Insight: The simplest thing not everyone has

By Ed Pierce
Managing Editor

When I was growing up, I used to receive compliments for my manners but to be honest, the credit belongs to my parents who drilled into me the basics of etiquette.

My father would describe etiquette to my younger brother and me as like traffic lights for our interactions with others and he said that courtesy was simply a way to show respect for others. My mother was a stickler for proper manners and believed that displays of improper etiquette required immediate corrections.

She was “hands-on” with her corrections of bad manners and many times the lobe of my right ear was yanked as she made a point. Her understanding of good manners also made her mandate that children should not place their elbows on the table when seated for dinner.

According to my parents, exhibiting proper manners included always being mindful of other people’s feelings, beliefs, and expectations and helped to create more positive relationships with everyone in our lives. That included teachers, grocery clerks, bus drivers, aunts and uncles, the mailman and the doctor.

I thought of this last Saturday night while I was sitting alone at a table at a Rock n’ Roll dance waiting for my wife to return from the restroom. I was scrolling through my iPhone looking at Major League Baseball scores. When she arrived back at the table, she immediately informed me that looking at my phone was bad manners and anti-social.

Here are some of my parents’ basic manners tenets:

Wait to eat until everyone is seated and served. During my U.S. Air Force Basic Training experience, if I was to arrive at a vacant table for four in the dining hall, I was required to stand at attention with my hand raised indicating how many seats were left at the table. Once all the seats were filled, you could sit down and eat your meal. To this day no matter if I’m sitting in a restaurant or at home, if I’m served first, I won’t start eating until everyone’s food is at the table.

Respect the personal space of others. My father stressed that I never stand too close to people and insisted that I always ask before touching someone. That included always asking before reaching into someone else’s refrigerator or cupboards when visiting friends or neighbors. Years ago, I had a boss at the newspaper I was working at who would come up from behind me when I was sitting at my cubicle and working on my computer. He wanted to see what I was typing and would creep up so close to me to catch a glimpse of my computer screen that I could feel his hot breath on the back of my neck. It was a disregard for my personal space and the other reporters in our department to whom he did the same thing.

Being punctual means you’re never late. My mother explained to me that it shows respect for other people’s time when you are on time or early for appointments and meetings. To this very day, I try to arrive for my appointments in advance of the scheduled time not only for my own peace of mind, but also to let the person I have the appointment with know I’m there. Once I was attending a press briefing for an author who had written a popular book and the author had noticed I had arrived early and was so impressed by that, he offered me an exclusive interview after the other reporters had left.

Always tip service workers well. My father came from a family of nine kids during the Great Depression. He worked for 19 cents an hour every day after high school classes at a company that made tin cans. He understood that no matter what a person’s job or social status was, they deserved to be singled out for the exceptional service that they provide. He went out his way to thank waitresses, janitors, or garbage men with a generous tip as appreciation. My father said that leaving a tip is a polite way of saying thank you while recognizing and acknowledging the value of contributions that service workers make to our lives.

Offering to help others is a sign of courtesy. Whether it was helping an elderly woman carry a bag of groceries to her car or returning shopping carts to the proper collection area, my mother demanded that I do something useful for others when I was out in public with her. She told me when I was a paperboy that I should always bring newspapers I was delivering to a subscriber’s front steps, rather than pitching them in their driveway as I rode past their homes on my bicycle. She would often send me over to a neighbor’s house to help rake leaves for them or shovel snow from their sidewalk. Years later, I still push the shopping carts back neatly in the collection spot instead of just leaving it for someone else to push there.

The way I see it, good manners are a way of showing other people that we respect them. Sadly, it seems to be disappearing in today’s world. <

Barbara Bagshaw: Protecting Maine’s voice in Presidential Elections

By State Rep. Barbara Bagshaw

Last session, the Legislature passed a law that limits the voices of small states like Maine in selecting a President.

State Rep. Barbara
Bagshaw

The National Popular Vote Interstate Compact that was approved by lawmakers by one vote, and allowed to become law without the governor’s signature, would award the state’s four electoral votes to whichever candidate garners the most popular votes nationwide, irrespective of who the majority of Mainers voted for at the ballot box.

The Electoral College is a constitutional provision that ensures that small states, like Maine, have a voice in selecting the President of the United States. Because of that provision, Maine has received attention from presidential candidates. The law attempts to circumvent the Constitution by surrendering Maine’s voice through an interstate compact.

It means that if Mainers vote for a different candidate than the candidate winning the national popular vote, state electors would be bound to vote for the popular vote winner. The votes of large states with major cities like California and New York would dominate at the expense of smaller, rural states.

The compact requires enough states to join before it is triggered. It has the potential to create national chaos in our court system, especially if there is a recount in any of the states.

I can only speculate why Governor Mills did not sign it. In her message she claimed that she had conflicted feelings about the law and saw merit in both sides. I personally believe that it is unconstitutional under Article 1, Sec. 10, Clause 3 because it enters into a state compact without Congressional approval. It will not withstand Supreme Court scrutiny if it is ever triggered.

Ironically, the law was passed to prevent President Trump from being elected because Democrats assumed he would lose the popular vote. In 2024, Trump won the popular vote and an Electoral College landslide, winning all the battleground states. It is dangerous to change the constitution for future electoral advantage by looking back at previous elections.

As your legislator I sponsored a bill to repeal the law and recently it had a public hearing. I am hopeful that there is enough bipartisan support to correct the mistake that was made and preserve Maine influence in Presidential elections. The legislature must carefully consider protecting Maine’s 4 electoral votes from theft by large, urban states.

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/

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

The car accident (with subliminal advertising)

By Andy Young

Monday has never been my favorite day of the week, so I shouldn’t have been surprised that a snowplow tore off most of my car’s rear bumper on one of them this past February. I hadn’t planned on that happening, but there’s a reason that motor vehicle mishaps are referred to as “accidents.”

At the moment of impact, I wasn’t feeling particularly fortunate, but in retrospect I believe that Feb. 3 was an extremely lucky day.

Why? Let me count the ways.

While the inauspicious start to the week sidelined my car temporarily, I myself was unhurt in the Monday morning misadventure. I was also fortunate from a fiscal standpoint, since like a good neighbor, the snowplow driver’s insurance company was there.

A motor vehicle accident can be a major inconvenience, but caring, decent, honest human beings who take pride in doing their jobs right can go a long way toward lessening the pain, and that’s exactly what happened in my case.

The plow operator who hit my car was first and foremost concerned about my condition following the collision, for which he took full responsibility. With a thousand other things going on in his life, in the aftermath of the accident he worked overtime to ensure I was treated right.

Next up were the professionals at the auto body repair place, who were understanding, thorough, and eager to put my car, like Humpty Dumpty, back together again. They kept me informed every step of the way and did so in a manner that was always cheerful and never Moody.

Finally, the Enterprising young woman at the car rental agency set me up with reliable and economical transportation for the three-plus weeks that my vehicle was undergoing surgery. She also made me an offer that required a quick decision.

I am not by nature a risk taker, but when I was given the option to purchase some extra insurance for my temporary ride, I did some quick math and decided to forgo the opportunity to pay $28 per day for the added coverage.

While I had my rental, a Toyota Prius with Maryland license plates, I used the most distant parking lot spots, drove the least-traveled roads available, and totally avoided parallel parking. Naturally the number of drivers who darted out of side streets without warning, stopped suddenly in front of me for no apparent reason, or changed lanes on the highway in my vicinity without signaling, began increasing at an exponential rate.

However, against all odds, after 27 days I brought the car back to the agency in the same condition it was in when I borrowed it. The sigh of relief I let out when I returned it was probably audible in both New Hampshire and New Brunswick. I had taken an uncharacteristic gamble on myself … and won!

