To eat is human. To eat local is divine.Unless one is interested in pinching pennies. A drawback to “locavorism” (a made-up word meaning eating locally produced food) is, often, this support means paying a premium.It’s a quandary that pits principles against pocketbook.Enter the iconic Maine lobster, the price of which is plummeting due to difficult […]

There ought to be a law: If a person cannot spell their own race, they cannot hate another. Call it an intellectual threshold for intolerance. The closed-minded already embarrass themselves with their opinions, but illiteracy is just icing. The two often go hand-in-hand, though.Consider the recent incident in Rangeley, where a housing development owned by […]

So, want a seat in the State House or Congress, huh?Better take a seat at Simones first.The landmark eatery is celebrating its 100th birthday this week with celebrations of its rise from a stand made of soda crates to where, some regulars are known to quip, Lewiston-Auburn’s elite meet to eat.(We would say where L-A’s […]

Dissident author Alexander Solzhenitsyn ripped the veil from an unknown world: the infamous gulags of Stalinist Russia, whose terrors were cloistered from the global community. Through his literary talents, Solzhenitsyn revealed the measure of Soviet monstrosity against its own people.His recent death, at age 89, has drawn renewed attention to his achievements. As a near-powerless […]

For years, many smart people in Maine government called Tax Foundation calculations on tax burden flawed. For about as long, critics of Maine government used the Tax Foundation to argue for reduced state spending.This argument was a stalemate, until now. Methodological re-jiggering by the Tax Foundation has dropped Maine from the top, into the top […]

If gold medals were awarded for politicking, competition between the United States and China would be too close to call. Not since the sunset of the Soviet Union have testy global affairs so overshadowed an Olympiad.China’s pre-Olympic crackdown on its people – rounding up dissidents, shuttering businesses, smothering smokestacks – to present an image of […]

What does it say when perhaps the most bipartisan energy proposal belongs to Paris Hilton?The bronzed blond hotel heiress has lampooned Sen. John McCain’s advertisement branding Sen. Barack Obama as a bubble-headed celebrity, just like her. Laying poolside, in a leopard-print swimsuit, a smarmy Hilton disclosed her energy plan to, like, totally help the country.Allow […]

A deadlocked Congress has headed home, sans energy progress. Republicans blame Democrats for skedaddling, Democrats blame Republicans for trying to stick around to give more goodies to oil companies.It’s dizzying.Local governments are struggling too, but not for lack of trying. Auburn’s latest plan, for example, is the harvest of city-owned lots for cordwood, which is […]

Humbug. Technology changes everything.A bunch of technophiles log onto the Internet, start trading their unwanted stuff for somebody else’s unwanted stuff, and they get hosannas for inventing something with the hip name “freecycling.”Sounds like a swap shop to us.For our money (or the complete lack thereof) there are few things finer than scrounging for swap […]

Jack Cashman’s a baseball fan, so he’ll appreciate this analogy: Like a mid-season acquisition, his nomination to the Public Utilities Commission changes the status of the regulator from also-ran into front-runner.By an 11-2 vote Monday, the Legislature’s Utilities and Energy Committee endorsed Cashman’s candidacy for the vacant commissioner’s seat. A confirmation vote is scheduled for […]