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. <

Insight: Gazing once more into my crystal ball

By Ed Pierce
Managing Editor

I can’t be labeled as a “traditionalist” because I don’t stay up to watch the annual countdown in Times Square on New Year’s Eve, and I certainly do not make New Year’s resolutions.

But way back in the 1990s, I never missed a Dec. 31 episode of ABC’s Nightline television program because that was their annual predictions show. Nightline’s host, Ted Koppel, would bring back the same panel every year of fearless prognosticators including Pulitzer Prize winning columnist and former presidential speechwriter William Safire; renowned economist Arthur Laffer, who was the so-called “architect of the 1980s supply side economics” movement; and witty former Sports Illustrated writer Frank Deford, the dean of American sports commentary.

For me, it was always a gripping hour of television, and I always appreciated the keen insight of Koppel, who was able to move with ease from topics ranging from politics to religion to business to sports, all while keeping the esteemed panelists’ egos in check and the discussion centered on what they thought would be the breaking news in the unknown year ahead. Sadly, after Koppel retired as Nightline host in 2005, the Nightline prediction show came to an end. Safire died of pancreatic cancer in 2009 and Deford passed away at age 78 in 2017.

But on New Year’s Eve in 2021, I revived the spirit of Nightline’s predictions show by sharing a few annual predictions of my own here in this column.

To recap my predictions for 2024 in The Windham Eagle, it’s interesting to see how accurate or lacking my sixth sense was in the past year.

** I predicted that Purdue would win the NCAA Men’s College Basketball Tournament in April by defeating Houston in the championship game and that the San Francisco 49ers would defeat the Miami Dolphins in Super Bowl LVIII in February. I also predicted that the Philadelphia Phillies would win the 2024 World Series by defeating the Houston Astros and that Oklahoma would win the national college football championship in an undefeated season. For real, Purdue lost to Connecticut in the Men’s College Basketball championship game in April, while Kansas City beat San Francisco in the Super Bowl in February. The Los Angeles Dodgers won this year’s World Series in October over the New York Yankees, and Michigan won the 2024 national college football championship by defeating Washington in January. In recapping my predictions, I did have Purdue and San Francisco 49ers both reach their respective title games, but they each lost, and all my other predictions were also wrong. All four of my championship predictions for the past year were wrong.

** I incorrectly predicted that NASA would successfully launch Artemis II in November for a manned spaceflight around the moon and back to Earth as the U.S. took its first steps to establish a scientific mission there. That mission has now been pushed back to April 2026 at the earliest. Once again, I was incorrect about this prediction too.

** Per last year’s prediction, “Oppenheimer” indeed won the Best Picture Academy Award in April. However, “Barbie” director Greta Gerwig didn’t win the best director award, Christopher Nolan did for “Oppenheimer.” Paul Giamatti didn’t win the best actor award for “The Holdovers,” Cillian Murphy did for “Oppenheimer.” Carey Mulligan didn’t win as the best actress award for “Maestro,” instead, Emma Stone did for “Poor Things.” Therefore, I only got one out four predictions right in this category.

Here are my new predictions for 2025 and when we revisit this end-of-year column in The Windham Eagle again a year from now, let’s see how accurate my conjectures turn out to be.

** “Conclave” a fictional dramatization about the election of a new pope will win the Academy Award for Best Picture. Timothée Chalamet will take home the Best Actor Oscar for the film “A Complete Unknown” about singer Bob Dylan. Kate Winslet will win Best Actress for her starring role in “Lee.” Ridley Scott will win the Academy Award for Best Director for “Gladiator II.”

** Houston will defeat Mississippi State on a last-second shot to win the NCAA men’s college basketball tournament in April. The Baltimore Ravens will defeat the Philadelphia Eagles to win the Super Bowl in February. The Atlanta Braves will crush the Kansas City Royals to win the World Series in five games in October. The Notre Dame Fighting Irish will upset Oregon to claim the NCAA College Football Championship in January.

** Two different hurricanes will strike Miami Beach in September and the saturated wet soil will lead to a frightening collapse of at least five major high-rise condo and apartment buildings there. It will lead to the evacuation of other buildings on the beach and many people living there will have no place to go. Converted airplane hangers will be used to house thousands of displaced residents, and they will be living there for months.

Once again, I probably need to remind you that I’m certainly not in the league of Nostradamus or the distinguished celebrity Nightline panel, but as playwright Eugene Ionesco once said, “You can only predict things after they have happened.”

Wishing a Happy New Year in 2025 to one and all.

Andy Young: Incompetence pays a dividend

By Andy Young

Like many males of his generation, my father was exceptionally good at working with his hands. Trained as an electrician, he also learned basic carpentry, mechanics, masonry, plumbing, and auto body repair. He could fix anything, so naturally he tried to pass some of his very practical abilities on to his children, starting with his oldest son.

Much to Dad’s disappointment, I wasn’t the most eager or hardworking apprentice. However, I ultimately mastered every skill he had, except those related to electricity, carpentry, mechanics, masonry, plumbing, and auto body repair. Today the only talent I have that he didn’t came courtesy of my maternal grandfather’s DNA. I can change nearly any indoor light bulb without needing a stepladder, something my 5-foot-7 father couldn’t always accomplish.

My failure to pick up any of those valuable skills was as much due to impatience as it was to any innate disability. Then, as now, I enjoyed trying things I quickly excelled at, but if I couldn’t master something instantly frustration kicked in, followed in short order by indifference, disdain, and, depending on how long certain adults insisted I keep trying, deep loathing.

In retrospect, being able to perform what some consider basic tasks would have saved me thousands of dollars over the years. Paying people to keep cars running efficiently, unclog pipes, repair furniture, put up sheetrock and rewire electrical outlets is expensive. Perhaps that’s why I haven’t taken any cruises or invested in any timeshares recently.

Or ever.

But every so often having a limited skill set can come in handy. Late last month my washing machine stopped completing the “spin” part of its job, meaning every load of laundry needed to be wrung out, item by item, and then line dried in the basement, since even a dope like me knows enough not to put dripping clothing into an electric dryer.

Getting a repairman to come diagnose (and subsequently fix) a large home appliance is difficult under normal circumstances, but it’s next to impossible to find one during the holidays. The few potential repairers who responded to my phone calls indicated they wouldn’t be available until the second week of the new year. There would be a significant cost just to have them show up, and the price of parts and labor was likely to dwarf that initial fee. The machine was already elderly when I moved into my current residence nine years ago, so a number of my well-meaning friends suggested I cut my losses and buy a new one. I considered that until I learned what new washing machines cost.

So, I did what comes naturally: nothing. But as my supply of clean clothing dwindled, I realized I needed to take action. I tentatively put in a test load consisting of just washcloths, socks, underwear, and thin t-shirts, all items which could, if necessary, be squeezed out manually and then hung up to dry. But before starting I felt around under the washing machine’s agitator and found two separate sizable wads of dried paper towels, which I hypothesized might have once been wet paper towels that maybe, just maybe, could have messed up my washer’s inner workings. The laundry came out fine, as did the next load, which consisted of heavier items like sheets, towels, jeans, and sweatshirts.

My inability to get anyone to come out and relieve me of several hundred dollars to see if my washing machine was salvageable resulted in the problem resolving itself, saving me lots of money and stress in the process.

It doesn’t happen often, but sometimes, against all odds, ineptitude actually pays off. <