Archive for ‘Opinion’

  • Stalking: Know it, so you can stop it

    By Renee O’Connor Lake Region Coalition Against Domestic & Sexual Violence This January, communities around the county will be holding events in order to raise awareness about stalking. So, what is stalking? While the legal definition is different from state to state, stalking is technically a course of conduct directed at a specific person that […]

  • Corrigan: Atop the cliff

    By Mike Corrigan BN Columnist Many recent tourists in Washington, D.C. are surprised to find that the fiscal cliff is not only real, it’s tangible. The cliff, situated between the White House and the Capitol and closer to the latter, drops off sheer from about 350 feet at its highest; it slopes upward to the […]

  • Precht: Home thoughts from abroad

    By Henry Precht BN Columnist I believe there’s a rule that when you write for The Bridgton News, there should be a connection — even a glancing one — to Bridgton itself. I’ve been fretting about that this week because the subject I want to discuss is distant in space and about every other way […]

  • Precht: Tough responses to hard times

    By Henry Precht BN Columnist Item #1. The other day I walked over to the public library near our house in Bethesda, Md. to look at some magazines in the periodical room. Half the slots for major publications were empty. All of the dozen computers were in use; people were waiting for an opening. Budget cuts, […]

  • S. Peter Lewis: We were already six

    By S. Peter Lewis BN Columnist Priorities. For a long time I had problems with those. From toddler-hood to my mid-twenties, I was mostly aimless and wayward, my compass spinning wildly. If life’s straight path was bordered by briar patches and burrs were trouble, then I was the boy always running crooked through the thickest […]

  • My Irish Up: How Congress passes (sic) a law

    By Mike Corrigan News Columnist Have you noticed how Congress hasn’t done anything this session? Or in the previous one, either, except for that health thing that got so watered down in 2009 that the insurance companies had to pretend they hated it? This is completely the fault of the Republicans — or it is […]

  • My Irish Up: Death at the laundromat

    By Mike Corrigan BN Columnist His neck tattoo stretched to the middle of his cheek, his body type was troglodyte XL and he was so intent at thrusting his laundry through the back of the washtub in the machine next to mine last Monday midnight that I decided to skip the pleasantries and pretend I didn’t […]

  • Precht: Hopes fading or merely on pause?

    By Henry Precht BN Columnist Some of us voted for Obama because (1.) we feared the nebulous promises of Romney and the malign influence of no-nothing Tea Partiers and (2.) we hoped that a second term, lame duck president would be less likely to compromise the liberal values we hoped he harbored. That first fear […]

  • Uppermost House: No more thin soup!

    By S. Peter Lewis BN Columnist I love the written word, but much of the inky letters that dry on paper these days (or the bits of binary code that fly through cyberspace: OMG, LOL) have no meat on their bones; they’re just thin soup. There’s no richness, no vividicity, and few dogfights; the pictures […]

  • My Irish Up: Why I am seceding

    By Mike Corrigan BN Columnist I can’t say it was my idea, since several of my friends suggested it, and the more determined among them even started a petition, but soon I could be seceding from the United States of America! As I’m sure you’ve heard, voting blocs in several states, principally Texas, want to […]