For months before he acted, the Lewiston mass shooter told many people about his delusions and his thoughts of violence. As a psychiatrist who has worked with people with severe and persistent mental illness, I am feeling sympathy and sadness for all of the shooter’s family and associates who tried to get him some help. […]

Full disclosure: I have voted in most every election and I am old and retired; that is a lot of elections. Until this year, I had never been on the other side and worked as a poll worker. Honestly, I never knew how much work goes on before and during Election Day. I was so […]

In the Nov. 5 Sunday Telegram, the law firm of Berman & Simmons took out a full-page ad expressing support for the city of Lewiston and its victims following the worst mass shootings ever in Maine. The firm exercised poor taste by including: “When the time comes to seek justice, Berman & Simmons stands ready […]

We need to ban assault weapons, but that will not solve the problem. There are so many guns already in existence everywhere. Who is going to take them out of the hands of their owners? The bigger problem is that we do not have a functioning health care system. We are a society that has […]

On Oct. 19, 12 days following the Hamas terrorist attacks in Israel, newly installed Bowdoin College President Safa Zaki sent an email to the Bowdoin College community explaining the lack of an institutional statement on the matter. As noted in a Bowdoin Orient student newspaper article, Zaki “declined to give a specific position on the […]

I wish I felt surprised by the news that Maine law enforcement had explicit knowledge of an imminent threat to our community weeks before 18 people lost their lives in Lewiston. While we do the slow work to address the many factors that can prevent future massacres (e.g., red flag laws, mental health reform), we […]

I have read the amendments to city ordinances, proposed by Councilors Anna Trevorrow and Roberto Rodriguez, that would allow camping in certain public areas of Portland through the winter, particularly in our parks. Public parks are our neighborhoods’ backyards, especially for people who live in buildings without access to outdoor space. Encampments in Deering Oaks […]

Nov. 7 marked one month since more than 200 innocent people were kidnapped in Israel and dragged underground by Hamas terrorists. These babies, toddlers, children, young girls, old men and women have generally not been heard from or seen since. We don’t know if they are dead or alive and can only imagine the horrors […]