On winter mornings since 2013, the bronze statue of Melville Fuller in front of the Kennebec County Superior Court sometimes features a crown of snow. In an artful touch, he sometimes sports a toque, or stocking cap, that modifies without erasing his judicial mien. It’s there because Fuller, who grew up in Augusta, is the […]

As the least racially diverse state in the nation, it has been easy for white Mainers to ignore the structures of racism that exist throughout our society. This has caused our fellow Mainers to suffer greatly. Over 400 years of policies designed to segregate, marginalize and economically oppress racial, Indigenous and tribal populations have resulted […]

Vote Shaw, Hepler In November, Woolwich residents will be voting for two Selectpersons. The incumbents are Jason Shaw and Allison Hepler. I have known Mr. Shaw personally and professionally for 30 years. I have also interacted with him several times during his tenor as a Selectperson. He is fair, open-minded and confident. He knows what […]

Every 50 years I have an engaging conversation with Michael Fiori. The first one occurred in the spring of 1970 in the Bowdoin College Admissions Office. Michael was a local kid, the son of Columbo and Marie Alice Fiori who ran the Kennebec Fruit Company on Maine Street. He had come for an interview because […]

A picture can reveal what a thousand words often miss altogether. On Sept. 14, there appeared a picture in The Times Record of the election season’s first U.S. Senate debate that took place on Sept. 11. There are four candidates in the race. The race is run for the first time in U.S. Senate history […]

In 1965 in Selma, Alabama, following the police attack against civil rights protestors on the Edmund Pettus Bridge, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. preached, “A man dies when he refuses to stand up for that which is right.” The popular paraphrase of this quotation is “our lives begin to end the day we […]

Who says old people don’t know how to have a good time? A sextet of over seventies recently met on Mount Desert Island for several summer days of biking, sea kayaking and mountain hiking. I call it an outdoor trifecta. Three couples with multiple agendas, we joined up for some activities and went separate ways with […]

Those of us who have experienced cancer know firsthand the havoc it can cause in life. This is where I found myself in 2007, not too long after being diagnosed with stage three non-Hodgkin lymphoma. For the next few years, my doctors’ appointments and treatments became my primary focus. It meant that my career had […]