2018 Island Journal

ISLAND JOURNAL

Volume 34

ISLAND JOURNAL Celebrating Island Life & Culture

2018

Keith Miller and crew harvest edible seaweed in Wheeler Bay, Saint George. Keith has lobstered in these waters for decades and this is his first year growing kelp. Keith began his journey into aquaculture as part of a cohort of the Island Institute’s Aquaculture Business Development program where fishermen and others learn how to get started in shellfish and edible seaweed farming. Growing kelp requires seeding in the Fall and then harvesting in the Spring and balances the seasonal nature of lobstering. ABOVE: PHOTO BY JACK SULLIVAN, FRONT COVER PHOTO BY JEFF ROBERTS Volume Thirty-Four

© ISLAND INSTITUTE, 2018 P.O. Box 648, 386 Main Street, Rockland, ME 04841 www.islandinstitute.org

In This Issue:

Innovative Waterfronts/Waterfront Innovators // Islands in the Farnsworth Collection

Publishers of Island Journal and The Working Waterfront PRESIDENT Robert Snyder CREATIVE DIRECTOR Marydale Abernathy EDITOR Tom Groening DESIGN / PRODUCTION Anneli Skaar

B OA R D OF T RU ST E E S Natalie Ames

Bryan Lewis

Sebastian Belle

Katherine Drew McGhee

Michael P. Boyd Clerk David Cousens Megan Dayton Michael Felton Douglas Henderson Treasurer & Finance Committee Chair Joseph R. Higdon Board Chair Luke Holden Kristin Howard Nathan Johnson Emily B. Lane Board Vice-Chair

Henry L. Miller Development Committee Chair Hannah Pingree Governance Committee Chair Michael Sant Barbara Sweet Tom Tinsley Charles Verrill, Jr. Board Secretary Donna Wiegle Programs Committee Chair

HONORARY TRUSTEES: John Bird

Maine artists have inspired each other for generations.

This wall sculpture, by Jeffrey Barrett of Monroe, Maine, now hanging in Archipelago’s gallery was inspired by Ruth Moore’s poem “The Ballad of the Three Green Waves” originally published in 1958 and reprinted in the 2015 Island Journal.

Meetat atthe theBeach, Beach,by byAmy AmyPeters PetersWood Wood Meet

Louis W. Cabot Horace Hildreth, Jr.

The Island Institute works to sustain Maine’s island and coastal communities, and exchanges ideas and experiences to further the sustainability of communities here and elsewhere.

www.islandinstitute.org www.islandjournal.com

C OVE R PHOTO : Jeff Roberts T HI S PAG E : Jeffrey Becton, Ides of March

Shop Archipelago where the art and inspiration change with the seasons.

Archipelago supports supports Maine’s Maine’s creative creative economy economy by by featuring featuring the the work work of of over over 250 250 artists artists in in our our Archipelago gallery and and online, online, by by producing producing the the annual annual Artist Artist & & Makers Makers Conference, Conference, and and providing providing business business gallery consultingand andmentoring. mentoring. consulting ARCHIPELAGO || 386 386 Main Main Street Street || Rockland, Rockland, Maine Maine || 207-594-0701 207-594-0701 || www.thearchipelago.net www.thearchipelago.net ARCHIPELAGO Openseven sevendays daysaaweek weekJune June--December; December;five fivedays daysaaweek weekJanuary January--May May Open

– TO O U R R E A D E R S – Conception, design, manufacture, and regulation combine in what can only be described as innovation.

Widening our lens for spotting innovation

I

t’s a scene we’ve witnessed—and in fact, acted in—many times. It’s afternoon on a late summer day, and a fishing pier somewhere on the Maine coast beckons. We walk down its length, take in the lobster boats at rest on their moorings, the low-angled sun saturating their colors, the warm air making the bits of bait debris on the pier’s decking pungent.

Of course, there are a handful of lobster traps stacked on the pier, their block shape and wire-mesh grid patterns a contrast to the curves of hull, shore, and wave.

The scene bestows a sense of peace, of tradition, of nature. We’re far from the hard-charging world of business and technology, and the struggle to innovate, to find new solutions.

Or are we?

Let’s go back to those lobster traps. Yes, they are the primary tool in a centuries-old resource harvesting operation. But consider them again. Take a closer look at the rigid plastic rectangles with slots cut in them affixed to their sides. Though those vents may be beat up and maybe even barnacle-encrusted, they represent innovation and technology.

Decades ago, regulators and fishermen, concerned that lobster would be recklessly harvested, decided to include that vent so captured young lobster could escape and grow another season or two.

That plastic vent is a piece of ingenious technology. If the opening is too big, the trap would let too many legal lobsters escape. Too small, and the trap would be full of small lobsters, wasting the harvester’s time hauling them up and tossing them back.

Conception, design, manufacture, and regulation combine in what can only be described as innovation. And that’s

what we examine in this issue of Island Journal. Our theme of “Innovative Waterfronts, Waterfront Innovators” is explored through stories about coastal communities working to catch the next wave, seeking to stay on the edge of economic development.

Of course, innovation rarely happens by committee; more often than not, it is spawned in the imagination of an individual who bumps up against a problem and conceives of a solution. And so in our stories, you will hear how creative and persistent minds found their way to those new ways of doing things.

There still is a high-tech thread to the innovation we consider here, most notably in the efforts underway to bring broadband-speed internet to the coast and islands.

Twenty years ago, the internet was a novel way to share information, and perhaps only as essential to business as a phone book or catalog. No more. The internet is a vital pipeline for economic development, for education, for healthcare. Retirees and millennials expect it to work and be fast enough to manage large files.

That idyllic moment on a quiet fishing pier must remain part of our identity. We don’t begrudge—and in fact, welcome—those who come to our shores to find that peace, that beauty. But our islands and coast cannot afford to get by on their good looks alone.

And so we are enthusiastic about the innovators, and the communities that spawn and embrace these changes, and we trust that enthusiasm shines through in this issue of Island Journal.

—Tom Groening, editor

ISLAND JOURNAL 2018

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ISLAND JOURNAL Celebrating Island Life & Culture

F RO M T H E H E L M

The Numbers That Tell Stories……...…Page 4 Great Lakes Islands Choose People-Focused Strategy

By Abigail Curtis………………………Page 6 Remember the Monarchs: Rachel Carson’s Southport Island

By Edgar Allen Beem…………………Page 12 I N N OVAT I V E WAT E R F RO N T S , WAT E R F RO N T I N N OVATO R S

Bucksport: Life After the Mill

By Jim Baumer………………..…...….Page 18

Volume 34

Grabbing the Digital Future

By Jennifer Van Allen……………….Page 22 The Laboratory by the Sea

By Carl Little...................................Page 26 Belfast: Sardines to Yachts

By Tom Groening………............….. Page 32 Luke Holden’s ‘Trap to Table’ Adventure

By Stephanie Bouchard....................Page 36 P O E M : 88

By JohnWulpe……………………... Page 39 FOLIO:

Maine Islands at the Farnsworth Art Museum............................. …… Page 40

p.6 p.34 p.57 2

ISLAND JOURNAL 2018

Responding First, Fifteen Miles Out

By Gideon Davidson…....................Page 51

The Sound of Island Silence

By Scott Sell……...………………… Page 76

FICTION:

FOLIO:

The Ledge

By Lawrence Sargent Hall...............Page 55

Altered Realities Jeffrey C. Becton...... ………………..Page 78

FOLIO: On the Water

By Abe Goodale................................Page 64

P O E M : VA R N I S H I N G

Me, Books, Food, and Drink

By Phil Crossman.............................Page 66

By David Shipler………..................Page 89 Harpswell, A Town of Superlatives

By Callie Ferguson………..... ………Page 90

The Collector of Islands

By Melissa Waterman…….…………Page 69 More Than a Pile of Shells: Maine’s Middens

By Catherine Schmitt……………….Page 73

p.66 p.39

p.80 ISLAND JOURNAL 2018

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– F RO M T H E H E L M – Rob Snyder, Island Institute president, and Heather Deese, executive vice-president, talk numbers at January’s “Waypoints Forum” event in Portland.

Numbers That Tell Stories About Our Communities ROB: Heather, you like numbers quite a bit. Why don’t you give us a number?

HEATHER: I do like numbers and I had a couple that I thought are helpful to start out with. Our Waypoints publication, we put out last year, looked at data for 120 communities. Those are 105 mainland coastal communities and 15 year-round island communities. Of those, the smallest, according to the U.S. census, is Monhegan, with 34 year-round residents. The city of Portland is the largest, with is 66,000 residents. If you include South Portland, it’s up to around 90,000. So, we have communities that range in size from 34 to 100,000 or so. But 25 percent of those communities have fewer than 800 residents. So, it’s not just Monhegan that’s small; a lot of us live in small communities on the coast.

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Island, at the lobster license holders and how old they are, because we have a rural myth that our lobstermen are all old.

But in fact, 26 percent were issued to people who are under the age of 25. That includes student licenses. It’s seen as an important future economic activity for young people by themselves, by their parents, and by their families. So lobster is a big important part of our future.

ROB: My next number is 12.

At the Island Institute, we say it takes 12 years from the time somebody has a new idea for it to actually come to fruition.

We came up with that number before I looked at the sociological research that shows that, in fact, it takes about 12 years for adaptation of new technologies and new ideas.

I think that’s something to keep in mind when we think about the pace of change. Things don’t happen quickly here, and it’s OK that they require effort and energy.

ROB: I think numbers are for telling stories, not the other way around. So, a number I find striking is 3 million, the number of people who visited L.L. Bean this past year which is second, as a tourist destination, only to Acadia National Park at 3.5 million. Given those kinds of numbers, I think there’s a real question about the extent to which we are a lobster coast versus a tourist coast.

HEATHER: So, 12 years from today would take us out to 2030 and I just read a projection that 95 percent of passenger miles traveled in this country in 2030 will be in autonomous electric fleet owned vehicles. Which I’m like, Woo! I’m not driving anymore. Maybe that’s ambitious, but it’s probably not off by more than a factor of two. So, that’s got to change what it’s like to live in Maine.

HEATHER: I have another number, which has to do with the part of our coast that is a lobster coast. A community member asked me to look-into the demographics of Long

ROB: So, are we the lobster coast in 2030?

ISLAND JOURNAL 2018 ISLAND JOURNAL 2018

HEATHER: I would predict we will have a lot of lobster in

It takes about 12 years for adaptation of new technologies and new ideas. I think that’s something to keep in mind when we think about the pace of change. Things don’t happen quickly here, and it’s OK that they require effort and energy.

2030, but we may not have as much as we have today.

I’m thinking by 2030 we will have a mix of different species: more black sea bass, more squid, we may have somewhat less lobster, but maybe we can make more money from each species and therefore they would contribute just as much to our economy. I think the biggest question for me is, how can we make sure we are still a commercial fisheries coast? Will that be with a mix of aquaculture?

ROB: Are there other elements of the future worth pointing out?

HEATHER: At the Island Institute, we put out this goal that we would like to see every coastal and island community in Maine at or above the national speeds for broadband by the year 2025. So, by 2030, sure! What would it look like if we were on the leading edge and completely connected, so that we’re able to live in places we want to live, in a way where we’re still connected to the environment?

The clean environment is our quality and our brand opportunity, and it is also our Achilles’ heel, in talking about water quality issues, with our septic, sewage, and water quality problems. We build water treatment facilities on 30-year timelines, but we’ve also got rising sea levels. So, we know we need to replace these facilities, we know we need to get ourselves and our coastal infrastructure shored up. So what if we could get those cleaner environmental outcomes, and get our infrastructure ready at the same time?

Maine is going to continue to be an attractive place to live.

I saw an Atlas Van Lines study that said that Maine was one of the 17 states in the nation that had net inward migration; more people moved into Maine than out last year.

ROB: I like “clean, shored-up, connected.” We do need people to do this work and we have got to learn how to become more accepting of a diverse population as a part of this work force.

That’s essential to our future.

I think another element of a community economy that I want to look back on and be able to say we’ve been very successful at is that our communities still have the time and energy and volunteer spirit to sustain our cultural institutions. Our historical society, our friends of the schools, our arts institutions, they are all being contributed to by these private sector enterprises.

HEATHER: I know we’ve been talking and thinking a lot about the community and I just wonder if you can talk a little bit about how you define that word?

ROB: The first thing we need to do is stop looking at community as singular; communities are already diverse. There’s economic diversity, there are people who have been here 10 generations, there are people who’ve been here 10 months, and we all give each other categories and names and identities around that.

The next step is to say that not only are our communities already diverse, they’re already connected. Communities don’t exist in isolation anymore. All the answers to our problems don’t exist with the people who are already in our communities. They exist because we are connected.

I think the last thing we need to understand is that communities are a place we anchor our identities. We find out who we are, we decide what work looks like, what being a man or a woman looks like, we decide what it feels like to have a home, and we sort all that out in our towns and where we grow up, and the places we’re from. These communities are a huge source of our identity.

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Great Lakes Islands Choose People-Focused Strategy I sl a n d communit ies t hat lo se f e rry se rvi c e i n w i nt er , fa cin g aging challenge s, re sp o nd w i th c o m m uni c at i on B Y A B I G A I L C U RT I S / / P H OTO S B Y F R A N K S O L L E

Let other people flock to Beaver Island’s white sand beaches, secluded forests, and scenic lighthouses in the summer, the busiest season for the tourist-friendly spot 32 miles off the coast in northeastern Lake Michigan. Pam Grassmick, one of the island’s 600 year-round residents, loves it there the most during the spring and fall, when the bucolic landscape is shaking off one season and welcoming another.

“I love to see the island awaken out of the snow. I love that time of year,” she said. “And the other time I really love it is the fall. We have a lot of maple trees and seven inland lakes, and you can really see the changing colors.”

Maybe it’s no coincidence that the transitional seasons are her favorites. Grassmick, 62, is a fourth-generation islander and grew up on a farm there. Her childhood memories are, in many ways, timeless. Just as her ancestors were, she was taught by the Dominican sisters whose mission was to come and educate the Beaver Island children. Non-school hours

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were filled with farm chores and fun. After Lake Michigan froze, the town’s plow truck would clear the snow off a portion of the harbor, and they would skate, sometimes making a cheerful bonfire on the ice to warm their hands and light the night. “Those are some of my best childhood memories,” Grassmick said.

Still, she, like many of her classmates, left Beaver Island to try her luck on the mainland. She went to college, became a nurse and worked in Alaska and then Michigan. When she retired, Beaver Island pulled her and her husband back to live in the place she had always gone to recharge her batteries.

But she found the island had changed. It had prospered with an influx of people who built second summer homes on it, and the increased property tax revenue allowed islanders to build a beautiful new school and a medical facility. But other changes seemed more ominous. Islanders were getting older, the school population was declining, and it seemed these two demographic

“The vision was for the radio station to be a way for the islanders to communicate and feel connected, especially during the winter.” — D E N N I S W I N S L OW

realities were on a collision course that could not end well for the community’s long term viability.

Grassmick was getting worried. And so when she learned about a nascent effort to bring sometimes far-flung Great Lakes islanders together for collaboration and support on the issues that they are all facing, she wanted in. The Great Lakes Islands Initiative was inspired by the Maine Islands Coalition—a group that sends representatives of Maine’s 15 unbridged, year-round islands to quarterly meetings—but has quickly taken on a freshwater flavor all its own. There are 32,000 Great Lakes islands, with nearly 20 that have communities on them. All have their own character, traditions, and geography, but many of the challenges they face are the same.

“At the heart of it is how to maintain a viable population,” Grassmick said. “The big thing is that we need to have people on these islands, and that’s what I really see in the coalition— islanders helping each other.”

The crew of WVBI: Below, from left: Kevin Boyle and Maureen “Mo” Abele; above, from left: Mark Beltaire, and Dennis Winslow.

PHOTO: COURTESY DENNIS WINSLOW

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M A I NE C O N N E C T I O N The idea for the initiative came about in part because one Michigan man had spent a number of childhood summers off the coast of Maine. Jon Allan, the director of the Michigan Office of the Great Lakes, spent some of his formative years participating in an ecology program on Hardwood Island in Blue Hill Bay. Because of that, he kept on paying attention to what was happening on the coast of Maine, and was aware of the work that the Island Institute was doing. And when, five years ago, he was hired to oversee a state-run department whose mission is to protect, restore, and sustain the Great Lakes watershed, he figured that some of what Maine was doing would translate well to Michigan. The Michigan office long had focused on environmental protection, water resource management, and the ecosystems of the lakes, but it seemed to Allan that something important was missing from the recipe: people.

“It dawned on me that our Great Lakes islands have a lot in common with Maine islands, and the work that the Island Institute was doing was so profound, so insightful and in tune

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with their communities. We wanted some of that, too. How can we start to help our communities in a meaningful way?”

So, a couple of years ago, his agency began to collect information about the islands to learn from the remaining communities. They started with Beaver Island and have expanded.

