Insight: A life to be remembered

By Ed Pierce
Managing Editor

For years when I was downcast and dejected, I knew that a phone call with one of my closest friends would lift my spirits.

Todd Clemens

Todd Clemens had an innate way of knowing exactly what to say to make me feel better or to support my decisions when I even had my doubts about some of them.

I first met Todd the summer before my sophomore year of high school when we each coached Little League teams on the ballfields behind Winslow Elementary School and Carlton Webster Junior High in Henrietta, New York. He had given me some coaching tips to instruct baserunning and congratulated me when my team’s pitcher threw a no-hitter leading us to a 1-0 win in the opening playoff game.

In high school that year, I had Todd’s father, George, as my Physical Education teacher and Todd was in some of the same classes as me. He always was kind and supportive to everyone he met and was a natural athlete, playing football, basketball and baseball for our school.

After high school, Todd attended West Point Military Academy but transferred to Colgate University where he earned his degree. He married and had three children and was thrilled to be working as a broker on Wall Street in New York City.

But his perfect life suddenly fell apart when he came home from work to find an empty house. His wife had left him for his boss and took the kids with her out of state. He began a frantic search to find them and when he did locate them, he discovered that his wife was suing him for divorce and custody of their children. And he learned that his wife had maxed out their credit cards, leaving him deeply in debt.

He quit his Wall Street job and took a job coaching football and baseball and teaching French at Chaminade High School in South Florida, but a prolonged divorce and custody lawsuit left him depressed and a shell of his former self.

For a while, he took a job for several years as a sportswriter and sports editor at a newspaper in Connecticut but ended up having to commute back and forth from Massachusetts because the Connecticut state taxes were so high, it left him unable to even rent his own apartment.

Eventually he paid off the enormous credit card debt and moved to Arizona, where he worked as a broker and financial services advisor in Phoenix. He told me that he was proud that his son pitched for Boston College in a spring exhibition game against the Boston Red Sox. And in working as a sportswriter, he was following in his mother’s footsteps as she was the first female sportswriter in the state of Indiana.

Listening to his story, I tried to cheer him up as much as I could during our lengthy phone conversations, but he ended up encouraging me as I was working for a newspaper in Florida and starting to put my own life back together after my first wife’s death at the age of 37.

We talked a lot about baseball, and Todd took great delight in sharing how his favorite team, the 1971 Pittsburgh Pirates, had defeated my beloved Baltimore Orioles in the World Series, 4 games to 3, by winning the final game of the 1971 World Series, 2-1, in Baltimore.

As his parents aged and needed help, Todd moved back to Massachusetts from Arizona. His mother died in 2011, and he then stayed with his father to look after him. In 2014, Todd called to tell me he had read an article in the Boston Globe I had written for the newspaper I was working for in New Hampshire. It was picked up and run nationally by the Associated Press and he wanted me to know what a big deal that was.

One summer evening in 2017, Todd decided to jog a couple laps around the high school track in Milford, Mass. after dinner to stay in shape. He passed out on his second lap and when he woke up, he was in a hospital bed, and one of his legs had been amputated just below the knee. He fought valiantly to overcome infection and the lingering trauma of losing a leg and finding a comfortable prosthetic.

When my mother died in August 2018, I was surprised to receive a call from Todd. Despite everything he was going through himself, he took the time to call and let me know how sorry he was and how proud he was of my career in journalism. It certainly meant a lot to me.

In February 2019, Todd’s father died. I called Todd and he thanked me for being supportive. He said he was slowly putting his life back together and was very appreciative of me mailing him some old Pittsburgh Pirates baseball cards.

On July 26, 2019, I received word from a classmate that my friend Todd had died at the age of 65. He was someone of high character, intelligent, athletic, kind, warm and personable.

At each class reunion I attend, it pains me to see his photo included on the poster of lost classmates. The world sure lost a good person. <

Andy Young: A February whodunit

By Andy Young

Maybe it’s my imagination, but even though I don’t care much for winter, it seems like February goes by far more quickly than any other month on the calendar.

Maybe it’s because of the increasing daylight that comes with each 24-hour passage of time. Another possibility, at least for teachers like me: the month contains a weeklong school vacation. Or there could be a more obvious explanation, like February having fewer actual days than any of the other 11 months, even during a leap year.

Coincidentally, I was born in early February, and this year one of the best gifts I received came the night before my actual birthday, when I (and presumably a couple hundred other faculty and staff in my school district) received a text message from the superintendent explaining that due to anticipated inclement weather, there would be no school in RSU 21 the next day. Woo-hoo! The only thing better than having a birthday snow day in February is knowing ahead of time that you’re going to have one! I joyously shut off my alarm and slept in until nearly 5:30 the next morning. And when I finally did become conscious, I did so with a smile, imagining that I now know for certain what life for the idle rich must be like.

Nothing was falling from the sky when I got up and for a brief moment, I thought the superintendent was doomed to getting pilloried on social media by the district’s perpetual complainers, but fortunately for her snow began falling right when the forecasters had said it would, and by noon there was no question she had made the right call.

One drawback to having a snow day when one’s children have moved away: snow removal becomes a one-person job. And to do that efficiently and lessen the chance of pulling one of my few remaining muscles, my shovel and I go out every two hours or so. At about 3 p.m. I cleared four inches of fluffy white flakes off the driveway, but knew I’d have to return later to finish the job. However, I didn’t think it would be too tough, given the slackening rate at which the snow was falling.

By 7 p.m. the storm was over, but another inch or two needed clearing, and of course there’d be the wall of cinder-block-sized ice chunks the town plow inevitably leaves at the foot of the driveway as well.

But when I got to the end of my driveway there wasn’t any snow. However, there was evidence that someone equipped with a machine had been there, and had cleared everything away for me.

Elated, I raced inside and began pounding out a “thank you” text message to my neighbor Cris, who I’ve caught in the past doing covert good deeds. But then it suddenly occurred to me: what if I were thanking the wrong person? Suppose the driveway-clearer had been Will, who lives across the street and is also prone to committing random acts of kindness? Or maybe it was Dan, the new neighbor with the big snow-throwing tractor. Then again, it could have been Mrs. A, or Angela, or one of Angela’s energetic children, or some other neighborhood kid(s). Who knew?

Then it hit me: the best birthday present of all was realizing there are too many plausible suspects living near me to know for certain who the Good Samaritan was!

I’ve always loved Thanksgiving, but events like the one that occurred on my birthday help me remember that there’s no need to wait for November to feel (and express) sincere gratitude. <

Nangle: Pass the Supplemental Budget to protect Maine families

By Senator Tim Nangle

Every two years, the Legislature passes a biennial budget, a long-term spending plan for Maine. But, just like balancing a checkbook, adjustments are often needed. The supplemental budget is how we make those adjustments, allowing us to address emergency needs, funding gaps and changing economic conditions. 

State Senator Tim Nangle

Whether it’s rising healthcare costs, shifts in federal funding, or critical investments left unmet in the biennium, the supplemental budget ensures Maine remains on stable and predictable financial footing.

That’s exactly where we are today.

Maine faces a $118 million MaineCare shortfall, which threatens health care access for many residents. Half of Maine children and one in three adult Mainers — including seniors and working families — depend on MaineCare. Without funding, hospitals and providers may be forced to cut services and staff, leaving vulnerable people without care.

The shortfall stems from rising health care costs and increased usage of services post-pandemic. If we do not act, Maine’s families, seniors, and rural communities will pay the price.

The supplemental budget also provides funding for critical spruce budworm remediation. This destructive pest threatens our forests and, in turn, the livelihoods of thousands of Maine workers. Without intervention, the economic impact could exceed $794 million, crushing Maine’s forest products industry, small businesses and rural economies.

