Working Waterfront

When winter gets tough, we bake cookies

Ahhhhh. November and December in the Cranberry Isles. I really don’t mind these darker months. I know the light comes back pretty quickly in January and February and there’s something very special about the pre-solstice sunsets seen from a ride home on the mailboat. Hello wool socks and old sweater friends.… SEE MORE

Working Waterfront

Moving through these mood-inspiring times

It’s Oct. 4 and we are about seven months (feels like 20) into this COVID pandemic. I don’t have much to write because there is not a whole heck of a lot going on. “What did you do today?” “Not much, you?” “I don’t really remember.” My moods are like… SEE MORE

Working Waterfront

The melancholy season is different this year

Every year I experience a two-week stretch of melancholy that hits me in the middle of September. It doesn’t matter that it is one of the most beautiful times of the year in the Cranberry Isles. Even though it is part of the rhythm of the place in which I… SEE MORE

Working Waterfront

A powerful voice from a life that matters

I was asked in the late spring if I would be willing to participate in a webinar with The Working Waterfront’s three other island columnists to answer questions about island living. Our editor, Tom, was to be the moderator of a panel discussion via Zoom. He sent us his questions ahead of… SEE MORE

Working Waterfront

Considering summer raises questions

After two months of having all of our lives turned upside down from COVID-19, we are peering at summer just over the horizon. No one can quite imagine what it will look like. No matter where we live, we are experiencing the angst of trying to find some semblance of normal.… SEE MORE

Working Waterfront

Bringing it all back home

It sure is a different summer in the Cranberry Isles. Some people have chosen not to come to the islands this summer, considering the risk factors of traveling long distances during a pandemic. I missed one summer on Islesford, when I was 20, and I still remember what it felt like.… SEE MORE

Working Waterfront

Gardening is a balm for worldly worries

Like many of my friends, this spring, I have found great solace in my garden. Whenever I feel pandemic depression take hold, I try to get outside. The minute I connect my hands with the earth I feel better. I’ve weeded grass from places I’d ignored for years and my… SEE MORE

Working Waterfront

Town meeting in the time of COVID-19

By Barbara Fernald As I write today, April 6, all through our state we are experiencing similar hardships. Isolation, worry about loved ones, and changes in how we get our groceries, to name a few. Today’s COVID-19 numbers in Maine are 499 confirmed cases and ten deaths. We watch the… 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

Island complexity explained by four islanders

By Tom Groening Consider the extremes in how islands are portrayed in literature, film, and on TV. The island setting often is used to show how the very best of community values can thrive, or how the very worst of human nature can fester. In Richard Russo’s Empire Falls, the protagonist’s… SEE MORE