Now, residents of 14 different islands are working together to share information, ideas, problems, and more. A couple of years ago, several islanders came to Maine to visit coastal island communities and attend a meeting of the Maine Islands Coalition.

Grassmick, who was there, said that it was a rousing success.

“It was such a powerful meeting,” she said. “Seeing the islanders all helping each other and cheering when someone had six students in their school, and sharing their stories, those messages really resonated with the group that went.”

After that, Great Lakes islanders came together for a summit of their own last fall on Beaver Island, with some staff members from the Island Institute flying out to share their experiences in Maine. People came from different states, different lakes, and different islands, but they had more in common than they had expected. Discussion topics may sound familiar to Mainers, who

“Let’s focus on these remaining phenomenally cool places with phenomenally cool people.” — J O N A L L A N

are used to conversations about improving access to working waterfront, aging in place, infrastructure, attracting new people to the islands and, of course, waste and recycling.

Great Lakes islanders now are planning a second summit, this one on Madeline Island in Lake Superior in Wisconsin.

They also are having a monthly conference call. It feels exciting to Allan, who wants islanders, and not his office, to drive the direction of the initiative.

“First, islanders understand islanders. They understand both the beauty and the challenges of these hyper-rural communities,” he said. “And number two, my impression is that the value of a collective voice, at a time when it’s easy to dismiss small or individual voices, is really profound. You don’t lose identity, but you gain voice.”

He and others in his office also hope that a louder, collective voice will help island communities raise their profile among mainlanders, government agencies, and the general public, which are not generally aware of what is happening miles off shore and out of sight.

“Everybody knows Mackinac Island in Lake Huron, but only because you go there in the summer and you ride the bikes, stay a couple days and then leave,” Matt Preisser, the lake coordinator for the Michigan Office of the Great Lakes said.

“People don’t think, ‘Wow, there’s a school there, and what do they do in February?’ There’s a big awareness gap right now, and raising awareness is one of the longer term things this group can help do.”

Allan doesn’t want to study island communities as a lockedin-time oddity or a living museum, but instead as vibrant places full of people who are independent, resourceful, and resilient.

“While we spend a lot of time on fish and habitats and invasive species and other things, our island communities really are a profound reflection of Great Lakes culture,” he said. “I think it’s incumbent upon us to learn from them.

Let’s focus on these remaining phenomenally cool places with phenomenally cool people. Not as museums. These are not museums in the Sturbridge Village way. These are living, breathing communities that change and morph with time.”

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C O M B AT I N G I S O L AT I O N W I T H I NGE N U I T Y Compared to many small island communities, Beaver Island has a lot in the way of amenities. There are hotels, restaurants, a full-service grocery store, two small airlines, museums, and more. There’s even music festivals, a golf course, and an Irish pub. But despite all that, it’s safe to say that most residents like the quiet, unspoiled nature of their island. Birders from all over come to spot the pelicans, piping plovers, and other bird species that flock there. Spring brings an explosion of wildflowers, and summer brings lots of opportunity for swimming, hiking, and other outdoor adventures.

“Beaver Island is quite active and beautiful. It’s still very wooded. There’s lots of wild deer and turkey and foxes—all kinds of cool things,” Dennis Winslow, a part-time island resident since 2000, said. “It really is an interesting little place.

A lot of people don’t know the history, and a lot of people don’t know how beautiful it is.”

But the winters can challenge even the hardiest island dwellers. The ferries stop running when the lakes freeze up so islanders rely on airplanes to get back and forth from the mainland. If bad weather makes it unsafe to fly, people can be stuck for days on one side or the other (hard, though still easier

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than in the old days before planes, when islanders crossed the ice on foot or wagon on a trail marked by Christmas trees and hoped for the best. One year, the story went, a postal horse, wagon, and mailman were lost when the ice was too thin and they broke through to the lake).

A few years ago, Winslow and a couple other full and parttime islanders decided that one thing that could decrease the isolation and be good for the community would be a low-power FM radio station. In 2013, the Federal Communications Commission opened a window for new license applications, and the three Beaver islanders—old radio hands all—thought that a low-power station would be a perfect fit.

“The vision was for the radio station to be a way for the islanders to communicate and feel connected, especially during the winter,” Winslow said.

It took some work, persuasion, and a lot of help, but WVBI-FM began broadcasting about a year-and-a-half ago.

The independent, nonprofit, community-run radio station is broadcast from a studio in the Beaver Island Community Center, at the heart of the island.

So far, locally produced shows feature oldies, jazz, classic country, Celtic, and “Cottage Mix,” a kind of lucky dip that can leave a listener bopping to Elton John one minute and local artists the next. The station also covers community meetings,

updates the community calendar regularly, has broadcast locally-produced radio plays, and even recorded and broadcast the memorial service for a longtime, well-loved islander.

Listeners who live within 10 miles or so of the broadcast tower can tune in on their radios. But anyone, anywhere can listen to it online, and that helps the summer residents stay connected to the island, too.

“The station really has helped, I think, provide the island with its own voice,” Mark Beltaire, one of the radio guys who got WBVI going, said from his winter home in Detroit, Michigan.

Then he paused. Beaver Island is a place full of unique, eccentric people, he said, and one of the things they have in common is a deep love of where they live. That reminded him of another radio station—albeit a fictional one—that also brought the people of a rural community together.

“People ask what does Beaver Island look like,” he said. “I explain it’s just like that old television show, Northern Exposure, only without the moose.”

A B I G A I L C U RT I S is a staff writer for the Bangor Daily News.

She lives in Belfast and spends her free time hiking, gardening, canoe camping and getting to Maine's islands whenever she can.

Beaver Island in Lake Michigan is now on her bucket list.

KING STRANG’S ISLAND Among those thousands of freshwater islands in the Great Lakes, Beaver Island really does stand out. At 55 square miles and a two-hour ferry ride from the mainland, it’s the largest island in Lake Michigan, and also surely the only island that once was home to a Mormon kingdom ruled by a self-appointed king.

The island originally was settled by prehistoric Mound Builder Indians, then Chippewa and Ojibways followed by traders and trappers. But “King Strang,” arguably its most colorful resident, arrived on its shores in 1848. James Jesse Strang was a lawyer in the Wisconsin Territory who converted to Mormonism shortly before Joseph Smith, the founder of the faith, died at the hands of an angry mob in Carthage, Illinois.

After Smith was killed, several people scrambled to succeed him as leader of the church. One was Brigham Young, who took his followers to Salt Lake City, Utah. But another was Strang, who brought his followers to Wisconsin and then to Beaver Island, at that time a sleepy fishing village.

Strang, who declared himself king in an 1850 ceremony that featured a cardboard crown, had his followers build roads, clear land for farming, and sell wood to passing ships. He came out as a polygamist, ultimately marrying five wives. Things seemed good in his kingdom. And yet there was a looming shadow—faraway American government officials, who didn’t cotton to the idea of part of the country being turned into a religious monarchy.

The same year as Strang’s coronation, he was arrested and accused of treason, and was taken to Detroit, Michigan by Navy ship to stand trial along with some of his men. The trial went well for Strang, who defended himself skillfully and was acquitted. He and his men returned home to their island, and Strang ran for a seat in the Michigan Legislature and won.

But the shadow hadn’t really gone away. Other, non-Mormon islanders remained suspicious and resentful of Strang, his followers, and his religion. In 1856 he was shot in the back and head by two men who were never charged with a crime. He died a few weeks later of his injuries. The end of the Mormon kingdom came quickly after his assassination. Most of his followers left of their own accord or were driven off the island by a mob from nearby Mackinac Island, which also burned Mormon homes and the tabernacle.

The next wave of settlers were the Irish, who took advantage of the rich fishing grounds that surrounded Beaver Island and the peaceful isolation on it. By the mid-1880s, the island was the biggest supplier of freshwater fish consumed in the United States, and church services and regular conversations were being conducted in Gaelic. But change, a constant on Beaver Island, struck again. Overfishing and technological changes brought the fishing heyday to an end by the beginning of the 20th century, and logging and then tourism filled the void it left.

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B Y E D G A R A L L E N B E E M / P H OTO S B Y M I C H E L E S TA P L E TO N

Remember the Rachel Carson’s Last Monarchs Summer at Southport H

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“When the tide is high on a rocky shore, when its brimming fullness creeps up almost to the bayberry and the junipers where they come down from the land, one might easily suppose that nothing at all lived in or on or under these waters of the sea’s edge.”

S

o wrote Rachel Carson, perhaps the greatest environmentalist of the 20th century, in “The Edge of the Sea”. Carson was describing the littoral landscape just below her small summer cottage on Southport Island west of Boothbay Harbor. The low, one-story silvery gray home with its seaside deck sits like a wooden gull above the shore of the Sheepscot River between Dogfish Head and Hendricks Head Light.

The Carson cottage is an accurate reflection of the woman herself. A modest dwelling simply furnished with pine paneling, rattan chairs, books, nautical charts, sunlight, and sea air, her summer home is an artifact of the 1960s, intimate and authentic in ways that very few Maine summer cottages are anymore. The cottage defers to the site, hiding atop the ledges in the trees, not calling attention to itself.

Just so, Rachel Carson was a modest woman who lived a quiet life beside the sea, yet her work had a global impact. Carson (1907-1964) was a federal employee much of her working life, but her sea trilogy—Under the Sea-Wind (1941), The Sea Around Us (1951), and The Edge of the Sea (1955), established her as one of America’s leading nature writers. Silent Spring (1962), Carson’s bombshell documentation of chemicals in the environment, led directly to the banning of DDT and indirectly to the founding of the Environmental Protection Agency.

Rachel Carson first came to Maine in 1946, renting a cottage for a month near Boothbay Harbor with her mother. In 1953, she built the cottage on Southport Island where she spent the happiest years of her life.

“Maine was her haven. It was her laboratory and it gave her the solitude to write,” says Martha Freeman, who edited the voluminous letters between Carson and Freeman’s grandmother, Dorothy Freeman, and published them as Always, Rachel (1995). “Without Maine in her life, she couldn’t have done Silent Spring.

Maine was her refuge. It re-energized her. It was her relation with nature.

And she had my grandmother.”

Rachel Carson and Dorothy Freeman met when Carson moved to Maine and became the best of friends.

Carson was an unmarried 46-yearold and Freeman a 55-year-old wife, mother, and grandmother when they met. In Maine, they explored the shores and woods together, sharing a love of nature and a companionship in the outdoors. Freeman became Carson’s best reader, confidant, and kindred soul. Carson was the writer Freeman had hoped to become. When they returned home—Carson to Silver Springs, Maryland and Freeman to West Bridgewater, Massachusetts, they wrote so often that Martha Freeman inherited an entire maroon plaid suitcase full of their correspondence, some 750 letters in all.

A BOVE: Martha Freeman, granddaughter of Rachel Carson’s friend and frequent letter correspondent, Dorothy Freeman, provided this photo. She writes,

“The adults are my parents, Stanley and Madeleine Freeman, and Rachel (far right). The boy with the glasses is Roger Christie, the other boy is my brother Richard, and the 10-year-old girl is me! This was taken on Labor Day weekend in 1963. Rachel died on April 14, 1964, one day after my 11th birthday.

LEFT: The shore which Carson explored for her research.

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The writing desk and bookshelves in Rachel Carson’s Southport Island cottage.

The woods that created seclusion for Carson in her cottage.

Bookshelves featuring Carson’s work.

Though she became a major figure in the public life of was attacked as a spinster, a pseudo-scientist and a mystic.

America with the publication of Silent Spring, Carson was a very Time magazine, to its everlasting shame, was especially hard private person. One of the amazing things about her was how on Carson, calling Silent Spring “unfair, one-sided, hysterically much she was able to accomplish despite the weight of family overemphatic” and “nonsense.” The unnamed author of the Time responsibilities that fell to her. review claimed DDT was perfectly safe, citing a government As an unmarried daughter, Carson became the caretaker for scientist who claimed to have fed 200 times the “safe” level of her aging mother. When her DDT to convicts for months with older sister died, leaving two “Without Maine in her life, she couldn’t “no ill effects.” young daughters, she took The fact that Carson was able have done Silent Spring. Maine was on that responsibility as well. to prevail over industry, regulators, When one of her nieces died and media critics, says her son her refuge.”

— M A RT H A F R E E M A N at 31, leaving a five-yearRoger Christie, who inherited the old son, Carson dutifully Southport cottage, was a function adopted her grandnephew Roger Christie, as her own son. of the kind of person Rachel Carson was.

All this while working full time for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife “She was a pretty compelling person,” says Christie. “She was Service and writing her books. good and she was thorough. She took great pains to document everything she was doing. She would just lock herself away and When Silent Spring appeared in 1962, Carson found herself work. I’d ask her to do something and she’d say, ‘No, I’m in taking on not only the chemical industry, but government the study footnoting.’ The fact that she did it all while she was regulators and the media as well. For questioning the amount dying is even more remarkable. She wanted someone else to do of toxic chemicals being pumped into the environment, she it, but she couldn’t find anyone, so she did it herself.”

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The main room in the Carson cottage.

Carson struggled with cancer and a heart condition the last few years of her life, though male doctors never gave her the full diagnosis, as women were felt to be too fragile to handle the truth.

Then, as now, an earnest person in possession of a scientific truth could be subjected to partisan attacks and charges of fake news, but Rachel Carson only needed an audience of three powerful men to get her Silent Spring message out to the world.

The New Yorker editor William Shawn serialized the book, CBS Reports news anchor Eric Sevaried presented Carson to an audience of 15 million viewers, and President John F. Kennedy saw to it that Carson’s findings in Silent Spring were included in “The Uses of Pesticides,” a report of the President’s Science Advisory Committee.

“She was the apex of something going on all around the country,” says Martha Freeman, that something being the dawning of an environmental consciousness, the realization that human beings are part of the natural world, not separate and apart from it. “She was laser-focused, an efficient organizer, an excellent researcher, a great writer. And Kennedy wanted the

facts. Government officials believed one of their constituencies was the facts, reality. That doesn’t seem to be true today.”

After the watershed Silent Spring year, Carson sought refuge in Maine the following summer, her last summer on Southport.

She and Roger arrived on June 25, 1963, and Roger, 11, was quickly sent off to camp at Chewonki for the month of July.

In mid-summer, Rachel Carson sent a note to Dorothy Freeman asking, “Would you help me search for a fairy cave on an August moon and low, low tide? I would love to try once more, for the memories are precious.”

The tide pools, stone beaches, and sea caves along the rocky Southport shore were Carson’s favorite marine landscapes. She loved nothing better than spending her time exploring the marine life at the edge of the sea. But when Christie returned from summer camp, he discovered that Carson had been unable to climb down over the steep ledges to the rocks below the cottage.

“I knew she was ill,” he recalls, “but I didn’t know she was dying.”

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Carson’s last tide pool expedition took place remotely in September 1963 when Christie, his friend Martha Freeman, and Martha’s parents brought specimens up to the cottage for Carson to examine under her microscope and then, at her insistence, dutifully returned them to the natural world.

“She taught us to have respect for other forms of life on the planet and to be good stewards of the Earth,” says Christie of his mother’s legacy.

On September 9, Carson’s cat Moppet died. The following morning she and Dorothy Freeman went to the Newagen Inn where they sat together on a bench above the shore watching the sea and sky and listening to the wind in the spruces, the surf on the rocks, and the gulls crying in the distance.

The highlight of that outing was the spectacle of a drift of hundreds of monarch butterflies, riding the breeze from milkweed to milkweed before lifting off for Mexico. Already in a funereal mood, the two women speculated that these lovely orange and black butterflies would not live to return to Southport.

“But it occurred to me this afternoon,” wrote Carson to Freeman later that same day, “remembering that it has been a happy spectacle, that we had felt no sadness when we spoke of the fact that there would be no return. And rightly—for when any living thing has come to the end of its life cycle we accept that end as natural … when that intangible cycle has run its The Carson cottage on the Southport Island shore.

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course it is a natural and not unhappy thing that a life comes to an end … That is what those brightly fluttering bits of life taught me this morning. I found a deep happiness in it—so, I hope, may you. Thank you for this morning.”

Carson died the following spring, April 14, 1964, in a Cleveland hospital without ever returning to Maine. Christie, Dorothy Freeman, and the people who loved her scattered some of her ashes along the shore below the Newagen Inn. A pair of white Adirondack chairs mark the spot, a comfortable perch from which to contemplate the natural world. On a quiet morning when no gulls call and lobster boats are too far off to be heard, silent clouds propelled by invisible winds cast shadows on the eternal rock and the gray-green brine from which we all came and to which we all return.

Just below the chairs is a bronze plaque mounted on a split boulder, marking where Rachel Carson’s earthly remains were returned to the sea.

“But most all,” reads the inscription, “I shall remember the monarchs.”

E D G A R A L L E N B E E M is a freelance writer living in Brunswick. He has written about the cultural life of Maine since 1978 in such publications as Maine Times, Down East, Yankee, Boston Globe Magazine, The Forecaster, Maine Arts Journal, and Island Journal.