The Legislature took an initial vote on this budget, and some representatives from our area chose not to support it. Their inaction threatens health care access, nursing homes, and hospitals and leaves our rural economy vulnerable.

This is not about politics — it’s about keeping Maine families healthy and our economy stable. This funding must be approved by a two-thirds vote to take effect immediately. Otherwise, Maine people will pay the price while we wait months for relief.

Democrats have compromised. We have negotiated in good faith. However, my colleagues on the other side of the aisle keep shifting the goalposts, making unworkable demands. Continued delays of these necessary budget adjustments will hurt the most vulnerable Mainers.

We cannot move forward alone. Please contact your legislators and tell them why passing this budget is crucial to your family and families across Maine. We cannot afford further delays.

Find your lawmakers here: https://www.maine.gov/portal/government/edemocracy/voter_lookup.php

Contact me directly at Timothy.Nangle@legislature.maine.gov or call the Senate Majority Office at 207-287-1515. For the latest updates, follow me on Facebook at facebook.com/SenatorTimNangle, and sign up for my e-newsletter at mainesenate.org. <

Insight: Life in the fast lane

By Ed Pierce
Managing Editor

In looking back regarding my experience with automobiles, I’d have to say it’s not my favorite subject.

The first new car that Ed Pierce ever purchased was this
1974 Mercury Capri. COURTESY PHOTO

That can probably be explained by a series of misfortunes and bad purchases through the years that left me wondering if I would ever find the right vehicle.

Former U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell once said, “Always focus on the front windshield and not the rearview mirror,” and yet there are some automobiles that I’ve owned that are truly unforgettable.

The first one I owned was a 1956 Chevy that I purchased from a college classmate. That lasted for a few years until the left rear wheel well rusted through, and driving through puddles resulted in a stream of rainwater spraying the back of my driver’s seat.

My first new car purchase was a 1974 Mercury Capri and the difference between it and the 1956 Chevy was significant. The Chevy’s interior was made of steel, while the Capri’s interior was mostly plastic. The Capri’s rear window was angled and the sun damage it caused to the back seats and rear window mat left me with no other choice than to place a bathmat there to absorb the harmful UV rays.

The Capri was sold when I entered the U.S. Air Force and was assigned overseas. Returning to the U.S. two years later, I purchased a 1969 Volkswagen Beetle for $500 and was pleased with it until driving to work at The Pentagon one winter morning. The sun was shining, and I wanted some fresh air, so I rolled the driver’s window down about halfway.

Apparently, that knocked the driver’s window off the track, and it was stuck in that position. No matter what I did to fix it, it wouldn’t work. So, I tried taking the entire door apart to resolve the problem. That only created more of a problem in trying to put the door back together. I never could get the window back on its proper track, so I inserted a piece of wood there to hold the window up. If I needed to put the window down, I removed the wood. But after a while that got very tedious, and so I went to the auto salvage junkyard and found another Volkswagen door. The only issue was it was white, and my Volkswagen was green.

I drove the Volkswagen that way for a year until I traded it in for a new 1981 Datsun pickup truck. That truck took me across the country to my new military assignment in Arizona. The only problem with it turned out to be the truck’s plastic fuel filter which was so tiny that it frequently clogged from using inexpensive gasoline and left me stranded on more than one occasion.

That truck was sold, and I eventually purchased a 1978 Chrysler LeBaron. That was a huge and lengthy automobile and was good for a few years until the brakes went out on it as I neared a brick wall at 40 mph. I struck the wall head-on, and that vehicle’s front end crumpled like an accordion. Before it could be hauled away, tall grass underneath where it was parked caught fire and burned the interior.   

Moving to Florida, my father helped me buy a used 1986 Buick Regal for $1,700. That was a decent car, but it was doomed when some sort of hose became loose while driving on I-95 late at night sparking an engine fire and resulting in it too being dispatched to the junkyard.

A co-worker then sold me a 1985 Ford Tempo for $400. It had belonged to his daughter, and he was selling it because his family had presented her with a new car for her high school graduation. The daughter’s boyfriend had upgraded the stereo system in the vehicle, and it was good on gas. But one night at work, somebody returning from a break in the parking lot told me they thought they saw smoke inside my car. When I opened the side door, a fireball erupted inside, torching the steering wheel and melting most of the dashboard. The daughter’s boyfriend hadn’t connected wires properly installing the stereo and caused the fire.

A used car dealer took the Tempo in trade and gave me $300 for it when I purchased a used 1988 Pontiac Grand Am from him. After spending thousands on mechanical repairs for the Grand Am over three years, I traded that in for a used 1996 Pontiac Firebird. I drove that for several years after paying off the five-year car loan. The Firebird had pop-up front headlights and when one of the headlight motors went out, I couldn’t afford to replace it.

Instead, I inserted a spoon in the grill to the headlight framework to hold it up and that worked for a while. The other issue was the outlandish replacement cost for tires on the Firebird which I also could not afford. It was parked for about a year before I sold the Firebird to someone who wanted to use it to haul their boat around.

My next vehicle was a 2004 Hyundai Sonata which ended up being a total loss following a crash. These days I have a 2011 Hyundai Sonata which I purchased in 2014 and it’s still going.

If my vehicle history was a novel, its title would be “Exhausting.” <

   

Andy Young: Valentine's Day - the untold story

By Andy Young

Like St. Patrick’s Day and Halloween, Valentine’s Day doesn’t come with legally mandated time off from work. But there’s more to earning red-letter-day status than falling on a Monday. Sure, each of the 12 federal holidays is significant. But if you ask any florist, chocolatier, or restaurateur what the year’s most important holiday is, their response won’t be Memorial Day, Labor Day, or Juneteenth.

February 14th is nominally about appreciating one’s sweetheart(s)but what truly drives it is unfettered capitalism, or more specifically the combined marketing efforts of corporate giants like Hallmark, Godiva Chocolates, and FTD. Plush toy sales skyrocket on Valentine’s Day as well, and have ever since 1889, when German inventor Heinrich Tedibaer revolutionized the industry by inventing a process enabling skilled seamstresses to fashion cuddly toys with man-made materials. Previously the only way of producing a stuffed animal was to actually slay one, then gut it, remove the bones, and fill the fur with sawdust and rolled-up newspaper before sewing it back together. Unsurprisingly, few recipients of pre-1889 stuffies found such gifts even remotely romantic.

The differences between Valentine’s Day and St. Patrick’s Day are striking. One pseudo-holiday is named for the saint credited with removing every snake from the Emerald Isle. The other commemorates a 1929 massacre that eliminated less than one one-hundredth of a percent of Chicago’s gangster population. In addition, March 17th has an endearing nickname, St. Paddy’s Day. In contrast, February 14th’s proposed diminution, VD Day, never caught on, although no one really knows why.

The only holiday rivaling Valentine’s Day for sugar consumption is Halloween, which combines another alarming spike in candy sales with the commemoration of the memorable (though fortunately fictional) lives of Jason Voorhees, Michael Myers, and Freddy Krueger, among others.

Anyone who thinks Valentine's Day is just about roses, romantic dinners, and candy hearts embossed with romance-themed two-word expressions like “Love you,” “Be mine,” and “Do me,” hasn’t studied American political history.

Democrat Tim Valentine served six terms as a Congressman from North Carolina’s 2nd district from 1983-1995, and Republican Edward Valentine represented Nebraska’s 3rd district in that same chamber a century before, from 1883-1885.