But why do I consider an accident that sidelined my car for nearly a month lucky? Well, for starters, I’m just as healthy physically as I was before the incident. I also learned I can still, when necessary, handle inconvenience and adversity. And best of all I met Travis the snowplow driver, Ashley the car rental agent, and Ken the autobody specialist, three exceptionally kind, hard-working, innately decent people whose paths I most likely would never have crossed had it not been for that crash early on a snowy morning.

More than eight months remain in 2025, so it’s possible there are still some days ahead when I’ll get even luckier than I did on Feb. 3. But if I’m truly fortunate, I won’t get that lucky again anytime soon. <

Insight: A Flattened Treasure Hunt

By Ed Pierce
Managing Editor

In the 1950s Johnny Carson used to host a television game show called “Who Do You Trust?” and I was thinking about that program recently when I drove to Kittery to have some old baseball cards appraised by a prominent antiques business.

Ed Pierce had his collection of 1960 Topps baseball
cards appraised last week at an event in Kittery.
PHOTO BY ED PIERCE 

For some years now I have been working on collecting every baseball card issued in 1960 by the Topps Chewing Gum Company. I’ve been a baseball card collector since 1964 but didn’t start working on my 1960 set until about 12 years ago.

There are a total of 572 cards issued in the 1960 Topps set and several years ago I completed acquiring all the cards when I purchased a Mickey Mantle card for $350 on eBay. Mickey Mantle’s 1960 card is deemed as the most highly valuable card in the entire set although Carl Yastrzemski’s rookie card, and other Hall of Famers such as Henry Aaron, Willie Mays, and Sandy Koufax fetch a large sum too.

About a month ago I saw an ad on Facebook saying an antique business would be appraising collections and so I signed up to see how much the cards would be worth.

I keep my cards in a three-ring binder in plastic sleeves and the majority of my 1960s are in Excellent to Near Mint condition. I know this because many of these cards were purchased through a reputable card shop in Ohio and none of them arrived in less than Excellent condition. Cards are professionally graded by the sharpness of the corners, creases in the cardboard, paper loss, writing on the cards, photo centering and coloring.

When I was just starting out in baseball card collecting, I’d add cards in less-than-ideal conditions, and after a while I discovered that a card’s condition is crucial to its overall value.

Through the years, I have upgraded and replaced many cards in my sets, and such is the case with this 1960 collection.

When I showed the cards to the appraiser, his expression was priceless. He looked at each page in the binder with amazement at the condition of the common cards and told me I had done a good job in assembling the complete set.

However, when he extracted the Carl Yastrzemski and Mickey Mantle cards, he informed me that both these cards were slightly creased, detracting from the overall value of my 1960 set. I had purchased both of those cards on eBay and never noticed the tiny creases on each card at the time.

The appraiser asked me how much I thought my set was worth and I told him I thought it was probably in the range of $5,000. Last summer, I had taken the cards to a professional grader at a card show in Old Orchard Beach and he estimated it to be about $8,000 but I did think that was greatly exaggerating their value and he only glanced through the binder quickly.

This new appraiser said it was his opinion that my 1960 cards were nice, but he recommended that I have the most valuable cards in the set graded, including the Mantle, Yastrzemski, Mays, Aaron, Koufax and Willie McCovey cards.

He showed me on his iPhone that some complete 1960 baseball card sets in Excellent to Near Condition are selling for between $3,500 to $5,500 at most. He thought that if I did have four or five of the Hall of Fame player cards from the set professionally graded by a nationally recognized grading company and permanently encased in plastic slabs, that I could boost my set’s overall value.

Driving home from that appraisal, I was sort of shocked and disappointed. I had envisioned that the appraiser would be impressed and would make me a decent offer for them, and I would accept and use the money to help pay for my wife and I to take a trip to England.

Now that I’ve had a few days to think about it, and hearing one appraiser tell me my cards are worth $8,000 and another suggesting $3,500, I’m inclined to take the advice of the second appraiser. That will mean I will have to purchase new 1960 Carl Yastrzemski and Mickey Mantle cards and those will not be inexpensive.

The average going price for a 1960 Carl Yastrzemski graded card in excellent condition on eBay is $300 and a decent 1960 Mickey Mantle graded card in excellent condition is $750. It’s probably better for me to purchase these two cards graded and slabbed than take another chance on cheaper deals of ungraded cards.

And once I do acquire those Yastrzemski and Mantle cards for my set, I will still have to pay a grading fee and send off my 1960 Roberto Clemente, Koufax, Mays, Aaron or McCovey cards for assessment and hope they do not get lost in the mail or damaged in the return shipment from the grading source.

When I was a kid growing up in the 1960s, I never liked the Yankees so I would often take Mickey Mantle cards and pin them to the spokes of my bike to make a flapping noise as I pedaled along.

If I knew then what I know now, that surely wouldn’t happen. <   

The end of an era?

By Andy Young

The 100-year agreement designating the bunny as Easter’s official animal has just expired. Until recently it was assumed the continuation of the adorable cottontail’s reign as the holiday’s trademark was a mere formality.

However, determined digging by attorneys skilled in trademark law has revealed the 1925 contract included a clause allowing, after a century has gone by, a one-time opportunity for either of the involved parties to “opt out” of the agreement.

Bunny fans are concerned, and with reason. Easter’s original owners sold the holiday to a consortium of greeting card conglomerates, chocolatiers, and plush toy manufacturers in the late 1970s, and hammering out a new deal with a cartel consisting of a bunch of corporate CEOs is a lot different than negotiating with a genial pope and the Vatican.

Easter has become a multi-billion-dollar industry, and there’s no shortage of groups and/or individuals wanting a piece of it. Those trying to get Easter to re-up with the bunny have their work cut out for them. The competition is fierce, as plenty of animals are vying for what is a potential gold mine, not to mention a public relations bonanza.

“Who says bunnies are cuter than squirrels, chipmunks, or hedgehogs?” asks Avaricious Q. Farquhar, an attorney representing a variety of small animals.

American Avian Association president Harold Rapacious called bunnies “Yesterday’s news,” dismissively adding, “they’ve had their day.” The AAA represents groups advocating for both the Easter Parrot and the Easter Dove.

Adds Nestor Skroobawl, public relations director for a group touting the Easter Eagle, “When’s the last time a bunny laid any eggs, let alone the Easter kind?”

Ching-Ching Yeah, spokesperson for the Easter Panda Association declares, “The ugliest panda is infinitely more adorable than the cutest bunny.”

“What have rabbits ever done besides rob Mr. McGregor’s garden?” asks Conrad Eurograbber, head of a group hoping a lovable, drooling service animal, the Easter St. Bernard, will gallop in with a basket of Easter eggs each April and become the holiday’s future logo.

“It’s high time Easter ends their unholy alliance with these unseemly creatures!” huffs Eunice Priggish, who has campaigned for the Easter bunny’s excommunication ever since “Bunnies” became an integral part of the Playboy empire in 1960.

Attacks on the Easter Bunny aren’t limited to the Northern Hemisphere. “You call those hops?” scoffs Laughlin Downunder, spokesperson for an Australian group bidding to replace the Easter Bunny with the Easter Kangaroo. “Compared to one of our ‘roos, bunnies don’t hop; they limp!”

Individuals or groups pushing to replace the bunny include proponents of the Easter Elephant, the Easter Tiger, the Easter Flamingo, the Easter Weasel, the Easter Jellyfish, and the Easter Giraffe, among others. “Sure, we’re a longshot,” says Spiros Noncomposmentis, who represents a group trying to install an unlikely holiday animal. “But if we don’t point out the attractiveness of the Easter Jackal, who will?”

Says one industry insider: “Those rabbit people have the toughest job this side of selling pork in Saudi Arabia.”

