I recently led a field trip with 57 Oxford Hills Middle School students. After finishing our fourth hike of the week (at Thorncrag Bird Sanctuary), we decided to treat the students to ice cream as a reward. It seemed wise to alert the business — Fielder’s Choice on Minot Avenue. The young lady who answered […]

Donna Dodge’s letter (May 2), stating an anti-vaccine position “based on facts … not propaganda,” would be more convincing if her most startling piece of evidence was not a clever distortion. The Supreme Court has not “ruled that they (vaccines) are ‘unavoidably unsafe’ and … quietly compensated victims more than $3 billion …” Ronald Reagan […]

As someone who works at a bottle redemption store, I believe Maine is nowhere near ready for improving recycling. The majority of customers who come to my store are rude and careless about the condition of the containers they are returning, which often contain trash, needles and, sometimes, bugs that follow me home. The amount […]

Taxes going up again — I wish the Lewiston City Council would do what is expected of them by the taxpayers. If councilors just spent a day at Lewiston Public Works, they would see that the department has more new equipment than is actually needed. I have inside knowledge that the municipal garage needs at […]

As severe storms race through America, spawning tornadoes, hail and floods, I wonder what must occur to move people to take action on mitigating climate change? Some already have loved ones affected by wildfires, intensified by high temperatures and drought. My household needed to dig a new well in 2016 due to prolonged drought conditions. […]

In the United States, no one is above the law but, day after day, I watch what appear to be violations of the Constitution by President Donald Trump as he ignores the rule of law and slow-walks the country toward autocracy. (Autocracy is when one person possesses unlimited power in a government.) People have a […]

Donna Dodge, in her letter (May 2) opposing mandatory vaccination, was inaccurate when she said that the Supreme Court ruled that vaccines are “unavoidably unsafe.” The case in question was Bruesewitz v Wyeth in 2010, and the issue in question was a complex one regarding consumers’ ability to sue the manufacturer of a vaccine for […]

Everyone knows why people are required to wear seat belts. It is really because when someone gets hurt without wearing a seat belt, the auto insurance companies don’t like that. I came to realize that you can fight city hall but you cannot fight the insurance companies. So, getting pulled over for not wearing a […]

Three members of my household voted for Janet Mills in anticipation that she would protect the dwindling semi-wilderness of Maine. Her support of a hydro-electric transmission line, consisting of cutting a swath through precious, irreplaceable, semi-wilderness — like a dagger through the heart of Maine — is disappointing. Unfortunately, using Maine as a doormat will […]

John Adams was the principal author of the Massachusetts Constitution of 1780. That document became the principal model for the U.S Constitution of 1787. Adams wrote: “In the government of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, the legislative, executive and judicial power shall be placed in separate departments, to the end that it might be a government […]