Poliquin stands up for gun rights

Tragedies like the heartbreaking massacre perpetrated in Parkland, Florida, force us to reflect on what we as a society can do to prevent future incidents. For many in Washington, the first thing politicians think about is restricting the ability of law-abiding citizens to exercise their Second Amendment rights. Those politicians are wrong, and I am glad that my congressman is focused on solving the actual problem.

Law enforcement agencies have failed us repeatedly in preventing these incidents and their process must be fixed to protect our communities. I appreciate that Rep. Bruce Poliquin is standing strong in protecting our constitutional rights, while working to reform the FBI and other institutions that have failed us.

Blake Winslow
Presque Isle

Gratwick for Maine Senate

I have known Sen. Geoff Gratwick for many years. First as a devoted physician, then as a devoted city councilor, and for the last six years as a devoted state senator.

Gratwick brings his A-game to whatever task is before him, whether that be medicine or as a public servant. Gratwick is particularly important now as a member of the opioid task force, using both his medical knowledge and political pragmatism to help solve a crisis of epidemic proportion.

Let’s not lose that experience and knowledge. Let’s return Gratwick to the state Senate for two more years.

Ken Huhn
Bangor

Poliquin cares about veterans

“Nobody deserves more support and praise from our community than our brave veterans.” Sentiments and statements like these are common. What is so frustrating is that almost everyone will say they agree with this statement, yet veterans constantly suffer due to government bureaucracy.

The Veterans Affairs Department has left our veterans without the support they desperately need, and there are far too few members of Congress willing to propose actual solutions to fix these problems. As a veteran, that is why I am so thankful for Rep. Bruce Poliquin’s aggressive actions in Congress on behalf of my fellow Maine veterans.

Poliquin is on the front lines fighting to reform the broken VA and bring justice to thousands of veterans who deserve the best care possible. It makes me proud that my congressman cares enough to advocate for those who deserve it most.

Robert Leathers
Brewer

Elvers, not baby eels

Two recent articles in the BDN contained inaccuracies and misleading statements. Foremost, the small eels caught here are not “baby eels, also known as elvers.” They are not babies, and they do not “swim to shore … immediately after being born.” Elvers, the proper term, caught in Maine are offspring of the American eel and have spent about one year drifting and swimming as larvae in the western North Atlantic Ocean before entering coastal waters and rivers. Please, let us purge the term “baby eel” from lexicons.

The latest article mentions a “boosted demand for Atlantic eels.” There are two separate species of Atlantic eels, the American eel, and the European eel. The export of glass eels, or elvers, of the European eel from countries in the European Union is banned by law, but there is some illegal trade.

The term “japonica eels” is nonsense because it mixes part of a scientific name and a common name. The proper common name of this species is Japanese eel. The “japonica” part comes from the scientific name, Anguilla japonica, but is never used alone or as a modifier of eel.

James McCleave
Professor emeritus of Marine Sciences
University of Maine
Bangor

Oil drilling unlikely off Maine’s coast

Recently, new concerns have surfaced about opening the continental shelves of the United States, including Maine, to new exploration and possible production of oil and gas. There are those in Maine, including, tourism and local governments, who fear that oil platforms would be put off Mount Desert Island, destroying scenic views and providing the possibility for disastrous oil spills.

These fears exist for all of Maine’s coastline and result from the widely held misconception that oil and gas are present throughout the Gulf of Maine. In reality, there is no possibility that the ancient rocks flooring the Gulf of Maine contain petroleum reserves. However, petroleum has been proven to be contained in the younger strata of Georges Bank, just beyond the gulf, 250 miles southeast of Maine, on the outer edge of the Continental Shelf.

The last continental glacier flowed across Maine and the entire 250-mile-wide Gulf of Maine, terminating along the inner margin of Georges Bank about 35,000 years ago. Erosion by the glacier apparently removed all of the potential petroleum-bearing younger strata within the gulf, leaving only a remnant on Georges Bank.

Only the strata preserved on Georges Bank are known to contain proven oil and gas reserves. The gulf, stripped of these younger strata, is underlain by the same ancient rocks as those exposed on the Maine landscape. None of these ancient rocks are such that they can possibly contain petroleum. Consequently, there is no reason to believe that we will ever see oil drilling or production platforms along our immediate coast.

Harold W. Borns Jr.
Professor emeritus
University of Maine
Orono

Poliquin helps Old Town

The people of Old Town should give Rep. Bruce Poliquin a big ole “thank you.” I saw on Facebook that Poliquin sponsored a bill specifically to change a law that prevented economic development on a parcel of land next to the Old Town airport. It revises an outdated law by removing an obsolete deed restriction on this land.

Poliquin’s law will allow the airport to move forward with the project of developing the land to attract and welcome new interested businesses and jobs to our area.

For years, the Old Town City Council and residents have been brainstorming ways about how we can bring more small businesses into our city. Thanks to Poliquin’s hard work, Old Town should be able to make that happen very quickly.

Mainers are lucky to have Poliquin representing us in Washington, D.C. We deserve a government that works as hard as we do, and Poliquin does just that.

Wanda Lincoln
Old Town

Planting season, always a critical time for farmers, just became more nerve-wracking for U.S. growers of soybeans and corn.

In a move that caught many in U.S. agriculture by surprise, China on Wednesday announced planned tariffs on American shipments of the two crops. The measures are set to take effect in 60 days. That gives some farmers the opportunity of making a last-gasp switch to another crop. But for others — perhaps most — it’s too late to make a change.

“It puts it into flux,” said Dave Walton, a farmer in Wilton, Iowa, who intends to watch prices closely in the next few weeks amid expectations that China and the U.S. will negotiate to avoid an outright trade war. “We can switch acres from beans to corn if necessary.”

North Americans farmers have until around the end of June to put soybean seeds in the ground, while corn planting typically ends a month earlier. The U.S. Department of Agriculture said last week there will be 88 million acres of corn and 89 million acres of soybeans, covering a combined area larger than California.

The stakes are especially high this year given the parlous state of the agricultural economy. A succession of bumper harvests has led to gluts and depressed crop prices. The USDA projects net farm income will fall to a 12-year low of $59.5 billion, less than half the record level seen in 2013.

The specter of trade disruption has been hanging over the U.S. farm economy ever since Donald Trump was elected on a platform that included promises to challenge China and renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement.

There’s still uncertainty over whether the tariffs will be enacted, how high they will ultimately be, and how long they might last, said Chris Hurt, a professor of agricultural economics at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana.

That was reflected in the market reaction Wednesday. Amid surging volumes in the futures markets, soybeans and corn futures pared some of their early losses. Soy closed 22.75 cents, or 2.2 percent, lower at $10.1525 a bushel on the Chicago Board of Trade. A 50-cent drop may lead to some acres shifting to corn but a major change would require at least a $1 drop, Hurt said.

North Dakota farmer Monte Peterson had planned to plant more soybeans than corn this year. He says that’s now up in the air, as the soy market may take a while to adjust to the tariffs.

