s boots, winter coats and snow pants.

The littler the kid, the probably more likely it is that they’re ready to size up.

Like many other things I’ve learned in parenting, I know this because I’ve learned the hard way – the Rookie Mama way, so to speak. 

In my early mama-ing years, I’d wait for snow to fly, run down to get a kid’s pair of boots, only for them not to fit and I’d be the one booting out to the nearest store only to find winter wear no longer on shelves, nor available online in right sizes.

You know how it is; in a culture of oversaturated back-to-school shopping sales in June, it’s no surprise that by the time snow hits the fan, store shelves have already replaced winter gear with Valentine’s hearts and Easter eggs.

And Easter eggs are the only thing I ever want to hunt.

As for boots for kids, shop now for best options – this I kid you not.

Try on the winter coats, and have your kiddos do the sleeve test by reaching up high to see whether those sleeves ride up.

To each his own, but when I see too much wrist, I know it’s time to park what I’m doing and find a parka.

Kids today will never know the pure technicolor joy of our ‘90s generation’s Starter jackets, but if they are lucky enough, they may find loose change or a long-forgotten pair of matching winter gloves in an old coat pocket, the jacket color notwithstanding (But oh, how I loved the Charlotte Hornets colors.)

Lastly take a peek at any snow pants while you’re in the neighborhood of winter storage bins. 

Just like the rule of wrist for winter coats, nobody wants snow pants too short or those that ride up in other places, for that matter – Just think of the cold snow on their ankles from a snowdrift step wrongly taken.

It’s still too early for a pot of hot cocoa and peppermint sticks – or is it? – but truly the time to get a foothold on winter boots and downsizing clothes from last season is now.

So that when the cold blasts through, you’ll be the one who’s chill – But you won’t have to worry about getting cold feet.

So re-boot now while you’re in Halloween shopping mode so you aren’t spooked in the months to come.

Out with the Crocs, in with Crocktober!

­­– 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!

Andy Young: Indigenous Columbus People’s Day

By Andy Young

Americans are guaranteed a minimum of five extended weekends every year. These include the Martin Luther King Day, Presidents Day, Memorial Day and Labor Day holidays, plus the second Monday in October’s one-day vacation from work. In fact, there can be as many as nine three-day weekends in a calendar year, since any time June 19 (Juneteenth), Nov. 11 (Veterans Day), July 4 (Independence Day), or Dec. 25 (Christmas) falls on a Monday or a Friday, it creates another government-approved three-day weekend.

This coming Monday’s day off occurs during what in much of the country is the nicest time of year. Early October in Maine brings pleasant daytime temperatures, cool, crisp evenings, spectacular foliage, slackening traffic, fewer pesky insects, and hardly any signs of the grim five-month winter that lies ahead.

But not everyone is unconditionally enthusiastic about the impending holiday.

The reproachful glance a younger colleague shot at me when I asked if he had anything special planned for Columbus Day weekend was the sort one ordinarily reserves for drug dealers wearing swastika-festooned motorcycle helmets who have just loudly broken wind in church.

“It’s Indigenous Peoples Day,” he huffed in a tone suggesting I had just proposed naming a federal holiday for Osama bin Laden. Actually though, he was right. Multiple states no longer celebrate Columbus Day. Monday is officially Indigenous Peoples Day in Alaska, Hawaii, Louisiana, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, New Mexico, Oregon, Vermont, Wisconsin, and Maine, and Native American Day in South Dakota.

School children of my vintage learned that Italian navigator Christopher Columbus was a determined, plucky underdog who had to go to another country (Spain) to get the funding necessary to sail across the Atlantic and discover America.

But subsequent societal changes, including the revolutionary idea that fact should be more important than folklore when it comes to teaching history, have radically changed Columbus’s image. While he may indeed have been an intrepid explorer, he was also guilty of committing and/or tolerating acts including murder, enslavement, human trafficking, and a variety of similar atrocities which shouldn’t entitle someone to have a holiday named for him.

