Articles by Kent Ward
KENT WARD
Memorial Day a time to be grateful
Like thousands of young American men eager to see action in World War II, Maurice Phair of Limestone enlisted in the Royal Canadian Air Force in May 1941 because the United States had not yet entered the war. After the United States declared war on the Axis powers later that ...
KENT WARD
An old tale about true Maine grit
Nearly 50 years ago a Maine State Prison inmate escaped from the former prison at Thomaston, disappearing into dense fog and remaining at large for 11 days before state police collared him at Wiscasset. For much of that time he had been holed up in the barn of South Warren ...
KENT WARD
Guidelines for aging gracefully
When I turned a year older but none the wiser a week ago, I received from a friend by snail mail a clipping of an essay by newspaper columnist and author Roger Rosenblatt that — near as can be determined by the handwritten note in the margin — was published ...
KENT WARD
Anthology describes hardy breed of Bangor and Aroostook Railroad
“Griswold isn’t even a whistle-stop on the Bangor and Aroostook’s Ashland Branch anymore. The two buildings remaining, formerly occupied by railroad employees, keep a brooding vigil over the grassy clearing and the clear waters of the St. Croix swirling past on the journey to the Aroostook River at Masardis. “The ...
KENT WARD
A distress call on May Day
“May is a green as no other,’’ the poet Amy Lowell wrote. It is also many other things, she suggested, including soft earth, apple blossoms “and windows open to a South wind.’’ With its welcome greening of the countryside, rebirth of baseball and days set aside to honor motherhood, endangered ...
KENT WARD
On junking a tax code gone rogue
There is an idea often expressed by frustrated taxpayers after the annual mid-April income-tax-filing frenzy has abated that the ponderous federal tax code should be junked and a new one, short and to the point, be written — this one in plain English. In the words of political satirist and ...
KENT WARD
Parking lot lost vehicle syndrome
When a downstate friend called earlier this week to regale me with a tale about losing his car in a Bangor Mall parking lot, it occurred to me that most anyone who has driven a vehicle for any significant length of time likely has a similar story to tell. You ...
KENT WARD
The lengthy shelf life of Maine’s east-west highway
One doesn’t have to poke around in the archives of a newspaper for long before being reminded of the truth of the biblical observation that there is not a whole lot new under the sun. A case in point is the current discussion concerning a proposed privately funded east-west toll ...
KENT WARD
Our exalted opinion of our own driving
In the midst of the recently expired winter, a down-river friend sent me two newspaper clippings. One was a photograph of a pickup truck perched atop a substantial snowbank as two good ol’ boys — the befuddled male driver and his passenger — stood by, presumably trying to figure out ...
KENT WARD
A ‘be’ ball up high and inside
Mainers may be impressed with the spectacular grand entrance of spring, but that doesn’t mean we have abandoned a suspicion that the weather gods will somehow extract payment for their unseasonable gift of abundant sunshine and summer-like temperatures. Show me the person who, when talk turns to the run of ...
KENT WARD
Life without real books, newspapers
The announcement came late last month. Mr. Paperback, the popular bookstore chain that has been a fixture in Maine for 50 years, would go out of business at the end of April because of a shaky economy and technological advances that have changed the public’s reading habits and siphoned off ...
KENT WARD
Some names are game-changers
Journalism 101 teaches two basic principles of news gathering. One is that a solid news story provides readers with the who, what, when, where and why of the matter. I like to think that the late poet Rudyard Kipling alluded to the tenet when he wrote, “I keep six honest ...
KENT WARD
Snowe job applicants check in
Had the lady been a Democrat, I suppose it could have been said that her bombshell announcement on Tuesday that she will not seek re-election to a fourth term in the United States Senate had come straight out of left field. But since Maine’s Sen. Olympia Snowe is a moderate ...
KENT WARD
A rascal remembered by Mainers
In oral arguments Wednesday, the United States Supreme Court began the process of determining whether the First Amendment protects from prosecution under the federal Stolen Valor Act anyone falsely claiming to have received military decorations and medals. The federal law imposes prison sentences of up to a year for those ...
KENT WARD
Basketball as relief from winter
For many a rural Mainer, a memorable vehicular encounter with mid-February’s first serious frost heave on the road to the village can be a reminder that soon the dismal mud-splattered snow banks of March will herald the pothole-patching interval that leads eventually to the welcome greenery of spring. We muddle ...
KENT WARD
‘Just see the ball and hit it’
When asked where they find their inspiration, newspaper columnists rarely care to expound on the matter, believing that the genesis of ideas — like the making of meatloaf down at the local greasy spoon diner — is a mystery probably better left unexplored. “The last thing I want to be ...
KENT WARD
Cue cards for GOP debaters
When the University of Maine men’s basketball team played the University of New Hampshire at Alfond Arena some years ago, a New Hampshire coach positioned at the far end of his team’s bench worked a series of large cards bearing coded messages in ultra-bold foot-high type. By this method he ...
KENT WARD
Mailing in ‘The Speech’ a bad idea
A friend once advised me that if one is to make it to the conclusion of a typical snoozer of a presidential State of the Union address it helps to have some sort of diversion in play. And so it was that I decided to remain awake by counting the ...
KENT WARD
Relocation of snow a major sport
Although they have taken their sweet time in getting here, the snows of winter seem at last to have arrived in the north country, which means that the periodic rearrangement of snow in our dooryards has become the outdoor seasonal sport of necessity. While most of us are weekend warriors ...
KENT WARD
Of death spirals and remarkable revisions
In a feasibility study to determine whether the U.S. Postal Service should close its Eastern Maine mail processing and distribution center at Hampden and process all of the state’s mail at a similar facility in Scarborough, among the projected savings was $797,000 through the elimination of two managerial positions at ...
Glenburn art teacher killed in Friday morning collision in Bangor
Harvard student asked to leave bar for ‘bad behavior,’ not drunkenness
LePage blasts teachers union for endorsing same-sex marriage question
Reporting crime
A people’s revolt in Bar Harbor
Old Town football coach steps down
Perakslis helps UMaine beat Albany; Binghamton next in America East tournament
Orono baseball shuts out archrival Old Town for ninth straight victory
Stony Brook knocks out UMaine to win America East tournament
Aroostook businessman expands company out of home with hit mobile app 7 Little Words
Former CEO of MaineToday Media Richard Connor sued over $250,000 in loans
Small idea launches major project in Hampden
Diversity predicts export success, MIT professor tells Maine audience
New, old methods combine to deter scrap metal thefts in Aroostook
Gary Allan talks with the BDN leading up to Bangor concert
Out of the ashes, Central Street’s garden grows
Mid Coast Actor’s Studio provides new forum for classic plays
Signs lead artist to opportunity
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