The predicament of Illinois soybean and corn farmer Chris Gould is probably more typical. Gould said he plans to get out his spreadsheets to calculate profitability and see if a change is needed, but it may be too late to alter course.

Most North American farmers have by now purchased seed, fertilizer and other inputs based on what they intend to plant in the spring. Even though they can tweak their plans, those big costs largely lock them in.

Furthermore, freezing temperatures and snow in the Midwest are keeping some farmers off their fields right now. Adverse weather could end up having a greater impact on acreage than concerns about trade tariffs because soybeans can be planted later than corn.

April Hemmes, an Iowa farmer, is one farmer waiting for the snow to melt so that planting can begin. She says she sold 25 percent of her upcoming soybean crop Tuesday amid uncertainty about what China might do and also because of earlier price gains.

“Let’s just hope this is a war of words and none of these tariffs are ever enacted,” she said. “These words and actions cost farmers real money.”

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ALBUQUERQUE, New Mexico — President Donald Trump’s promise to use the National Guard to secure the U.S.-Mexico border isn’t a new concept and is something the U.S. has done in the past for varying reasons.

Both Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama sent National Guard troops to the border when they were in the White House. And throughout the history of the borderlands, the military or armed militias have been dispatched there to keep black slaves from fleeing, remove Native Americans from ancestral lands and suppress Mexican-American revolts stemming from anger over white mob violence.

Here’s a look at how the U.S. has used the military and armed militias along the border:

Slavery and Chinese exclusion

After the U.S. seized Texas and American Southwest following the U.S-Mexico War, armed militias patrolled the border looking for runaway black slaves. The traditional Underground Railroad to the north was too far for slaves to travel so thousands attempted the journey south to freedom. Soon, a guerra sorda, or cold war, developed between the nations.

According to historian James David Nichols, Texas slaveholders took matters into their own hands and sent armed militias to the border and into Mexico to search for runaway slaves. Often Mexico refused to turn over slaves and the conflict sometimes resulted in violent skirmishes.

[Trump working with governors to ‘immediately’ send National Guard to border]

In the late 1800s and early 1900s, mounted watchmen who patrolled from El Paso, Texas, to California were dispatched largely to look out for Chinese immigrants trying to illegally enter the U.S.

Kelly Lytle Hernandez, a University of California at Los Angeles history professor and author of “Migra!: A History of the U.S. Border Patrol,” says initially there were no restrictions on Mexican immigration at the time because U.S. growers wanted a steady stream of agricultural workers.

Revolution and revolt

Tensions remained high between white settlers, Mexican-Americans and Native Americans in the newly acquired territory following the U.S-Mexico War.

Miguel Levario, a Texas Tech history professor and author of “Militarizing the Border: When Mexicans Became the Enemy,” said the U.S. government erected military bases such as Fort Bliss in El Paso for the sole purpose of removing Native Americans from lands.

“It had little to do with immigration,” Levario said.

As the Mexican Revolution began in Mexico around 1910, white settlers feared Mexican-Americans might take up arms on behalf of Mexican Revolutionary leader Pancho Villa.

[Opinion: Few remember how the Maine Guard helped secure the Mexican border 100 years ago]

When Villa soldiers in northern Mexico killed 19 white engineers and staff from an American mining company, drunken U.S. soldiers sought revenge in El Paso and attacked Mexican-Americans in poor El Paso neighborhoods, sparking a riot in 1916. El Paso police also are believed to have sought revenge and set fire to Mexican inmates in the El Paso jail, killing 27, Levario said. The inmates were doused with coal oil and gasoline as a crude disinfectant, he said.

What happened at the jail helped push Villa to raid the small town of Columbus, New Mexico. The violent raid angered whites and President Woodrow Wilson, who ordered Gen. John J. Pershing to invade Mexico to arrest Villa. The U.S. Army never caught him.

National Guard units from around the country were called up and more than 100,000 troops were sent to the border.

Immigration and drugs

Congress created the U.S. Border Patrol in 1924 and the agency slowly grew in size as its mission changed. At first, the agents sought to keep out Asian immigrants and later worked to stall alcohol trafficking in the Prohibition era. Slowly, it evolved into stalling unwanted migration from Mexico.

Occasionally, U.S. presidents have sent the military or the National Guard to the border region to help the Border Patrol stem a crisis amid controversy with border residents.

[Trump wants military to secure border with Mexico]

In 1997, camouflage-clad U.S. Marines ordered to patrol the border for drugs in West Texas shot and killed 18-year-old Esequiel Hernandez Jr. while he was herding his family’s goats near the tiny village of Redford, Texas, along the U.S.-Mexico border. Authorities say Hernandez had no connection to the drug trade and was an honor student.

That shooting sparked anger along the border and ended the President Bill Clinton-era military presence along the border. After Sept. 11, President George W. Bush sent unarmed National Guard units to the border for support, Levario said.

In 2010, President Barack Obama deployed National Guard troops to the border over fear of increasing drug-trafficking violence.

Today, there are more than 20,000 Border Patrol agents along the U.S.-Mexico border, and a number of other federal agencies have a presence as well.

Associated Press writer Russell Contreras is a member of the AP’s race and ethnicity team.

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With just over two weeks to go in this year’s legislative session — officially anyway — my colleagues and I are once again confronted with Gov. Paul LePage’s obsession with closing Downeast Correctional Facility in Machiasport.

That obsession, bubbling for years as Legislature after Legislature denied LePage’s wish to shutter one of Maine’s most cost-effective, transformational correctional facilities, exploded rather spectacularly in the early morning hours of Feb. 9, when Maine law enforcement and corrections officers were ordered to close the prison and transport about 60 inmates elsewhere — without the consent or knowledge of the 186 men and women who serve in the Legislature.

We can argue whether Maine is too soft or too tough on crime. We can argue why people commit crimes, and how we can reduce that. We can argue whether we have enough law enforcement officers out there keeping our state safe. We can even argue whether our jails and prisons are doing all they can to keep people from coming back into the correctional system. But whether you are the most ardent progressive or staunchest conservative, this governor broke the law and justified it rather than let policymakers have these very important debates.

[Opinion: I worked at the Down East prison. Its closure is a blow to Maine’s corrections system.]

Perhaps it is because Democrats, Republicans and independents in the Legislature have continually supported keeping this prison open and have educated themselves on the work-release and community-service programs it offers inmates — and the restitution those programs offers victims — and the role the prison plays within the entire correctional system.

Perhaps it is because lawmakers have seen through false claims that the facility is ailing — its kitchen has been certified by inspectors from LePage’s own Health and Human Services Department, and it has passed inspection after inspection from the fire marshal’s office — and that it costs too much per prisoner — data from LePage’s own Corrections Department show that the facility is actually the second-most cost-effective correctional facility in Maine.

Perhaps the governor wants to privatize our prisons. Perhaps he has a grudge against legislators from across the spectrum who dare disagree with him publicly. Or perhaps he is just upset over not getting his own way.

