So Maine is packed with neurotic extroverts, who are not only disagreeable, undisciplined and irresponsible, but uncreative and not intellectual?Something smells funny to us. This appraisal, culled from an online survey of 3,540 Mainers over five years, runs counter to most generally understood, and apparent, qualities of what it means to live here.Neurotic really means […]

Cheers and jeers from around the news (now a regular feature):• Cheers for Ruth Marden, town manager in Jay, for instituting a stringent new e-mail policy for selectmen. She’s trying to protect town officials from misusing e-mail, and any embarrassing revelations under Right-To-Know.Marden, though, may be taking matters too far. She told selectmen recently, and […]

Deep in the cobwebbed corners of the soul, who doesn’t want to be a superhero? We’d like wielding tremendous power, to right terrible wrongs and save life and property before anybody is harmed.Such characters are idolized – Superman, Batman, Captain America, etc. It’s a human failing, perhaps. We want to save the day, and, also, […]

In Brunswick, Mid Coast Hospital and Central Maine Healthcare, which oversees Parkview Hospital, are clashing over which can provide the community’s medical needs more efficiently.Mid Coast says its plan – a $3.5 million urgent/diagnostic care facility – would let it serve Brunswick by itself, for $18.5 million less than running Parkview for a year. Mid […]

Today is the seventh anniversary of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Milestone anniversaries are generally observed at one year, at five years and every five years thereafter. So, today is not a milestone anniversary, except that it is.When it comes to the attacks of Sept. 11, which struck deep into Americans’ hearts and […]

Let’s talk risk.Real, proven risk.There is real risk of accidental injury to newborns leaving hospitals by car, which is why hospitals require infants traveling to be transported in car seats.There is real risk to newborns if new parents are not skilled in feeding because infants can dehydrate quickly and lose a dangerous amount of weight […]

That Bates College is using an unprecedented $2.5 million gift to offset an expansion of its Maine-produced menu doesn’t speak well about the affordability of “local” food.It’s a great culinary paradox. The foodstuffs that should be cheapest – grown by smaller, local producers, which should have lower overhead and transportation costs – still cannot compete […]

For a long while, our displeasure at the second-class treatment of the Androscoggin River, versus the Kennebec and Penobscot rivers, regarding the restoration of the river’s habitat, has been apparent.Now, here comes the federal government – namely the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Association and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service – proposing endangered species status […]

While the world has moved on since 2006, when the Taxpayer Bill of Rights and legislative tax reform dominated Maine’s political agenda, this many-headed policy monster is now vowing to return with a vengeance.Advocates for the so-called “Son of TABOR” say they’ve collected enough signatures for its placement on an upcoming ballot. A parallel measure, […]

Cheers and jeers from around the news:• Jeers for current Androscoggin County Commissioner Helen Poulin, who says residing outside her district is immaterial. It is not. The least she now could do is hold office hours in Lewiston so constituents could meet her.Wait. That’s not quite true.The least Poulin really could do is resign.• Cheers […]