Back in 1989, Diane and I moved to Damariscotta from Florida during the coldest and snowiest December Maine had experienced in years.

Beginning in early July, the Dept. of Transportation Wiscasset Traffic monitors have been in operation and they generate a lot of data.

Here’s the thing about lies: If you tell them loudly enough and often enough, people will believe them. Especially the vulnerable, the powerless, and those who get their “news” from blowhard talk radio.

My son drove into our yard in Bristol after a Saturday morning trip from Massachusetts to pick up their children with whom we had spent a delightful week. Mike greeted me with these words. “I’d forgotten what an adventure it was to come to Maine on a Saturday morning in summer, but we didn’t get stuck in Wiscasset traffic this time.”

At our Newcastle office, we field a lot of phone calls in a given week. We don’t keep track in terms of volume but suffice it to say, the phone pretty much rings off the hook all day, everyday, beginning before the office opens at 8 a.m. and continuing until well after we close at 5.

Two weeks ago I wrote to First District Representative Chellie Pingree with my concerns over the excessive power concentration in the federal government. The answer I got back is not to be believed. My letter and her answer are enclosed. Draw your own conclusions.

I wanted to write my feelings about Bob Reny’s passing so much, but when I read all the wonderful words – so well put, in the tributes – from the governor on down – I thought, “Who am I to add to all that’s been said by those who knew him so well?”

If I dreamed a weekend, it couldn’t have been better – if I hired someone to paint it, it would be Norman Rockwell. Picture perfect weather, flawless execution by the Whitefield Bicentennial Committee chairs, and a little divine intervention.

When volunteers first put up all those American flags in the pouring rain I thought this is what being part of a community is all about and it was contagious – flags went up everywhere along the winding back roads.

What would our Founding Fathers think if they could see us now?

Our Founders deserve a lot of credit and rightly so for creating a form of government that, for the first time in history, recognized the rights of all (free, white) men, and gave all (free, white) men a say in their form of government.

The Maine State Senate has defeated a bill, LD 1438, which would have approved allowing charter schools to operate in Maine, as 40 other states already do.

Charter Schools are public and do not add to the tax burden of either the state or local governments. Not all parents approve of their local public school for their child and charter schools offer another educational choice.

Saturday’s education budget meeting in Windsor set a budget that many will not be able to afford. The end result for each of the eight member towns in the RSU will be a 17.75 percent increase ($2,225,130) in the funds they need to raise in property taxes to pay for the increase in the budget.

In response to Paul’s [Marseglia of Dresden] letter last week about gas and cigarette taxes. I know what you’re saying Paul, but what’s the alternative?

I hear a lot of complaints about taxes but seldom do folks offer solutions. We have to raise money somewhere to keep roads, state parks, schools, etc. operating.

I would like to commend the Transfer station in Nobleboro for now having a place to dispose of ‘flashlight’ batteries; small batteries that used to go in the general garbage and get burned, thereby putting a lot of cadmium and other chemicals into the atmosphere (see http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1525/is_n6_v78/ai_14263165/).

You can tell by the way people talk about him today that R.H. “Bob” Reny was a special kind of man.

He connected with people in a special way. He was a salesman sure, but he was a man who would look you in the eye, firmly shake your hand, inquire after the health of your mother and recall the names of your children.