Maine
In a word: Reflecting on Maine’s E.B. White
“Trust me, Wilbur. People are very gullible. They’ll believe anything they see in print.” – E.B. White, “Charlotte’s Web”
Even though he wasn’t born here, E.B. White lived for nearly 50 years on a farm in Brooklin, Maine, and did almost all of his best work here. That said, I thought I’d take a brief look at the life of one of Maine’s favorite writers.
Elwyn Brooks White was born in Mount Vernon, N.Y., in 1899. After graduating from Cornell University in 1921, he roamed across America taking jobs as a reporter and freelance writer.
In 1927 White landed a job at The New Yorker, the magazine with which he’d spend his entire career, working first as a writer and contributing editor, and later as a monthly columnist right up to his death. In the witty pieces he produced, he mused about everything from life in the city to literature and politics.
After more than a decade in New York he came to the realization that “I was stuck with the editorial ‘we,’ a weasel word suggestive of corporate profundity or institutional consensus. I wanted to write as straight as possible, with no fuzziness.” (Later in the book “The Elements of Style,” he opined, “Even to a writer who is being intentionally obscure or wild of tongue we can say ‘Be obscure clearly! Be wild of tongue in a way we can understand!’”)
So, in 1938, he moved to a saltwater farm in Brooklin, where he lived until his passing in 1985. As he was about to leave the big city, Harper’s magazine offered him the princely sum of $300 a month (over $6,000 in today’s dollars) if he’d send them monthly essays about rural life.
Fifty-five of those essays would be collected in White’s 1942 book “One Man’s Meat.” Forty years later he’d write in his introduction to the book’s revised edition, “Once in everyone’s life there is apt to be a period when he is fully awake, instead of half asleep. I think of those five years (1938–1942) in Maine as the time when this happened to me. . . . I was suddenly seeing, feeling, and listening as a child sees, feels, and listens. It was one of those rare interludes that can never be repeated, a time of enchantment.”
Still, White said he found writing difficult and bad for one’s disposition, saying, “Writing is hard work and bad for the health.” But he kept at it. He began writing “Stuart Little” as a story for a 6-year-old niece of his, but before he’d finished it in 1945 she had grown up. “I am still encouraged to go on,” he said. “I wouldn’t know where else to go.”
“If the world were merely seductive,” he concluded, “that would be easy. If it were merely challenging, that would be no problem. But I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve (or save) the world and a desire to enjoy (or savor) the world. This makes it hard to plan the day.”
“Stuart Little” was followed in 1952 by “Charlotte’s Web,” the poignant children’s classic about the friendship between Charlotte the spider and Wilbur the pig. After those books came “The Trumpet of the Swan” in 1970, the same year he received the Laura Ingalls Wilder Medal for “Stuart Little” and “Charlotte’s Web.”
In his New Yorker column of July 27, 1957, White praised a 43-page handbook on good writing written by his former professor, William Strunk Jr., as “a summation of the case for cleanliness, accuracy, and brevity in the use of English.” Two years later Macmillan and Co. published White’s revision of Strunk’s 1935 edition of “The Elements of Style.” White’s expanded version (my 1979 third edition comes in at 85 pages not counting the index) went on to sell more than 2 million copies.
“Vigorous writing is concise,” he wrote in his revisions. “A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts.”
And if you’re a writer, remember that “Writing is an act of faith, not a trick of grammar.”
I’ll leave you with two of what I think are the best pieces of E.B. White’s advice: “The best writing is rewriting,” and “Use the smallest word that does the job.”
Jim Witherell of Lewiston is a writer and lover of words whose work includes “L.L. Bean: The Man and His Company” and “Ed Muskie: Made in Maine.” He can be reached at jlwitherell19@gmail.com.
A Massachusetts photographer was seriously injured when he was stabbed during a wedding reception last month in Raymond, Maine.
Donald Halsing, 26, was hospitalized for five days after the stabbing on May 23. NBC affiliate News Center Maine reported that 26-year-old Andrew Manderson was arrested and charged with elevated aggravated assault.
Still recovering, Halsing told NBC10 Boston the attack came out of nowhere — one moment, he was snapping photos on the dance floor, while the next, he was searching for help as blood spilled onto his camera.
“I was sitting there in that chair thinking, ‘There’s a real possibility I could die here,’” Halsing said. “Immediately, I put my hand on my chest here to try and stop the bleeding, get some pressure on it, and started yelling for help.”
Halsing was working at the reception at the Kingsley Pine Campgrounds. He took his last photo at 9:01 p.m., minutes before the stabbing.
“One of the wedding guests came up to me and started asking questions about our business,” he said.
Halsing said it was nothing out of the ordinary, and he tried to explain his photography business to the inquiring guest through the pulse of the DJ booth and celebrating guests.
“I thought he was going to reach in his back pocket for his phone, and instead, he didn’t pull out his phone — he pulled out a pocket knife and stabbed me,” he said.
Manderson, who faced a judge days later, is a cousin of the bride.
“There was this look in his eyes that he wasn’t quite all there,” Halsing said.
Halsing’s fiancée, Ashley Wall, was feet away as he struggled to stay awake. She has been his photography partner for eight years since they met at Framingham State University, and she was helping him work the wedding.
“People who were around me, they asked, ‘What can we do to help you? What do you need?’ And I said, ‘Please go check on Ashley. Please go check on my fiancée,’” he recalled.
Halsing spent five days in the hospital suffering from two lacerations to his liver, ultimately developing a blood clot in his left leg. But the road to recovery exceeds his physical wounds as he contemplates his mental state when he resumes photography next year.
