It is a terrifying time to be a parent. Monday evening, I learned that a student in my oldest son's middle school had passed away. The next day, media reports stated that the Maine State Police were investigating her death as a possible suicide.

Sometimes, when a football team has a prolonged losing streak, it creates a cycle that’s hard to break. The good folks of New England haven’t recently experienced this challenge (as evidenced by yet another Super Bowl trip – go Pats!), but unfortunately, the U.S. Senate is currently dealing with exactly that problem.

Happy midwinter! No doubt about it, time is marching on for all of us. So it is time to bring everyone up to date on what will be happening in the upcoming year for people who want to stay active, connected, engaged and have fun in our region (and who doesn’t?).

I’d like to think I’d be different, though I hope I never find out.

Tom Kawczynski was fired as the town manager of Jackman this week after his radical, racist agenda was exposed. After news about Kawczynski surfaced last week, I spent some time on his New Albion website and in the underworld of Gab, an alt-right Twitter alternative, and on Kawczynski’s Facebook page. While the white separatist and racist beliefs he espoused are terrible, I was more amazed by the openness with which he talked about his views and his goals of creating a white ethno-state in northern Maine, Vermont and New Hampshire.

Nearly 30 million Americans have diabetes, including more than 137,000 Mainers. Diabetes is the leading cause of kidney failure, blindness in adults, and amputations not related to injury, and it is the seventh leading cause of death in the U.S., claiming some 70,000 lives each year.

Last July, I wrote a column that implored you to ignore fundraising reports and polls in the gubernatorial contest. Today is your first test to see whether you listened or not.

Some Republicans, it appears, suffer from situational hearing impairment. Present in a room, listening to an audio tape, reacting to a reporter’s questions, members of the Republican Party aren’t able to hear clearly -- at least if they’re to be believed.

Obesity is a problem in our nation, and it’s a problem in Maine. But the USDA refuses to prohibit the purchase of soda and candy with food stamps.

Across the U.S. more than 40 million Americans provide care for parents, spouses, children and other relatives with disabilities or illness. Here in our state, about 178,000 Mainers care for their loved ones and help them live in their homes and communities.

As a small business owner who also represented a largely rural community in the Maine State Senate, I know first-hand the importance of access to broadband in communities like ours.

Terry Hayes, Maine’s first independent state treasurer and independent, clean elections candidate for governor, is honored to announce the support of Rep. Norman Higgins, I-Dover-Foxcroft. Treasurer Hayes will be campaigning in Piscataquis County on Friday, Jan. 19 with Rep. Higgins who represents House District 120.

It was an otherwise innocent stroll through Frank Harrison Middle School, where my oldest son goes to school, when my eye caught a display on the wall.

Give Gov. Paul LePage a break. Sure, his note to a 16-year-old who is concerned about the future of the internet was insensitive. Absolutely, he was tone deaf. And really, who doesn’t sign a personal note with a third-person job title? But the advice, despite the deeply flawed delivery, was sound.

Too many Maine families are facing skyrocketing property taxes that strain household budgets. Our elderly on fixed incomes are particularly vulnerable to these increases. School budgets are often blamed for annual increases in property taxes. But there’s another reason. A tremendous amount of land and property value has been taken off the tax rolls, leaving homeowners to pick up the tab.

Despite these historic accomplishments during more than a century of powered flight, today women remain significantly underrepresented in the aviation industry. Although women make up more than 50 percent of our nation’s workforce, they represent just two percent of airline mechanics, four percent of flight engineers, five percent of repairmen, six percent of pilots, 18 percent of flight dispatchers and 26 percent of air traffic controllers.

The Piscataquis Thriving in Place Collaborative (TiP) came to life through generous funding from the Maine Health Access Foundation (MeHAF). TiP is an aging-in-place resource and referral network coordinated by the Charlotte White Center (CWC) that has grown to over 60 partners over the last four years.

In those extreme situations where children cannot safely remain in their parents’ care, youth are placed in foster care with adults who are willing to care for them while parental and child treatment needs are being assessed and issues of permanency are being resolved. The reality of this situation is that the need for safe, caring and healing homes surpasses the present capacity of licensed homes.