Working Waterfront

Navigating the joyous holiday season as a religious minority

I love Christmas on North Haven. Colored lights criss-cross Main Street, the community gathers at Waterman's for hot chocolate, cookies and carols before a tree lighting, and we usually have at least a dusting of snow. Paradoxically, perhaps, for a Jewish person, I look forward to the church service the… SEE MORE

Boats in a cove on Long Island in Casco Bay

Working Waterfront

Learning the meaning of ‘neighbor’ informs my work

Reflections is a monthly column written by Island Fellows, recent college grads who do community service work on Maine islands and in remote coastal communities through the Island Institute, publisher of The Working Waterfront. Angelique Williams is working with the town of Long Island in Casco Bay on telemedicine and aging… SEE MORE

Working Waterfront

Available Light: The intersection of poetry and Castine

Available Light: Philip Booth and the Gift of Place Jeanne Braham; Bauhan Publishing, Peterborough, New Hampshire, 2016; color photographs; 144 pages, paperback, $23.95. In the mid-1980s, Island Institute co-founder Philip Conkling traveled to Castine to interview Philip Booth for an upcoming issue of the Institute's Island Journal. Booth, Conkling later… SEE MORE

Working Waterfront

How to understand Maine’s ‘High North’ opportunities

By Dan Bookham Since 2013 when the Icelandic steamship line Eimskip established operations in Portland, there has been growing buzz around Maine’s ocean-driven connections to our north. Ship calls to Portland’s International Marine Terminal have steadily increased, more and more Maine officials, economic developers and business people have made the… SEE MORE

Working Waterfront

In politics, it’s location, location, location

It’s a day in early May, and the TV weatherman on the midday report is practically giddy about the bright sun and unseasonably warm temperatures. But you’ve just ascended the Tableland on Mt. Katahdin, and Portland’s 70 degrees and light winds are irrelevant for you and your hiking party, as… SEE MORE

Working Waterfront

Thankful for one president, bracing for another

It’s the season of Thanksgiving and I try, as always, to remind myself of the things I’m most thankful for. For the last eight years, our American president has been among those things. Although I now and then disagreed with him or wished he’d done more or less, I found… SEE MORE

Working Waterfront

Adventures in eating out

A new restaurant that opened up a while back had itself a maitre d’ and its own bartender and everything. They had a lot of live music and as a result the place was quite a draw some nights. They tapped the locals as waitresses and waiters and these folks,… SEE MORE

A map showing tanker routes through the Gulf of Maine.

Working Waterfront

Oil that doesn’t float: Tar sands oil shipped through Gulf of Maine poses threat

It’s hard to imagine a heavy tar sands oil spill in the Gulf of Maine. Not just because of the vastness of the open ocean and our dependence on clean water for our fisheries economy, but also because tar sands oil is mined and steamed from the ground thousands of… SEE MORE

Working Waterfront

A love letter to the seasons

Summer To Fall: Notes and Numia from the Maine Woods Dana Wilde/North Country Press 2016 Remember in the film Jerry Maguire when Dorothy says, “You had me at hello…”? Author Dana Wilde had me at the first paragraph of the preface when he writes: “…this book is about the transit… SEE MORE

Working Waterfront

Taking back the cellar

Just about once a year, often in the fall, Martha Ballard, the midwife who lived in Augusta in the late 1700s and early 1800s, cleaned her “sellar.” I do, too, usually this time of year before I haul down there the last of potatoes gathered up, the apples and other… SEE MORE