As the print deadline slowly approached on Monday morning – and after making it safely to the office on this slippery morning – the personal apprehension on whether we could fill 20 pages with news eased a bit by 11 a.m. Thankfully, several of the pages were filled with our annual Year In Review articles and photos by the time we arrived for the work week.

There’s a lot of reading material in this issue and hopefully you can take the time on New Year’s Day or the weekend to get through most of it. There is some worrisome news and some happy news in the articles. Some of the issues have been carrying on for years and/or months and not yet resolved but we will do our best to provide updates as they happen.

We are also looking forward to 2026 to give you some of the top stories and fun material from the past as we slide into our 150th year as the region’s top news outlet. If you have any ideas on marking this milestone, don’t hesitate to contact us. And remember, you can support our digitization project in various ways. Click on https://www.boothbayregister.com/historic-digitizing from our websites. Our volunteers have been busy the past few months getting the pages of the Boothbay Register from 1876 on scanned at the Maine State Museum in Augusta. Thank you to those who have been doing this job under the guidance of Merritt Blakeslee of Boothbay Region Historical Society and Adam Fisher of the Maine State Museum.

Happy New Year, everyone! Be safe out there and may you continue to enjoy our newspaper in the years to come.