George H.W. Bush witness at Maine same-sex wedding

KENNEBUNK, Maine (AP) — Former President George H.W. Bush was an official witness at the same-sex wedding of two longtime friends, his spokesman said Wednesday.

Bush and his wife, Barbara Bush, attended the ceremony joining Bonnie Clement and Helen Thorgalsen as private citizens and friends on Saturday, spokesman Jim McGrath said.

Thorgalsen posted a photo on her Facebook page showing Bush signing the marriage license as a witness. She captioned the photo: "Getting our marriage license witnessed!"

In the photo, Bush is seated in a wheelchair, a stack of papers on his lap and his left hand poised with a pen. One bright red sock and one bright blue one peek out below the cuffs of his blue slacks.

The 41st president has deep ties to the area and owns a compound in Kennebunkport, a small coastal town. Thorgalsen and Clement own a general store in neighboring Kennebunk. They were honeymooning overseas and didn't immediately respond to an email seeking comment Wednesday.

Gay marriage became legal in Maine in December.

One of Bush's sons, former President George W. Bush, opposed same-sex marriage and in 2004 announced his support for a proposed constitutional amendment to outlaw it. But his wife, Laura Bush, and their daughter Barbara Bush support gay marriage, as does his former vice president, Dick Cheney, whose daughter Mary Cheney is openly gay.

A spokesman for George W. Bush on Wednesday declined to comment on his current feelings about same-sex marriage or his thoughts about his father's role in a same-sex wedding.

In July, George W. Bush made headlines when he said he wouldn't comment on the issue, saying he "shouldn't be taking a speck out of someone else's eye when I have a log in my own." He later explained that he just wasn't going to answer the question because he was out of politics.

His brother Jeb Bush, a former governor of Florida and a potential presidential candidate, has said same-sex marriage is an issue best left to the states to decide. In a speech in June, he told the Faith & Freedom Coalition the nation needs to be supportive of non-traditional families.

Via Yahoo News!

Mother arrested after boy found dead in Maine

Police released a photo of sneakers from the small boy's body that was found in Maine on Saturday.The boy's body was found Saturday near the Maine-New Hampshire borderThe mother faces a charge of second-degree murderShe is scheduled to be at an arraignment ThursdayRead more about this story from CNN affiliate WHDH.

(CNN) -- The mother of a 6-year-old boy found dead in the Maine woods is scheduled to be arraigned Thursday after she was arrested a day earlier, authorities said.

Julianne McCrery, 42, faces a charge of second-degree murder in the death of her son, according to Michael Delaney, the New Hampshire attorney general.

A tip from someone who saw a suspicious vehicle near the boy's body helped police in making the arrest, Delaney said.

McCrery was arrested at a rest stop in a pickup truck that fit the description of the one authorities were looking for, CNN affiliate WHDH reported. She was reading the Bible when she was arrested.

CNN's Anna Gonzalez contributed to this report.

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Whoopie pies spark food fight between Pennsylvania, Maine

BIRD-IN-HAND, Pa. — It consists of two round, textbook-thick, palm-sized chocolate cakes that sandwich a creamy vanilla filling to create one sinfully rich snack. It's the whoopie pie, a snack so beloved that residents in two states have cooked up a good-natured tug of war over which place is its rightful home — Maine or Pennsylvania?

A baker makes whoopie pies at the S. Clyde Weaver market in East Petersburg, Pa.

By Matt Rourke, AP

A baker makes whoopie pies at the S. Clyde Weaver market in East Petersburg, Pa.

A state legislator in Maine whipped up passions when he introduced a bill in January to make the whoopie pie Maine's official state dessert. Like a group of chefs tweaking a recipe, a legislative committee has since dropped "dessert" in favor of making the snack Maine's official "treat."

No matter — residents in Pennsylvania's Lancaster County say that's just baloney. Those round mounds of cakey goodness originated from kitchens of the area's Amish families, dating back generations, they say.

"We've had this thing going with the whoopie pie here for years and years and decades," John Smucker, CEO of the family-run company that owns the Bird-in-Hand Bakery, said as kitchen workers busily put together a batch of red velvet whoopie pies. "And all of a sudden they try to enter into the picture ... It's just a bunch of nonsense."

At the S. Clyde Weaver store in East Petersburg, staff piece together their version of the traditional chocolate-with-vanilla-filling variety.

By Justin David Graybill, AP

People hold signs at a whoopie pie rally held Feb. 19 at Penn Square in Lancaster, Pa.

"We do the original," baker Nancy Rexroad said. "When something's the original, you can't improve on it."

Maine state Rep. Paul Davis got things brewing with a bill to laud the whoopie pie. Davis got the idea from speaking with people at the Maine Whoopie Pie Festival, which last year attracted 4,000 visitors to Dover-Foxcroft, part of Davis' district.