Comedian Jack Benny was born on February 14th, 1894. Other notable Valentine’s Day babies: labor leader Jimmy Hoffa (1913), former New Hampshire governor and senator Judd Gregg (1947); radio host Terry Gross (1951), 7-foot-7-inch basketball player Gheorghe Muresan (1971); NFL football star Jadeveon Clowney (1993); and legendary jockey Johnny Longden (1907).

Among the people of consequence who breathed their last on a Valentine’s Day: Captain James Cook (1779); Vicente Guerrero, Mexico’s 2nd president (1831); Hall of Fame baseball pitcher Three-Finger Brown (1948); and legendary jockey Johnny Longden (2003). February 14ths are challenging for the remaining members of the Longden clan, who don’t know whether to celebrate the date of their famous relative’s birth or mourn the anniversary of his passing.

Actress Karen Valentine won an Emmy Award in 1970 for her role on Room 222, a pioneering TV show about a racially diverse high school. Major league baseball players Ellis Valentine, Bobby Valentine, and Fred Valentine all starred at times during their respective careers, as did professional grappler Jonathan Anthony Wisniski, who was more familiarly known to wrestling fans as Greg “The Hammer” Valentine. Unfortunately, none of these Valentines were born on February 14th.

So now, in the words of the late, legendary radio commentator Paul Harvey, you know The Rest of the Story about Valentine’s Day.

Except Paul Harvey wasn’t born on February 14th. And Heinrich Tedibaer is just as fictional as (albeit far less ghoulish than) Jason Voorhees, Michael Myers, and Freddy Krueger. <

Insight: Overruling any objections

By Ed Pierce
Managing Editor

One of my favorite movies is “To Kill A Mockingbird,” and in that film attorney Atticus Finch proclaims, “A court is only as sound as its jury, and a jury is only as sound as the people who make it up.” Judge for yourself, but throughout February, I have been summoned as a potential juror.

Most of my exposure to the legal system comes from watching cases tried on television, such as the Johnny Depp v. Amber Heard media circus or most notably, the O.J. Simpson murder trial in the 1990s.

I previously served on two juries when I lived in Florida. The first time the parties went through the jury selection process, and I was seated in the group, but within minutes of starting the trial, the judge dismissed the jury as the parties had reached a settlement.

The second time was totally different. It took most of the morning to find jurors acceptable to both attorneys involved in the case. By noon a jury was seated, and I was among them. The judge had the courtroom break for lunch and the trial resumed with testimony for the remainder of the afternoon and into the following day.

The case was rather interesting to me. A Haitian immigrant who spoke very little English finished work as a stonemason for a contractor late in the afternoon of the Friday before Memorial Day. Before leaving, the contractor paid him a month’s salary of about $8,000 in cash in a brown paper bag he placed in the truck’s center console. He got in his pickup truck and started to drive home when another Haitian immigrant at the work site flagged the stonemason down and asked if he could give him a ride home.

During one of the hottest and most humid times of the year in Florida, the air conditioner in the pickup truck did not work and so the stonemason and his co-worker rolled the windows down to have some fresh air come into the truck. As they arrived at the co-worker’s home, he asked the stonemason to wait for a moment as he went inside for something. He reemerged with a four-pack of Bartles & Jaymes wine coolers, although it was missing two bottles. He said it was a gift for his kindness in giving him a ride home.

Taking off again, it was now dark outside, and the stonemason noticed flashing lights up ahead on the highway. It was a police DWI roadblock. He was pulled over and an officer noticed the unopened Bartles & Jaymes wine coolers on the passenger seat. He instructed the stonemason to step out of the truck and gave him a field sobriety test.

The Haitian immigrant passed all field sobriety testing, but as he didn’t reply to some of the questions the officer asked because he didn’t understand much English and the officer didn’t speak his language, Creole, the officer detained him and requested another police car and officers to take him to the police station for blood testing for intoxication.

Once at the police station, blood was drawn from the Haitian. Since results would not be available from the lab for several days, he was booked for DWI and transported to the county jail. His pickup truck was towed to the county impound yard. It was Memorial Day Weekend, and the Haitian waited in the jail the remainder of Friday evening, Saturday, Sunday and through Monday as it was Memorial Day, just to obtain an attorney.

When the results of the blood test confirmed no alcohol in his system, the attorney for the state dropped charges filed against him and he was freed from jail. At the impound yard, he reclaimed his truck only after his attorney paid the $750 towing and storage fees. And to his surprise, the brown paper bag of cash was missing.

He sued the city and the police department for $50,000 for false imprisonment, false arrest, his expense of having to hire an attorney, the loss of a month’s salary from the missing bag of cash, and the suffering and humiliation from spending four days in the slammer.

All of this had taken place three years before this trial that I was a juror for. We listened to all the testimony and adjourned to the jury room for our deliberation. To us, it was clear who had made a mistake. We reached a verdict for the plaintiff but before we could announce our decision, the judge dismissed the case.

It seems that the plaintiff’s attorney had made some sort of technical error when filling out the paperwork for the case and this was brought to the judge’s attention during the jury’s deliberations. The judge visited us in the jury room before we left and said he had no choice but to dismiss this case and that the plaintiff’s attorney said he was going to file the case for trial again, even if it took another three years to get on the court docket.

Now I am on the precipice again of doing my civic duty and serving as a potential juror. Paying homage to Atticus Finch, I’m hoping I can remain of sound mind until then. <

Rookie Mama: The discount snack haul of fame

By Michelle Cote
The Rookie Mama

I’ve rekindled that old lost love for our local surplus and salvage store.

Alas, it’s the store filled with many, many, rotating and delightfully haphazard overstock items that replace themselves so quickly, inevitably one may regrettably think, ‘I should have bought it…’

Mainers, you know the jingle.

But my relationship with our town’s local discount shop had been an oscillating one.

And not just because you can buy oscillating fans next to the carpets next to the dog leashes next to the snow pants in said warehouse space.

I have had a years-long aversion for shopping inside stores, namely stores with erratic inventory that require any sort of rifling through of goods.

I became a mama precisely around the dawn of curbside grocery pick-up, a sort of kismet convenience so appreciated that couldn’t have come at a better time, and so I’ve been spoiled in that regard.

Just like that, no more had I the patience nor time for browsing aisles, scouring deals, feeling stifled by the marketing of clutter-some items I just didn’t need.

Online grocery shopping with the painless advantage of pickup without leaving the vehicle is an undeniable luxury – one that keeps me on budget and no longer requires me to lug two shopping carts down all the aisles as I excuse myself to every single shopper ever because I’m taking up all the lanes, only to end each excursion with a double-down Tetris round as I meticulously pack every item back into the cart, then again into the vehicle.

In those days, I ended each grocery shopping run like a flushed, wild-haired Supermarket Sweep contestant, and who had time for that?

No, sir; I’ll keep my curbside pickup just fine.

But back to our local salvage store.

For years, I was less and less enticed to stop in and shop because of its unpredictable merchandise, although I couldn’t help but acknowledge the prices were right, and always had been, no matter the product.

I have family and friends who love their local discount store for this very reason.

Oh what fun for the knitters of my family to browse the skeins upon skeins of yarn galore.

What a glorious feeling for friends who score the name-brand clothing deals. They are the patient ones, and they deserve all the bargains.

Until recently, I only perused this store strictly day after Christmas, because it was a near guarantee I’d find significantly marked down holiday wrapping paper well ahead of budget and next Noel season.

But as of late, fellow mama friends have nudged me along with encouraging assurance that I could score fantastic bargains on school snack hauls – Now that’s a hard one to pass up.

And what hauls I’ve since made off with, indeed.

My family and I recently embarked on a road trip that necessitated road snacks, and I found treats a’plenty at the salvage store for a deal.

