The 27th annual Maine Forest Heritage Days is scheduled for Aug. 9-12. The weekend includes a bus tour through Maine’s working forest, a craft fair, carriage rides, chainsaw carving, a woodsman demonstration featuring chopping and ax throwing and the regional Game of Logging competition.

Along the banks of those ponds, they may also find a few dozen stashed canoes left behind by their owners. The unspoken rules of the Maine custom are that anyone can use them, as long as they are returned in the same condition as they were borrowed.

Recent studies have show that Lyme disease -- a tick-borne illness with debilitating consequences -- is on the rise. If left untreated, this disease can cause arthritis with severe joint pain and swelling.

Leslie Lizotte, aging and disability resource center specialist from the Eastern Area Agency on Aging, will be holding a Medicare 101 class at the Piscataquis County office building (Peaks House) located at 163 East Main Street from 10 a.m. to noon on Wednesday, Aug. 15.

Susan Patten is full of surprises. We’ve known each other through various incarnations in Maine's news business. Mostly, Susan was a radio news broadcaster; I was communications director for legislators or political campaigns.

The Piscataquis County Economic Development Council (PCEDC), in partnership with Helping Hands with Heart (HHH), has received a $10,000 grant from a component fund of the Maine Community Foundation to investigate shared concerns about workforce development, youth aspirations, local youth and the barriers to successful employment in the towns served by five area school districts.

I volunteered to join Sue Mackey Andrews, Senate District 4 Democratic candidate, going house to house talking with residents in Piscataquis County. I was so moved by the number of people who needed to work two jobs just to keep up with healthcare and medication expenses

Each year, the Piscataquis County Soil and Water Conservation District (PCSWCD) honors an educator working in the county with the Outstanding Conservation Educator of the Year award. The awarded educator’s dedication to fostering students’ learning and understanding of natural resource ecology and related curriculum is why they were selected. This year, the PCSWCD staff and board of supervisors will present Alexandra Conover Bennett, Maine guide and professor at the College of the Atlantic.

In the cool and pleasant basement of the Abbott Memorial Library Friday evening (Aug. 3) for the monthly gathering of Dexter Dover Area Towns in Transition (DDATT), about two dozen area people watched the short film “A Farm for the Future” in which the foundations of modern agriculture are questioned by a young farmer trying to figure out how to make her family’s land productive and profitable.

On Saturday, Aug. 4 at approximately 12:45 p.m. Maine Warden Service divers being pulled underwater with planing boards located the body of Robert Hammond, 66, of Hanson, Mass.