Hello Sailor T-shirt By Sally Noble//Photos by Michele Stapleton A happily married couple, they packed their memories of long, lazy summer vacations—like that of their first meeting, in 2003, at campcamp.com, a free-spirited gay camp in the Maine woods. Weary of their frenetic life in the Washington D.C. area, filled with dreams of a slower-paced, more authentic way of life,…

By Tom Groening Now that I have six years under my belt here at the Island Institute, I’ve begun—cautiously—to accept a few speaking engagements, holding forth on the topic of…

By Phil Crossman When I was a Vinalhaven youngster, I lived on the western side of Armbrust Hill. It seemed enormous. A little pond, the Trolley Puddle, was nestled under…

By Rob Snyder Communities are largely absent from national discussions of how to address climate change. Instead they are featured as victims. As a result, we are missing a major…

By Dana Wilde Long ago, when I was a kid growing up in Southern Maine, we made road trips to Massachusetts to visit my father’s family. This was the late…

By Stephanie Bouchard In the last weeks of 2018, Luke’s Lobster, a restaurant group with Maine roots, announced it is opening its first Portland-based restaurant. It will be the second…

By Shirley Barlow My friend Mikki owns a house on Matinicus Island. She and her late husband, a merchant marine seaman and lobster fisherman, spent most of their lives on…

By Courtney Naliboff Community engagement and the opportunity to be “out and about” on the job have made new North Haven Town Administrator Rick Lattimer’s transition from federal service to…

By Barbara Fernald Summer visitors often ask what it’s like to live here in the winter. For many of us, this is a much slower and quieter time of year,…

By Sandy Oliver Some people can see the upside of almost any bad situation; they’d keep a good attitude going even in a nuclear holocaust. I am not one of…