Regardless, Kennebec County Superior Court Justice Micaela Murphy ruled last month that Downeast Correctional must be reopened, and that the Legislature has a say in whether it is ultimately closed. That’s right; the Legislature has a say in this facility and its future.

Eight of the 10 House and Senate leaders agreed that we ought to look at funding Downeast Correctional past June when I submitted legislation — LD 1704 — to do just that earlier this session. An overwhelming majority of the Criminal Justice and Public Safety Committee also agreed when they heard my bill — and hours of testimony from businesses, communities, prisoner advocates and workers at the prison — and ultimately passed it unanimously a few days before the half-baked attempt to close it.

[Opinion: The Down East prison is a vital link in Maine’s corrections system]

On March 27, policymakers, including many of my Republican colleagues who are having second thoughts about what the administration did, how it was done and what they have been told about the prison, voted 95-53 in support of funding Downeast Correctional.

Now, the future of this prison is in the hands of the budget committee. It is my sincere hope that each of the 13 men and women figuring out the finances take a big picture view and support not only one more year of funding for Downeast Correctional, but also require the Maine Department of Corrections to develop a detailed plan for the facility’s future when the new Legislature is sworn in.

Some might say that is kicking the can down the road. I would submit that with all that has gone on this year — the illegal closure, the court cases, the misinformation the governor’s staff has distributed — that we clean this up and follow a fair, open, thorough process to restore Mainers’ faith and trust in government.

If former Gov. John Baldacci had done what LePage did, Republicans would rightfully be up in arms. If former Gov. Angus King had done it, he probably wouldn’t be a senator today. When Baldacci wanted to close Downeast Correctional, he tried to find an alternative. Same for King. We should hold LePage and future administrations to the same high standard or we have only ourselves to blame for what follows.

Will Tuell, R-East Machias, represents Maine House District 139.

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High winds knocked out power to thousands of Mainers living in the southern portion of the state and the Bangor area overnight, leaving many still without power early Thursday morning.

As of nearly 8:45 a.m., when Emera Maine posted its most recent update, nearly 800 customers still lacked power — a number that fell from more than 11,000 just 3 hours earlier, according to post on its website. At 8:30 a.m., more than 4,500 Central Maine Power customers were still without power, according to its website.

Winds gusting up to 40 mph starting blowing in the early morning hours, hitting Greater Bangor especially hard, cutting power to at least 10,500 Emera Maine customers, according to a 6 a.m. update. But at 8:45 a.m., most of those lines had been repaired, and 500 of the remaining customers still without power were concentrated along coastal Hancock County — Cranberry Isles, Isleford, Mount Desert, Northeast Harbor, Seal Harbor and Sutton Island.

Farther south, Cumberland County amassed the majority of outages, and nearly 2,000 people were still without power by 8 a.m. Outages were more concentrated in the Lakes Region, CBS affiliate WGME reported.

Emera expects to restore lines in staggered phases through the morning and early afternoon, with times for specific towns posted on its website. CMP is updating its live outage map on its website.

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Olivia Harper, swimming for the Bath YMCA, finished second in the finals of the 200-yard backstroke on Wednesday at the YMCA Nationals in Greensboro, North Carolina.

Bangor High School senior Colby Prouty, racing for the Old Town YMCA, also scored in the finals, placing fourth in the 200 breaststroke.

Harper qualified fourth in the trials and then moved to second in the finals with a time of 1 minute, 57 seconds. The winner recorded a 1:54.7.

In an event where a national record of 1:53.5 was established, Prouty lowered his trial time in the finals to finish in 2:01.1.

Gabby Low of Kennebec Valley YMCA in Augusta placed 14th in the 100-yard butterfly at 55.5, two seconds behind the winning time of 53.4. Kennebec Valley’s Cecilia Guadalupi touched in 2:26.5 in the 200 breaststroke.

Other Maine competitors in Wednesday’s racing included Ritchie Mathews of the Downeast YMCA in Ellsworth in the 100 butterfly (52.9) and 200 breaststroke (2:13.4). Ava Sealander, also of the Downeast Y, posted a 56.4 in the 100 butterfly while Harper swam a 56.6.

Brian Hess of the Bath YMCA finished in 2:09.7 in the 200 breaststroke and teammate Matt Yost clocked a 53.8 in the butterfly.

The meet concludes Saturday.

New data from the federal government shows that Maine’s higher minimum wage is working as intended, especially when it comes to putting more money into the pockets of the state’s lowest-paid workers.

Given this evidence, there is no reason to rollback the minimum wage law, as the Maine Senate is still considering. The Maine House has rejected such a move.

Despite warnings from businesses that an increase in the state’s minimum wage would depress employment and harm the state’s economy, a referendum to raise the wage was passed by voters in November 2016. Under the new law, Maine’s minimum wage will be increased by $1 a year until reaching $12 an hour in 2020. After that, the minimum wage will be indexed to inflation. Before the November 2016 vote, Maine’s minimum wage was $7.50 an hour. It is now $10 an hour.

In January, about 59,000 workers in Maine got a raise, which will result in nearly $80 million in additional money that will flow through the Maine economy.

U.S. Department of Labor statistics show that wages grew across the board for Maine workers in 2017. As expected, the largest gain was among the lowest-paid workers, who saw the largest increase in earnings in the more than 15 years that the department has tracked this state-level data.

At the same time, overall employment and the average number of hours worked also grew in Maine, dispelling warnings that the minimum wage increase would depress hiring and hours.

Yet, there is still an effort to rollback portions of the law. The Senate passed an amended bill that would slow the rise of the state’s minimum wage from $1 a year to 50 cents per year. The minimum wage would not reach $12 an hour until 2022. The House has rejected all changes to the current law. The bill faces further action in both chambers because they are in disagreement.

The amended Senate bill is much better than earlier versions of the bill, which would have reduced the current minimum wage to $9.50 and hour and raised it by 50 cents a year until it reached $11. The original bill would also allow a lower minimum wage for teen workers and a “training wage” for workers between 18 and 20 for the first three months they are on a job, the length of Maine’s summer tourist season.

But there is no reason to slow down the scheduled increases in Maine’s minimum wage, which have already helped lift Mainers out of poverty and have put more money into the state’s economy.

There is long-standing national evidence that increasing the wages of low-wage earners is one of the best ways to stimulate the economy, because these workers spend their money on goods and services. Wealthier individuals tend to invest or save money they receive from raises or tax cuts. Every extra dollar that goes to a low-wage worker creates $1.21 worth of economic activity, according to respected economic models. Every dollar that goes into the pockets of high-earning Americans adds just 39 cents to the national economy.

That’s why so many economists argue that raising the minimum wage is one of the best ways to boost the economy.

Maine’s early experience bolsters this argument. Raising the state’s minimum wage helped the economy and low-wage workers. Reversing or slowing these benefits makes no sense.

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SACO, Maine — Fire officials in Maine say a lightning strike that hit a utility pole traveled underground and started a house fire.

The Portland Press Herald reports the fire happened Wednesday afternoon in Saco. Firefighters contained the fire in a basement unit of a duplex.