Some of the snacks were bigger hits than others; some had mixed reviews, but all cost very little.

So, why are salvage store prices so low anyway?

Often products are nearing their expiration date, dented, damaged, or overstocked.

My favorite finds have been snacks or other food items that may include a promotion for a limited time offer of a movie or other deal that has since expired, but the food item at hand is still perfectly fine.

Items publicizing expired promotional ads such as these won’t be found on traditional retail shelves, so are re-sold for a fraction to the salvage shop.

Food items ranging from dented cans of tomato sauce to frozen foods still safe for consumption but marked beyond a stamped date are also often included in these finds.

As well, company product roll-outs that don’t quite catch on as hoped and produced en masse are often found – I’m looking at you, Hostess SnoBall-flavored coffee pods.

High hopes for sure, but no go.

I can’t stress enough that shopping salvage stores truly requires patience.

I’ve visited mine before with all the intentions of a fabulous snack haul only to return home dismayed with shopping bags empty.

But most recently on a particular shopping trip, I lucked out and walked down a random aisle – a road less traveled, you might say – and was face to face with rows upon rows of name-brand boots.

Garden boots.

I needed garden boots to replace my eleven-year-old beloved purple wellies that had spent more than their fair share deeply embedded in garden muck as my kids and I ran amok.

So beloved were the boots that cracks had formed in various areas, and I’d every intention of duct taping the cracks this year to squeeze out one more garden summer in their faded purple beauty.

And here I was, facing gorgeous replacement boots, a higher-end brand in a dusty rose color, just my size, dreamily comfortable, for an incredible fraction of the cost.

Perhaps the company merely had overshot their expected sales and so sold their overstock to this warehouse.

The world may never know.

But in that moment, these boots were not only made for walkin,’ but made for me.

That’s the satisfaction of shopping salvage in a moment just right.

Had I waited another day, I may have missed the opportunity altogether, and stubbornly spent one more summer in fancy duct-taped glamorous wellies.

So shop salvage with pride.

If you don’t find the knitting skeins you seek, there’s probably a dented stewed tomato can or two waiting for you.

And if you’re very lucky, you can score a fantastic snack haul for your kiddos and super fancy footwear to boot.

And that’s spinning no yarn.

­­– 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: An abs soul loot game changer

By Andy Young

No one, least of all me, can afford to stagnate professionally. That’s why, in an effort to improve myself technologically, I recently decided to try out an “app” (I think that’s what it’s called) which, according to its creator, can sharpen up anyone’s writing, or at least the spelling part of it. Has it helped? You be the judge.

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Of coarse, I’d half to tell the prince sip pull at my school, a former banned liter, before I hit the rode, not only to say high, but too let him no wear I was head did, in case he kneaded me. I don’t think he’d mined, butt cents he’s a fare and cay ring person, I’m sure he’d have tolled me knot to overdue things. And weather or knot hour principle mint it, aye bet he wood say I’d be mist bye the wrest of the staph. He’d also wont to make sir tin that I eight rite. I mien, eye sup hose I could all ways gist take an our ore two too visit a soup per mark it sew I could bye myself a thick juice E stake, butt I probably all sew ought to inn jest some hell thee foods, like maybe sum bran serial, a pare, or sum carats, just sew I don’t get the flew.

Eye gist proof red this; there’s knot won sin gull miss steak.

This A Eye is a maze zing! Y eye weighted sew long to try it, I’ll never no. <

Insight: Remembering kindness and tragedy

By Ed Pierce
Managing Editor

I’m not exactly sure how I became friends with Danny Meyering, but I’m certainly glad I did.

Carlton Webster Junior High School in Henrietta, New York
is where Ed Pierce went to school from 1966 to 1968.
COURTESY PHOTO 

As an eighth grader at Carlton Webster Junior High School in Henrietta, New York in the fall of 1966, I was officially a teenager, and my family had moved to a new community and into a new house where I had my own bedroom. I was attending a public school for the first time at age 13 after many years of being in a Catholic school.

Danny Meyering was a year older than I was and he was always laughing and joking whenever I passed by him in the school hallways. One day in November 1966, Danny and I were assigned to spot other students jumping on the trampoline during gym class. Our job was to stand guard and prevent students from landing awkwardly and bouncing off the edge of the trampoline and injuring themselves.

While doing that he asked who my favorite football player was and when I told him it was Joe Namath, Danny grinned and said, “Mine too.” As the school year went on, he invited me to sit with him and some of his other friends at a junior high basketball game over the Christmas break and I had a blast.

One day over the holidays, Danny walked to my house and my mother made us some lunch. He brought some Marvel comic books with him and after eating, we sat at the kitchen table reading them.

In our first week back to school in January 1967, I noticed a poster outside the school library announcing tryouts for that spring’s school musical “Finnian’s Rainbow.” I thought it would be fun to audition and told all my friends, including Danny, that I was going to try out for the cast. Several classmates told me that afterschool activities were a waste of time, and that I would never be chosen for a part in the musical.

The only one who thought I could possibly win a role was Danny and he took the time to listen to me when I sang my audition song for him “How Are Things in Glocca Morra?” from “Finnian’s Rainbow.” He smiled and gave me a thumbs up even though I was horrible.

On the Friday afternoon of the audition, I was very nervous. Waiting backstage, I was shaking and could barely stand. When my name was called, I summoned my courage and walked out into the spotlight to perform the song for the musical’s director.

It didn’t go well. My voice cracked several times during the song, and I also forgot some of the lyrics. Without a doubt, my audition was one huge disaster, and I wasn’t selected for the cast of “Finnian’s Rainbow” when the list was posted on the auditorium door on Monday.

At lunchtime, I sat in the school cafeteria with Danny, and he noticed that I was feeling dejected about not getting the part. He told me that it really didn’t matter and at least I had tried. His comment made me feel better and helped me get over the disappointment I was feeling for flubbing my audition.

A week or so later in January 1967, a huge snowstorm hit the area, and the temperature hovered near zero. Danny decided to go ice skating at the town park on a school night and walked there with a couple of his other friends. On the way home, a driver ran over them with a car and left the scene. Danny was killed and police were searching for the hit-and-run driver.

The next day at school was terribly sad once the word got out about what had happened. It was like everyone who knew Danny was bewildered and shocked and was trying to come to terms with his senseless death. He was the first friend I had known who had died and it left me angry and confused.

A 18-year-old area resident called police and told them she thought she had hit something when she noticed a crack in her windshield. She was arrested by the police and charged with hit and run. Eventually her charges were reduced to leaving the scene of an accident.

Eventually that school year ended, and another started. My classmates and I moved on to 10th grade at Rush Henrietta High School. Danny’s memory and what had happened to him seemed to fade away for many.

Through the years I have thought about him and wondered what he would be doing today or if he would have had a family of his own if he had lived.

I never again attempted to audition for a school musical and instead, I stuck with performing with the school’s chorus. One of Danny’s friends that he introduced me to, Nick Vecchioli, has remained my friend for more than 59 years now.

The passing of time has not diminished my recollection of Danny’s kindness to me all those years ago and although I only knew him for a short time, I appreciated him for always being positive and a true friend, especially when I needed it most. <

Andy Young: The pros and cons of a healthy walk

By Andy Young

Assuming nothing’s falling from the sky and the temperature is somewhere between 20 degrees and 80 degrees Fahrenheit, nothing is more invigorating than taking a brisk walk.

Few easily performable acts nourish the soul more thoroughly than hiking, striding, moseying, or, for thesaurus junkies, perambulating or locomoting. And that’s regardless of whether the hike, mosey, amble, trudge, perambulation or locomotion is done alone or with company.

