Category: Arts

Working Waterfront

The Maine coast, 50 years ago

Thanks to the Farnsworth Art Museum for use of these photos shot by George Tice in several Maine coastal towns in 1971.     [caption id="attachment_28820" align="aligncenter" width="600"] Bertram Peabody and son clam digging on Beals Island, 1971.[/caption]   [caption id="attachment_28821" align="aligncenter" width="600"] Painted lobster buoys, Stonington, 1971.[/caption]   [caption… SEE MORE
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Working Waterfront

More Maine voices: tales from here, everywhere

Most of the 16 stories collected in North by Northeast 2: New Short Fiction by Maine Writers are set in Maine, and most of them approach their subject matter fairly realistically. Some, though, go outside the boundaries of conventional realism. Several stories by contributors to North by Northeast 1 (published… SEE MORE
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Working Waterfront

The Midcoast’s master of realistic sci-fi

The Best of Elizabeth Hand By Elizabeth Hand, edited by Bill Sheehan (2021) Death, darkness, dismay, and the supernatural are hallmark characteristics of Elizabeth Hand’s highly literary weird fiction, and The Best of Elizabeth Hand collects a dozen exemplary stories from across her long career. The book contains a number… SEE MORE
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Working Waterfront

A tasty how-to: Maine’s homegrown food

The Maine Farm Table Cookbook: 125 Homegrown Recipes from the Pine Tree State By Kate Shaffer (Countryman Press, 2021) The Maine Farm Table Cookbook, part of its publisher’s “Farm Table” series, is authored by Kate Shaffer, who comes credentialed with some Downeast culinary experience and, notably, founder of Black Dinah’s… SEE MORE
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Working Waterfront

Whiteness and Maine’s ‘distinct alien race’

A Distinct Alien Race: The Untold Story of Franco-Americans By David Vermette (2018) Growing up in the Midcoast, the only thing I knew about French-Canadians was what I learned from my dad. He said the stereotype was of the “dumb Frenchman” who usually took shop classes in high school and… SEE MORE
Carl Little PHOTO: ERIN LITTLE

Working Waterfront

Art writer Carl Little honored

The Dorothea and Leo Rabkin Foundation, dedicated to recognizing and rewarding writers who make art accessible to general audiences, have awarded a $50,000 lifetime achievement award to poet and art critic Carl Little of Mount Desert. For more than 30 years, Little has been one of the primary cultural connections… SEE MORE
Green Moors Inn, between Portsmouth and York. PHOTO: COURTESY MAINE HISTORIC PRESERVATION COMMISSION

Working Waterfront

Maine’s Route 1: The tourist highway

When then-Gov. Angus King coined the “Maine… The Way Life Should Be” slogan, a friend in Belfast manufactured coffee cups that included the phrase on one side. On the other side, it read: “Belfast… The Way It Is.” If those Jeff Dobbs aerial videos in which stunning footage reveals the… SEE MORE

Working Waterfront

The noise of life after war

Silence: A Novel By William Carpenter (2021) Reading Silence: A Novel, by Maine author and College of the Atlantic professor William Carpenter, made me think of traversing the terrain of a Penobscot Bay rocky island—which is largely the setting for this story. One needs to stay constantly aware of the… SEE MORE
Gabriel Byrne

Working Waterfront

Memoir traces abuse, addiction, and revival

Walking With Ghosts By Gabriel Byrne (Grove Press, 2021) Since reading Gabriel Byrne’s recently published memoir Walking With Ghosts, I’ve delayed watching the newest HBO season of In Treatment in favor of first re-watching the previous three, which aired 2008-2010. Those star Byrne, who won a Golden Globe for his… SEE MORE