Working Waterfront

Private air-traffic control could impact Penobscot Bay

By Kevin Waters In 1998, an ice storm swept through Maine, leaving some communities completely inaccessible. Without general aviation, many towns and island communities would have been cut off from resources for an unknown period. It was general aviation pilots who stepped up to the plate, providing a vital link to ensure… SEE MORE

Working Waterfront

Transportation decisions must consider community identity

Here’s a question to ponder, maybe while you’re stuck in traffic this summer: What would Maine be like if the interstate highway system ended in Portsmouth, N.H.? Transportation infrastructure impacts the way our communities grow, the way they function, and even what sort of relative prosperity they enjoy. A decision… SEE MORE

Working Waterfront

Memoir is a rumination on doing good work

A Winter Apprentice, by John Holt Willey; Polar Bear & Co., Solon, Maine, 2016; 280 pages, trade paperback, $14.95. In the summer of 1977 John Willey returned home to Maine with his wife, Barbara, who had never been that far east. His last permanent address had been San Francisco, where… SEE MORE

An especially high tide in Wells a few years back shows the Maine coast's vulnerability to rising sea levels.

Working Waterfront

Climate decisions reflect who we are as nation

Our government’s decisions project a story to the world about who we are as people. When we step off a plane in another country, we encounter these stories, as the people we meet repeat them back to us. We find that we are asked to personally represent and explain the United States,… SEE MORE

Working Waterfront

Islands of the South Atlantic tell stories of people, nature

By Dwight Gertz Strung between Antarctica and the Equator, a thin chain of islands in the South Atlantic Ocean lies almost abandoned by commerce. Once valued for whaling or as stopping points on the way to the capes at the tip of Africa and South America, these islands exist mostly… SEE MORE

Working Waterfront

Flying just for fun

Because I go back and forth between Matinicus and Rockland a lot, and because our island doesn’t have a daily ferry or mail boat, and because the pilots who fly for Penobscot Island Air are friends, I spend probably too much time hanging around underfoot in the air service office… SEE MORE

Working Waterfront

Addiction tidal wave crashing over our coast

The Island Institute, publisher of The Working Waterfront, is working to understand the opioid epidemic on the coast of Maine, and to learn more about the issue, we recently hosted a presentation by Dr. Ira Mandel, founder of the Knox County Recovery Coalition. One comment from a staffer summed up… SEE MORE

Working Waterfront

The fall and rise of the Great Lakes is a cautionary tale

The Death and Life of the Great Lakes, by Dan Egan; W.W. Norton & Co., New York, 2017; 280 pages, hardcover, $27.95. The federal budget that President Trump proposed to Congress in March of this year reduces funding for practically everything in it except the military. And among federal departments,… SEE MORE

Working Waterfront

Help on the way from island caretakers

As May began with limited sunshine and two weeks of showers in the forecast, I said to Bruce, “Remember that one year when we had 23 days of rain in May?” He reminded me it was the year we built our house. “We were so lucky to get the whole… SEE MORE

Working Waterfront

Matches, the half-life of cake, and other kitchen observations

Where are the kitchen matches of yesteryear? I’m not looking for something that existed 50 or 100 years ago—just maybe ten or so, the wonderful red-tipped, strike-anywhere Diamond matches that have been replaced with the atrocity named Green Light. I loathe these new matches. They come 300 to a box,… SEE MORE