The basket of names of men accused of sexual impropriety is filling right up. More than 100 so far. Now begins the pushback, and with it a long process of deciding whom to acquit in the court of public opinion, whom to forgive, whom to punish. Chief among the pushers back is Catherine Deneuve, excellent […]

When Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote, “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds,” he seemed to be saying inconsistency isn’t always a problem. Still inconsistency sometimes puzzles me. The most conservative Christians, for example. Seventy percent of white evangelicals in 1992, when Bill Clinton ran for president, said a person’s moral character was important […]

You’re going to see lots of coverage of the “top stories” of 2017, mostly about what has changed this year. But, rather than simply chronicle major events, let’s look at things that didn’t change, for better and for worse, despite, in some cases, a great deal of brouhaha surrounding them. The very word “Islam” still […]

My mother and her parents are buried in Kennebunk, in Hope Cemetery. It strikes me as both appropriate and ironic that one’s last resting place be called “Hope.” Hope is where you find it. Here are some other places, beyond that graveyard in the heart of the village of Kennebunk, where I find hope. Stuffed […]

Teaching my final class at the University of Maine, in 1983, I told about 30 journalism students that their career could put them in the driver’s seat because they were becoming masters of words, and words were coming to be more important than actions. I claim no prescience, but I may have got that one […]

Odds are pretty good that you didn’t attend church today. Or synagogue yesterday or mosque on Friday. You’re in Maine, and Maine is the least churched state in America. With Christmas season upon us, a few more will attend Christmas Eve services, but the empty pews will still yawn silently through the carols. Church activity […]