Articles by Kent Ward
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 ...
KENT WARD
The icing on January’s annual thaw
When the new year rang in earlier this week, bringing to Maine a spate of unseasonably warm weather and rain showers, it upset ice fishermen and pond hockey players, but went down OK with homeowners, pedestrians and retired snowbirds late in heading for their winter quarters in Florida. Two days ...
KENT WARD
A new year much like the old one
One of the more notable birth dates I recall belonged to a gentleman, long since gone to his heavenly reward, who came wailing into this world on Jan. 1, 1900. I always considered him to be the ultimate New Year’s baby, born as he was on such an easy date ...
KENT WARD
Honesty in speeding earns break
It’s hard to beat those unique Christmas gifts that come from readers throughout the year in the form of written response — mostly by email these days — to things they read in their newspaper. Little stocking stuffers they are, and a delight to read. An example of the genre ...
KENT WARD
Christmas reward for being good
In his poem “Just ’Fore Christmas,” the poet Eugene Field acknowledged, “Most all the time, the whole year round, there ain’t no flies on me. But jest ’fore Christmas I’m as good as I kin be.” Well, sure. Aren’t we all. But as Christmas, now just eight days off, sneaks ...
KENT WARD
Lingering party guests a challenge
In an essay on rules for a happy marriage, the late humorist James Thurber argued that husbands and wives should stifle any urge one might have to insult the other in public, saving their best zingers for the privacy of the dwelling place. “Thus, if a man thinks the souffles ...
KENT WARD
Pearl Harbor remembrance in newsroom
As November morphed into December and the 70th anniversary of the Dec. 7, 1941, surprise attack on Hawaii’s Pearl Harbor by Japanese forces drew near, a friend and former co-worker at the newspaper called. During our chat, we reminisced about the newsroom gyrations we sometimes went through concerning coverage of ...
KENT WARD
Polarizing callifudges of politics
A newspaper comic strip and my desk calendar featuring forgotten English words and terms may express the sentiments of many Americans following a congressional supercommittee’s colossal failure to reach a deficit-reduction accord, despite 14 weeks of intense and mostly secret deliberations that ended Monday. In Jeff MacNelly’s “Shoe” strip in ...
KENT WARD
Thankful for things to be thankful for
Topping most any list of things for which to be thankful as the Thanksgiving holiday approaches, I suppose, would be that we are not the turkey about to become the main event on the day’s dinner menu. Unfortunately for the turkey population, only one will be spared by the traditional ...
The eerie stillness of armistice
“He fell in October 1918, on a day that was so quiet and still on the whole front, that the army report confined itself to the single sentence: All quiet on the Western Front. “He had fallen forward and lay on the earth as though sleeping. Turning him over, one ...
KENT WARD
A touch of brandy in style sauce
A front page story in the Thursday morning newspaper reported that 40 Republican members of the House of Representatives had joined 60 Democrats in signing a letter to the Congressional “supercommittee” which has little time remaining to find ways to reduce the gargantuan $14.8 trillion national debt, or see automatic ...
KENT WARD
On catching the drift of things
“Snow again. I didn’t catch your drift,’’ an old timer of my acquaintance now gone to his heavenly reward was fond of saying when the person with whom he was conversing had made an ambiguous statement that my guy felt required clarification. When we have to reread passages in news ...
KENT WARD
Finale for baseball’s spitters
On an unusually chilly and blustery recent day I bumped into an old friend while on a grocery run to the village, and the conversation naturally turned to the weather. “The old-timers always claimed that we have only three seasons here in The County — Fourth of July, the Presque ...
KENT WARD
Quimby and Maine pride of place
In his book “Over to Home and From Away,” an anthology of Maine humor writing published by the Guy Gannett Publishing Co. in 1980, former Portland newsman Jim Brunelle includes several pieces by popular 19th century humorist Edgar Wilson “Bill” Nye, who was born in the Piscataquis County town of ...
KENT WARD
Meddybemps awaits the occupation
The lead paragraph of The Associated Press dispatch out of New York City reporting on the proliferating Occupy Wall Street protest movement pretty much outlined the fine mess we’ve gotten ourselves into: “Protests against Wall Street spread across the country Monday as demonstrators marched on Federal Reserve banks and camped ...
CONTRIBUTORS
Mementos of baseball in summers past
On this fine autumn weekend when September morphs into October, there is no joy in Mudville. Red Sox Nation is in deep mourning after watching the home team spectacularly flame out, blowing a nine-game late-season lead over the Tampa Bay Rays for the wild-card spot in Major League Baseball’s American ...
Former Bangor YMCA building sold to new dental technology school
LePage delivers instant veto after hospital debt, Medicaid bill passes Senate
‘Knife war’ led to fatal stabbing at Bangor apartments in April, witness says
Bangor man charged with murder, escape from psychiatric hospital found not competent to stand trial
After 27 years, a father continues to search for his daughter, presumed dead
Why is DHHS always asking for more money?
The scramble to fill the 2nd District seat if Mike Michaud runs for governor
Maine GOP disappoints on Medicaid
Goodwin steps down as Brewer High School boys basketball coach
University of Maine hockey job has been offered to former assistant Red Gendron
Bucksport’s Cassidy Adams strikes out 19 in single game
Live Updates: UMaine baseball vs. Binghamton in America East championship round
UMaine trails Binghamton 8-2 in suspended game at America East baseball tourney
Maine Democrats stooped to the governor’s level with TV complaint
Maine’s beer industry continues to brew double-digit growth
‘All That’ actress Amanda Bynes arrested after allegedly tossing bong out apartment window on 36th floor
Maine School of Science and Mathematics alumni drawn to give back to magnet school