It is a balmy 8 degrees as I sit down to write this. The first of February in Lincolnville, Maine, the ground blanketed with a nice thick cover of snow. It seems like there have been too many years recently when the lakes barely froze over, and I like seeing the snowmobile trails being used, people out on cross-country skis, and ice fishing shacks set up.

Many of us lifelong and/or yearlong Mainers can get a bit smug about being here in February. February is when it gets real. Christmas is a memory, spring is a far off dream. The cold hurts your face when you force yourself to go outside

Each year, more than 100,000 children in the United States are treated in emergency departments for burn injuries, with about 20,000 requiring hospitalization, according to the National Institutes of Health. With four specialized burn care locations throughout the United States that treat more than 3,000 burn patients each year, Shriners Children’s doctors are urging parents to be aware of common burn risks found both at home and online. 

“Most burn injuries, especially scald burns, can be prevented with simple safety measures,” said Dr. Ludwik Branski, a burn surgeon at Shriners Children’s

With women survivors of domestic violence making up half of the homeless people in midcoast Maine, Homeworthy and Finding Our Voices are partnering to bring more help, and faster, to our area's most vulnerable families. 

Finding Our Voices, the grassroots and statewide nonprofit providing support to its sister-survivors of domestic violence, gave a grant of $20,000 from its Get Out Stay Out Fund late last year to Homeworthy, for disbursement to its women clients who are homeless due to domestic abuse.  

"Because of the low barrier nature of these funds," said Molly Feeney, Executive Director

Warblers, those brightly colored sprites of the bird world, are abundant here in Maine in summer. On a June day in Midcoast Maine during a morning of birding, it’s not too hard to  find blackburnian warblers with their flaming orange throats singing their high-pitched songs from the tops of tall green spruces. Nearby, may be the buzzy “zee-zee-zee-zoo-zee” of a black-throated green warbler, its bright yellow cheeks gleaming in the sun. Yellow warblers, chestnut-sided warblers, American redstarts, northern parulas, black-and-white warblers—they are all relative easy to find.

But come winter

I can't begin to express the gratitude we feel to you, who have given so much, to help so many during our recent Fill The Strand event. This year, our sixth, we collected more than 7,400 pounds of food and more than $40,000. Everything we collected during this event is at work as I write. AIO distributes more than 20,000 lbs of food each week and the food and funds you donated will help AIO feed the community for the next 5 weeks and get through the hardest part of the winter.

Fill the Strand is a true community event, made possible by a team of individuals and businesses who help in the

As a travel entertainment I’m reading Stephan Ambrose’s biography of Meriwether Lewis and Ambrose’s account of the expedition that explored the west along the Missouri River and across the Rockies to the Pacific. This exploration was at the behest of Thomas Jefferson who had just made the Louisiana Purchase and about doubled the size of the country.

Lewis and Jefferson were both Virginians and the agricultural practices of plantations and slaves required more and more new land. We live sometimes uncomfortably with the results. When Lewis set out for the west there were three passes through the

The freighter rose and fell sluggishly at her pier, with the dark waves slapping at her sides. The garish New England night was full of shadows and the sound of winches, screeching cranes, and the shuffling cadence of weary troops.

  One of the black shadows hung over the stern of the freighter almost obliterating her name ... the Dorchester. The vessel was old and small, and only the constraints of total war had forced her transformation into a troop ship.  

On this night in mid-January 1943 she was being loaded with troops at the Massachusetts port; her destination hidden in an envelope of

With frigid temperatures and snow in the forecast, Shriners Children’s Boston is alerting parents about the risk of frostbite for children and teenagers. 

Shriners provides the following article:

Frostbite is an injury caused by the freezing of skin and underlying tissues, most often affecting the fingers, toes, nose and ears. It occurs when skin is exposed to temperatures below 32°F, causing ice crystals to form in the cells, damaging tissue, reducing blood flow and potentially leading to severe or permanent injury.  