The Easter Bunny’s spokesperson, Virtuous D. Fender, vigorously defends her client. “Rabbits in general and the Easter Bunny in particular are inherent parts of society. Who’d watch a movie called ‘Who Framed Roger Raccoon’?” she asks rhetorically. “And seriously, could Bugs Beaver have dominated Elmer Fudd and Yosemite Sam? Buck teeth aren’t everything; long ears matter, too.”

Ms. Fender admits, though, that with billions of Easter industry dollars at stake, she and her leporine clients are facing an uphill battle.

“There’s no question it’s dog-eat-dog out there,” she says of the current competition for official Easter animal status.

She’d better hope it’s not jackal-eat-bunny. <

Tim Nangle: Giving Residents a Fair Shot at Owning Their Communities

By Senator Tim Nangle

In the 1950s, my father bought a mobile home park in Danvers, Massachusetts. He didn’t do it to get rich; he did it to build a life and a community. For decades, he kept that park running with a simple philosophy: treat people fairly. He fixed things himself, unclogging toilets and crawling under trailers on cold winter days. Sometimes he worked throughout the night to wrap heat tape around frozen pipes. If a tenant was late on rent, he worked with them. He took care of his tenants, and they appreciated that. When my father passed away, my siblings and I took over running the park and we did our best to carry my father’s approach forward.

State Senator Tim Nangle

A few years ago, everything changed. We started getting unsolicited offers from private equity firms with deep pockets and little interest in the people who lived in the park. Their goal was simple — buy the park, raise rent and extract as much profit as possible.

Thankfully, Massachusetts has a strong law on its books that gives residents the right to match an outside offer and buy the park themselves. That law gave our residents a fighting chance and they took it. They organized, secured financing and made a competitive offer. Today, they own the park and it’s thriving under their ownership.

Their story could have ended very differently, though. And here in Maine, it too often does. That’s why I’ve introduced LD 1145, "An Act to Protect Residents Living in Mobile Home Parks."

Mobile home parks are some of our last truly affordable housing options in Maine. But in recent years, they’ve become a favorite target of out-of-state investors looking to make a quick profit. These firms often raise rents, enforce strict eviction policies and skimp on maintenance. And because our current laws don’t do enough to protect residents, their actions can go unchecked.

LD 1145 strengthens protections for park residents by:

● Requiring park owners to notify residents when they plan to sell.

● Giving residents 90 days to organize and make a purchase offer.

● Creating a clear right of first refusal so they can match any outside offer.

● Ensuring that if a park is being shut down or redeveloped, residents get 90 days' notice and help relocating, paid for by the park owner.

We’ve already seen signs that Mainers are ready and willing to step up. During the public hearing on this bill, Nora Gosselin from the Cooperative Development Institute shared that under Maine’s current statute, residents in nine different communities have already organized and submitted competitive purchase offers — sometimes offering more than what corporate buyers had on the table. But six of those offers were rejected. As Nora put it, “The law needs to be strengthened into a Right of First Refusal to build upon an effective model, in an environment with so many aggressive, deep-pocketed, out-of-state corporations, amid an affordable housing crisis."

LD 1145 isn’t radical. It’s fair. It’s practical. And it’s proven. This bill gives residents the chance to hold on to the homes and communities they’ve built not just for now, but for generations to come.

The bill is currently being considered by the Legislature’s Housing and Economic Development Committee. If you agree that Mainers deserve a fair shot at owning their communities, I urge you to contact the committee and your local legislators. Let them know that you support LD 1145.

You can contact all members of the Housing and Economic Development Committee by sending an email to HED@legislature.maine.gov. To find your representative, visit legislature.maine.gov/house/. <

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

Insight: Gone but not forgotten

By Ed Pierce
Managing Editor

Not long ago, I wrote about people who unexpectedly re-entered being a part of my life after a prolonged absence and that got me to thinking. What about those people who unexpectedly left being part of my life and never returned?

U.S. Air Force airmen serving on a Reforger exercise
deployment in Germany in 1978 included, from left,
Ed Pierce, James Smith and Mike Hodges.
COURTESY PHOTO 

In some of these situations, I probably will never find the answers about what happened to them as too much time has passed and despite being resourceful, I’m afraid I will never know.

Airman First Class James Smith served with me in the U.S. Air Force in Germany from 1977 to 1979. He was without a doubt the wittiest and funniest individual I’ve ever known. “Smitty” as we called him was from Los Angeles, California and was a radio operator for our unit.

From the first time that I met him, I liked him, and he made me laugh heartily. His humor wasn’t the type that made fun of other people’s looks, appearances or physical traits, instead he found laughter in everyday situations.

He was adept at pointing out humorous aspects of daily life and as many of us, including me, had recently completed Air Force Basic Training in Texas, and he often found humor in the lingo or expressions used by Air Force Training Instructors at Lackland Air Force Base in Texas.

Almost 50 years later, I can remember “Smitty” telling me a story about learning to march in formation with his fellow recruits during basic training. When he missed a step, “Smitty” caught the attention of the Training Instructor. He said he told the instructor “I’m sorry.” The Training Instructor then growled at him saying “I know you’re sorry. That’s why I’m screaming at you!”

“Smitty” made everyone laugh, from the unit commander to the lowliest airman, and he uplifted us all during a time when we were far from home and needed something to smile about.

On the day he was departing back to the United States as his tour in Germany was up, he stopped by my office in his dress blue uniform and shook my hand for the final time. He told me that he needed to go back to the radio operator’s trailer for a second because he had left something there that he wanted to take on the plane with him. While in the radio trailer, another radio operator grabbed a fire extinguisher and sprayed it over his dress uniform as a joke.

The last time I ever saw “Smitty” he was frantically brushing white fire retardant off his uniform before catching his flight home. I never saw him again after that incident in October 1979 and I left Germany myself for an assignment at The Pentagon in Washington, D.C. the very next month.

I’ve tried looking for “Smitty” as best I could, but James Smith is one of the most common names in America and it’s like searching for a needle in a haystack.

Rick Walsh was in my first- and second-grade classes at Our Lady of Lourdes Catholic School in Brighton, New York in 1959 and 1960. He was quiet and reserved but a good student and his desk was across the aisle from me. We both liked reading comic books and playing kickball. Rick also happened to be the first kid I knew who had a crew cut with his head shaved except for a small tuft remaining in the front of his scalp.

He always took a place in front of me in line when we were going to the school library, outside for recess, or to the school lunchroom. We both brought our lunches every day from home and sat together every day during lunchtime.

We were each advanced readers and in third grade in 1961, Rick and I were both reading Hardy Boys mystery books. When I finished one, I’d pass it on to him to read. After each of us finished a book, we would sit in my garage and discuss it and talk about who should play the part on television. Walt Disney had made some of the first Hardy Boys books into a serial presentation for TV’s “Mickey Mouse Club” in the 1950s but had stopped doing that by the time we were in third grade.

I would tell him that I thought Paul Petersen, the young actor from “The Donna Reed Show” should portray Frank Hardy if they ever made a new “Hardy Boys” series. Rick disagreed, saying it should be Tim Considine from “My Three Sons,” who had played the role in Disney’s 1950s adaptation.

One day in January 1962, our third-grade teacher, Mrs. Wahl, told our class that Rick had suffered a severe diabetic attack and that he was in the hospital. The class all made Get Well cards for Rick, and I was elected to take them to his bedside at the hospital. My father drove me there and we found Rick was in bad shape. Rick’s father said that he would not be able to return to school and that he would require insulin injections for the rest of his life.

I never saw Rick again and to this day, I don’t know what became of him.

We lost touch, but he’s not forgotten. <

Andy Young: Banana. Yellow. Submarine. Torpedo. Speedo.

