Anybody out there have a problem with people who constantly expect to be rescued? Who are absolutely dead certain they’re entitled to be rescued? I’m not talking about those of us who occasionally appreciate having firepersons save us from our burning homes, or having physicians rescue us from dying of an unpronounceable disease or having […]

This is the 500th piece I’ve written for the “Just a Little Old” column. When I began the column, I explained the inspiration for the title. Twenty years ago I was at a wedding in Oregon. My 2-year-old granddaughter Emma looked at me and said, “Dee, you’re old!” I pointed to my father, then in […]

What is gleaning? It falls into that broad category of words that you kind of know that conjure indistinct images of vaguely familiar activities like, say, glamping, galivanting, larping or loitering. Yes, perhaps you’d know it if you saw it. Or perhaps not. Really, it’s a simple idea betrayed by an overly abstract word, quite […]

One thing is sure about Joe Brennan, who died last week at age 89 — he was like no other Maine politician, before or since. Brennan was the first governor from Portland (1979-87) since Percival Baxter nearly 60 years earlier, his temperamental opposite — a working class scrapper vs. Baxter’s polished, upper-crust style. Governors from […]