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 […]

“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 […]