Calendar of events for April into May

Stop trying to fool us, Angus. I'll admit, you are a talented salesman. You have built a carefully crafted image over the years, and have created a very successful personal brand. You have used that mythos to make quite a career for yourself. But what you have built is a phony house of cards, and it is time to just come clean with the truth about who you are. Enough already.

Aren't town charters developed to be a kind of rule book to which town administrations and town residents can agree to adhere? Shouldn't one be able to assume revisions of that charter would be undertaken in the interest of these residents and in an effort to achieve maximum transparency by the town's government? Well, the currently proposed (revised) Dover-Foxcroft Municipal Charter appears to do just the opposite.

On behalf of our lovely community and the Moosehead Lake Region, I want to thank the People's United Methodist Church for the wonderful spaghetti suppers they have on Wednesday nights. They are delicious. Also the Thanksgiving dinner every year. We appreciate all the work church members do in preparing these lovely meals.

The spring that never was, at least that's the prediction as of late from the weather prophets. As we dream of warm spring air and fear it may never again appear through the snow drifts, the maple sugar industry is just wishing the sap would run. It’s awful hard to boil sap without any sap.

Deer yards, or deer wintering areas, are a critical component of deer survival in Maine. Nearly 15 years ago, in an article about the status of Maine’s deer yards, I wrote this: As state biologists prepare Maine's next 15-year plan for deer management, which is due to be approved early this year, deer wintering habitat (deer yards) has become the focal point. Over the past decade, there has been a marked decline in deer wintering areas, especially in Northern and Eastern Maine where deer populations are down.

Are we about to see another state tax transfer millions of Maine cigarette smokers’ dollars into government programs said to help Mainers stop, or not start, smoking cigarettes? Maine legislators sponsoring LD 945 "An Act To Reduce the Burden of Tobacco-related Illness by Increasing Revenue from the Cigarette Tax for Use for Tobacco Cessation" want to increase state taxes to $3.50 on each pack of 20 cigarettes, effective November 1, 2017.

On the evening of Sunday, April 2, after an amazing weekend at the District Educational Convention in Springfield Mass., students from Dexter, Foxcroft Academy, Greenville and Penquis Valley Key Clubs were were given a surprise escort by the Dexter Fire Department. Fire trucks met the bus at the town line with sirens blazing escorting the students on buses to Dexter Regional High School.

Join us for a morning birdwalk as we explore springtime birds at the Law Farm. On Saturday, April 22 the Piscataquis County Soil & Water Conservation District (PCSWCD) will be hosting birding expert Bob Duchesne for a free birdwalk starting at 8 a.m.

This week, I’d like to talk about the lake trout fishery on Moosehead Lake. We spend quite a bit of our time working on Maine’s largest lake.