Amos Orcutt, president of the Maine Whoopie Pie Association, was one of the Mainers who lobbied Davis to make a stand. In a phone interview, Orcutt, whose full-time job is president of the University of Maine Foundation, said he got steamed after reading a New York Times story on whoopie pies in March 2009 that cited food historians on the likelihood that the whoopie pie got its start in Pennsylvania.

"Having grown up in Maine, I used that well-worn term 'appalled and aghast,' so I started looking into it," Orcutt said. "A lot of our older alumni said, 'Oh no, I remember whoopie pies as a child."

Davis said he's been told Maine whoopie pies may date back as far as 1925. The website for Labadie's Bakery in Lewiston, Maine, says bakers there started making whoopie pies that year.

About the time he read the Times story, Orcutt said a local high school's mock legislature exercise proposed a "bill" to give the whoopie pie the official dessert designation.

"One thing led to another, and folks kept saying, 'Well, gee, you've got to do something about it,'" Orcutt said. Davis estimates that about 400 to 500 bakeries — from commercial operators to small-town markets to individuals who sell kitchen-baked goods at farmers markets — sell whoopie pies.

Word of Davis' bill reached the Pennsylvania Dutch Convention and Visitors Bureau in Lancaster, and organizers there decided to answer back. They touted a website — www.saveourwhoopie.com — that likened Maine's actions to "confectionary larceny."

Area residents say Amish and other Pennsylvania Dutch families have passed down whoopie pie recipes for generations. Smucker said his bakery's recipe dates back at least 50 years to his grandmother's kitchen. Further west in Pennsylvania, the treats were also known in the Johnstown area as "gobs."

Dan Neff, owner and president of the S. Clyde Weaver market, said he suspected that one possible origin for the whoopie pie was home cooks looking for a creation to replace cream-filled doughnuts, which would be difficult to make in a home kitchen.

Smucker relayed another story passed on in Bird-in-Hand about the origin of the "whoopie pie" name in 1958, in which one in a group of young Amish women exclaimed "whoopie" when checking on the progress of her cakes in the oven. (Several variations of the story have made the rounds.)

It's also about that time, Smucker said, that whoopie pies started to become a more popular snack in the larger community.

Residents are backing their bakers. Visitors bureau spokesman Joel Cliff said about 1,700 signatures have been collected for an online petition "objecting to any other state, county or town claiming the whoopie pie as its own."

The Hershey Farm Restaurant and Inn, in Strasburg, makes over 100 different flavors for its Whoopie Pie Festival which started six years ago — or several years before the Maine event.

And 21-year-old Josh Graupera of Lancaster got so worked up after hearing about Maine's move that he and a friend organized a rally in downtown Lancaster on Feb. 19 attended by 100 people, including one person who carried a sign "Give Me Whoopie, or Give Me Death."

"We thought we would organize as many people as possible to stand up and say, 'You're not going to take our heritage from us,'" he said. "This is a Lancaster County tradition."

All sides say they're turning up the heat all in good fun.

"They can have their lobsters," Graupera said.

Copyright 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

For more information about reprints & permissions, visit our FAQ's. To report corrections and clarifications, contact Standards Editor Brent Jones. For publication consideration in the newspaper, send comments to letters@usatoday.com. Include name, phone number, city and state for verification. To view our corrections, go to corrections.usatoday.com.We've updated the Conversation Guidelines. Changes include a brief review of the moderation process and an explanation on how to use the "Report Abuse" button. Read more.

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Whoopie pies spark food fight between Pennsylvania, Maine

BIRD-IN-HAND, Pa. — It consists of two round, textbook-thick, palm-sized chocolate cakes that sandwich a creamy vanilla filling to create one sinfully rich snack. It's the whoopie pie, a snack so beloved that residents in two states have cooked up a good-natured tug of war over which place is its rightful home — Maine or Pennsylvania?

A baker makes whoopie pies at the S. Clyde Weaver market in East Petersburg, Pa.

A state legislator in Maine whipped up passions when he introduced a bill in January to make the whoopie pie Maine's official state dessert. Like a group of chefs tweaking a recipe, a legislative committee has since dropped "dessert" in favor of making the snack Maine's official "treat."

No matter — residents in Pennsylvania's Lancaster County say that's just baloney. Those round mounds of cakey goodness originated from kitchens of the area's Amish families, dating back generations, they say.

"We've had this thing going with the whoopie pie here for years and years and decades," John Smucker, CEO of the family-run company that owns the Bird-in-Hand Bakery, said as kitchen workers busily put together a batch of red velvet whoopie pies. "And all of a sudden they try to enter into the picture ... It's just a bunch of nonsense."

At the S. Clyde Weaver store in East Petersburg, staff piece together their version of the traditional chocolate-with-vanilla-filling variety.