Saco Fire Department Capt. Chris West believes the fire was caused by lightning that traveled underground because a water main was destroyed and the basement unit sustained the most damage.

The utility pole was destroyed and area homes lost power. Utility crews were on the scene trying to restore power and repair the damage.

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Featured photo by Flickr user Flowizm used under Creative Commons license 2.0.

WISCASSET, Maine — An 82-year-old Wiscasset man remained in critical condition at Maine Medical Center in Portland on Thursday after being struck by a car on Route 27 Tuesday afternoon.

Bernard Koehling was struck by a car driven by Chad Breton, 37, of Wiscasset at about 3:15 p.m. Tuesday, Wiscasset police Chief Jeffrey E. Lange wrote in a news release.

The crash remains under investigation, and Breton has cooperated with investigators, Lange said.

Bath police Detective Sgt. Andrew Booth is assisting with the investigation and reconstruction of the crash.

No additional information was immediately available Thursday morning.

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A few weeks ago, the Bangor Daily News asked the Republican gubernatorial candidates to weigh in on four immediate issues they would face as governor. Candidates were asked about their policy priorities, Medicaid expansion, citizen initiatives and abortion.

Why is a safe, legal medical procedure 1 in 4 women will have an immediate issue for Maine’s governor?

For decades, reporters and politicians have continually written and talked about abortion as a divisive, political issue. They use terms like “lightning rod” and “culture wars” and perpetuate the myth that Americans are “pro-life” or “pro-choice” and deeply divided in their opinions about abortion.

This is not accurate and doesn’t reflect the conversations happening today.

For starters, the pro-life and pro-choice labels aren’t working. They don’t accurately depict people’s thoughts and feelings about abortion. As one example, the number of Americans who believe abortion should be safe and legal is much greater than the number who would describe themselves as “pro-choice.”

Labels are limiting. Instead of putting people in a box, politicians and reporters should respect the real-life conversations and decisions women and families make every day.

The truth is, when it comes to abortion, we’re mostly in agreement.

Last December, the nonpartisan research firm PerryUndem conducted a national survey about abortion that asked questions moving beyond labels. The results may be surprising to those who have only thought of abortion as a partisan political issue.

When respondents were told a woman has decided to have an abortion and asked what they would want the experience for her to be, the most prevalent answers were: informed by medically-accurate information (96 percent), safe (95 percent), legal (85 percent), supportive (83 percent) and without protesters (83 percent)

These feelings would likely be categorized as “pro-choice,” yet only 55 percent of respondents labeled themselves as either pro-choice (35 percent) or both pro-choice and pro-life (20 percent). Using these outdated labels, whether in reporting or polling, is missing the mark and misrepresenting the conversations people are having about abortion.

Despite the rhetoric in news coverage or during campaigns, voters are also clear that they don’t want the government and politicians involved in personal decisions about abortion.

When asked who should decide what procedures are used for abortion, the top responses were the woman and the doctor. Only 4 percent of voters want politicians in Congress or the State House to have a say.

Put more directly, when asked if the government should require women to carry a pregnancy to term and give birth, even if it is against their will, 80 percent say no. We might enjoy watching “The Handmaid’s Tale” on TV, but we certainly don’t want people to live it.

Given these responses, it’s not surprising that 50 percent of voters said they are more likely to vote for a state or federal candidate who supports women having the right to abortion. Fewer than 20 percent said they would be more likely to vote for a candidate who is against women having the right to an abortion.

It is not only Democrats and independents driving this trend. Republican responses reveal similar patterns: only one-third of Republican voters said they would be more likely to vote for a candidate who opposes safe, legal abortion. One-third said they are more likely to vote for a candidate who supports safe, legal abortion and one-third said a candidate’s position on abortion made no difference.

While there has been much hand-wringing among some Democratic Party operatives over whether to run candidates opposed to safe, legal abortion, the research is clear: Democrats stand to lose much more than they might gain. In fact, given the numbers, it’s Republicans who would do well to re-evaluate; sticking with candidates opposed to abortion is costing them votes.

If politicians truly want to represent their constituents, they would support policies that empower women and improve their health, such as guaranteeing all women have affordable access to the most effective birth control methods and providing comprehensive sex education in schools — policies voters say are most important.

And if reporters want to accurately reflect voters’ opinions about abortion, they will stop categorizing us or candidates based on limiting labels that don’t capture how most people actually think and feel about abortion.

Abortion is a deeply personal decision for a woman. It’s time for our candidates, lawmakers and reporters to speak about it that way.

Nicole Clegg is the vice president of public policy for Planned Parenthood of Northern New England in Maine and the Planned Parenthood Maine Action Fund. Andrea Irwin is the executive director of the Mabel Wadsworth Center in Bangor.

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The Rockport man accused of killing four people, including his mother and grandparents, in Massachusetts last fall has been indicted on four counts of first-degree murder.

Orion Krause, 22, will be arraigned on those charges in Middlesex Superior Court in Woburn Massachusetts, according to his attorney, Edward Wayland. Arraignment is set for 9 a.m. April 11, according to the Middlesex district attorney’s office.

Krause was deemed mentally fit to stand trial in October. The indictments against Krause were handed down by a Middlesex County grand jury on March 29.

Krause is accused of killing his mother, Elizabeth “Buffy” Krause, 60; her parents Elizabeth “Esu” Lackey, 85, and Frank Danby “Dan” Lackey III, 89; and their home health aide, Bertha Mae Parker, 68.

[Unsealed police reports in quadruple slaying case offer grisly details]

Krause has been in custody since he was arrested for the Sept. 8 killings. He is being held at Bridgewater State Hospital, according to Wayland.

Krause allegedly admitted to investigators that he committed the killings with a baseball bat at his grandparents’ home in Groton, Massachusetts, according to police reports from the Sept. 8 incident.

Police found the bodies of Krause’s mother and grandparents sitting in chairs in the kitchen. Parker’s body was found in a flower bed, according to the report.

Krause allegedly told investigators that he “freed them.”

[Former babysitter of Mainer accused of killing 4 recalls ‘Little Orion’]

One investigator wrote in the report that when asked where the deaths happened, Krause allegedly pointed to the woods. Investigators found a wooden baseball bat with what appeared to be blood on it under a tree in the backyard.

On the night of the killings, Krause allegedly called a former college professor and said, “I think I have to kill my mom.”

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“This may seem like an unusual request, but I write to you today seeking a ‘pardon.’”

So began an 1,100-word letter from Nick Burchill of Nova Scotia to the Fairmont Empress hotel in downtown Victoria, Canada.

Burchill was coming “hat-in-hand,” as he wrote in his missive, to apologize and ask forgiveness for an incident that got him banned for life from the upscale establishment 17 years ago. The following may sound incredible, but hotel staff say it’s true.

In 2001, Burchill, a former member of the Canadian Naval Reserve, traveled to Victoria for a work conference, according to his letter, which he published in a widely shared Facebook post last week. Knowing he’d see some Navy buddies during the trip, he brought with him a suitcase full of pepperoni from their favorite deli in Halifax.

