Like many people, we traveled to spend time with family for the Thanksgiving holiday. In our case, the travel was a car ride to New York City to be with our son and his girlfriend. We were among millions who visit the millions in Manhattan this time of year, many for the famous parade and holiday kickoff events and shopping, in addition to being with family.

We don’t love the traffic but after we get the car parked and out of mind until departure, we love the hustle and bustle on the streets, contrasted with the coziness of being together in a small apartment. The subway ride to Chelsea

It is the first Saturday in December. The early dusk is settling in, and in the middle of the sand of Lincolnville Beach sits a massive structure: a tangle of pine boughs built around a core of wooden pallets scavenged or generously donated by local businesses. People begin to gather around, from the old to the very young, encircling as the fire thrust into the heart of the pile begins to catch. Flames shoot up into the darkening sky, the circle backs away from the burst of heat, and the people begin to sing. Carols — those worthy of a Christmas Eve church season, and those of more secular

The situation in Gaza remains urgent. Israel violates the ceasefire every day, continuing to kill unarmed civilians. There is no safety.

The Rafah Crossing remains closed, preventing thousands of wounded Palestinians from seeking treatment abroad. Many will die because Israel destroyed Gaza’s healthcare system.

Only a trickle of humanitarian aid has entered Gaza. Israel allows no heavy machinery, essential for clearing rubble, digging for bodies and rebuilding infrastructure like water wells and sewage treatment. Most fuel trucks are denied access. 

Famine continues. Food remains scarce

The German political philosopher Hannah Arendt spent a lifetime studying and writing about totalitarian systems after she fled from Nazi Germany.  (She also co-taught a course that I took in my college years a long time ago.)  Arendt wrote: "The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the convinced Communist but people for whom the distinction between fact
fiction and the distinction between true and false no longer exist."

Donald Trump has a unique status among American politicians as the most effective exemplar and propagator of the fateful failure to uphold the truth

Despite the recent plethora of cheery print and television media adds extolling Senator Collins’s service, I would suggest that she is missing in action at this frightening time for our democracy. At key points, she has proven that she prefers silence or is only willing to take principled stands when it does not matter – resulting in continuing, de-facto deference to Trump and his/her MAGA enablers. Yet Mainers are unable to explore critical issues with Collins, as she persistently declines to hold open press conferences or public forums. This is a shameful dereliction of duty. 

Whether it’s

I am writing to thank Rev. Loren McGrail for sharing her powerful art and poetry from “ climate collapse to Gaza”, and her invitation to explore together what it means to face the unspeakable violence of the world we are living in, through her exhibit at the Belfast Free Library for the month of November.

Her example of witnessing and turning the anguish we all feel on seeing so much loss, whether the threatened extinction of a species, loss of habitat for creatures and humans, or the destruction of war in Gaza into art and what she calls “compassionate witnessing” is something I encourage

There is a fascinating history of women’s clubs in America, rooted in a history that did not often include the role of women in society. Often relegated to auxiliary groups to established men’s clubs, women began organizing on their own — as abolitionists, as temperance groups, as advocates for woman’s suffrage.

There was a second wave of women’s clubs during the 1960s and 1970s, and it was during this time that Lincolnville’s group began.

The Lincolnville Woman’s Club was started in 1971, with Helen Dodd as the president, and 25 members.

In 2025, the Lincolnville Women’s Club has 25 members

ROCKPORT — Lung health plays a vital role in daily life, influencing energy levels, heart function, sleep quality, mental well-being and more. Yet, changes in a person’s breathing often go unnoticed until they become serious.

“The worst thing you can do is ignore changes to your breathing,” said Suzan Collins, lung health educator for all of MaineHealth Pen Bay Hospital’s primary care practices, including Family Medicine, Internal Medicine and Pediatrics. “If you’re finding it harder to do the things you normally do, talk to someone. Early awareness and action can make all the difference in

“Exploding Lobster” by Judy Nixon. At first glance I thought the subject must be a red phoenix rising from the ashes. The white floating objects floating away above the body, feathers. I was quite satisfied with my supernaturalist interpretation until I looked at the name of the painting. My eyes widened and then I just burst out laughing ... and then as I looked closer lobster claws and the shape of the body were visible. And those “feathers” are what we dip in butter.

