With news that storms are forming in the mid-Atlantic, the dreaded cliche season is upon us. A cliche, by the way, is any word that gets used so many times it no longer means anything. It is repeated again and again until we no longer hear it.We become like people who live in the flight […]

What happened in Newry and Upton over the holiday weekend deserves comment. But, little can be said to make sense of the senseless.Maine State Police Chief Col. Craig Poulin called the quadruple murder at the former Black Bear Bed & Breakfast “a crime of horrific proportions.”He’s right, but those words – any words – are […]

Maine Public Broadcasting Network has embarked on a project worth noting.Tonight begins the first in a six-part USDA-sponsored series titled “Hometown Economies.” It’s an examination of the economic past, present and future of certain Maine towns that have been crippled by business and base closures and are in the process of re-establishing economic health. In […]

When you make a mistake, it’s best to admit it, fix it and move on.The Maine Turnpike Authority has done the first two, and the rest of us should now allow it to do the third.It was revealed last month that Turnpike officials and members of its chief engineering firm had been treated to an […]

The Maine Turnpike Authority won’t have to repair any image problems with the tens of thousands of tourists leaving the state Monday in the annual Labor Day evacuation of Vacationland.While handling 4,000 vehicles per hour for six consecutive hours, there was little delay for commuters at the southern portal plaza. “At most, there were six […]

The 4-1 decision by the Peru Board of Selectmen to allow ATV riders to use several town roads, including portions of Main Street to the Peru-Mexico bridge, was a big mistake.After the local ATV club failed to get access to private lands to connect its recreational trail network, it turned to town government for permission […]

Labor Day might as well be called American Dream Day. It’s a useful time to assess the state of American workers: are they better off than they were a year ago? A decade ago? Are they optimistic or pessimistic about their futures?And the answer is always complicated, contradictory and, like everything else, politically divisive. Unemployment […]

The Maine Department of Transportation bears some responsibility for the Buckfield Village Corporation’s rapidly escalating water rates. The corporation’s weary water customers learned recently they may soon be paying twice the state average, and, quite possibly, the most in the nation, for clean drinking water.If another rate increase, needed to cover the water district’s debt […]

We live in a disposable society, too willing to throw away our pets.The “creature” in Turner is proof.As amusing as the wild summertime speculation has been, this animal – a dog of unknown breed – was most likely a once-domesticated animal living with a local family. We will never know what circumstances placed that dog […]

The time has clearly come to do what the U.S. tobacco companies have always feared: classify nicotine as a drug, label cigarettes as drug-delivery devices and place them under the regulatory authority of the federal Food and Drug Administration.A plain-spoken Republican surgeon general, Dr. C. Everett Koop, suggested this nearly 20 years ago and tobacco […]