Working Waterfront

‘Blow the Man Down’ a salty, funny, Maine noir

By Jacqueline Weaver Movie tips in the time of coronavirus are like following crumbs through the forest, each promising some relief from the ennui of waiting for the confinement to end. Blow the Man Down, a film by directors Bridget Savage Cole and Danielle Krudy, could not have been released… SEE MORE

Working Waterfront

Telling Vinalhaven student stories a worthy exercise

By Nancy Lloyd The joy of teaching lies in seeing the whole class come alive, with everyone on target and enjoying the work. Working with the Telling Room process makes that happen more often than not. The Telling Room is a Portland-based educational nonprofit that works with students from 6-17… SEE MORE

Working Waterfront

Olive ages, and faces regret

Olive, Again by Elizabeth Strout (2019) Review by Tina Cohen You’d need a good memory or having both books (in hardbound) to realize this: Elizabeth Strout’s collection of stories, Olive Kitteridge, published in 2008, featured a single green leaf. And on the cover of her newest, Olive, Again, falling leaves… SEE MORE

Working Waterfront

Is the fear about the ‘if, when’ virus unprecedented?

By Dana Wilde “This is like an atomic bomb, or worse,” Xiao Xingzheng wrote to me from his home in the island-city of Xiamen, China. This was in late March, when the covid-19 pandemic was subsiding there and intensifying here. He and his own family had, luckily, escaped illness so… SEE MORE

Working Waterfront

With endowment, Haystack looks toward the future

By Laurie Schreiber One of the most defining characteristics of the legendary Haystack Mountain School of Crafts, an international craft school in Deer Isle, is the campus itself, designed by American architect Edward Larrabee Barnes and overlooking the Atlantic Ocean. When the campus opened in 1961, 11 years after the… SEE MORE

Working Waterfront

A journey of infinite hope, faith, art—and prejudice

By Carl Little This year marks the 75th anniversary of the end of World War II. As Lauren Katzenberg noted in the New York Times “At War” newsletter last August, “There will be many commemorations: the liberation of the concentration camps, Victory in Europe Day, the dropping of the atomic… SEE MORE

Working Waterfront

Jeremiah Hacker, Portland’s ‘genuine homegrown radical’

By Tom Groening Jeremiah Hacker is not more than a footnote in Portland’s history, let alone Maine’s history. But examining his work as a crusading journalist through the middle of the 19th century opens a window on a world wrestling with slavery, brutal prisons, poverty without social safety nets, a… SEE MORE

Production still from The Lighthouse (2019) and Captain January (1936)

Working Waterfront

‘Maine in the Movies’ film festival March 6-15

By Tom Groening No, Mainers were not watching movies in 1820 when the state was established. But celebrating Maine’s role in film is an appropriate facet of the bicentennial celebration, say Mike Perreault and Tom Wilhite, who are producing the “Maine in the Movies” film festival. The festival brings more… SEE MORE

Working Waterfront

Revisiting N. C. Wyeth

By Carl Little For a couple of months, the Portland Museum of Art is stealing some of the Farnsworth Art Museum’s Wyeth thunder. “N. C. Wyeth: New Perspectives” (through Jan. 12) offers 46 paintings and one drawing by the granddaddy who launched the family art dynasty at the turn of… SEE MORE

Working Waterfront

New collection splits open from-away, native identities

North by Northeast: New Short Fiction by Writers from Maine and New England Agnes Bushell, editor/Littoral Books, Portland, 2019 Review by Dana Wilde In the 1980s, a minor civil war was waged in Maine’s literary subculture over who, exactly, was eligible for the label “Maine writer.” As I recall there… SEE MORE