Working Waterfront

Whale skeleton work brings school, community together

By Courtney Naliboff It could have been a ghoulish scene: hole saws cut into vertebrae, hammers whacking chisels, loosening chunks of marrow. Small children swept bone and sawdust from the floor. Rather than a scene from a horror movie, this was a community work day on North Haven’s minke whale… SEE MORE

Working Waterfront

Building for change: Focusing on community partnerships

The Maine coast is changing with the seasons. Winter is approaching, the summer community has left, and as columnist Barb Fernald noted, we are “reclining” in to the long winter. According to the Island Institute’s new Waypoints: Livelihoods publication, during this time of year on the islands, communities experience a drop in… SEE MORE

A man rows to the dock on Islesford in late autumn of 2017.

Working Waterfront

A new approach to the ‘sweet decline’ time

By Barbara Fernald This year, as I anticipated my annual sense of melancholy for first two weeks of September, I realized something was different. I could easily summon an aching loneliness, but it was not ever-present. I had spent the summer finding ways to cope with my grief over several… SEE MORE

Working Waterfront

Our oceans are worth a deeper dive

By Tom Groening The rock musician Frank Zappa often chose bizarre, sometimes off-color, but usually witty titles for his instrumental songs. One from the late 1970s, “The Ocean is the Ultimate Solution,” remains in my memory, even though I can’t summon to mind a single lick of the tune. The… SEE MORE

Working Waterfront

A plethora of peaches

The peach deluge is over for this year. For two weeks from the end of August into the second week of September a flood of peaches and a surge of panic fill the house while the three peach trees in my life deposit their fruit on the ground, in waiting… SEE MORE

The church on Isle au Haut as seen across the thoroughfare.

Working Waterfront

Isle au Haut church faces crossroads

By Bob Gerber Isle au Haut’s Union Congregational Church occupies a prominent hilltop overlooking the thoroughfare between Kimball Island and the village at the island’s north end. It was built in 1857 at a cost of $1,649 during a period of fervent evangelistic efforts to bring organized religion to island community… SEE MORE

Working Waterfront

Music is community… again

The dilemma of the music teacher is that sometimes there aren’t enough hours in the day for the music teacher to also play music. Of course, it’s what we love to do. Music teachers began as music students, playing in recitals and sighing our way through Hanon exercises and scales… SEE MORE

Fuel tanks sit close to the water during a high-tide event in Lincolnville Beach.

Working Waterfront

Mounting weather disaster costs make case for preparation

By Susie Arnold, Ph. D. and Heather Deese, Ph. D. There were 16 separate weather and climate disaster events topping $1 billion in recovery costs in the U.S. in 2017, with a cumulative cost exceeding $300 billion. It clear that it’s cheaper to prepare and minimize the clean-up rather than… SEE MORE

Working Waterfront

Remembering the ‘improbable’ Harbor Gawker

On Oct. 1 of last year, a man with no legs and just a few fingers put together one of several final meals at one of coastal Maine’s iconic—and most improbable—seafood restaurants. It was a haddock and havarti sandwich, which I enjoyed and with a gusto that I’d reserved over the… SEE MORE

Working Waterfront

Clean energy from a meeting of Iceland and Maine

By Cameron G. Brien What is the single largest commodity the nation of Iceland produces in a single year? Is it fish? Banking? The attractive, blonde descendants of Viking shield-maidens? It is, in fact, something much more abstract than any of those things. What Iceland produces more of than anything… SEE MORE