Growing up in Whitefield, I was incredibly lucky to experience a school environment that, even as children, we knew was special. Our little elementary school was the envy of nearby towns, and I am eternally grateful to all the good people involved, who gave me and so many others this exceptional experience.

To accompany our many snow flurries this year, Alna has also seen a flurry of recent controversy over K-8 school choice. In my view, much of it has been fueled by incomplete information. Alna’s student numbers have certainly risen in recent years, but this rise has been driven almost entirely by a natural phenomenon: our town’s birth rate. Restricting K-8 school choice will have little impact on our education costs. Restricting our residents from having babies? Now there’s an idea that could make a difference!

There’s no doubt that the New England Patriots’ 10th Super Bowl game on Sunday will be one for the books. Each championship game they’ve played in the last 17 years has come down to a nail-biting margin of six points or less.

The Medomak Valley Community Foundation (of which we are both honored to be board members) received a cruel and unanticipated blow from the Waldoboro Board of Selectmen at its meeting last Tuesday evening.

I am 12 years old and live in Richmond. Photography is one of my interests and I absolutely enjoy it as a hobby, hoping to have either photography or ornithology as a career sometime when I am older.

In an incredibly forward-looking policy, the nation of Kenya last fall enacted the most stringent law against plastic bags in the world. Kenya has joined 40 other countries, including China (2008), Rwanda (2008), Italy (2011), and France (2016), in making plastic bags illegal.