Working Waterfront

A perfectly planned memorial

Judy Coffin perfectly, and cheerfully, planned her memorial service and the reception that followed it. All that we her grieving neighbors, friends and family had to do was follow instructions. As she entered hospice, she announced to her husband Jack, "We are going to be happy," and she set the… SEE MORE

Working Waterfront

Majestic eagle caught in awkward moment

Editor's note: This month's Observer is a reprise of an earlier published column. I'm not a bird watcher but I did notice, last week, an Eastern Phoebe light on a weatherstick outside my window. The stick was tiny and delicate but the Phoebe was even more so and the stick's… SEE MORE

Working Waterfront

Facebook, the island version

At the top of Kent's Hill, the one-way road leading into North Haven's downtown, is the community bulletin board. Hand-written notices of transfer station hours, with annotations like "No April Fool's Joke!" and "Dump Closed—Guess Why" are posted there, along with the high school basketball schedule, welcome home notices for… SEE MORE

Lucas Milardo works with Frenchboro's two students.

Working Waterfront

Learning about island history from children

Luke Milardo is an Island Fellow, a participant in a two-year service program operated by AmeriCorps and the Island Institute, doing community development work on islands and remote coastal communities. He is serving on Frenchboro (Long Island) off Mount Desert Island. This fall, the Frenchboro School studied island history and… SEE MORE

Working Waterfront

Island museum celebrates Islesford’s lobster fishing heritage

ISLESFORD—When Leeman Gilley Ham, a lifelong lobster fisherman and well-loved resident of Islesford, died in 2012 at age 99, the island's entire fleet held a flotilla procession in his memory. Katrina Winfield-Howard, a summer resident, recently recalled how moved she was to hear about the ceremony. Adam Olearcek, Ham's great-grandson,… SEE MORE

An 1837 entry in Woodruff's journal describes North Islanders as "intelligent

Working Waterfront

When Mormon missionaries came to North Haven

Kathy Luke has a map of the Fox Islands on the wall of her Utah home, a souvenir of her visit to North Haven in September. "We decided to go back to where the Luce family lived and the reason that is so important is because not only did they… SEE MORE

Working Waterfront

Islesboro, Isle au Haut postpone town meetings

Islesboro and Isle au Haut have each postponed their annual town meetings. In Islesboro, residents are considering an ambitious plan that would have the town build a broadband Internet network on the island. Selectmen had proposed borrowing $3 million through a municipal bond for the project, but the article on the… SEE MORE

Working Waterfront

Asserting ourselves locally is still an option

The traditional March town meeting in Maine, an institution that has launched many a laudatory newspaper editorial praising it as the last bastion of pure democracy, ain't what it used to be. And that's too bad. In recent decades, management of schools, law enforcement, solid waste and other government functions… SEE MORE

Working Waterfront

From Castine to the world—again

Picture in your mind a cargo ship and an aircraft carrier, one 900-feet and the other 1,200-feet-long and both 20 stories tall, traveling through the ocean only 100 yards away from each other. Water shoots between them, causing suction and push forces that make the two vessels want to steer… SEE MORE

Working Waterfront

Ferry service agrees to study blood sample transport

ROCKLAND — A late-April ruling by the Maine State Ferry Service (MSFS) meant blood samples taken in island health care clinics could no longer be transported by ferry crews and captains. But after the May 7 meeting of the Ferry Advisory Board, the MSFS agreed to investigate how to comply… SEE MORE