By Andy Young

It was on a lengthy car ride with several family members some years ago that my sister introduced us to a word association game that made the time pass far more pleasantly than would have otherwise been the case. The initial player names a person, place, or thing, and each other participant follows, in order, with something associated with whatever it was the previous player had said.

For example: Walter Cronkite. Chet Huntley. David Brinkley. Christie Brinkley. Billy Joel. Joel Chandler Harris. Uncle Remus. Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Log cabin. Lincoln Logs. Lincoln Continental. Continental Divide. Divide and conquer. William the Conqueror. Conquering hero. Sergeant York. New York Yankees. Mickey Mantle. Fireplace mantel. Fireside chat. FDR. JFK. LBJ. BLT. XYZ. A to Z. Alphabet soup. Soup to nuts. Nuts to you! You stink! Pig-Pen. Charlie Brown. Lucy. Snoopy. Beagle. Dog. Hot dog. Frankfurter. Frank Sinatra. Nancy Sinatra. “These Boots are made for walkin’.” Boots Day. Rainy day. Doris Day. Rock Hudson. Plymouth Rock. Plymouth Fury. Fury Gene Tenace. Tennis, anyone? Arthur Ashe. Arthur C. Clarke. Clark Gable. Anne of Green Gables. Green with envy. Nevada (N-V; get it?).

It’s enjoyable, provided all involved parties trust one another. For instance, in the example above everyone took my word for the fact that Boots Day and Gene Tenace (his given first name really is Fury, and his last name is pronounced “tennis”) actually were reasonably well-known major league baseball players in the 1970s. But that’s only fair, since if my sister threw out a name I’d never heard before and told me they had won an Oscar sometime in the 1940s, I’d have believed her, too. However, if someone younger than me blurts out some bizarre moniker and claims it’s that of a “social media influencer,” well, that’s a different story. “Social media influencers” I’ve never heard of (a classic redundancy, since I’ve never heard of any of them) don’t count. Period.

Or perhaps I’m remembering wrong. Maybe the rules were that you had to name someone or something well-known, real or fictitious, and the next person had to do the same, only using a first name that began with the letter that started the previous subject's last name.

Like: Ronald McDonald. Meat Loaf. Larry Fine. Fred Flintstone. Flat Stanley. Senator Sam Ervin. Ernie Banks. Bart Simpson. Snoop Dogg, Derek Jeter. Julius Erving. Elizabeth Taylor. Thomas Edison. Eddie Arcaro. Australian Outback. Outback Steakhouse. Stan Musial. Mount Katahdin. Kaiser Wilhelm. Winston Churchill. Concord, New Hampshire. Norman Vincent Peale. Peter Marshall. Mashed potatoes. Paul McCartney. Mary Travers. Toni Tennille. Theo Epstein. Eddie Munster. Michelle Obama. Oscar Robertson. Reggie Jackson. Jack Benny. Bruce Wayne. Will Ferrell. Ferdinand Magellan. Minnesota Fats. Flash Gordon. Ginger Rogers. Robert Frost. Fred Astaire. Al Roker. Rhode Island. Ivan Rodriguez. Rodney Dangerfield. Dolly Parton. Patrick Dempsey. Denis Potvin. Pete Rose. Rose Marie. Mahatma Gandhi. George Carlin. Charles Barkley. Benjamin Harrison. Hakeem Olajuwon. Oskar Schindler. Sherlock Holmes. Harrison Ford. Fidel Castro. Carl Sagan. Stevie Wonder. William Shakespeare. Sigourney Weaver. William Shatner. Serena Williams. Warren Spahn. Smokey Robinson. Regina, Saskatchewan. Sandra Bullock. Bo Jackson. Joanne Woodward. Wilt Chamberlain.

When it’s played in a car, the game concludes when everyone quits or falls asleep, you reach your destination, or, while going 70 mph, someone opens a car door and falls out onto the highway.

Every so often I’ll try playing the game by myself.

Andrews Sisters. Marx Brothers. Smothers Brothers. Smothered Potatoes. French fries. Italian dressing. Swiss cheese. Belgian waffles. Portuguese rolls. English muffins. Irish Whiskey. Russian vodka. Hungarian Goulash. Spanish omelet. Polish sausage. Swedish Fish. Dutch treat. Norwegian Wood. Prune Danish. Greek yogurt.

Czech mate. <

Insight: If I could turn back time

By Ed Pierce
Managing Editor

No, this isn’t about Cher’s 1989 music video filmed aboard the USS Missouri. Not that there’s anything wrong with Cher, I’ve always liked her music, but I’d like to use this space to detail things that have disappeared over time that need to be restored in my opinion.

If I could travel through time and bring something back from the past that’s missing right now, I’d start by choosing to restore theme songs to the opening credits of television shows.

When I was a child, hearing the opening stanza of “The Rifleman” would draw me to the TV set so I could catch Chuck Connors wielding his modified Winchester rifle demonstrating how potent it could be. Yes, “The Rifleman” certainly had a lot of violence but there’s no escaping that anyone who heard that music and soundtrack every week can ever forget it.

Then there’s the theme to “Bonanza” as the three Cartwright brothers and their father ride across the Ponderosa Ranch in Nevada as a map of their property burns. Or revving up the Ferrari with Tom Selleck to take it out for a spin in Hawaii in “Magnum P.I.?”

Sometime in the late 1990s, television producers decided to focus less on theme songs and use that extra minute or so on developing their story or episode’s plot.

I sure miss being able to know all the words and sing along to the theme songs to “The Beverly Hillbillies” or “Three’s Company” or “Rawhide” or “Gilligan’s Island” instead of the screeching discordant sound of shards of metal scraping that are heard in the opening title sequence of “Lost” every week.

My thought is that composing memorable music for a television series theme song appears to be a lost art, and if I could turn back time, I’d love to see it revived.

Another aspect of American life when I was a kid that always fascinated me was going through the Sears catalogue in the months leading up to Christmas. There was page after page of toys, bicycles and hours of fun contained in those old catalogues, and not something that can easily be replicated scrolling through Amazon on an iPhone.

The catalogue was an alternative for a retailer who chose not to market their products on television and was sheer merchandising genius. I could always find a generous selection of items I would want for Christmas and would write them down in order in case we stopped to see Santa on our next department store visit.

It was always a happy day in our household each October when the catalogue arrived in the mail, and I’d have to fight off my brother to see which one of us got to look through the pages while making our annual Christmas gift request list. I would even spend time looking at the clothes and shoes because inevitably if I asked for a toy from the catalogue, my mother would think it was far more practical for me to have a new set of thermal underwear rather than “Rock ‘Em, Sock ‘Em Robots.”

Turning back time, I’d advocate for a return of the Sears catalogue as a place for kids to dream and get ideas for the holidays.

And that leads me to the topic of technology. Posing a serious question way back when sometimes meant that you’d have to explore solutions by going to the library and finding a book explaining that topic. It didn’t result in instant answers found by a Google search, you had to research and made you really think about things, not using AI to solve problems.

Recipes were found in cookbooks, not on your smart phone, and it created an atmosphere so much more personal.

With the introduction of video gaming consoles, it seems that kids stopped playing outside after school, or riding their bicycles through their neighborhood, like I used to. We spent more time as kids telling stories, reading comic books and using our imaginations instead of sitting indoors playing “Fortnight.”

Simple little things produced smiles from us such as drinking from the garden hose, a 1-cent piece of Bazooka bubble gum, catching and releasing fireflies in a Mason jar or running through a sprinkler in the backyard on a hot summer afternoon. Working on the newspaper crossword puzzle occupied my Sunday afternoons after looking over the Sunday comics section.

Before the days of endless cable television channels, your options were limited to just three TV networks, and you made do with what was available.