This is but one of the reasons I have always loved the annual ART in the Square show at Boothbay Region Art Foundation. You

Everyone welcomes the cessation of full-scale violence in Gaza but the current situation is a ceasefire, not a full peace deal as President Trump claims in his questfor the Nobel Peace Prize. Many complex and challenging issues remain to be negotiated such as disarming Hamas, a multi-national security force, and some form of Palestinian governance.

To sustain the ceasefire both sides must uphold the terms of the accord that they signed.  Alas, violence continues. When Palestinian militants killed two Israeli soldiers, the IDF responded with a bombing campaign that killed over one hundred

Zoning reform has become the Legislature’s preferred answer to Maine’s housing crisis. It’s tidy, inexpensive, and offers the reassuring glow of “doing something.” But in the parts of the state where the shortage is most acute — coastal towns, service-center cities, and tourism-driven regions — zoning was never the real barrier. Treating it as the centerpiece of state housing policy has let lawmakers dodge the harder conversation: the economics of actually building housing in Maine.

Communities figured this out long before Augusta.

When Rockland passed a $10 million housing infrastructure bond

I have been promising myself and others to write about the Rock Road for at least five years, but each time I start, I get so entangled and entranced by some new layer of its history that I never finish. This will have to be an incomplete account, because unfortunately, we may have run out of time, as a section of the road is proposed for removal.

In 1999, after the Camden-Rockport Bicycle and Pedestrian Committee (now the C-R Pathways Committee) helped secure grants to improve the road for use as a year-round, paved, multi-use pathway, a 3–2 vote on the Rockport Select Board removed the trail

I am a concerned citizen and resident of Thomaston. Over the past several years much time and energy has been expended on questions related to the former Maine State Prison site located just off Route1 or Main Street in Thomaston. 

In June, 2023, Thomaston voters—by the razor-thin margin of four votes in a dangerously over-capacity annual Town meeting that allowed only “in-person” voting and limited public discussion—approved purchase by the Knox Health Clinic of a parcel of this land from the Town of Thomaston to be developed as a new facility for the Knox Health Clinic. 

As we rapidly

Once again, Ma has submitted a wonderful piece of writing for this week’s column:

Putting the Garden to Bed, by Diane Roesing O’Brien

The next warm day, the one I promised myself, finally arrived last weekend. No more procrastinating, get out and do it: cut down the dead perennials, pull up the tomato stakes, and the painful part, take inventory. Neatening up the garden at the end of the season was never our strong suit. Except for taking down the ravaged pea vines and storing away the fence, a job Wally refused to do since I was the one who insisted on peas, I never did much else. He put

The Waldo Theatre’s upcoming community theatre production Murdering the Mob, which opens November 15, is a silly, fun, whodunit murder mystery co-written by Westport Island resident Cheryl Salatino and her former creative partners Donald K. Baillargeon and Dan Dowling.

“One of the things we try to do here at The Waldo is feature local artists’ works,” said Susan Hodder, The Waldo’s executive director and co-director of this play. “Two years ago we featured the play Homer Bound, written by the wonderful Karmo Sanders, aka The Marden’s Lady (who, sadly, recently passed away) and last year we

By a recent count, at least twenty-five transgender or gender variant lives have been lost in the United States since this time last year. Those are just the murders that have been made known, and in the context of the anti-trans focus of the current administration, we know that underreporting is a fact. Many victims of transphobic violence never have their deaths publicly acknowledged. With the recent bombardment of anti-trans legislation aimed to suppress the trans and gender variant community in this country, the acknowledgement of these tragic deaths is all the more critical. Now, more

A few days ago, we were walking the dog when we heard what sounded exactly like the sweet call notes of pine grosbeaks. This surprised us. It seemed too early for these northern finches to be here. But there they were, six of them in the top of a tree in the neighborhood.

A glance at eBird and we knew we weren’t the only ones to have found pine grosbeaks here in Maine in the last week or two. No, they’re not in everyone’s backyard, but a handful have been found across the state.

Birders (ourselves included) in the northeastern U.S. always seem to get particularly excited by the prospect of