On the first day of school, you journey into the big, wide world, wondering if you will be OK.

You quickly discover that you are not alone; most everyone’s stomach sometimes gets that fluttery feeling, too, and they fixate on the same questions as you. Will I be liked? Do I have the smarts to succeed? Can I do this?

Soon, you get familiar with the foreign places (the playground, the classroom, the cafeteria) and the new routines (the bus pickups, the bells, single-file, no running, raise your hand).

The bad numbers are high and the good ones are low, with only a gleam of light on the horizon.

The group’s call for dealing better with home-grown terrorists is echoed by Sen. Collins.

President Obama looked at the nation’s larger interests and came down on the right side.

Missions that carried humans to the moon, and unmanned probes that have contributed immensely to our familiarity with our sun’s family of planets and moons, comets and asteroids, have greatly increased the sum of human knowledge.

Why is it that, seemingly almost overnight, we appear to have abandoned any effort to send people into space?

Sometimes you have to take a risk, and sometimes big risks pay off in a big way.

That certainly looks like the result of the big chance Maine took this winter in regard to the Katahdin region paper mills in Millinocket and East Millinocket.

Facing the dismantling of the two mills, the permanent loss of hundreds of good manufacturing jobs and a way of life for a whole community, Gov. LePage and the Legislature gave . . .