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This year marks the Institute’s 40th year. Maine’s islands and coast were very different places in 1983, yet as we reflect on those four decades, it’s satisfying to see consistent themes threading through the years. These days, we often describe ourselves as a community development organization. What does that mean? It means we recognize how essential those units of human congregation are; community coalesces around shared economic and cultural
activity, and over time, it grows its own values and learns to identify threats.

I have been looking back at what fishing was like in 1973, the year I founded Commercial Fisheries News. The differences are stunning, even to someone like me who reported on those changes, sold ads for the new gear, was part of creating the new lobster laws in the 1990s, and tried to connect fishermen… Read more »

Outside, there is still the gritty facade of what was most recently Vinalhaven’s public works garage; preceding that, it was the net factory, with much older roots. Now the building houses the island’s Swap Shop, an intown facility relocated from the dump. Especially for those familiar with the old one, the surprise is inside—an interior resembling a department store, various sections stocked with the different categories of goods—but no price tags on anything because all of it has been donated and is free.