The internet, cell phones, personalized surveillance cameras and the rise of social media have taken a lot of spontaneity and joy out of everyday life. It affects everything. Movie plots of upcoming films are revealed months before the move debuts, a baseball player hits a home run in a game in California and it’s instantly transmitted to millions globally by smartphone.

More than anything, I would love to return to a day and age when simple conversations with friends, family, and neighbors mattered, and we weren’t interrupted by 24-7 breaking news, social media posts about celebrities, conjecturing pundits or conspiracy theories.

If I could turn back time, it would be for a simpler life.

Rookie Mama: Going bananas for the sweet world of food dehydration

By Michelle Cote
The Rookie Mama

In this era of trendy pink Stanley cups and hydration focus, here’s a term with which you may not be overly familiar – the wonder of dehydrating.

Drying food, that is.

A friend recently asked me what gadget I use to make dried fruit, and it occurred to me this process is a frugal, fun, tasty favorite activity I haven’t really touched upon in this column, and dehydrating delicious snacks is truly worthy of its own space in print.

My family and I love to batch together trail mixes when packing for travel, and our blends of nuts and chocolate have always included some sort of commercially prepared delectable dried fruit – bananas, mangos, apples, you name it.

Dried fruit is widely available in packaged form at most grocery stores.

One could make a date of shopping for pitted dates.

A few years ago, my husband and I reevaluated whether there might be a better way to obtain large quantities of dried fruit without such added cost, especially as our family was growing like fruit by the foot.

Life itself was bananas and nutty, which I suppose made us a trail mix variety of its own.

As it turned out, dehydrating our own fruit strips was not only an economical choice, but a healthy one, and an easy enough task to accomplish.

Like a well-loved slow cooker, one must do a bit of prep, then it’s set and forget, as the home fills with delicious aroma.

So, we purchased a fairly inexpensive dehydrator appliance with multiple trays and began our test strips, so to speak.

The science to dehydrating food is that controlled heat and airflow sucks out water, reducing moisture to a level that prevents bacterial growth and spoilage, thus extending shelf life and reducing weight and volume.

Although moisture is removed, nutrients are preserved – a win for the whole gang.

And not only is this process a fantastic frugal choice because it’s less expensive than buying prepared dried fruits, it can reduce food waste.

Think of all those fresh fruits for which you had high hopes that were rendered to the ol’ compost bin because rot and bruising got the better of them before they could be gobbled up.

Think of all the naturally sweetened strawberries and oranges galore you could dehydrate.

And did I mention the bananas?

Once you’ve dehydrated your own fruits, you’ve got yourself a healthy snack, whether for hitting the road or for scrumptious, colorful, nutrition-dense school snacks.

Another favorite – arguably tastier – road snack is homemade beef jerky.

Pick up a lean cut such as top round, bottom round, or flank steak, as fatty cuts can become rancid during the drying process.

Slice into very thin strips – or ask your butcher to do this if preferred.

From here, the Google is aplenty with beefed up easy marinades, and you likely already have many of the ingredients that are just the ticket to create these savory strips, such as Worcestershire sauce, soy sauce, paprika, garlic powder, onion powder, and so on.

Homemade jerky is seriously cost-effective just as fruit is, but also high in protein, iron, and vitamins A and C. Unlike the storebought variety, homemade jerky has no added preservatives. Ingredients are higher quality, and the resulting treat may be more flavorful.

Look, my family loves some Jack Links from a fuel-up stop as much as the next traveling circus, but the homemade variety – if you can carve the time to carve the beef – really makes for the cool jerk.

There are many other foods to experiment with in a food dehydrator, from fruit leather to herbs, from vegetables to even watermelon jerky.

So as with other new kitchen tools, have fun and experiment. Follow directions carefully. Dehydrators range in price and can be quite costly, but our inexpensive Nesco has been operating tremendously for years, its soft hum a familiar mainstay.

Dried foods are also best when shared with those you love, so don’t forget to gift some of your snack experiments to family and friends – they make a super Christmas gift.

Because that, my friends, would be enough to make anyone go bananas.

­­– 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: Making a case for trophies

By Andy Young

I got the first of what I assumed would be many athletic trophies when I was a member of the championship baseball team in my hometown’s Little League.

Never mind that I rarely played; back then 9-year-olds were only there to chase foul balls, coach first base, and go through the stands passing the hat so the coaches could give each kid 15 cents after the game to go get something from the snack bar.

Recently I learned that the word “trophy” originated from the Greek “tropaion,” which referred to captives, weapons, property, or enemy body parts that were collected in war.

That information surprised me, since like most people I had previously assumed the word had derived from some Latin term meaning “dust collector.” Fortunately, none of my subsequent trophy-worthy honors ever involved the forcible removal of anyone else’s body parts.

I knew in my soul that someday I’d need a huge trophy room to properly display all the individual awards I’d win for my many astounding baseball and basketball exploits. After all, those multiple Major League Baseball and National Basketball Association Most Valuable Player awards I’d earn during my dual-sport career would need proper displaying.

And besides that, I’d likely need more space in the future, since my trophy wife (and later our trophy kids) would undoubtedly be awash in athletic accolades as well.

There are more different kinds of trophies than there are ice cream flavors. They can look like a knight standing atop a reel of film (the Oscar), an old record player (the Grammy), or a football player (the Heisman Trophy).

There are trophies that look like cars, dogs, pianos, horses, typewriters, microphones, elephants, donkeys, fish, ballet slippers, Rubik’s Cubes, and pinking shears.

Still others are shaped like singers, mechanics, doctors, accountants, police officers, dancers, fishermen, chefs, librarians and hunters. Trophies are regularly handed out to top performers and coaches in baseball, softball, football, basketball, hockey, soccer, lacrosse, volleyball, swimming, tennis, wrestling, pickleball, rowing, gymnastics, running, jumping, throwing, pole vaulting, and skiing.

There are also trophies for non-athletes like bowlers, race car drivers, and golfers.

Unfortunately, it’s now officially spring-cleaning season, and who wants to waste time relocating clutter, vacuuming up dirt, washing windows, de-cobwebbing the basement, mopping the kitchen floor until it returns to whatever its original color was….or dusting off old trophies?

After a long winter, the last thing(s) I want to waste time on involve cleaning the garage, freshening up the cellar, or disinfecting bathrooms.

That’s why I always start my seasonal home-cleansing ritual small, by sanitizing my dream-come-true, appropriately sized trophy room.

The most recent addition to my trophy collection came in 1984, when a softball team I was on took home the league championship.

Actually, I had to leave at mid-season, since I had taken a job 4,000 miles away.

I felt guilty about that, since at the time it was obvious to all concerned it was my batting, fielding, and leadership skills which had led us to victory in seven of our first 10 contests. Thankfully though, the team somehow won 23 of their 24 games after my departure.

The upside to having a modest number of trophies: my long-anticipated display case isn’t just a dual-purpose one; it’s portable! And the only times I have to temporarily move my two treasured statuettes are when I need to reheat soup, melt butter rapidly, or make a quick bag of popcorn.

Finally, I keep an old pie plate atop my portable miniature trophy room. It’s a convenient place to stash all the hate mail I get from bowlers, race car drivers, and golfers. <

Insight: Looking back on an indelible friendship

By Ed Pierce
Managing Editor

It’s been mentioned that if you embrace the unfamiliar it can often lead to unexpected friendships.

I first met Ray Clifford in September 1971 as a freshman attending New Mexico Highlands University. I was about to turn 18 and he was five years older and 23, having served as a military policeman on a patrol boat on the Mekong River during the Vietnam War.

Ray Clifford, back row fifth from right, and Ed Pierce,
front row fourth from right, were members of the same
college fraternity in 1971. COURTESY PHOTO  

Clifford was 6 feet tall and weighed 240 pounds while I was 5 feet 6 and 130 pounds. I was in school to earn a degree and launch a career, while he was there for beer, parties, women, good times and certainly not academics.

