Working Waterfront

Protecting Nantucket’s vanishing working waterfront

There are times when I wonder if Nantucket Island, where I have lived and worked for the last twelve years, faces an impossible situation. Thirty miles south of mainland Massachusetts, Nantucket’s character is eroding under extreme development pressures. They aren’t making any new land out here; more and more of… SEE MORE

Working Waterfront

Jeff’s boat

I rented 20-foot Bertram boats from Jeff Armstrong at Jeff’s Marine in Thomaston for many years. Jeff had five of those Bertram Bahia Mar models. Wonderfully built, amazingly seaworthy, and steady. Ten years ago, I rented a boat from Jeff as usual, but about two weeks into the summer rental,… SEE MORE

Working Waterfront

The working waterfront threw me a lifeline

I didn’t come to Lincoln County looking to start over. I was already here. By early June of 2025, I had moved to Jefferson and begun building a life—writing, volunteering, settling into a rhythm. Three weeks after moving in with my partner, our relationship ended abruptly. Overnight, I was without… SEE MORE

Working Waterfront

Old-time cussidness in Ruth Moore’s The Walk Down Main Street

My mother, who was born, grew up, lived, and died in Portland and environs, was not much of a talker. She had that taciturnity sometimes associated with old-time Mainers. Mainers who, Robert Creeley once told me, “say as little as possible, as often as possible.” But like a lot of… SEE MORE

Working Waterfront

Kindness of others brightens a dark holiday season

A few weeks before Thanksgiving, my son Jackson and I were sitting quietly in a medical examining room with a small bed, a computer, a sink, and two chairs crammed into the remaining space. The physician, whom I had just called “a great doctor” and received the corroborating reply “I… SEE MORE

Essay

Working Waterfront

Why is there a grain silo on Rockland Harbor?

Drive through the smallest no-stoplight town in the Midwest and you’ll encounter a hulking grain elevator. The ubiquitous structures define the landscape in the country’s grain-producing midsection. But what is one doing on the harbor in Rockland? The answer, it turns out, involves mid-20th century competition between rail freight and… SEE MORE

Essay

A rocky Maine shoreline speaks to large forces at work. PHOTO: ADOBE STOCK

Working Waterfront

Maine’s fractal coast

Day in and day out, summer after summer when I was a kid, I flew back and forth over Casco Bay with my father in his Piper Cub seaplane. From the air I saw thousands of spooked seagulls, smooth steel-colored sea rollers in identical ranks, wind-beaten chop, whales, porpoises, schools… SEE MORE

Cod drying on a Newfoundland shore. ADOBE STOCK

Working Waterfront

How Newfoundland fishermen protected their own

It was into this environment that the Fishermen's Protective Union was initiated by Newfoundland businessman William Ford Coaker. He recognized that the system meant fishermen had no direct access to markets or control over prices. SEE MORE

The cottage on Long Island in Casco Bay. PHOTO: CANDICE DALE

Working Waterfront

Ode to an island cottage

On Long Island in Casco Bay, a summer cottage sits back from the road across from the conservation area and white sands of Fowler’s Beach. The full branches of pines and maples hide much of Hussey Sound from view off the high porch in the summer months. As autumn arrives,… SEE MORE

The inside cover includes Bertie’s hand-written name.

Working Waterfront

Dear diary: 140-year-old journal returns home

Bertie married Fred Hatch and moved to East Boston, where she had three children: Grace, Robert, and Seth Parker. Fred passed away around 1895 due to “phthisis pulmonalis,” known today as tuberculosis. SEE MORE