The holiday season is underway and soon families will gather for meals and gift giving. With many relatives under one roof, this is a great time for genealogists to ask questions about holiday traditions practiced in the past or to try to learn more about the family.

Maneuvering has begun in Washington among the Democrats to choose the next speaker of the House. I am not a big fan of Rep. Nancy Pelosi and neither is our Rep.-elect Jared Golden. He indicated during the campaign his intention to try to vote for an alternative candidate for speaker.

Looking back almost 40 years I can’t imagine not crossing paths with Ron Spagnardi, founder and publisher of Modern Drummer magazine. We were both drummers, entrepreneurs. Ron in New Jersey, me in New York. At about age 34, Spagnardi saw the success of a 10-year-old magazine devoted to guitarists, "Guitar Player," and wondered, why not publish a magazine devoted to drummers?

Earlier in the month, on the day we all went to the polls, Mississipians held a special election for the seat left vacated by the resignation of U.S. Sen. Thad Cochran. Four candidates ran for the seat, each running on a nonpartisan ticket line, with two main competitors -- Republican Cindy Hyde-Smith and Democrat Mike Espy -- taking up the lion's share of votes. The other two were minor candidates with no realistic chance of winning.

Maine’s attorney general straddles two worlds. Elected by the Legislature, the attorney general performs executive branch duties. The attorney general is the state’s top law enforcement officer, but also acts as the lawyer for state government’s departments and agencies.

After the Thanksgiving weekend and having just returned from a more urban environment, I feel grateful for my community and the people and organizations that I depend on every day.

I’ve voted every Election Day for 49 years. This year was the first time my vote didn't count.

Want to hear an interesting fact about the 2018 election? Shawn Moody received the fourth-most votes for governor in the nearly 200 years of Maine history.

Charity is no replacement for sound policy, especially if you’re the governor of the state. In his radio address this week, Gov. Paul LePage touts the success of an annual food drive organized through the Blaine House that helps people in need around the holidays.

I recently came across a chart of major epidemics in the United States starting in 1794 and ending in 1918. The author was emphasizing that many people thought to have “disappeared” from records were actually victims of diseases.

Grafton, who turns five mid-December, visited Eileen and I this Veterans Day. We had not seen each other in weeks. Our weekly day to babysit each other ended months ago when Grafton and his mom moved to Brunswick, and he started pre-K school.

In a surprise to exactly no one, Bruce Poliquin filed a lawsuit in federal court on Tuesday, challenging Maine's ranked-choice voting system. Poliquin has a duty to his campaign, the plurality of his constituents that voted for him, and to the country to file this suit, and file it exactly when he did.

There can be no question that Maine saw a blue wave on Election Day. Voters elected Democrat Janet Mills as governor, flipped the state Senate from Republican to Democratic control and expanded the Democratic majority in the state House of Representatives.

The holiday season is upon us again, which means here in the Moosehead Region we do our best to spread holiday cheer all around! To do this, the Moosehead Lake Kiwanis Club will be placing wish trees out in our community very soon.

Bruce Poliquin has won reelection to Congress to represent CD 2 by 2,000 votes. In the realms of sanity and fairness, that would be the headline, but once again, forces from outside CD 2 have conspired to work against the wishes of the voters in this District. The cycle of southern liberal arrogance continues.

Dear friends and neighbors, I want to congratulate Paul Davis for retaining Senate District 4. Despite the toxic environment on both sides of the aisle at the state and national level, I believe we treated each other with respect and civility. I wish Paul the best as you continue to serve the people in our district and want to assure you that I will work at your side to promote the issues raised by so many local residents -- healthcare access and costs, property taxes, the quality of our educational system, and economic growth and sustainability for our large rural region.

While scrolling through my photos of past trips to Baxter State Park, I realized that in years past every trip included a photo of a moose. This year, I made a half-dozen multi-day trips to the park to both the north and south ends, and not only did I not see a moose, but it was only outside the park that I even saw evidence of moose.

It’s November 7, 2018. The morning after the 2018 midterm elections, the first day of campaign season for the 2020 general elections.