Nancie Atwell, founder of the Center for Teaching and Learning in Edgecomb, has received the first Varkey Foundation Global Teacher Prize, the $1 million award that is being called the Nobel Prize of Teaching. Maine should be proud that a teacher being held up as one of the best in the world is from Maine. […]

John Martin is nothing if not bold. The current state representative from Eagle Lake, whose dictatorial 20-year reign as speaker of the Maine House was ended by a 1993 referendum vote that imposed term limits, last week urged a legislative committee to throw out the law that drove him from power. As a result of […]

What do we do with the time we have left? That question has provoked great thinkers across religions, cultures and epochs. It also inspired an essay by Paul Kalanithi, a Stanford neurosurgeon writing for his institution’s medical magazine, the Stanford Medicine. On March 9, Kalanithi died, at 37, from metastatic lung cancer. “Before I Go” […]

One would not think that an opinion column “talking about shame” could be uplifting and refreshing, but Julie McDonald-Smith’s column was just that. Following the cue set by the mainstream media attacking the right, she dismantled the left with a casual, but accurately pointed, finger at the disgraceful behavior and absence before Congress of those […]

Shame? Yes, let’s talk about shame. Not that of U.S. Rep. Chellie Pingree, who should feel none for skipping a speech by Benjamin Netanyahu, as he unabashedly used the U.S. Congress as a campaign stop for his own re-election – all organized by Republicans behind President Obama’s back, thereby insulting not only the sitting president, but […]

When I think the opinions of Julie McDonald-Smith can sink no lower, she stoops (“Let’s Talk About Shame”). Apparently the “finger pointing” applies to criticism of published accounts of racist hate speech diatribes by state Sen. Michael Willette, while U.S. Rep. Chellie Pingree is the “very definition of shameful.” McDonald-Smith’s assertions that Benjamin Netanyahu’s protocol-breaching […]

Imagine my surprise when I saw Julie McDonald-Smith’s “Let’s talk about shame” column draw a comparison between abortion and the Holocaust. I can only assume she quotes Jennifer Fulwiler’s blog “Conversion Diary” on the subject instead of making the assertion herself so she can claim plausible deniability should anyone call her on the carpet. Using […]

How apt that Julie McDonald-Smith begins her recent column with the definition of shame, as she parades her shameful ignorance. I would like to see her documentation that U.S. Rep. Chellie Pingree ever voted for a bill promoting the exclusive abortion of male or female or gay fetuses. If the author would broaden her news […]

I would like to know on what basis Julie McDonald-Smith states that President Obama is “the most radical, destructive president we’ve ever had.” Did she conduct a poll? Is there some scientific evidence to prove her claim? I wonder if she has ever heard of John Adams, Andrew Jackson, Abraham Lincoln, or Lyndon Johnson? I […]

I very much appreciated Edgar Allen Beem’s column on the Maine Department of Health and Human Services and its director, Mary Mayhew. I never would have guessed she was a Democrat. Makes me wonder what her motivations are. Glad your publication has the fortitude to carry such an article; you may end up on Paul […]