Everyone will be glad when we reach the end of the current fraught debates over the handling of our municipal trash and recycling. But the prevalence of waste management in the public eye in the last couple of years has silver linings. It has improved residents’ working knowledge of the science, economics and policy involved. …
The town’s review of the planned expansion of an employee housing site on West Street Extension in Bar Harbor, owned by a subsidiary of hotel company Ocean Properties, continued this week. The proposal is to nearly double the footprint of the complex, constructing four new buildings and reconfigure the existing buildings to make the apartments …
This month marks the end of a remarkable political partnership between U.S. Senator Angus King and Kay Rand, the woman who managed his campaigns and his offices since he first ran for governor of Maine in 1993. A long-shot independent candidate for governor, King won a 5-way race in 1994 with just over 35 percent …
Long before Marie Kondo challenged us to test our possessions to see if they “spark joy” before offloading them, I was finding joy in suburban back alleys on trash collection days. Once I was old enough to traipse out the back gate, pulling my red Radio Flyer wagon behind me, I discovered a world of …
To the Editor: According to the Sustainable Maine Project (nrcm.org), half of the 8.3 billion tons of plastic manufactured on the planet was produced in the last 13 years, and a family of four uses 1,500 plastic bags a year. Only nine percent of these bags are recycled, the rest end up in landfills or …
To the Editor: I thank the Islander for its coverage of the Charter Commission’s first public hearing on Jan. 7. I write because one speaker, Tom St. Germain, misremembered the factual and procedural history of the failed attempt to repeal and replace our Land Use Ordinance, and another speaker, Cornell Knight, both misremembered key facts …
I would like to acknowledge two very talented craftsmen right here on MDI: Alexander Phillips, a clockmaker in Bar Harbor, and Rick Bradbury, a cabinetmaker in Town Hill. In September, I had a vision of a clock I wanted made. Alex recommended Rick to make the clock case. And so the project began. I cannot …
The Bar Harbor Town Council’s decision last month to include money in the coming fiscal year’s draft budget for enforcement of vacation rental rules drew a strong response. So did the move, also part of the budget process that’s just beginning, to change the fee for vacation rentals from one-time $50 fee to an annual …
During the 13-day government shutdown in 2013, then-National Park Service director Jonathan Jarvis made the decision to close the national parks. “The logic was that if the employees were furloughed and could not perform their stewardship and safety responsibilities,” he wrote in a recent op-ed in The Guardian, then the only way to protect the …
BAR HARBOR — Linda Robinson will talk about empowering women and combating fear of medical facilities in Malawi on Thursday, Jan. 24, at 7 p.m. at the Jesup Memorial Library. A certified nurse midwife, Robinson spent the past two years teaching midwifery at Kamuzu College of Nursing in Malawi. The lifetime maternal mortality risk is …