Rural lanes, city streets, open fields, sylvan forests or, in case of foul weather, indoor shopping malls, are all fine places for a healthy jaunt. Walking is particularly beneficial for those of us who formerly enjoyed running but currently hesitate to do so on account of a replacement hip or knee joint. It’s also advisable when the surgeon who installed said prosthetic joint has threatened to slay any former patient who attempts to go jogging or heaven forbid, running, and thus put his handiwork at risk.

I’ve long since decided, for a variety of reasons, that going for a walk is preferable to running, particularly since it’s getting harder to find disguises that would fool my potentially homicidal doctor. That’s why, on a recent bright sunshiny, not-too-chilly, not-too-windy Saturday, I decided to treat myself to a hearty stroll. I was in an area encompassing sidewalks, residential areas, a business district, and even a glimpse of the ocean. What could be better?

Since I was by myself, I was a little more observant of my surroundings than usual, which meant I couldn’t help noticing a significant amount of randomly strewn detritus along my chosen route. Apparently those responsible for it had decided they couldn’t be bothered to find a trash can for their gum wrappers, energy drink containers, fast-food packaging and/or cigarette butts, and had opted to heedlessly discard them instead. This sort of totally avoidable blight briefly made my blood pressure rise, but then, reminding myself that the cretins responsible for these miniature eyesores probably make up less than one percent of our local population, I calmly soldiered on.

A few blocks later I came to a crosswalk on a heavily traveled street. Making eye contact with the oncoming motorist, I gave a wave of acknowledgement. Then, to show my respect and gratitude, I quickened my pace, though not into an all-out jog, just in case the driver was my hip doctor. I then resumed my leisurely stroll, satisfied I had shown appropriate courtesy to someone who’d routinely done the same for me.

Approaching another crosswalk moments later, I observed two cars that had stopped for a youthful pedestrian. However, not only did the street-crosser (“streetwalker” didn’t sound right) not acknowledge the drivers who had paused for her, she slowed her already snail-like saunter to a shuffle, her body language suggesting she’d have flipped both drivers the bird if only it didn’t require so much energy to do so.

Shortly after that I arrived at a busier section of town, passing a place of business where seven SUV’s, three trucks, and three cars, all with engines running, were waiting in line to pick up overpriced, over-caffeinated, sugar-laden drinks that were most likely going to be served in containers that take 500 years to decompose. I’m not sure which irritated me more: watching that exhaust-belching line of vehicles inch forward every 90 seconds or so or breathing in the foul hydrocarbons they were discharging. I couldn’t help wondering how many folks inside those vehicles waiting for their fixes proudly describe themselves as environmentalists.

I don’t know the precise age someone has to be to officially qualify as a curmudgeon, but I think I’m closing in on it. <

Insight: The Stranger, Bookends and the Ring of Fire

By Ed Pierce
Managing Editor

Every single day, in some way, shape or form, music touches my life. And I’m a better person for it.

Last weekend, my wife Nancy and I spent time visiting several thrift shops and antique stores and we each found something to bring home. She is into sewing and with the time speeding by until a new grandchild is born in March, she’s been busy accumulating fabric to turn into clothing and other items for the baby. As for me, I always find a record album or two during these excursions to add to my growing collection.

On this trip, I brought home Billy Joel’s 1977 recording “The Stranger” priced at only $5, and Simon and Garfunkel’s 1968 “Bookends,” also for $5. I also bought a “Peter Paul and Mary” album for $3. Considering those to be genuine bargains, you can only imagine my surprise when I noticed a pristine copy of 1963’s “The Best of Johnny Cash: Ring of Fire” for $12. I brought four all-time classic recordings home for just $25.

That Billy Joel album remains one of my favorites, and I am lucky to say that I saw him and his band perform it live during his “Just the Way You Are” tour at the Frankfurt Zoo in Germany in 1978. I was stationed in Frankfurt in the U.S. Air Force at the time and a friend called and asked if I wanted him to purchase tickets for the concert. I was able to scrape up the $20 and the next evening, my wife and I joined our friend and his wife to walk two blocks to the zoo for the show.

The Frankfurt Zoo Auditorium featured a small stage facing 300 folding chairs with 150 on each side divided by an aisle. We sat near the aisle in the third row, and I was completely mesmerized by how great the acoustics were there. At one point, Billy Joel stepped off the stage and ran up and down the aisle while singing and I certainly felt that he gave a great performance that night.

If you’ve watched the movie “Almost Famous,” you’ve probably seen the cover of Simon and Garfunkel’s “Bookends” album. It’s a black and white image of the two singers and in the film, actress Zooey Deschanel brings the album home and her mother, portrayed by actress Frances McDormand, disapproves. Deschanel says that the music of Simon and Garfunkel is poetry, but McDormand says “Yes, it's poetry. It is the poetry of drugs and promiscuous sex.”

The “Bookends” album contains an interesting mix of catchy tunes including “A Hazy Shade of Winter,” “At the Zoo,” “Mrs. Robinson” (from the 1967 film “The Graduate”), and “America.” Deschanel plays “America” from “Bookends” to explain to her mother why she’s leaving home to become a flight attendant. At one time in the 1970s, I owned the Simon and Garfunkel album “Bookends” on 8-Track tape for my car, but that’s another story for another time.

Growing up in the 1960s, I loved listening to Peter Paul and Mary but have never previously owned one of their albums. This was their first album on the Warner Brothers label in 1962 and includes classic folk songs such as “500 Miles,” “Where Have All The Flowers Gone,” “If I Had A Hammer,” and “Lemon Tree.” I was on my way to the front of the store to pay for the other records I had found when I noticed the “Peter Paul and Mary” album. Its cost of $3 was less than a gallon of gas and it promises to be a much-beloved part of my collection, especially since it was the first folk music album to ever reach the top position in America on the Billboard Popular Music chart.

The weekend after the New Year’s holiday, Nancy and I went to the theater to see the Bob Dylan biopic “A Complete Unknown.” Scenes in that movie depict the friendship between Dylan and Johnny Cash and although I’m not much of a country music afficionado, I am aware that Johnny Cash is truly a legend, and through the years I have come to appreciate his music.

Finding “The Best of Johnny Cash: Ring of Fire” album was indeed a stroke of luck. The distinctive purple album cover, and the LP inside it are in near-mint condition, and it’s a tangible piece of history now residing in my music room. Released in July 1963, sales for “The Best of Johnny Cash: Ring of Fire” grew over the rest of that year and it was the first #1 album when Billboard debuted their “Country Album Chart” on Jan. 11, 1964. Some new copies of the soon-to-be 62-year-old album are selling for $35 currently on Amazon.

With each passing day, I’m so grateful to have rebuilt my home stereo system last summer. I even have co-workers contribute albums to my collection. Over Christmas, Melissa Carter of The Windham Eagle was in Goodwill and found two old Neil Diamond albums which she purchased and gave to me.

For me, music rekindles past memories, it helps me travel to places I wouldn’t normally visit, and awakens my sense of creativity. <

Andy Young: The simple pleasure of interacting

By Andy Young

About a week ago I stopped for groceries on the way home from work. I needed bananas, oranges, fresh spinach, brown sugar, and milk.

It didn’t take long to find everything on my list. I also picked up some blueberries because they were on sale; two boxes of store-brand Rice Chex, because I remembered I was running short of cereal; and a box of generic wheat crackers, because I went shopping when I was hungry, which I recalled too late was the first thing the professor for the “Personal and Family Financial Management” course I took in college told us never to do.