My tuition was paid for by student loans and his was covered courtesy of the GI Bill from his service in the U.S. military. I was from Rochester, New York and he was from Breezy Point, New York on Long Island.

Somehow, both of us ended up in the same fraternity pledge class and were living in the same fraternity house off campus. After getting to know Ray Clifford for a few weeks, I determined that something was unusual about him, especially when he requested a room to live in the basement.

His ambition was to become a police officer or detective in New York City, but I sensed that his temperament wasn’t a great fit for that. He was quick to anger and often exhibited poor judgement. He drove recklessly when borrowing another fraternity member’s car and he would carry a bottle of peach schnapps in his coat to take sips in class when the professor wasn’t looking.

It just didn’t seem like he was all there at times, and I can cite examples of his questionable actions.

Once when I was carrying a laundry basket down the cellar stairs filled with dirty clothes to wash, I stopped just inside the door to turn on the light and see where I was going. Immediately after turning on the light, it went out and someone grabbed me from behind around the neck and held a butcher knife to my throat saying, “What are you going to do now?” I realized it was Ray Clifford right away because of the tone of his sing-song voice and I asked to be released, telling him I watched "Kung Fu" on television every week. He laughed and told me that I should be more careful when entering darkened rooms in the future.

During our fraternity pledge weekend where we were supposed to leave the area for 48 hours and not be found, the entire pledge class traveled more than 100 miles away to a remote cabin.

Not long after arriving, Clifford went outside to smoke and those of us inside the cabin heard a gunshot. He came running in saying he had brought a pistol and fired it indiscriminately, but a bullet had ricocheted off a fencepost and somehow hit a cow standing nearby in a field. He was scared and wouldn’t let us notify the farmer so we spent the next two days fearful that the police would arrive and arrest us all for murdering a heffer.

As the first semester exams neared and before everyone departed to go home for the holidays, the fraternity held a huge dance. Clifford made what he called “Breezy Bash,” a concoction of fruit punch and generous amounts of alcohol mixed in. While people were dancing, I observed him add six bottles of Everclear (pure alcohol) to the “Breezy Bash” and I’m sure it produced quite a few hangovers for anyone who drank it.

He shared his first semester grade report with me while we were flying home for Christmas. In Economics, he had received a “C,” but in American National Government, Psychology, English 101, and Earth Science, he received an “F.”

Before the school year ended, he was involved in a fight and melee that spring while sticking up for a fellow fraternity brother who had been called a racial slur and then punched at the Student Union Building on campus.

Many members of our fraternity and college administrators were surprised though when Ray Clifford did not return that fall for his sophomore year.

Years passed and I eventually served in the U.S. Air Force, got married, earned my college degree and began a career in journalism writing for newspapers.

In 2010, I was watching a baseball game on television in early May at our home in Florida when the phone rang. I answered it and was shocked to learn it was Ray Clifford on the other end.

He said a fellow fraternity member had given him my number. He told me that he had obtained degrees from both Saint Francis University and Florida International University and had never married. He had worked as a court officer for the State of New York and was now retired and living in New Smyrna Beach, Florida about 80 miles from me.

I told him about my newspaper career and my wife and family, and before we said goodbye, he said to me, “We sure had some crazy times in college, didn’t we?’

Years later I found out that he had died at the age of 65 in 2013.

It’s my contention that no friendship we ever make is purely by accident. <

Andy Young: The necessity of all five vowels

By Andy Y.

Exactly how many people on this planet speak English cannot be determined precisely, or at least not for certain. The total, according to Wikipedia, an online encyclopedia where many folks go to obtain esoteric information, is somewhere in the neighborhood of 1.5 billion. However, if that seems a bit inflated, well, it is. For the majority of Earth’s denizens, English never has been and never will be their primary method of sharing ideas. 

A mere 360 million earthlings consider it their primary form of expression. Others converse (or trade opinions) by employing Spanish, French, Mandarin, Arabic, Farsi, or Hindi. These are only a few of the many other systems of engaging in verbal or written interactions by employing a common system of terminology. English is, for many people, at best a secondary method of engaging in conversation and/or written correspondence with others.

While there are 26 letters in the alphabet, five are widely considered more important than all the others. Were it not for vowels, words, phrases, and sentences as we know them might not exist. Imagine trying to clearly convey a vital message, verbally or in writing, if speakers, writers, and all other creators of oral and written transmission of ideas didn’t have those five most important letters of the alphabet at their disposal!

Even professionals who examine books, articles, words and sentences for a living can’t effectively analyze controversies related to literary topics if they’re limited to availing themselves solely of mere consonants.

Make no mistake: this analytical commentary is not intended as a jab at the letters B, C, D, F, G, H, J, K, L, M, N, P, Q, R, S, T, V, W, X, Y, and/or Z. These twenty-one easily recognizable symbols have served English speakers with clarity, honor and distinction for more than one and a half millennia, and it’s likely they’ll persist in doing so for at least that long into whatever period of time lies ahead for mankind. Consider for a moment the prospect of a vowel-less world. It’d definitely be a wretched one, since there’d be severe limitations regarding the capability of men, women, and children to know what anyone else was thinking at any given time or place.

If it weren’t for vowels there’d be no viable way to attempt to compose even a brief letter, to say nothing of lengthier written pieces like this one, which consists of a mere fifty dozen words. Can anyone fathom a life devoid of the alphabet’s five-letter assemblage of vowels?

If these five splendid letters didn’t exist, there’d be no effective form of oral or written expression available to anyone. Imagine trying to relay messages with only hand signals or facial expressions, while emitting only snorts or groans. We’d have to “baaah” like rams or ewes, and assign meanings to words like zvmmt, kwrss, pklxz, or qmkllffs! I don’t see that as being even a remote possibility.

Crafting a viable, coherent dissertation while deprived of even one specific vowel doesn’t seem doable. Composing a 600-word article that doesn’t contain each of them at least once is inconceivable even for me, and I’ve got an exceptionally healthy imagination. I’m really glad nobody ever assigned me to write a lengthy treatise on the importance of vowels, while at the same time prohibiting me from employing a specific one even once. To decent writers, each vowel is of vital importance.

Thank goodness for these five essential letters. I can’t imagine writing an essay sans any A’s, E’s, I’s, or O’s. It’s simply not attainable for me.

Nevertheless, it might be achievable for someone else.

Maybe even yew. <

Insight: If You Wanna Be Happy

By Ed Pierce
Managing Editor

Recently I listened to part of a podcast featuring a so-called expert discussing her series of books instructing people how to be happy.

The podcast’s host described how this “happiness expert” has sold more than two million books and is one of the most requested public speakers currently in America. Using what she says are scientific resources while pursuing opportunities and experiences fostering growth and learning is this author’s mantra and she advocates that self-knowledge and strong relationships are the keys to unlocking happiness.

Listening to her share her rationale about how to create happiness made me think that I too could detail what makes me happy and not charge anyone a dime for my thoughts on the subject.

Without further ado, here’s Ed’s Happiness Rules, free of charge:

Rule #1: Surround yourself with upbeat people. I’ve found that I’m happiest when I reduce the amount of time I spend with negative people, whiners and complainers, anyone who is easily annoyed or know-it-all Debbie Downers. Anyone who makes me laugh is a great way to start my day and I believe that associating with upbeat, happy and positive people always rubs off on me.

Rule #2: Inject something of personal significance into every day. Hardly a day goes by when I am not listening to music or spending time with my baseball card collection. Music does indeed soothe my soul and remains a huge part of my personal happiness equation. My music makes me feel nostalgic and content and so does reviewing my baseball cards as it produces a similar feeling for me. No matter what it is that is significant to you, I recommend finding out what that is and enjoying it as often as possible.

