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Happy Tuesday!

As you might have by now deduced, by the sheer volume of political ads on the TV and internet, there’s a lot of money pumping into our U.S. Senate race.

All that money is hard up for places to go. Color the people of Portland surprised when they began seeing ads about Susan Collins and Troy Jackson. That is, the Portland in Oregon, not the one in southern Maine.

The mistake infuriated the CEO behind the PAC running the ads, which have since been pulled from the city nearly 3,200 miles away in the Pacific Northwest.

Of course, they could be forgiven considering Portland, Oregon, was named after Portland, Maine, in a coin toss. But then it could be seen as just another measure of how much money is pouring into the fight over which party controls Congress after November.

Emily Patrick stands in front of a cattle gate, concrete blocks, planters and orange snow stakes that her neighbor uses to mark the end of the deeded easement Patrick shares with them to access a small parking area behind her house. The dispute between the neighbors over the driveway has gone on for years. Credit: Linda Coan O'Kresik / BDN

When the late poet Mary Oliver asked, “what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?” she probably wasn’t thinking about fighting her neighbor over a shared driveway. 

But sometimes there’s no way around it.

A dispute in Greenville has escalated through small slights and offenses to “no parking” signs, signs protesting the “no parking” signs, fences, the same fences thrown in a pond, a 6-foot wall of concrete blocks, motion activated cameras to monitor the battlefield and, for years, a legal battle.

Part of the problem is that the driveway is on an easement, and such provisions, however longstanding, don’t always address future needs and the full variety of possible uses, or how anyone will feel about them.

On Lily Bay Road, it’s not going great, but a settlement is on the table that might let all involved get back to watching grasshoppers eat sugar out of their hands or whatever else makes life worth living.

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From the Opinion Page

State Auditor Matt Dunlap, the Democratic nominee for Maine’s 2nd Congressional District, answers a question at a May forum in Presque Isle. Credit: Cameron Levasseur / The County

“To put the focus on the topics and concerns that matter most to you, the BDN opinion section asked subscribers for their questions for the candidates for governor, U.S. Senate and U.S. House.”

Opinion: Candidates for Maine’s 2nd Congressional District answer your questions