After checking into the Fairmont Empress on a chilly April day, he noticed there wasn’t a refrigerator in his room. So he laid the bundles of meat by an open window to keep them cool. Then he stepped out for a stroll around the city.

He returned hours later to a scene out of an Alfred Hitchcock film. A flock of seagulls, dozens of them, had descended on the pepperoni and invaded the room, he said. When Burchill tried to clear them out, chaos ensued.

“They immediately started flying around and crashing into things as they desperately tried to leave the room through the small opening by which they had entered,” Burchill wrote. “The result was a tornado of seagull excrement, feathers and pepperoni chunks and fairly large birds whipping around the room. The lamps were falling. The curtains were trashed. The coffee tray was just disgusting.”

Hotel employees were aghast. The mess was so bad that the management sent a letter to Burchill’s employers saying he could never stay there again. Burchill, by all accounts, abided by the decision.

But on Sunday, the Fairmont Empress decided to open its doors to him once again. Hotel staff said in a statement that they had reviewed his request for a pardon and lifted the ban.

Burchill dropped by the front desk over the weekend and gave the managers a pound of Brothers TNT Pepperoni as a “peace offering,” he told CBC News. A picture posted to his Facebook account shows him and two hotel staff members laughing together.

The incident is now apparently Fairmont Empress lore, according to Burchill.

“When I was talking to the people at the desk and the manager, they did say that they had heard this story from a long-term employee that works there,” he told CBC News.

“I was just kind of in and out,” he added. “I didn’t want to overstay my welcome.”

Tracey Drake, the hotel’s public relations director, told the Canadian Press that some staff members thought Burchill’s letter was an April Fools’ Day prank. But they checked the records and, sure enough, the seagull story was no joke. Nor was Burchill’s permanent ban.

“It is absolutely a true story,” Drake said.

“The hotel followed up with his employer afterwards, saying he’s not welcome back at the hotel due to the damage in the room,” she told the Canadian Press. “He’s correct. The lamps were broken. The room was trashed. It’s a really funny story to tell 17 years later, but I was sitting here thinking about the housekeeper and what her first reaction must have been when she opened that door.”

In retrospect, the whole situation was ripe for trouble. The fourth-floor room in which Burchill stayed during the ill-fated trip faced Victoria’s inner harbor, a stone’s throw from the docks. As anyone who has spent time near a body of salt water can tell you, seagulls are aggressive creatures that will scavenge for just about anything — even landfill trash, as Popular Science magazine notes. Pepperoni is definitely on the menu.

In his letter, Burchill recalled his shock when he opened the door to his room that afternoon in 2001 and saw “an entire flock of seagulls” laying waste to the place. There must have been 40 of them, he said.

“In case you were wondering, Brothers TNT Pepperoni does NASTY things to a seagull’s digestive system,” he wrote. “As you would expect, the room was covered in seagull crap.”

After the initial mayhem, Burchill managed to shoo most of the birds out by opening the remaining windows, but one stayed behind. “In a moment of clarity,” he said, he grabbed a towel, wrapped up the gull and threw it outside. The bird wasn’t harmed, but the projectile did startle a group of tourists milling around on the hotel lawn, he said.

As he scrambled to clean up, he let a running hair dryer fall into the sink, triggering a power outage, he wrote. That’s when he called the front desk for help.

“I can still remember the look on the cleaning lady’s face when she opened the door,” Burchill wrote. “I had absolutely no idea what to tell her, so I just said, ‘I’m sorry,’ and I went to dinner.”

He returned for the night to find that his belongings had been moved to a smaller room. His employer got the lifetime ban notice shortly after.

Burchill wrote in his letter that he was younger and more foolish then, and that he wanted to take responsibility for his actions.

In a Facebook post Tuesday, the hotel staff stated they were “as amused as everyone” to read his entreaty.

“We look forward to welcoming Mr. Burchill to Fairmont Empress again in the future,” the post read. “He will be delighted to know that the rooms have modern amenities and air conditioning to keep his pepperoni cool.”

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Authorities found and dismantled an active meth lab inside a Mount Hope Avenue apartment building Wednesday, and they are searching for the people behind it.

Drug agents were called to 36 Mount Hope Ave. around 9:30 a.m. after a Bangor police officer spotted two backpacks and a purse containing ingredients to make methamphetamine in the building’s hallway, including a bottle of corrosive, muriatic acid, according to Maine Department of Public Safety spokesman Steve McCausland.

When drug agents arrived, they found two more liquid-filled bottles in which someone had mixed the chemical ingredients to make meth, he said. After processing the scene, the Maine Drug Enforcement Agency’s lab team sent samples from the three bottles away for testing, and turned the rest of the lab over to the state Department of Environmental Protection to be safely destroyed. Bangor police and fire assisted at the scene, McCausland said.

Authorities did not make any arrests Wednesday, and they are looking for the suspected cooks behind the lab.

It was the eighth meth lab that drug agents have responded to in 2018, and the second in Bangor in a week, said Cmdr. Darrell Crandall, the leader for the MDEA in northern Maine. Agents responded on March 29 to a discarded bottle containing the remnants of a lab found on Essex Street, he said. On Tuesday, drug agents busted a lab on Verona Island where they found 33 bottles used to make meth and a 5-year-old child was living, McCausland said.

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Why do so many soldiers continue to take their own lives at a higher rate than their civilian counterparts, whether young or old? I’ve spent a lot of time stewing about this over the past few days.

It began Monday morning, when I got a note from a vet in a very dark place and contemplating the act. He’d served in Vietnam. His risk of suicide is about 22 percent higher than that of his nonveteran peers, according to a report last year from the Department of Veterans Affairs.

That afternoon, I learned that an Army captain who had been featured a while back in my old “Best Defense” column on the Foreign Policy website had gone out in the middle of the night and sat on railroad tracks near Fort Carson, Colorado, and apparently let a train run over him. He was still in the military but may have been thinking of leaving. People getting out are at the highest risk in the year after they leave — about 1.5 to two times as likely to kill themselves as those still on active duty.

A friend of his wrote to me, “He was always a high-performing and intelligent guy. He had deployed to Afghanistan with 10th Mountain, then to Kuwait with 4th ID prior to Atlantic Resolve where it looks like you met him. He was on deck to teach Military Science at West Point. He had a wife and daughter. Nothing about his death makes sense. The only indicator I had that he was unhappy was his deep frustrations with the conventional military, the high op tempo for support roles and exercises, and the impact on his family.”

Last month, the commander of the Marine 4th Reconnaissance Battalion was found dead in his home. He also had deployed several times to Iraq and Afghanistan.

Also recently, I read that a retired major who had served in military intelligence in Iraq had killed himself and his wife.

The suicide rate for veterans has gone up 35 percent since 2001, in part because of increases in post-9/11 veterans killing themselves.

I know what I am seeing around me is anecdotal. But it just doesn’t feel right to me. What is going on here?

