From the April 9, 2008 issue of The Original Irregular, a weekly newspaper published in Kingfield:

"It was brought out that Maine has few laws to protect towns in the event of a law suite."

(And even fewer laws to stave off lawyers with only one room.)

"Trying to catch up to

On paper, David Hart's career looks like a success. But his current efforts to steer Maine's environmental community in a new direction "might be viewed as a response to a failed career," he told me.

Hart has been the director of the George Mitchell Center for Environmental and Watershed Research in Orono since June 2006. He sums up what he thinks is needed in just four words: "Linking knowledge to action."

"My number one goal is actually to change the way we deal with environmental

If a newspaper had information that indicated a member of Congress had taken part in burning the U.S. flag to protest the war in Iraq, you'd think that would be big news. Front page. Above the fold. Giant headline.

But that's not the way things are done at the Morning Sentinel in Waterville.

The word happily goes around the island each time the Sunbeam is in, tied up alongside the Steamboat Wharf. People begin wandering down aboard for a cup of coffee or a look at what Felicia's got there on the counter for cakes and cookies; perhaps Mike the captain has made a gingerbread again. It beats just collecting your mail and heading directly back to the woodpile or the laundry or the paperwork.

The Sunbeam has been coming to Matinicus and to many of the other islands

Pressure's off: The Portland Press Herald will get a break from the withering criticism leveled at it almost every day by PressingTheHerald, the on-line outlet for pseudonymous blogger "T. Cushing Munjoy" (www.pressingtheherald.blogspot.com).