Insight: Humility doesn’t need to be noticed

By Ed Pierce
Managing Editor

I recently read a magazine article which drew distinctions between a sense of humility and having excessive pride in an achievement that you’ve accomplished.

The article’s author mentions that humility is a character trait of self-esteem and suggests that lofty achievements do not require you to brag or gloat about them, while pride is a personal quality of recognizing that you’ve personally done something significant and are happy about it.

In the article, it cited a survey saying that most Americans found that humility was not a character trait that translated to life satisfaction and not something sought in a leader, a great athlete or a movie star. Results of the survey indicated that Americans look at our culture as a competition where only the best person lands the job, wins the Olympic medal, is elected to a government position, or can afford the purchase of an $8 million home.

The author related that in the day and age that we live in, it’s tough to understand the need for humility in our society and how we all deal with each other every day.

This made me think of some of the people I have admired in my lifetime, and what made them special to me.

I’ll start with my father, who was a World War II veteran. He never wanted to be a soldier, in high school he had his mind set on becoming a mechanical engineer and designing things to make people’s lives better. Yet on his 18th birthday in 1943, his draft notice from the U.S. Army arrived in the mail.

Trained for the infantry, he was assigned to a combat unit bound for Libya and Morocco and then to an outfit participating in the liberation of Anzio, Italy from the Germans. During that battle, a vital communications line at a forward outpost had been severed, so a volunteer was sought to see what had happened to it and to restore it. When that volunteer didn’t come back, a second volunteer was sought. Again, hours passed, and it was determined that a third volunteer was needed to find out what had happened and repair the broken communications line.

That third volunteer was my father. He followed the line all the way to the outskirts of a small village where he saw the bodies of the two volunteers from his unit laying on the ground by the broken line. He determined that they were dead and worked quickly to fix the broken communications line. Suddenly, he heard a gunshot and felt pain in his back. A German sniper in a church bell tower had shot him and my father lay still and played dead hoping that when darkness fell in a few hours, he could get to safety.

Within 15 minutes, my father noticed the German sniper walking toward him. He bent over and started going through the pockets of the other two dead volunteers from my father’s unit. In great pain and bleeding profusely, my father raised his rifle and shot the sniper. He crawled to the communications line and restored it to operational status. Medics transported my father for treatment and he survived. Not long after, he was awarded the Bronze Star medal for bravery and heroism for his actions in combat.

Years later when I asked him about his time in the U.S. Army, he told me it was “nothing special.” He told me about traveling across the Atlantic Ocean on a troop ship and what the American encampments were like in Libya, but he left out the combat details of his military service. I found after his death about the specifics from paperwork he had stashed away in his closet.

I attribute his not wanting to talk about his experiences in combat to humility. He grew up during the Great Depression and coming from a family of eight kids, he had set a goal to be the first in his family to graduate from college and to own a home. The way he viewed it, his military experiences were necessary to preserve our American way of life and protect everyone’s future freedom to pursue our goals in life.

Many of the military veterans I’ve had the privilege to meet and interview in my journalism career have similar stories. It’s like they have compartmentalized their combat experiences, put them in the rearview mirror and hit the gas pedal to move forward. They have not forgotten seeing good friends and colleagues lose their lives but choose to live in the present day with humility, rather than relive the horrors of war.

The same thing can be said of Hall of Fame National Football League and Major League Baseball players that I’ve interviewed through the years. For the most part they are nostalgic about their achievements, but do not brag or gloat about them. As one college basketball player I interviewed once told me, his greatest thrill was in making the college team when only a select few players are chosen to compete at that level.

To me, genuine humility is something we all should strive for. It’s a willingness to forego pretense and accept that we are all human deep down inside.

Andy Young: King of the wordsmiths

By Andy Young

Until recently I didn’t realize that “assesses” is, with eight letters, the longest English word that contains just a single consonant, albeit one that appears four times. Nor was I aware that “bookkeeper” is the only common word in the English language with three consecutive pairs of double letters.

