World affairs may seem safely distant from life in a corner of the country, but events last week will affect this country for years to come. The most powerful democracies met twice, once at a NATO summit and then at the Group of 7 leading economic powers. Among countries that count the most, only Russia […]

Buying furniture is stressful. Too stressful. I’ve driven across French-speaking Canada alone with no map, I’ve worked and taken graduate courses full-time, and I even watched a Vin Diesel movie once, which was perhaps the most arduous undertaking of all. And I would do it all again if it meant never having to buy another […]

Mainers know the difference between a fair shake and a raw deal. And when you’re dealing with an illness, an injury, or even a routine medical procedure, you shouldn’t also have to worry about surprise medical bills. Surprise medical bills cause financial and emotional stress for patients and families, yet they are mostly preventable. That […]

Like a lot of inland paper mill towns, my boyhood home of Rumford has seen better days, where nearly one-in-four residents lives in poverty. That’s about twice the poverty rate for the rest of Maine. With so many families struggling to pay their bills, the Affordable Care Act (ACA, also known as Obamacare) has offered […]

In an effort to squeegee politics out of my life for a long weekend, I recently attended several sporting events that highlighted my granddaughters’ skills in soccer and swimming. Let’s start with the soccer teams. Let’s call one the Sesame Street Hushpuppies and the other team the Fighting Pacifists. But don’t let these names mislead […]

Abolishing the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) and the taxes that pay for it would save rich taxpayers like me a lot of money. But it would also endanger the health care of more than 30 million Americans. That’s not a tradeoff I want to make — and no one else should, either. Long before the […]

I’ve written in the past about how my Pop carried with him a haunting memory from his time aboard the aircraft carrier Essex in World War II. Anti-aircraft fire had killed a turret gunner during a sortie. Pop, whose job it was to repair and prepare planes for the next mission, went up to inspect the plane as soon […]

Every Memorial Day I attend a parade in the little town of Mercer, Pa. It’s pure Americana: flags, kids, the snow-cone stand, marching bands, local clubs and rotaries, and veterans of wars past processing down the street. Every year, one exhibit always strikes me: a car with a placard announcing the “Five Bailey Brothers.” The […]

Big budget battles are under way now. In Maine, the Legislature struggles toward a bipartisan compromise, essential for adopting a state budget, with the central issues being tax cuts for the wealthy and education spending. In Washington, President Trump’s new budget proposal focuses on tax cuts for the wealthy and reduced spending for the most […]