Smoking bans have their advantages. That is clear to anyone who remembers going out for drinks or dinner, or even flying on an airplane, before no-smoking signs lit up for good. Cigarettes were kicked out of bars and restaurants because smoke is irritating and harmful to bystanders, and because as more people quit smoking due […]

It’s said you can pick your friends, but you can’t pick your relatives or your unsolicited emails. For example, an email came over the transom here at Storyteller Central the other day from someone from away who said he had been reading a book on “the humor of Abe Lincoln,” and it said somewhere that […]

We got a letter last week from a woman who is now saving more than $1,000 a year, the result of an article she read here – and taking the time to make a phone call. She discovered there were programs she qualified for, and she could access them. Sometimes, all it takes is a […]

Even though same-sex marriage won in Maine, that doesn’t mean you can jump into bed with just anybody. Democratic state Rep. John Martin of Eagle Lake found that out when he was caught in the company of – no, not a scantily clad Zumba instructor from Kennebunk – but fully clothed accountants and lawyers employed […]