Working Waterfront

An island musical legacy

On a Tuesday evening earlier this summer, representatives of the Jeff Tolman Music Award, a 501(c)3, presented themselves at a select board meeting to make an unreasonable request: that they might close and be given free rein of the only—and very busy—town parking lot, from noon and through the evening,… SEE MORE

Working Waterfront

That pause between summer and fall

I’m at my laptop on a Tuesday, wracking my brain for a subject to write about. It is Bruce’s birthday. I promised to bake an orange cake with orange chocolate frosting and I’m starting to get anxious. I’m fully confident in my bread-baking capabilities, but cakes are not my forte.… SEE MORE

Working Waterfront

The plant-based food masquerade

If it ever lived—moved, breathed, ate, drank, grew from within—it is probably plant-based. My house has a plant-based structure, filled with plant-based things to sit on, sleep on, dine and write at, and filled with plant-based creatures, humans and a cat, who are covered, as much as possible, with plant-based… SEE MORE

Working Waterfront

Alive in the time of herons

On an overcast August day, my teammates and I set off on a training swim down the Millstream. We were building up mileage ahead of our 5K fundraiser for LifeFlight of Maine, our fourth such venture in as many years. As we passed the waterfront house that serves as our… SEE MORE

Working Waterfront

Dave Macy steps away from the pulpit

After 32 years as pastor to the North Haven Baptist Church and missionary at large to the island, Dave Macy is retiring. Macy was hired in 1991 by the Maine Seacoast Missionary Society as a full-time minister, taking the pulpit from a part-time predecessor. “I would speculate that it always… SEE MORE

Working Waterfront

The fate of frogs on Oxbow Island

Oxbow Island Gang: Leap Frog By Rae Chalmers, Maine Author Publishing (2023) It’s April break from school and Berend Houtman—known to his family and friends as Bear—can’t wait to visit his grandmother, Sally Parker, on Peaks Island. He has to jump onto the ferry at the last minute—the first of… SEE MORE

Island Institute Fellows, including those returning for a second year and those beginning their fellowship this fall, pose for a photo during an orientation in St. George. Back row, from left: Katie Liberman, Lavinia Clarke, Olivia Jolley, Kaylin Wu, and Morgan Karns. Front row, from left: Alice Cockerham, Brianna Cunliffe, Grace Carrier, and Claire Oxford. PHOTO: JACK SULLIVAN

Working Waterfront

Island Institute announces new Fellows

Island Institute, publisher of The Working Waterfront, has announced its new cohort of Island Institute Fellows who join a group returning for their second year. The Fellows program places recent college graduates in island and remote coastal communities to do service work. New Fellows include: [caption id="attachment_38241" align="alignnone" width="300"] Alice… SEE MORE

An image of herring seining off Vinalhaven in 1957, photographed by Life magazine’s Eliot Elisofon. PHOTO: PENOBSCOT MARINE MUSEUM

Working Waterfront

When a Life photographer captured a herring harvest

Seining for herring—known in the seafood market as sardines—was a common sight on the Maine coast in 1957, but there is nothing common about the accompanying photograph. It is the work of a photographic master as evidenced in its composition and timing. Looking at the image below, you’re met with… SEE MORE

Working Waterfront

My chat with God

I acknowledge comfortably, eagerly in fact, that I’m very close to a couple who have a transgender child. There was no question, at birth, of course, about whether the child was born a boy or girl and, until a certain point, the parents—long among most of us who, in our… SEE MORE

Working Waterfront

Take it or leave it

On Aug. 2 on Great Cranberry Island, the Ladies Aid Society held its 122nd annual fair. It featured, among other things, lunch, crafts, clothing, cookbooks, a garden table, face painting, and a silent auction. For many years the Church Club on Islesford hosted the same kind of fair, making sure… SEE MORE