But I know it now, thanks to Richard Lederer, who has authored more than 50 books on the English language. One of them, “Word Circus,” contains not only the fascinating information above, but numerous essays on (and examples of) anagrams, puns, oxymorons, and various other forms of wordplay.

There’s plenty more delightful word trivia where that came from. For instance, the two longest words whose letters all appear in alphabetical order are “billowy” and “beefily.” Conversely, “sponged” and “wronged” are the two longest words with all their letters in reverse alphabetical order.

The shortest word containing all five vowels in alphabetical sequence is “facetious,” while the shortest one containing each of the five vowels in reverse order, with each appearing only once, is “unnoticeably.”

“Redivider” is the longest palindromic word in the English language.

“Overstuffed” and “understudy” each contain four consecutive letters (RSTU) in alphabetical order.

Lederer isn’t just a wordsmith; he’s a lettersmith as well. Who else would point out that H, I, O, and X are the only letters that look the same when seen in a mirror…even when they’re being viewed upside down!

Fans of presidential anagrams will enjoy some of Lederer’s efforts in that area, including: “He did view the war doings” (Dwight David Eisenhower); “Loved horse; tree, too” (Theodore Roosevelt); A rare, calm jester (James Earl Carter); and “Insane Anglo warlord” (Ronald Wilson Reagan).

Looking to stump your friends in a game of Hangman? Try using crypt, nymph, rhythm or their plurals, since none contains an A, E, I, O, or U.

In another of his books, “Crazy English,” Lederer rhapsodizes about lengthy words like “inappropriateness,”a seventeen-letter noun, “incomprehensibility,” which is two letters longer, and the 28-letter “antidisestablishmentarianism.” The definitions of the first two words cited here are self-evident. The third, unsurprisingly, means: “A doctrine against the dissolution of the establishment.” This brings to mind a three-letter word which, when spelled backward, is the title of a Paul Newman movie: duh!

Try as I might, I cannot choose my favorite Richard Lederer bon mot. Think it’s easy? Good luck selecting the best of this tiny sampling of his gems.

“Writing is a way to capture fleeting thoughts and immortalize them on paper.”

“Reading is like traveling through time and space without leaving your chair.”

“Language is a playground, and grammar is the rulebook.”

“Words have the power to hurt, heal, inspire, and transform.”

“The more words you know, the more ideas you can express.”

“Language is a living organism that evolves and adapts over time.”

“It’s not what you say, it’s what people hear.”

“Language is a dance – a delicate balance of rhythm, melody, and meaning.”

“The secret to good writing is rewriting.”

“Language is the foundation of civilization. It is the glue that holds a people together.”

It’s hard to ascertain which English language writer has penned the greatest number of published words. Some have speculated it’s William Shakespeare. Others point to Agatha Christie, whose books have sold over a billion copies in English and another billion in other languages, or L. Ron Hubbard, who was credited with 1084 published works. But I think that when it comes to writing words about words, Richard Lederer has easily outdone them all.

Now if only I can find a bookkeeper who assesses such things to confirm it. <

Insight: Class is in session

By Ed Pierce
Managing Editor

Teachers are the heart and soul of the American educational system, but it took me marrying one to fully appreciate all they do for us.

Here are a few examples of things that I have observed in the 20 years I have been married to a grade-school teacher:

At the elementary school she taught at in Florida when we first met, she had 22 students in her class. The school had a copy machine exclusively for teachers but to hold down expenses, it would limit teachers to 10 copies made per day. If my wife had to give a test that day, she’d have to plan for it three days ahead based upon her daily copy limitation.

The same thing applied for student handouts or anything else needing to be copied, therefore, to create more flexibility, some teachers would have to negotiate with other teachers who were not making copies that school day. More often it resulted in teachers purchasing a copier for their homes and meant the teacher paid the additional expense of buying copier ink, paper and the copier itself.

Weekends were supposed to be days off for teachers, but a good portion of that is spent grading a mountain of papers or preparing lesson plans for the coming week. Contrary to what I thought previously, most teachers don’t just stand before their students and wing it, they have a plan for everything they want to instruct and developing those plans takes hours of work.

