Working Waterfront

Remembering Maine’s lady of letters, Elizabeth Coatsworth

Though less renowned than Damariscotta’s late Barbara Cooney of Miss Rumphius fame, prolific poet and writer Elizabeth Coatsworth penned an estimated 127 total titles while living for decades in an early 19th-century house at lakefront Chimney Farm in Nobleboro. There Coatsworth and her pioneering nature writer husband Henry Beston (contemporaries… SEE MORE

Francis Hamabe, Boat Yard, ca. 1960, watercolor and silkscreen on paper, 18 by 24 inches. Collection of Ellen Best and Geoffrey Anthony.

Working Waterfront

Francis Hamabe’s boat yard

In a 1965 article in the Newark (NJ) Sunday News, Francis Hamabe explained his attraction to his adopted home to the north and east. “Maine is like I thought Sweden would be,” Hamabe told the reporter, while the Penobscot Bay area was “very much like where my father lived in… SEE MORE

Chebeague beach house. FILE PHOTO: TOM GROENING

Working Waterfront

Keeping houses lit through winter

The last time I set foot on Chebeague Island it was June 14, 2003. My enduring memory of the day is watching my brother speed across the bay aboard his best friend’s lobster boat, suited up and on his way to join his soon-to-be wife on the shore, where they… SEE MORE

Working Waterfront

Celebrate Ashley Bryan by making art

No matter how you feel about Facebook, one thing the social networking site does well is to connect scattered friends in times of celebration and grief. On Feb. 5, less than 24 hours after his death, it did not feel to me that Ashley Bryan was gone. It seemed more… SEE MORE

Working Waterfront

Photographic proof of Portland’s hip rebirth

Take It Easy: Portland in the 1970s by John Duncan; Islandport Press Review by Dana Wilde Summers in the ’60s my father trundled from Cape Elizabeth to Portland to go to marine chandleries on the wharves. I remember Commercial Street being like something out of a badly filmed B movie.… SEE MORE

A view of North Haven's landing. PHOTO: JACK SULLIVAN

Working Waterfront

North Haven to offer ‘offshore year’

Islanders sometimes wryly refer to the mainland as America. If that were true, a mainland student attending an island school would be like studying abroad. North Haven Community School is not pitching its revamped magnet program that way, but it is highlighting the surrounded-by-water nature of the experience. The school… SEE MORE

Working Waterfront

Living aboard: Damariscove Harbor was a family’s home for 16 years

This story first appeared in The Working Waterfront in 2003. John and Robin Hammond lived aboard their wooden 1936 Casey Cutter, at Damariscove Island for 16 years. There, beside a barren island known for centuries to fishermen, they raised their son, Tomas. They fished, tended a hidden garden, and got… SEE MORE

Working Waterfront

Stonington hosts ‘Jane’s Walk’ on Saturday, May 7

Stonington and community collaborators will host on "Jane’s Walk: Pier to Pier, a Walk Through Time, Fishing, Quarrying and Culture" on Saturday, May 7. The event gathers friends, neighbors, and visitors for a free, short, 90-minute guided walk which begins at 11:30 a.m. on Stonington’s Commercial Fish Pier and ends… SEE MORE

Working Waterfront

Native stories keep heritage alive

Stories Our Grandmothers Told Us Edited by Wayne Newell and Robert M. Leavitt Resolute Bear Press Review by Carl Little In his introduction to Kuhkomossonuk Akonutomuwinokot: Stories Our Grandmothers Told Us, Wayne Newell notes that the traditional Passamaquoddy stories he and Robert Leavitt collected “create a bridge between the knowledge… SEE MORE

Working Waterfront

WoodenBoat founder turns over the helm

In the early 1970s, Jon Wilson realized he wasn’t as good a boatbuilder as others whose works he admired. But he was a pretty good thinker about boatbuilding. “At that time, wooden boats had been going out of fashion and fiberglass boats were coming in, big time,” he recalled. “I… SEE MORE