Working Waterfront

How to shop at a farmers market

If you enjoy frustration, grab a recipe card for a dish you can’t wait to try, and then prowl among vendors at a farmers market. Likely you won’t find everything you need for your recipe at one time. That’s a kind of top-down market experience that you just can’t get… SEE MORE

Working Waterfront

Remembering an island icon

Delly—whose full name was Dallas Levi Anthony—was a pianist, a wonderful baritone, a terrific cook and baker, precipitously mischievous, and a help to all. A friend recalls that Delly let him and his brother, nine- and ten-year-olds, tag along up into the bell tower of the Union Church to take… SEE MORE

Working Waterfront

Those who served at back of the boat

I’m reposting an abridged version of a column from May 2012. I smile thinking of all the different people Bruce and I recalled and what fun we had doing it. On Little Cranberry Island sternmen stories abound! Most of the lobster fishermen in our area take an extra person or… SEE MORE

Working Waterfront

These are the rules

I didn’t make the rules, but the rules require that as soon as you think to yourself “It’s hot out here,” you have to get to a beach as quickly as you can, shed your winter plumage, and run into the sea. SEE MORE

Working Waterfront

Online from Peaks Island, it’s ‘Today in Tabs!’

From his Peaks Island home, Rusty Foster makes a living writing about other writers’ writing. And sometimes other writers write about him. SEE MORE

Working Waterfront

Noblesse oblige, Maine style

About 15 years ago, I had a most pleasant conversation with Linda Bean. I was covering the Maine Fishermen’s Forum for the Bangor Daily News and found myself sitting next to her at a session which had participants gathered in a circle. A fellow journalist had recently told me something… SEE MORE

Vinalhaven's downtown as seen from the water. FILE PHOTO: TOM GROENING

Working Waterfront

When high standards can stand in the way

Recently, I wrote an incorrect answer to a question in front of a group of students. We were learning how to work with variable lists in Javascript and how the rules we established for variables still applied... SEE MORE

Working Waterfront

The magic of music

I keep misjudging people. Last month an elderly woman, four years my junior, put in an appearance at the Vinalhaven Library to sing songs and tell stories. The event had been scheduled weeks before and announced repeatedly in our island newsletter, so as the day approached and it became increasingly… SEE MORE

Working Waterfront

Indulging in doughnuts

The March 23 storm caused icing and power outages along the Maine coast and dumped two feet of snow in the western part of the state. In the Cranberry Isles we got about five inches of snow before the rain took it all away again. By Sunday the trees were… SEE MORE

Working Waterfront

Chowder is Maine’s food for all seasons

Chowder season begins and ends simultaneously in Maine. Maybe on a few over-warm days in July and early August it doesn’t taste as good as it does on chilly September nights. Most traditional Maine eateries keep it on the menu all the time. For people truly from Maine, it’s a… SEE MORE