Here are four possibilities, specific to the conditions of our recent war:

A lost war: My initial thought was that perhaps people are feeling empty and lost as the Middle Eastern war winds down and we don’t have a lot to show for it, besides Iran being more powerful than ever. But a friend who did several tours in Vietnam said he also knew that feeling but didn’t see any rash of suicides in the 1970s among his former comrades.

Death by rotation: Another theory is that everyone is born with just so much to give and that repeated deployments drain that reserve, without replenishment. At some point, a person might just decide they can’t do this anymore, that this is too painful and look for the fastest exit.

Brain injury: A third theory, related to the extensive use of roadside bombs in the Middle East, suggests that the human brain can, at best, withstand only one or two nearby explosions and cannot heal the deep damage inflicted by repeated blasts.

More to come: Or is it that depressed vets are responding to the whiff of another possible war on the horizon, with North Korea?

Whether it is one of these, or a combination, or something else, it worries me deeply.

Thomas E. Ricks is the author of five books about the U.S. military. He writes “The Long March”column for Task & Purpose, a veteran-oriented website.

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WINSLOW, Maine — A traveling petting zoo in Maine says its reindeer has unexpectedly given birth to the first baby reindeer in the state in more than 20 years.

Pony X-Press co-owner Ed Papsis says the reindeer is a dark brown female calf and it was born at a farm on Easter Sunday.

Julia Bayly | BDN

June 2017 file photo of a reindeer calf in Finland, taken during a trip by BDN writer Julia Bayly. A traveling petting zoo in Maine says its reindeer has unexpectedly given birth to the first baby reindeer in the state in more than 20 years.

Papsis tells the Morning Sentinel that the new reindeer has yet to be named. Her mother’s name is Cocoa.

There are no wild reindeer left in Maine, and Pony X-Press has the only domesticated ones in the state. It once had the only reindeer in the state, an 18-year-old female named Freeway who died in 2016. It now has one male and four females.

Attempts to reintroduce reindeer to the wild in Maine in the past have not succeeded.

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BOSTON — A person with knowledge of the situation says Celtics point guard Kyrie Irving will miss the rest of the regular season and playoffs after surgery on his left knee.

The official spoke on the condition of anonymity to The Associated Press because the team has not released the news. ESPN first reported the development.

The team has said that Irving had a “minimally invasive” procedure March 24. That was to remove a wire that had been placed in his knee during surgery to repair his broken kneecap from the 2015 NBA finals.

The team said the knee was structurally sound and the kneecap healed, but the wire had been putting pressure on the knee.

An original estimate would have sidelined Irving through at least start of the postseason and possibly into the second round.

The clouds opened up on a hill overlooking Phillips Lake, sheets of rain pelted my car as I headed toward a patch of open water and my own personal opening day of fishing season.

Granted, I was a few days late — the official April 1 opener fell on Easter — but I had been reluctant to trade a sumptuous ham dinner with family for a few hours spent freezing my toes off in Grand Lake Stream’s Dam Pool.

Thus, I waited for a day when I had an available two-hour window free, and at my boss’s urging, headed east from Bangor late Wednesday afternoon … and drove into a torrential downpour.

That’s the way fishing is, of course: Some days, the weather is beautiful, and the fishing is horrible. Or vice versa. And you never really know what’s going to happen unless you actually get out the door and wet a line.

And honestly, this personal opening day wasn’t really about catching fish. Instead, I went into the outing with modest goals. I wanted to be able to say that I fished. I wanted to rig up my fly rod and limber up the casting muscles.

Simply put, I wanted to return to a familiar place, stare out at the water, and enjoy being outdoors again after a long, cold winter. As if on cue, when I turned off busy Route 1A and made my final approach to my destination, the rain simply ceased, leaving me no excuse but to fish for a bit.

My special spot for this day isn’t really a fishing hotspot, though the bobbers and rubber worms that dangle from nearby utility wires provide evidence that wild-casting youths sometimes stop by to spend some time.

More importantly, it’s a spot where a small stream flows into a large lake, and come this time of year, the stream starts winning that epic battle between winter and spring, and the ice begins to recede.

At this time of year, open water is in short supply. And I was determined to take a few ceremonial first casts into that lake, whether the fish showed up to participate in my hijinks or not.

This is a place that holds special memories for me, regardless of the season.

As a kid heading toward the family camp, this glimpse of Green Lake was our first sight of water en route to Beech Hill Pond. In later years, I ice fished here, and launched my boat at the landing and went for afternoon trolling trips, targeting landlocked salmon and togue.

In fact, the biggest togue I ever (almost) caught came from this lake, and I still kick myself over the mistakes I made while failing to land it.

Some years, on opening day, I’ve come here with live bait, or worms and a bobber, or lures, and have casted into the gentle flow where the brook joins the lake. I’ve hoped for the best, expected the worst, and been content to spend a half-hour or so just watching the water and breathing the fresh air.

That’s the way it was on Wednesday, too.

I tied on a smelty-looking streamer fly, cast it into the frigid water, and watched as my fly line slowly drifted farther from shore. Signs of a rough winter were everywhere: The detritus that had been washed in off the lake gathered next to the bridge. A hodgepodge of branches, leaves, pine needles, boards — and even a swim float — lay in the shallow water near my casting position.

At some point in the next few weeks, the smelts will run into this brook, and the landlocked salmon will follow, setting up shop in the cove I’m targeting.

At some point. But not today.

A friend who lives on the lake says he can tell when those smelts are present: He looks for the ducks and loons to congregate in the cove. They, too, like to feed on the fish.

On Wednesday, there were no ducks. No loons. No fish.

But there were first casts to make, and plans to make.

Among those: Return. Soon.

John Holyoke can be reached at jholyoke@bangordailynews.com or 990-8214. Follow him on Twitter: @JohnHolyoke

PORTLAND, Maine — René Johnson’s one-woman, interactive storytelling show is not a free ride. Johnson challenges the audience to speak to strangers in the room. She has them gaze in each other’s eyes in silence. She asks them personal questions.

Johnson expects the audience to participate and pull its own weight.

It’s the least they can do while she unravels harrowing and intimate details of her life. Through multiple characters, dance and song, she weaves a story of escaping South African apartheid, childhood abuse at the hands of her mother, teenage self-harm and coming to terms with Maine’s own racism.

Johnson, 33, will perform her show three times this weekend at Bright Star World Dance studio on High Street.

She first devised the piece during a summer program at the Celebration Barn Theater in South Paris in 2013. Since then, Johnson has performed it dozens of times but it’s never the same. She’s constantly revising it as her life, and outlook on the world, shifts and grows.

The show is titled “Geel,” the Dutch word for yellow, but it would spoil things to explain too much.

Troy R. Bennett | BDN

Performer Rene Johnson sings a gospel song while rehearsing her one-woman show "Geel" in Portland Wednesday night. The show explores Johnson's complicated relationship with Maine and childhood abuse suffered at the hands of her mother.

