Archive for ‘Opinion’

  • Recycling Matters: Making corporations pay for their waste

    By Rachel Miller Bridgton Recycling Committee Member When the town of Bridgton voted down Pay Per Bag, many community members rejected the proposal out of concerns for the resulting costs to the individual and in reaction to the mandatory nature of the approach for individuals. In the meantime, interestingly, the state of Maine has been […]

  • Earth Notes: Relax, it’s just money

    By Rev. Robert Plaisted Guest Columnist Much of modern life is a mad scramble for money, so perhaps we should ask what money is, and how it became so important to us. Merriam Webster defines money as “something generally accepted as a medium of exchange, a measure of value, or a means of payment.” Money […]

  • Earth Notes: Let’s recognize ‘Too Much of a Good Thing’

    By Cynthia Hoeh Stancioff Guest Columnist As the brief, dreary, gray winter days begin to lengthen and yield to spring’s brightening, we frost-weary Mainers rejoice at the first promises of warmth and sun. This change and the preceding darkness are part of the thrill of living in the north. We experience, and pride ourselves in […]

  • Earth Notes: Our need to be more connected

    By Megan-Mack Nicholson Guest Columnist If you were to think about the largest organism on earth, what would you imagine? Maybe an elephant? Or possibly a blue whale? What if I were to tell you the largest organism on earth spanned 108 acres, weighed 6,000 tons and was up to several thousand years old… and […]

  • Earth Notes: The Faith to Trust Science

    By Rev. Robert Plaisted Guest Columnist In 1960, a group of wide-eyed high school juniors stared at a patch of white powder in a metal dish. I was one of them. Our teacher had just performed a classic chemistry experiment — mixing a pre-measured quantity of hydrochloric acid (very corrosive), with a pre-measured quantity of […]

  • Independent Thought — When the panic hits

    By Rev. Robert Plaisted Guest Columnist What will we do when the panic hits? It’s coming, you know, sure as God made little green apples. Merriam-Webster defines panic this way: “sudden, overpowering fright,” “sudden, unreasoning terror often accompanied by mass flight,” or “sudden, widespread fright concerning financial affairs.” All those definitions share characteristics in common. […]

  • Earth Notes: Changes that change us

    By Megan-Mack Nicholson Guest Columnist I’m a lover of winter. A lover of all the seasons, really. It would be hard for me to pick a favorite season other than the season I’m in at any given moment. The symphony of peepers and still canoeing waters of spring as you watch the water birds return […]

  • Recycling Matters — Awesome aluminum

    By Sally Chappell Bridgton Recycling Committee Even as the oceans swirl with human-generated trash and as we devote more precious land to landfills, we hear that recycling isn’t worth the bother. How untrue! Surely, the difficulties of recycling plastic need to be addressed. More progress needs to happen with the different plastic formulas taken in […]

  • Earth Notes — What good is a dead tree?

    By Cynthia Stancioff Guest Columnist I’ve been appreciating dead trees more and more lately, since they seem to be increasingly under-valued by average property owners. I say: A dead tree is no less important than a live tree! It seems most people respond to the death of a tree by removing it from sight immediately, […]

  • Recycling Matters: Remember when…?

    By Sally Chappell Bridgton Recycling Committee It surely can be agreed that change of any type is difficult. Change provokes anxiety — something we try to avoid, but when that something becomes so glaringly upsetting that it causes us misery, then change becomes not only possible but necessary. We only have to look at societal […]