Rule #3: Eat breakfast for dinner. At least one night a week, forget spending hours preparing a meatloaf, making mashed potatoes and tossing a salad for the family. Trust me, a hearty stack of buttermilk pancakes, scrambled eggs, hash browns, fruit, toast and juice at dinnertime always leads to a very happy evening in my household.

Rule #4: Sleep when you are tired. I do have a regular bedtime that I turn in each night, but during the college basketball season, I occasionally skip that bedtime to stay up late watching my favorite team play on the west coast. Believe it or not, by the time the games are over, I sleep soundly through the rest of the night.

Rule #5: Take a walk. I do not go to the gym each morning and I do not spend hours every day working out or exercising. However, I do enjoy taking my dog for walks and just being outside in the fresh air and trying to keep up with my canine friend does work wonders for me.

Rule #6: Focus on what you can control while watching the news. Whenever I sit down for an extended period and watch the news on television lately, it seems that I quickly become overwhelmed with the state of the world. Multiple airplane crashes, wartime massacres, starvation, looming economic problems, injustice, terrorism, natural disasters and diseases can certainly drive a person to the looney bin faster than any attempt to change the channel. After consuming a half-hour of televised daily misery and conjecture, what I do is try and think of all the positive things happening in my life and discount those uncertain world and national events that I simply have no control over. Turning off the non-stop barrage of cable news is beneficial.

Rule #7. Think only good thoughts about other people. We live in such a divisive society today that makes us distrust everyone and everything. It’s not easy to be kind and compassionate and not find shortcomings in others that you see out and about every single day. I recall Michael Jordan once saying during an interview that he had missed 26 game-winning shots during his professional career and yet he didn’t stop taking them, and he ended up winning six NBA championships. Jordan credits his teammates thinking good thoughts about him and having the confidence that he could accomplish what he did in basketball. During my own career in journalism, I’ve discovered that telling someone something positive about them can truly make a difference in how they view themselves and their work.

Rule #8: Let go of the future. We all have worries about what lies ahead for us down the road, be it old age, poor health, loneliness, a shortage of money because of the rising cost of living or losing our close and cherished friends to cancer or heart disease. I recommend forgetting all the worry and angst and simply taking things day by day. Otherwise, anxiety and depression take charge and control of your life, and that’s not what life should be about, no matter where your journey takes you.

It's my contention that as I go through life, my happiness is not about being enormously wealthy or blessed with athletic talent or possessing movie-star looks. What makes me the happiest are the little things that I’m truly grateful for such as a loving wife and family, a new granddaughter born March 5, and wonderful friends. <

Andy Young: Ahead to the future or back to the past?

By Andy Young

When someone asked me not long ago if I would rather visit with my great-great grandparents or meet my great-great grandchildren, my initial reaction was, “What an utterly random question!”

Both are intriguing possibilities though, even if neither seems likely to occur anytime soon. Barring changes in the space-time continuum, there’s no chance I’ll ever meet my grandparents’ grandparents. As for seeing my grandchildren’s grandchildren, since I’m currently both grandchild-less and eligible for Medicare, it’s hard to imagine I’ll live long enough to see three additional generations of Youngs.

That established, there are reasons to desire both of these theoretical scenarios. For me oral history is far more fascinating and relevant than opening a textbook to read someone’s biased version of past events.

Hearing recollections from people who genuinely experienced history is the closest thing to actually being there. And while any eyewitness account of the past can bring history to life, hearing one from actual ancestors would make those particular memories even more vivid.

There would be some challenges involved with meeting my ancestral great-greats, since some of them probably spoke English with difficult-to-understand accents, and others didn’t speak it at all. But where there’s a will there’s a way, and I’ll bet if I were to somehow find myself face-to-face with a great-great grandmother or great-great grandfather, we’d be able to figure out some effective way to communicate.

However, checking in with my great-great grandchildren would be tempting, too. There are multiple upsides to meeting one’s four-generations-ahead descendants.

Given the current state of humanity, the future is even more unknowable than the past. It’d be thrilling to meet my great-great grandkids, although the prospect of lasting long enough to do so seems unlikely. Still, while it’s easy to imagine what the future might look like, wouldn’t it be great to find out for certain how accurate our conception of it actually is?

After thoughtfully considering this conundrum, and in the process squandering many hours that could have been better utilized for trifles like working, eating, and sleeping, I’ve come to what I consider the only logical conclusion.

First of all, for either of these scenarios to occur, time travel would be required. Assuming mankind obtains this ability sometime in the next two decades or so, I’m going to buy myself a time machine, which I will use to travel back to meet with my great-great-grandparents. That journey won’t just be through time, though. It’ll also be geographical, since I know for a fact that I’ve got progenitors from both Ireland and Hungary, and perhaps from parts of North America as well.

Once time travel has been normalized there’ll be plenty of vehicles to choose from, and with that in mind I’m going to opt for a really big one. That’s because what I plan to do after briefly experiencing what life in their world was like is to transport all 16 of my great-greats back to the present, where I can update them on what life is like here in the first quarter of the 21st century.

I’ve got nothing against any of my forebears, but I suspect that after getting a taste of what life in the middle of the 1800s entailed, I’ll be ready to return to a world with electricity and indoor plumbing, to name just two amenities I’d prefer not to go without for long.

Another reason that going back in time makes more sense than journeying ahead: suppose I travel forward four generations, only to arrive and subsequently find out that I don’t have any great-great grandkids?

Or, even worse, that nobody does. <

Insight: Déjà vu thought through

By Ed Pierce
Managing Editor

The other night I had a dream in which I was in a dark movie theater watching “The Sound of Music” with my date, Angela Cartwright, who was an actress who appeared in that film as Brigitta von Trapp.

Angela Cartwright portrayed Penny
Robinson on the 1960s TV series
'Lost in Space.' COURTESY PHOTO

Angela Cartwright was a longtime crush of mine growing up in the 1960s. Along with “The Sound of Music,” she starred as Penny Robinson in the classic television show “Lost in Space” and portrayed the stepdaughter of Danny Thomas on “Make Room for Daddy.”

I never missed anything with Angela Cartwright in it and so it’s interesting that she showed up in my dream 60 years later. But it seems the concept of people coming and going in my life has been a recurring theme for me.

For several years while I was attending college in the 1970s, I worked at a business called American Furniture Company. It was a physically demanding job that only paid me $2.70 an hour.

My duties were to unpack boxes of furniture delivered on the loading dock, remove the furniture from plastic coverings and ask a store merchandiser where it needed to be displayed on the sales floor. Unpacking and preparing it for display was the easy part, carrying it out to the sales floor was the hard part.

Some of the sofas and large couches were heavy and the store owner would only let us carry the furniture by their arms, thereby protecting them if we bumped into doorways. The merchandisers were tough and demanding, wanting these new pieces of furniture displayed immediately and they were not always kind to dock workers like me.

But one merchandiser was. Jerry Sena was always friendly and good-natured and laughed a lot with the dock workers. He always treated me with respect, and I found out he was an avid tennis player.

During Wimbledon or the U.S. Open, Jerry would pause at the display of televisions on the sales floor to see if Jimmy Connors or Cris Evert was playing in a match that day. If he was directing us to the location where he wanted the sofa or dinette set placed on the sales floor, I knew he was aware of how heavy the load we were carrying was, and he would give us a chance to stop and take a small break at some point.

Eventually I asked for a raise from $2.70 to $3 per hour at American Furniture. The store owner told me he would give me a 5-cent raise to $2.75 but since I had only worked there for two years, his policy was not to pay anyone $3 an hour unless they had worked for him for five years.

I moved on and eventually enlisted in the U.S. Air Force and following my military experience, I obtained my degree in journalism and started to work for newspapers as a reporter about 13 years after working for American Furniture Company.

