AMES, Iowa – In “The Music Man” which, happily, returns to Broadway this fall, there’s a tune called “Iowa Stubborn,” written in 1957 by Mason City native Meredith Willson. It muses that folks in the Hawkeye state “could stand touchin’ noses for a week at a time and never see eye to eye.” There’s a […]

Clarity is in short supply across America, but no longer at dairy farms in Maine. In 2014, you see, drivers for a dairy company in Portland, Maine sued their employer for overtime pay because a state law pertaining to overtime-pay exemptions failed to include the Oxford comma. What is the Oxford comma? It’s the final […]

Finding ways to get kids outside and study the marine environment is not simple. You need special equipment like big rubber boots, and you have to be prepared to get wet – and muddy. You also have to find a way to get to and from the water from school within the regular school-day schedule. […]

More than once, readers have written in, or people have stopped me, to complain about their fellow Americans’ ignorance of the basic functions of government. Incandescent with anger, they’ll complain that, while their neighbors don’t know the name of their local member of Congress, they can absolutely tell you what happened on the latest episode […]

Vaccines critical to public health I still wince when children get vaccines, and I am no fan of Big Pharma. But after a long pediatric career, I feel that we must vote “No on 1.” The wording of the March referendum is confusing and misleading, as was the petition drive to get it on the […]

In my first State of the State address as Governor this week, I told the people of Maine, you watching in homes, businesses and shops across the state, that our economy is on a solid footing and it is growing. Revenues are up, our gross domestic product is up, housing starts, construction, auto sales are […]

For a small state, Maine grants notable powers to its governor. Unlike New Hampshire and Vermont, which have two-year terms, Maine ratified a constitutional amendment for a four-year term in 1957. Also unlike New Hampshire, Maine abolished its Executive Council in 1977, making the governor the effective CEO of a Cabinet-style government where department heads […]