I am writing a winter update to our community about The Commons as we wrap up an eventful year and have made some important changes in our structure. We now have both a program and marketing director, Jeremy Loguercio, and a development director, Tara Smith. We are also pursuing a position for volunteer director.

Many genealogists in Maine have Scottish and/or Irish ancestors in their family trees.

Lawmakers want your money, and they never stop wanting your money. At any given opportunity, they will dream up new ways of identifying it, taking it from you, and then using it. When they can't get it, they just take it from you anyway by spending money they don't have and covering it with debt.

Off-year elections -- even high profile contests -- aren’t always reliable predictors of things to come. But election results in Kentucky, Louisiana and Virginia confirm a lesson that we learned in Maine in 2017: The No. 1 issue in the mind of voters is health care.

My Catholic nun elementary school teachers were disciplinarians. Without question, they were the toughest formal education teachers. Although I spent only four years in Catholic school, plus time in Catechism school, I have fond memories of the nuns I encountered. More to the point, I am grateful for the nuns' life lessons.

The first quarter or trimester of the school year has come and gone, and the autumn has clearly given way to the winter. Clocks have been turned back, the daylight hours have become shorter, and people across Maine and New England are preparing for what is sure to be an impressive season of snow and cold.

In a Nov. 4 BDN OpEd, Bloomberg columnist Noah Smith asserts that the 1950s are greatly overrated and those of us who harbor ”wistful” recollections of that era are engaging in “rose-tinted sentimentality.” Smith either wasn’t living in the 1950s, or, if he was, certainly wasn’t living in rural or small-town America. Some of his points are historical fact, that pollution was a problem and there was a lack of equal economic opportunity for minorities.

Freddie Gruber was a great drum teacher. If you have a great teacher in your life, no matter the subject taught, then Freddie Gruber won’t be a total stranger.

In the last column I discussed tips for locating the surnames of female ancestors. This can often be a difficult and long task.

For years, following politics in the United States has felt -- at least to me -- like trying to take a refreshing sip of water out of a high pressure fire hose. In other words, overwhelming, painful, and ultimately unsatisfying.

Ben Grant, the former chair of the Maine Democratic Party, is running for state representative for House District 41 in Portland. Grant, an attorney and PTO board member among other things, is trying a novel approach to fundraising for his race.

This past Wednesday I arrived at Museum L-A for Executive Director Rachel Desgrosseilliers’s “Grateful for Rachel” retirement party. She is a Maine treasure who created a model of historic and cultural preservation that can, and should, be duplicated in communities statewide.

This week I had a great discussion up at Blair Hill Inn and Restaurant in Greenville with business owners, residents, development leaders and local lawmakers. We focused on ideas and strategies for economic growth in rural Maine, particularly Western Maine.

There are currently 17 candidates running for the Democratic nomination for president in 2020, and there seems to be a little something for everyone?

Members of the Maine Legislature, judges and the governor deserve a raise -- not because they’re all great at their job, though many are, but because they are woefully underpaid for the difficult work that they do.

Finding the maiden name of a female ancestor can be a challenge. Men’s names were recorded in town vital records but the wife was usually listed by her given name only.

On my October 13, 2019 return drive home from St. Petersburg, FL, I decided to detour a bit to visit my Uncle Bob’s grave in Auburn, MA. Uncle Bob was a profound influence, equal to, in some ways greater than, my parents’ influence in my life.

Most people in this country don't trust the media. Gallup, which runs an annual tracking poll on public perception of the media, asks a rather simple question every year. "How much trust and confidence do you have in the mass media -- such as newspapers, TV and radio -- when it comes to reporting the news fully, accurately and fairly?"