When my mother was a teenager in Exeter, New Hampshire, she’d sometimes respond to a potential suitor’s request for a date with the line, “No thank you, I’d rather stay home and read Dickens.” When I was a ninth grader in Parkersburg, West Virginia, my English teacher Ms. Pettigrew seemed taken right out of a […]

Before Republicans agreed to elect Kevin McCarthy Speaker House, a handful of his colleagues demanded the implementation of a fiscal framework to rein in federal spending. The threat of spending reduction has launched a full debt ceiling “default” panic. The spending interests are trying to cast conservatives as unreasonable and spendthrift Democrats as saviors of […]

A month after it was put on the docket, the Legislature swiftly passed and Gov. Janet Mills signed a “Winter Energy Relief” bill on its regular opening day, Jan. 4. The $474 million spending proposal, LD 3, was a curious production, about which more in a moment. It was also curious how it became law. […]

What makes us happy and fulfilled? According to the directors of the Harvard Study of Adult Development, the longest scientific study of happiness ever conducted, the answer is very simple: our relationships. “The stronger our relationships, the more likely we are to live happy, satisfying and overall healthier lives,” according to the book “The Good […]