I’M JUST CURIOUS: Hiding your treasures

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by Debbie Walker

Some people have money/jewelry they prefer to keep in a “hidy hole” (oops, that’s day care speak) instead of a safety deposit box. Sometimes when you need your hidden treasure, if it’s in your home it is available to you 24/7.

In hiding your treasures there are some of what I see as common and well known. My favorite, new to me, is to cut open (slit) a tennis ball and put treasure inside. Who is going to steal tennis balls? Following are some of the suggestions you might use for your hidden treasure:

Toilet tanks – You would stuff your things in a jar. Place inside the tank. Make sure nothing is taped inside the lid.

Freezers – Credit cards and cash frozen in blocks of ice and plastic zipper, freezer bags.

Pantries – Try cereal boxes, flower bags and coffee cans. (The coffee can reference reminded me of my friend whose dad used to distrust the bank or anyone else. He would bury the coffee cans in his garden. We often wondered how he knew where they all were.)

Bookshelves – You can buy hollowed-out Bibles and dictionaries online. Or you can just slip the money or credit card into any book and just be careful where you choose the book. (I think I would pick one of my cookbooks that I never use, at least they would now have a purpose.)

Underfloor boards – Construction is done a little differently these days. I have found hidden places in the back of drawers that come out. Also, you can pick an area behind a moveable piece of furniture and lift the carpet in that one spot and slip the money into.

Your closet – a thief would have a lot of work to do to get to my stash. They would get tired looking.

Drawers – This is one of the places I wouldn’t bother because they like looking in the woman’s drawer. Might be the first place some would look. There are some dressers that have the top that opens to show a hiding place. It might work, it’s called “out of sight, out of mind”.

Air vent: the robber probably didn’t watch any NCIS shows recently. They always look there for valuables

In a clock: I like this one and, of course, my wall clock would be my choice.

Jar or container: in a smaller inside jar surrounded by nuts and put in kitchen cabinet.

Bird house: You can use an unoccupied bird house to keep your spare keys. You should screen off the entrance to birds.

Diaper: You are at the beach and have no place for your keys, use a clean one!

Curtain: Some hems on curtains are open and would be an excellent place to hide small things.

Socks: Socks in your draw can be a great hiding place. A folded pair of socks will work because no one is likely to checking every pair.

Vases – An opaque vase conceals money quite well. Throw some fake flowers in and no one will ever notice.

There are probably many more than I have here, but I have run out of time.

I’m just curious where your favorite hiding place is. Contact me with questions or comments at DebbieWalker@townline.org. Be careful and stay warm.

REVIEW POTPOURRI: Nikita Khruschev

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Nikita Khruschev

Peter Catesby Peter Cates

Nikita Khruschev

During these times of conflict in Ukraine, I was led to read up on former Soviet premier Nikita Khruschev (1894-1971), as he was the head Rus­sian grizzly in Moscow for most of my formative years between 1953 and 1964. I vividly remember first encountering his toothy grin and shiny bald headed dome via the AP wire photos on the front page of the Waterville Morning Sentinel when he toured the U.S. in 1959 (the one of Khruschev with former President Ike Eisenhower, whose own broad smile and similar bald top got my innocent mind thinking they were brothers.).

Also Khruschev was born and brought up in Ukraine. Through his own shrewd intelligence, he overcame his impoverished background and became quite the useful yes man to Joseph Stalin by the 1930s Great Terror. In 1937, Stalin appointed him Deputy Comissar of Ukraine, whereupon Khruschev initiated mass arrests and executions.

In his Memoirs, which should be taken with a grain of salt, Khruschev tells of first meeting Laventi Beria (1899-1953), who was the KGB Chief for over 12 years and whom Stalin proudly introduced to FDR and Churchill as “my Himmler. ”

Khruschev tells of how they were both fellow Ukrainians, drinking buddies and connoisseurs of dirty jokes. It was only later on when Beria was becoming the number two man to Stalin and gladly ordered arrests, torture and executions on a grand scale that Khruschev and others in Stalin’s inner circle realized what a sociopath Beria was.

After Stalin’s death in March 1953, Beria was scheming to replace Stalin and had much of the security apparatus under his control. Khruschev and his like-minded colleagues lured Beria to a secret meeting where he was kidnapped, imprisoned, and executed along with five of his subordinates.

The fascinating details can also be read in Wikipedia and other sources.

