WESTBROOK – Westbrook School Superintendent Marc Gousse’s contract has been renewed for another three years, extending his current role into 2017. On Feb. 13, the School Committee unanimously voted to approve Gousse’s new contract, which includes a pay freeze and a cut in his vacation and sick time. “I don’t look at it as taking […]

WESTBROOK – Inside a small band room in Westbrook High School, it’s so loud students have to shout to be heard over saxophones and trumpets. In the background, the fierce metallic crash of a drum high-hat drenches everything in a familiar jazz beat. Luckily, these students aren’t trying to have conversations. They’re practicing for Berklee […]

GORHAM – Martha Treworgy Harris, a well-known Gorham resident who recently began cancer treatment, died Tuesday night after suffering a setback just days ago. “Everybody is stunned,” the Rev. David Butler, pastor of the First Parish Congregational Church in Gorham, said Wednesday. “She was one of the most beloved people in this town for many […]

More than 100,000 homes and businesses lose electricity, and at least three deaths are blamed on the blizzard.

Bates College Museum of Art in Lewiston is offering three shows; two of which I would call traditional. The third is so nontraditional that it challenges my expectations. To add weight to its novelty, a portion of that third — “Color at the Center” by Fransje Killaars — is not presented in the museum itself, […]

I am keeping my eyes on the canopy, where spring and green leaves are still absent, but other presences are putting in an appearance. Even with the seemingly unrelenting repetition of snow and melt and rain and slush, evoking descriptions of the landscape as “bleak” and “monotonous,” a certain amount of activity from animals still […]

ISABEAU ESBY and A.J. KITT

A wink from federal prosecutors is not enough to protect the legal rights of Maine patients.

Last January, Peter Kallin of Rome stopped at my home, and in the middle of our conversation, said something that perked my ears up straighter than a Boston terrier’s. Kallin was talking about his 2012 open-water season on Long Pond in the Belgrade Lakes, where he had caught 30 landlocked salmon, impressing me. The salmon […]

Feuds, fiefdoms and betrayals await the next pontiff