Among the most heinous crimes in recent Maine history was the April 2018 murder of Cpl. Eugene Cole, the Somerset County sheriff’s deputy who was shot by a drug addict attempting to elude capture. Though the murderer, John Williams of Madison, was recently given a life sentence for the crime, we’ve heard relatively little about […]

Welcome to another edition of Boos and Bravos, the quick-hit, catch-all column of Here’s Something. This week, remarkably, we have nothing but positive bravos to report: Bravo to a fantastic, though fleeting, Maine summer. The weather was what Goldilocks would have ordered – warm but not oppressively so. There was little rain and few beach […]

Republican U.S. Sen. Susan Collins is not going to vote for any sort of meaningful gun-control legislation. Not now. Not ever. The reason is simple: Collins is totally owned by a rich guy who makes guns for a living. His name is Richard Dyke, and he’s spent a lot of money over the decades supporting […]

It’s time to talk about an idea whose time hasn’t come. And probably never will. It’s called the Maine Mountains Park, and it’s the brainchild of Lance Tapley, the man behind the successful effort back in the 1970s to create the Bigelow Preserve in western Maine. Tapley recently wrote a column for the Free Press in […]

It’s time for a return to our roots of rugged individualism.

After letting Democrats walk all over them during the regular session that adjourned in June, Republicans in the Maine Legislature seemed to have finally found their voice, and some spine. Republicans did taxpayers a favor during late August’s special legislative session by rejecting three of four Democrat spending proposals, saving the state $58 million. They […]

In Maine, hardly any restaurants serve whale. For good reasons. Whales are endangered, so any chef who offers the giant mammals as the fresh catch of the day is guaranteed to incite protests, vandalism and the sort of caustic online reaction usually reserved for racist remarks from the president. Also, I have it on good […]

Random thoughts while dozing off on a late summer afternoon: President Trump got into a serious spat with Denmark over his offer to buy Greenland. Apparently, the United States needs the island because it has a serious shortage of umlauts. From Maine’s perspective, there might be a better deal to be made. The U.S. should […]

Giving people money, rather than making them earn it, is false compassion.

“When one door closes,” Alexander Graham Bell said, “another door opens.” It’s an optimistic outlook I came to appreciate 15 years ago, when I joined The Forecaster. It’s the philosophy guiding me now as I close the door on my tenure at the newspaper. I left the Journal Tribune in Biddeford  in 2004, after 19 […]