Mark Twain, in an unpublished manuscript, once wrote: “It is not worthwhile to try to keep history from repeating itself, for man’s character will always make the preventing of the repetitions impossible.” “Man’s character” indeed. Check out what’s happening right now in Charlottesville, Virginia. Hear the eerie echoes of what happened in Germany in 1924. […]

On Nov. 2, the Maine people spoke loudly about CMP’s so-called Green Energy Corridor. We saw through many of CMP’s questionable plans. But foremost I think Maine people realized we were getting a bad deal. The corridor was never about green energy. It was about making billions for CMP and its parent company. Is this […]

My daughter-in-law recently told me about an NPR story which sparked the idea for this column. The noted Nobel-winning physicist Richard Feynman was asked what one message he would pass along to future beings if the world blew up. He said he would tell them that everything is composed of atoms. Audience members were asked […]

While Republicans are positively giddy over the party’s sweep of Virginia and the near-miss in reliably blue New Jersey, Democrats have succumbed to public bickering and finger-pointing over who and what was to blame. Whatever détente was possible between the party’s progressives and centrists vanished on the morning after the election, as leaders of both […]

“What’s the matter with Kansas?” An 1896 editorial in a Kansas newspaper carried that headline. It became a national mantra, revived in a 2004 book, a film – both with that title – plus a New York Times commentary last week. They all concluded that average people often vote against their own best interests. After […]

At The Gathering Place, just before COVID, we marked something important to many of us there: Our 10th anniversary. Feb. 7, 2010, marked our first day, on which we opened to a grand total of seven guests. Yes, seven! Since then we’ve been visited over 200,000 times by guests, the majority of them folks who […]

11 white jurors and one Black juror. We are in week two of the Ahmaud Arbery trial, and I wanted to remind you of the make-up of the jury in the case of a Black Georgia man who was shot and killed by three white men. A father and son duo — Gregory McMichael and […]