“I’m also worried about what lingering effects there might be,” he said. “If we get out on the dance floor and I start remembering what happened, I don’t know how I’m going to react.”
Halsing still doesn’t know why he was attacked.
Manderson was released on $50,000 bail and is due back in court in October.
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This story will be updated.
The Maine Department of Transportation is moving to slash up to $400 million in projects from its agenda, a shocking and abrupt cutback that is rattling the state’s construction industry at the start of building season.
Roughly $50 million across six pavement projects have already been delayed, according to a memo exclusively obtained by the Bangor Daily News. The agency plans to cut or delay another $150 million in bridge, highway, intersection and multimodal projects later this month. A further $200 million or more in cuts are planned in the next three-year work plan.
Those figures were outlined by Transportation Commissioner Dale Doughty in the May 18 memo to Gov. Janet Mills that has since circulated widely in the transportation sector, which has been getting drip-by-drip details on the wide scope of the cuts over the past three weeks.
It comes at the beginning of the state’s relatively narrow construction season. Companies have hired workers and ordered materials for projects they expected to begin this summer. The severity of the transportation budget problems was not raised to lawmakers during the 2026 legislative session.
Kelly Flagg, executive director of the Associated General Contractors of Maine, called the shortfall “deeply troubling” in a statement.
“We stand ready to work with policymakers, stakeholders, and industry partners to identify both immediate and long-term solutions,” Flagg said. “Maine cannot afford to fall further behind.”
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The cuts stem from a structural funding gap of at least $130 million in the state’s current work plan, according to Doughty’s memo. Losses are magnified because state money from the gas tax and other revenue sources is matched by federal funds. Lawmakers have long grappled with politically difficult long-term problems with the state’s transportation budget.
A Mills spokesperson said Wednesday morning that the administration was working on a response to questions from the BDN. The department says it needs roughly $240 million more in state capital funding annually to maintain the existing system, and that anything less than $200 million will erode it over time.
Doughty’s memo the only near-term solution is a series of bonds beginning as soon as possible. Lawmakers would have to return to Augusta to authorize that if one is going to appear on the November ballot.
The BDN Opinion section operates independently and does not set news policies or contribute to reporting or editing articles elsewhere in the newspaper or on bangordailynews.com
Michael Capeci is the former chairman of the Bangor GOP.
Let’s be honest about Maine’s current state.
For many families, the cost of living has become unsustainable. Housing is out of reach for many young people. Energy bills keep rising. Many small businesses are struggling under taxes and regulations that make it harder to grow. Rural hospitals are under strain and despite years of increased state spending, the results are not showing up in people’s daily lives.
Concurrently, Maine continues to lose young workers to other states. That is not a statistic, it is a warning sign.
To me, the question in this Republican primary for governor is not about slogans. It is whether we continue with a political approach that has failed to reverse these trends, or whether we nominate someone with new ideas. I think that someone is Owen McCarthy.
Owen is not a political insider. He is an entrepreneur from Patten, a small town where opportunity is not assumed, it is built. He grew up in a working-class family, became the first in his family to graduate from college graduating from the University of Maine, and founded MedRhythms, a healthcare technology company focused on neurological treatment.
He didn’t just talk about opportunity. He built it. That distinction matters, because Maine’s problem is not a lack of debate it is a lack of results. We have seen the trajectory: higher costs, slower growth, and a steady outmigration of young workers. I believe Owen McCarthy represents a break from that pattern.
His Maine 2040 plan focuses on creating 50,000 new jobs in sectors where Maine has real advantages — maritime and defense, advanced forest products, and life sciences. These are export-driven industries tied directly to Maine’s workforce, geography, and institutions. What sets Owen apart is not only what he proposes, but how he approaches governing.
He prioritizes modernizing permitting so projects do not stall. He supports using technology to reduce costs and increase efficiency. He focuses on making it easier to build, hire, and expand in Maine.
That same practical mindset extends to healthcare. Expanding telehealth, strengthening EMS systems, improving provider flexibility, and shifting toward earlier intervention are not abstract reforms. They are system upgrades designed to improve access while controlling costs.
Maine voters consistently respond to competence. They reward candidates who understand problems and present plans to solve them. I believe they are tired of rhetoric that does not translate into results, and skeptical of politics that prioritizes messaging over execution.
Owen’s approach is grounded in solving the issues that shape daily life — affordability, healthcare access, job creation, and government efficiency. That is not just policy positioning. It is a governing model that speaks directly to voters.
Some will point to his lack of political experience. But I believe Maine’s core problems are not the result of insufficient political experience; they are the result of policies that have failed to deliver measurable improvement. Experience inside a broken system, by itself, is not a solution.
If Republicans want to win, this primary must be taken seriously. From my perspective, it is not about choosing a nominee for governor who can energize the base. It is about selecting someone who can compete in a broader electorate that is frustrated and looking for change.
That requires a candidate who can speak beyond the base, not by abandoning principles, but by demonstrating competence and a credible plan to address Maine’s challenges. I believe Owen McCarthy offers that combination. He represents a shift away from managed decline and toward economic execution.
This is not just another primary. It is a decision about whether Republicans position themselves to win Maine or whether they remain trapped in a cycle of repeating the same strategies and expecting different outcomes.
If Republicans want to compete for Maine’s future, they cannot afford to nominate a candidate who only motivates part of the electorate. They need someone who expands it.
I believe Owen McCarthy is that candidate.
And if the goal is to win Maine, then the choice should be unmistakable
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