Working Waterfront

Be sure to feed the watchdogs

The irony wasn’t lost on the audience. Especially this audience. I attended the Maine Press Association’s fall conference in Bar Harbor in late October—for the first time in over 20 years—and came away charged up and proud. One of the presentations was by Steve Waldman, co-founder of Report For America,… SEE MORE

A rock cliff and sandy shore on the east side of Sears Island. FILE PHOTO: TOM GROENING

Working Waterfront

Offshore wind blows across Searsport

Have you heard there’s another plan to develop Sears Island in Searsport? The state is considering using 100 acres or so on the western shore as a site where enormous floating wind turbines will be built and then deployed to the Gulf of Maine as part of Maine’s renewable energy… SEE MORE

Boats at their moorings in a cove off Long Island. FILE PHOTO: TOM GROENING

Working Waterfront

Island balances character with change

There is so much good work happening and so much good work to come. SEE MORE

Working Waterfront

Lucy at sea in pandemic times

Lucy is back in New York City after several trips with William, her ex- and the father of their two grown daughters. It is March of 2020. SEE MORE

Working Waterfront

Girl from the hill country makes good

Though Rockefeller’s life had ranged from West Virginia to Connecticut, where he mother had remarried, and then to Michigan, a twist brought her to Maine. SEE MORE

Working Waterfront

The full Nelson

Nelson’s riff on the Cape Racer sled is equally memorable. The sound of it sliding prompts him to consider “a hidden extinction,” namely, “the lost sounds familiar in former times.” SEE MORE

Working Waterfront

Meanwhile, down on the gentleman’s farm…

Barrette’s knowledge of garden vegetables, fruits, and flowers is not that of recently retired hobbyist. Though born in the U.S. in 1897, he was raised in England, and much of his understanding of farm life seems to have come from that upbringing. SEE MORE

Gregory Dunham’s Eaton’s Boatyard, 2015; watercolor, 15 inches by 22½ inches (now in a private collection).

Working Waterfront

Gregory Dunham paints Eaton’s Boatyard

In 1980, inspired by friend and mentor, the famed lithographer Stow Wengenroth (1906-1978), painter Gregory Dunham and his wife-to-be Pat McGrath decided to go on a “pilgrimage” to some of the Maine towns the artist had frequented in his lifetime. From their home in Rockport, Mass., they drove straight to… SEE MORE

Working Waterfront

How to determine the degrees of ‘Away’

Away happens and it comes in many forms as does the process of making an accurate determination of whether one is from here, from here only to a degree, or from elsewhere. The means-testing that has emerged is quite sophisticated and, when applied carefully, reveals relative nativeness with uncanny accuracy.… SEE MORE

And aerial view of South Portland’s Cushing’s Point Shipyard which was in full production during World War II. PHOTO: MAINE MARITIME MUSEUM

Working Waterfront

A working waterfront transformed by war

Maine can claim a lot of superlatives in terms of national shipbuilding. With about 20,000 vessels under its belt, Maine surpassed the output of states with major industrialized metropolitan areas for most of its history. Many of the shipyards and boatyards today have been the site of active shipbuilding for decades, if not a century or more, with their own claims to fame in innovation, size, or speed. In contrast there are also builders of significance that lasted a surprisingly limited amount of time and had a huge impact, like the yard pictured here. SEE MORE