This week, it’s another edition of “We’re all thumbs,” in which we pick proverbial winners and losers, heroes and villains from recent news stories:

• Thumbs UP to Tom Brady and the Patriots, who showed the Pittsburgh Steelers, Patriots Nation and, most importantly, National Football League Commissioner Roger Goodell, who’s the boss. Brady, coming off a courtroom victory concerning Deflategate the week before, was dominant in the season opener on Sept. 10 at Gillette Stadium, completing 25 of 32 passes for 288 yards. The Patriots went on a 16-0 regular season tear in 2007 after charged with spying on the New York Jets (Spygate), so let’s hope similar post-scandal success continues.

• Thumbs DOWN to Gov. Paul LePage for his actions regarding House Speaker Mark Eves’ employment at Good Will-Hinckley School. The independent Office of Program Evaluation and Government Accountability (OPEGA) last week confirmed media reports that the governor threatened to withhold about a half-million dollars of funding from the school if its board hired Eves, a Democrat. Once Eves was no longer a candidate for the position, the funding was approved. The governor’s interference with someone’s employment prospects is dirty and unethical. With impeachment rumors starting to buzz, we wonder if LePage hadn’t been so concerned with his political foes’ job prospects, his own might not be imperiled now.

• Thumbs UP to the Gorham schools’ department of technology, which has worked hard to repair 100 laptops that were damaged when a storage cabinet came crashing down about a month ago. While most will be fixed elsewhere and covered by insurance, technology director Dennis Crowe praised technician Michael Nash for working “tirelessly,” including 80 hours of overtime in four weeks, to fix many of the laptops before opening day.

• Thumbs DOWN to the School Administrative District 6 School Board for approving the demolition of the historic Samuel D. Hanson School. The school was razed last week to the horror of many. With historic structures rare, and getting rarer, it’s sad the board decided to demo the handsome structure built during the Great Depression by Buxton laborers. We agree with folks who say it could have been repurposed as a community center. Workers said the building was rock solid and showed it by stubbornly resisting. While it eventually fell, we take heart in what one onlooker shared: “She’s a tough old girl. She didn’t want to go down.”

• Thumbs UP to the new 5-cent charge of plastic bags and ban on Styrofoam containers being considered in South Portland. The City Council passed a first reading of the measure last week with little fanfare. The council is reflecting a mood in society that people are sick of seeing the bags littering the roadsides and that charging people for the bags will reduce litter. While many of us reuse the plastic bags to pick up pet waste and for a variety of other useful purposes, we understand that changing to reusable shopping bags brought from home makes sense, too, and even sounds downright old-fashioned. Besides, if you really want to continue using the plastic bags, 5 cents seems a reasonable cost.

• Thumbs DOWN to the partying Appalachian Trail through-hikers who are using the Maine woods, and especially Baxter State Park, as their personal party headquarters. We’re disturbed by national reports regarding alcohol and drug use among some through-hikers. The practice violates the sanctity of the outdoors that day hikers and overnighters rely on to get a brief respite from the rat race. Scott Jurek, who broke the record for speed hiking the 2,200-mile trail this summer, was fined $500 by Baxter State Park officials for drinking celebratory alcohol atop Katahdin, the trail’s northern terminus, and now Baxter officials are trying to get the trail rerouted from the park. This would be a travesty for the venerable trail that has linked Georgia and Maine for eight decades. We don’t think Baxter officials are overstating the problem, but instead are speaking on behalf of thousands of outdoor enthusiasts who want to keep the trail primitive and free of hooliganism.

• Thumbs UP to On the Vine, the newly opened food store in Scarborough built in the former Dunstan School Restaurant space. We always like to see independent operations move into town and we know the community will appreciate their quality offerings. They join a growing list of natural food stores in our area. With Mainers growing more educated about the downsides to heavily processed food, we say the more natural grocery options, the merrier.

–John Balentine, managing editor