It’s not a performance for the faint-hearted. Johnson screams, swears and brings herself to tears. She also dances and sings with soul and grace. At times, she lets Nina Simone songs take over where her own words fail her.

In the powerful second half of the show, she reenacts her mother beating her and her twin brother. Johnson also talks about channeling the of intense pain and beauty of ballet into a form of self-harm starting at the age of nine. It culminates in a wrenching scene of her running through the West End after her mother throws her out of the house when she gets her first period.

Q: Have you always been a performer?

A: I’ve always had a big, big personality. I’ve always had a loud mouth. I’ve used it, always, mostly because I felt like I wasn’t being seen.

Q: Were you not seen because you’re small or because you’re a woman?

A: Because I was a black child, a black female child.

Troy R. Bennett | BDN

Rene Johnson performs a ballet exercise while rehearsing her one-woman show "Geel" in Portland Wednesday night. The show explores Johnson's complicated relationship with Maine and childhood abuse suffered at the hands of her mother.

Q: You came to Portland from Johannesburg, South Africa in 1991. What was that like?

A: I was six-and-a-half. It was dope. America was dope. Literally, the place was paved in gold. We came as refugees. Apartheid was the thing in South Africa at the time and we were suffering from that. We could have ended up in Detroit. We could have ended up in Compton. We could have ended up in Texas but we ended up here, and this place is magic.

Q: You’ve been an accidental Mainer for 27 years now. Given Mainers’ general skepticism towards “people from away,” do you feel like a Mainer?

A: Some days I do. Some days I’m like, “Yes, I’m totally a Mainer.” But mostly, no. Mostly, I feel like a person trying really hard to be a Mainer. Because there’s a thing you have to be, to be a Mainer. And I’m trying to uncondition myself from that right now. That’s part of what this show is. It’s me being able to reflect on what it means to be a person, what it means to be a René, what it means to be a daughter, what it means to be a sister, what it means to be a Mainer, what it means to be black. I don’t feel like a Mainer. I wish I did. And then there are some days when I’m like, “No, I don’t.”

Q: You came to the United States to escape Apartheid but you’ve said you experienced your share of racism right here, in Portland. So much so, you’re thinking of leaving. Tell me about that.

A: I’ve left, I’ve come back. I’ve left, I’ve come back again. I went away and people treated me so much better — white people, specifically. I said, “I am angry at you, Maine — I am so angry at you and I’m going to do something with that anger because this is unreal.”

Then, I started this [show].

In 2014, I went away for a really long time and the way that white people treated me felt so strange. It felt odd because they were being kind without me having to prove anything, not my intellect, not my savvy. Nothing.

[It made me realize] I lived in this space, here, where white people make me prove everything about me, all the time, since I was a child.

Troy R. Bennett | BDN

Performer Rene Johnson raises her first in anger while rehearsing her one-woman show "Geel" in Portland Wednesday night. The show explores Johnson's complicated relationship with Maine and childhood abuse suffered at the hands of her mother.

Q: One experience you described earlier was when a potential employer here once denied you a job because you were wearing an African headwrap?

A: And then he says, “But I do want you to know, I’m wonderfully surprised to find out that this resumé belonged to a woman of color. Well done.”

So, I’m like, “I hate you, Maine. I hate you so much.”

Q: And it wasn’t long after that when you started putting this show together during an extended summer program at the Celebration Barn Theater?

A: Yes. [This year] I’m going back for my fifth year. Every time I go back I get a chance to live here [in Portland] for six months, do something with this anger and then go back to the barn and put that shit down.

Troy R. Bennett | BDN

Rene Johnson dances to a Nina Simone song while rehearsing her one-woman show "Geel" in Portland Wednesday night. The show explores Johnson's complicated relationship with Maine and childhood abuse suffered at the hands of her mother.

Q: It’s fair to say this show comes straight from your love/hate relationship with Maine?

A: Yeah, with Maine and trauma. Those are the two things — my complicated relationship with being a black child who came to Maine, and being a young woman who was severely abused by her mother. This show is my version of not lying to myself and trying really hard to undo what this place is doing to me.

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Hammon Buck has been working with Maine gardeners for more than half a century, and in those five decades he’s seen what a warming trend and climate change are doing to the region’s growing seasons.

“As a child there were a lot of things we could not grow [in Maine] that are now common like Magnolia, weeping cherries and some of the locust trees,” Buck, owner of Plants Unlimited in Rockport, said. “Now those things are quite common with the warming up.”

A noticeable change

Buck is not alone in noticing things are changing in accordance with a continued climate shift.

“A lot of the plant diseases that used to be confined to certain areas of the south are starting to move north,” said Pete Zuck, product manager for vegetables at Johnny’s Selected Seeds. “Viruses that are transported by southern bugs that would be killed off by frost here are gaining ground moving north.”

In recognition of the impact climate change is having on planting, in 2012 the USDA released an updated version of its plant hardiness zone map, which is used by gardeners to determine what flowers, fruits or vegetables grow best in their particular region — or zone.

It’s previous map was released in 1990.

“The planting zones have definitely changed,” Buck said. “We were always a constant zone five but now we are a warmer five with some areas going to zone six.”

What this means to those who plant in Maine, according to climate change experts, is the state’s growing seasons have lengthened, allowing for the introduction of newer crops.

“I think in this is instance climate change is in some ways potentially helpful for the home gardner,” said Dr. John Jemison, professor with University of Maine Cooperative Extension. “That’s a broad brush statement, but a longer season does mean they can grow things they were not able to before and can extend the growing season a bit longer.”

But as helpful as a longer season could be for growing plants and food in Maine, Jemison said it also comes at a cost.

“With this change in climate also comes a lot of other issues,” he said. “There is really no other issue more important to the longevity of humans than climate change.”

According to the University of Maine Climate and Agriculture Network, the average length of Maine’s frost-free growing season is currently 12 to 14 days longer than it was in 1930 and is expected to continue to increase by 2 to 3 days per decade.

Along with this, the minimum winter temperatures in Maine are increasing a rate faster than the daily highs in the other seasons.

With warmer winters, according to the climate network, Maine is also in store for more frequent and intense heat waves during which the feel-like temperature will break 95-degrees.

With the predicted added risk of heatwaves comes more frequent and extreme downpours, according to the agriculture and climate network.

The network’s data shows the frequency of extreme precipitation events in Maine increased 74 percent between 1948 and 2011. Intense storms that used to hit around every 12 months are now occurring every seven months with the maximum hourly rate of precipitation increasing around 35 percent between 2001 and 2013.

The network predicts the frequency and intensity of these extreme weather events will continue over the coming decades bringing risks of increased soil erosion, seed loss, flooding and nutrient runoff.

When it rains, it pours

“One thing that gets to me is this intensity in rainfall,” said Glen Koehler, of the University of Maine Cooperative Extension pest management office. “I started in this 30 years ago and at that time more than an inch of rain in 24 hours we unusual, now — while still not typical — it is happening with more frequency.”

Koehler, who works with Maine’s fruit tree growers, said his farmers have observed the annual rainfall in the state creeping up, but not in a manner beneficial to their crops.

