January has been full of outside winter fun as our Rangers have been participating in the WinterKids competition! Our students have been able to learn and implement fun ways to get outside and stay healthy and active during our state’s long winters. We’re currently in the last week of participation and have had lots of fun–especially enjoying healthy smoothies and homemade fruit and yogurt parfaits!

Will Tuell

Governor Janet Mills has submitted legislation allowing her administration to sell a 9.5-acre parcel of land adjacent to the Downeast Correctional Facility in Bucks Harbor, raising the ire of local lawmakers and town officials who learned of the proposal hours before it appeared on the House calendar last week. 

Will Tuell

Forty-five Maine House Republicans submitted a letter to University of Maine Systems Chancellor Dan Malloy Feb. 10 urging him and the UMS Board of Trustees to repeal the system-wide COVID-19 vaccination mandate in the wake of a similar decision by the Maine Community College System (MCCS) earlier in the week. If approved, students attending college at one of the system’s seven campuses, including the University of Maine at Machias, would not be required to have the COVID-19 vaccine to take class.

Strout Proposes Bill to Set Minimum Hunting Age 

Will Tuell

Representative Tiffany Strout (R-Harrington) presented a bill that would require youth hunters to be at least five years old during a public hearing before the Inland Fisheries and Wildlife Committee Feb. 13. The bill, LD 261, would reinstitute a minimum hunting age after it was repealed for all species except moose in 2015. 

Will Tuell

A member of the Washington County Sheriff’s Office K-9 Unit, K-9 Memphis, who has been on active duty with his handler, Deputy Toni Bridges, will be receiving some much-needed protection in the form of a bullet- and stab-proof protective vest courtesy of the nonprofit Vested Interest in K-9s later this winter. 

Sarah Craighead Dedmon

She came Downeast intending to stay just a few years, but last Saturday, more than 150 people gathered to celebrate Dr. Cynthia Sammis’s retirement after 38 years of family practice in Washington County.

“I literally grew up with all of you, I came from my residency program to here and was going to stay for four years, but you see how that worked out. It was a little bit longer,” Sammis told the gathering. “I fell in love with the place, the people.”

Storytime came at the Lincoln Memorial Library in Dennysville on Tuesday, March 7.  First, we read a winter-themed book called Stranger in the Woods that’s also titled A Photographic Fantasy. Then, we checked out some of the animals that were present to discover the “stranger” in a book called Animals in Winter.

Sarah Craighead Dedmon

Kimberly Pushard and Angela Bussell had been missing since Wednesday, Feb. 22, when they were last seen in a Springfield, Maine, gas station. The Topsham police department had issued a silver alert the day prior, and Maine law enforcement agencies, including Maine Game Wardens, joined in the search.

Warden Brad Richard of Princeton was brought onto the search on Sunday, Feb. 26, after two days of single-digit and subzero temperatures. 

Joyce Kryszak, 

Maine Monitor

The shortage of school bus drivers has reached a crisis point in Washington County, with school administrators resorting to extreme measures — including driving the bus themselves. 

“When I open the bus door, they look up and see me and say, ‘Oh! Mr. Maker is driving the bus today,’ ” said Tony Maker, principal of Elm Street School in East Machias. “I say, yeah, you never know who you’re gonna see driving the bus.”

Natalie Boomer

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A young woman from Perry is in a fight against cystic fibrosis, a disorder that damages one’s lungs, digestive tract, and other organs throughout the body.

Ashley Larose-Kilby has been battling this awful disease for many, many years. She finally qualified for a lung transplant in hopes to improve her quality of life, and received this life-saving operation five years ago.