Lots of older people, especially if living alone, may find themselves eating less or not really up to getting meals. As we get older, often we simply don’t get hungry, and substitute a good meal with a dish of cereal or maybe some toast and tea. For these folks, Meals on Wheels can literally be […]
American Journal Opinion
Posted inAmerican Journal, Current, Lakes Region Weekly, Northern Forecaster, Web
POLITICS & OTHER MISTAKES: Time to go
Now that Mike Michaud’s political career is coming to an end, let’s review the highlights of his long tenure in office. Roll the highlights, please. Uh … highlights? We appear to be experiencing technical difficulties. Whenever we enter the words “Mike Michaud” and “highlights” in the computer, it keeps replying, “No items found matching your […]
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Posted inAmerican Journal, Lakes Region Weekly
ON THE RIGHT LANE: Thrown under the bus
Right now I can only see one direction that the United States and some other nations are heading and it’s the one place most of us don’t want to go. That place is just the opposite of Heaven. I don’t care whether it’s politics, crimes, terrorism or just plain stupidity, our planet seems to be […]
Posted inAmerican Journal
EDITORIAL: Don’t forget those old-time traditions
Last week’s alarming episode at the University of Maine at Orono, in which a renegade administrator sent out a staff-wide email barring any religious displays of the upcoming Christmas holiday (an effort that was eventually reversed), got us thinking this week about holiday traditions, and how many of them seem to be slowly fading. For […]
Posted inAmerican Journal, Current, Lakes Region Weekly
GREETINGS FROM ZIP CODE 04074: Not so black and white
I love how white America is dealing with the news items the past few months about black people and police shootings; jury verdicts of not-guilty for white defendants; grand jury refusals to indict white policemen, etc. Let’s play pretend; let’s pretend that the black people shot in the past year in these U.S. news stories […]
Posted inAmerican Journal, Current, Lakes Region Weekly
THE REALLY LONG VIEW: Dickens, LePage part ways
In Charles Dickens’ story “A Christmas Carol,” the ghost of Jacob Marley sharply rebukes Ebenezer Scrooge for defending his myopic devotion to “business” as life’s only worthy value: “Business?! Mankind was my business. The common welfare was my business; charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence were all my business. The dealings of my trade were but […]
Posted inAmerican Journal, Current, Lakes Region Weekly
THE REALLY LONG VIEW: Dickens, LePage part ways
In Charles Dickens’ story “A Christmas Carol,” the ghost of Jacob Marley sharply rebukes Ebenezer Scrooge for defending his myopic devotion to “business” as life’s only worthy value: “Business?! Mankind was my business. The common welfare was my business; charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence were all my business. The dealings of my trade were but […]
Posted inAmerican Journal, Current, Lakes Region Weekly
POLITICS & OTHER MISTAKES: Nothing was delivered
There are plenty of ideas for reforming the electoral process in Maine, nearly all of them confusing, expensive or stupid. Also, none of them produces a fairer result. Ranked-choice voting? It’s complicated (lots of people mark their ballots in ways they didn’t intend), costly (it requires new voting machines) and – in spite of proponents’ […]
Posted inAmerican Journal, Current, Lakes Region Weekly
0N THE RIGHT LANE: Political two-face shuffle
“Instead of giving a politician the keys to the city, it might be better to change the locks.” Doug Larson Have you noticed that when political power changes, nothing else seems to change to any meaningful extent? I have seen tax breaks that did nothing but increase taxes. I have seen tax shifts that supposedly […]
Posted inAmerican Journal, Lakes Region Weekly, Northern Forecaster
DOWN THE ROAD A PIECE: Flying into the future
As a kid in grammar school I enjoyed reading articles in The Weekly Reader about what life would be like in the future. Of course, I stated reading those articles in the late ’50s and “the future” they referred to was the distant 1970s and 1980s. According to these futuristic predictors, we could expect to […]