Compared to Stalin, Khruschev was quite easy going but far from democratic in his own mix of good and bad, and Wikipedia goes into exhaustive detail.

In October 1962, Khruschev and former U.S. President John F. Kennedy locked heads during the Cuban missile crisis; two years later, Khruschev was replaced by Alexei Kosygin and Leonid Brezhnev.

VETERANS CORNER: March 3 recognizes paid and unpaid care givers

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by Gary Kennedy

March, named for the Roman God, Mars, must have been a very confused god as he allowed more than a 120 holidays to be celebrated in the month of March. I went through the list and came up with two favorites. The first was National Corn Beef Day. I am a big fan of corn beef and cabbage, with a few other vegetables thrown in and cooked for four hours, slowly. I guess it’s the Irish in me but I just can’t get enough of that great stuff. My mother was great with this dish. She added dumplings, which you have to have a taste for. They are great when they take on the flavors of all that is in the pot, corn beef cooked slowly will melt in your mouth. It becomes very tender, especially if you pick out a fatty one. I can see some of you going, “yuck”. You probably would prefer Vegan, not me.

Well, now that I am hungry, let me go on to the other holiday that I chose and that is Care Givers Day. When I think of this day it places a big smile on my face. Some of my greatest and best friends around the world are not thinking about world domination but the caring of others. Most of these people are humanitarians and do this work out of love and heart. Some also receive a stipend for giving this service.

In any case it takes a special person to perform in this capacity. Most caregivers come with some training which is usually given at some medical level. These folks are usually well versed in the care of those in need of a helping hand. Places such as our VA system give online classes which carry some detail at many different levels, as there are several levels and situations of need.

Unless these folks are lucky enough to come from a wealthy family or inherit a lot of money they will never be among the rich. However, wealth is not necessarily measured monetarily. You can’t buy happiness and that is what many of the Caregivers bring to the table. When you wake in the morning knowing you’ve helped another or about to do that, it’s a wonderful feeling. Our world is in such disarray it sometimes feels overwhelming but you know you must carry on and pray for the best. Caring for the ill, disabled and elderly requires tens of millions of these caregivers. Some of these wonderful people even give up their careers in order to fulfill this mission.

November is National Care Giver Appreciation Month. I personally like March 3 as it picks a particular day in which to recognize and appreciate both the paid and unpaid Care Givers. Some of us do this freely and even spend our own money. This can be a thankless job with even family members avoiding doing it. Also, there are organizations that give a stipend yet they don’t truly offer the support necessary to accomplish the labor of love before them. If you’re in it just for the money you are in it for the wrong reason, and are wasting your time and the well being of others, as you probably don’t know what you’re doing.

When it comes to our veterans I fight to the bitter end and try my best to expose the inadequacies of the system as well as the individual care. I try to get the word out to all our vets, especially those I work with. They most likely are in need of aid and attendance if they are asking for it. Its only common sense that if one of our soldiers reaches out, he or she is most likely in need. We have programs out there now for them that are relatively easy to get but are not properly run. You’ve heard me mention the “Peter Principle” in the past and that is where the buck stops. Those that get placed into positions they have no business being in are the ones that damage and can’t manage these much needed programs. When you ask a question relative to their mission statement and they answer, “I don’t know”, then you know you have just met someone who has succumbed to the Peter Principle.

If you are a moderate to severely damaged veteran, either physically or psychologically, then perhaps you are in need and qualify for a caregiver. The caregiver can be your wife or a significant other. Most likely they will qualify for a stipend of at least $1,600 per month, tax free and possible benefits. That person will receive some caregiver training via online. It’s well worth looking into. For veterans, call 623-8411-0 and ask for the Veterans Advocate and then the booklet on the eligibility for the Caregiver Program. Don’t let your veteran go it alone if he/she needs a little or a lot of help. It will be very beneficial for the veteran and rewarding for you, so there you have it.

This is my conversation over a great Corned Beef Dinner. You will respect this meal on St. Patrick’s Day. I will remind you. Take care my friends and God Bless America and those others who are suffering in the world. Also, pray for our brothers and sisters under siege. God only knows they need much more than our prayers. One more thing: since I write “Veterans Corner” I address the needs of veterans. However, the state and federal governments have programs as well which address non veterans. Stay safe and take “Care”.

