I was listening to a President Donald Trump interview over the weekend. He said they’ve already started to build the wall -- big parts, it’s going to be beautiful -- with money they had on hand. So what I’d like to know is, why was there a shutdown? Or is that another lie?

More than two dozen mushers and their teams from across Maine, New England, and Quebec took to the trails for the annual 100-Mile Wilderness Sled Dog Race on Feb. 2. Entrants competed in 35- and 70-mile races, starting and finishing by the Leisure Life Resort.

Three tiny bear cubs are resting peacefully in new dens after their original winter home was disturbed by a logging operation on Jan. 31, and their startled mother fled.

Brook trout are among the state’s most treasured natural gifts, and Maine is lucky to have more places to catch wild brookies than any other state in the lower 48. And according to a state fisheries biologist, anglers on the state’s largest lake have been hauling in some huge brookies of late.

Dexter Family Practice has joined Mayo Regional Hospital to become the hospital’s fifth rural health center in the region.

The town of Monson will hold “Snowroller 2019,” one of the county’s few family-fun winter events, on Friday, Feb. 15 and Saturday, Feb 16.

Advance care planning isn’t just for those with life-limiting illnesses – but for all of us. Pine Tree Hospice is offering a free informative seminar at the Dover Foxcroft Congregational Church from 9:30 a.m. to noon on Saturday, Feb. 16.

If only it were a lost art and we had left it there long ago. Its device and scheme is a plague upon our nation's soul. So it has followed us from distant shores, infectious and diseased, to raise its ugly bulbous head in a legislative eruption of taxation.

Gabrielle Heuttener and Susannah Heuttener of Monson, Tyler Libby of Parkman, Ingrid Halvorsen of Guilford, and Tyler Judd of Athens served as honorary pages in the Maine Senate on Jan. 31. They were visiting the Statehouse with the 4-H Youth Development Program and they met with Sen. Paul Davis, R-Sangerville.

Upcoming events around the region.