Working Waterfront

Adventures in art

As I sit in my 8-foot by 10-foot studio on a sunny afternoon in the fourth week of February I think about the strange winter we’ve experienced. The islands have not had more than 3 inches of snow at a time and that hasn’t lasted. There have been days in… SEE MORE

Working Waterfront

A paddling partner remembered

A friend, Jack Waterbury, was a former military pilot and had retired to the island a few years earlier. Charming but woefully disorganized and chaotic, he continually misplaced things. Many years ago, when in his 50s, he was my date on a canoeing trip with two other couples on Lobster… SEE MORE

A photo from about 1900 shows what was once Winnegance Tide Mills, near where a bridge today carries Route 209 over Winnegance Creek. PHOTO: MAINE MARITIME MUSEUM

Working Waterfront

Tidal power is not new to Maine

Prior to advances in transportation and energy production, industry and commerce across civilizations often relied on proximity to water. In the case of the lumber industry, one of Maine’s largest industries to date, the reliance was three-fold: inland timber harvests floated down-river to mills via log drives, saw mills used… SEE MORE

Working Waterfront

Multiple approaches to addressing worker shortage

The days of finding large numbers of pre-trained and experienced workers are fast fading. Businesses across Maine—and the nation—have had trouble finding the available, qualified workers they need to operate at full capacity. In fact, there are currently about two open jobs for every unemployed job seeker in the state… SEE MORE

Working Waterfront

Fraying family is unwanted ballast

Sailing at the Edge of Disaster: A Memoir of a Young Woman’s Daring Year By Elizabeth W. Garber, Toad Hall Editions (2022) Among the many weird things that were happening during the social upheavals of the 1960s and ’70s, one of the weirdest was the wholesale revolt of children against… SEE MORE

From left, the Island Institute's Eastport Island Fellow Paige Atkinson; Institute staff Alex Zipparo; Mount Desert Island Fellow Brianna Cunliffe; and Institute staffer Abby Roche.

Working Waterfront

Resilience is the response

I was on Great Cranberry Island for a community event recently and encountered a sight that will not be easily forgotten. As I stood on the dock awaiting the mailboat back to mainland, I looked to the west and saw several gravestones on a grassy enclave that were dangerously close… SEE MORE

Working Waterfront

The radical idea of public parks

I was walking recently along Belfast’s Harbor Walk, a paved trail that follows the shore along a large lawn area where a shuttered poultry plant once stood, past a boat dealer and marina, across Main Street and, amazingly, through the Front Street Shipyard, offering views of yachts, ocean-going fishing vessels,… SEE MORE

Working Waterfront

Listening for right whales

You might think keeping track of a 100,000 pound animal would be easy. But when its home has no boundaries and its prey moves with changing ocean circulation within the vast Atlantic, it presents a challenge. Then there’s the fact that there are only around 350 remaining and they aren’t… SEE MORE

Working Waterfront

Making our ‘civic deserts’ more fertile

Like most of Generation Z, many of my early life milestones were bookmarked by incredible socio-political events. I graduated high school in 2016, the same year as a shocking U.S. presidential election and the second deadliest mass shooting in the country. When I graduated from college in 2020, the first… SEE MORE

Working Waterfront

When admitting you’re wrong is the right move

Reading the Glass: A Captain’s View of Weather, Water, and Life on Ships By Elliot Rappaport, Dutton/Penguin Random House (2023) A few of us get to know everything: doctors, editors, various experts, philosophers, TV pundits, religious gurus—and, now after reading Elliot Rappaport’s Reading the Glass: A Captain’s View of Weather,… SEE MORE