FOR YOUR HEALTH – Fact Or Fiction: COVID-19 Vaccine And Booster Myths Debunked

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To boost your chances of staying healthy, get a COVID vaccine booster.

(NAPSI)—Two years into the COVID-19 pandemic, myths and misperceptions about COVID and vaccines continue to arise and evolve on social media, online and in daily conversation. Getting facts from a reliable source can keep myths from complicating decisions about getting vaccinated and boosted or following other prevention measures.

“Misinformation tends to spread rapidly, and it can be difficult for people to sort fact from fiction,” said Dr. Shaefer Spires, Assistant Professor of Medicine and Medical Director of Duke Antimicrobial Stewardship Outreach Network at Duke University School of Medicine. “But at this point in the fight against COVID, there is no doubt that keeping up on vaccinations gives people the strongest defense against serious illness.”

Here are the facts behind COVID vaccine and booster myths:

Myth: The need for booster shots is a sign that the vaccines aren’t working.

Fact: Science shows that COVID vaccines are working well to prevent severe illness, hospitalization, and premature death. However, studies show that protection against mild and moderate disease can decrease gradually over time, and boosters can make your protection last longer. They can also help protect you against new variants.

Myth: Vaccinated and boosted people no longer need to wear masks or social distance.

Fact: Even though vaccines reduce the risk of spreading and getting COVID, the virus can still be passed through the air as people breathe and talk, especially in crowded and poorly ventilated spaces. To help prevent the spread of COVID and reduce risk of infection, everyone ages 2 years and older should wear the best-fitting mask available to them while in public indoor areas regardless of their vaccination status. In general, people do not need to wear masks when outdoors.

Myth: Since there are more ways to treat COVID, getting vaccinated is no longer necessary. 

Fact: Many advances have been made in the fight against COVID, but treatments have limitations and it is always better to prevent disease in the first place. Some treatments, including antivirals like “the COVID pill,” must be taken within days of getting COVID and are only for people at highest risk. Other treatments are taken by injection or intravenously in multiple sessions in a healthcare facility. Treatments are in limited supply and do not keep you from getting COVID. They can also be expensive. Getting vaccinated teaches the body to recognize and fight the virus. No-cost vaccines and boosters offer the best form of protection against severe illness, hospitalization, and premature death.

Myth: Natural immunity from getting sick with COVID is better than the immunity you get from vaccination.

Fact: The risks of getting seriously ill from COVID, or of developing long COVID after infection, far outweigh any potential side effects of COVID vaccines. Getting vaccinated gives most people a high level of protection against severe illness. Current data shows that unvaccinated adults 18 and older are five times more likely to get COVID than vaccinated adults and 16 times more likely to be hospitalized from it than vaccinated adults. Vaccination also protects the people around you since you can spread COVID to others when you are ill. Vaccination even provides more robust protection for people who have already had COVID to reduce the risk of getting infected again.

Myths and misperceptions about COVID, vaccines, and boosters are everywhere, and misinformation can interfere with making informed decisions about getting vaccinated or following other prevention measures—putting people at risk for severe illness, hospitalization, and premature death.

Learn More

For accurate, science-based information about vaccines and boosters, visit www.vaccines.gov.

SCORES & OUTDOORS: How do animals, like deer, survive during the worst of winter

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Roland D. Halleeby Roland D. Hallee

During the blizzard that swept through our area a little while back, I was standing at my kitchen window, watching the bird feeders. To my surprise, even during the peak of the storm, with heavy snowfall and howling winds, the birds kept coming to the feeding stations.

“Tough little buggers,” I thought while watching.

That got me to thinking. How do these animals and birds survive these harsh winters?

So, I decided to do some research on the white-tailed deer. I had recently read an article that said the “mild” winter so far made it easier for the deer to move in search of food. That all changed that weekend. Now that there was a significant amount of additional snow on the ground, how will they survive the remainder of this season?

White-tailed deer have developed a set of adaptations that enable them to survive the deep snow and cold temperatures that occur in Maine. Maine is the northern-most point of their range and there are very few of them north of the St. Lawrence River. Also, the further north you go in their range, the larger the body size, as compared to their counterparts in the south.

According to Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife biologists, deer shed their hair in the spring and fall. The summer hair has solid shafts and lacks the undercoat, but the winter hair has hollow hair shafts, and dense, wool-like under fur, providing effective insulation.