When I went to pay there was only one checkout line open, so I dutifully lugged my nine items to a spot behind a person leaning on a cart that was overflowing with groceries. She was behind an individual who was buying a bottle of wine, who was behind the first person in line. His numerous purchases were being scanned by an adolescent cashier, who then sent them down a belt to a second teenaged employee, who carefully placed each item in one of the customer’s cloth shopping bags.

It looked like I’d be waiting a while, but then, for no apparent reason, the tiny, older woman in front of me asked if I’d like to go ahead of her in line. I told her that wasn’t necessary, but she insisted. “No, really. I’ve got all this stuff, and you’ve only got a few items,” she said. “You go first.”

So I did, and got checked out in a flash, since both the cashier and the equally youthful bagger perhaps inspired by my new friend’s courtesy, were exceptionally efficient, friendly and accommodating.

That woman’s random act of kindness probably allowed me to get home three or four minutes earlier than would have been the case had we each maintained our respective places in line. But the generosity of spirit she showed with her tiny bit of thoughtful unselfishness has paid off in far greater ways than just that.

A few days later I made another post-work trip to the grocery store, got my 10 or so items, staked out my spot in the checkout line, and prepared to wait my turn. A moment later a young man who was probably less than a third of my chronological age got in line behind me, clutching a lone can of soda. I invited him to go ahead of me. The genuine appreciation he expressed made my already pretty good day into a great one. He enthusiastically pledged he was going to let a whole lot of people in front of him the next time he had a cartful of groceries, and I don’t doubt for a second that he has.

So why, a cynic might ask, didn’t I just get into one of the four self-checkout lines that the local grocery store has installed in order to save time?

I suppose I could claim it’s for the same reason I always walk into my local credit union and stand in line to cash my check, rather than use the automated drive-up teller outside: so I can interact with someone who is as happy to serve a cheerful person as they are grateful to have a job that feeds and clothes them and their family.

But the real reason I choose to deal with actual people rather than soulless, computer-powered machinery is a selfish one. I truly enjoy direct communication with other human beings and choose to believe they appreciate being cheerfully interacted with at least as much as I do. <

Insight: Secrets from beyond the grave

By Ed Pierce
Managing Editor

When my mother died at the age of 95 in August 2018, I thought she had shared everything about her family with me before leaving the earthly plane of existence.

Several of the newspaper stories are shown
detailing previously unknown information
about one of Ed Pierce's late relatives.
COURTESY PHOTO  

About a decade before her death, I had helped through her depression from losing 98 percent of her eyesight from macular degeneration by researching her family’s history and ancestry. We had figured out that we were cousins to John McIntosh, an immigrant from Scotland who settled on a farm in 1790s Canada and is credited with discovering the McIntosh apple growing in one of his fields. It seems that another branch of the McIntosh family immigrated to Canada in the 1820s and that is from whom my mother and I are descended.

A story passed down through the generations of our family is that one of those Scottish immigrants by the name of James Rutherford McIntosh first heard about a booming economy in Rochester, New York, about 145 miles away from his home in Dundas, Ontario in 1855. It seems Rochester’s textile and flour mills were a huge economic success and James R. McIntosh wanted to be a part of that. He successfully applied to immigrate to America, moved to Rochester and found steady employment there.

He eventually married an Irish immigrant to the United States, Helen Agnes Duffy, and they had six children, one of whom was my great-grandmother, Harriett McIntosh, who died at 65 in 1939 in Rochester. My mother, Harriett Baker, was named after her and that was the story I was familiar with.

But I recently learned several things about one of my great-grandmother’s sisters that I was never told by my mother and for the life of me, I can’t say why she never mentioned them.

For part of my ancestral research, I also have had a subscription to newspapers.com for many years. On occasion I have used it to find old clippings of newspaper stories I have written but didn’t save from the 1970s and 1980s. While on Christmas break last month, I decided to see how far back their files went and looked up my great-grandmother’s obituary in the Rochester newspaper from 1939. It was easily found. In that obituary it listed her husband, her children, her grandchildren and her surviving brother, James R. McIntosh Jr., and surviving sister, Anna Duffy Sill.

I wanted to know more about James R. McIntosh Jr. but noticed that he had died in 1948. Several news stories were posted though about his sister, Anna Sill, and that’s where I surprisingly discovered facts I had never heard before about my relatives.

The first news story I read was from 1936 and it was an obituary for Anna’s husband, Julius Sill. It said Anna and Julius did not have children, only nieces and nephews. Then I saw in a clipping from Jan. 22, 1942 that Anna D. Sill, 62 at the time, testified in a court trial in Rochester about being assaulted in her home by a man she was renting a room to. Apparently, she had converted her home into a rooming house following her husband’s death and during an argument with a man renting a room there about his drinking, he struck her over the head with a hammer.

She was taken to the hospital and was treated for eight lacerations to her scalp requiring 30 stitches. The man was on trial for second degree assault and his defense was that he wasn’t responsible for his actions because he was drunk stemming from being a single parent after his wife had died. The judge found him guilty and sentenced him to three years in prison for assaulting my great-great-aunt Anna Sill.

The bombshell news clipping I found was from the Dec. 8, 1954 edition of the newspaper though. In the early morning hours of Dec. 7, 1954, a neighbor going to work living near Anna Sill noticed her house was on fire. He awakened his next-door neighbors, one of whom was home on leave from the U.S. Army. They tried to enter Ann’s home through the front door where she was living alone but were turned back by intense heat, flames and dense smoke. They also tried to get in through several windows and a side door but were driven back by flames.

When the fire department arrived on the scene, the home could not be saved. The Fire Battalion Chief said the house was “like a furnace.”

Hours later when the fire was extinguished and firefighters were sifting through the rubble, they found Anna’s corpse in the basement laundry room. The city mortician said she had been trying to reach the front door of her home crossing the living room to escape the blaze. Intense heat caused the chimney and a wall to fall down in the living room. The living room floor then collapsed into the basement and carried Anna to her death with it.

I was just a year old at the time and had never heard about any of these events growing up. In fact, I only heard Anna’s name mentioned once by my mother that I can recall.

Finding these stories was like discovering secrets from beyond the grave. <

Barbara Bagshaw: 2025 Legislative Session Update

By State Rep. Barbara Bagshaw
House District 106 (Representing part of Windham)

The new Legislature is in session. The 132nd Legislature was officially sworn in Dec. 4 and began its work on Jan. 8. I will be serving a second term on the Education and Cultural Affairs Committee. Most of our early session days will be spent referring bills to Joint Standing Committees for public hearings and ultimately recommendations to the full legislature.

State Rep. Barbara Bagshaw

The Education and Cultural Affairs Committee has jurisdiction over the Department of Education; State Board of Education; school finance, governance and administration; school budgets; school facilities; curriculum, instruction and assessment; teachers and administrators; special education and child development services; education of deaf and hard-of-hearing students; career and technical education; charter schools, alternative education, school choice and home schooling; school district reorganization; online learning; student health, nutrition and safety; truancy and dropouts; educational services at juvenile correctional facilities; adult education; Maine Educational Policy Research Institute; University of Maine System; Maine Community College System; Maine Maritime Academy; postsecondary education finance and governance; Maine State Library; student assistance programs at Finance Authority of Maine (FAME); and cultural affairs, including Maine Arts Commission, Maine State Museum, Maine Historical Society, Maine Historic Preservation Commission, Maine Humanities Council and Maine Public, Formerly known as Maine Public Broadcasting.

As you can see from the official committee description, the Education Committee will be very busy this session. In addition to my committee’s responsibilities, I am most interested in finding ways to lower our energy bills. Maine consumers are overpaying for energy, and it is hurting Maine citizens. We need to help make Maine affordable again for working families and prevent more employers from going out of business.

