Judy Coffin perfectly, and cheerfully, planned her memorial service and the reception that followed it. All that we her grieving neighbors, friends and family had to do was follow instructions. As she entered hospice, she announced to her husband Jack, "We are going to be happy," and she set the tone for the rest of us: no long faces, no…

The cruise ship business must have been hit by the Great Recession, as were other sectors of the tourism economy. So the news, reported by the Mount Desert Islander, that…

Editor's note: This month's Observer is a reprise of an earlier published column. I'm not a bird watcher but I did notice, last week, an Eastern Phoebe light on a…

Bruce Fernald recently traveled to the Napa Valley to attend the 17th Annual Worlds of Flavor International Conference and Festival at the Culinary Institute of America. He participated in a…

  Receding ice in the Arctic is the dramatic, even shocking result of climate change, climatologists say. But despite what may be understood as environmental catastrophe, open waters in the…

The first time Aaron Sprague and Karen Roper sat down in a yurt, owned by a friend in Maine, they experienced a deep sense of calm. "It was such a…

The traditional March town meeting in Maine, an institution that has launched many a laudatory newspaper editorial praising it as the last bastion of pure democracy, ain't what it used…

By Susie Arnold, Ph. D. and Heather Deese, Ph. D. "We believe, yes!" This is Georgetown clammer Chris Warner's answer to the question: Can a single shellfish harvester with a…

Nine years ago, a man who had no background or any interest in creating art became an artist. Not instantaneously, of course. Swimming along the bottom of Wiscasset harbor, 30…

At the top of Kent's Hill, the one-way road leading into North Haven's downtown, is the community bulletin board. Hand-written notices of transfer station hours, with annotations like "No April…