Working Waterfront

School of rock

The band mounted the stage, confidently striding up the ramp to find their places behind the microphones and amplifiers. Earlier that afternoon they had loaded everything out of their practice space, working together as a team to make sure nothing was left behind. Their sound check was efficient, and they… SEE MORE

Working Waterfront

‘Confessing’ a love for place

Confessional poets are not usually confessing anything, but more accurately, using their own private emotions, events, and relationships… SEE MORE

Working Waterfront

Indigenous stories hit hard

This story collection comes with the author’s “trigger warning,” advising readers that they may be disturbed by issues including “racism, missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls, pregnancy loss, murder, physical abuse and drug abuse.” SEE MORE

Working Waterfront

A travel writer’s hippie roots

Steves has been described as the Mr. Rogers of travel programs, and if that’s accurate, On the Hippie Trail creates some clashing images. Steves did indeed have longish hair and a beard in the book jacket photo, taken when he wrote this book in 1978. But then... SEE MORE

Jillian Herrigel, “Harbor Hues,” 2024, acrylic and oil stick, 22 x 28 inches.

Working Waterfront

At home with harbors and oysters

Their oyster farm on New Meadows River inspired a series of lively watercolor-and-ink studies which were shown at the Maine Oyster Company’s raw bar in Portland in 2019. Herrigel captures the action—harvesting, sorting, shucking—via color washes and dashing outlines. SEE MORE

“Richard Stanley, Wooden Boatbuilder” by Lou Stanley (2025), oil on mounted linen panel, 22 x 28 in. COURTESY: ARTIST AND THE GALLERY AT SOMES SOUND

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Stanley paints a Stanley

Lou Stanley remembers the day she came across Richard Stanley. Richard was in his father Ralph Stanley’s boatyard in Tremont, working on Westwind, a 40-foot Friendship sloop built in 1902 by Charles Morse. It was late fall, the Saturday after Thanksgiving, “the full sun’s warmth,” she writes, “just barely keeping ahead of the chill in the air.” SEE MORE

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Trans-Atlantic art

Horta, the town at the eastern end of Faial, one of the islands that make up the Azores in the North Atlantic, has long been a major destination or stopping point for trans-Atlantic sailors, including many from Maine. SEE MORE

Colby Adolphsen with “Harbor Town” PHOTO: COURTESY COLBY ADOLPHSEN

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Colby Adolphsen’s LEGO harbor town

The detail is astounding, from a wall of hardware store tools and a diner grill to a lobster boat in drydock. Fishermen work on the wharf, a girl walks a dog, a boy fishes off the bridge. Vintage dollhouse stickers provided the aesthetic Adolphsen wanted for the signage: “Town Talk Bread,” “Burdan’s Ice Cream,” “Princes Lobster,” etc. SEE MORE

A view of the harbor, framed by trees. FILE PHOTO: TOM GROENING

Working Waterfront

When life gives you a library

Now the library is poised for a new chapter. It holds over 15,000 volumes and finds its home in a spacious and modern facility that would never have come to be without the 2008 tragedy. After many successful years as “just a library,” we feel like we can dream bigger. SEE MORE

Working Waterfront

Art appreciation

The striking thing about these poems is their down-to-earth, conversational atmosphere, couched nonetheless in precise diction and tightly made speech rhythms heightened into the music of poetry. SEE MORE