Category: People

Members of the Passamaquoddy nation gather at a tribal ceremony. FILE PHOTO: LESLIE BOWMAN

Working Waterfront

Maine’s not-so-clean history on race

Early in his presentation, Todd Little-Sebold shows a photo of a Ku Klux Klan gathering in 1926 that drew about 30,000. Mississippi? Georgia? Nope. Portland, Maine. The photo often prompts the question, “You mean the Klan was active in progressive, hip Portland?” he said. “And the answer is yes.” A… SEE MORE
Maurice Freedman (1904-1985), Stonington Pier, 1954, oil on canvas, 30 by 40 inches. Courtesy Greenhut Galleries.

Working Waterfront

Maurice Freedman’s Stonington pier

The town of Stonington’s fish pier has a Facebook page. In addition to informational posts, the page features photos of the pier and its surroundings taken by visitors. There are views down Main Street, a shot of William Muir’s monument to local stonecutters, and a study of colorful lobster buoys.… SEE MORE
This image from the Captain William Abbott Collection at the Penobscot Marine Museum shows a schooner being towed by a tug.

Working Waterfront

Even schooners relied on tugs

The photo accompanying this month’s column shows the Ross Towing Co. tug Walter Ross with a four-master in tow down the Penobscot River, seen from the Stockton Springs shore, off Verona about three miles above Fort Point. Blue Hill is barely visible through the haze in the background. A fish… SEE MORE

Working Waterfront

Belle elected head of national aquaculture group

Sebastian Belle, executive director of the Maine Aquaculture Association, has been elected president of the board of directors for the National Aquaculture Association. Since 1984, Belle has established best practices and advised commercial aquaculture ventures around the world, bridging private and public sectors. He has dedicated his career to demonstrating… SEE MORE
Chimney Farm in Nobleboro.

Working Waterfront

Remembering Maine’s lady of letters, Elizabeth Coatsworth

Though less renowned than Damariscotta’s late Barbara Cooney of Miss Rumphius fame, prolific poet and writer Elizabeth Coatsworth penned an estimated 127 total titles while living for decades in an early 19th-century house at lakefront Chimney Farm in Nobleboro. There Coatsworth and her pioneering nature writer husband Henry Beston (contemporaries… SEE MORE
Francis Hamabe, Boat Yard, ca. 1960, watercolor and silkscreen on paper, 18 by 24 inches. Collection of Ellen Best and Geoffrey Anthony.

Working Waterfront

Francis Hamabe’s boat yard

In a 1965 article in the Newark (NJ) Sunday News, Francis Hamabe explained his attraction to his adopted home to the north and east. “Maine is like I thought Sweden would be,” Hamabe told the reporter, while the Penobscot Bay area was “very much like where my father lived in… SEE MORE