I N N OVAT I V E WAT E R F RO N T S , WAT E R F RO N T INNOVATO RS No room for complacency on the Maine coast and islands One town was forced to act boldly and, against its instincts, sought outside help to reinvent itself after a large industry closed. Another town patiently waited for the private sector to see opportunity on its waterfront, and then its elected and appointed officials rolled up their sleeves to negotiate a development plan that worked for all. Yet another community is engaged in balancing the diverse communities and geographies within its borders, aiming to maintain traditions and stay vital.

This collection, built around the theme of innovation, also introduces you to Luke Holden, a young entrepreneur who has learned how to have one foot on a lobster boat and the other in high-end, big-city restaurants.

And we survey the many efforts underway along the coast and on the islands to bring the 21st century equivalent of electricity—high-speed internet—to their communities. —T.G.

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Bu c ks p o rt: L i f e Af ter th e M i l l The town at the top of Penobscot Bay searches for its (new) heart and soul

B Y J I M B AU M E R / / P H OTO S B Y L I N D A C OA N O ’ K R E S I K

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aine has endured a litany of paper mill closures in recent years. These have been devastating to the communities that leaned heavily on the jobs and tax base these mills provided. But only one town moving into the state’s post-paper era can leverage its rich coastal assets.

When Bucksport’s Verso paper mill closed in 2014, eliminating 500 jobs, the community was already at work embracing a future that includes new uses of its waterfront, while leaning on an outside nonprofit to help the community find its new heart and soul.

Still, the demise of a mill whose history dates to the 1930s, isn’t easily glossed over. Some of the pain and loss has been captured powerfully by the town’s “poet laureate for life,” Pat Ranzoni, in her collection STILL MILL: Poems, Stories & Songs of Making Paper in Bucksport Maine 1930 – 2014.

In her introduction to STILL MILL Ranzoni wrote, “…what was happening in the Bucksport area was part of a larger, state, and country-wide loss of industry just as the coming of our paper mill had, in the first place, contributed

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to the industrialization of the Penobscot River, of the state of Maine and of the United States.”

Losing a legacy industry can cause people to “get stuck.”

Moving on often becomes difficult, but Bucksport’s response seems different. It may be because Bucksport hasn’t seen itself as a traditional mill town for a while, but rather, a town with a mill.

Andy Lacher, owner of BookStacks on Main Street, a downtown retail fixture since 1997, has seen the downtown hold its own, even as the fortunes of the mill have declined.

“While it might seem counter intuitive, I’m seeing more business now than when the mill was open,” said Lacher.

When Lacher launched BookStacks, he was one of just three retail stores along Main Street.

“Now there is a tanning salon, a wine bar, a gift and card shop, the Alamo (theater) is showing films regularly—downtown hasn’t dried up without the mill,” he said.

Echoing Lacher’s enthusiasm for Bucksport’s downtown is Brook Ewing Minner, executive director of Main Street Bucksport.

“I think that our waterfront presents opportunities for Bucksport that haven’t been fully realized.” — B RO O K M I N N E R

Nancy Minott

Sue Lessard

“Although the mill closure was a big hit to the town both financially as well as psychologically, people in town—and this included local government—knew that it was important to begin organizing and thinking about the future,” said Minner.

Building on Lacher’s enthusiasm for Bucksport’s downtown vitality, Minner highlights the natural assets inherent along the town’s waterfront area—which includes a marina, a park, as well as a waterfront walkway. Minner and Lacher recognize the potential represented by these assets bordering the Penobscot.

“I think that our waterfront presents opportunities for Bucksport that haven’t been fully realized,” she said.

Minner cites the expansion of the marina—which the town owns. “This has been profitable, yet there’s still room for growth,” Minner added.

Given that the waterfront provides a protected space for boats, an increase in the marina’s capacity would bring more boaters to the area, which feeds into the health of downtown merchants.

When Sue Lessard arrived in Bucksport in August 2015, hired to serve as interim town manager, she was surprised by what she encountered.

Andy Lacher

“When I arrived, it was pretty clear that the town was in a ‘look around and figure out what we’re going to do’ phase,” she said.

Lessard credits local government with planning and preparing for a possible mill closure.

“There was a recognition by those in charge that with some correction, Bucksport could maintain services without raising the tax rate through the roof,” she said. “Now, three years later, we’re in the range and often lower with our tax rate than other full-service communities in the area.”

The town council had been setting aside funds for the possibility that the mill might close. Assessments made sure the mill’s value wasn’t inflated.

While admitting that the mill “closed sooner than anyone thought it would,” Lessard says this foresight created a fund balance of $8 million that allowed for the continuation of services.

A committee of residents and elected officials met to scrutinize expenditures so the town would be as efficient and economical as possible. Initiating zero-sort recycling, not filling the vacant finance director position, restructuring public works

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after the longtime director retired, contracting with the YMCA for recreation—all were implemented during that process.

The Orton Family Foundation is the philanthropic arm of The Vermont Country Store, a catalog, retail, and e-commerce business based in Manchester, Vermont. The nonprofit provides funding, along with technical and advisory resources, to communities like Bucksport that are experiencing an economic loss.

Orton’s model focuses on supporting and improving local decision-making, creating a shared sense of belonging, and ultimately seeks to strengthen the social, cultural, and economic vibrancy of the community.

John Paul LaLonde, a former mill worker who is a member of the core group of Bucksport’s Community Heart & Soul team, recalls an October 2015 meeting at which several community-based stakeholders were present, including the Maine Community Foundation, Maine Development Foundation, and representatives from Orton and Bangor Savings Bank.

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“What was attractive about Orton’s model was that it involved the entire community,” LaLonde remembered. “Their approach pushes members of the core team to understand the demographics before going out and collecting information and data.”

LaLonde recognizes that while the demolition of the mill is tough for many former workers to come to terms with, it also makes moving on the reality for Bucksport as a community with an eye to the future.

“There are no false expectations or hopes that the mill might reopen,” he said.

Jane LaFleur, who serves as a consultant and coach to Bucksport’s group, explains that the first step in Heart & Soul is to determine the town’s interest in signing on for the four phases that follow over a two-year period. Participating communities all hire their own coordinator.

Bucksport hired former teacher Nancy Minott to serve as entire industrial-zoned site,” ticking off the considerable watercoordinator, a role she’s occupied (in a part-time capacity) since front assets represented at the former paper mill site, such as October 2016. electrical infrastructure, ample fresh and saltwater supply, active “The coordinator’s job is to walk the community through rail, deep water river access—existing dock and wharf—close the phases of the process,” said Lafleur. proximity to I-95, and a large amount of available land area.

Lafleur, who has coached teams in other Maine communiA spur line from the natural gas conduit that crosses Maine ties, has been favorably impressed by the Bucksport team. In from Nova Scotia also is available at the former mill site. another town struggling with a mill closure, the initiative was In early 2018, the town learned that Whole Oceans, a slower getting off the ground. In Bucksport, the community Maine-based company, wants to buy much of the mill site to immediately “jumped in and got behind it.” build a land-based salmon farm. The planned investment could “The strength of Bucksport’s group is obviously the people total $250 million. in the community,” explained Lafleur. “It’s not simply someone Part of the redevelopment process involved hiring a concoming in from the outside and telling them what to do, but sultant, Elan Planning, Design & Architecture out of Saratoga connecting people in the community and strengthening part- Springs, New York. nerships that already existed.”

Lisa Nagle, Elan’s principal, said Bucksport residents will see According to Lafleur, during Bucksport’s Heart & Soul the conceptual plan next spring. process, it’s been clear what the town views as its assets.

“We’ve been working with various groups in Bucksport— “What our team heard is like Community Heart & Soul— that people love the waterfront,” in soliciting community-wide said Lafleur. “They also love the to help us in planning,” “There are no false expectations or hopes input open spaces outside of town said Nagle. and Bucksport is 18 miles from While no one has a crystal that the mill might reopen.” everything—that’s a real asset, ball, the industrial infrastructure too. But the people are the along the waterfront remains — J O H N PAU L L A L O N D E biggest asset and the positive attractive, especially for the right energy that they’ve brought to all kind of investor. of the potlucks, picnics, and the overall story-gathering—that’s It’s possible that a sign of things to come is represented something you don’t always see in places dealing with the closure by MaineWoods Biomass Exports, LLC, currently leasing a of a mill.” portion of the mill site (what was formerly the mill’s log yard) Lafleur indicates that the Heart & Soul process is set to for wood handling, debarking, and shipping. This is just one wrap-up in spring. step in the possible procession of other businesses locating to When Verso sold its mill to a subsidiary of a Canadian scrap Bucksport’s port area. Art House, the company’s president and metal recycler the day after closing the plant, it left no doubt CEO, indicates that he has established contracts with European that papermaking in Bucksport was finished.

Union buyers for wood chips to be shipped from Maine. He The new owner, AIM Development, is a subsidiary of states his goal is to create good-paying jobs with benefits.

American Iron and Metal, based in Montreal. While tasked to Lessard may have summarized it best when asked about redevelop the 275-acre mill site, AIM’s first order of business Bucksport’s future, post-papermaking. was the demolition of the former mill structure.

“It is an amazing community—driven by the spirit of those What’s currently in the works is a plan to redevelop the mill who live and work and have businesses here. They believe in this site sitting prominently beside the Penobscot River, most likely place and its future. No—it’s not nirvana—but it is a whole diffor some type of industrial use. No one is certain what that ferent approach to loss. No one is looking to be fixed or saved. might look like at this point.

They are looking to make their own way forward.”

Lessard envisions a diverse mix of industrial, commercial, and service-type businesses replacing the mill and its jobs. The J I M B AU M E R is a freelance writer living in Brunswick. He has town has good schools, and because of that, people are moving been writing about people and place for the past 15 years. He’s also into Bucksport. the author of two books about Moxie, the iconic soft drink with a Jeff McLin, AIM Development’s vice president, reported rabid cult-like following in New England. the company is “exploring redevelopment opportunities for the

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G r a bbi n g th e Di gi tal F u tu re Islands explore ways to bring fast internet to boost economies, support health care and education, and sustain population

B Y J E N N I F E R VA N A L L E N

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alcolm Fernald’s internet service has been just fast enough to maintain a web site for his family business, the Islesford Artists Gallery. But if a potential customer wants to get a closer look at a painting or two online, he’s out of luck.

“Trying to upload high-quality images to email to a person would either take forever or not happen at all,” says Fernald, 34, a lobsterman who is chairman of the board of selectmen for the town of Cranberry Isles.

For Fernald, even beyond boosting business, an internet upgrade is critical to sustaining the way of life that has always felt like a refuge for him, and to maintaining his family’s ties to Islesford that have endured for generations. He’s banking on fast, reliable internet service to open up new social and economic opportunities for the town and reduce its reliance on fishing and tourism.

“Our economy is very dependent on lobstering,” said Fernald, who also chairs the town’s citizen broadband task

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force. “While that’s been strong for the last 20 years, it’s never a guarantee.”

In early 2018, the town learned it had won a $1.3 million grant from USDA to build a broadband network that’s faster than the national average—with download speeds of 25 to 100 megabits per second (mbps) and upload speeds of 5 to 20 mbps.

Installation began in late 2017.

Cranberry Isles is one of 34 Maine coastal and island communities actively pursuing improved internet speeds with the assistance of the Island Institute. The Institute hopes to get all of Maine’s 120 coastal and island communities connected to internet speeds that meet or exceed the national average by the year 2025.

“Broadband has emerged as critical to sustainability of island life,” said Briana Warner, economic development director for the Island Institute, publisher of Island Journal. “These people already have a geographic barrier. We want to make sure that a digital divide doesn’t make that barrier even bigger.”

Internet access is notoriously poor in rural Maine—below the level that the ConnectME Authority defines as “broadband,” and far below the speed standard set by the Federal Communications Commission, which is 25 mpbs for downloads, and 3 mpbs for uploads.

“In Maine—and for the islands in particular—it’s one of the huge holes in our ability to move forward,” said U.S. Rep. Chellie Pingree, who is a member of the House Rural Broadband Caucus. Pingree lives on North Haven.

In November, Pingree cosponsored The Broadband Connections for Rural Opportunities Program Act, which would make grants available to rural areas, funding between 50 percent to 75 percent of a broadband project’s cost.

“If we want to be prosperous nationwide we have to make sure everyone down to the last mile gets it, and encourage more funds to go into these last miles.”

The importance of faster internet emerged during conversations Warner held with islanders about their economic development priorities.

While residents weren’t necessarily clamoring for broadband, said Warner, the needs they identified—better access to healthcare, education, employment, new markets for small businesses, attracting more seasonal and year-round residents—all hinged on improved internet service.

“They were listing all these reasons why they were having problems, and they all led to the issue of terrible connectivity,” she said. Each community’s challenges are unique, but their stories about the digital divide are often the same.

Businesses couldn’t operate credit card machines. Artists who wanted to sell their goods online had to travel to the mainland to upload high-resolution photos. Summer visitors couldn’t extend their stays and potential new year-round residents were

Page Clason prepares to snake the fiber through a conduit on Islesboro.

“A house without internet is like a house without running water.”

— RO G E R H E I N E N

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“These people already have a geographic barrier. We want to make sure that a digital divide doesn’t make that barrier even bigger” — B R I A N A WA R N E R turned off because they couldn’t work remotely. Schoolchildren were sitting outside after dark doing homework on the steps of libraries—the only source of fast internet. The sick and elderly were having to make arduous trips to the mainland to see their doctors.

“Years ago, people looking for houses would ask about taxes, heating, and utilities,” said Andrea Galuza, a real estate agent in Arrowsic. “Now their first question is ‘What’s the internet access like?’”

A powerful example has been set by Islesboro, which embarked on an internet upgrade before the Island Institute’s efforts began.

In 2016, Islesboro residents approved a $3.8 million bond to build a broadband internet network which will provide access of 1 gigabit per second—that’s 40 times faster than the broadband standard set by the FCC and 300 to 500 times faster than what’s affordable to islanders now. Though this fiber optic service could be considered overkill for today’s island internet needs, the system had to be designed and constructed to be viable for future generations.

The network is owned by the town and operated by GWI. All subscribers pay a fee of $30 per month to cover the cost of connectivity and support, while the town pays off the construction bond and maintains the network infrastructure—which will bring a property tax increase of about 8 percent.

To Arch Gillies, broadband is just as critical to sustainability as other initiatives now underway, like the new preschool, and changes to town laws designed to stimulate more affordable multifamily housing for residents.

“There’s a realization that if we don’t do these kinds of things, we’ll fall behind the Midcoast pretty quickly,” said Gillies, chairman of Islesboro’s select board and a member of the broadband committee. “All the islands have summer residents who are very important to their economies. You have to look to the day when all these economies have to be much more varied in the event that tastes shift, and people say they’d rather vacation in Nova Scotia, Florida, or Australia.”

Roger Heinen, a former senior executive at Microsoft, began advocating for widespread internet access when he moved to Islesboro in 1996.

Before the upgrade, he was relying on a pricey point-topoint radio link that allowed him to work remotely. “It was weather dependent and had all sorts of issues, and it cost several

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thousand dollars, but it made it possible for me to work from my house, which was essential,” he said.

But it bothered him that his solution was beyond what most islanders could afford. “It caused this terrible problem of haves and have nots,” Heinen said. “Internet is an essential part of life now. A house without internet is like a house without running water.”

That’s why an important principle of the island's broadband plans was that all residents would pay the same rate and get the same level of service. Another key facet of the project was that it would be owned by the town and have on-island tech support from GWI. “It means we control our destiny,” said Gillies. “If it’s owned by someone else, they can always decide that it’s not profitable, or that we wouldn’t get some new aspect of technology. Also, we felt that we could do this at a better price and ultimately have better service than we might have gotten otherwise.”

But even beyond that was maintaining their fierce sense of independence that has always been one of the most cherished qualities of island life.

“This had to be a local solution to a local problem,” said Heinen. “No one was going to come to our rescue. It needed to be solved, and we had to step up and do it ourselves.”

In 2015, the Island Institute hired Tilson Technologies to assess internet infrastructure on 13 year-round islands, plus the seasonal Sutton Island, part of the Cranberry Isles. The study gauged how much residents were paying, how satisfied they were, and identified possible upgrades.

The Institute also held a broadband summit to help community leaders learn, network, and strategize. Since then, the Institute has been providing a wide variety of support services that include helping community leaders: write grants, research financing options, negotiate with internet service providers, and form municipally-authorized broadband task forces. The Institute also has awarded planning grants of up to $10,000 to fund engineered infrastructure designs that communities can put out to bid.

“We’re trying to fill whatever gaps the community has to help keep the projects moving,” said Stephenie MacLagan, an economic development associate at the Institute.

For the 3 Bridged Island Task Force that includes Arrowsic, Georgetown, and Southport, all three towns financially supported an engineering study, which was matched by a planning grant from the Island Institute.

Roger Heinen in the building on Islesboro that houses all customer fiber lines.

