Working Waterfront

Growing up on the coast: ‘Adventures remembered enthusiastically’

The Stone From Halfway Rock: A Boy’s Adventures on the Coast of Maine By Peter Macdonald Blachly (published by Polar Bear & Company, 2016) The pages of The Stone From Halfway Rock should practically reek of salt air and ocean spray, so vividly does author Peter Macdonald Blachly, a writer… SEE MORE

Working Waterfront

Wulp’s poems prove wit, insight, reflection sharpen with age

Cormorant Time: A Madman’s Journal. Poems Written in a Time of Fever by John Wulp. Camden, Maine: Philip Conkling & Associates, 2016. 190 pp. “Can one man have been a United States Marine Corps honor guard at the White House, a photographer, a producer, a playwright, wait—a short-order cook, an… SEE MORE

Working Waterfront

Book review: National parks as ‘breathing places’

The Hour of Land: A Personal Topography of America’s National Parks. By Terry Tempest Williams When filmmaker Ken Burns set out to document the history of America’s “best idea”—our national parks—he called on a number of distinguished writers and historians to help testify to their special place in our land—and… SEE MORE

Working Waterfront

A wife tells her husband’s abuse story

Dirt Roads & Diner Pie by Shonna Milliken Humphrey Published by Central Recovery Press, 2016 The title Dirt Roads & Diner Pie suggests a travel guide, tips for a trip off the beaten path, advice for a journey into the heart and soul of a place, with a chance to… SEE MORE

Working Waterfront

Available Light: The intersection of poetry and Castine

Available Light: Philip Booth and the Gift of Place Jeanne Braham; Bauhan Publishing, Peterborough, New Hampshire, 2016; color photographs; 144 pages, paperback, $23.95. In the mid-1980s, Island Institute co-founder Philip Conkling traveled to Castine to interview Philip Booth for an upcoming issue of the Institute's Island Journal. Booth, Conkling later… SEE MORE

Working Waterfront

A love letter to the seasons

Summer To Fall: Notes and Numia from the Maine Woods Dana Wilde/North Country Press 2016 Remember in the film Jerry Maguire when Dorothy says, “You had me at hello…”? Author Dana Wilde had me at the first paragraph of the preface when he writes: “…this book is about the transit… SEE MORE

Working Waterfront

Mainer roots teased out in ‘Salt in Their Veins’

Salt in Their Veins: Conversations with coastal Mainers (As told to Charlie Wing… published by Charlie Wing Books, 2016) Before Salt in Their Veins, Charlie Wing was already a published author of books about “things,” including how things work in homes and boats (and while I’m oversimplifying the topics, those… SEE MORE

Working Waterfront

Postcards from paradise… or Eden

Forever Yours, Bar Harbor: Historic Postcard Images of Mount Desert Island and Acadia Islandport Press, Yarmouth, Maine. Softbound, $14.95 Earl Brechlin The study and collecting of postcards is called deltiology, a term coined by one Prof. Randall Rhoades of Ashland, Ohio, in 1945. Earl Brechlin, editor of the Mount Desert… SEE MORE

Working Waterfront

Art of Acadia—The Little brothers on Mount Desert Island

By Edgar Allen Beem The natural beauty of Mount Desert Island has inspired artists for centuries. In the 19th century, some of those artists’ romantic visions inspired tourists and rusticators to plant the summer colonies that flourish on the island to this day. The art history of Maine’s most renowned… SEE MORE

Working Waterfront

Normal is only skin deep

Words like “horror” and “monsters” accompanied the publicity for John Manderino’s new collection of short stories, But You Scared Me The Most. It may be that my sensibilities have taken a turn toward the twisted, but not only did I find the 26 stories engaging and entertaining, most also were… SEE MORE