Working Waterfront

Isle au Haut prepares to go solar, with new storage technology

By Stephanie Bouchard Living on an island fosters innovation. For the 50 or so year-round residents of Isle au Haut, innovation can look like using PVC pipe as a curtain rod because there are no real curtain rods at hand, or it can look like the future of the nation’s… SEE MORE

A view of Somes Sound on Miount Desert Island.

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

‘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

A cruise ship looms over a view of West Street

Working Waterfront

Cruise ship tourism appears grounded

By Tom Walsh The global, seven-seas cruise ship industry has run aground. The curious role cruise ships have played as global infection vectors for the COVID-19 pandemic has resuscitated the pejorative description of cruise ships as “floating Petri dishes” for disease incubation. “I think we’ve reached the point where we… SEE MORE

Working Waterfront

The joys of a ‘staycation’

By Courtney Naliboff Ah, staycation. That portmanteau word might seem like a consolation prize—a vacation born of a lack of funds or time, but it actually speaks to a period of relaxation and an opportunity to get to know your community as a person of leisure. My family and I… SEE MORE

Working Waterfront

Town meeting, painting lines, eating doughnuts, and throwing rocks

By Barbara Fernald Activity on the islands, at the end of February and into March, is like a mirror image of the action at the end of August into September. Just as the summer residents of the Cranberry Isles end their vacations right before fall, many year-round residents end their… SEE MORE

Working Waterfront

Good reasons to eat (and live) on an island

By Sandy Oliver Recently, three days spent on the mainland prompted ponderings about what it would be like to live and eat there. For 30-something years now, I’ve eaten three meals a day on-island, the vast majority of them home-cooked by myself, or friends and neighbors. The exceptions are a… SEE MORE

Working Waterfront

Earth Day turns 50, and it’s more complicated than ever

By Philip Conkling One of the lessons of the COVID-19 pandemic is that the fates of humans across the globe are inextricably linked. Fifty years ago, the idea our lives depended on linkages with the natural world was a central part of the message of the first Earth Day and… SEE MORE

Bicycles ready to be worked on in Milbridge.

Working Waterfront

Making Washington County bicycle friendly

Reflections is written by Island Fellows, recent college grads who do community service work on Maine islands and in coastal communities through the Island Institute, publisher of The Working Waterfront. By Dylan McBride A year ago, I was a college senior majoring in medieval studies with little idea of what I… SEE MORE

Working Waterfront

Will Portland choke on its success?

By Tom Groening What if Portland wasn’t in Maine? What if the state’s border with New Hampshire fell along the shore of the Royal River in Yarmouth, instead of along the Piscataqua? Or what if Portland were somehow transported to the area near Newburyport, Mass.? What would be lost? It’s… SEE MORE