What can be more precise than numbers? Ten is 10. No argument. But Brooks Hamilton, my colleague at the University of Maine, used to grumble that journalists were too often dazzled by numbers. We had been taught to be as precise as possible in writing news. That often meant throw in some numbers, even if […]

For the next 51 days, we’ll be in the midst of Silly Season, the biennial statewide election campaign. You’ll see and hear things you don’t see and hear the rest of the time. Silly as it may seem at times, the election is sacred to our democracy. If we have a civic equivalent to attending […]

At age 72, the only quickness about her was the speed of the arthritis overtaking her body. She had to use a walker, but she was determined to participate in two rituals, holding her new grandson and hurrahing with her tribe. In July 1972, my mother flew from Florida to North Carolina, then rode with […]

When a friend’s son committed suicide, she told me she had read that people killing themselves want to kill at least one other person, likely the person closest to them. When my father killed himself in 1950, he may not have killed anyone else — each survivor might wonder who was the other person he […]

The photo shows a youngish John McCain, wearing the three-day growth of beard that so many guys flash these days. The caption reads: “The Last Republican, 1936-2018.” If McCain wasn’t the last Republican, he may have been the last of what we traditional-minded people think of as a Republican. Cautious, practical, steadfast, cooperative. My kind […]

Waiting for a trolley at the 30th Street station in Philadelphia, I saw two clumps of weeds pushing up through the rock ballast and over the creosoted crossties, seeking sunshine and water to stay alive. That put me in mind of my father, now dead for nearly 68 years. If these brainless shreds of grass, […]

The news last week of Catholic priests defiling children in Pennsylvania should have shocked us. But many of us may be beyond shock. Haven’t we seen all this before? Well, in a way, yes. This was the 11th report by a grand jury or attorney general detailing sexual abuse of children and young adults by […]

If you don’t like the way your political party leans, just wait a while. That paraphrase of the old saw about the weather in Maine (or just about anywhere that isn’t San Diego) exaggerates the situation, but look at how the two major political parties have switched places over the past few decades on the […]

We used to call them “animal crazies,” and we could count on them every year to try to take down the Maine Lobster Festival at Rockland. PETA hasn’t taken down the festival, so you can grab a lobster today at Rockland or any time and just about anywhere. PETA stands for “People for the Ethical […]

By the time I saw “The Front Page,” the show about hard-bitten police reporters in Chicago, the story may have been a bit of an anachronism. The play and movie painted a picture of reporters who came from the street and worked on the street. They weren’t cops or criminals, but they got their living […]