When it comes to a debate of Christopher Columbus’s worthiness, I have no ethnicity-based bias. My lineage contains no connection to any Italians, Spaniards, or indigenous peoples. Then again, maybe it does, since no one in my family seems to know much about the ancestors who preceded us by more than four generations.

But while committing the sorts of atrocities Columbus and his barbarians did is hardly a basis for sainthood, the late 15th and early 16th centuries weren’t marked by good behavior of Caucasians who traveled to other continents seeking new opportunities. While their conduct was far from praiseworthy, it reflected Europe’s status quo at the time. Had the Nina, Pinta, and Santa Maria all somehow ended up in Davy Jones’s locker, it’s unlikely Amerigo Vespucci, Ferdinand Magellan, Vasco da Gama, or whichever European explorer got to North America first would have treated the natives any differently than Columbus and his crew did. They were products of their time, albeit a far less enlightened one.

Most people are resistant to change, which explains why those familiar with Columbus Day are having a hard time transitioning to a newly renamed “Day” that’s got twice as many syllables.

Given the abuse North America’s native denizens have been suffering since the initial plague of European invaders began arriving 534 years ago, I’d say it’s appropriate to change Columbus Day to Indigenous Peoples Day.

But there are limits to political correctness. Don’t hold your breath waiting for lawmakers in the Buckeye State to rename their capital city Indigenous Peoples, Ohio. <

Insight: A Trip Through Time

By Ed Pierce
Managing Editor

It’s funny how hearing a song can bring me back to experiences in my life from years ago and open a floodgate of memories, but that’s what happened to me last week.

A snowstorm rolls across the Texas Panhandle plains near
Amarillo in 1972. COURTESY PHOTO

I was driving my car back home from the mechanic’s shop where it had received a new state inspection sticker and was impressed at how smooth it was handling after $450 worth of repair work. I turned on the Sirius XM radio in the car and the song “You’re So Vain” by Carly Simon was playing.

Suddenly, I found myself sitting in the passenger seat of my friend Craig Podosek’s Volkswagen Beetle driving across the Panhandle of Texas on New Year’s Day in 1973 bound for another semester of college classes in New Mexico.

Craig was from New York state like I was and both of us had traveled home over the Christmas break from New Mexico to spend the holidays with our families. We had spoken by phone before Christmas Day, and he asked if I wanted to drive across the country and share expenses with him.

The two of us had become friends a year earlier when we were pledges for Tau Kappa Epsilon fraternity. For three months Craig and I were part of a pledge class that put in a lot of late-night walking after being dropped off a few miles outside of town as a gag or spent time dragging a fraternity cannon to football games. The pledges met a few times every week to study the fraternity’s pledge manual prior to our initiation test.

I learned that Craig had transferred to our college after attending a community college in New York state and was studying to become an accountant. Somehow, all the pledges in our class passed the initiation test and we were inducted into the fraternity in November 1971.

Four days after Christmas in 1972, Craig arrived at my parents’ home in Rochester, New York, and we started off for college. The two of us drove the Volkswagen that first day all the way to Dayton, Ohio. We spent the night there at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base where his brother was stationed.

The next morning, we got up and drove all the way to Joplin, Missouri where we found affordable motel rooms for the night. Along the way we talked about school, interesting college classes that we had taken, friends and family, and our career plans and hopes. We also tuned in to radio stations that discussed weather conditions, trying to find the best route to take to avoid being caught in a storm.

On New Year’s Eve 1972, we pulled into the driveway of our fraternity brother Jerry Joyner in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, who was preparing a huge meal for us before his beloved Oklahoma Sooners were to play Penn State in the Sugar Bowl game. Oklahoma beat Penn State, 14-0, as the Nittany Lions played without leading rusher and future Heisman Trophy winner John Cappelletti, who had the flu.

We not only celebrated Oklahoma’s Sugar Bowl victory but also watched the ball drop on television in Times Square in New York City marking the arrival of 1973.