Dr. Robert Sheridan of Shriners Children’s Boston said children are

We recently wrote about the idea of which backyard bird is the toughest based on a study that pulled together observations of the victor in one-on-one encounters among different bird species. There’s no doubt that that competitive dynamic is one that many humans find pretty interesting. When he was around 10 years old, our son loved a game when he would ask us to consider which of two fierce animals would win in a fight. “Polar bear versus killer whale?” he would ask. Or “elephant versus alligator?”

It didn’t matter for him whether the two would ever actually ever have a way to face-off in

I'm old enough to remember when Route 1 between Thomaston village and Rockland was attractive. After Dragon Cement's looming plant, there were trees and fields, Dorman's ice cream, and a small airport opposite it, plus a snack bar that later became the site of Dave's Diner.

But today New County Road, as almost nobody calls it, is a wasteland of big box stores, traffic lights and traffic jams. It is strip development with no apparent zoning.

Thomaston village, including Route 1 Main Street, embodies charm and character, even without the stately elms some of us remember. But Thomaston's leaders

Recent news reports and events that seek to demonize and thwart the efforts of our law enforcement to carry out their duties has made me realize that that a simple statement needs to be made.

Our laws should be enforced.  

Immigrants entering our country without documentation have broken U.S. law.

Smuggling, human trafficking and selling of drugs by undocumented immigrants has escalated the danger to all of us.  Our citizens have been raped and murdered by undocumented immigrants. These violent criminals must be held accountable for their crimes and then deported.

Recently reported illegal

 If there’s a state with better place names than North Carolina I can’t wait to get there. I started the day exploring Frog Island Road. It dead ends at a dock and an oyster shell pile on a creek that feeds into Albemarle Sound. 

 I had slept soundly behind a Pentecostal Church under renovation. I started the day with a cup of tea and a Gillian Welch CD, "Times A Revelator", playing. It set a mood. I decided to draw the steeple laying on the ground behind the Church. So many steeples are pointed straight toward heaven that this one seemed unique. Then I headed for the Outer Banks.

I will always remember the time a 14-year-old struggling reader I was working with at Camden Hills Regional High School exclaimed, “Why didn’t anyone tell me this before?!” as he realized there were rules he could use to decode words. It was a question I had been asking for years.

Scientific research on how children learn to read has been available for at least 30 years, yet the Maine Dept. of Education and Maine universities have continued to promote instructional programs and materials, such as Fountas & Pinnell’s ‘leveled literacy readers’, that evolved out of the now debunked Whole

I like to cook. There is something amazing about putting food in front of people you love — a warm soup on a cold evening, a plate of greens harvested from a summer garden, a custard full of eggs supplied by the backyard dinosaurs.

My earliest jobs were in the food industry, starting with a summer gig at 15 for Rick McLaughlin at the Lobster Pond Takeout, now McLaughlins, just down the hill. Breading station, that was my place, coating seafood with the deep fried triumvirate of flour, egg wash, and cracker meal destined to become crispy goodness in Rick’s vat of oil. 

I still hear Rick in my

The 2025 Maine Integrated Youth Health Survey (MIYHS) provides insight into the health behaviors of Maine students. Conducted every two years by the Maine Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS), the Maine Center for Disease Control (CDC), and the Maine Department of Education (DOE), the survey helps guide youth prevention and intervention programs.

Overall, survey results show that teen participation in cigarette smoking and vaping is declining. However, smokeless tobacco use—including nicotine pouches—has increased significantly statewide. In 2023, 3.1% of Maine high school students

With the beginning of the new year exciting transformations are happening at Watts Hall in Thomaston. Resulting from the conscientious and collaborative efforts of Watts Hall Community Players, Watts Hall Community Arts, Watts Block Trustees, and the Town of Thomaston, several grants and other funding sources have been secured to fund an extensive Watts Hall renovation project that got underway in late 2025.

These restoration partners have been successful in procuring grants from the National Park Service for Historic Preservation, the Federal Northern Border Regional Commission, and the Davis

It’s shaping up to be one of those years where birds are pushed south by cold weather.

One example: This week we had the good fortune to have an evening grosbeak show up in our neighborhood. It seemed odd to see one of these normally gregarious birds by itself when they are almost always in flocks. Over these last weeks there have been an uptick in reports of flocks of evening grosbeaks across Maine’s Midcoast region.