Access to and options around health care impacts our daily lives in ways large and small. For rural Mainers, this is especially true. I am working with Maine Family Planning to host an interactive and family-friendly civic engagement event at 5:30 p.m. on Wednesday, July 11 at the Commons at Central Hall in Dover-Foxcroft to address these very questions.

Saturday morning July 14 from 10 to noon Dexter Dover Area Towns in Transition (DDATT) will host a free presentation on woodland edibles at the Abbott Memorial Library.

A record-high number 27 boats took to the water across about two dozen different classes during the annual Sebec Fourth of July canoe race held mid-morning on Sebec Lake as part of the holiday festivities in the village.

We in Maine enjoy being able to see moose and bear, and go camping, fishing, hiking and hunting, especially in remote wilderness areas. A big reason is that Maine’s longstanding “adjacency policy” serves the Unorganized Territory and our state well. Large tracts of north country have been protected from sprawling development, where we can still “get away from it all,” and where animals needing large wilderness areas can survive.

On July 5 the Piscataquis County Sheriff’s Office received a call from a 21-year-old female hiking southbound on the Appalachian Trail (AT) complaining of nausea near the Wilson Valley Lean-to. Four game wardens from the Greenville area responded along with Greenville Fire Department, Monson Fire Department and C.A. Dean Memorial Hospital EMS personnel.

The Piscataquis County Soil and Water Conservation District (PCSWCD) is excited to announce its fun, new series “Families in the Outdoors.” District staff invite the public to register for this series of three half-day programs, each with a different and fun theme and all featuring games, exploration, learning, special guests, hands-on activities and fun for the whole family.

Cancer patients and their families in central Maine will be the winners when the eighth annual Central Maine Field Hockey Battle for Breast Cancer Tournament takes place July 21 at Thomas College in Waterville.

The Piscataquis County Committee of the Maine Community Foundation has awarded more than $55,000 in grants to eight nonprofits located across the region.

If you aren't a conservative, I suppose it can be difficult to understand the source of conservative antipathy about the media. To the outsider, conservatives can often come off like whiny complainers, decrying the "liberal media" as "fake news" when they just don't like what the news reports.

A young girl arrived in the United States as an unaccompanied minor, just 17 years old. She found work as a domestic servant, caring for the homes of the wealthy until she met the man she married a few years later.