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Sep 8, 2024 | 
thebollard.com | Al Diamon |Samuel James |Kristine Millard |Todd Russell
Voter ID is a fraudI possess an official State of Maine Identification Card. It was issued about 40 years ago by then-Secretary of State Rodney Quinn. You’ll have to take my word for that because Quinn has been dead for a dozen years. But unlike him, the card has no expiration date. It’s still valid, even though I don’t look much like the photo anymore and haven’t lived at the listed address in more than three decades.
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Sep 8, 2024 | 
thebollard.com | Kristine Millard |Todd Russell |Charlie Brown |Samuel James
An op-ed by Kristine Snow MillardWe’d gather every night around the dinner table in the rectory of the Episcopal church where my father was the priest — Mom, Dad, all five of us daughters. Inevitably, conversations turned to Dad’s work. He’d fret about the church furnace, boast about Sunday service attendance, comment on something the bishop did.
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Jul 4, 2024 | 
thebollard.com | Samuel James |Al Diamon |Leo Hylton |Todd Russell
Bollard 2016 file photo/Jay YorkThe clouds looked threatening, but the rain held off that early evening in late October on the edge of Portland’s East End. I heard the outer door to my office open and shut. I hoped it was my wife, but it was one of our tenants, a therapist who works on the second floor. “Someone’s asleep on the front steps,” she said. “A vagrant?”“Probably homeless.”She left, and a few minutes later the door opened again.
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Jun 2, 2024 | 
thebollard.com | Al Diamon |Chris Busby |Todd Russell |Leo Hylton
Bean catalog: obituary editionThe simplest way to have all your misdeeds forgotten is to die. Maine news organizations are wimpy about turning scandals, scurrilous statements and other sins of commission into the focus of their cautiously edited stories about important peoples’ demise. Few in the local media seem willing to speak ill of the dead, no matter how ill the dead had spoken (and/or acted) before hitting the down button on life’s elevator.
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Jun 2, 2024 | 
thebollard.com | Phoebe Kolbert |Todd Russell |Leo Hylton |Al Diamon
My Almost Old SchoolI’m finally graduating from college on the 19th of this month, and my grandparents already got me a watch, counting their chickens before they’ve hatched. I am going to be, perhaps oddly, very relieved to not have to write a paper ever again. I can, begrudgingly, admit I will miss school, and at points I’m sure I’ll feel its absence deeply.
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Apr 3, 2024 | 
thebollard.com | Chris Busby |Todd Russell |Leo Hylton |Al Diamon
An open letter to the cop trying to bust us for peddling weed to kidsP.O. Box 17765 Portland, ME 04112Vernon “Vern” MallochDeputy Director of OperationsMaine Office of Cannabis Policy162 State House StationAugusta, ME 04333Dear Vern,Hey, man! It’s Busby, from The Bollard. I hope this open letter exposing your office’s gross negligence finds you well.
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Mar 5, 2024 | 
thebollard.com | Chris Busby |Todd Russell |Jessie Banhazl |Sara Hogan
cover photo/Chris BusbyWhen the porn theater that bought the bones of the once-grand movie palace downtown also falls to ruin, you know it’s actually your city that’s really getting screwed here. That was Portland on a February day 34 years ago, as a young gay man walked by the State Theatre at the corner of Congress and High, accompanied by a couple straight friends.
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Feb 5, 2024 | 
thebollard.com | Emma Chance |Todd Russell |Samuel James |Al Diamon
images/Todd Fowler, Ginny (ginnerobot), Karolina Grabowska, David Stewart (homagets.com), Paul VanDerWerf A decade has gone by since I graduated from Portland High and I’ve spent most of those years trying to make a living as a shopgirl. My days are filled with candles, lotions, towels, greeting cards and small talk about the weather.
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Feb 5, 2024 | 
thebollard.com | Al Diamon |Todd Russell |Samuel James |Leo Hylton
Improving management at the Maine Department of Health and Human Services should be easy. Unfortunately, the simplest method requires violations of the Geneva Convention banning torture. Which is ironic, because top DHHS officials have displayed little concern about the torture they’ve inflicted (albeit indirectly) on the abused, neglected and (occasionally) dead kids unfortunate enough to have been called to their indifferent attention.
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Feb 5, 2024 | 
thebollard.com | Tina Carson |Todd Russell |Samuel James |Al Diamon
When I had my child, I did so quite deliberately. I had discovered, at age 37, that I had an estimated window of six months in which to conceive because, my fertility doctor informed me, I had prematurely aging ovaries. The image of my ovaries, withered and leaning on canes, came to me immediately. I reached for the tissues on his desk. I left the office and walked toward the promising green of Central Park, just a block away. I was crying. I did a lot of crying that year.
