ArcaMax

Q: My landscape looked terrible this summer. It is only a year old, and many of the larger shrubs and evergreens don't have big root systems yet. There isn't a lot of topsoil, and the plants dried out too often over the summer. Even with some fall rain, I worry about them over the winter. After the first week of cold weather, I noticed that ...Read more

So, how was your Remembrance Sunday?

The British Parliament -- and people -- wear red poppy symbols to honor soldiers who fell in the Great War trenches, World War II and ever since.

The U.S. Senate had one Remembrance Sunday, Nov. 9, that I'll never forget. As night fell outside the Capitol, you could feel the shutdown political theater ...Read more

Oh, happy day! Thanksgiving -- our annual pause for family gatherings to celebrate the rich and tasty diversity of America's harvests.

There is, however, something decidedly distasteful that has steadily been forcing its way onto our dinner tables: raw monopoly power. This concentration of market control in the hands of a few domineering ...Read more

"Everything she writes," Mary McCarthy famously said about playwright Lillian Hellman, "is a lie -- including 'and' and 'the'." Historians wrestling with how Americans permitted their democracy to be so badly debased during the President Donald Trump era will have to first assess why so many millions of us consumed patent falsehoods so eagerly...Read more

Donald Trump's approval numbers continue to crater. Even Republicans have cooled on the president's performance. But the president shows no sign of noticing, nor is he changing his ways. Even his gaslighting has gone wan. He's failed to make Americans believe that prices are going down when they're clearly not.

What gives? Why isn't he trying...Read more

It has been a terrifying week for the one in eight Americans who depend on food stamps -- the SNAP program -- to feed their families. Would they be eating this month?

With two federal lawsuits and two federal judges breathing down the administration's neck, President Donald Trump took to social media this week to threaten to withhold SNAP ...Read more

"Put a little extra caramel on that latte," I told the young woman at Dunkin' Donuts. "If you know what I mean."

"Sure," she said, drizzling a little more caramel on the mountain of whipped cream that topped my decaf white chocolate latte.

Maybe she didn't know what I meant. Maybe she did. She was a perfectly nice woman with a slight ...Read more

Is the Supreme Court really a conservative court, bound by conservative principles of statutory construction and judicial review, or is it President Donald Trump's Court, ready to do his bidding, no matter how radical it may be? This week's tariff cases, challenging the president's power to unilaterally impose whatever tariffs he chooses, will...Read more

Warning: this column is a dark path to a gaudy "Great Gatsby" party while children go hungry.

We know the damage cellphones cause to kids and teenagers in learning and mental health epidemics of anxiety and depression. The research results are in.

Private and public schools are banning them. Girls suffer poor self-esteem and body ...Read more

How about some good news for a change? News that has nothing to do with Donald Whatzizname. News you might even use.

It's about "The Library of Things," a real library, but different. Just as our public libraries share a wealth of publications -- this one in Brunswick, Maine, also maintains a wealth of tools, devices, equipment and other "...Read more

*Names have been changed to protect identities

Shackled and chained while miscarrying, denied prenatal care, given inadequate food and water -- these are the conditions that pregnant women in Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention must endure.

Despite its own directive advising against detaining pregnant individuals, ICE has ...Read more

With a new NBC poll showing that only 28% of Americans view the Democratic Party favorably, Republicans hardly need to be handed any more gifts this holiday season.

But hang on.

Speaking to his Democratic Socialists of American just two years ago, the new national face of the Democratic Party opined thusly on the proximate cause of any police ...Read more

The big headlines about job losses tend to focus on the big employers. Layoffs at UPS, 48,000 -- at Intel, 24,000. Amazon is cutting up to 30,000 workers, and Target, 1,800. These pink slips are being dropped largely on white-collar positions.

The thinking is that artificial intelligence will be able to handle much of the work now being done ...Read more

Leave it to the Trump administration to come up with yet another way to enforce -- and I mean enforce -- its political ideology on students. It's bad enough -- well, worse than bad enough -- that they are trying to police our classrooms; their next move is to redefine what "public service" means for purposes of loan forgiveness.

The Public ...Read more

In every election, the voters choose a candidate to do a job. In some races, they also have an opportunity to send a message.

Sometimes, in a change election, voters pass over the best person for the job in favor of making a statement. Although she certainly wasn't "the most qualified person ever to run for president," former Sen. and ...Read more