NORWAY — Asking a small child questions about fishing is like opening a box of chocolates. You never know what you’ll get for an answer.
Six-year-old Dominic Baughman of Harrison walked toward me on May 31 at the debut Norway Family Fishing Festival. He was proudly carrying his festival limit from Lake Pennesseewassee Stream on a stick: two pretty colorful, but quite dead brook trout.
I took some photos of him with his “trophies,” then started the video camera and asked him what kind of fish he caught.
“Dead fish,” he said, busting up all the adults standing around admiring the catch.
I tried again.
“Polka dot fish,” Dominic said. “They look like polka dots and they’re colorful. They’re yellow and orange.”
One more time. “What kind of fish did you catch?”
“I got them in the river so they’re trout fish; dead,” Dominic said.
Finally his father, Dustin Baughman, said, “Brook trout,” and Dominic mimicked him.
I asked Dominic what he caught the brookies on.
“A lake,” he said.
“No, what did you use for bait?” I asked.
“What did we use to catch them with?” Dustin Baughman asks Dominic.
Dominic points to the fishing rod his father is carrying.
“What did you use for bait?” I asked again.
“We put them in a net,” the child said.
“We used worms,” his father said.
“Yeah, worms,” Dominic said.
— Terry Karkos
Parents approve of military sashes at graduation
LEWISTON — On the morning of the June 6 Lewiston High School graduation, Superintendent Bill Webster tweeted, and wrote on Facebook, that he and Principal Linda MacKenzie “welcome LHS students enlisting in the military to wear their military sashes at graduation. Thank you for serving.”
That followed some controversy after a Poland student was discouraged from wearing her military sash at the Poland Regional High School graduation. The issue quickly became a hot topic.
After the tweet and post, Webster reported that 10 people favored or retweeted the tweet, and on Facebook more than 160 people “liked” it.
“As my Twitter followers tend to be students or younger adults, and my Facebook readers parents, I gather from this that the significance of sashes was very, very strong for parents, less so for students,” Webster said.
— Bonnie Washuk
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