Record-keeping for teachers is also time-consuming. It used to be grades were entered into a teacher’s notebook, but these days grades are kept digitally and navigating that process is not always easy. One year, while adjusting to a new record-keeping software system, all the additional comments my wife entered for student report cards were published twice for some inexplicable reason. The double comments were flagged by the school principal and all her report cards had to be redone at the last minute before being sent home with the students.

One year my wife was assigned to a classroom without a bathroom. Her students had to leave the classroom and walk several doors down to use the restroom. On the first day students had returned to school after two weeks off for the Christmas holidays, a student asked if he could use the restroom, and my wife allowed him to. She asked him to return to the classroom as soon as he was done. It happened to be the lunch period for some other classes at the school and after a few minutes had elapsed, the principal showed up at the classroom door with the student who had left for the restroom.

It seems the student had entered an unlocked classroom of students who were gone for lunch, and he was caught going through the purse of the teacher in that classroom. When asked, he said he was told his teacher wanted to wish the teacher whose purse he was rifling through a “Happy New Year.” That student wasn’t allowed to leave for the restroom unaccompanied again that school year, giving plenty of work to an ed tech assigned to my wife’s classroom.

No matter how hard she tried to help him, that student’s grades never improved and by the end of the school year, he failed to meet the minimum standards to advance to the next grade. My wife recommended to his mother that having him repeat that grade might give him a better grasp of reading and math. However, the student’s mother chose not to hold him back and instead pulled him out of public school and entered him in the next grade at a nearby charter school.

One story that left me scratching my head was about a reading coach at the school. This woman had been a classroom teacher at one time but over the years had been promoted to a position overseeing reading activities and lessons at the school. To help her, the school district gave her volumes of books and instructional materials to share with the teachers to help them boost student reading.

But the reading coach refused to share any of the books with the teachers. She insisted the best way to instruct reading was to read to students attending the school. To get her to visit their classrooms, teachers had to make an appointment and when she was available, she would come in and read to students.

During another school year, my wife was assigned a student who was represented by an attorney. That same class had a defiant student who refused to do his assignment. When my wife asked him to try, he said, “No.” When asked again, he said, “What am I speaking Spanish? I said no.”

My wife’s teaching career included many moments of triumph and success for her students and recently a student she taught in the 1990s reached out to thank her for inspiring her. That student is now a psychologist in Ohio. Many of my wife’s past students are now parents of their own with kids in school themselves.

Teaching is a noble profession that shapes the future, and in my opinion is greatly unappreciated. <

Andy Young: Going nuts over acorns

By Andy Young

Recently I was entertaining company when a sudden noise coming from outside the house made my guest pause mid-sentence and murmur, with a concerned expression, “That sounds like gunfire.” Chuckling knowingly, I explained it was just the sound of acorns falling onto my garage’s roof.

Moments later we heard a sudden rat-a-tat-tat that sounded like machine gun fire. I don’t want friends thinking I reside in a war zone, but that second volley was indeed alarming. Thankfully, it was just another fusillade of acorns coming down in rapid fire fashion on my neighbor's metal roof.

Were acorns locusts, people would be describing what’s currently going on in southern Maine in biblical terms. There is no overstating how many of these ovine nuts are being produced by the oak trees along my street.

There’s always a reason for what Mother Nature does, even if human beings can’t always understand her rationale. I know next to nothing about dendrology (the study of trees; I looked it up), but that ignorance allows me to make up my own explanations regarding why certain things occur (and what’s going to happen as a result) without being contradicted by any pesky documented facts about the subject. Intelligence and education can be awfully inconvenient at times, but fortunately I don’t have that problem when it comes to science.

Or in many other areas, now that I think of it.

I’ve decided that because of all these acorns there’s going to be a bumper crop of small rodents around here next year, since they’re currently stockpiling acorns, and will no doubt be gorging themselves on them this winter.

I’d like to take this opportunity to invite any winged predators who can read this to take up residence rent-free in any tree in my neighborhood. It’d be nice to thin the chipmunk population, since they’ve been a local scourge for the past few years. Given that most of these objectionable rodents will be all but inert next summer thanks to their upcoming gluttony, well, it’s likely that any nearby owls, hawks, or falcons will be looking at a potential cornucopia thanks to the hundreds of morbidly obese chipmunks and squirrels that are all but certain to be waddling around next year. It’ll be like shooting fish in a barrel for any flying carnivore.

