In light of recent news of the Maine Arts Commission’s decision not to fund an implementation grant proposed by L/A Arts on behalf of the Lewiston-Auburn community’s Cultural Plan, we  wish to comment briefly on the status of the Cultural Plan that so many in our community helped develop and support. The cultivation of that […]

For 45 minutes on Christmas Eve, I watched love, in all of its diversity, play out in front of me. Thanks, 2016. I needed that. I was parked in the arrivals lane at Cleveland Hopkins International Airport, nearly an hour early for my daughter and her family. It is not my habit to arrive so […]

REARVIEW MIRROR What makes George Washington different than President-Elect Donald Trump? One traveled the road to national unification 227 years ago, while the other has taken the path to self-glorification. On April 16, 1789, Washington reluctantly left his beloved plantation home in Mt. Vernon, Virginia to travel to New York City, then the nation’s capital, […]

25 years ago this week, on December 31, 1991, the Soviet Union collapsed. Though Cold War has no definitive peace treaty per se, with the Kremlin’s Communist empire in fragments everyone knew the great military and economic struggle between the free world and the Communist  bloc had ended. Fortunately the Cold War didn’t end with […]

Stressed Americans seeking calm through decluttering and meditation might add a third activity: the cocktail hour. Whether at home or out, the cocktail hour usefully separated the workday from a presumably free evening. The TV series “Mad Men” revived interest in this grown-up ritual. While showing the social benefits, it didn’t ignore the downside of […]

The following editorial appears on Bloomberg View: President Barack Obama’s ill-advised decision to order the U.S. to abstain on a United Nations resolution condemning Israeli settlements breaks with past U.S. policy, undermines a vital ally and sets back the cause of Middle East peace. Yet it also offers Democrats and Republicans a chance to unite […]

The following editorial appears on Bloomberg View: The quest to create a more rational health-care system took a dispiriting turn this month, when the federal government abandoned an effort to motivate doctors to use the best available drugs, rather than the costliest ones. What’s worrisome is that this could be the start of a more […]

Donald Trump was supposed to take over the Republican Party, but the question going forward will be whether the Republican Party takes over him. So far the early legislative agenda of Republicans after the Trump revolution is shaping up to be what you would have expected prior to the Trump revolution. It’s a cookie-cutter GOP […]

Donald Trump has inspired so much fear among his Republican comrades that he no longer has to issue harsh tweets when they misbehave. They do it themselves. Newt Gingrich was once himself revered as House speaker but has since become a Trump fawner. When Gingrich recently opined that Trump was no longer interested in “draining […]

This appeared in Wednesday’s Washington Post: President-elect Donald Trump is right to close down the Donald J. Trump Foundation, a charitable organization that been dogged by questions about its practices. Trump must not interfere with the ongoing investigation by the New York attorney general, but he should shutter the foundation as quickly as possible so […]