“So, what is the bottom line?” You’ve heard the question a hundred times. Or more. At the end of that sentence, it is clear that the speaker is interested in one thing. Only one thing. How much money did it make (or lose)? This is the ultimate triumph of the bean counters, the accountants who […]

Time was, we were taught not to discuss two topics in polite company. Religion and politics. The thinking of our parents and grandparents was that everyone had a different take on religion and politics, that these ideas underpinned how folks thought and behaved. So polite people didn’t risk angering others by tiptoeing into convictions that […]

To get the right answer, we have to ask the right question. Too often, we don’t. I first saw the importance of asking the right question 28 years ago, when I was on the SAD 9 (Mount Blue) school board. In response to a question about students’ smarts, the superintendent, Dr. Lawson Rutherford, said: “We […]

We joke about having five seasons in Maine. And it always gets the attention of folks out of state when we talk about mud season. But it isn’t always a laughing matter. In my 39th spring since settling in Maine, I still miss spring. Sometimes, spring here hardly lasts long enough to clean the dried […]

If you’re not a sports fan, bear with me for a minute. This isn’t about sports, but sports gives me a good peg. The men’s basketball team at UMBC — that stands for the University of Maryland—Baltimore County — last month became the first men’s team picked as last in its bracket (seeded 16th, as […]

No, that headline is not how I really feel about public employees, but they are coming in for a beating these days and it may not be entirely their fault. Consider these instances in which public employees have come up short. On Feb. 25, Marissa Kennedy, 10, was beaten to death in Stockton Springs, and […]

There he goes again. Gov. Paul LePage, must be trying to seal his reputation as the governor who passed on the opportunity to make the largest change in Maine’s direction, just so he can vent his spleen at people who disagree with him. LePage is nothing if not dogged. This week, he said he would […]

The songwriter Jason Isbell is getting his due, with two Grammies this year. In one of his most popular songs, he wrote: “I sobered up and I swore off that stuff/Forever this time.” Audiences who know his story of drug and alcohol use always applaud that line. And now, I, too am gonna sober up […]

When Ronald Reagan was elected president in 1980, George Will, a conservative columnist for the Washington Post, wrote that Reagan had won because Republicans had ideas and Democrats had none. That column was a dope slap. I had thought of Republicans as stick-in-the-mud do-littles and Democrats as people who thought up ideas, workable and not. […]