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It’s Friday.

And that means we’re getting hit with the worst of this latest hot streak. The National Weather Service has issued an afternoon heat advisory for the entire coast and inland to Greater Bangor. We’re expected to see the heat index rise to about 97 degrees Fahrenheit thanks to the humidity. Don’t expect any relief from the swelter, because the winds today are forecast to be very light.

While today might not be ideal for time out of doors, you can still read about 10-year-old Liam Holland’s inspiring thru-hike of the Appalachian Trail. The boy and his father started out from Springer Mountain in Georgia back in February and summited Katahdin on Tuesday.

Now he’s caught that “spirit of undying adventure,” as Henry David Thoreau put it. Holland has his eye set on completing Vermont’s Long Trail, a return to the Appalachian Trail and possibly a hike of the 2,650-mile Pacific Crest Trail.

She wanted to build an addition for her aging parents. Now she’s suing her contractor over work that doesn’t meet code.

Lori Swain paid hundreds of thousands of dollars for improvements to her home so her aging parents could move in with her, but some of the work done doesn’t meet local code requirements and the home can’t receive a certificate of occupancy. Credit: Linda Coan O'Kresik / BDN

Lori Swain hired Paolo Patriotti of Paolo’s Construction Enterprise in 2024 to put an addition on her Cape Elizabeth home for roughly $298,000, a contract between the two reviewed by the Bangor Daily News showed.

Two years later, Swain alleges she spent more on the renovation than the contract stated and that the work performed caused extensive damage to her home, according to a lawsuit she filed against Patriotti in Cumberland County Superior Court on July 31.

Patriotti disputed many of Swain’s allegations when contacted by the BDN in May. But Patriotti’s insurance provider determined he is “fully liable for the operational errors and the resulting damages” after inspecting Swain’s home, according to a $41,456 settlement offered to Swain on June 2.

She declined, saying it “doesn’t address all the issues and isn’t nearly enough” to have the deficiencies corrected.

Swain’s situation mirrors that of hundreds of Mainers each year who end up dissatisfied with a contractor’s work. But her experience highlights how difficult it can be to financially recover from such an event, as the contractor’s insurance in this case offered only a portion of the money that Swain believes will be required to make the repairs she seeks.

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From the Opinion Page

In this Sept. 7, 1945, file photo, an unidentified man stands next to a tiled fireplace where a house once stood in Hiroshima, Japan, one month after the after United States dropped an atomic bomb on the city. Credit: Stanley Troutman / AP

“I tell you urgently that you face a situation similar to the one we experienced in the 1930s and early 1940s. I beg you not to make the same kinds of mistakes that we did.”

Opinion: A witness to Nagasaki’s tragic history