Working Waterfront

Robert Indiana’s Maine misadventures

The Isolation Artist: Scandal, Deception, and the Last Days of Robert Indiana By Bob Keyes Born Robert Earl Clark in Newcastle, Indiana, in 1928, the famed “Love” artist changed his name in 1958 not long after moving to New York City—a way to pay homage to his home state, but… SEE MORE

Working Waterfront

The truth is out there… or not

Baseless: My Search for Secrets in the Ruins of the Freedom of Information Act By Nicholson Baker; Penguin Press, 2020 One of my many unproven cultural theories that hasn’t changed much for decades goes like this: In 1914 the world went insane. It showed no signs of recovering until the… SEE MORE

Working Waterfront

Doctor recounts 30 years of island practice

Go By Boat: Stories of a Maine Island Doctor By Chuck Radis (Down East Books, 2021) Dr. Chuck Radis provides a front row seat to what life is like for a practicing doctor living on Peaks Island. Although he now practices rheumatology in Portland, he and his wife have lived… SEE MORE

Working Waterfront

Reviving Rachel Field whose muse was Cranberry Isles

The Field House: A Writer’s Life Lost and Found on an Island in Maine She Writes Press Early in The Field House: A Writer’s Life Lost and Found on an Island in Maine author Robin Clifford Wood asks, “Why has no one told her story?” The “her” is Rachel Field,… SEE MORE

Working Waterfront

Plenty of grit in the women who lobster

Pretty Rugged: True Stories From Women of the Sea By Ali Farrell (Sea Street Publishing, Camden; 2020) Review by Tina Cohen This is a book about women who lobster, and it is about the grit of these fishermen (the term has become gender-neutral). Nothing is prettied up here. Author Ali… SEE MORE

Working Waterfront

Carving her way from surgery to art

Carving from green wood is a whole different beast from dry-wood carving, says Danielle Rose Byrd, a Bar Harbor-based wood carver and sculptor. “It’s wet wood. It behaves differently when it dries. It wants to crack and people are super scared of that. And so I’m like … Why is that bad?” In Byrd’s new book, the self-taught carver presents step-by-step wood carving instruction, with some soul-carving instruction threaded in. SEE MORE

Working Waterfront

Telling stories about the birds

Birds, says field biologist Richard MacDonald of Bar Harbor, have been “a unifying theme” in his life. At age ten MacDonald was banding ducks and in college he carried binoculars wherever he went. And for the past several decades he has led birding expeditions, local and way away (Antarctica), while running the Natural History Center on Mount Desert Island. SEE MORE

Working Waterfront

Why paper was king, and why it was deposed

Shredding Paper: The Rise and Fall of Maine’s Mighty Paper Industry By Michael G. Hillard Understanding Maine’s once-gigantic paper industry and what happened to it is a matter of perspective. Michael Hillard, author of Shredding Paper, a well-researched look at the mills that once employed thousands in communities all over… SEE MORE

Working Waterfront

Poetry embedded in a fisherman’s diary

Review by Dana Wilde Didn’t Do Much but a Little of Everything: The Eagle Island Diary of Dalton Raynes Ian Ludders, ed.; Lulu.com It’s about 1961, a sunny day somewhere in Scarborough. Spread over what seems, to my 8-year-old eyes, like acres and acres of dry field, are sardine… SEE MORE

Working Waterfront

When jobs have deadly consequences

Mill Town: Reckoning with What Remains Kerri Arsenault (2020) Review by Tina Cohen Mill Town, with no specific location in its title, could refer to a lot of places. Here it refers to Rumford, where Arsenault grew up in the adjacent town of Mexico, across the Androscoggin River from the… SEE MORE