Working Waterfront

The summer we built ‘The Camp’

Editor's note: Phil Crossman's brother, Dick, has written this remembrance from the boys' childhood on Vinalhaven. It was just a camp built by boys, because that is what we were back in 1959—boys in search of adventure where Brandy Brook empties its copper colored water into Carver’s Pond, an estuary… SEE MORE

Working Waterfront

Phil Crossman’s Vinalhaven Observations is history and opinion

Phil Crossman has a new book out called Observations: A Maine Island, a Century of Newsletters and the Stories Found Between the Lines. His name and writing will be familiar to readers of The Working Waterfront and Island Journal over the years as well as his popular book, Away Happens… SEE MORE

Island students learnt to play golf croquet.

Working Waterfront

‘Golf croquet’: new sport a good fit for island schools

This past summer at a luncheon for the recipients of a scholarship program administered by the Island Institute, Melissa Amuso, one of the mothers from Islesford, spoke of the lack of recreational activities for the children in their small school system. It was suggested that "golf croquet" might be appropriate… SEE MORE

Roger Pielke at a reception at the University of Maine

Working Waterfront

Untangling the collision of science and politics

Roger Pielke had come to Maine to speak at the University of Maine's Mitchell Center for Sustainability, traveling to the state from Colorado, where he is director of the University of Colorado's Center for Science. After speaking, he hoped to head to Bar Harbor to see Acadia National Park and… SEE MORE

Working Waterfront

Great Cranberry resident Phil Whitney traveled the world, dodged danger

As a “small-town boy” growing up in Southwest Harbor, Phil Whitney had dreams of traveling the world. When he entered the U.S. State Department’s Office of Security, he found himself on a career path that would fulfill his dreams many times over. Over 20 years, Whitney’s service in dignitary protection,… SEE MORE

Working Waterfront

Women wanted for Virginia work day Nov. 8

BATH — Women are invited to join a group of other volunteers at Maine’s First Ship’s waterfront boatshed on Sunday, Nov. 8, for the second annual Women’s Shipbuilding Day. Maine’s First Ship is building Virginia, a reconstruction of the first ship built by English colonists in 1607 at the mouth… SEE MORE

An unidentified ship with containers stacked high on deck.

Working Waterfront

Thoughts about ‘those in peril on the sea’

Maine is a state made up of small communities. When my parents chose to move from the big city of Baltimore to the small island town we now live in—Islesford—part of their decision came because of the tightly knit bond within a small community. That bond brings all Mainers together;… SEE MORE

The team chalks pictures on the composting towers

Working Waterfront

Island life nurtures the best in team design

For a week during each of the past four summers, a group of college students and their instructors have been channeling the innovative spirit and nature-oriented sensibility of R. Buckminster Fuller in the design pioneer’s own habitat. Throughout his life, Fuller spent summers on Bear Island in Penobscot Bay. The… SEE MORE

Working Waterfront

Swan’s Island designer explores intersection of art and function

When Christine Dentremont finished the industrial design program at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, N.Y., she relocated two days later to Swan’s Island, where she would spend the next few years as a sternman on a lobster boat. Fishing was never going to be her ultimate career move, but she found… SEE MORE

Working Waterfront

Bemused by an island

Reflections on Martha’s Vineyard William A. Caldwell, Edited by Tom Dunlop Vineyard Stories 2015, paperback, $19.95 After retiring to Martha’s Vineyard in 1972, William A. Caldwell wrote a weekly column for the Vineyard Gazette called “Reflections of That Man Friday,” now skillfully edited into a book by islander Tom Dunlop.… SEE MORE