On Vinalhaven, the Institute cosponsored a digital education workshop to increase know-how on programs like Quick Books. Events like this are often held at the public library, which has internet that’s 100 times faster than what they have at their homes. Even beyond showing residents how to reach more customers and work more efficiently, “These workshops show what’s possible with broadband,” MacLagan said.

But even without the Institute’s assistance, community leaders have pursued internet upgrades at a pace that has surpassed all expectations.

“Initially we thought a few communities would take it up, but it would be a long, hard slog,” said Warner. “Now 34 communities are actively pursuing better broadband. Our basic aspirations have been blown out of the water. These communities are taking control of their own digital futures. But they’re used to that. As islanders, they’ve had to do that forever.”

Even in areas where internet providers have made upgrades, longer-term solutions are being pursued. In the Hancock County town of Brooklin, Fairpoint upgraded DSL system in 2017 to provide 25/3 service.

“Fairpoint’s efforts have taken care of much of us for the short term,” said Bill Cohen, chairman of the board of selectmen in Brooklin. “The question is, what do we want as a community to position ourselves for 20 years out?”

Cohen sees broadband as a key to attracting more families and bolstering enrollment in local schools.

“We have been seeing a stagnation of young people moving into the community,” said Cohen, who is chair of the Brooklin Broadband Committee. “Local education is part of our vitality.

But the fewer kids you have, the more expensive it is. And the less diverse.”

While many residents surveyed by Tilson for the Island Institute said they would be willing to pay more for better internet access, in some cases they may end up paying less than the expensive workarounds they’re paying for now. In the town of Cranberry Isles, the upgraded service will be available in three levels, for $65, $75, or $100 a month for residents. Though Fernald would pay at least $23 more a month for internet than he is paying now, and he estimates his property taxes will be about $17 a month higher to pay for the infrastructure, the upgrades will allow him to cut expenses elsewhere.

For example, the upgraded service is expected to be fast enough for VOIP (Voice Over Internet Protocol), so he’ll be able to use it to make calls, which means he will be able to cancel his landline. He’ll be able to stream his favorite shows, and eventually get rid of satellite TV, which costs $100 a month.

In Georgetown, Mark Aukeman, who works remotely as a technology consultant, was paying $175 per month to rent office space in Bath—just for internet service. Whatever the new system costs, said Aukeman, who chairs the 3 Bridged Islands Broadband Task Force, “It’s still going to be cheaper than renting an office.”

J E N N I F E R VA N A L L E N is a Yarmouth-based writer and author of four books. Her work has also appeared in The Washington Post, Runner's World, The New York Times, The Working Waterfront and Mainebiz. Learn more about her work at jenvanallen.com.

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Th e L a b or atory by th e S ea Biological Lab’s connection to nature informs its work

B Y C A R L L I T T L E / / P H OTO S B Y L I N D A C OA N O ' K R E S I K

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n the late 1800s, biology was becoming a real science and profession. The discoveries of Alexander Humboldt, the publication of Darwin’s The Origin of Species, and the classification work of Jean Louis Rodolphe Agassiz had spurred interest in diversity and evolution.

One place where biologists could easily access many life forms was the marine environment. At the turn of the 19th century, marine research stations were being set up all over the world. One of them, the Tufts Summer School of Biology, opened at Potts Point in South Harpswell on Casco Bay in 1898. The first summer, eight students and their teachers hauled seawater half a mile to a small cottage that served as laboratory and dorm.

In 1920, affluent Bostonian George B. Dorr, the main driver behind the creation of Acadia National Park, decided there should be a marine research station on Mount Desert Island.

He knew about the South Harpswell laboratory and came up

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with a plan to move it to the former Thomas Emery Farm in Salisbury Cove. He touted the property’s beneficial qualities: “good wharfage opportunity, its picturesque character, its old farmhouse and the pure water…coming in a deep continuous channel from the open sea.”

The station would be a place for scientists to go in the summer to study marine organisms. Dorr felt the station would provide “a delightful contrast to Bar Harbor’s fashionable life.”

In fact, the arrangement aligned with the well-established rusticator tradition whereby college presidents, clergy, industrialists and other esteemed and well-off individuals and their families spent their summers on the island in retreat from East Coast cities. As Charles Eliot, president of Harvard put it, the scientists would be “invigorated, ready to do more valuable work the whole winter through in consequence of this climate boon and stimulating change.”

In recounting the history of the lab—which became The

MDI Biological Laboratory—Jerilyn Bowers, its development officer, explains how the physician-scientists who arrived in the 1920s and 1930s believed that marine organisms might help them address medical challenges. Physiologist Eli Kennerly Marshall (1889-1966), for example, wanted to understand how the body could retain drugs longer and thereby increase their effectiveness. In studying the physiology of the kidney, he discovered that certain fish had complex filtration units.

His studies of goosefish, caught in nearby waters, led to a new understanding of how the kidney functions.

Because the lab attracted scientists from around the world, the research was varied. One avenue of interest was environmental issues, including the effects of DDT and other toxins on fish and the impact of crude oil on sea birds. The underlying theme of the research is “finding the right model, whatever that is, to answer the question you are seeking to answer,” Bowers said.

End of Vacation Science The model of doing research where scientists would pack up and go away for a summer of study started “dying very rapidly in the 1980s,” notes Kevin Strange, Ph.D., MDI Bio Lab’s president since 2009. Indeed, the lab moved to a year-round operation in 2000. And while the research facility remains by the water—fronting on Upper Frenchman Bay—its connection to the marine environment has decreased in the last 20 or so years.

The setting remains important, however. “Rather than doing science in a bunker somewhere in the middle of a big city,” says Strange, the lab is “keeping people connected to the natural world,” a connection he feels has been lost in the biomedical sciences.

While biologists can still learn a great deal from marine organisms, Strange points to economic realities to explain the lab’s shift away from the sea at its doorstep. Not long after arriving at the lab, he asked his team to review all the National Institutes of Health grants using search terms related to marine organisms. Out of 35,000, they came up with 25.

Faced with this state of affairs, the lab sought to diversify its revenues, in part by finding ways to commercialize its work. Many marine labs are adopting this strategy to survive.

The Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences in Boothbay, for example, has taken up algae production. Its National Center for Marine Algae and Microbiota is a leading distributor of marine microalgae for science and industry.

In 2013, MDI Bio Lab spun off a for-profit company, Novo Biosciences, Inc., based on a molecular chemical compound, MSI-1436. First discovered by Michael Zasloff, M.D., Ph.D. in the dogfish shark on a visit to the lab in the 1990s, the

TO P : Jarod Rollins, faculty member and principal investigator at MDI Biological Laboratory, studies C. elegans, or roundworms, with the goal of understanding how life-extending interventions work across different species and applying what is learned to extend human health and longevity.

B OT TO M : The C. elegans, as seen through a microscope.

compound has been shown to facilitate dramatic repair and hasten regeneration of complex limb tissues and heart muscle. Novo Biosciences received a major NIH Small Business Innovative Research grant in 2017 to take the drug candidate to the next stage, testing for commercialization.

“A lot of the stuff that we’re doing with industry— companies incubating on campus, trying to form our own companies where it makes both economic and strategic sense—that was a dirty word 20 years ago,” Strange says, “but it’s the reality of the world and it’s the right thing to do, too.”

He points out that the lab is funded by the National Institutes of Health, not the National Academy of Sciences. “There’s a balance between pure discovery and where that discovery

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Kevin Strange, Ph.D., president of MDI Biological Laboratory in Bar Harbor since 2009, stands on the dock of the lab with Star Point in background.

OP P OSI TE: MDI Biological Lab’s campus.

might have real applications,” he avers, “and the trick is finding that balance.”

“We’re not studying stem cells,” Strange explains, “We’re studying the animals that live in nature that have phenomenal regenerative capacities.” Among those creatures are the zebrafish and the axolotl, a kind of salamander. Both have the amazing capacity to regenerate lost body parts.

Voot Yin, Ph.D. and other scientists at the lab have been studying these creatures to learn how regeneration works and how to trigger a similar mechanism in humans.

The lab produces most of its own test animals. Animal care technician Karlee Markovich shows a visitor immaculate incubating facilities where the tiny creatures are raised. The animals reproduce quickly in captivity and are relatively inexpensive to house and utilize.

Strange and his team remain realistic about finding a breakthrough. “If you had a heart attack and you could reduce the amount of scar tissue by 5 percent,” Strange explains, “you’d be doing handsprings.” If the new drug works, it would also have potential applications for MS, spinal cord regeneration, and burn healing.

Education Central “The Laboratory is a place for study and investigation, not for teaching,” wrote George B. Dorr at its inception. But today, education is a core part of its mission. The lab prides itself on its hands-on approach, offering 30 to 35 courses each year, training

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A $3 million bond issue approved by voters in 2014 allowed the lab to modernize and expand its infrastructure.

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Lynne-Beverly Staggs, a research assistant, examines zebrafish.

Adult axolotl

everyone from middle school students to practicing physicians and scientists. “It’s an important part of our economic diversification,” says Strange.

The lab is not interested in training more bench scientists.

“We really focus on what people can do with a science education, whether in business, politics, law—you name it.”

This effort relates to a bigger push to produce a more scientifically literate society, and to place knowledgeable people in decision-making positions. “We’re living in a period where science doesn’t seem to matter much,” he states. “We have an Administration that has no interest in science, and wants to remove it from every discussion it possibly can.” Nevertheless, Strange believes science will “always prevail because it’s the way to understand the world around you.”

The lab enjoys close relationships with a dozen research and educational institutions across the state, including the Jackson Laboratory and College of the Atlantic, both on MDI. The collaboration aims to develop a technically skilled workforce through biomedical research training for undergraduates; provide research support to young faculty to increase their competitiveness for federal biomedical research grants; and improve Maine’s research infrastructure through a network of

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core facilities with state-of-the-art equipment.

“Young people coming up now have a much broader perspective of science,” says Strange. “They’re not going to go off into an ivory tower somewhere and close the door; they want to solve problems.” The lab initiated a one-week course last summer, “Bridging Disciplines: Navigating Successful 21st Century Careers in Biomedical Science,” inspired by a couple of University of Maine students who recognized the need for cross-disciplinary training to keep their studies relevant in a rapidly changing job market.

The lab has embraced the STEM movement and the increasing focus on entrepreneurship. At the same time, Senior Staff Scientist Jane Disney, Ph.D., the lab’s director of education, has been leading the effort to train citizen scientists.

“We’re trying to instill a sense of place in students,” she explains, so that they return home with the tools to test and measure. “People learn better when they have something invested in the data they’re developing,” she says.

The lab offers special summer programs to engage and educate visitors. For several years, it mounted exhibitions highlighting connections between art and science. Last year four artists were “embedded” in the lab.

James Godwin, Ph.D., who studies regenerative biology and medicine.

Additionally, the lab has increased its contribution to local, regional, and state economies. The lab has built two new facilities in recent years, using all Maine labor. Many of its 62 full-time employees live on Mount Desert Island. While the nearby Jackson Laboratory boasts a much larger work force, Strange believes that for its size the MDI Bio Lab has “a very substantial impact on this economy.”

He also insists that science and technology can “drive a robust economy.” He points to Maine’s “remarkable” number of R&D assets. Although the state lacks a long-term strategic plan to build on these assets, he sees no reason why it can’t be a regional leader in the field, considering its proximity to Boston. A $3 million bond issue approved by voters in 2014 allowed the lab to modernize and expand its infrastructure, which includes a new building, the Maine Center for Biomedical Innovation.

Asked where he’d like to see the lab in ten years, Strange first addresses capacity: “We need more scientists.” While the lab should stay small enough to be able to adapt and move quickly, he notes, it needs to be larger, with “more people colliding with each other.”

One of those colliders, Aric Rogers, Ph.D., left his career as a meteorologist after seeing a special on television about the

Karlee Markovich is an animal care technician at MDI Biological Laboratory’s animal facility who cares for more than 20,000 zebrafish.

genetics of aging.

“I was fascinated by the incredible discoveries that were being made in many different animal species,” he recalls. After completing post-doctorate research at the Buck Institute for Research on Aging in California, he made his way to the MDI Bio Lab where he works with C. elegans, a roundworm nematode the size of a grain of rice. His goal? To find new therapies that slow aging and prevent or treat age-related illnesses in humans.

As the MDI Biological Laboratory moves further into its second century, it remains the laboratory by the sea, but its mission has expanded. With support from the NIH, the Maine Technology Institute, and other funders, the lab is now recognized as a world leader in regenerative and aging biology and medicine research. From the beginning, the lab was clear in its focus: advance human health. Its current commitment to anti-aging and regenerative strategies takes this focus to a new and exciting level.

C A R L L I T T L E lives and writes in Somesville on Mount Desert Island. His most recent book is Paintings of Portland (with his brother, David). He is the communications manager at the Maine Community Foundation.

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– I NN OVATI V E WAT E RF RO N TS | WATE R F RO N T IN N OVATORS –

Fro m Sardi nes to Yach ts, Bel fa s t Tr ansf or m s Water f ron t City government, Front Street Shipyard collaborated to create a thriving working waterfront with public access

B Y TO M G RO E N I N G

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t may have been inevitable. A part of Belfast’s waterfront characterized by graffiti-covered, decrepit industrial buildings wouldn’t remain so for long, given the safe bet that is investing in Maine harbor-front property. But the story of how Front Street Shipyard became established on that same property—now characterized by multimillion dollar yachts parked in and outside large green, steel-sided buildings—might seem like an overnight success story.

In fact, it’s a story that owes its happy ending to two groups of people who saw opportunity, and who were willing to work to find a way for each to succeed. Cliché though it might sound, the Front Street Shipyard and Belfast’s city government truly achieved a win-win. It may not have come to fruition without a bit of legal innovation with a name only a lawyer could love: contract rezoning.

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The story begins with the demise of the sardine industry.

In 2001, the Stinson Seafood plant on the city’s northeasterly waterfront was for sale. Wayne Marshall, the city’s planner, remembers Stinson asking $1.3 million for the property.

“It was pretty much an unusual beast,” this 1,000-feet of shorefront that was dormant industrial, yet close to the heart of downtown. It was flat, a plus for redevelopment, yet narrow, hemmed in by Front Street. “A real constraint on the property was that all of it was in the flood plain,” Marshall explained, and any development would need state approval.

As the economy strengthened in the first decade of the century, the property drew interest from developers. Rather than allow a buyer to impose a vision, the city wanted a say in how this key property would develop.

“We established a contract zone goal statement.

We would negotiate what the terms were.”

— WAY N E M A R S H A L L

“We established a contract zone goal statement,” Marshall remembers. “We would negotiate what the terms were.”

Contract zoning allows municipalities to consider a range of development proposals, and to stipulate their own standards, and if both sides agree on a set of terms, a unique zone is created for an individual property. This provision is typically applied to larger properties.

In 2004, Tom Roberts, a would-be developer from New Jersey joined by four partners, applied to the city to redevelop the sardine plant as 22 residential condominiums, 14,000-squarefeet of retail space and offices, a restaurant, and a 62-slip marina offering boat repair and storage.

He agreed to begin negotiating with the city on a contract rezoning deal—the first time the city employed this mechanism.

Roberts unveiled a design for the new building that mimicked the opera house in Sydney, Australia, resembling two giant sails. It received tepid reviews from residents and city officials. But the city’s harbor committee, planning board, and city council worked with the developer. Marshall remembers more than 25 meetings with Roberts, who landed financing for his proposal in 2005.

One key provision the city wanted in any deal with Roberts was his approval of a long-planned public walkway along the harbor, through the project site. The walkway idea originated in the late 1990s, Marshall said, with a renewed effort to establish it when the Armistice Bridge—the former U.S. Route 1 bridge, now known locally as the footbridge—was rebuilt in 2003.

In its negotiations with Roberts, the city also worked to establish protections for a small lobster fleet and to maintain public access from both the harbor and land. The contract between the city and Roberts was inked, but despite the deal, Roberts and his partners sought to sell the property and the project, perhaps because of a souring real estate market. By June 2008, Roberts and his group were ready to bail. Investors dipped in their toes, but none committed.

By late 2009 and into early 2010,“The property was becoming increasingly derelict. You could see water through the building from the street side. The owner was doing nothing. It was a safety hazard,” Marshall said.

The fate of the property, and the city’s vision for a public waterfront walkway, hung in the balance. If the building remained decrepit for another five years, city councilors could be blamed for driving too hard a bargain.

In late 2010, the city learned of an inquiry about the property from four men: Taylor Allen, owner and operator of Rockport Marine; JB Turner, former president of boatbuilding company Lyman-Morse in Thomaston; Steve White, owner and operator of Brooklin Boat Yard; and Ken Priest of Kenway Composites.

The group planned not a boatyard, but a shipyard, capable of handling large yachts and commercial vessels at the Belfast site.

The city then took a bold step, filing a notice of violation in court, declaring the building dangerous. Though the safety concerns were real, the city’s action had the effect of pressuring the Roberts group to sell. The stand-off between the city and Roberts on the safety violations was resolved with a sale looming.

