Christine Caulfield, now 65, came out as transgender in 2007. As a Marine Corps veteran, a teacher, and a married parent of two, she worried about how it might affect her life and family.
Her wife was supportive, and they began telling close friends and family. Eventually Caulfield came out to others in her community and at work. But she said when she was ready to formally change her name in 2018, the public notice requirement meant she had to publish her name change in the local paper, and that created problems, particularly in her wife’s professional life.
Educators across the state expected an adjustment when students returned to school full time this year, with unfamiliar routines and the enduring pandemic. But now, they’re grappling with a rise in behavior challenges, which come as studies show depression and anxiety have doubled for children and teens since before the pandemic.
This week, three leading pediatric health organizations warned that the mental health crisis for kids has become a “national emergency.” And the U.S. Department of Education released a new report, declaring that it “has reached a critical point. The DOE called on schools to use extra pandemic funding to hire more support staff such as social workers and counselors and do away with punitive punishments like suspensions.
“We are seeing a lot more overall disruptive behavior, oppositional behavior in regard to listening and following rules,” said Brooke Proulx, a school social worker at Gorham Middle School, or GMS. “It feels like a free for all, like, here it is all at once. And kids don't have the skills to navigate it.”
Sean O’Donnell started growing grains about 10 years ago at Rusted Rooster Farm, 45 minutes north of Skowhegan on the border of Somerset and Piscataquis counties. He began on a small scale, using grains as a cover crop planted in rotation with other crops to improve the health of the soil.
He and his wife now grow about 150 acres of organic grains including Red Fife Wheat, Winter Rye, oats, and barley. That’s up from around 40 acres just five years ago. O’Donnell credits this growth, in part, to Maine’s burgeoning grain economy.
“It's growing more and more. I don't think I could do what I was doing 10 years ago, and that credit goes to the grain economy,” O’Donnell said.
But that regional grain economy is also providing a buffer to extreme fluctuations in prices, crop failures and supply chain issues linked to climate change.
When artist Titi de Baccarat first saw someone kneeling as a cultural gesture in the United States, he was both confused and captivated. He watched a man get down on one knee, open a small box, and ask a woman to marry him - a tradition that people in his home country of Gabon did not practice.
Several years later he watched a police officer kneel on the neck of George Floyd, killing him, and sparking protests nationwide.