I’ve seen a few Allagash Wilderness Waterway canoe trips get cut short because people were ill prepared for black flies. A couple years ago, we had two young women that started their trip at Chamberlain Bridge who were desperate to get out of the waterway by the time they got to Churchill Dam.

Early in its existence the Dexter Historical Society received a donation of negatives and photos from Bert Lincoln Call, a photographer in Dexter from 1886 until the early 1940s. Call's stock-in-trade was portraiture of local citizens, but his passion was for the woods, lakes and rivers of northern Maine which he visited annually.

As part of its Community Care Program, Maine Highlands Federal Credit Union recently presented a donation to the Valley Grange of Guilford. Employees contributed based on their “dress down” Fridays with the proceeds being distributed to local community organizations.

Enough already. The media — no monolith, mind you — is not the enemy. Sure, individual reporters make mistakes, bias occasionally slips in, facts get mangled, and spin proves effective. But by and large — and with the exception of some elements of Fox News — reporters are operating in good faith.

Dexter Regional High School has released the honor roll for the fourth quarter of the 2017-18 academic year.

Before I moved to Sangerville 44 years ago. I worked as a custodian in a K-6 grade school and then I went and worked in a 7-8 grade school. In both schools I saw some very sad and depressed students. The younger children did not understand why their mother or father was not coming home anymore and the older boys and girls became very angry and some needed anger management. Children are the biggest losers. Very sad.

The motivation for nearly 90 recent high school graduates to sacrifice a midsummer week to participate in the Maine Shrine Lobster Bowl Classic takes on several forms.

Castlebay plays at the Wayside Theatre at 7 p.m. on Saturday, July 28. Since 1986, Castlebay has been weaving together Maine's nautical and British Isles legacies transporting their audience through time and across the Atlantic. Julia Lane and Fred Gosbee’s traditional and original songs are supported with Celtic harp, 12-string guitar, fiddle and woodwinds.

Upcoming events around the region.

The lineup for the Sept. 8 New England Fights “Wicked Season” mixed martial arts card at the Cross Insurance Center in Bangor is beginning to take shape with several local fighters already set to compete.