The new investors accepted what Marshall describes as non-negotiable terms—the harbor walk through the property, a dock for commercial fishermen, removal of the building in the worst shape, and the city retaining a $200,000 performance bond.

In December 2010, the new entity, Front Street Shipyard, purchased the property. The business demolished the troubled building in 42 days.

“It was unlike almost anyone else I’ve worked with,” Marshall said. Not only was the city taking the new company at its word, but the partners trusted the city. “I’m not sure a lot of people would have purchased a single-family home with these conditions.”

What followed has been described by both city officials and the shipyard as a love fest. The two parties have exchanged nearly 40 parcels of land, and right of ways and building height restrictions have been modified. And they were not city giveaways—the shipyard paid $600,000 for what had been a city parking lot.

“I remember it to this day,” said Turner, now president and general manager of Front Street Shipyard. “They had a vision for what they wanted Belfast to be,” he said. “They worked with us, arm in arm, to make everything possible that we wanted to do.”

Marshall echoes this recollection.

“I cannot overstate the trust arrangement between the two parties,” the planner said. “They had this vision to create a shipyard, not a boatyard,” and the city wanted to erase the “slum and blight” area while also creating public access. The

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planner credits the city councilors during this period as well as City Manager Joe Slocum: “They know the Maine coast.”

Construction began in January 2011, and in July of that year, the Front Street Shipyard opened its doors with a community picnic, with 450 attending. Marshall remembers seeing a 6-year-old boy operating the 165-ton travel-lift using a handheld toggle switch at the event.

But there was more.

“All of a sudden, Belfast was sort of on the map,” Marshall said, with large yachts, some from the Caribbean and Europe, which had come solely for the service at the yard. The city

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recently landed a $1.9 million federal grant to rebuild Front Street with upgraded curbs, sidewalks, higher-grade asphalt to allow large vessels to be hauled, and new water lines.

“We would not have seen one nickel of that if not for Front Street Shipyard,” he said.

And, of course, the city benefits from the property taxes paid by the shipyard and the 100-plus skilled employees, whose wages average over $18 an hour.

The shipyard has since upgraded its facility, adding the 440-ton boat lift, and constructing new buildings on site and purchasing the adjacent former Belfast Boat Yard. And last

PHOTO: TIM SHACKLEFORD/5IVELEAF PHOTOGRAPHY

spring, the company announced it would build a $4.5 million, 22,500-square-foot building tall enough to allow the large boat lift to roll through its doors.

What lessons were learned through this multiyear process?

“We created a zoning process that was flexible and could respect the business interests and the public,” Marshall said. The city council form of government can act decisively, while others with town meeting government would rely on public votes.

And Belfast was chosen to host the shipyard because it is a vibrant community. The captains and crews of these multimillion dollar yachts are comfortable staying in town for months at a time to consult with the company on repairs and upgrades.

“A lot of things went right,” Marshall said, but the key decision was having a vision. “It’s identifying upfront what’s important to you.”

The walkway was one of those important amenities, and it’s busy, year-round, with people of all ages.

“It’s probably the only shipyard in North America where you can actually walk through the travel-lift area,” Turner observed, but it’s more than a recreation area. “We brought a working waterfront back to Belfast.”

TO M G RO E N I N G is editor of Island Journal.

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– I NN OVATI V E WAT E RF RO N TS | WATE R F RO N T IN N OVATORS –

L uke H ol den’s ‘ Tr a p to Tab l e’ Adventu re Luke’s Lobster chain of restaurants is reinventing fishing business

Luke Holden, left, and Ben Conniff.

PHOTO : C O U RT ESY LU KE’S LO B ST ER

BY STEPHANIE BOUCHARD

Y

ou hear a lot of horror stories associated with Craigslist ads, but this is not one of them. You could say it’s a business success story that has big implications, maybe even revolutionary ones, for Maine’s lobster industry. But maybe it’s best described as—dare we say it?—a whale of a tale.

Ben Conniff was a freelance food writer who really wanted to ditch the freelance life and get an employed position in the food industry. He jumped on Craigslist to look for his golden opportunity. He found and applied for lots of counter service and back-of-house jobs, but nothing developed.

Then one day he saw an ad for his dream job. It was posted by a guy named Luke Holden, a native of Cape Elizabeth who grew up on lobster boats but was working in investment banking in New York City. (“I was content and happy to do that [lobstering] until my parents basically said that it was time to do something else with my Georgetown education,” Holden said.)

Holden’s Craigslist post read something, in essence, (very loosely, mind you) like this: “Opening up a Maine lobster shack in the East Village. I

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have no practical experience, but have great products and great familiarity and experience with Maine lobster shacks. Come help me do it.”

Conniff applied even though the only experience he had with lobster shacks was eating at the one on the wharf at Five Islands in Georgetown during childhood vacations. But he got the call and interviewed.

“I went in and met Luke and he actually had a good head on his shoulders and a really good business plan,” he said.

“I probably would have done it anyways because it sounded exciting,” he added, “but the fact that the plan sounded like it would work made it more appealing.”

It was mid-August 2009. Holden told him that people buy lobster seasonally (read: not in the winter) so they’d have to open within a month. This timetable would have rung alarm bells in a lot of people, but not Conniff. Instead, he said to his new business partner, “OK. Where are we now?”

They didn’t have a location yet. This still did not give him pause.

As it turns out, his willingness (or craziness) to roll with it

Today, there are 28 Luke’s Lobster restaurants in the U.S. in some of the country’s biggest markets… was a good thing, because what has happened since has been quite the ride.

With help from Holden’s father, a fisherman and lobster processor, they opened the first Luke’s Lobster that October, 30 days after signing the lease on their first location in Manhattan, and hit the ground running, learning fast on their feet.

“It was insane,” Conniff said.

Lobster Chain Today, there are 28 Luke’s Lobster restaurants in the U.S. in some of the country’s biggest markets, such as Boston, New York City, Chicago, and Miami. There’s also one in Tenant’s Harbor (more on that later), six in Japan and, as of this writing, one scheduled to open in Taiwan in the spring of this year.

Last year, the restaurants did more than $30 million in sales.

Pretty impressive stuff for a couple of young guys with no restaurant experience. But here’s where things really get interesting and where the potential for positive change to Maine’s lobster industry comes into play.

In 2012, just three years after going into the restaurant business, the pair decided to do something by all accounts rare in the restaurant industry and unheard of in the lobster industry: vertically integrate.

Holden and Conniff strongly believe in the farm to table— or in this case, trap to table—movement that is characterized by consumers who want to know where their food is coming from, how it is harvested, and who produced it. They are committed to sustainable fishing and business practices, delivering a quality product, and supporting fishermen and their communities.

“With someone like Luke—he’s really kind of started to crack the code, in a way, in being able to figure out how do you vertically integrate a supply chain that has historically been unintegrated,” said Briana Warner, economic development director of the Island Institute, publisher of the Island Journal. “That’s really the innovation here.”

“We employ a stakeholder model versus a shareholder model,” said Holden. “We look at everybody in our business, whether it’s our fishermen, our suppliers, our teammates.

And we look for win-wins. We don’t look at the business and make short-term decisions that just positively affect profits.

We think that type of decision-making process ultimately kills the business, and that’s not how we’re motivated as business managers.”

In order to meet the high standards they set for themselves

Luke Holden at the Maine Fishermen’s Forum in March.

P H OTO : J A C K S U L L I VA N

and their business, they needed more control over their supply chain, hence their vertical integration strategy.

They began Cape Seafood, a seafood processing plant in Saco, that prepares and packages lobster and crab for Luke’s Lobster restaurants. In 2017, the Cape Seafood team of about 150 people processed over 4 million pounds of lobster and about a million pounds of crab, said Holden. Most of the lobster and crab is sourced from Maine fishermen, he said, but they also buy from Rhode Island and Marine Stewardship Council-certified fisheries in Canada.

Then they put in place the clincher in their vertical integration strategy: They partnered with the Tenants Harbor Fishermen’s Co-op.

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Holden had to prove to the fishermen that he was serious and trustworthy.

Luke Holden, left, and Ben Conniff.

PHOTO: C OURTESY LU KE’S LO B ST ER

Cape Seafood buys 100 percent of the catch of the lobstermen in the co-op, said Holden, so instead of selling to whoever is offering the highest price on a given day, the co-op fishermen know where their product is going and know they will get a fair price. Luke’s Lobster and Cape Seafood get a dependable product source and the quality they want.

For the co-op fishermen, the partnership with Cape Seafood offers them the ability to run a leaner business, potentially earn a few extra nickels per pound (which adds up over pounds and time), and share in the revenues generated when Cape Seafood sells products made with lobster harvested by coop members to retailers such as Luke’s Lobster or Whole Foods.

They also get to work with a trustworthy partner that respects and understands them and their business. And that’s no small thing in the lobstering world, where distrust between buyers and lobster harvesters is commonplace, said Josh Miller, a lobsterman from Tenants Harbor and a member of the co-op.

“If we can establish a relationship with a buyer we trust and we feel like we’re always getting a fair price and we’re not haggling and fighting, that’s a big benefit for us,” he said.

The partnership between the co-op fishermen and Cape Seafood was not a foregone conclusion. Holden had to prove to the fishermen that he was serious and trustworthy. So, he offered to open the first Maine-based Luke’s Lobster restaurant

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in Tenants Harbor on a wharf owned by Josh Miller’s family, where a restaurant had operated but had closed two years earlier.

He also agreed that 50 percent of the profits from that location would be shared with the fishermen in the co-op. The restaurant opened in 2016 and due to start-up costs, didn’t offer any profit sharing that first season. Numbers for 2017 had yet to be determined at the time of writing.

“Right off the bat, Luke went out on a limb with that,” Miller said. He’s continued to earn trust by not only visiting the Tenants Harbor location, but going out on the boats with the lobstermen and inviting them to participate in company events, like the opening of new Luke’s Lobster restaurants, and be part of the corporate team attending seafood conferences.

“They’re probably not the first buyers to go down to the shore and buy product directly off fishermen,” Miller said.

“There are other companies that do that, but the level of participation and interaction that they’ve had with us and we’ve had with them, I’ve never heard of that before.”

With their personal and business ethos of doing right by their customers and by the fishing community guiding them, it’s safe to say that their whale of a tale is likely only to get bigger. In other words, to be continued …

S T E P H A N I E B O U C H A R D is a freelance writer and editor

based in the Midcoast. Find her at www.stephaniebouchard.net.

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By John Wulpe Why do poets always have meadows A copse of wood nearby A pond, a terrace A place for afternoon tea And deep thoughts I have an old, ruined orchard And sometimes in spring and summer I have tea there Underneath the branches My trees are more Than a hundred years old They’re gnarled and twisted Like crones in a fairy tale Or a Walt Disney movie Like my apple trees I am old and twisted too The only difference is Each year, in spring They put on their best finery Clothes they wore when they were young And gambol like children on the lawn They may seem foolish In their white frocks But they know things About living and dying And coming to life again That I shall never know I’ve just started school And already the bell has rung MARCH 24, 2016

Painting by John Wulpe

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N.C. Wyeth, Maine Headland, Black Rock, Monhegan (detail), 1936-38

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Maine Isl ands PA I N T I N G S F RO M T H E FA R N S WO RT H C O L L E C T I O N The Farnsworth Art Museum’s collection of approximately 15,000 works focuses on American art from the 18th century to the present, with a special emphasis on artists who have lived or worked in Maine. Since the midnineteenth century, the state has been both host and inspiration to many of America's most noted painters. Drawn here by Maine’s physical beauty, they found subjects for their work that sustained them and, in some cases, defined their careers. The museum's earliest acquisitions thus often depicted not only Maine’s scenic coastline, but its stunning islands as well.

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JAN MARINUS DOMELA (1896-1973) Monhegan Island, 1938 Oil on canvas Bequest of Mrs. Elizabeth B. Noyce, 1997 Monhegan Island shows the village, harbor, and Manana Island in the distance under the bright sunlight and dramatic shadows of a late afternoon, during a time when Domela was painting with friend and resident island painter Jay Hall Connaway.

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GEORGE WESLEY BELLOWS (1882-1925) Beating Out to Sea, 1913 Oil on board Museum Purchase, 1945 One of the earliest acquisitions by the Farnsworth Museum, Beating Out to Sea is among the hundred works George Bellows painted on Monhegan Island during the summer and fall of 1913. This study reveals the immediacy of his experience with the sea, and energy that he felt and so quickly expressed with brush on board. This painting captures an instant but suggests everchanging color, the sound of pounding, deep, cold, water against slippery hard rock, and the feel of salt spray and heavy wet fog.

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GEORGE WESLEY BELLOWS (1882-1925) The Fish Wharf, Matinicus Island, 1916 Oil on panel Bequest of Mrs. Elizabeth B. Noyce, 1997 In the autumn of 1916 Bellows and his wife Emma stayed on Matinicus Island, a thriving fishing community 20 miles off the Maine coast. Bellows completed several paintings and many sketches of this productive trip. Later, he painted scenes from memory, and wrote that it is the artist who makes life more interesting or beautiful, more understandable or mysterious, or probably, in the best sense, more wonderful.

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SANFORD ROBINSON GIFFORD (1823-1880) Rocks at Porcupine Island near Mt. Desert, 1864 Oil on canvas Museum purchase, 1998 Sanford Robinson Gifford focused on the fleeting effects of light during his painting trips abroad and in the United States.

While Civil War battles raged elsewhere, Gifford joined fellow painter Jervis McEntee on a three-week visit to Mount Desert Island, filling sketchbooks with impressions of the landscape made during treks from a rustic cabin on Cadillac Mountain.

When he returned to his New York studio, Gifford made oil studies from his sketches of the island, one of which resulted in this painting. He rendered a sailboat in the distance against a cloudless blue sky, but in a single brush stroke, suggested in the foreground a tiny dinghy, buffeted upon swirling cold waters at the foot of a sheer cliff. Smashed by whitecaps, this unmoving rock at the edge of Porcupine Island appears too powerful to crumble from encroaching plant life or the force of salty spray.

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RAPHAEL SOYER (1899-1987) The Boatyard, Vinalhaven, c. 1950 Oil on canvas Gift of Mrs. Elizabeth B. Noyce, 1996 © Estate of Raphael Soyer, courtesy of Forum Gallery, New York, NY Raphael Soyer painted The Boatyard on the island of Vinalhaven, located just off the coast of Rockland, where he summered from 1957 until the end of his life. Vinalhaven’s attraction was, in Soyer’s words, that it was “naturally picturesque” and that it “acquired a peculiar charm that semi-abandonment and isolation give.” He established himself as a painter of the gritty urban scene in New York in the 1920s and 1930s, featuring ordinary men and women in their homes, at work, and at leisure, but landscape subjects became more frequent in his work upon his arrival in Maine.

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ROCKWELL KENT (1882-1971) Maine Coast, c. 1907 Oil on canvas Bequest of Mrs. Elizabeth B. Noyce, 1997 Rockwell Kent, one of several painters to follow the advice of the influential American painter and teacher Robert Henri, came to paint on Monhegan as early as 1905. Maine Coast exhibits Kent’s graphic vision and command of color in his emphasis of the stark beauty of island snow under a wintry sky. Kent financed his years at his self-built Monhegan home and studio by working alongside islanders as a lobsterman, well driller, and carpenter. His experience of the island’s dramatic sea and land in all seasons inspired him to embark on decades of far-flung northern adventures to Newfoundland, Alaska, Greenland and Ireland before returning to Monhegan 35 years later.

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ALVAN FISHER (1792-1863) Sutton Island, Mount Desert, c. 1848 Oil on canvas Museum purchase, 1960 Alvan Fisher painted a number of romantic views of Mount Desert Island based on sketches he made during a tour of the area in 1847 and 1848. This was at a time when dramatic depictions of Mount Desert scenery were causing a surge of artistic and popular interest in the island. Fisher emphasized the island’s rugged beauty, somewhat tempered by human intervention. In Sutton Island the darker shape of the foreground cliff acts as a framing device, like a theater curtain that is swept aside, to reveal the sailboats and tiny figures bathed in sunlight. Fisher’s scene is symbol and promise of growing tourism along Maine coastal waters.

is a speaker, poet, writer, teacher, and founder of Planetize the Movement. Visit www.drewdellinger.org DREW DELLINGER

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WILLARD LEROY METCALF (1858-1925) Ebbing Tide, Version 2, 1907 Oil on canvas Gift of the Estate of Sylvia Benson Lawson, 1982 Willard Metcalf was noted for his ability to evoke a sense of the actual experience of place in his paintings. The scene of pale rocky islands set against sparkling blue water and bright sky in Ebbing Tide exemplifies the best of Maine’s summer vistas on Penobscot Bay, while betraying little of the unhappiness felt by its author. Painted from the North Haven dock of friend and fellow artist Frank Benson during a time of retreat from his broken marriage, Metcalf ’s view depicts the Fox Island thoroughfare between North Haven and Vinalhaven islands. Metcalf dedicated the seascape to Benson, whose caring family helped him through his period of despondency.

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Andrew Wyeth, Rockland Light, 1961, watercolor on paper.