By Justin David Graybill, AP

People hold signs at a whoopie pie rally held Feb. 19 at Penn Square in Lancaster, Pa.

"We do the original," baker Nancy Rexroad said. "When something's the original, you can't improve on it."

Maine state Rep. Paul Davis got things brewing with a bill to laud the whoopie pie. Davis got the idea from speaking with people at the Maine Whoopie Pie Festival, which last year attracted 4,000 visitors to Dover-Foxcroft, part of Davis' district.

Amos Orcutt, president of the Maine Whoopie Pie Association, was one of the Mainers who lobbied Davis to make a stand. In a phone interview, Orcutt, whose full-time job is president of the University of Maine Foundation, said he got steamed after reading a New York Times story on whoopie pies in March 2009 that cited food historians on the likelihood that the whoopie pie got its start in Pennsylvania.

"Having grown up in Maine, I used that well-worn term 'appalled and aghast,' so I started looking into it," Orcutt said. "A lot of our older alumni said, 'Oh no, I remember whoopie pies as a child."

Davis said he's been told Maine whoopie pies may date back as far as 1925. The website for Labadie's Bakery in Lewiston, Maine, says bakers there started making whoopie pies that year.

About the time he read the Times story, Orcutt said a local high school's mock legislature exercise proposed a "bill" to give the whoopie pie the official dessert designation.

"One thing led to another, and folks kept saying, 'Well, gee, you've got to do something about it,'" Orcutt said. Davis estimates that about 400 to 500 bakeries — from commercial operators to small-town markets to individuals who sell kitchen-baked goods at farmers markets — sell whoopie pies.

Word of Davis' bill reached the Pennsylvania Dutch Convention and Visitors Bureau in Lancaster, and organizers there decided to answer back. They touted a website — www.saveourwhoopie.com — that likened Maine's actions to "confectionary larceny."

Area residents say Amish and other Pennsylvania Dutch families have passed down whoopie pie recipes for generations. Smucker said his bakery's recipe dates back at least 50 years to his grandmother's kitchen. Further west in Pennsylvania, the treats were also known in the Johnstown area as "gobs."

Dan Neff, owner and president of the S. Clyde Weaver market, said he suspected that one possible origin for the whoopie pie was home cooks looking for a creation to replace cream-filled doughnuts, which would be difficult to make in a home kitchen.

Smucker relayed another story passed on in Bird-in-Hand about the origin of the "whoopie pie" name in 1958, in which one in a group of young Amish women exclaimed "whoopie" when checking on the progress of her cakes in the oven. (Several variations of the story have made the rounds.)

It's also about that time, Smucker said, that whoopie pies started to become a more popular snack in the larger community.

Residents are backing their bakers. Visitors bureau spokesman Joel Cliff said about 1,700 signatures have been collected for an online petition "objecting to any other state, county or town claiming the whoopie pie as its own."

The Hershey Farm Restaurant and Inn, in Strasburg, makes over 100 different flavors for its Whoopie Pie Festival which started six years ago — or several years before the Maine event.

And 21-year-old Josh Graupera of Lancaster got so worked up after hearing about Maine's move that he and a friend organized a rally in downtown Lancaster on Feb. 19 attended by 100 people, including one person who carried a sign "Give Me Whoopie, or Give Me Death."

"We thought we would organize as many people as possible to stand up and say, 'You're not going to take our heritage from us,'" he said. "This is a Lancaster County tradition."

All sides say they're turning up the heat all in good fun.

"They can have their lobsters," Graupera said.

Copyright 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

For more information about reprints & permissions, visit our FAQ's. To report corrections and clarifications, contact Standards Editor Brent Jones. For publication consideration in the newspaper, send comments to letters@usatoday.com. Include name, phone number, city and state for verification. To view our corrections, go to corrections.usatoday.com.We've updated the Conversation Guidelines. Changes include a brief review of the moderation process and an explanation on how to use the "Report Abuse" button. Read more.

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Maine student born without hands honored for penmanship

Boy with no hands wins handwriting awardSTORY HIGHLIGHTSFifth grader gets special award from publisherNational contest will now have category named after himMaine boy was born without hands or lower arms (CNN) -- Born without hands and lower arms, fifth-grader Nicholas Maxim received a unique award Monday for his participation in Zaner-Bloser's 20th annual National Handwriting Contest.

"We submitted his entry because we felt his penmanship was amazing considering he completes most of his work without using his prostheses," said Cheryl Hasenfus, Readfield Elementary School principal.

At those times, Nicholas writes by holding a pen or pencil between his upper arms.

On behalf of Zaner-Bloser, a publisher of educational materials, Hasenfus presented a trophy to Nicholas during a school assembly for his excellent penmanship. The school is in Readfield, Maine.

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