Maine’s asylum seekers and other immigrants have also fled violence and threats to their families’ safety and well-being. Just as we want to support those fleeing Ukraine, we can take actions to support those building new lives here. That includes ensuring they have access to housing, health care and other basic needs.

The woman at the post office worries there are insufficient numbers among the young and even millennials to guarantee our freedoms will be extended. Sadly, she may be right.

It is said that alcoholics often need to “hit bottom” before they will make the necessary changes to kick their craving. The crisis in Ukraine has made us hit bottom on our addiction to oil. It is best for humanity’s survival, and the planet’s, that we kick it now.

An appointment to the Planning Board might not seem like a big deal to most folks. How these four councilors went about it should be a wakeup call to all Lewiston citizens to pay close attention to what decisions are made and how our city is being governed.

My Christian faith tells me we are all beloved children of God. My secular experience tells me my publisher was correct. “Some people are just purely evil.” The best we can do is seek a ray of goodness in even the most evil people. Hard to find one in Putin, though.

According to Beijing’s propagandists, Siberia belongs to China. The current border (approximately 2,740 miles) is an artifact of the 1860 Convention of Peking. The Second Opium War had weakened China. Czarist Russia was expanding. In 1917, the Bolsheviks acknowledged that czarist treaties forced on China were coercive and predatory. Russia, however, has never returned any Siberian territory.

The Endurance crew were explorers and scientists who volunteered for an exciting mission to explore the ice cap at the South Pole. Ukraine’s people never asked to undertake the suffering under Russian President Vladimir Putin’s cruel and insane campaign. But as Ukrainians die in the thousands, they show no signs of ending their resistance.

Adam Kinzinger, Republican from Illinois, took to Twitter last Friday with a remarkable statement of contrition for failing to hold the last president accountable. He wrote that his “biggest regret” was his decision to vote against Donald Trump’s first impeachment.

Like so much of the Constitution, the left and too many on the right have ignored history and sage advice when it comes to the economy. We are doomed to repeat that history unless we get our economic house in order. That will require more Americans taking a pledge to care for themselves and rely less on government, and it will mean electing people who will heed the warnings and advice of the people quoted above.

We must focus on maintaining a first-class military, winning the high-tech race with China, and reducing our vulnerabilities in the event of a war that disrupts supply chains and our access to key strategic materials and goods.