People! We are trying to have summer here. The candidates for various federal offices are besieging us with requests for money, but we are not feeling it. We are thinking about chilling out, not chipping in. There is irony in the fact that candidates are asking for money as a way to combat money in …
Fourth of July! Bar Harbor! Yay! Parade, right? Then to the ballfield for lobster and hot dogs. The sun is out, the heat is cranking and by afternoon we all screamed for ice cream. Let’s hear it for the scoopers! If you went to CJ’s for a cone you were one of 1,768 sweltering visitors …
By Jill Goldthwait Can it really be the Fourth of July? The long, cold, wet spring gave way so precipitously to sunshine and warmth that we hardly had a chance to realize summer was upon us until it was. Legislators have decamped to wherever home is, adjourning in the wee hours of June 20. …
By Jill Goldthwait Here we go again. Federal fisheries regulators have been tightening the screws on Maine lobstermen for decades. Now they are planning to take another turn in an effort to reduce “the risk of death or injury” to right whales by 60 percent. In the late 1990s, a trap limit was introduced in …
By Jill Goldthwait Well hello, Ellsworth. Looks like you’re expecting company. Floods of housing is being built all over the city. Single-family homes, apartments and low-income housing, and the scale of most projects is not overwhelming. There are balconies. Patios. There will be landscaping. Best of all? New housing is being designed for people who …
A blast from the past last week was a sentimental journey back to a time when the world made a certain amount of sense. Maine’s distinguished U.S. senator and secretary of defense in the Clinton administration, Bill Cohen, wrote a May 29 piece in the Washington Post about the controversy surrounding President Donald Trump. Of …
Alright, independent voters. You know where you stand. That would be on the outside, looking in. For the millionth time (rounding down) the Maine Legislature killed a bill that would have permitted unenrolled voters to vote in primary elections. It was a modest proposal. Unenrolled voters could show up at the primary, request one party …
Somebody flipped the switch last weekend and the tourists arrived. Never mind the snow on Cadillac Mountain, the brisk winds battering the newborn leaves or the proliferation of wooly hats. People from away are here. A brave little hummingbird buzzed through the daffodils, hoping for just a drop of nectar to keep those teensy wings …
In my May 9 column, I wrote about bonds, citing Rep. Justin Fecteau as the only Republican who has sponsored a bond this session. Wrong. The bond for equipment for career and technical education centers was sponsored by a different Fecteau, Democratic Rep. Ryan Fecteau. Sponsor Ryan Fecteau represents part of Biddeford and is the …
Finally the temperature is rising and Maine is beginning to blossom. It is an exquisite time of year, with tiny baby leaves cautiously unfurling, shoots of green popping up in the garden and, most beautiful of all, flowering trees showing off their ephemeral glory. The temperature is rising in Augusta, too. Statutory adjournment is June …
