In the newsroom, tyros learn to frame stories about issues through the eyes and experiences of individuals. “Names is news,” we were often told. Enter Hilary Manuel, who was featured Wednesday in a front-page story about a bill to establish a state office to help former students with their loan debt. She finished graduate school $96,000 in […]
The Countryman
Posted inOp-Eds, Perspective
All downhill from here? Maybe
We’ve reached that point in a long winter — the ground at my house has been covered by snow since Nov. 11 — when it seems that nearly all conversations start with the weather and soon include the F word. Florida. Seems we’re barely into a conversation when someone says, “Maybe next winter I’ll go […]
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Posted inOp-Eds, Perspective
Going to college through the ‘side door’
Oh, Felicity Huffman, say it ain’t so. For 20 years, the actor you may know as Lynette Scavo on “Desperate Housewives” was a role model in our house for a role she had played earlier. Now, she is a role model for how the elite cheat. Damn. Huffman was indicted on Tuesday by the federal Justice […]
Posted inOp-Eds, Opinion, Perspective
Character revealed, good and bad
An old saying among coaches who expect a losing year is, “This will be a character-building season.” We won’t win many games, but we’ll turn out some really decent kids. The truth, though, is that sports doesn’t build character so much as it reveals character. Something about competing, about camaraderie, about performing in public brings out the […]
Posted inOp-Eds, Perspective
Basic Democracy? Maybe not
New Englanders have long had two religions. Our faith religion is slowly sinking beneath the hard boulders of our countryside. Our secular religion, “local control” of government, may be a bit stronger, but it, too, may be fading. When we came to New Sharon 39 years ago, we took up the practice of both religions. I became a […]
Posted inOp-Eds, Perspective
Response to child abuse: Too little, too late?
The power of religion, despite the decline in the number of practitioners, must be strong if there are still people today who believe and practice in spite of the scandals within major religions. Especially sexual scandals. In the past week, Pope Francis has convened a Vatican summit to address the issue of priests and bishops sexually […]
Posted inOp-Eds, Opinion
The population bomb bombs
Most of America may think of Maine as quaint, even rustic. Certainly not a trailblazer. Pine trees don’t make great innovators. But here’s an area in which Maine may be setting a trend. Population. Worldwide. Conventional wisdom is that the earth is lurching into a future of too-damned-many people. But Maine is coping with a decline […]
Posted inOp-Eds, sj-web
The optics of giddiness
Every endeavor has its lingo, a language that people in the field use as code. A vogue word in the lingo of political operatives these days is “optics.” It’s probably just a new word for an old concern. Did your parents caution you about what you look like when you, say, dye your hair purple […]
Posted inOp-Eds
The college dilemma: vocational or liberal arts?
Nobody has better framed the difficulty of a tough choice than Robert Frost. “Two woods diverged in a yellow wood,” he began in “The Road Not Taken.” He concluded, “I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.” Our choices don’t always narrow to two. But for decades America’s colleges […]
Posted inOp-Eds, sj-web
Seeing the whole picture
If a picture is worth a thousand words, what happens when the picture shows only part of the story or, worse, shows the wrong picture? In the past 10 days, we have seen pictures that generated way more than 1,000 words apiece yet remain unclear. People often saw in the pictures what they wanted to […]