The next morning on New Year’s Day, Craig and I set out for New Mexico in the Volkswagen except this time we were tired and slightly hung over from all the New Year’s Eve festivities just hours before.

As we drove along I-40, most of the radio stations we were listening to kept mentioning that a massive storm was headed south into the Texas Panhandle with limited visibility and drifting snow. Both of us looked out to the north across the plains and could see the snow coming straight for us. We hoped that we could outrun the blizzard heading in our direction.

Since we knew what we were up against weather-wise, Craig suggested that we listen to some music and found a radio station from Amarillo playing popular hits. The station’s playlist coming out of commercials that day started with “Crocodile Rock” by Elton John and was followed “I Wanna Be With You” by the Raspberries and “Oh Girl” by the Ch-Lites. The fourth song, though, was brand-new and was the first time I had ever heard Carly Simon sing “You’re So Vain.” 

I turned to Craig when the song was over and told him I thought it was a hit song if I ever heard one. As it turns out, “You’re So Vain” became the top song in America for three weeks later that month and went on to capture “Song of the Year,” “Record of the Year,” and “Best Female Pop Vocal Performance” at the Grammy Awards.

Fortunately for us, the Volkswagen was great on gas, and we didn’t have to stop again for fuel in Texas. We were able to outrun the blizzard, making it all the way across the state line to Tucumcari, New Mexico before having to fill up again. We eventually arrived back at the fraternity house at our college about 5 p.m. and were relieved to have completed the trip safely.

It’s a small snapshot from my life but hearing “You’re So Vain” instantly returns me to that time 54 years ago. <

Barbara Bagshaw: Your Voice Matters – Why Showing Up at the Polls Strengthens Our Community

By State Rep. Barbara Bagshaw

As your State Representative for District 106 in Windham, I have the privilege of listening to neighbors every day, at the grocery store, at local meetings, and through the messages you send. One theme comes through clearly: people care deeply about the direction of our town, our schools, our costs of living, and the future we are building together. That care only translates into results when citizens participate.

State Rep. Barbara Bagshaw

Voting is one of the most direct ways we exercise self-government. It is not about any single candidate or party. It is about ensuring that the people who make decisions in Augusta and beyond hear from the full range of voices in our community. When turnout is high, elected officials of every background receive a clearer signal about what matters most to families here in Windham: property taxes, education quality, energy costs, public safety, and the everyday expenses that shape household budgets.

Maine makes it relatively straightforward to cast a ballot. You can vote early, request an absentee ballot, or go to the polls on Election Day. Confirm your registration, find your polling place, and mark your calendar. Local clerks and the Secretary of State’s office provide the practical details; taking a few minutes to check them removes last-minute uncertainty. Bring a neighbor if it helps. Talk with young people in your household about why the process exists. These small acts reinforce the habit of participation.

High participation also strengthens accountability. When more residents vote, representatives know they must answer to a broad cross-section of the district, rather than a narrow slice. That dynamic encourages careful listening and practical problem-solving over rigid ideology. It reminds everyone in public office that government derives its legitimacy from the consent of the governed—an idea as old as our founding documents and still essential today.

I have spent years in classrooms and community service. I have seen how engaged citizens improve outcomes in schools, local projects, and neighbor-to-neighbor support. The same principle applies at the ballot box. Your single vote may feel small, yet together those votes set priorities, fund programs, and shape the rules under which we all live.

Whatever your views on the issues of the day, the most important step is to make them known through the formal process our system provides. Mark the date. Plan how you will vote. Encourage others to do the same. A community that turns out in strong numbers is a community that keeps its government responsive.

It remains an honor to represent part of Windham. If you have questions about state services or need assistance navigating available resources, my office is here to help. Contact me at [email protected] or 207-310-0051. Thank you for caring about Windham and for taking the time to participate.

State Rep. Barbara Bagshaw represents part of Windham in District 106.