Also, deer will alter their diet to accumulate and retain more fat under their skin and around organs, providing them with insulation and energy reserves for the months that lie ahead. The winter diet is lower in protein and less digestible than the summer diet, requiring more energy to digest and resulting in fewer calories. The stored fat is burned during winter to partially compensate for the lack of energy in the winter diet. Deer will lose weight during the winter. If winters become too long (early start and late finish) deer could run out of stored energy and die.

Fat reserves in adult does can account for up to 30 percent of their body mass in the fall.

Their winter habitat is also important. Dense softwood canopies intercept more snow, resulting in reduced snow depths. Gathering in these areas also allow many deer to share the energy cost of maintaining a trail network to access food and to escape predators.

As you would suspect, the greatest mortality in the winter is found among fawns, followed by adult bucks and then does. Severe winters can drastically deplete the fawn population, resulting in fewer young to mature into adulthood. Consecutive severe winters can have a devastating effect, by as much as 90 percent, of young maturing, depleting the adult herd.

So, should you try to help out these critters?

Although supplemental feeding of deer is usually well-intentioned, it could have some severe adverse effects. Just to touch on a few of the reasons to leave the deer to Mother Nature’s natural course:

  • Supple­mental feeding may actually increase predation. Providing supplemental food sources crowds deer into a smaller area than their usual range, making it easier for coyotes and bobcats to hunt down the deer, by limiting their escape routes;
  • Feeding sites near homes may place deer in danger of free-roaming dogs;
  • Deer feeding stations may increase deer/vehicle collisions. Feeding stations near homes also place the deer in close proximity to well-traveled highways;
  • Deer could actually starve when fed supplemental foods during winter. It takes deer two weeks to adjust to new foods, and could starve in that time period;
  • Deer compete aggressively for scarce, high-quality feeds;
  • They could die from eating too much at one time;
  • Deer concentrations at feeding sites may increase the vulnerability of deer to disease. MDIFW has documented deer concentrations equal to 350 deer per square mile at some feeding sites can cause an outbreak of infectious diseases, such as the bovine tuberculosis in 1994, and more recently, the fear of introduction of Chronic Wasting Disease, which, by 2016, had only been found in deer and moose. Although CWD, a disease that causes weight loss leading to death, has not been detected in Maine, the disease, which originated in the midwest, seems to be making its way east. It is now found in 23 U.S. states and two Canadian provinces.

Finally, predation and vehicle collisions claim more deer during the winter than starvation. Mother Nature has provided well for her creatures, so just sit back and watch them go about their daily routine.

Roland’s trivia question of the week:

Which NFL quarterback has the fewest Super Bowl rings, Peyton Manning, Eli Manning, Ben Roethlisberger, John Elway or Jimmy Garoppolo?

Answer can be found here.

Give Us Your Best Shot! for Thursday, February 24, 2022

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To submit a photo for this section, please visit our contact page or email us at townline@townline.org!

KEEPING WATCH: Joan Chaffee, of Clinton, snapped this immature bald eagle keeping a watchful eye.

BY DAWN’S EARLY LIGHT: Pat Clark, of Palermo, captured this early sunrise last fall.

IT’S MINE: Emily Poulin, of South China, photographed this gold finch seemingly challenging the tufted titmouse at the feeder.

FOR YOUR HEALTH: Building A Stronger Retirement

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A healthy, happy retirement can be easier to achieve if you plan ahead.

(NAPSI)—With each generation’s expected retirement time growing longer and longer, you may need to plan for 20 to 30 years of life after you stop working. And when it comes to ways to save for the future, many Americans think first of the 401(k), the most popular and well-known retirement savings option.

Saving for Your Health

Lesser known—and understood—is another way to save for your future: the Health Savings Account (HSA). With rising healthcare costs that can exceed $10,000 annually during the retirement years, HSAs are gaining more recognition as a smart way to complement 401(k)s and other retirement savings options by helping you plan and save for healthcare costs encountered now and in the future.

The Foundation

Traditional 401(k) plans are popular retirement vehicles for several reasons:

  • Tax advantages: 401(k) contributions are taken out of your paycheck before federal taxes are withheld, which lowers your taxable income. Contributions are also tax-deferred until you withdraw them.
  • More control: You can contribute as much as you want to a 401(k) within your plan and IRS limits, and you can change your contribution at any time.
  • Compound interest: The earlier you start investing in a 401(k), the more time your money has to grow.
  • It moves with you: The money in your 401(k) belongs to you—even if you change jobs, you can keep your money invested and growing.
  • Ease of use: 401(k)s are easy to contribute to, with many employers offering automatic payroll deductions.

