It was February break week after two long years of COVID and I had the joy of taking my youngest daughter, Juliet, to see some colleges today. She will be 17 very soon — although it seems like yesterday that she was still swaddled in my arms. She’s a junior in high school now and […]
Times Record
Posted inTimes Record Opinion
Letter: Utility accountability bill won’t work
Consumers are furious about the poor reliability and high cost of electricity delivered by CMP and Versant. Gov. Janet Mills has proposed a bill (LD 1959) that is intended to improve the situation and make all electric utilities accountable to the public. The bill does not accomplish those goals and has major shortcomings. The bill […]
advertisement
Posted inTimes Record Opinion
Guest column: Pessimistic hope is not an oxymoron — in preserving democracy and all other endeavors
As a dyed-in-the-wool pessimist, I rarely see the glass as half full. So when a young colleague told me I have “radical hope,” I thought she had mistakenly sent me an email meant for another. She proclaimed this upon my helping her escape a toxic work environment — her first professional position — intact. There, […]
Posted inTimes Record Opinion
Tom Purcell: Old family photos bring new perspective
My mother and father keep our old photos in their hall closet in a sturdy old Pabst Blue Ribbon box. Sifting through old photos is a glorious experience — one, we now know, that relieves aches and pains by calming the brain, according to a recent study. The last time I looked through the box […]
Posted inTimes Record Opinion
The Maine Idea: Business taxes gone with the wind
As we emerge from a pandemic that has scrambled supply chains, consumer habits and household budgets, we might devote some attention to creating better boundaries between business and public purposes, especially where taxation is concerned. Deregulation has been the watchword since the Carter administration, and we’ve seen entire industries born and prosper without much, if […]
Posted inIndoor Track, Times Record Sports, Varsity Maine
Mt. Ararat indoor track and field athletes prepare to compete at national events
Mt. Ararat seniors Grady Satterfield, Mikaela Langston and Nathaniel Smith among handful of athletes who will be in New York this weekend.
Posted inTimes Record Opinion
Commentary: 3 things that influence college graduates from rural areas to return to their communities
When high-achieving students from rural areas go off to college and graduate, they often choose to live in suburban or urban areas instead rural communities like the ones where they grew up, decades of research have shown. Often they are following the advice of adults – or just deciding on their own – to search […]
Posted inTimes Record Opinion
Commentary: Battles over book bans reflect conflicts from the 1980s
A conservative leader found fault with how “respect for our nation’s heritage” had been mostly stripped from the textbooks of public schools. “From kindergarten right through the total school system, it almost seems as if classroom textbooks are designed to negate what philosophies previously had been taught,” the conservative leader lamented. “[M]any textbooks are actually […]
Posted inTimes Record Opinion
Dick Polman: Is America strong enough to endure domestic sacrifice?
During World War II, Americans put up with rationed gas and car tires, rationed coal and fuel oil, rationed silk and nylon, rationed meat and daily products, rationed jams and jellies, even rationed coffee. Would today’s Americans – some of whom freaked out, during the worst of the pandemic, when they couldn’t get their hair […]
Posted inTimes Record Opinion
Peter Funt: We don’t want blood-stained oil
Dear President Biden: Many of us feel helpless — overwhelmed, actually — about the catastrophe in Ukraine, wishing we could do more to show support for that nation’s brave people. Moreover, we want to pitch in. We’re giving money to organizations providing aid to the more than one million refugees, most of them women and […]