Working Waterfront

Working on the railroad

Back in my weekly newspaper days, I worked with an old-timer who, in those years, was responsible for settling up with the stores that carried our paper. Now that I think about it, he was probably the age I am now, so strike the “old-timer” crack. Bob grew up in… SEE MORE

Working Waterfront

Columbus, Squanto, and our original sin

This, the December/January issue of The Working Waterfront, prints between a couple of holidays that are sort of related—Indigenous Peoples Day and Thanksgiving. The history embedded in these dates is worth reflection, especially as our understanding of it has evolved in recent years. The 500th anniversary of Columbus arriving in… SEE MORE

Working Waterfront

Columbus, Squanto, and our original sin

This, the December/January issue of The Working Waterfront, prints between a couple of holidays that are sort of related—Indigenous Peoples Day and Thanksgiving. The history embedded in these dates is worth reflection, especially as our understanding of it has evolved in recent years. The 500th anniversary of Columbus arriving in… SEE MORE

Working Waterfront

Port Clyde’s loss is seared in pain

We can watch live satellite images of a typhoon on the other side of the planet. We can record thousands of photographs in a device not much bigger than a deck of playing cards. We can inject a genetic replica of a virus to boost immunity. But something as elemental… SEE MORE

Working Waterfront

Why am I painting the living room?

As summer wanes, the urgency to squeeze out the last of projects and fun grows to a fever pitch, especially so in Maine, where the season is so fleeting. That urgency comes with a conundrum—how to balance projects with fun? Lyrics from an old folk song by the husband and… SEE MORE

Working Waterfront

My happy Maine anniversary

As I write this in early August, it’s a couple of days away from the 40th anniversary of our moving to Maine. I’m not expecting the governor to make the day a state holiday or that friends and neighbors fete us with food and drink, but I believe this 40-year… SEE MORE

Working Waterfront

Architecture for the way we live

Our recent vacation trip to Wellfleet on Cape Cod offered many pleasant diversions—ocean swimming, long walks on sandy beaches on both the ocean and bay sides, and enjoying the quiet vibe of that small New England village. For me, a perennial joy of these visits is taking in the beauty… SEE MORE

Working Waterfront

Maine should welcome immigrants… again

Few countries were unscathed by the Great Recession, whose symptoms first appeared in the fall of 2008 and which metastasized six months later as U.S. unemployment rates nearly hit 10%. Scary times, and certainly unprecedented in most of our lifetimes. One country that was hit especially hard was Iceland. The… SEE MORE

Working Waterfront

Pondering the poverty question

I grew up in a middle-class neighborhood in a small ranch house on a quarter-acre of land in suburban New York. When I was ten, my parents doubled the size of the house with a first-floor addition. “Poor people” were those who lived on the other side of a two-lane… SEE MORE

Working Waterfront

Remembering conflict on the home front

Memories of long-ago events are cemented into our hearts and minds when they are baptized in emotion. Where were you when…? Without a visceral response at the “what,” the exact “where” gets fuzzy. With other big news events in recent weeks—another school shooting, the legal woes of an ex-president—an important… SEE MORE