Working Waterfront

The joys of a quiet January

By Barbara Fernald Ahhhh! The month of January on Islesford is one of my favorites. It’s not because the island has so much to offer at this time of year, but because it gives me two things I’ve been yearning for since last spring: time and quiet. Ever since our… SEE MORE

Working Waterfront

A journey of infinite hope, faith, art—and prejudice

By Carl Little This year marks the 75th anniversary of the end of World War II. As Lauren Katzenberg noted in the New York Times “At War” newsletter last August, “There will be many commemorations: the liberation of the concentration camps, Victory in Europe Day, the dropping of the atomic… SEE MORE

Jon Cheston and Nancy Hauswald aboard their boat

Working Waterfront

To pee (or not to pee) at sea

By Nancy Hauswald Thursday, June 4, 1987 Approx. 75 miles off the coast of the Carolinas The storm drags on, unrelenting in its pummeling of Merry Yarn and us. Jon is down below, glued to the nav station, poring over the chart, plotting our location, getting constant fixes, and keeping… SEE MORE

Working Waterfront

Generational fault lines, not earthquakes

By Tom Groening All generalizations are false, right? Well, yes. Including that one. But I’ll admit that assigning distinctive qualities to groups of people is to step on a slippery slope. Careers have ended when high-profile people have done so, and those falls from grace are usually deserved. Yet it… SEE MORE

Working Waterfront

Jeremiah Hacker, Portland’s ‘genuine homegrown radical’

By Tom Groening Jeremiah Hacker is not more than a footnote in Portland’s history, let alone Maine’s history. But examining his work as a crusading journalist through the middle of the 19th century opens a window on a world wrestling with slavery, brutal prisons, poverty without social safety nets, a… SEE MORE

Working Waterfront

Bar Harbor man is helping an anxious world

By Jacqueline Weaver Between out of control bushfires in Australia and rising sea levels isolating neighborhoods in Key Largo, Florida, it’s difficult not to be preoccupied by changes in climate around the world. Concern, though, can become obsessive and almost debilitating, which is an issue Dennis Kiley is addressing in… SEE MORE

Production still from The Lighthouse (2019) and Captain January (1936)

Working Waterfront

‘Maine in the Movies’ film festival March 6-15

By Tom Groening No, Mainers were not watching movies in 1820 when the state was established. But celebrating Maine’s role in film is an appropriate facet of the bicentennial celebration, say Mike Perreault and Tom Wilhite, who are producing the “Maine in the Movies” film festival. The festival brings more… SEE MORE

An aerial view of the West Branch of the Pleasant River. PAn aerial view of the West Branch of the Pleasant River.

Working Waterfront

Taking stock of a Downeast river

By Jon Keller Five degrees above zero and the wind peels northwest. Sky and river both black dark. Headlights shine in the small parking lot. The wind howls, rocks the truck. Out there in the headlight shine lies a slick mud bank and a river of churning brown water. Bobby… SEE MORE

Working Waterfront

Our readers write about…

Giving thanks works To the editor: I really connected with Barbara Fernald's piece on “tacking toward the positives” in life (Cranberry Report, November issue). Her physiological explanation for the seasonal disorder is easy to understand and logical. Her strategies to look around at what is available to all of us,… SEE MORE

Working Waterfront

The Secret Soul of an Island Shoe

By Christina Marsden Gillis Its sole gouged with holes, the leather top cracked and ripped, the shoe, a woman's, had been hidden in the west wall of an upstairs bedroom in our Gotts Island house. Nestled behind the plaster, it had endured Maine winters when the winds howled out of… SEE MORE