Working out can be a chore, drudgery akin to dusting ceiling fan blades or vacuuming under the bed. It can also be a joy. A lot depends on your personality type and exercise of choice. We don’t recommend going straight from the couch to dead lifts. What we do suggest is finding others to work …
Smokers pay for their habit in more ways than one. There’s the toll smoking takes on their health and then there’s the toll it takes on their wallets. Starting Jan. 2, electronic cigarette users in Maine will be feeling the pain when the excise tax on non-cigarette tobacco products, including vaping devices and liquids, will …
As the summer begins to wind down and kids prepare to go back to school, some students are steeling themselves for an unfortunate prospect: confronting bullies. And while bullying still happens in school hallways, locker rooms and playgrounds, kid-on-kid torment increasingly has gone digital. And bullying that happens via text, Snapchat, Instagram messaging or video …
Roughly 2.5 million rural Americans (about 7 percent of the total rural population) report having no friends or family nearby to rely on, according to a recent poll by NPR, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. An additional 14 million rural residents say they only have a …
Branch Lake, spanning nearly 3,000 acres and dotted with a few small islands and a greater number of wailing loons, is one of Ellsworth’s greatest assets. It is home to lake trout, landlocked salmon and smallmouth bass. Beautiful, clean and surrounded by valuable real estate, it is also the city’s spigot, the sole source of …
Statewide in Maine during the seven-year period from 2006 to 2012, nearly 398 million prescription hydrocodone and oxycodone pills were distributed, according to Drug Enforcement Agency data compiled by the Washington Post. The pharmacy that sold the most was Miller Drug in Bangor. Number two? Hannaford right here in Ellsworth, with over 4.2 million of …
Bucksport town councilors recently voted unanimously to provide significant financial assistance to Whole Oceans, LLC in support of plans to build a land-based Atlantic salmon aquaculture project on the former Verso Paper Co. site. Their action designated the newly acquired Whole Oceans property as a Municipal Development and Tax Increment Financing TIF District, which will …
Maine’s beleaguered wild blueberry industry is suffering from trade dispute retaliation. This month, the state of Maine took appropriate action and petitioned the federal government to provide temporary relief to the growers. We hopefully await the outcome. President Trump is exercising his unilateral authority to impose economic tariffs on a range of U.S. imports manufactured …
Friday marks the 200th anniversary of the vote to separate the District of Maine from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Statehood didn’t come until nearly seven months later on March 15, 1820. At a time when the nation was embroiled in controversy over slavery, Maine’s admission to the union was a feat of political compromise so …
Nearly one of out of every six workers in Maine is employed by the government — federal, state or local. And according to the Maine Department of Labor Center for Workforce Research and Information, the average weekly wage paid to federal employees is considerably higher than the average earnings of workers across all other industries. …
Ellsworth’s annual report is hot off the presses and a little lighter this year. Actually make that recently published and shorter. It doesn’t weigh a thing and there were no presses; the city’s report has gone digital. (Find it online at ellsworthmaine.gov.) While we in the newspaper business appreciate a printed product, the move saved …
Open Door Recovery Center’s closure after 35 years demonstrates that sometimes it’s not only the individuals battling addiction who are in crisis, but the organizations that serve them too. Open Door has been on the front lines of the drug epidemic in Hancock County. The need for treatment for substance-use disorder is greater than ever …