The only reason the local rodent population hasn't exploded even further is that there’s competition when it comes to consuming the ongoing oak-provided bounty. Pigeons, ducks, woodpeckers and other birds go for acorns because they’re high in vitamins, carbohydrates, and good fats. Blue Jays have been known to bury acorns and go back to recover them months later.

Bears, possums, and raccoons are all acorn-consumers, too. Another fun fact: acorns can make up 25 percent of a deer’s autumn diet.

So why can’t hungry humans eat some of this fall’s acorn bounty? Well, they taste pretty bitter for one thing. They also contain tannins, which are complex chemical substances derived from phenolic acids. Tannins are considered nutritionally undesirable for humans, even though they can, in low doses, stimulate the immune system and help lower blood pressure and cholesterol. Unfortunately, ingesting too many of them can irritate the stomach lining and intestines, which can cause kidney damage. Tannins can also be toxic to certain animals, so don’t feed acorns to your dog, horse, pig, or sheep.

Eating acorns can harm humans, yet mice, squirrels, chipmunks and deer can munch on them to their little hearts’ content. How does that make sense?

I wonder if an owl or a hawk could take down an acorn-bloated possum, deer, or bear? <

Insight: What’s in a Name?

By Ed Pierce
Managing Editor

The process of creating a nickname for professional athletes has always fascinated me.

Billy Scripture's nickname given to 
him by his fellow ballplayers was
'Old Hardrock.' He could demonstrate
chewing the horsehide off baseballs
for anyone who asked him to.
COURTESY PHOTO  

Some are derived from physical characteristics such as football’s William “The Refrigerator” Perry, so named for his size or Ed “Too Tall” Jones for being an overly large 6-foot-9 defensive end. Then there’s baseball’s Walt “No Neck” Williams stemming from a typhus injection he received as a baby that left him with an overtly short neck, Mark “The Bird” Fidrych for his resemblance to the Sesame Street character Big Bird, or Rusty “Le Grande Orange” Staub, who was so dubbed by French-speaking fans of the old Montreal Expos who admired his flaming red hair.

Basketball has Dennis “The Worm” Rodman who earned the name for the way he wriggled around when playing pinball, Larry “The Hick from French Lick” Bird, who grew up in French Lick, Indiana, and David “The Admiral” Robinson whose nickname pays homage to the time he served in the U.S. Navy.

But my all-time favorite nickname for an athlete is for a minor league baseball player you might not have heard of.

Billy “Old Hardrock” Scripture had that nickname hung on him supposedly for his penchant for munching on rocks with his strong teeth. It wasn’t true, he preferred chewing the horsehide off baseballs.

Earl Wayne “Billy” Scripture had been a star high school quarterback, wrestler, and baseball outfielder at Princess Anne High School in Virginia and earned a baseball scholarship to play at the college level for Wake Forest University. He led his team to consecutive Atlantic Coast Conference titles and was honored as a NCAA All-American before being drafted by the Baltimore Orioles to play professionally.

Working his way up to the Orioles’ top farm team, the Rochester Red Wings in 1968, Scripture was admired for his on-field hustle and never-say-die attitude. He personified toughness, refusing to acknowledge pain when hit by a pitch in his jaw.

According to Scripture, his practice of chewing on baseballs began as a nervous habit while sitting in the dugout at the old Silver Stadium in Rochester and watching his friend and teammate, Merv Rettenmund, batting during games.

Instead of chewing bubble gum, tobacco or sunflower seeds, Scripture would use his teeth to loosen up the heavily stitched seams and then proceed to rip the cover off baseballs. It was a unique talent that drew the scorn of dentists but bonded him forever with teammates and fans.

