This past weekend, I once again took my life in my hands and drove south, through the maze of highways that leads to my homeland: New Jersey. The first leg of our journey took us through southern Maine, a tiny sliver of coastal New Hampshire and then into Boston to pick up child No. 1 […]

If you want to sit back in the comfort of your own home and watch the long, slow, steady decline of America, I suggest you tune in to the National Geographic Channel and take a long hard look at “Doomsday Preppers.” This new series focuses on people stockpiling, fortifying, and arming themselves against the Apocalypse, […]

The School Administrative District 51 Board of Directors held their board meeting in North Yarmouth last week to hear the views of Cumberland and North Yarmouth citizens on the recommendation to close North Yarmouth Memorial School and to move 341 fourth- and fifth-graders to the Greely Middle School campus. The consensus public response was slow […]

I was quite disappointed with The Forecaster’s coverage of the Regional School Unit 5 education forum. Your reporter focused nearly all of his attention on the keynote speaker, Commissioner Stephen Bowen, reserving only a single sentence for the loudest issue raised at this “community discussion”: the dozens of teachers trying to raise the public’s awareness […]

As I watch all the towns in Cumberland County increase their spending over last year, I was appalled to see my town, Scarborough, lead the pack with a proposed double-digit increase in spending. Current proposals from our town’s departments is 10.86 percent. This is not a category you want to be No. 1 in, as […]

This week’s story about Kestrel Aircraft Co. is another solid piece of reporting and writing by award-winning staff writer Emily Guerin. It’s also her final story for The Forecaster. Emily was a freelance writer before she joined our staff, and it wasn’t easy to lure her into a staff position; she turned us down twice […]

Reporter Emily Guerin’s examination this week of the background behind the aborted attempt by Kestrel Aircraft Co. to establish a manufacturing facility at the former Brunswick Naval Air Station asks two important questions: Is Kestrel Aircraft the kind of company the state, and the Midcoast Regional Redevelopment Authority, should have been trying to attract, and […]

In his March 23 decision in the Maine labor history mural case, U.S. District Court Judge John Woodcock concluded that Gov. Paul LePage was simply engaging in legal “government speech” when he ordered the mural removed from the Department of Labor waiting room sight unseen. “The Governor’s message – whether verbal or in the form […]