Working Waterfront

A paddling partner remembered

A friend, Jack Waterbury, was a former military pilot and had retired to the island a few years earlier. Charming but woefully disorganized and chaotic, he continually misplaced things. Many years ago, when in his 50s, he was my date on a canoeing trip with two other couples on Lobster… SEE MORE

Working Waterfront

Childhood by neighborhoods and houses

On Nov. 14, 1948, Mom, Dad—the man she’d married in Massachusetts four years earlier and who’d just been discharged from the army after a grueling couple of years in Germany—four-year-old me, and my two-year-old brother, moved back to her island home on Vinalhaven. We moved into a second story downtown… SEE MORE

Working Waterfront

The school bus driver is king

It's a wonder I have a school bus driver's license at all. On the appointed day, my permit in hand, accompanied by Tiny, a fully licensed driver, I drove the bus to a public works depot for my driving test. The man in charge there couldn't have been a greater… SEE MORE

Working Waterfront

‘Bunglaries,’ island criminal misadventures

At the motel, eager to make up their losses, they busted out an awning window that was much too small for any one of them to have squeezed through before trying the door and finding it open. 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

Phil Crossman sits at the piano at Waterman's Community Center on North Haven as Gov. Janet Mills, vacationing on the island, sings.

Working Waterfront

My singing partner, Janet Mills

Gov. Janet Mills can sing. I don’t mean to imply that simply because she can sing, she should be re-elected and neither do I mean to suggest that the ability to carry a tune be a prerequisite for holding office. However, she can sing, does so enthusiastically and I have… SEE MORE

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

Working Waterfront

A dog life remembered

I was born ready, ready to love without condition. So simple were my needs that to be adopted 13 years ago by a human family represented complete fulfillment. Over the years I found a real home on this island. This is a real Dog Town. From the beginning I went… SEE MORE

Working Waterfront

My wife can’t throw a flatbar

My wife can do almost anything, really, almost anything. I mean mechanical stuff, electronic stuff, and carpentry stuff, plus all sorts of things that involve thinking, like philosophical and ethereal stuff. Further, she’s a marvelous painter and runs her own very successful gallery. She also knows (she reminds me now… SEE MORE

Working Waterfront

Music to be melancholy by

Whenever I can listen and do whatever else I’m doing simultaneously, I tune in to At the Hop on WERU-FM (89.9) on Saturday afternoons. Host Rick Foster’s regard for the music and for those of us he supposes are listening, his ironic consideration of the mood and the music, are… SEE MORE