Spring edition of Echoes magazine blends past, present

    Lucy Leaf thought she would be OK when she determined the tick that bit her was not a deer tick. Learning she was mistaken is just one of the lessons she shares in the new edition of Echoes magazine.
    Lucy’s “tick-borne journey” through illness, diagnosis and treatment for lyme disease is one of a number of articles in the April-June Echoes that balance recollections of the past with features about life today.
    Hollie Gowen of Presque Isle fills the colorful center spread with loving faces of the animals and people to be found at the Central Aroostook Humane Society in Presque Isle. She writes from the heart in “Saving Strays,” tracing the history of the organization to its present-day service to the community and its critters.
    Kathryn Olmstead unearthed photos from 1979, when central Aroostook County was trying to save Loring Air Force Base, to provide context for a feature story on the enterprises housed there today as components of the Loring Commerce Centre. Ray Burby of Caribou provided a 2010 aerial panorama of Loring for Echoes’ cover.
    Larry Conrad takes readers on a walk in Aroostook County that he took in 2008 to celebrate the completion of his income taxes. His “Spring in Aroostook” is a bookend to “Serenity,” the last essay in the magazine by Barbara Shaw who writes about walking to school as a girl growing up in Williamstown, New Brunswick.
    Echoes No. 96 debuts a new column by Dottie Hutchins of Presque Isle — a revival of the genealogical column “Tapping Family Trees,” started in the 1990s by Mary Humphrey of Washburn who wrote for Echoes until her death in 2004. In her first column, Dottie explains her attraction to family history and invites readers to send their requests for information about their ancestors.
    Regular columnist John Dombek calls up his best talents as a humorist to re-create the night he accompanied his granddaughter on the piano for her performance in the grade school talent show. A rendition of “Good Night, Irene” has never been funnier than the account he presents in “Showtime for Nicki.”
    Glenna Johnson Smith maintains in “My Wild Night” that she would probably have been suspended from the University of Maine had she not been dating a star athlete from Easton when she, her boyfriend Don Smith and an older couple were stranded in a filling station overnight in an April snowstorm. “Rules concerning girls were rigidly enforced in the 1930s and ‘40s and our dean followed the rules,” Glenna writes in her column “Old County Woman.”
    Alice True Larkin (Larrabee) of Boothbay and Sue Dahlgren Daigneault of North Berwick both pay tribute to their fathers in essays titled “Two Rows of Corn” and “Play Ball,” respectively. Larkin’s father would not let a good deed go uncompensated and provided an enduring example of gratitude for his daughter.
    Echoes’ hallmark color photography is provided by Karen Morway of Danforth, Michael Gudreau of Presque Isle and Mike McNally of Ashland, in addition to Burby’s views of Loring.
    Echoes is published quarterly by Echoes Press of Caribou, and printed by Print Works of Presque Isle. For information visit www.echoesofmaine.com.