Thumbs up to all who celebrated their Irish heritage on St. Patrick’s Day this past Saturday by attending public events such as flag raisings and parades. The parade through Old Orchard Beach is a nice addition to the town’s offerings and a good way to take advantage of a springtime celebration with which many people identify.

Heritage is an important part of who we are, and for those of Irish descent, this is the seminal day to show their “green” pride. Cheers!

Thumbs up to the proposal in Old Orchard Beach to connect the Eastern Trail with Veterans Memorial Park. The conservation commission, in its recent review of the town’s trails and open space, noticed how much sense it would make to create a connector that would allow people to easily access the downtown from the trail. The commission believes the connector would be a low-cost project, and Steve Blais ”“ an engineer who is working on a nearby subdivision project ”“ has even offered to build a sidewalk to help it along. We hope the town council and residents will get behind this effort to make the town’s trail system even more useful and inviting to tourists and locals alike.

Thumbs up to the continuation of the freshman academy program at Biddeford High School, and to the proposal to have all ninth-grade students take part next year. This school year marks the first time the school has tried the program, but its results can hardly be considered representative, since only 74 students are taking part. Even so, grades in all but English are better for the “academy” group than for the rest of their class, so maybe it’s helping some students. Transitioning into high school can be daunting for many youth and other area schools have found success with the teaming model of keeping students with a small core group of teachers and students for that first year. Biddeford could find success with this approach, too, but they’ll have to give it a chance with the whole class to have a valid basis of comparison. We hope the school board agrees to approve the schoolwide approach when they take up this issue later this month, so the results can later be compared, apples to apples.

Thumbs up to the Northern York County YMCA staff for their efficient and quick evacuation of the building when suspected high levels of chlorine began to cause respiratory problems on Tuesday evening. All involved have had words of praise for the YMCA’s response to the situation, which led to all those affected being properly treated and avoiding serious injury. The incident is an important reminder that even some of the chemicals we consider to be commonplace, such as pool chlorine, can be dangerous, and we must always be on our guard to make sure they are being used with care.

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Thumbnails is a Monday feature of the Journal Tribune’s opinion pages. If you want to respond, feel free to write to the Readers’ Forum via email at jtcommunity@journaltribune.com or by dropping your letter off at our Biddeford or Sanford offices.