The Legislature is reviewing a proposed two-year budget from Gov. Janet Mills. Updated revenue projections are slightly better but still show a substantial deficit in 2026/2027 after years of one-party over-spending. This needs to be addressed in order to meet the Maine Constitution’s balanced budget requirement. I do not support raising taxes because Maine already has one of the highest tax burdens in the country.

It is an honor to represent part of Windham in the Legislature. If there is any way that I can be of assistance, please contact me at barbara.bagshaw@legislature.maine.gov .My office phone number is 207-287-1440. You can find me on Facebook. To receive regular updates, sign up for my e-newsletter at https://mainehousegop.org/ <

Andy Young: Unforgettable

By Andy Young

I was unable to read the newspaper one morning last week. But that allowed my mind to go elsewhere, and on the day in question that precipitated an unexpected trip down Memory Lane, with several side excursions along the way.

Grandma Spaine made this baseball quilt for Andy Young
when he was 10 years old. COURTESY PHOTO 

Some highlights:

I’ll never forget hitting four home runs in a pickup softball game on the University of Connecticut campus. Three of them actually cleared a reasonably distant fence, too!

I’ll never forget making the last out of the final game of the first half of the Easton Little League season when I was 12 years old. My team, the Hawks, was rallying, but with the tying runs on base the pitcher for the Bears, who happened to be my cousin, got me to pop out to the first baseman, which meant that their team (and not ours) were first half champions.

I’ll never forget seeing all three of my children born. The thrill was indescribable, as was (and is) my gratitude for being born male.

I’ll never forget the 25-cent wager that I made during my freshman year of high school with Jeff Wohl, who sat next to me in homeroom for four years. The bet was that whoever was absent from school first had to pay the other a quarter. Neither of us cared much about academics, but because we were both healthy and cheap, no one ended up having to pay.

I’ll never forget the baseball quilt Grandma Spaine made for me when I was 10 years old. In fact, I still have it, thanks to my sister finding it in our mom’s attic decades after I had left home and then sending it to an elite textile hospital for repairs.

I’ll never forget playing pickup basketball on Gary’s driveway, at Fig’s house, and at Noel’s barn.

I’ll never forget riding back from Pennsylvania to Connecticut in the middle of the winter, wrapped in two army-issue sleeping bags, while seat-belted in the (open-air) back of my cousin’s Subaru Brat. It was awfully cold, but it was also 100 percent less expensive than a bus ticket.

I’ll never forget the numbers 6602 and 2714. $66 and two cents was what I got paid (after taxes) for a 40-hour week of manual labor at my hometown’s apple orchard. I made $27.14 for working a 16-hour weekend.

I’ll never forget my first major league baseball game. I had never seen greener grass! It was the ninth-place Astros vs. the 10th-place Mets, so the crowd was probably sparse, but my father accurately informed my brother, my cousins, and me that there were more people in Shea Stadium that night than there were residing in our entire small hometown.

I’ll never forget coming face-to-face with a huge deer that came thrashing through the remote field where, early one Saturday morning, I had been left by my boss with instructions to fill each of the 20 large burlap bags he had given me with five dozen ears of corn. Thankfully, after staring down at me for a few seconds, the buck chose to scamper off in another direction. Apparently, he was more scared of me than I was of him, although then, as now, I have no idea why that would have been the case.

It’s astounding how vivid these memories still are after so many years have passed. But what’s more mysterious: why, given my ability to summon long-ago events in such great detail, can’t I remember back five minutes, when I left the glasses I need to read the newspaper someplace that for the life of me I can’t recall? <

Insight: Into the Deep Freeze

By Ed Pierce
Managing Editor

Stepping outdoors at this time of year can be a chilling experience but for me, the coldest conditions that I have ever been in happened to be when I covered sled dog racing in Laconia, New Hampshire for the daily newspaper there.

A musher guides a team of sled dogs during the World
Championship Sled Dog Derby in Laconia, New
Hampshire in 2015. COURTESY PHOTO 

In a tradition that harkens back to 1929, sled dog teams and mushers gather in Laconia every winter to compete in a three-day race in various classes on a 15-mile course around Lake Opechee and Paugus Bay. Some of the top sled dog racing teams from across the globe compete in what is billed as the “World Championship Sled Dog Derby.”

The first year I worked for the newspaper in Laconia the event was scrubbed because of a lack of snow and ice but by the time the second year rolled around, temperatures dropped below zero and there was plenty of snow to hold the races.

As the editor of the newspaper, I could have assigned a reporter to provide coverage of the sled dog races, but it was something I wanted to do myself. Being a longtime sportswriter, I had watched televised reporting of the 1,000-mile Iditarod sled dog race in Alaska through the years and thought it would be interesting to attend this race in New Hampshire and write about it.

On the day that the Laconia races were to be held, the thermometer started dropping and fell 13 degrees overnight. When I started my car in the newspaper parking lot to drive to the event, it was minus 18 degrees and sunny at 10 a.m.

I had been forewarned to dress warmly and so I was wearing thermal underwear, a heavy sweater, a wool cap, a scarf, gloves, and an insulated parka. But even that combination did not prepare me for spending time interviewing racing participants in that sort of cold.

In under 10 minutes outside, I was told by a race administrator to go back to my car to warm up. He suggested that I conduct interviews and photography for the newspaper in 10-minute stretches, and in the meantime, he told me to leave my car running with the heat turned on and to retreat back there when I needed to warm up.

First off, I decided to interview a racing team musher from Syracuse, New York. He and his wife and son had brought their six-dog team to Laconia for the event. It was the second time they had competed there. He told me that all his dogs were Siberian Huskies, and they had recently replaced the team’s dog harnesses.

He told me that racing sled dogs each wear individual harnesses and then what are called tuglines are attached to those forming a loop which connects to a master gangline for the musher to guide the team. To keep each dog in the proper position, they can also be attached to a neckline for maximum control by the team’s musher.

Not every dog racing team was made up of huskies. I found out that some teams had Samoyeds or Malamutes, while other had Chinooks or German Shorthaired Pointers. All the dogs competing on the Syracuse team weighed between 35 and 65 pounds and their lead dog, a huskie named “Bo,” was placed in front because he was the oldest and the strongest of the entire team.

According to the musher, the team had practiced on their farm over the summer and fall. Each of the dogs’ meals were calculated and maintained by a veterinarian to keep their weight under control and to provide the dogs with plenty of power and energy for the racing circuit. This particular team from New York state would travel to events in Illinois and Ohio and throughout New England and Canada every winter to compete in sled dog racing and in six years had won eight different trophies and cash prizes.

They drove to the events each winter in a pickup truck pulling a camper which housed their dogs in crates when they weren’t racing. He said that his dogs weren’t bothered by the cold because they were accustomed to sub-zero temperatures.

I also interviewed a race official who monitored the start of the races. He told me that there were two categories for racing teams with one being for six-dog sleds and the other being “unlimited,” containing between 14 and 16 dogs in each team. Because each race was 15 miles and compiled over three days, he said the winning team was trying to log the best aggregate time accumulated in that time frame.

By the time those interviews were finished, I was absolutely freezing. Despite the layers of clothing I was wearing, the cold still penetrated and each trip back to the car to warm up took longer and longer. I stepped to a position on a snowbank near the starting line and got photographs of dog teams and mushers beginning that day’s race.

Being outside in minus 18-degree weather was not something I would prefer to do again, and it was the coldest I have ever been in my lifetime, but experiencing the sled dog races and writing about it is something I can say can be checked off my bucket list.<

The Rookie Mama: Enough’s enough: Collect memories, not stuff

By Michelle Cote
The Rookie Mama

New year, new gander at our old friend, “Minimalism.”

