There are lot of things that have come out of Washington over the past few years that have done more harm than good. Partisan divisions have hardened to the point it’s almost impossible to reach across the aisle. One place progress had been made, happily, was in reforming the criminal justice system. Unfortunately, some people […]

Some years ago, I began searching for an antidote to February. For a short month, given, occasionally, to odd leaps, it gets talked down a lot. It turned out to be a short search; not long into it I was sun struck. Here’s the short story: It’s a cloudy February day in the aftermath of […]

While browsing through the bookcase on our wall, I came across “The Real Diary of a Real Boy,” published in 1902. It is, in fact, the real diary that the author (Henry Shute) kept when he was an 11-year-old growing up in Exeter, New Hampshire. My dear mother, who also grew up in Exeter, gave […]

The start of a sensational murder trial was almost lost in an avalanche of last week’s news from Memphis to Moscow. Alex Murdaugh, a prominent South Carolina lawyer, is standing trial for the murder of his wife and one of his sons. Facing charges of stealing large sums from clients and under investigation in connection […]

The signatures are in, and the questions have been certified, so it’s official: Mainers will be making momentous decisions in November 2023 about whether to buy out its two largest electric utilities, Central Maine Power and Versant, for somewhere between $9 billion and $13.5 billion in borrowing. Those are the range of estimates between backers […]

In 1790. Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson, by that time bitter rivals serving together in Washington’s Cabinet, dined privately with James Madison and struck a deal. The Virginians would get Hamilton the votes in Congress needed to adopt a financial system of his design in exchange for putting the new capital city on the banks […]