Working Waterfront

Personal stories about sewage and pollution

By Albert Presgraves I started sailing as a youngster with my family in the 1960s. At that time, the only sewage disposal system in common use on boats was a marine toilet with a built-in pump that pulled in seawater and discharged the waste and water mix overboard. It seemed… SEE MORE

Working Waterfront

Our island communities value our seasonal residents, but we worry

By Roger Berle and Donna Wiegle As co-chairs of the Maine Islands Coalition (MIC), we feel the need to collaboratively present our perspective on how the COVID-19 pandemic is affecting our island communities. And that is this: the pandemic has already landed on our islands, and we now wonder what… SEE MORE

Working Waterfront

Isle au Haut prepares to go solar, with new storage technology

By Stephanie Bouchard Living on an island fosters innovation. For the 50 or so year-round residents of Isle au Haut, innovation can look like using PVC pipe as a curtain rod because there are no real curtain rods at hand, or it can look like the future of the nation’s… SEE MORE

Working Waterfront

Telling Vinalhaven student stories a worthy exercise

By Nancy Lloyd The joy of teaching lies in seeing the whole class come alive, with everyone on target and enjoying the work. Working with the Telling Room process makes that happen more often than not. The Telling Room is a Portland-based educational nonprofit that works with students from 6-17… SEE MORE

Working Waterfront

The joys of a ‘staycation’

By Courtney Naliboff Ah, staycation. That portmanteau word might seem like a consolation prize—a vacation born of a lack of funds or time, but it actually speaks to a period of relaxation and an opportunity to get to know your community as a person of leisure. My family and I… SEE MORE

Working Waterfront

Town meeting, painting lines, eating doughnuts, and throwing rocks

By Barbara Fernald Activity on the islands, at the end of February and into March, is like a mirror image of the action at the end of August into September. Just as the summer residents of the Cranberry Isles end their vacations right before fall, many year-round residents end their… SEE MORE

Working Waterfront

Good reasons to eat (and live) on an island

By Sandy Oliver Recently, three days spent on the mainland prompted ponderings about what it would be like to live and eat there. For 30-something years now, I’ve eaten three meals a day on-island, the vast majority of them home-cooked by myself, or friends and neighbors. The exceptions are a… SEE MORE

Working Waterfront

Earth Day turns 50, and it’s more complicated than ever

By Philip Conkling One of the lessons of the COVID-19 pandemic is that the fates of humans across the globe are inextricably linked. Fifty years ago, the idea our lives depended on linkages with the natural world was a central part of the message of the first Earth Day and… SEE MORE

Working Waterfront

Lost in translation and the international incident

By Phil Crossman In August of 1964 I was stationed on the carrier USS Saratoga in the Mediterranean. A buddy and I took a few days leave and hitchhiked up the coast of Italy from Naples to the Riviera. We started out with a jug of Chardonnay, a big jug—the… SEE MORE

Working Waterfront

The wrath that follows environmental sin

Falter: Has the Human Game Begun to Play Itself Out? Bill McKibben; Henry Holt and Co., New York, 2019; 300 pages, hard cover, $28. Review by Dana Wilde Recently, a lobsterman from Swan’s Island told a reporter that, despite scientists’ finding that climate change has driven lobster populations north from… SEE MORE