It’s effortlessly easy to accrue physical items in our home with four young children.

And it’s all the easier to find legitimate reasons to prioritize other, timely life things that render us unable to pause our family-of-six world and sort and toss all the donatable things.

My husband and I are aspirational minimalists, but not as disciplined in practice as we’d like to be.

Yet, on occasion we do try to bring our mantra to top of mind: ‘Our memories aren’t in our things but inside ourselves’.

We also understand that storage is oftentimes organized clutter – Why keep purposeless items in boxes ‘just in case’?

In case of what?

There have been events in our lives that forced our hand to downsize – Impending births of baby boys, moves, home renovations, pre-Christmas purges. But still – Life accumulates, manifesting itself a trail of breadcrumbs and Hot Wheels cars and LEGO sets and sweet-potato-spit-up-laden onesies and puzzles.

Therein lies the tougher part of said downsizing task – Convincing our little ones to be on board with decluttering; donating items they no longer play with to make room for the new and trusted and true favorites.

In the spirit of sustainability, our family does repurpose what we can – torn clothing that’s gone through four boys and is beyond repair sometimes has solid fabric pieces for patches or canning covers. Gift bags in good shape are neatly folded and sorted for reuse – The purpose of downsizing is not to unnecessarily buy new stuff. Au contraire, mes amies.

I often tell my children, ‘Close your eyes and picture your dream bedroom. I bet it’s not filled with junk.’

As much as it’s hard for adults to let go, it’s harder for children to do so – Sentimental attachment to knick-knacks runs deep.

But knick-knack, paddywhack, give these toys a home at the local Goodwill.

One tactic we’ve used with moderate success is convincing our children that toys we donate will be appreciated and loved by new families.

Toys that aren’t worth re-bestowing because they’ve worn out their wear are trashed or recycled.

At the end of these conversations, oftentimes we parents are the ones who are worn out.

Always a work in progress but baby steps.

And speaking of babies – Each time I was expecting a new little guy, I’d pore over their stored baby totes, shocked at how much I’d saved that wasn’t needed – Really, 20 hooded towels? – which thus gave me a perfect opportunity to declutter boxes of my own during each nesting phase.

How much do we really, truly need?

As a culture, we strangely associate our ‘stuff’ net worth with personal worth.

We fill our homes with stuff, stuff, and more stuff, enough linens and dishes and kitchen tools to provision a hotel, in addition to our family at hand.

When bored, we hoard.

We forget that what truly counts – what is most memorable are one’s life experiences, not things once owned.

Consider this, then read on for itchy statistics –

According to Becoming Minimalist, the average American home has tripled in size over the past 50 years, yet still 1 in 10 Americans rent offsite storage.

25 percent of Americans with two-car garages don’t have room to park cars inside of them.

Nearly half of American households don’t save any money but consume twice as many material goods today as were expended 50 years ago.

And over the course of an average American’s lifetime, a total of 3,680 hours is spent searching for misplaced items. This research found that up to nine items are lost every day – 198,743 in a lifetime.

We forget how freeing a decluttered life can be – Organization is wonderful but having less to organize is all the more tremendous. Associated costs of your time with maintaining such a volume of paraphernalia can be reduced.

Again, baby steps.

One room at a time, one shelf at a time.

Toss, donate, recycle.

Items saved should be kept with a true and understood purpose.

As for items to be rid of, there are more creative ways to accomplish this than yard sale days of old.

Items in good condition can be sold – or offered free – via a simple social media post.

Our boys recently took it upon themselves to sell several DVDs and CDs they no longer use in exchange for some spending money by selling them to a local music store.

We are frequent fliers to our hometown library – a magnificent way to meet one’s needs for free, then return the borrowed item without the burden of having to store the items oneself.

Baby steps.

We're making efforts daily to get rid of things we know we don't need; digital clutter included. We remind ourselves that our memories are inside us, not inside our things.

We get out and go on adventures, the best of which don't cost us a thing, such as exploring trails and nearby parks and beaches.

And so we imperfectly try, daily, to work on collecting memories – not stuff.

Makes you wonder whether consumer “'goods” really are all that good.

Now if you'll excuse me, I've got another Goodwill run to make.

I’ve just come across an unnecessarily large pile of more hooded towels.

As for those baby food-stained onesies – Into the trash they go.

­­– 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: What’s in a name?

By Andy Young

I have never played a round of golf in my life, aside from the miniature variety.

Yet every year when I hang up a new calendar, I can’t help recalling my youth, and a specific professional golfer whose name appeared in the agate type on the sports page every weekend when the newspapers reliably printed the results of whatever tournament was taking place.

The late Don January won 10 different events while
competing on the Professional Golfers Association Tour.
COURTESY PHOTO 

Don January won 10 tour events during his days on the PGA (Professional Golfers Tour). I didn’t know anything about him, or any other golfer other than Jack Nicklaus, Arnold Palmer, and Gary Player, for that matter. But I quietly rooted for him, because who else had a month for a surname? Maybe there were other golfers with months for last names, but if there were, I never heard of them, so they don’t count.

A few other months serve as surnames for accomplished individuals. Fredric March won Academy Awards for Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1932) and The Best Years of our Lives (1946). Elaine May is a much-decorated writer, director, producer, actor, and comedian, and the world in general and baseball in particular has been fraught with people named May. Lee May and Carlos May were brothers. Dave May and Derrick May were father and son, as were Merrill “Pinky” May and Milt May. Fun fact: Milt and Lee, though not related, were Houston Astros teammates in 1974. Other baseball-playing Mays, past and present, include Rudy, Jerry, Trevor, Darrell, Jakie, Lucas, Scott, Joe, Jacob, and Buckshot. However, aside from all the Mays, Don August, a Milwaukee Brewer pitcher from 1988-1991, is the only other major league ballplayer with a month for a last name. Sorry, Yankee fans, but “October” isn’t Reggie Jackson’s real last name.

Do any other months qualify as surnames? According to the website imdb.com, there are currently people in the entertainment industry named Lauran September, Teddo November, and C. J. December. However, since I’ve never heard of them, they also don’t count. And I don’t feel guilty about omitting them, since to my knowledge Lauran, Teddo, and C. J. haven’t put me on any random lists they’re compiling, either.

People named for days of the week names seemingly outnumber those with month names. Rick Monday played 19 seasons of Major League Baseball. Tuesday Weld was active as an actress from 1955 to 2001, winning a Golden Globe Award along the way. Although little Wednesday was fictional (as was her brother Pugsley), she was nonetheless an important member of the creepy, kooky, mysterious and spooky Addams family. A similarly fictitious day-of-the-week name from the classic TV era was Dragnet’s Sergeant Joe Friday. However, those preferring people who actually existed can cite Bill Friday, a much-decorated National Hockey League referee who was the first president of the NHL’s Officials Association. Jeff Saturday spent 14 seasons as a National Football League offensive lineman before transitioning to a position as a sports analyst for ESPN. However, the best professional conversion ever performed by someone with a day of the week for a last name was by a man who, after playing eight seasons of major league baseball switched over to a field far more appropriate for someone named Billy Sunday: he became a nationally known evangelist.

There are, of course, odder things than having a word on the calendar for a last name. Besides comedian Orson Bean, film producer Albert Broccoli, and author/journalist David Corn, there aren’t many celebrated people with a vegetable surname.

But if there are actually people named Joe Cucumber, Mary Potato, or Pat Mushroom, well, they don’t count either, because I’ve never heard of them. <