This op-ed originally ran in the June 10, 2023, issue of the Kennebec Journal. Imagine a trail from Augusta to Brunswick, offering rare and breathtaking views as it traces the Kennebec, Cathance, and Androscoggin rivers. Running along an inactive state-owned railroad corridor, it would attract tourists from around the country, benefit small businesses in our […]
This op-ed originally ran in the March 10, 2023 issue of the Times Record newspaper. I am a parent of children in the Maine School Administrative District 75 school system. Recently, I have become concerned that certain rights of mine are not being respected. Here are some of the rights I’m talking about. As a […]
This column originally ran in the Times Record newspaper on November 26, 2021. Each autumn, I’ve been lucky to find myself with much to be thankful for. The smell of a fall campfire, for one. The friend who takes me duck hunting and suggests good excuses when I miss every shot. And of course, the […]
This column was originally published in the Kennebec Journal newspaper on August 28, 2021. You may have heard about the Merrymeeting Trail, a 26-mile multi-use trail that would join the Kennebec River Rail Trail in the north to the Androscoggin River Bicycle and Pedestrian Path in the south, linking Augusta to Brunswick (and one day […]
This column originally ran in the Portland Press Herald newspaper on April 16, 2021. Robert Frost famously wrote about two roads that “diverged in a yellow wood.” These days, you couldn’t be blamed for thinking that half of us have wandered down one of those roads, half down the other. With all the division and […]
This column originally ran in the Times Record newspaper on October 27, 2020. One recent evening, I was getting ready for bed in the usual way: staring at my phone, anxiously doomscrolling through deeply troubling news stories. An article about the wildfires out west had caught my attention, and I was reading about how climate […]
This column originally ran in the Times Record newspaper on August 24, 2020. I have a deep, nerdy love for the Postal Service. I trace it back to my 20s, when I was working as an analyst at the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) in Washington, DC. As part of my job, I was sent […]
You were awesome.
File under Nerd Alert. But I basically turned back into a 10-year old when I read this: Netflix is said to be working on a new series that uses Nintendo’s beloved ‘Legend of Zelda’ games as their source material. The Wall Street Journal reports that it’s in the early stages of development, and that it […]
On Monday we rolled out a host of changes to the Bates website. The overriding goal was to make the site work well on all screen sizes and devices, and the changes touched the global navigation, search, and homepage design — all big and consequential things for users. We have been working on this project […]