Working Waterfront

More Maine voices: tales from here, everywhere

Most of the 16 stories collected in North by Northeast 2: New Short Fiction by Maine Writers are set in Maine, and most of them approach their subject matter fairly realistically. Some, though, go outside the boundaries of conventional realism. Several stories by contributors to North by Northeast 1 (published… SEE MORE

Working Waterfront

The Midcoast’s master of realistic sci-fi

The Best of Elizabeth Hand By Elizabeth Hand, edited by Bill Sheehan (2021) Death, darkness, dismay, and the supernatural are hallmark characteristics of Elizabeth Hand’s highly literary weird fiction, and The Best of Elizabeth Hand collects a dozen exemplary stories from across her long career. The book contains a number… SEE MORE

Nordic Aquafarms' new facility in Fredrikstad, Norway.

Working Waterfront

Salmon facility critic says technology unproven

I wish to thank The Working Waterfront for allowing me to comment (op-ed, November issue) on technologies being promised for new large scale aquaculture facilities in Maine. The federal Environmental Protection Agency refers to these as concentrated aquatic animal production facilities. As an individual, it has been extremely difficult to… SEE MORE

Working Waterfront

Remembering my ‘summer girl’ days

How did we get to September already? July felt like August and August felt like a gust of wind. Surely, after the time warp that was summer 2021, I could avoid experiencing the strange mix of emotions that hits me around Labor Day. But no, here it is, right on… SEE MORE

Working Waterfront

Bluefin tuna blues: To eat or not to eat?

My favorite sushi restaurant is in Rockland—Suzuki Sushi, where Keiko Suzuki Steinberger presides over a delectable panorama of sushi, sashimi, nigiri, and other mostly seafood delights of Japanese cuisine. I love Chef Keiko’s insistence on fish that’s local, fresh, and sustainably harvested, but there’s one variety, in great demand, that… SEE MORE

Working Waterfront

The essential kitchen arts

Art, according to one Merriam-Webster definition, is a skill acquired by experience, study, or observation. Let’s tweak that to “and/or” observation. If that definition works for you, then, because it’s a joy to practice an art, let’s apply it to the part of daily life that starts in the kitchen.… SEE MORE

Working Waterfront

Don’t mow the milkweed

Not too far from my house, on one of my usual walking routes, is a huge field. A house sits on the field far back from the road, so that any signs of habitation are invisible to passersby, but the field covers an immense swath of South Shore Road. It… SEE MORE

Working Waterfront

The ‘ocean’ above us under assault

One of the great ocean experiences is the panoply of the night sky. A vast darkness, shaped by intimations of residual clouds, the crescent moon, complicated by distant planets and stars in their constellations, swept into the arc of the Milky Way, made exhilarating and mysterious by the potential of… SEE MORE

Working Waterfront

The nuances of defining drought

In June, which turned out to be one of the hottest and driest on record, we paddled to a beaver dam on the St. George River just north of Round Pond in Union. The banks rose above us covered in sedges and grasses, bringing our focus to the slow-moving water,… SEE MORE

Working Waterfront

It’s time to build leadership skills

Discussions about leadership are everywhere—in books, in the media, in our daily conversations. But what does leadership mean? How do you define an effective leader? At the Island Institute, publisher of The Working Waterfront, we recognize that community projects cannot move forward without effective leaders at the helm. As a… SEE MORE