His ascent to the major leagues stalled because of Scripture’s inability to hit a curveball and by 1972, his playing days were at an end without ever reaching the majors. He was offered a minor league managing position by the Kansas City Royals and skippered teams in the Midwest League, the Gulf Coast League and the Southern League. In 1978, Scripture managed a minor league team for the Pittsburgh Pirates in the Western Carolina League, and he returned as a manager one last time in 1984 to guide the Nashua Pirates in the Eastern League.

Among the players he managed who reached the majors are outfielder Bobby Bonilla, pitcher Dave Dravecky and infielder Ron Washington, who currently serves as the manager of the Los Angeles Angels.

To impress young ballplayers with his toughness, he once climbed a light tower to do chin-ups, or he would let the pitching machine bounce fastballs off his chest.

But nothing compared to Scripture demonstrating for sportswriters while managing the Jacksonville Suns in 1975 how to chew the cover off a Spaulding baseball.

He explained that his frustration intensified as a manager, and he would chew baseballs to alleviate gametime stress.

“Only lost one molar so far, and that's a whole lot less expensive than an ulcer operation," Scripture told reporters.

The trainer for the Royals, Mickey Cobb, said that Scripture was oblivious to pain and before a spring training game, he noticed Scripture had 19 blisters on one hand from hitting fly balls for outfielders.

Cobb said Scripture walked into the dugout and poured rubbing alcohol over the blisters and refused any Band-Aids for them. Later that same day, he saw Scripture having other coaches hit fly balls to the outfield so he could demonstrate to players the best way to run head-on into a chain-link fence.

After leaving baseball, Scripture spent a lot of time training labrador retriever dogs. He was a duck hunting guide and would compete in trap shooting competitions. He became so proficient at it that he became a director of trap and skeet shooting clubs in Indiana, Nevada, Texas, and Florida.

In 1968, I remember going to a Rochester Red Wings game against the Toledo Mud Hens and when the game ended, a few players stood by the dugout signing autographs for fans. I approached Billy Scripture and asked him if he would sign my program for the game.

“Why would you want a silly autograph when you can have something of mine even better,” he asked me.

Giving him a puzzled look, Scripture handed me a tiny knawed-on piece of a baseball. It sat for a week on my bedroom dresser before my mother tossed it in the garbage as if it were trash.

Who knows what it might be worth today?

Andy Young: Five thumbs, four of them up

By Andy Young

Not long ago I was coming home from work when I ran into one of my favorite people walking along the country lane I was navigating.

I’d like this person even if we didn’t have so much in common. We’re neighbors, we both have three children, we’re both educators, and we share similar views on various contemporary issues. It was a beautiful afternoon, and since the street corner where our paths crossed wasn’t heavily traveled, we enjoyed an impromptu visit.

We chatted about the beautiful weather, caught up on the doings of our respective families, then compared notes on the start of the school year.

From there we moved on to the topic of books, at which point my neighbor told me I must read a work of fiction called The House in the Cerulean Sea. Its messages, she told me, are ones everyone should hear. Her recommendation was made with an uncommon amount of zeal, even for someone who is by nature enthusiastic. I wrote down the name of the book and the author (T. J. Klune), then wished her well and moved on. But for reasons I still don’t fully understand, her last four words (“Everyone should read it!”) remained etched in my memory.

I didn’t want to disappoint my friend/neighbor, but the truth is I don’t read much fiction. Tastes vary in literature, just as they do when it comes to food. I intensely dislike parmesan cheese and feel similarly about turnips, yet others enjoy those things. Conversely, I love stewed tomatoes, which others detest. For me fiction, particularly the fantasy genre, is particularly pungent cheese. I would never tell my sweet, kind neighbor I wasn’t going to read what she had complimented so ardently, but I already had a stack of books nearly as tall as I am in the “to be read” queue.

However, the next day a student in one of my Grade 12 English classes who sports a significant amount of metallic facial jewelry arrived at school carrying a copy of the very book my neighbor had lavished praise on. When I asked about it the response was another rave review, along with four suddenly familiar words: “Everyone should read it.”

Later I asked another avid bibliophile if they’d heard of The House in the Cerulean Sea. The instant reply: an appreciative grin, and an aside about how much they loved one of the book’s more memorable characters.

