Four years ago, Caroline Russell, a Gathering Place Board member, came to me with a big idea. How can we better educate the community about the people we serve? How can we shatter the stigma and stereotypes that exist when it comes to the people who access Housing Resources for Youth, Midcoast Hunger Prevention Program, […]

Last week, Arizona Sen. Kyrsten Sinema threw a wrench into Democrats’ plan on voting rights by continuing to oppose her own party’s efforts to reform the Senate filibuster. She’s also undermining her party’s leader, President Joe Biden, who delivered a speech last week in Atlanta viewed by many as a turning point for his presidency. […]

The U.S. Supreme Court looks like a divided legislature. Seven of the nine justices expressed their sharply differing opinions in two recent COVID vaccination decisions. Only Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Brett Kavanaugh, both conservatives, joined in the majority in both cases, and they alone refrained from making a comment. Despite appearances, the central […]

“Snow day.” Those were once the two most glorious words ever uttered on an early morning radio broadcast. When I was a kid in the ‘70s, it was pure heaven to wake to snow-blanketed hills, then tune into Jack Bogut’s KDKA morning show, praying he’d say our suburban school district was closed for the day. […]

Last week, Gov. Janet Mills’s policies concerning COVID vaccines were vindicated by the U.S. Supreme Court, though – strangely – no one seems to have noticed. It was Mills’s decision, early in the pandemic’s Delta variant phase, to mandate shots for health care workers at a time when the federal government was still studying the […]

The international community is closely monitoring the Taliban, after the group re-seized power in Afghanistan in August 2021. There is legitimate reason for concern. The Taliban are again ruling through fear and draconian rules. The Taliban’s last regime, in the mid-1990s, was marked by human rights violations, including massacres, mass detentions and rape. The regime […]