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RICK WORMWOOD

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Sending off the Baxter School’s most notorious abuser

Dr. Kelly is dead
A sadistic, voracious pedophile whose globe-spanning career of devouring children would ultimately prove long and completely unchecked, Dr. Robert Kelly was Mackworth Island’s original vampire, the keystone figure of the school’s dark past

By: RICK WORMWOOD | December 19, 2013

Student Survival Guide: Professorial notes

What the person standing in the front of the room really wants you to know
Unsolicited free advice from a former college freshman who has been a college professor for eight years.

By: RICK WORMWOOD | September 25, 2013

What the person standing in the front of the room really wants you to know

Professorial notes
Matriculation was only the first hurdle, though, and at the risk of seeming gloomy at such a hopeful time, the truth is that a great many of the fall semester’s shiny, new students will never wear the cap and gown.

By: RICK WORMWOOD | September 12, 2013

Never go far

Without a little Big Star
Without a little Big Star

By: RICK WORMWOOD | July 25, 2013

Finality

Balls, Pucks, & Monster Trucks
Every June, students wrestle with finals, before either graduating or going off to their summer jobs, waitressing in places that specialize in fried full-belly clams.

By: RICK WORMWOOD | June 13, 2012

Positive change, at last

Balls, Pucks & Monster Trucks
Even when the Sanford School Committee gets it right, its members manage to be wrong.

By: RICK WORMWOOD | May 16, 2012

Empathy, racism, and Venn diagrams

Balls, Pucks, and Monster Trucks
Roland Cote raised his hand. Fifty people were in the basement of a Sanford church, listening to several Native Americans and tribal elders, some of whom had driven more than 500 miles to be there, speak about how offensive the local high school's continued use of the mascot name "Redskins" was for their community.

By: RICK WORMWOOD | April 18, 2012

Hater-Ade pub crawl

Balls, pucks, and monster trucks
The plan was simple: pub crawling, drinking beer, and watching March Madness basketball games with friends.

By: RICK WORMWOOD | March 21, 2012

11 years on, Levier death echoes through Maine’s deaf community

Political Suicide
On March 16, 2001, James Levier, a deaf man, took a deer rifle to the Shop and Save parking lot in Scarborough.

By: RICK WORMWOOD | March 14, 2012

Elusive enshrinement

Balls, Pucks and Monster Trucks
In December 2010, I made a case for Portland boxer Pete Riccitelli's induction into the Maine Sports Hall of Fame, in the snappily titled "The Case for Pete Riccitelli."

By: RICK WORMWOOD | February 22, 2012

Black Bears at Fenway

Balls, Pucks, and Monster Trucks
I had my doubts about Frozen Fenway, the 16-day-long "ice event" held at the venerable old ballpark, starting on New Year's Day.

By: RICK WORMWOOD | January 25, 2012

Small potatoes

Balls, pucks and monster trucks
There are too many ridiculous college football bowl games to really care about unless your alma mater plays in one.

By: RICK WORMWOOD | December 28, 2011

Shopping, simplified

Balls, pucks, and monster trucks
With the holidays, and their attendant sturm und drang , upon us again, I was thinking about sports news in the context of Thanksgiving.

By: RICK WORMWOOD | November 30, 2011

SF’s no Boston

Balls, pucks and monster trucks
While escaping New England for a few days on the west coast, in the Bay Area, just ahead of all that unexpected October wind and snow, I decided to catch a 49ers game.

By: RICK WORMWOOD | November 02, 2011

Gilding the turd

Balls, pucks and monster trucks
The issues surrounding the Cumberland County Civic Center's potential refurbishing remind me of the problems people face when they drive piece-of-shit cars.

By: RICK WORMWOOD | October 05, 2011

Political football

Balls, pucks and monster trucks
Sadly, the only upcoming event with the capacity to truly inspire hope for millions of Americans, the start of the 2011 NFL season, will be twice marred by our current political culture and media.

By: RICK WORMWOOD | September 07, 2011

For Memphis Three, a bitter guilty plea

Prosecutorial discretion
On Friday — after inspiring songs, award-winning documentaries, and celebrity-led protests — the West Memphis Three were suddenly freed from state custody, but only after all three pleaded guilty to the murders as part of the deal that secured their freedom.

By: RICK WORMWOOD | August 25, 2011

Running in the Family

Balls, Pucks, and Monster Trucks
As a kid, I always knew I had been adopted. It was no big deal, but being adopted meant I had no information about my biological family's medical history, which is a double-edged sword.

By: RICK WORMWOOD | August 10, 2011

Come the revolution?

Balls, pucks, and monster trucks
As the Pats, Sox, and Celtics all won recent championships, the Bruins were the unlucky, left-out stepchildren during a decade of professional sports dominance the likes of which New England (nor anywhere else, for that matter) had never seen. Of course, to the delight of their fans, the Bruins won the Stanley Cup last month and finally joined the party.

By: RICK WORMWOOD | July 13, 2011

The kids are all right

Balls, pucks and monster trucks
First the good news: in 2008, when I first wrote about the last two high schools in Maine still using the racist mascot name "Redskins," Wiscasset and Sanford, I predicted that Sanford, my hometown, would be the last holdout.

By: RICK WORMWOOD | June 15, 2011

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