“You see more rain so you think well, no drought,” Koehler said. “But in reality the increased rain is coming in ‘pulses’ and if you go several weeks with no rain, your crops are going to get thirsty and irrigation becomes more important.”

In fact, supplemental watering has become more important at Johnny’s Seeds, according to Zuck.

“We are still seeing Maine get its 45 inches of precipitation a year, but it’s becoming less spread out, more sporadic and in larger amounts when it does rain,” Zuck said. “Here at Johnny’s we never had to irrigate, but the last two drought years did a lot of damage so we have upgraded nad installed irrigation where we never had it in the past.”

As far as home gardening is concerned, Jemison, who has been gardening in Maine for 25 years, said planters need to be prepared for these sporadic rains that he said seem to be creating wetter spring months in Maine.

“Temperatures may be warmer in the spring, but we still seemingly are pushed later for planting because things are so wet,” he said. “One way to deal with that instead of waiting for things to dry out is to make raised garden beds, with good soil drainage.”

Best practices

Climate change, he said, is only going to exacerbate plant diseases and pest issues and he said the best way for the home gardener to battle that is practicing the best gardening possible.

“Having those raised beds really helps dry out the soils,” he said. “That, in turn, helps decrease those diseases and pests that love moist conditions.”

Building organic material into the soil also helps with supplying important nutrients to plants and with proper water drainage, Jemison said.

“I’m a real fan of my raised beds,” he said. “I tend to use bark mulch in the pathways between the beds to help with drainage and slow erosion [and] use black plastic to help warm the soil.”

Jemison also suggests creating methods to capture and store rainwater for use during dry periods.

Gardeners may be tempted to start planting as soon as the weather seems warmer, but Jemison cautions against going all in with what seems to be early springs.

“You may see a lot of early warm weather and ‘mama nature’ says ‘I want to start to leaf out and flower,’ and then she gets hit with a late frost or unexpected cold snap,” he said. “I tell people if they really want to put things in the ground early to start, think twice [because] we are still at risk for the cold snaps.”

If someone is determined to get that early outside planting start, Jemison recommends planting things that are easily and inexpensively re-planted like greens, instead of more costly things like fruit trees.

Trust what has worked

When it comes to what to plant, Buck, whose business celebrates its 40th anniversary this year, recommends sticking with what has worked in the psat, despite what zone changes may have occurred in Maine, or at least doing some homework before planting.

“Warming conditions do offer up some new plants we can grow,” he said. “But don’t bite on every new seed that comes along [and] understand if you are going to experiment with zones, you are taking a risk.”

The key, he said, is to find out if the seed has been thoroughly tested.

“I’ve seen a lot of plants and seeds that are supposed to be hardy for a specific zone, but are not,” Buck said. “If you live in a zone 5, plant for a zone 5 [and] if you want to dabble in zone 6, go for it, but understand the risks.”

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At first glance, the American economy is healthy: We’ve had a year of full employment, wage increases and record corporate profits. Higher GDP growth is forecast for 2018.

Republicans, with their political monopoly in Washington and their agenda of tax cuts and deregulation, are claiming credit — no matter that they inherited a thriving economy in 2017. In fact, recent polls indicate that the economy is the one area in which President Donald Trump’s approval ratings are positive.

We don’t like to rain on the GOP’s party, but this episode of economic buoyancy cannot last. Trump and the Republican-dominated Congress are creating the conditions for a crisis that could prove as severe as the Great Recession of 2008-2010. But where the last crisis was “Made on Wall Street,” this one will bear the label “Made in Washington.”

[Analysis: Trump’s new problem: There’s growing talk of a downturn in 2019]

The most obvious folly is piling a massive federal spending increase, just enacted, on top of last year’s massive tax cuts. Together, these actions will escalate already fast-growing budget deficits. Deficits of nearly a trillion dollars at the peak of the business cycle mean that government borrowing in the coming years will drive up interest rates and “crowd out” business investments, new home construction and consumer spending on durable goods, which are keys to growth and prosperity. This squeeze on private capital formation will surely dampen — if not negate — the investment incentives in the Republicans’ new tax code.

In light of America’s pressing long-term challenges, we foresee a crisis down the road.

Large budget deficits under full employment are always irresponsible. The locked-in commitment to ongoing deficits will undercut our capacity to finance critically needed public investments in America’s deteriorating infrastructure and build human capital by investing in education and health. These are essential engines of sustained growth.

Large deficits as far as the eye can see will also multiply the challenges of funding Social Security and Medicare for an aging population as well as Medicaid for lower-income Americans. Budget experts know that America’s demographic trends are shaping a looming fiscal crisis. The heavy federal debt burden will make it even more painful.

In an added twist, the Federal Reserve is gradually selling off the trillions in government bonds it accumulated to stimulate recovery from the Great Recession. Largely because of swelling federal budget deficits, rising price inflation is now the consensus forecast. The Fed will likely respond by restricting growth in the money supply to curb inflationary pressures. Thus, in simple supply-and-demand terms, a flood of federal debt obligations on the bond markets will drive bond prices down and borrowing costs up. All borrowers will be vulnerable to credit rationing and rising interest rates.

[Opinion: America is set up for a fiscal disaster]

A final sobering effect of budget deficits is an inevitable increase in America’s trade deficit, despite the protectionist measures taking shape under the present administration. Through complex linkages, higher interest rates will make U.S. assets more attractive to foreign investors, which, in turn, will raise the value of the dollar and make U.S. goods less competitive. If the U.S. government borrows more from abroad, Trump’s import tariffs can have little impact on the trade deficit.

Rather, trade restrictions by the U.S. and other nations will be another factor depressing economic growth, by shrinking the gains we obtain from international trade and specializing in what we do best. The current tit-for-tat between the U.S. and China over tariffs could be the initial phase of a lose-lose trade war that could spread to more goods and services and to other U.S. trade partners

To the extent that America’s protectionist policies reduce the trade deficit, it will be because our partners reduce their U.S. government bond purchases, either in retaliation or, more likely, because protectionism makes the U.S. a less desirable destination for investment. The smaller the inflow of foreign capital to supplement domestic savings, the higher U.S. interest rates will be.

[Opinion: America owes its wealth to free trade. Throwing up trade barriers will only hurt us.]

We cannot predict when bond markets will reach a tipping point or whether the train wreck will be rapid or slow motion. But we are convinced that the government, under the Republican political monopoly, has created a ticking time bomb. Ultimately, current fiscal and international economic policies will cause a serious downturn, possibly rivaling the financial crisis that began 10 years ago.

A big difference from a decade ago: With a little economic common sense, we can see this one coming. With a huge budget deficit, federal revenues will shrink still further when the next recession hits, and the party in power will have no leverage to soften the blow by raising spending or cutting taxes.

Given today’s hyperpartisan political environment, that dire scenario seems highly likely.

David Vail is professor emeritus and Michael Jones associate professor emeritus in the Economics Department at Bowdoin College in Brunswick.

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