The Andrew and Betsy Wyeth Collection © 2018 Andrew Wyeth/Artists Rights Society (ARS)

ANDREW WYETH IN ROCKLAND THROUGH FEB.19, 2019 AT T H E F A R N S W O R T H A R T M U S E U M

In celebration of the Farnsworth Art Museum’s 70th anniversary, the Wyeth Study Center presents a selection of Andrew Wyeth’s Rockland watercolors. These watercolors, painted here in Rockland, have not been previously examined as a group and offer insight into Wyeth’s interest in Rockland, the closest city to his summer home.

Documenting select elements of the city’s architecture, working waterfront, and industrial history, these paintings express a long-term interest in Rockland that spans most of Wyeth’s artistic career.

Andrew Wyeth came to Maine as a teenager, and his relationship with Rockland began even before the Farnworth Art Museum was founded.

In the 1930s, Andrew’s father, N.C. Wyeth, brought his family up from Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania to spend summers in Port Clyde. At that time, Rockland’s shores included lime kilns burning 24 hours a day, while cargo and passenger ships came through the harbor powered by sail and steam.

The city’s busy main street would have provided a counterpoint to the rural coast of the St. George peninsula where Andrew spent the majority of his summers painting.

Created between 1940 and 1998, the works in this exhibition span the majority of Andrew Wyeth’s artistic career as well as much of Rockland’s transformation from an industrial city on the coast to the art capital of Maine. Wyeth’s role in the city’s transformation was confirmed in Rockland when the Farnsworth Art Museum opened the Center for the Wyeth Family in Maine, now referred to as the Wyeth Center, in 1998.

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Responding First, Fifteen Miles Out Islanders want to do their neighborly duty, but time and regulations add to challenges B Y G I D E O N D AV I D S O N

E

va Murray moved to Matinicus in 1987 to become the island school teacher. Matinicus then was like Matinicus now—a small island fishing town, 15 miles out to sea, resplendent in natural beauty and with a powerful sense of community, yet lacking many basic services.

Medical care was nonexistent. When Murray arrived, she remembers, there was “No one to go to if you got hurt, or got a burn—no one had any training and certainly no one had any obligation” to help.

A program that had brought licensed nurses to Matinicus had lapsed in the 1970s, and so island residents needed to rely on being able to get off Matinicus for serious medical attention. “We were the backcountry,” Murray said.

“Being on Matinicus was very much akin to mountain climbing—whether you can get off the island or not was almost entirely dependent on weather.”

Each of Maine’s island communities faces unique challenges. But one incontrovertible fact unites all of them—no matter the mode of transport, it takes time to get to the mainland, and it’s that time that consumes the thoughts of island first responders like Murray.

It’s also what makes it difficult to receive proper training.

And it means an emergency 9-1-1 call can take hours, not minutes, for the mostly volunteers who provide the service.

It’s the reason on-island, dependable emergency medical services are so important—because the island responders are not a ferry ride away and can get to the patient faster than anyone else.

In 1994, after nearly 20 years of no emergency medical care on Matinicus, Murray and four other residents got together and advocated for a licensed paramedic to come to the island to offer EMT training. This provided an essential first step and it circumvented the challenges facing island first responders—receiving adequate, on-site training. Daily ferry trips are prohibitively costly—both financially and temporally. Having someone come to Matinicus guaranteed that more people would be interested in taking the training.

Five people signed up, but what they didn’t realize when they started training was that they would be forced by law to form a state-sanctioned ambulance service.

Maine law holds that a basic-level EMT needs 52 hours of continuing education every year to maintain a license.

This training needs to be documented, certified, and archived. Only a few months after the five trainees on Matinicus received their licenses, Matinicus Island Rescue was born. Because it was a registered place of work, Matinicus Island Rescue also had to observe federal and state labor standards. If an organization fails random check-ups—which can happen when one or two people are in charge of all administrative, operational, and financial duties—then it is subject to fines. As Murray recalls, those five original trainees “had to become EMTs in every sense of the word,” which turned out to be much more than anyone had expected.

Ultimately, administrative demands became too much for Matinicus Island Rescue, and the service was disbanded.

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Vinalhaven’s EMS volunteers demonstrate how they train by performing CPR on a dummy. From left: Denise Hopkins, Jeff Aronson, Sarah Crossman, Marc Candage. PHOTO: J ACK SUL L I VA N Today, Murray is the only licensed EMT on Matinicus.

That Matinicus had a cohort of enthusiastic citizens prepared to dedicate their time to emergency services, yet couldn’t make it work, speaks to the second—and most correctable—challenge facing island EMS departments. Maine laws hold small volunteer EMS departments like the Matinicus service to the same standards as large city departments.

Comprehensive documentation is vital in any industry, especially in one with such high stakes as emergency medical services, but some leeway could be made for tiny departments serving remote areas. The argument could be made that less detailed record keeping is better than having no EMS. On larger islands, the calculus shifts slightly. Paperwork and administrative duties still take up a lot of effort for Swan’s Island’s and Vinalhaven’s ambulance services, but by far, the biggest obstacle is a lack of volunteers. This, too, can be traced back to time. A typical call for Swan’s Island EMS will have EMTs on scene in five minutes and the patient

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stabilized in 10. But the subsequent trip to the mainland in the ambulance on the ferry might add three or four hours.

And even though Vinalhaven has a medical center with a minor emergency room, Pat Lundholm, the island’s EMS director, says “a morning (emergency) call around 8:45 requires that you be off island until 2:30 or 3.” Helping fellow islanders in an emergency is never regretted, and responders acknowledge the satisfaction it provides, but many don’t volunteer because they simply don’t have the time.

Still, looking at how island communities react when something does go wrong, it’s clear that distance to the mainland isn’t the only trait these islands share. Zain Padamsee, who served as an Island Institute Island Fellow for two years on Frenchboro, described what happens when there is a fire on an island with no formal fire department: “One person runs and gets the brush truck, and another person calls everybody on the island, and everyone who’s on the island shows up and starts doing what they can. It’s a complete town effort.”

“It feels good to be the one who can help. It feels like being a good neighbor.” — E VA M U R R AY On Matinicus, there may not be an ambulance service, but Murray still provides emergency care. “There are some heartbreaking sides to it,” she said. “Sometimes, I see friends and neighbors at their lowest. But being the one who can comfort them as they’re evacuated more than makes up for it. It feels good to be the one who can help. It feels like being a good neighbor.”

FIRE BRIGADE

And on Swan’s Island, where I lived for a year as an Island Institute Island Fellow and a member of the island fire department, I’ll always remember one of my last days on the island, in the heat of August.

After almost 12 months, it was my first fire call.

The scene was at a far end of the island, and as I drove over I wondered at the lack of other cars on the road. I was worried we wouldn’t have enough people to fight the fire, that people were out lobstering and hadn’t heard the call or couldn’t get back to the harbor in time.

But when I rounded the last turn, I saw as many cars as I’d ever seen parked in one place on Swan’s. I saw the cars of people in the fire department and the cars of people not in the department, of fishermen and

fisherwomen, carpenters and teachers. While it was only the members of the fire department that were doing the actual firefighting work, seemingly the entire island population had shown up to see if they could, in some way, help.

A father and his son—both still in fishing gear—told me the situation was under control. It had been a minor brush fire.

Being a small island community often means that the resource in shortest supply is people. The administrative responsibilities and ambulance runs that last two or three times as long as they would for mainland departments, means that a disproportionate burden falls on a few dedicated people.

That makes day to day operations of an island emergency medical service exceedingly difficult. But that day on Swan’s Island, I knew that all those people who showed up reacted instinctively. Even on a larger island like Swan’s Island, there are simply not enough people for one to assume that someone else will answer the call. That’s how islands work.

When help is needed, it is given, and given unreservedly.

L ast year, G I D E O N D AV I D S O N lived and worked on Swan’s Island as an Island Institute Fellow. After his year on Swan’s, Gideon moved to New York City, where he works in operations at the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.

The Swan’s Island Fire Department, along with residents who are not members of the department, turned out to help battle a house fire.

PHOTO: COURT E SY DONNA WIE G LE .

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– FICTION –

H

THE LEDGE

H

B Y L AW R E NC E S A RG E N T H A L L

“The Ledge” was first published in The Hudson Review in 1959. Lawrence Sargent Hall was educated at Yale and worked as a professor of English at Bowdoin College for more than 40 years. Based on actual events and initially rejected by Esquire and The New Yorker, this story was selected by John Updike as one of the best of the century. Hall died in 1993. The copyright is held by Bowdoin College.The story is reprinted here by its kind permission.

O

n Christmas morning before sunup the fisherman embraced his warm wife and left his close bed. She did not want him to go. It was Christmas morning. He was a big, raw man, with too much strength, whose delight in winter was to hunt the sea ducks that flew in to feed by the outer ledges, bare at low tide.

As his bare feet touched the cold floor and the frosty air struck his nude flesh, he might have changed his mind in the dark of this special day. It was a home day, which made it seem natural to think of the outer ledges merely as someplace he had shot ducks in the past. But he had promised his son, 13, and his nephew, 15, who came from inland. That was why he had given them his present of an automatic shotgun each the night before, on Christmas Eve. Rough man though he was known to be, and no spoiler of boys, he kept his promises when he understood what they meant. And to the boys, as to him, home meant where you came for rest after you had had your Christmas fill of action and excitement.

His legs astride, his arms raised, the fisherman stretched as high as he could in the dim privacy of his bedroom. Above the snug murmur of his wife’s protest he heard the wind in the pines and knew it was easterly as the boys had hoped and he had surmised the night before. Conditions would be ideal, and when they were, anybody ought to take advantage of them. The birds would be flying. The boys would get a man’s sport their first time outside on the ledges.

His son at 13, small but steady and experienced, was fierce to grow up in hunting, to graduate from sheltered waters and the blinds along the shores of the inner bay. His nephew at 15, an overgrown farm boy, had a farm boy’s love of the sea, though he could not swim a stroke and was often sick in choppy weather. That was the reason his father, the fisherman’s brother, was a farmer and chose to sleep in on the holiday morning at his brother’s house. Many of the ones the farmer had grown up with were regularly seasick and could not swim, but they were unafraid of the water. They could not have dreamed of being anything but fishermen. The fisherman himself could swim like a seal and was never sick, and he would sooner die than be anything else.

He dressed in the cold and dark, and woke the boys gruffly. They tumbled out of bed, their instincts instantly awake while their thoughts still fumbled slumbrously. The fisherman’s wife in the adjacent bedroom heard them apparently trying to find their clothes, mumbling sleepily and happily to each other, while her husband went down to the hot kitchen to fry eggs sunny side up, she knew, because that was how they all liked them.

Always in winter she hated to have them go outside, the weather was so treacherous and there were so few others out in case of trouble. To the fisherman these were no more than woman’s fears, to be taken for granted and laughed off. When they were first married they fought miserably every fall because she was after him constantly to put his boat up until spring.

The fishing was all outside in winter, and though prices were high the storms made the rate of attrition high on gear.

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Nevertheless he did well. So she could do nothing with him.

People thought him a hard man, and gave him the reputation of being all out for himself because he was inclined to brag and be disdainful. If it was true, and his own brother was one of those who strongly felt it was, they lived better than others, and his brother had small right to criticize. There had been times when in her loneliness she had yearned to leave him for another man. But it would have been dangerous. So over the years she had learned to shut her mind to his hard-driving, and take what comfort she might from his unsympathetic competence. Only once or twice, perhaps, had she gone so far as to dwell guiltily on what it would be like to be a widow.

The thought that her boy, possibly because he was small, would not be insensitive like his father, and the rattle of dishes and smell of frying bacon downstairs in the kitchen shut off from the rest of the chilly house, restored the cozy feeling she had had before she was alone in bed. She heard them after a while go out and shut the back door.

Under her window she heard the snow grind dryly beneath their boots, and her husband’s sharp, exasperated commands to the boys. She shivered slightly in the envelope of her own warmth. She listened to the noise of her son and nephew talking elatedly. Twice she caught the glimmer of their lights on the white ceiling above the window as they went down the path to the shore. There would be frost on the skiff and freezing suds at the water’s edge. She herself used to go gunning when she was younger; now, it seemed to her, anyone going out like that on Christmas morning had to be incurably male.

They would none of them think about her until they returned and piled the birds they had shot on top of the sink for her to dress.

Ripping into the quiet predawn cold she heard the hot snarl of the outboard taking them out to the boat. It died as abruptly as it had burst into life. Two or three or four or five minutes later the big engine broke into a warm reassuring roar.

He had the best of equipment, and he kept it in the best of condition. She closed her eyes. It would not be too long before the others would be up for Christmas. The summer drone of the exhaust deepened. Then gradually it faded in the wind until it was lost at sea, or she slept.

The engine had started immediately in spite of the temperature. This put the fisherman in a good mood. He was proud of his boat. Together he and the two boys heaved the skiff and outboard onto the stern and secured it athwartships. His son went forward along the deck, iridescent in the ray of the light the nephew shone through the windshield, and cast the mooring pennant loose into darkness. The fisherman swung to starboard, glanced at his compass, and headed seaward down the obscure bay.

There would be just enough visibility by the time they reached the headland to navigate the crooked channel between the islands. It was the only nasty stretch of water. The fisherman had done it often in fog or at night—he always swore he could go anywhere in the bay blindfolded—but there was no sense in taking chances if you didn’t have to. From the mouth of the channel he could lay a straight course for Brown Cow Island, anchor the boat out of sight behind it, and from the skiff set their tollers off Devil’s Hump 300 yards to seaward. By then the tide would be clearing the ledge and they could land and be ready to shoot around half tide.

It was early, it was Christmas, and it was farther out than most hunters cared to go in this season of the closing year, so that he felt sure no one would be taking possession ahead of them. He had shot thousands of ducks there in his day. The Hump was by far the best hunting. Only thing was you had to plan for the right conditions because you didn’t have too much time. About four hours was all, and you had to get it before three in the afternoon when the birds left and went out to sea ahead of nightfall.

They had it figured exactly right for today. The ledge would not be going under until after the gunning was over, and they would be home for supper in good season. With a little luck the boys would have a skiff-load of birds to show for their first time outside. Well beyond the legal limit, which was no matter. You took what you could get in this life, or the next man made out and you didn’t.

The fisherman had never failed to make out gunning from Devil’s Hump. And this trip, he had a hunch, would be above ordinary. The easterly wind would come up just stiff enough, the tide was right, and it was going to storm by tomorrow morning so the birds would be moving. Things were perfect.

The old fierceness was in his bones. Keeping a weather eye to the murk out front and a hand on the wheel, he reached over and cuffed both boys playfully as they stood together close to the heat of the exhaust pipe running up through the center of the house. They poked back at him and shouted above the drumming engine, making bets as they always did on who would shoot the most birds. This trip they had the thrill of new guns, the best money could buy, and a man’s hunting ground. The black retriever wagged at them and barked. He was too old and arthritic to be allowed in December water, but

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he was jaunty anyway at being brought along.

Groping in his pocket for his pipe, the fisherman suddenly had his high spirits rocked by the discovery that he had left his tobacco at home. He swore. Anticipation of a day out with nothing to smoke made him incredulous. He searched his clothes, and then he searched them again, unable to believe the tobacco was not somewhere. When the boys inquired what was wrong he spoke angrily to them, blaming them for being in some devious way at fault. They were instantly crestfallen and willing to put back after the tobacco, though they could appreciate what it meant only through his irritation. But he bitterly refused. That would throw everything out of phase. He was a man who did things the way he set out to do.

He clamped his pipe between his teeth, and twice more during the next few minutes he ransacked his clothes in disbelief.

He was no stoic. For one relaxed moment he considered putting about and gunning somewhere nearer home. Instead he held his course and sucked the empty pipe, consoling himself with the reflection that at least he had whiskey enough if it got too uncomfortable on the ledge. Peremptorily he made the boys check to make certain the bottle was really in the knapsack with the lunches where he thought he had taken care to put it. When they reassured him he despised his fate a little less.

The fisherman’s judgment was as usual accurate. By the time they were abreast of the headland there was sufficient light so that he could wind his way among the reefs without slackening speed. At last he turned his bows toward open ocean, and as the winter dawn filtered upward through long layers of smoky cloud on the eastern rim his spirits rose again with it.

He opened the throttle, steadied on his course, and settled down to the two-hour run. The wind was stronger but seemed less cold coming from the sea. The boys had withdrawn from the fisherman and were talking together while they watched the sky through the windows. The boat churned solidly through a light chop, flinging spray off her flaring bows. Astern the headland thinned rapidly till it lay like a blackened sill on the gray water. No other boats were abroad.

The boys fondled their new guns, sighted along the barrels, worked the mechanisms, compared notes, boasted, and gave each other contradictory advice. The fisherman got their attention once and pointed at the horizon. They peered through the windows and saw what looked like a black scum floating on top of gently agitated water. It wheeled and tilted, rippled, curled, then rose, strung itself out and became a huge raft of ducks escaping over the sea. A good sign.

