Working Waterfront

Directing community theater in Eastport invigorates

Reflections is a monthly column written by Island Fellows, recent college grads who do community service work on Maine islands and in remote coastal communities through the Island Institute, publisher of The Working Waterfront. This week has been one of anticipation in Eastport. I’m not referring to spring’s slow arrival, though… SEE MORE

Working Waterfront

The art of serving your community

The first time I visited Ashley Bryan’s home on Little Cranberry Island, also known as Islesford, I knew I’d met an extraordinarily special person. I still feel that way every time Ashley and I meet. When asked to describe it at the time, I said it was like walking into… SEE MORE

Working Waterfront

Weather, The Great War and a homeward bound schooner

Let’s start with the weather. It’s April, that often cruelest of months, as this is being written. In Maine, April is a flirt, flashing a warm, beckoning smile one day, and spitting snow the next. This winter followed the pattern of last year’s, easier on the snow and cold—though in… SEE MORE

Working Waterfront

Native wisdom measuring Maine, verse by verse

Booker’s Point by Megan Grumbling. Denton, Texas: University of North Texas Press “Come to a fork, you gotta take/it, they say” When I was growing up on Long Island, New York, my parents hired a local man, Fred Grimshaw, to look after our property. He knew how to do everything—trim hedges,… SEE MORE

Working Waterfront

‘A world of singers’ is siren for Islesford poet

At Bunker Cove. Poems by Ralph Stevens. Westbrook, Maine: Moonpie Press, 2017. 58 pp. Softbound, $14 Born during World War II to a father who was in the Navy, Ralph Stevens moved at least ten times before graduating from Lincoln Academy in Newcastle. He dropped out of college and did… SEE MORE

Working Waterfront

Growing up on the coast: ‘Adventures remembered enthusiastically’

The Stone From Halfway Rock: A Boy’s Adventures on the Coast of Maine By Peter Macdonald Blachly (published by Polar Bear & Company, 2016) The pages of The Stone From Halfway Rock should practically reek of salt air and ocean spray, so vividly does author Peter Macdonald Blachly, a writer… SEE MORE

Working Waterfront

Wulp’s poems prove wit, insight, reflection sharpen with age

Cormorant Time: A Madman’s Journal. Poems Written in a Time of Fever by John Wulp. Camden, Maine: Philip Conkling & Associates, 2016. 190 pp. “Can one man have been a United States Marine Corps honor guard at the White House, a photographer, a producer, a playwright, wait—a short-order cook, an… SEE MORE

Working Waterfront

Bryan’s ‘Freedom Over Me’ earns Newberry honor

Islesford’s Ashley Bryan, the author and artist whose books, illustrations and paintings have reached world-wide audiences, was honored this month for his latest children’s book Freedom Over Me: Eleven Slaves, Their Lives and Dreams Brought to Life. The book won a Newbery Honor Award, a runner-up to the Newbery Medal.… SEE MORE

Working Waterfront

Map-making as art

When most of us think of mapmakers, we think of the big names in mapmaking: Google, Garmin/DeLorme, Rand McNally. These are companies engaging in cutting edge technologies to push cartography into the future. But there are lesser-known mapmakers contributing to the field right here in Maine, and their work spans… SEE MORE

Working Waterfront

Book review: National parks as ‘breathing places’

The Hour of Land: A Personal Topography of America’s National Parks. By Terry Tempest Williams When filmmaker Ken Burns set out to document the history of America’s “best idea”—our national parks—he called on a number of distinguished writers and historians to help testify to their special place in our land—and… SEE MORE