There are things about this adventurous life I’ve chosen that never get comfortable. Working nights and weekends isn’t a problem. I’ve almost learned to embrace the fact that I can never attend a concert, or a sporting event for the sheer purpose of my own amusement, the way everyone else on the planet can. Being […]
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Posted inLocal Sports
The Hot Corner: Let’s keep our heads in this game
Happy to report that our local schools are getting a clear head about the issue of concussions. No, the injuries aren’t going away. Despite everyone’s best efforts to teach better technique and promote awareness of the epidemic to every stakeholder in youth sports, I see and hear of more high school athletes getting concussed than […]
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Posted inLocal Sports
The Hot Corner: Football’s failures reflect society’s ills
We don’t have a football problem. We have a moral problem. A generation of men that doesn’t have the remotest suspicion how to be real men. Society that has pegged “disrespect” as the ultimate insult, without recognizing that respect is earned. Culture that has desensitized us to violence and the objectification of women, even as […]
Posted inMaine
North to Augusta: The post-Labor Day fun begins
Maine conventional wisdom suggests that the election season doesn’t really start until after Labor Day — and true to form, the campaigns for governor, Maine’s seats in the U.S. Congress and the State House are getting into full swing. Also now in full swing are the needling and nitpicking that goes on between the competing […]
Posted inLocal Sports
The Hot Corner: Halls purged, but is the rush alarming?
We, meaning the Maine basketball community, wanted answers Thursday after news broke of legendary coach Ordman Alley’s removal from one hall of fame and rescinded invitation from another. That measure of satisfaction arrived within 48 hours. And as is so often customary in controversies that unfold away from the bright lights and bleachers, all it […]
Posted inLocal Sports
The Hot Corner: Tragedy we can’t (and shouldn’t) shake
It is the story that won’t go away. Easy in this culture that struggles comically to separate rumor from fact to wish that it would. Failure to learn from the blink of an eye that has linked Tony Stewart and Kevin Ward Jr. for eternity, however, would heap tragedy upon tragedy. Ward’s life inexplicably is […]
Posted inMark LaFlamme
Street Talk: Kissing paradise goodbye
I promised myself I wouldn’t cry. Every early evening since the start of summer, I’ve been creeping like a trespasser to a stretch of woods along the Androscoggin River in Lewiston. It’s roughly a two-mile swath of woods and water, and for the better part of the last decade, it’s been my favorite place in […]
Posted inLocal Sports
The Hot Corner: Benjamin perfect fit with select company
OXFORD — Geoff Bodine. Ralph Nason. Ben Rowe. Eddie MacDonald. Let’s see: One of the top 50 drivers in NASCAR history; an irascible, indomitable local legend; and two guys who are still winning races and championships by the fistful, fluffing up the engraved writing for their regional hall of fame induction plaques someday. Does Travis […]
Posted inLocal Sports
The Hot Corner: It’s Theriault’s turn at 250
I’m the target of much abuse about my Oxford 250 forecast over the years. If I fail miserably, which was mostly the case from 1990 to 2007, I look like a fool. If I hit the winner four consecutive years, instead of being hailed as Nostradamus and Confucius in a blender, I hear that picking […]
Posted inAdvertiser Democrat, Mark LaFlamme, The Franklin Journal
Street Talk: The rules of Wiffle ball and how to break them
I was driving through one of Lewiston’s many fine neighborhoods one recent afternoon, when I came upon a loud spat — what we used to call a “row” — involving several preteen boys. The tone and wordage of the disagreement revealed at once what they were arguing about: Wiffle ball! In particular, one boy was […]