John Hickenlooper's time Down East in 1970

A few years ago, I was in Denver writing this POLITICO story on how the city built a metro-wide light rail system from scratch, a story that led to my interviewing then-governor (and former Denver mayor) John Hickenlooper.

He gets on the phone, hears I'm from Maine, and first thing he says is "You must know (D.L Geary Brewing founder) David Geary" (both men are micro brewing pioneers); the second is that as a teen he spent a summer volunteering at a free school in Maine. That school, it turned out, was in Robbinston and had been co-founded by Susan Tureen, who had been pushed out of her public school teaching job probably because she was married to Tom Tureen, the Passamaquoddy tribe's new attorney, in the midst of the epic land claims fight.

Now Hickenlooper is running for president, so I put a fuller story together for this week's Maine Sunday Telegram. Enjoy.

For more on the situation in Easternmost Maine in 1970, see the 29-part Press Herald series "Unsettled," especially Chapters 10 to 13.

Rep. Pingree reintroduced ocean acidification bill; this time it might pass

Ocean acidification, a potentially catastrophic threat to shellfish harvesters and the coastal communities they live in, is one of a variety of climate related risks confronting both the Gulf of Maine and Alaska.

This week, Maine US Rep. Chellie Pingree (D) and Alaska's Senator Lisa Murkowski (R) reintroduced bills in their respective chambers that would take the first steps in mitigating the problem by directing federal authorities to identify exactly where the greatest risks and gaps in knowledge are. With Democrats in control of the House, Pingree told me she's pretty upbeat the measures might become law.

I have the story in yesterday's Portland Press Herald.

For more context on the problem, start with this series.