The boys rushed out and leaned over the washboards in the wind and spray to see the flock curl below the horizon. Then they went and hovered around the hot engine, bewailing their lot. If only they had been already set out and waiting. Maybe these ducks would be crazy enough to return later and be slaughtered. Ducks were known to be foolish.

In due course and right on schedule they anchored at midmorning in the lee of Brown Cow Island. They put the skiff overboard and loaded it with guns, knapsacks, and tollers. The boys showed their eagerness by being clumsy. The fisherman showed his in bad temper and abuse, which they silently accepted in the absorbed tolerance of being boys. No doubt they laid it to lack of tobacco.

By outboard they rounded the island and pointed due east in the direction of a ridge of foam which could be seen whitening the surface 300 yards away. They set the decoys in a broad, straddling vee opening wide into the ocean. The fisherman warned them not to get their hands wet, and when they did he made them carry on with red and painful fingers, in order to teach them. Once the last toller was bobbing among his fellows, brisk and alluring, they got their numbed fingers inside their oilskins and hugged their warm crotches. In the meantime the fisherman had turned the skiff toward the patch of foam where as if by magic, like a black glossy rib of earth, the ledge had broken through the belly of the sea.

Carefully they inhabited their slippery nub of the North American continent, while the unresting Atlantic swelled and swirled as it had for eons round the indomitable edges. They hauled the skiff after them, established themselves as comfortably as they could in a shallow sump on top, lay on their sides a foot or so above the water, and waited, guns in hand.

In time the fisherman took a thermos bottle from the knapsack and they drank steaming coffee, and waited for the nodding decoys to lure in the first flight to the rock. Eventually the boys got hungry and restless. The fisherman let them open the picnic lunch and eat one sandwich apiece, which they both shared with the dog. Having no tobacco the fisherman himself would not eat.

Actually the day was relatively mild, and they were warm enough at present in their woolen clothes and socks underneath oilskins and hip boots. After a while, however, the boys began to feel cramped. Their nerves were agonized by inactivity. The nephew complained and was severely told by the fisherman—who pointed to the dog, crouched unmoving except for his white-rimmed eyes—that part of doing a man’s hunting was learning how to wait. But he was beginning to have misgivings of his own. This could be one of those days where all the right conditions masked an incalculable flaw.

If the fisherman had been alone, as he often was, stopping off when the necessary coincidence of tide and time occurred

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on his way home from hauling trawls, and had plenty of tobacco, he would not have fidgeted. The boys being nervous made him nervous. He growled at them again. When it came it was likely to come all at once, and then in a few moments be over.

He warned them not to slack off, never to slack off, to be always ready. Under his rebuke they kept their tortured peace, though they could not help shifting and twisting until he lost what patience he had left and bullied them into lying still. A duck could see an eyelid twitch. If the dog could go without moving so could they.

“Here it comes!” the fisherman said tersely at last.

The boys quivered with quick relief. The flock came in downwind, quartering slightly, myriad, black, and swift.

“Beautiful—” breathed the fisherman’s son.

“All right,” said the fisherman, intense and precise. “Aim at singles in the thickest part of the flock. Wait for me to fire and then don’t stop shooting till your gun’s empty.” He rolled up onto his left elbow and spread his legs to brace himself.

The flock bore down, arrowy and vibrant, then a hundred yards beyond the decoys it veered off.

“They’re going away!” the boys cried, sighting in.

“Not yet!” snapped the fisherman. “They’re coming round.”

The flock changed shape, folded over itself, and drove into the wind in a tight arc. “Thousands—” the boys hissed through their teeth. All at once a whistling storm of black and white broke over the decoys.

“Now!” the fisherman shouted. “Perfect!” And he opened fire at the flock just as it hung suspended in momentary chaos above the tollers. The three pulled at their triggers and the birds splashed into the water, until the last report went off unheard, the last smoking shell flew unheeded over their shoulders, and the last of the routed flock scattered diminishing, diminishing, diminishing in every direction.

Exultantly the boys dropped their guns, jumped up and scrambled for the skiff.

“I’ll handle that skiff!” the fisherman shouted at them. They stopped. Gripping the painter and balancing himself he eased the skiff into the water stern first and held the bow hard against the side of the rock shelf the skiff had rested on. “You stay here,” he said to his nephew. “No sense in all three of us going in the boat.”

The boy on the reef gazed at the gray water rising and falling hypnotically along the glistening edge. It had dropped about a foot since their arrival. “I want to go with you,” he said in a sullen tone, his eyes on the streaming eddies.

“You want to do what I tell you if you want to gun with me,” answered the fisherman harshly. The boy couldn’t swim, and he wasn’t going to have him climbing in and out of the skiff any more than necessary. Besides he was too big.

The fisherman took his son in the skiff and cruised round and round among the decoys picking up dead birds. Meanwhile the other boy stared unmoving after them from the highest part of the ledge. Before they had quite finished gathering the dead birds, the fisherman cut the outboard and dropped to his knees in the skiff. “Down!” he yelled. “Get down!” About a dozen birds came tolling in. “Shoot—shoot!” his son hollered from the bottom of the boat to the boy on the ledge.

The dog, who had been running back and forth whining, sank to his belly, his muzzle on his forepaws. But the boy on the ledge never stirred. The ducks took late alarm at the skiff, swerved aside and into the air, passing with a whirr no more than 50 feet over the head of the boy, who remained on the ledge like a statue, without his gun, watching the two crouching in the boat.

The fisherman’s son climbed onto the ledge and held the painter. The bottom of the skiff was covered with feathery black-and-white bodies with feet upturned and necks lolling. He was jubilant.

“We got 27!” he told his cousin. “How’s that? Nine apiece. Boy—” he added, “what a cool Christmas!”

The fisherman pulled the skiff onto its shelf and all three went and lay down again in anticipation of the next flight. The son, reloading, patted his shotgun affectionately. “I’m going to get me ten next time,” he said. Then he asked his cousin, “Whatsamatter—didn’t you see the strays?”

“Yeah,” the boy said.

“How come you didn’t shoot at ’em?”

“Didn’t feel like it,” replied the boy, still with a trace of sullenness.

“You stupid or something?” The fisherman’s son was astounded. “What a highlander!” But the fisherman, though he said nothing, knew that the older boy had had an attack of ledge fever.

“Cripes!” his son kept at it. “I’d at least of tried.”

“Shut up,” the fisherman finally told him, “and leave him be.”

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At slack water three more flocks came in, one right after the other, and when it was over, the skiff was half full of clean, dead birds. During the subsequent lull they broke out the lunch and ate it all and finished the hot coffee. For a while the fisherman sucked away on his cold pipe. Then he had himself a swig of whiskey.

The boys passed the time contentedly jabbering about who shot the most—there were 92 all told—which of their friends they would show the biggest ones to, how many each could eat at a meal provided they didn’t have to eat any vegetables.

Now and then they heard sporadic distant gunfire on the mainland, at its nearest point about two miles to the north. Once far off they saw a fishing boat making in the direction of home.

At length the fisherman got a hand inside his oilskins and produced his watch.

“Do we have to go now?” asked his son.

“Not just yet,” he replied. “Pretty soon.” Everything had been perfect. As good as he had ever had it. Because he was getting tired of the boys’ chatter he got up, heavily in his hip boots, and stretched. The tide had turned and was coming in, the sky was more ashen, and the wind had freshened enough so that whitecaps were beginning to blossom. It would be a good hour before they had to leave the ledge and pick up the tollers. However, he guessed they would leave a little early.

On account of the rising wind he doubted there would be much more shooting. He stepped carefully along the back of the ledge, to work his kinks out. It was also getting a little colder.

The whiskey had begun to warm him, but he was unprepared for the sudden blaze that flashed upward inside him from belly to head. He was standing looking at the shelf where the skiff was. Only the foolish skiff was not there!

For the second time that day the fisherman felt the deep vacuity of disbelief. He gaped, seeing nothing but the flat shelf of rock. He whirled, started toward the boys, slipped, recovered himself, fetched a complete circle, and stared at the unimaginably empty shelf. Its emptiness made him feel as if everything he had done that day so far, his life so far, he had dreamed. What could have happened? The tide was still nearly a foot below. There had been no sea to speak of.

The skiff could hardly have slid off by itself. For the life of him, consciously careful as he inveterately was, he could not now remember hauling it up the last time. Perhaps in the heat of hunting he had left it to the boy. Perhaps he could not remember which was the last time.

“Christ—” he exclaimed loudly, without realizing it because he was so entranced by the invisible event.

“What’s wrong, Dad?” asked his son, getting to his feet.

The fisherman went blind with uncontainable rage. “Get back down there where you belong!” he screamed. He scarcely noticed the boy sink back in amazement. In a frenzy he ran along the ledge thinking the skiff might have been drawn up at another place, though he knew better. There was no other place.

He stumbled, half falling, back to the boys who were gawking at him in consternation, as though he had gone insane.

“God damn it!” he yelled savagely, grabbing both of them and yanking them to their knees. “Get on your feet!”

“What’s wrong?” his son repeated in a stifled voice.

“Never mind what’s wrong,” he snarled. “Look for the skiff—it’s adrift!” When they peered around he gripped their shoulders, brutally facing them about. “Downwind—” He slammed his fist against his thigh. “Jesus!” he cried, struck to madness at their stupidity.

At last he sighted the skiff himself, magically bobbing along the grim sea like a toller, a quarter of a mile to leeward on a direct course for home. The impulse to strip himself naked was succeeded instantly by a queer calm. He simply sat down on the ledge and forgot everything except the marvelous mystery.

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As his awareness partially returned he glanced toward the boys. They were still observing the skiff speechlessly. Then he was gazing into the clear young eyes of his son.

“Dad,” asked the boy steadily, “what do we do now?”

That brought the fisherman upright. “The first thing we have to do,” he heard himself saying with infinite tenderness as if he were making love, “is think.”

“Could you swim it?” asked his son.

He shook his head and smiled at them. They smiled quickly back, too quickly. “A hundred yards, maybe, in this water. I wish I could,” he added. It was the most intimate and pitiful thing he had ever said. He walked in circles round them, trying to break the stall his mind was left in.

He gauged the level of the water. To the eye it was quite stationary, six inches from the shelf at this second. The fisherman did not have to mark it on the side of the rock against the passing of time to prove to his reason that it was rising, always rising. Already it was over the brink of reason, beyond the margins of thought—a senseless measurement. No sense to it.

All his life the fisherman had tried to lick the element of time by getting up earlier and going to bed later, owning a faster boat, planning more than the day would hold, and tackling just one other job before the deadline fell. If, as on rare occasions he had the grand illusion, he ever really had beaten the game, he would need to call on all his reserves of practice and cunning now.

He sized up the scant but unforgivable three hundred yards to Brown Cow Island. Another hundred yards behind it his boat rode at anchor, where, had he been aboard, he could have cut in a fathometer to plumb the profound and occult seas, or a ship-to-shore radio on which in an interminably short time he would have heard his wife’s voice talking to him over the air about homecoming.

“Couldn’t we wave something so somebody would see us?” his nephew suggested.

The fisherman spun round. “Load your guns!” he ordered. They loaded as if the air had suddenly gone frantic with birds.

“I’ll fire once and count to five. Then you fire. Count to five. That way they won’t just think it’s only somebody gunning ducks. We’ll keep doing that.”

“We’ve only got just two and a half boxes left,” said his son.

The fisherman nodded, understanding that from beginning to end their situation was purely mathematical, like the ticking of the alarm clock in his silent bedroom. Then he fired. The dog, who had been keeping watch over the decoys, leaped forward and yelped in confusion. They all counted off, fired the first five rounds by threes, and reloaded. The fisherman scanned first the horizon, then the contracting borders of the ledge, which was the sole place the water appeared to be climbing. Soon it would be over the shelf.

They counted off and fired the second five rounds. “We’ll hold off a while on the last one,” the fisherman told the boys.

He sat down and pondered what a trivial thing was a skiff. This one he and the boy had knocked together in a day. Was a gun, manufactured for killing.

His son tallied up the remaining shells, grouping them symmetrically in threes on the rock when the wet box fell apart.

“Two short,” he announced. They reloaded and laid the guns on their knees.

Behind thickening clouds they could not see the sun going down. The water, coming up, was growing blacker. The fisherman thought he might have told his wife they would be home before dark since it was Christmas Day. He realized he had forgotten about its being any particular day. The tide would not be high until two hours after sunset. When they did not get in by nightfall, and could not be raised by radio, she might send somebody to hunt for them right away. He rejected this arithmetic immediately, with a sickening shock, recollecting it was a two-and-a-half-hour run at best. Then it occurred to him that she might send somebody on the mainland who was nearer. She would think he had engine trouble.

He rose and searched the shoreline, barely visible. Then his glance dropped to the toy shoreline at the edges of the reef.

The shrinking ledge, so sinister from a boat, grew dearer minute by minute as though the whole wide world he gazed on from horizon to horizon balanced on its contracting rim. He checked the water level and found the shelf awash.

Some of what went through his mind the fisherman told to the boys. They accepted it without comment. If he caught their eyes they looked away to spare him or because they were not yet old enough to face what they saw. Mostly they watched the rising water. The fisherman was unable to initiate a word of encouragement. He wanted one of them to ask him whether somebody would reach them ahead of the tide. He would have found it possible to say yes. But they did not inquire.

The fisherman was not sure how much, at their age, they were able to imagine. Both of them had seen from the docks

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drowned bodies put ashore out of boats. Sometimes they grasped things, and sometimes not. He supposed they might be longing for the comfort of their mothers, and was astonished, as much as he was capable of any astonishment except the supreme one, to discover himself wishing he had not left his wife’s dark, close, naked bed that morning.

“Is it time to shoot now?” asked his nephew.

“Pretty soon,” he said, as if he were putting off making good on a promise. “Not yet.”

His own boy cried softly for a brief moment, like a man, his face averted in an effort neither to give nor show pain.

“Before school starts,” the fisherman said, wonderfully detached, “we’ll go to town and I’ll buy you boys anything you want.”

With great difficulty, in a dull tone as though he did not in the least desire it, his son said after a pause, “I’d like one of those new 30-horse outboards.”

“All right,” said the fisherman. And to his nephew, “How about you?”

The nephew shook his head desolately. “I don’t want anything,” he said.

After another pause the fisherman’s son said, “Yes he does, Dad. He wants one too.”

“All right—” the fisherman said again, and said no more.

The dog whined in uncertainty and licked the boys’ faces where they sat together. Each threw an arm over his back and hugged him. Three strays flew in and sat companionably down among the stiff-necked decoys. The dog crouched, obedient to his training. The boys observed them listlessly. Presently, sensing something untoward, the ducks took off, splashing the wave tops with feet and wingtips, into the dusky waste.

The sea began to make up in the mounting wind, and the wind bore a new and deathly chill. The fisherman, scouring the somber, dwindling shadow of the mainland for a sign, hoped it would not snow. But it did. First a few flakes, then a flurry, then storming past horizontally. The fisherman took one long, bewildered look at Brown Cow Island three hundred yards dead to leeward, and got to his feet.

Then it shut in, as if what was happening on the ledge was too private even for the last wan light of the expiring day.

“Last round,” the fisherman said austerely.

The boys rose and shouldered their tacit guns. The fisherman fired into the flying snow. He counted methodically to five.

His son fired and counted. His nephew. All three fired and counted. Four rounds.

“You’ve got one left, Dad,” his son said.

The fisherman hesitated another second, then he fired the final shell. Its pathetic report, like the spat of a popgun, whipped away on the wind and was instantly blanketed in falling snow.

Night fell all in a moment to meet the ascending sea. They were now barely able to make one another out through driving snowflakes, dim as ghosts in their yellow oilskins. The fisherman heard a sea break and glanced down where his feet were. They seemed to be wound in a snowy sheet. Gently he took the boys by the shoulders and pushed them in front of him, feeling with his feet along the shallow sump to the place where it triangulated into a sharp crevice at the highest point of the ledge. “Face ahead,” he told them. “Put the guns down.”

“I’d like to hold mine, Dad,” begged his son.

“Put it down,” said the fisherman. “The tide won’t hurt it. Now brace your feet against both sides and stay there.”

They felt the dog, who was pitch-black, running up and down in perplexity between their straddled legs. “Dad,” said his son, “what about the pooch?”

If he had called the dog by name it would have been too personal. The fisherman would have wept. As it was he had all he could do to keep from laughing. He bent his knees, and when he touched the dog hoisted him under one arm. The dog’s belly was soaking wet.

So they waited, marooned in their consciousness, surrounded by a monstrous tidal space which was slowly, slowly closing them out. In this space the periwinkle beneath the fisherman’s boots was king. While hovering airborne in his mind he had an inward glimpse of his house as curiously separate, like a June mirage.

Snow, rocks, seas, wind the fisherman had lived by all his life. Now he thought he had never comprehended what they were, and he hated them. Though they had not changed. He was deadly chilled. He set out to ask the boys if they were cold. There was no sense. He thought of the whiskey, and sidled backward, still holding the awkward dog, till he located the bottle underwater with his toe. He picked it up squeamishly as though afraid of getting his sleeve wet, worked his way forward and bent over his son. “Drink it,” he said, holding the bottle against the boy’s ribs. The boy tipped his head back, drank, coughed hotly, then vomited.

