A year after locals tried using an Internet auction site to sell off 80 or so church pews, there are still about 70 left.

So, they’re cutting the prices.

“The Internet was a bust,” said Rita Dube, executive director of the Franco-American Heritage Center at St. Mary’s.

Her group was trying to raise money for its ongoing renovation of the former church by selling off the heavy, wooden benches.

A few were sold at the initial prices of between $800 and $1,200, depending on the size.

Fourteen went to the new district courthouse on Lisbon Street. Several local people bought them after seeing news stories about the sale.

The Internet site, eBay, did nothing, though.

So, the center has dropped the prices to $500, $650 and $750.

“We’ve got plenty for everyone,” Dube said.

– Daniel Hartill
Not funny

Education Secretary Rod Paige said he was joking this week when he called the nation’s largest teachers’ union a “terrorist organization.”

But U.S. Rep. Tom Allen wasn’t amused.

Allen, a Maine Democrat, has joined the list of lawmakers, union members and organizations calling for Paige’s resignation for referring to the National Education Association as a “terrorist organization” during a meeting earlier this week.

The association is America’s largest teachers’ union. It oversees the Maine Education Association.

In a press release issued Friday, Allen said Paige has made a number of other hostile remarks. During one April 2003 interview, Allen said, Paige suggested that public schools were inferior to private Christian schools because “there are so many different kids with different kinds of values.”

But Allen likely won’t get to see Paige lose his job any time soon.

Paige has said he won’t resign. President Bush has said he won’t fire him.

– Lindsay Tice
The traffic trap

The kid had a red crewcut and he flashed a toothy smile. In one hand he held a cardboard sign. The other hand was extended, thumb leveled at oncoming traffic. A jolly looking hitchhiker with a homemade sign that said “Mongolia or bust.”

He stood on the sidewalk in front of Denny’s Restaurant, grinning like a goof, a kid of maybe 19 trying to get to Central Asia. Another guy was there, moving around the hitchhiker and taking photographs at several angles.

Cars and trucks moved past them at a snail’s speed in Court Street traffic. Some drivers honked. Others read the hitchhiker’s sign and shook their heads.

We don’t know how the happy hitchhiker planned to get to Mongolia by way of Court Street. The photographer’s role in the endeavor remained a mystery. Attempts to talk to them were unsuccessful.

By the time I meandered through the traffic, got to my destination and returned, the kid with the crewcut and the toothy smile was gone. Another story lost to the traffic trap called Court Street.

— Mark LaFlamme