Working Waterfront

Confessions of a compulsive counter

I was largely adrift in high school. I paid little sustained attention with one intriguing exception. My English teacher was a singularly intimidating and frightful old woman named Gwendlyn Green. One of her eyes wandered endlessly afield of whatever the other, her good and functioning eye, was focused on. She… SEE MORE

The Hesper and Luther Little, circa 1945, near Wiscasset’s town landing. PHOTO: COURTESY MAINE MARITIME MUSEUM

Working Waterfront

Maine’s lost fixtures: The Wiscasset schooners

For more than 60 years, the four-mast schooners Hesper and Luther Little lay abandoned in the Sheepscot River. Better known as the “Wiscasset Schooners,” they served as an iconic landmark to millions of passersby travelling on Maine’s coastal Route 1. The sight of these schooners charmed the masses, stirring visions… SEE MORE

Working Waterfront

The Maine coast goes electric

Sandy Oliver should be getting paid the big bucks by Tesla’s marketing team. Describing how she snuggles up to her smartphone to gaze lovingly at the app for her Powerwall—Tesla’s in-home backup battery system—Sandy builds a visceral connection for the otherwise esoteric and dull topic of energy resilience. “When the… SEE MORE

Working Waterfront

Island travel logistics rely on kindness

Are you headed to the mainland today? Most of us on the islands have a “going off” ritual of checking for car keys, wallet, water bottle and phone right before we leave the house. Quite a few years ago I was halfway to Great Cranberry, on the ferry, when I… SEE MORE

Working Waterfront

Getting the garden ‘out of the woods’

Most fruit trees overestimate how much fruit they can ripen. I thin my peaches in early summer, the Red Haven first which ripens a little sooner than the Reliance, whose fruit is already the diameter of a quarter. The tree will naturally throw off some of its fruit sets; I… SEE MORE

Working Waterfront

Strawberries, peas, and corn

When I was a child in Central Maine, summer meant rowing my inflatable dinghy around Silver Lake, eating macaroni salad with green olives on the screened-in porch, and reading for hours in the swing chair. The scent of hawkweed, daisies, and Timothy grass radiated from the side of the road… SEE MORE

Community Shellfish FILE PHOTO: JACK SULLIVAN

Working Waterfront

Reviving lobster pounds as oyster farms

Few places exemplify the resilient and sustainable coastal communities than the aptly named Community Shellfish in Bremen. The seafood distributor connects local independent fishermen to a wider market hungry for high-quality lobsters, clams, and oysters. The harbor, fueling station, and fully equipped dock at Community Shellfish’s facility on the Medomak… SEE MORE

Rockweed, bagged and piled at a Hancock Point boatyard. FILE PHOTO: TOM GROENING

Working Waterfront

Sharing the weight of rockweed science

On a recent Wednesday morning, a small group of volunteers walked the shoreline in Lamoine with buckets, mesh bags, large square plastic picture frames, and fish-weighing scales. Carefully picking their way across the slippery seaweed, they laid out transects, and began to count and weigh the rockweed, hefting pound after… SEE MORE

Working Waterfront

Human encounters are different here

Is it possible to write this column, titled “Reflections,” about the idea of reflection itself? Who knows. What I can say is that throughout my time as an Island Fellow in Washington County, one of the biggest components of my experience has been just that—reflection. Much of my day-to-day work… SEE MORE

Russ Tamblyn and Diane Varsi in a publicity still from Peyton Place.

Working Waterfront

Imagining coastal Maine, from ‘Peyton Place’ to ‘Murder She Wrote’

When I moved to Portland in 1988, I did not come alone: hundreds, perhaps thousands of images tagged along providing me with a vivid mental map of this place where place still matters. Rocky coasts, lighthouses, and lobster rolls, of course, but also quaint downtowns of white clapboard houses, shade… SEE MORE