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 mail bonanza that wasn’t

By Andy Young

I loved getting mail when I was young. “Mad Magazine” and “The Sporting News,” two publications I pored over at great length during my extended childhood, arrived periodically (pun intended) in the mailbox, as did the junk I’d sent for after collecting the appropriate number of box tops from whichever cereal was offering cool (and free) stuff to loyal box-top-accumulators.

These days my mail consists primarily of junk, including periodic “special offers” from, among others, insurance companies, credit card purveyors, loan providers, landscapers, exterminators, and window-replacement companies, plus ads from local supermarkets and appeals from various donation seekers, a few of whom might not be scammers looking for new suckers to bilk.

Last Wednesday afternoon the first thing I saw when I opened my mailbox was, predictably, weekly circulars from three local grocery stores. But underneath them were a postcard and three envelopes, two of which were actual letters written by actual people, with actual stamps on them! The third envelope contained a bill from Portland Water District, but that didn’t lessen my elation. I rarely get three pieces of real mail in a month, so getting three in one day was like winning the lottery!

Energized, I tossed the ads into the recycling bin and donned a pair of reading glasses so I could fully enjoy the unexpected mother lode of personal correspondence. I began with the postcard, which had a photo of Paris’s Arc de Triomphe on it. On the back was my friend Kevin’s entertaining and informative handwritten description of watching, from his observation post atop the Arc, traffic from 12 different avenues trying to merge onto (and exit from) France’s most dangerous traffic circle.

The postcard describing Europe’s foremost demolition derby training ground was merely the appetizer. Shifting my attention to the main course (the two letters), I prepared to tear one open when I noticed it wasn’t addressed to me, but to my son, who currently attends the University of Maine. Closer examination revealed something more troubling: a yellow sticker on the envelope’s lower right, which read, “RETURN TO SENDER; UNABLE TO FORWARD.” Utterly deflated, I saw it had been postmarked 18 February 2026, meaning a letter I wrote to my son which he never received had just spent the previous seven months in postal limbo.

But the disappointment was just beginning. The second letter, also intended for my son, sported a “RETURN TO SENDER” label, too. The difference: this one was postmarked 9 September 2025, so it had spent more than a year in parts unknown prior to returning to its point of origin!

The United States Postal Service probably isn’t to blame for this snafu, since both envelopes containing the returned letters were unopened, and in perfect condition. I suspect the mix-up took place in the University of Maine’s mailroom, since my son was living in a dormitory there when I sent them to him. But at least I’ll have two interesting (and now historical) documents to give him the next time he’s home.

I cannot say enough good things about the University of Maine. One of my offspring earned his degree there, and another is scheduled to obtain his in just over a year. Both have gained a great deal from their experiences in Orono, although perhaps significantly, neither ever took a course in postal studies there.

I’ve written a check to pay the Portland Water District bill. I’m not sure where I’ll mail it from but I definitely won’t drop it in a mailbox where there’s even the slightest chance the contents will be routed through the University of Maine’s mailroom. <

Insight: Oktoberfest remains a Bavarian tradition in September

By Ed Pierce
Managing Editor

Yes, it’s true, the real authentic Oktoberfest celebration in Munich, Germany takes place every year in September.

Kegs of beer arrive at the Lowenbrau Pavilion after being
pulled there by a horse-drawn wagon during Oktoberfest
in 1978.  PHOTO BY ED PIERCE 

In 1872, municipal officials staging the annual fall festival moved it up a month to take advantage of September’s longer days and warmer weather. Therefore, a famous event celebrating October has started in September ever since and traditionally ends on the first Sunday in October.

The only reason I happen to know this is because back in 1978 while stationed in the U.S. Air Force in Germany, I joined a dozen members of my unit attending Oktoberfest. We went on a Saturday because of work duties and chartered a bus to take us back and forth to the event.

While driving down the Autobahn to get there from our duty station near Frankfurt, I read about the history of Oktoberfest and why it means so much to Germans.