Endorsements from three unrelated individuals in a short period of time cannot be coincidence, so I went to the library, found a copy of the book, and perused the synopsis on the back cover.

The words I read didn’t describe subject matter I’d have chosen on my own. In fact, to me they vaguely brought to mind something along the lines of literary Parmesan. But remembering my neighbor’s zeal, the bejeweled student’s endorsement, and the voracious reader’s genuine appreciation, I decided to give it a try.

Four days and 390 pages later I finished it.

Without that trio of recommendations, I’d have never tried reading The House in the Cerulean Sea. But my neighbor, the student with the multiple piercings, and the world-class reader were right. The book is indeed terrific, and truly does contain important and powerful messages.

Okay, full disclosure: after the fact, my cousin, an intelligent person who also loves reading, said she absolutely hated the book. But then, perhaps she loves turnips. Nevertheless, the verdict is in. Scientifically conducted research reveals that 80 percent of the respondents to my exhaustive survey recommend that everyone should read The House in the Cerulean Sea! <

Rookie Mama: Crock and roll all night (and soccer every day)

By Michelle Cote

Here we go, Crocktober – Slow cookers are the savory secret weapon to feeding my entire brood throughout this season.

Ladies of a certain age may recall the classic ‘Mall Madness’ game – Folks, what we’ve entered is truly ‘Fall Madness’ – We’ve buttoned down summer, deflated pool floats, and autumnal sports are gorgeously in full swing, with blazing reds and golds saturating all surrounding foliage that envelopes every soccer field gorgeously here in the Northeast.

But how do parents find time to cart their kiddos to said gorgeous sports fields during the already sparingly few hours separating the school day’s last bell from the dinner bell, which ultimately leads to homework and bedtime routine’s slow roll?

Well, friends, it looks like crock and roll is here to stay.

Slow cookers, to me, are the working-class alternative to hiring a personal chef who spends all day whipping you up a scrumptious stew as you work and tend to business as usual.

There are hundreds of slow cooker recipes to suit a variety of dietary needs, and mouthwatering options abound for entrees, desserts, beverages, galore.

I’ve even made a decent yogurt – It’s easier than you’d think.

Some crock inserts can even be removed and placed in an oven for dishes that may need broiling or that certain crispy je-ne-said-quoi, such as a whole chicken flanked by potatoes, carrots, and all the mouthwatering flavors of fall spice and everything nice.

This, readers, is something I only learned of in the past five years. Always a rookie.

Slow cooker recipes are often as uncomplicated as you want them to be, can be prepared ahead of time – freezer meals for the win! – and literally dumped in as you run out the door.

Just don’t forget to switch it on – Set it and forget it.

Forget cleaning, too – For the truly lazy-man’s experience, one can purchase slow cooker liners and place them in your insert ahead of dumping in ingredients.

Then, you only need to remove and toss the bag after dining’s done; no need to soak and scrub the crock.

Your house will smell heavenly with a butternut squash soup or beef stew on, which is perfectly timed with windows snapping back shut after those hot summer nights are truly wrapped up ‘til next time.

Slow cookers also offer up nourishing dishes and soups that proactively combat those sniffles – or assist during recovery – because ‘tis that season, too.

I also appreciate that Crockpots are a most fabulous way to utilize your remaining fresh garden abundance. While I blanch and freeze most excess harvest so my family can eat homegrown produce all winter long, there’s nothing like freshly grown goods and spices added in a hot, tasty dish.

Although I seriously have no idea how I’ll find enough varied recipes for all those summer squashes – Yikes.

Most of all, slow cookers offer up ultimate convenience. They use very minimal energy and were designed for mamas in their soccer season.

They’re low maintenance, cost effective, who could ask for anything more?

And if you do ask for anything more, buy a second slow cooker – I use two at once frequently, because that comes with the territory of having a large family and hankerings for lots of the leftovers.

So, crock around the clock tonight – Enjoy your slow cooker era, an idea truly worth warming up to.

Consume hearty food – not precious time.

Just don’t forget to bring the crusty bread for dunking.

Who knows, you may have some free time to play a round of two of Mall Madness.

­­– 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!