Add More Stability and Strength with an HSA

If you save in your HSA as well as a 401(k), you can take advantage of three unique benefits:

1.Triple-tax advantage: No federal taxes on contributions, withdrawals for qualified medical expenses, or investment earnings

2.Build long-term healthcare and retirement savings: Especially with HSA Bank’s self-directed investment options

3.No “use it or lose it”: Investment balances carry over from year to year and grow tax-free (just like the HSA cash account)

Save for Expenses

Tax-free HSA fund withdrawals are limited to IRS-qualified medical expenses, but there’s a lengthy list of future healthcare costs your HSA can pay for, so your 401(k) funds don’t have to. These include everything from acupuncture to a wheelchair and many things in between.

Learn More

For further facts and tips on HSAs and planning your retirement, go to www.hsabank.com.

ERIC’S TECH TALK – My life in video games: a trip through gaming history

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King’s Quest III: To Heir is Human (1986)

by Eric W. Austin

It was sometime in the mid-1980s when my father took me to a technology expo here in Maine. I think it was held in Lewiston, but it might have been some other place. (Before I got my driver’s license, I didn’t know where anything was.) This was at a time when you couldn’t buy a computer down at the local department store. You had to go to a specialty shop (of which there were few) or order the parts you needed through the mail. Or you could go to a local technology expo like we were doing.

They didn’t have fancy gadgets or shiny screens on display like you might see today. No, this was the age of hobbyists, who built their own computers at home. It was very much a DIY computer culture. As we walked through the expo, we passed booths selling hard drives and circuit boards. For a twelve-year-old kid, it wasn’t very exciting stuff. But then we passed a booth with a pile of videogames and my interest immediately piqued.

My father didn’t have much respect for computer games. Computers were for work in his view. Spreadsheets and taxes. Databases and word processing. But I was there for the games.

I dug through the bin of budget games and pulled out the box for a game called King’s Quest III: To Heir is Human. The game was released in 1986, so the expo must have taken place a year or two after that. The King’s Quest games were a popular series of adventure games released by the now defunct developer, Sierra On-Line.

Somehow I convinced my father to buy it for me, but when I got home I found to my disappointment that it was the PC DOS version of the game and would not play on my Apple II computer. I never did get a chance to play To Heir is Human (still one of the cleverest titles for a game ever!), but I never lost my fascination with the digital interactive experience of videogames.

The first videogames did not even involve video graphics. They were text adventure games. I remember playing The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy Game (first released in 1984), which was a text adventure game based on the book series of the same name by Douglas Adams, on a PC in the computer lab at Winslow High School. These games did not have any graphics and everything was conveyed to the player by words on the screen. You would type simple commands like “look north” and the game would tell you there was a road leading away from you in that direction. Then you would type “go north” and it would describe a new scene. These games were like choose-your-own-adventure novels, but with infinitely more possibilities and endless fun. Who knew a bath towel could save your house from destruction or that you could translate alien languages by sticking a fish in your ear?

Wizardry VI: Bane of the Cosmic Forge (1990)

One of my first indelible gaming experiences was playing Wizardry VI: Bane of the Cosmic Forge (released 1990) in my father’s office on a Mac Lisa computer with a six-inch black and white screen. These sorts of games were commonly called “dungeon crawlers” because of their tendency to feature the player exploring an underground, enclosed space, searching for treasure and killing monsters. As was common for the genre at the time, the game worked on a tile-based movement system: press the forward key once, and your character moved forward one space on a grid. The environments for these types of games typically featured a labyrinthine structure, and part of the fun was getting lost. There was no in-game map system, so it was common for players to keep a stack of graph paper and a pencil next to their keyboard. With each step, you would draw a line on the graph paper and using this method you could map out your progress manually for later reference. Some games came with a map of the game world in the box. I remember that Ultima V: Warriors of Destiny (1988) came with a beautiful cloth map, which I thought was the coolest thing ever included with a game.

