To alter a sentence by Abraham Lincoln, “You cannot please all the people all the time.” Still, maybe we oughta try. We often have but one opportunity to make a relationship, be it romance, friendship or business. It’s not, as Woody Allen said, that “80 percent of life is showing up.” Sometimes he says “success” […]

When the food bank in Anchorage received a trailer-load of pickles in 5-gallon pails, it was clear that things had gone sour. The food bank needed produce and dairy, not pickles galore. That started a round of talks among food-bank managers and suppliers, a round of talks that led to an unusual solution. The free […]

As the old joke has it, if Democrats were to organize a firing squad, they would first form a circle. With almost everything going their way for the mid-term election and with the possibility of making Donald Trump a one-term president in 2020, Democrats may be circling up again. Their ability to snatch defeat from […]

Franklin Roosevelt reportedly promised Americans “a chicken in every pot.” Nowadays it seems that educationists are promising students an “honors” mark in every report card. An article on Monday in the Sun Journal showed that kids graduating from high school in Maine are almost certain to graduate at some “honors” level. At Cape Elizabeth High, […]

There are two kinds of people, those who . . . You’ve heard those words a hundred times, spoken by someone who wants to distinguish between, say, Type A (driven) and Type B (laid back) people, or between those who, say, get up early and those who would pummel those who rise early. Around here, […]

Maine’s chief export, say wags and leaders alike, is Mainers. More than lobsters, more than blueberries, more than vacation snapshots. Maine ships people out by the thousands. Among those shipping out were my forebears, leaving North Norway and Guilford decades ago for brighter prospects in — you guessed it — Massachusetts. Only when my grandparents […]

For starters, I never cared for the coffee. Bitter, maybe over roasted. When my son treated me once in Boston, his tab for two coffees — not frappuccinos, lattes or espressos — was $8. Two black coffees, $8. That was my only Starbucks coffee. I couldn’t handle the bitterness and the price, so for one […]

Bill Cosby has twice been the focus of a trend, possibly major each time. Once by design, once by personality defect. The importance of “The Cosby Show” (1984-92) cannot be overstated. It let us white Americans relate to a wildly successful black family, Heathcliff Huxtable, a father and obstetrician/gynecologist (irony noted), and Clair Huxtable, a […]