Working Waterfront

Mythic story-poems of spirit and survival

Review by Carl Little In a documentary about his life and work, award-winning Native-American writer N. Scott Momaday stated, “There is no such thing as poetry in Indian traditions.” Interviewing him in March, NPR reporter Lulu Garcia-Navarro asked him to explain. “It’s a storytelling tradition,” Momaday said, “so you have… SEE MORE

Working Waterfront

Lobstermen rally to fight right whale ruling

By Laurie Schreiber For lobster fishermen, today’s uncertainties revolve not only around a tightening market during the pandemic, but a legal situation that questions the industry’s ability to protect endangered North Atlantic right whales. In mid-April, a federal judge ruled, in a case brought by four conservation organizations, that the… SEE MORE

An illustration of a cod schooner at sea in the mid 1800s.

Working Waterfront

Maine: A pattern of renewal after hardship

By Jack Sullivan I was looking forward to doing something fun to celebrate my home state’s 200th anniversary of statehood. I wanted to have a few friends over and make a toast to the 23rd state of this great nation—maybe even pour one out for Joshua Chamberlain. Unfortunately, March 15… SEE MORE

Working Waterfront

Personal stories about sewage and pollution

By Albert Presgraves I started sailing as a youngster with my family in the 1960s. At that time, the only sewage disposal system in common use on boats was a marine toilet with a built-in pump that pulled in seawater and discharged the waste and water mix overboard. It seemed… SEE MORE

Working Waterfront

Let’s take a trip around some other waterfronts

By Tom Groening When I arrived at the Island Institute seven years ago, the newspaper featured a column that reported on working waterfront access issues around the U.S. The few times I wrote the column, my approach was to bop around the web, reading news stories about development and the… SEE MORE

Working Waterfront

Friendship family on its own for sea-level rise fixes

By Stephanie Bouchard When Tim Flood, 60, was a kid, the sea would find its way inside one of his family’s cottages on Muscongus Bay only once in a while during the winter. But within the last five years, the ocean has been a regular visitor to the two-story building… SEE MORE

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

Working Waterfront

Ticks make early appearance

By Wanda Curtis Maine’s tick season started early this year, says Chuck Lubelczyk, a vector ecologist at Maine Medical Center Research Institute. Tick activity was observed in late February and early March tied to the mild winter. Ticks were sighted earlier than normal as far north as Bangor, he reported.… SEE MORE

Environment

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

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