I’ve told this story before, but now that I’m officially ancient, that’s what ancients do, so here goes. I also think it bears repeating because it is a great example of what true friendship really is. Or perhaps isn’t. Some years ago, two or our dearest friends wanted to come to Maine for a visit. […]

Being from Arkansas, a landlocked state in the South, one might think that Maine is an alien place to me with its picturesque coastline, moose and winters in the negatives rather than a low of 30 degrees. However, since I have “lived” in Maine for the past four years as a Bowdoin College student, I […]

Political chatter focuses these days on whether we risk trading democracy for authoritarian rule. But the record shows we are well past that. These days, many critical government decisions are made by a single person. In a democracy, such a person is too powerful. Not that a single person controls our entire government, but one-person […]

Congressman Jared Golden has stirred up a late-summer kerfuffle with a social media post concerning his earlier vote against President Biden’s student loan debt relief package. Maine’s 2nd District representative was one of only two House Democrats to oppose the plan – later struck down by the Supreme Court’s conservative supermajority – and he was, […]

Amid the howls of outrage and shouts of jubilation over the indictment in Georgia of former president Donald Trump on charges of attempting to overturn the 2020 election, a few cautionary voices were raised quietly expressing concern that government prosecutors appear to be piling on the ex-president and creating sympathy for him. The Georgia indictment […]

Survivors of the deadly fires in Maui are being offered a $700-per-household payment by FEMA (the Federal Emergency Management Agency) and temporary shelter. But in Maui, $700 doesn’t go far. Estimated monthly living costs for a family of four are $7,203. The token $700 represents less than 10 percent of a family’s living costs, an […]

Likely you’re not thinking much about paper cups these days, am I right? Normally I’m not either but in one’s eighties, one’s brain thoughts begin to race about like roaches when the lights go on, and so today I began to remember paper cups. Way back when people in offices actually stood gossiping around a […]

THE CONVERSATION — An estimated 3,000 pets were still missing more than a week after deadly wildfires ripped through Maui in August 2023 and left thousands of people – many of whom had companion animals – homeless. The Conversation asked Sarah DeYoung, who has conducted research in Hawaii and studies what happens to pets after disasters, to […]

THE CONVERSATION — After three indictments of former President Donald Trump, the fourth one in Georgia came not as a surprise but as a powerful exposition of the scope of Trump’s efforts to remain in power despite losing the 2020 presidential election. New conservative legal scholarship spells out how and why those actions – which were observed by […]

Among my great collections of oddball books filled with oddball and fascinating pieces of trivia is a great little publication called “The Book of Days” put together by Guen Sublette. Published in 1996, Ms. Sublette compels readers to purchase her amazing book by promising the pages will be a “compendium of celebrations, common and arcane,” […]