As I grew up, so did the videogame industry. The graphics improved. The games became more complex. As their audiences matured, games flirted with issues of violence and sexuality. Games like Leisure Suit Larry (1987) pushed into adult territory with raunchy humor and sexual situations, while games like Wolfenstein 3D (1992) had you killing Nazis in an underground bunker in 1940s Germany, depicting violence like never before. These games created quite the controversies in their day from people who saw them as corrupt indicators of coming societal collapse.

Wolfenstein 3D (1992)

In 1996, I bought my first videogame console, the original PlayStation. At the time, Sony was taking a giant gamble, releasing a new console to compete with industry juggernauts like Nintendo and SEGA. The first PlayStation console was the result of a failed joint-effort between Sony and Nintendo to develop a CD-ROM peripheral for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES), a console released in 1991 in North America. When that deal fell through, Sony decided to develop their own videogame system, and that eventually became the PlayStation.

There was a lot of debate during these years about the best medium for delivering content — solid-state cartridges, which were used for the SNES and the later Nintendo-64 (released 1996), or the new optical CD-ROMs used by Sony’s PlayStation. The cartridges used by Nintendo (and nearly every console released before 1995) featured faster data transfer speeds over optical CDs but had a smaller potential data capacity. Optical media won that debate, as the N-64 was the last major console to use a cartridge-based storage format for its games. Funnily enough, this debate has come full-circle in recent years, with the resurgence of cartridge-based storage solutions like flash drives and solid state hard drives. Those storage limitations of the past have mostly been solved, and solid state memory still offers faster data transfer rates over optical options like CD-ROMs or DVDs (or now Blu-Ray).

Star Wars arcade game (1983)

The PlayStation was also built from the ground up to process the new polygonal-based graphic technology that was becoming popular with computer games, instead of the old sprite-based graphics of the past. This was a graphical shift away from the flat, two dimensional visuals that had been the standard up to that point. This shift was an evolution that had taken place over a number of years. First, there was something called vector graphics, which were basically just line drawings in three-dimensional space. I remember playing a Star Wars arcade game (released 1983) with simple black and white vector graphics down at the arcade that used to be located next to The Landing, in China Village, when I was a kid. The game simulated the assault on the Death Star from the original 1977 movie and featured unique flight-stick controls that were very cool to a young kid who was a fan of the films.

Videogame consoles have changed a lot over the years. My cousin owned an SNES and used to bring it up to my house in the summers to play Contra and Super Mario World. Back then, the big names in the industry were Nintendo, SEGA and Atari. Nintendo is the only company from those days that is still in the console market.

Up until the late 1990s, each console was defined by its own unique library of games, with much of the development happening in-house by the console manufacturers. This has changed over the years so that nearly everything today is made by third-party developers and released on multiple platforms. In the early 2000s, when this trend was really taking off, many people theorized it would spell doom for the videogame console market because it was removing each console’s uniqueness, but that has not turned out to be the case.

Videogames are usually categorized into genres much like books or movies, but the genres which have been most popular have changed drastically over the years. Adventure games, usually focused on puzzles and story, ruled the day in the early 1980s. That gave way to roleplaying games (RPGs) through the mid-’90s, which were basically adventure games with increasingly complex character progression systems. With the release of Wolfenstein 3D from id Software in 1992, the world was introduced to the first person shooter (FPS) genre, which is still one of the most popular game types today.

The “first person perspective,” as this type of game is called in videogame parlance, had previously been used in dungeon crawlers like the Wizardry series (mentioned above) and Eye of the Beholder (1991), but Wolfenstein coupled this perspective with a type of action gameplay that proved immediately popular and enduring. Another game I played that would prove to be influential for these type of games was Marathon, an alien shooter game released in 1994 for the Apple Macintosh and developed by Bungie, a studio that would later go on to create the incredibly popular Halo series of games for Microsoft’s Xbox console.

One of the things I have always loved about videogames is the way the industry never sits still. It’s always pushing the boundaries of the interactive experience. Games are constantly being driven forward by improving technology and innovative developers who are searching for new ways to engage players. It is one of the most dynamic entertainment industries operating today. With virtual reality technology advancing quickly and promising immersive experiences like never before, and creative developers committed to exploring the possibilities of emergent gameplay afforded by more powerful hardware, I’m excited to see where the industry heads in the coming decades. If the last thirty-five years are any indication, it should be awesome!

Eric W. Austin writes about technology and community issues. Contact him by email at ericwaustin@gmail.com.

