This week, I’m taking a vacation from writing opinions. Instead, I’ll just list some recent observations from which you can draw your own opinionated conclusions… • New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie makes a presidential campaign appearance in Portland, interrupting the breakfast of maybe a couple dozen people at Becky’s Diner. Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders does the […]
Thirty-five years after he arrived in town, and two years after municipal officials lifted the title of one of his essays for a marketing slogan — “Portland, Maine: Yes. Life’s good here.” — Maine’s largest city is still struggling to accept John Preston, the famous (or, to some, infamous) gay activist, journalist and pornographer. That […]
“A plague has infected Portland, and it’s spreading like a nasty rash from its point of origin in the city’s East End into neighborhoods and surrounding towns and beyond. It’s called Munjoy Hill disease. It may be incurable. The symptoms of this illness include a stubborn refusal to allow residential development to take place within […]
So long, Mark Rees. We hardly knew ya.And that was a big part of the problem.The announcement this week that Portland City Manager Mark Rees is resigning after three years as the boss of Maine’s largest city, and nearly a year before his current one-year contract is set to expire, has Portlanders all asking the […]
It was during a dreary stretch of winter in late January of this year that I got an unusual inquiry regarding freelance work. The freelancer herself didn’t contact me. Rather, the query came from an employment specialist in Scarborough on behalf of a “talented creative writer who is also working on a novel.” I provided […]
In Gaza, hundreds of women, children and other innocent civilians were being blown to pieces by an Israeli military armed and funded by our tax dollars. World leader like United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon were denouncing Israel’s indiscriminate bombing of homes, schools and hospitals as a “moral outrage” and a “criminal act,” while witnesses […]
Maine’s gubernatorial race, a rather sleepy affair so far, just got a whole lot livelier with the recent announcement of a new write-in candidate: “Green” Bud Kelly. Kelly is a contractor on a midcoast island whose services include house painting, dry walling, landscaping, carpentry and masonry. He has not, to my knowledge, run for political […]
The headline atop the BDN’s homepage certainly grabbed my attention: “LePage says 8 ‘unaccompanied alien children’ put in Maine without his knowledge.” “Oh, my God,” I thought. “The federal government” — long suspected of hiding evidence of extra-terrestrial contact on secret bases in the Nevada desert — “has shipped the spawn of space creatures into […]
As any good editor knows, words matter, especially when reporting on a controversial issue. For example, in covering the protests outside Planned Parenthood’s Congress Street offices, the media’s use of terms like “anti-choice,” “pro-life,” “pro-choice” and “abortion rights” can influence the debate and betray bias. Which brings us to the Portland Press Herald’s glaring editorial […]
Having done his part to torpedo independent Eliot Cutler’s gubernatorial bid four years ago with the Cutler Files website (which, by the way, is still online), maverick public-relations man Dennis Bailey is back with a new online salvo that rips holes in the sails of the state’s largest media organization, MaineToday Media — publisher of […]
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