It seems that on Oct. 12, 1810, Prince Ludwig I of Bavaria, the grandfather of the castle-building Bavarian King Ludwig II, married Princess Theresa in their own version of a royal wedding. The public was invited to celebrate the wedding afterward and the Munich fairgrounds were designated as the site where the wedding reception was to be held.

There was an abundance of food, music and King Maximillian I of Bavaria, the father of Prince Ludwig I, issued royal charters to six different Munich breweries to produce beer for the wedding party.

Those six breweries continue to supply beer for the Oktoberfest festivities to this day and include Augustiner, Hacker-Pschorr, Löwenbräu, Paulaner, Spaten and Hofbräu-München. Each brewery has its own house and pavilion at Oktoberfest and are packed with long tables and waitresses wearing traditional Dirndl (a traditional Alpine dress consisting of a bodice, blouse, full skirt and apron).

I observed that to become an Oktoberfest waitress, you must be strong and resilient. They are expected to carry a minimum of four heavy glass steins of beer by hand while holding the stein handles to each table and to not spill any beer along the way.

Along with finding beer houses and beer tents on the Oktoberfest grounds, visitors can also enjoy traditional oompah bands strolling the grounds playing Bavarian folk tunes and polka music using deep brass instruments and accordions and wearing lederhosen, traditional short or knee-length leather trousers worn by workers.

Food is everywhere and showcases different kinds of German sausages called wursts. Weisswurst is popular during Oktoberfest and is a mild wurst made of minced veal and sweet mustard. Then there’s Brezn, giant twisted and salted Bavarian pretzels and Hendl, which is rotisserie chicken crispy and seasoned.

I passed on eating Schweinshaxe (roasted pork knuckles) but did try the Wiener Schnitzel, a cut of veal pounded nice and thin, breaded, and pan-fried in butter. For a side dish, I had Spaetzle (small egg noodles).

Going to Oktoberfest is like attending a state fair here in America. There are rides such as the Ferris Wheel and Oktoberfest-themed merry-go-rounds.

My German neighbors in Frankfurt told me that Oktoberfest truly is the heart and soul of Munich and exemplifies the Bavarian way of life devoted to home and hospitality. It is intended to have something for everyone who attends to enjoy and experience.

Every year there is a procession in Munich at the start of Oktoberfest with staff, vendors, brass bands and beer wagons hauling thousands of kegs from breweries to the fairgrounds. The procession is traditionally led by a Bavarian girl dressed in a black and yellow monk’s habit and known as the “Münchner Kindl," or Munich child. This procession is known as the Entry of the Oktoberfest Innkeepers.

Following the procession, the official opening of Oktoberfest takes place at exactly noon. The Mayor of Munich taps the first keg of beer and announces the Bavarian phrase "O'zapft is!" (It is Tapped!). 

No matter where you may be from, something you will hear a lot about during Oktoberfest is “Gemütlichkeit.” That’s a uniquely Bavarian feeling of warmth, welcome, and belonging and it’s something that those who host Oktoberfest want to pass on to all who visit.

Of course that’s not always the case. Just two years after I attended the 1978 Oktoberfest, a far-right terrorist attack using an improvised explosive device detonated at the main Oktoberfest entrance in Munich in 1980, killing 13 (including the bomber) and wounding more than 200 people.

There have been other occasions when the annual festival was called off. It was not held in 1813 as Napoleon was waging war across Europe and for a cholera epidemic in 1854. The Prussian-Austrian War in 1866 halted the festival as did another cholera outbreak in 1873. From 1914 to 1918, no Oktoberfest was held because of World War I. In 1923, a financial crisis in Germany closed the event. From 1939 to 1948, the festival was scrapped thanks to World War II and in 2020 and 2021, the COVID-19 epidemic shut things down.

Unlike in America where marketing agencies try to cash in on the Oktoberfest name offering everything from car sales events to fast food sweepstakes, German citizens remain proud of the legacy of Oktoberfest and do not overly commercialize it. <