One of the jobs I worked at was as a reporter for a twice-a-week newspaper called the Valencia County News-Bulletin in Valencia County, New Mexico.

Not long after being hired there, I was at my desk typing when I heard a voice speaking on the phone in a nearby cubicle and it sounded familiar. For several weeks if I was at my desk in the mornings, I would hear this voice and I racked my brain trying to figure out where I had heard it before.

One day I left my desk and walked over to that cubicle and discovered that the voice belonged to an advertising representative for the newspaper. When I introduced myself as the new reporter for the News-Bulletin newspaper and shook his hand, I realized that it was Jerry Sena.

We worked together for several years there before I moved to Florida, and I would sometimes have dinner with Jerry and his wife Yvonne at their home. To me it was just another example of someone re-entering my life after an absence.

The same can be said of some of my high school classmates, many of whom I had last seen in the early 1970s.

One day in November 2000, I was working for a newspaper in Florida and the phone rang. On the other end of the line was a former high school classmate of mine named Bob Fay.

He told me that I was on a list of missing school classmates, and he was tracking people down so I could be invited to our 30th high school reunion in 2001.

As it turned out, going to that reunion brought many people I knew and had grown up with back into my life after a stretch of more than 30 years. As I reconnected with them, I felt grateful and was happy to learn what had happened to them in their lives.

Through the years, some of my classmates who attended that 30th reunion celebration passed away, so the chance to see and talk to them again is not lost on me.

There’s an old saying I once heard that “people come into your life for a reason, a season, or a lifetime.” In my case, I can certainly attest to that as the truth. <

Barbara Bagshaw: Maine’s educational leadership is failing our students

By State Rep. Barbara Bagshaw

I am encouraged that the woeful state of Maine’s education system is finally getting some public attention. Sadly, it is negative attention at both the national and state levels. For some time, parents, teachers and many students have been calling for a change in focus and a return to teaching the basics.

State Rep. Barbara Bagshaw

Just recently the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) released its’ results for 2024. NAEP measures the reading and mathematics proficiency of 4th grade and 8th grade students in American public schools.

It is one of a handful of nationwide standardized tests that can be used by policy makers to evaluate the effectiveness of state public education systems.

Since 2013, Maine spent 71 percent more per pupil, a total of $26,000 per student. Despite increased spending, the results of the NAEP report are disturbing:

· Maine had the biggest drop in reading and math proficiency in the country, falling 10 percentage points since 2019.

· Just 33 percent of Maine fourth graders are proficient in math.

· Only 26 percent of those fourth graders were proficient in reading.

· Only 25 percent of eighth graders were proficient in math and 26 percent in reading.

To begin to fix the problem, we need to start at the top.

Clearly what Maine is doing as a state is failing our students. We can no longer afford to focus on experimental diversity, equity and inclusion and gender issues at the expense of traditional learning.

That, unfortunately, is not the position of Maine’s Commissioner of Education. Before our committee, she stated that “unfortunately academics will have to take the back seat” to social-emotional learning and gender studies.

Our test scores are abysmal, and it seems that the powers that be are satisfied with that. When questioned about out low scores, they stated they see the scores as “neither good nor bad.” We are spending the most we ever have on education – with the results the worst they’ve ever been.

This session, I have sponsored and co-sponsored a number of bills designed to strengthen education and promote school choice bills. Unfortunately, Maine’s educational leadership and its focus on everything but student achievement, is failing us.

Through my extensive work with school systems, I’ve learned that the legal firm Drummond and Woodsum is running most of Maine’s schools – they have a monopolistic grip on school boards across Maine.

School Boards are never given an opportunity to hear any other legal opinions – they are at the mercy of Drummond & Woodsum’s interpretation which is always very left leaning. In fact, school board members are told if you have angry citizens come to a school board meeting, listen to them and essentially disregard what they say.

Local school boards and parents need access to as much information as possible in order to make sound decisions that affect our children’s future.

As a former art teacher, I understand that social emotional learning is important. Music, teachers and sports coaches also understand the value of social emotional learning. In spite of that, it cannot be at the expense of academics. We have excellent teachers in the state of Maine. We should give all the new teachers a raise, as well as stepping up the pay of all our seasoned, beloved teachers. This can be done without raising taxes if we prioritize Maine citizens over illegal aliens.

As a member of the Education Committee, I am committed to giving parents a greater voice in their children’s education and finding ways to improve student learning. I had the opportunity to go to a School Choice Summit for legislators in Utah last summer. They, in fact, say where there is choice, there is instant improvement in public schools because there is choice.

Maine taxpayers deserve choices.

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: The folly of competing with St. Patrick

By Andy Young

Relatively few people are familiar with St. Gertrude of Nivelles, who, when she was 10 years old, rejected her social-climbing, ambitious father’s proposal that she marry the son of an influential duke.

Later the selfless young woman ran a monastery that provided care and shelter for travelers, the sick, and the elderly. Worn out by a life of perpetual piety, fasting, and charity, she died at age 33, and was justifiably canonized by Pope Clement XII in 1677, a mere 1,018 years after her death.

I didn’t know this until recently. Nor, in all likelihood, did anyone who is reading this. But that’s not our fault.

The person responsible for America’s collective ignorance on this particular subject is the knucklehead who decided to declare March 17 as St. Gertrude of Nivelles Day. What’s dumber than pitting this altruistic woman’s “day” against a fellow saint’s day of commemoration? And not just any saint, but the one who drove every snake out of Ireland!

Surprisingly though, St. Gertrude’s press agent was far from the stupidest publicist of all time.

Few people know March 17 is also Doctor-Patient Trust Day. But given that hardly anyone thinks of anything not green and/or related to St. Paddy that day, it’s no wonder so many people currently distrust their doctor(s).

Why would anyone in their right mind choose to commemorate a person or an event on a day that’s already universally recognized for something else? If I were in charge of doing public relations for doctor-patient trust or St. Gertrude, I’d fire the underling(s) responsible for choosing March 17 for our cause’s special day and replace them with someone possessing at least an ounce of common sense.

Trying to draw national attention to a person or organization on St. Patrick’s Day is pure folly. But March 17 isn’t the only date that’s been foolishly chosen by some clueless publicity agent(s).

If you haven’t consumed any breadsticks lately, perhaps that’s because the morons in charge of making people desire these slender, crisp delicacies chose the final day of October as National Breadstick Day.

The people whose job it is to boost breadstick sales aren’t the only imbecilic publicizers who chose Halloween as the one day of the year to call attention to their product or cause.

National Magic Day, National Unity Day, National Knock-Knock Joke Day, National Muddy Dog Day, and Girl Scout Founders Day all fall on Oct. 31, the one date each year where virtually everyone with a pulse is fixated on Halloween.

It’s no wonder illiteracy is on the rise, given that both International Book Giving Day and Read to Your Child Day fall on Feb. 14, a date when most people have romance on their minds. No wonder reading has plummeted from the already-low spot it had previously occupied on the average American’s priorities list.

Another worthy cause has chosen Valentine’s Day for its annual call for attention, but whoever opted for designating Feb. 14 as National Impotence Day either has an affinity for irony or a mean streak the size of the Grand Canyon.

Unfamiliar with copyright laws? Blame it on the dope who made Jan. 1 Copyright Law Day. And don’t expect any dramatic rise in vegetarianism this year, since Independence from Meat Day falls, along with National Hillbilly Day, Jackfruit Day, and Invisible Day, on July 4.

Anyone responsible for promoting a specific cause who willingly chooses the date of a pre-existing national celebration for their annual “Day” clearly has rocks in their head.

Competent publicists, it seems, are rarer than invisible, impotent, breadstick-eating hillbillies who tell knock-knock jokes and trust their doctors. <