I’M JUST CURIOUS: Home, sweet home

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by Debbie Walker

Here’s wishing everyone felt that way, the warm memories of home. I love my little home but right now I am having a little bit of a hard time keeping anything in place. I know I am like Dolly Parton: trying to put 25 pounds of flour in 10-pound bag. It sure is not working here!

I just read a little blob about “Follow Five Rules of Order”. I can’t remember what magazine I tore the article from, and I hope they would forgive me for using it without giving credit to the writer. What follows is what she had to say:

1. Establish a Routine: When we enter our homes we should put our handbag in a designated place, along with coats, dog leash, and other items. Don’t overload the area. (It would defeat the purpose.)

2. Reset: Every time you use something, put it back in its home. Think of this as “resetting,” so it’s ready the next time you want it. (I hope you are better with that than I am, but I am going to try to improve.)

3. See tasks through: Unfinished chores are a major factor in a disorganized home (Oops, that’s me.) Laundry isn’t done until the clothes are folded and put away. The same would be true with any projects. Don’t start a job unless you have time to finish it. (I flunked again)

4. Cycle items in and out: If you bring something new into your home – from a new winter coat to a newspaper – something else can likely be thrown out or given away. (I am good at bringing it in, but I am not at all good about disposing of something else. I need to at least make an intent.)

5. Work one room at a time: Don’t organize by going back and forth between areas of your home. It will sap your energy and often result in half-finished projects. (That must be what happens here but most likely it is because my little great-granddaughter is nearby.)

How did you do with these? Of course, I believe I would have failed, let me know, please. We can compare notes. But we really aren’t done yet. The same magazine page had the following:

Keep it Clean

EVERY DAY:

Make the bed. Put away clothes and toys. Empty the trash.

ONCE A WEEK:

Do the laundry and put it away. Organize shelves. Go through bins, making sure the items are properly sorted. Straighten up the clothes closet and chest- of-drawers.

ONCE A MONTH

Remove clothing and shoes that no longer fit. Edit down playthings, asking your child to donate one toy for every new item he received that month. (He won’t even remember what he got.) Move toys that your child is outgrowing into a bin – if she doesn’t play with them by the following month, donate them.

Now we have all the tips we need for organizing when we get done with Spring Cleaning, and that time of year is coming up. Never mind the weather. You can always get a head start. By the time spring arrives you will have the time to spend outside.

I’m just curious what tips you would be willing to share. Contact me at DebbieWalker@townline.org with questions and comments. Thanks for reading and have a great week.

REVIEW POTPOURRI – Writer: Sarah Orne Jewett

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Peter Catesby Peter Cates

Sarah Orne Jewett

Sarah Orne Jewett

I have read very little of Maine writer Sarah Orne Jewett (1849-1909) but that little includes a story I very much consider a masterpiece, The White Heron. It depicts a nine-year-old girl, Sylvia, who lives with her grandmother on a farm in a seaside community based on the ones near Jewett’s native South Berwick, such as Wells Beach, Ogunquit and Kittery.

Sylvia has the daily task of driving a cow back from the woods surrounding the house for milking. While doing so, she hears from a visiting hunter that he has seen a white heron, which is a rarity in Maine:

“‘You would know the heron if you saw it….A queen tall white bird with soft feathers and long thin legs. And it would have a nest perhaps in the top of a high tree, made of sticks, something like a hawk’s nest.'”

The description of Sylvia climbing 100 feet or more to the top of an adjoining pine tree atop the highest ridge to get a closer look at the heron and its nest constitutes one of the scariest passages in a story for any reader such as myself who suffer from vertigo:

“Sylvia’s face was like a pale star, if one had seen it from the ground, when the last thorny bough was past, and she stood trembling and tired but wholly triumphant, high in the tree-top….Westward, the woodlands and farms reached miles and miles into the distance; here and there were church steeples, and white villages; truly it was a vast and awesome world.”

Nebraska novelist Willa Cather (1874-1948) once commented that My Antonia was heavily influenced by Sarah Orne Jewett’s own sense of place.

The Mississippi writer Eudora Welty (1909-2001) wrote the following about place in fiction: “the goodness-validity in the raw material of writing…the goodness in the writing itself-the achieved world of appearance, through which the novelist has his whole say and puts his whole case.”

In her depiction of Sylvia’s own peak experience atop those dangerous heights, Sarah Orne Jewett achieved a magnificent sense of place.