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“I can’t,” he told his father wretchedly.

“Try—try—” the fisherman pleaded, as if it meant the difference between life and death.

The boy obediently drank, and again he vomited hotly. He shook his head against his father’s chest and passed the bottle forward to his cousin, who drank and vomited also. Passing the bottle back, the boys dropped it in the frigid water between them.

When the waves reached his knees the fisherman set the warm dog loose and said to his son, “Turn around and get up on my shoulders.” The boy obeyed. The fisherman opened his oilskin jacket and twisted his hands behind him through his suspenders, clamping the boy’s booted ankles with his elbows.

“What about the dog?” the boy asked.

“He’ll make his own way all right,” the fisherman said. “He can take the cold water.” His knees were trembling. Every instinct shrieked for gymnastics. He ground his teeth and braced like a colossus against the sides of the submerged crevice.

The dog, having lived faithfully as though one of them for 11 years, swam a few minutes in and out around the fisherman’s legs, not knowing what was happening, and left them without a whimper. He would swim and swim at random by himself, round and round in the blinding night, and when he had swum routinely through the paralyzing water all he could, he would simply, in one incomprehensible moment, drown. Almost the fisherman, waiting out infinity, envied him his pattern.

Freezing seas swept by, flooding inexorably up and up as the earth sank away imperceptibly beneath them. The boy called out once to his cousin. There was no answer. The fisherman, marveling on a terror without voice, was dumbly glad when the boy did not call again. His own boots were long full of water. With no sensation left in his straddling legs he dared not move them. So long as the seas came sidewise against his hips, and then sidewise against his shoulders, he might balance no telling how long. The upper half of him was what felt frozen. His legs, disengaged from his nerves and his will, he came to regard quite scientifically. They were the absurd, precarious axis around which reeled and surged universal tumult. The waves would come on and on; he could not visualize how many tossing reinforcements lurked in the night beyond—inexhaustible numbers, and he wept in supernatural fury at each because it was higher, till he transcended hate and took them, swaying like a convert, one by one as they lunged against him and away aimlessly into their own undisputed, wild realm.

From his hips upward the fisherman stretched to his utmost as a man does whose spirit reaches out of dead sleep. The boy’s head, none too high, must be at least seven feet above the ledge. Though growing larger every minute, it was a small light life. The fisherman meant to hold it there, if need be, through a thousand tides.

By and by the boy, slumped on the head of his father, asked, “Is it over your boots, Dad?” “Not yet,” the fisherman said. Then through his teeth he added, “If I fall—kick your boots off—swim for it—down-wind —to the island. . . .”

“You . . . ?” the boy finally asked.

The fisherman nodded against the boy’s belly. “—Won’t see each other,” he said.

The boy did for the fisherman the greatest thing that can be done. He may have been too young for perfect terror, but he was old enough to know there were things beyond the power of any man. All he could do he did, by trusting his father to do all he could, and asking nothing more.

The fisherman, rocked to his soul by a sea, held his eyes shut upon the interminable night.

“Is it time now?” the boy said.

The fisherman could hardly speak. “Not yet,” he said. “Not just yet...”

As the land mass pivoted toward sunlight the day after Christmas, a tiny fleet of small craft converged offshore like iron filings to a magnet. At daybreak they found the skiff floating unscathed off the headland, half full of ducks and snow. The shooting had been good, as someone hearing on the nearby mainland the previous afternoon had supposed. Two hours afterward they found the unharmed boat adrift five miles at sea. At high noon they found the fisherman at ebb tide, his right foot jammed cruelly into a glacial crevice of the ledge beside three shotguns, his hands tangled behind him in his suspenders, and under his right elbow a rubber boot with a sock and a live starfish in it. After dragging unlit depths all day for the boys, they towed the fisherman home in his own boat at sundown, and in the frost of evening, mute with discovering purgatory, laid him on his wharf for his wife to see.

She, somehow, standing on the dock as in her frequent dream, gazing at the fisherman pure as crystal on the icy boards, a small rubber boot still frozen under one clenched arm, saw him exaggerated beyond remorse or grief, absolved of his mortality. ©1959, 1987, Bowdoin College.

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On the Water ABE GOODALE Abe Goodale spent the past dozen years working internationally as an artist and wilderness guide.

He recently returned home to Maine to focus on work connected to the local waters he grew up on.

Following in the footsteps of his great-great-grandfather Charles Dana Gibson, Goodale focuses on portraiture and the representation of an era. He sees the arts as a platform to instigate change and preserve culture. He spent last fall on the water and then through the winter created watercolor representations.

They are a tribute to the hardworking men and women who make their living along the coast and an industry that is thriving, yet fragile.

Goodale’s work will be featured in the Island Institute's Archipelago gallery August through October.

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Artist Abe Goodale in his studio. Over the winter Goodale worked with Island Institute's Archipelago gallery director, Lisa Mossel Vietze, to expand the audience for his work, resulting in a summer show opening August 3rd in Rockland.

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Men, Books, Food, and Drink Vinalhaven’s men’s book club creates cultural vibrance B Y P H I L C RO S S M A N // P H OTO S B Y S H E R I RO M E R - D AY

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n 2008, Vinalhaven native and lifelong fisherman Steve Rosen was chatting with Ellen Chandler, a seasonal resident of many years who told him of her book group in Garrison, N.Y. and how interesting and enjoyable it was. The group was called WOWEE (Women of the World Eating Everything). Ellen’s enthusiasm was infectious and Steve, an avid reader—and capable gourmand—had been toying with the idea of forming such a group himself and this was the impetus he needed.

WOWEE’s modus operandi was to choose a book and meet to discuss it once a month and, importantly, to make that meeting a potluck whose entrées had some relevance to what was being read.

Inspired, Steve contacted a handful of other islanders he felt were similarly inclined and in 2009 a dozen men got together at The ARC, a local coffee shop, to talk about it. An agreement emerged to model ourselves after WOWEE, to choose a book and meet to discuss it once a month, to bring food and drink, the food evocative of that book and the drink, it should be noted, with no such requisite relevance.

The makeup of the group was and remains reflective of the 1,200 people who call this place home. Founder Steve, at 50, was, and until recently, remained the youngest bibliophile.

I was a part of the group but, although my own mother was born here and my ancestors have called this place home since the 1700s, I, having arrived here when I was four, and worse, from Massachusetts, cannot lay claim to the same pedigree.

Mike moved here in 1972 and carved out a very respectable niche for himself as a lobsterman, not an easy accomplish-

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ment. Equally unlikely, Mark moved here from, of all places, Kansas, to become a skilled boatbuilder and sailor. Jackson, an artist from Cape Cod, Massachussetts, moved here in 1990 and has continued to produce beautiful things.

Wayne was retired and a history buff who’d moved here in the 1980s and who’d written a biography of Claude McCay, a Jamaican author and poet who figured prominently in the Harlem Renaissance. The book eventually became a group choice. Skip had come to the island a decade earlier to begin a new career after having summered here for many years. Karol moved to the island in 1981 and had since been the school’s very popular history teacher. Gary was a seasonal resident who was preparing to retire here full time.

The group has met faithfully each month since then and the founding prescription has been generally followed. As members come and go—and most who go have moved or passed on—their names are added to a roster and book choices are assigned sequentially so that each member has the opportunity to suggest a book once in any complete rotation and does so two months in advance of a given meeting.

Members are expected to have read the book, although there is no penalty for not having done so, and various of us bring appetizers, entrées, salads, and desserts which, as I said, might in one way or another bear some relationship to the book being discussed that night. We are, after all, an eclectic bunch.

Gary, who passed on in 2015, brought homemade applesauce to every meeting for seven years and Bill has brought kale salad to every meeting since he joined not long after the

Jackson rightfully complained that a book contained much, too much, unlikely erotica. group’s inception. These have generated no complaints; the applesauce was and the kale salad is very good and, when there is salad left over, Bill graciously allows me to bring it home to Elaine who loves it. Regardless, we do consume excellent food and drink at each of these events, such that Steve’s wife, Alice, is understood to have lamented that every time Steve prepares something delicious, he takes it to book group.

The meeting is held on the same day of each month and members begin assembling between 5:30 p.m. and 6 p.m.

Over the years, the meetings have been in several locations, first at The ARC and then at Ted’s home for several years.

Ted was a transplant whose presence here enriched the community in profound ways that many of us know nothing about. He was, as time went by, increasingly handicapped and couldn’t easily get out and around, which is why we met at his place. Those were memorable events because Ted was a gracious and engaging host, had always read the book, invariably had among the most interesting observations, and always presented a delicious and relevant entrée. When it was no longer possible for him to comfortably take part we all struggled to maintain our group composure but we did, largely in his memory, and now meet at the Vinalhaven Eldercare facility to accommodate Roy, our eldest and, at 92, arguably our most well-read member.

Discussion about nothing in particular, although it sometimes involves the book, takes place for an hour or so and then dinner is enjoyed, after which the members settle down in the big living room to discuss the book in earnest.

These discussions are nearly always interesting, often revealing, and equally often, funny. Jackson recently and rightfully complained that a book was a bad choice because it contained much, too much, unlikely erotica. He cited, by way of example, a scene in which, after too many pages, an admiring lover who’d begun his exploration admiring a young woman’s hair, had only reached her neck.

Over the course of these nine years the group has read, if not always enjoyed, over a hundred books. Since 2010 we have hosted a Ladies Night in June to which we invite the members of their own book group, which started about the same time as ours.

We also invite the author of a book we’ve particularly enjoyed during the previous year to be our guest of honor and to address the group and engage in conversation following dinner. Several of these have been authors with an island connection. In 2013, having just read My Beloved World, we invited Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor to be our guest. The justice penned a very gracious and apologetic handwritten

response explaining that the date of the proposed June meeting coincided with a period when the court was not in session and she felt she should spend those precious moments with her family.

In 2016, having read The Negotiator, the group invited its author, former Senator George Mitchell, and he agreed to come, and to enjoy dinner with the two book groups, but he asked for the opportunity to address not just us but the entire

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Over the years, the meetings have been in several locations, first at The ARC and then at Ted’s home…

island community. The result was an enormously popular and inspiring talk to a full auditorium, so appreciated that a similar invitation was extended to address the community again the next year and he graciously came and again gave us not only a fuller understanding of things worldly and political, but also provided hope.

Earlier this year we enjoyed David’s selection, The News of the World by Paulette Jiles, a beautifully written account of an old veteran bringing information about current events to the dangerous and intriguing wilderness that was Texas in the 1800s. We look forward to my own recommended reading, The Women in the Castle.The novel about the experiences of several women in the Bavarian ruins following World War II,

by Jessica Shattuck. Jessica is part of a much-loved Vinalhaven family of seasonal visitors.

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We recently read Michael Finkel’s The Stranger in the Woods, Bruce’s choice. Readers will perhaps be aware that the book’s subject, Christopher Knight, sustained himself by burglarizing seasonal cabins for the 28 astonishing and uninterrupted years he lived alone in the Maine woods.

Given our obligation to bring food that has some relevance to the book, I suggest Vinalhaven’s summer residents keep an eye on things.

P H I L C RO S S M A N lives on Vinalhaven where he owns and operates the Tidewater Motel and serves as a town selectman. He is the author of Away Happens.

F RO M U P P E R L E F T A N D C L O C K W I S E : Nantucket, Nantucket, Newfoundland, Stonington

The Collector of Islands

Their magical allure has carried the author through a lifetime B Y M E L I S S A WAT E R M A N

To get to the Lofoten Islands in Norway, you must take the ferry. But to get to the ferry you must journey by train. The train from Oslo takes 20 hours, travelling through Trondheim and the mountains to the tiny coastal settlement of Bodo. In Bodo I boarded the Hurtigruten, a coastal ferry that travels the entire Norwegian coastline year-round, to convey me to the small port town of SvolvÌr on one of the archipelago’s Arctic islands.

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I stood on sleek stone cliffs seemingly carved with a ruler and plumb bob looking westward and thought young romantic thoughts.

F RO M L E F T TO R I G H T: Ireland, Grand Manaan, Martha's Vineyard

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hristopher Columbus allegedly said after wandering about the islands of the Caribbean, “my desire was not to pass any island without taking possession, so that, one having been taken, the same may be said of all.” His was the deliberate avarice of empire; my desires are still unclear.

I began my collection of islands young. One summer during high school I lived on Nantucket. I found a small room for rent above a garage on a road of sand and bicycled daily to my work as a chambermaid. On my days off I peddled as far as my legs would take me to find stretches of beach unencumbered by tourists. I slid down fantastic sand dunes and loitered amid low trees listening to the surf. Through the fine art of trespass, I made Nantucket mine.

I later lived in Ireland for a time, traveling the island with my thumb out to find the small and the hidden. A fishing boat took me to the Aran Islands where I walked on fields handmade of seaweed and dung. I stood on sleek stone cliffs seemingly carved with a ruler and plumb bob looking westward and thought young, romantic thoughts.

Another island I claimed was named Prudence. Prudence Island sits in upper Narragansett Bay in Rhode Island, a plump mitten of land filled with small homes, unregistered battered cars, and fields.

At the island’s height lay a small vineyard owned by an older couple, refugees from New York. They grew grapes, had a small cave to store their wine and a windmill to draw water into their home. I camped on the island and visited them often, suddenly awake to the fact that on a small island in an overcrowded state some people had achieved freedom.

As the poet Derek Walcott wrote in his Poem Islands, “mere-

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O P P O S I T E : Nantucket

ly to name them is the prose/Of diarists, to make you a name/ For readers who like travellers praise…” I wasn’t interested in the praise of anyone.

Who can say why one collects islands?

I lived on Martha’s Vineyard, off the coast of Massachussets, for several years as a newly fledged adult. It is an island dipped in amber, caught in a preserve of money and fame that nearly renders it still and precious. Living on Martha’s Vineyard made me yearn for other islands less complicated.

One day I found myself on Cuttyhunk, part of the Elizabeth Islands off Cape Cod, Massachusetts, deliriously happy walking through a field of wildflowers in the sunshine, wind at my back. Another time I tromped the shore of nearby Nomans Land some years after the Navy ceased its practice-bombing runs. I was part of a team picking up marine trash along the shoreline and cataloguing it for state records. We scrambled up the muddy cliffs to reach the island’s modest heights, skirting bomb craters and searching for seabirds. I sat on a rock to eat my lunch overlooking destruction blanketed in green and once again felt that giddy joy fall over me.

The British nature writer Robert MacFarlane writes in Landmarks “We have come to forget that our minds are shaped by the bodily experience of being in the world—its spaces, textures, sounds, smells and habits—as well as by genetic traits we inherit and ideologies we absorb.”

Canada's Newfoundland is too vast to be recognized by the body as an island; the eastern Avalon peninsula, however, is not. There, cloudberries grow in patches across expanses of barrens. Moose shuffle across the roads and along the abandoned shoreline.

The fog sits off Ferryland and Placentia, ready to infiltrate and obscure these tiny towns whose houses are colored as brightly as children’s drawings. The people I met on my travels were more like the houses than the fog: vibrant, loquacious, filled in from the edges to the center with stories and music about the rock upon which they live.

Vinalhaven, Matinicus, Isleford, Eagle Island, Frenchboro, the scattered islands of Casco Bay and the Mussel Ridge—my island collection grew ever greater here in Maine.

I remember clearly a voyage one summer’s day to the tiniest of islands, Steve’s Island in Merchant’s Row off Stonington.

My companions and I launched our kayaks among the lobster boats and paddled out into the archipelago. We landed on Steve’s Island, one of the many included in the Maine Island Trail, for a rest and lunch. The small hunk of granite featured a minute cove, a handful of fir trees, and a fingernail of sand beach. Yet it was an infinite kingdom.

The limits of water cause one to pay attention to what is before one’s eyes. The island’s details filter in through each sense, slowly, permanently, as the smell of the sea imbues one’s clothes. I remember the turquoise clarity of the water over the beige stones, the harsh texture of sand granules, a scent of resin from the thin tree branches. How long we spent in this kingdom is unclear now; it’s the imprint that remains.

I read Robinson Crusoe for the first time on my travels through Norway. I chose the paperback from a shelf in a youth hostel solely because it was in English. But who, enamored of islands, would not be enthralled by Daniel Dafoe’s creation?

Finding himself washed ashore, Robinson Crusoe neatly orders his existence on the deserted island, taming animals, building a structure, setting up a calendar, discovering food and water.

Yet, as the novel progresses, Crusoe moves from the linearity of invention and control to a softer, almost poignant self-awareness. He is alone, on an island, and so he takes a keen interest in everything about him, including himself.

Perhaps that is why so many of us are drawn to islands.

Whether we live on one or simply collect them, we find ourselves on an island attending to its elements with greater consideration. We pay more attention to ourselves as well, to emotions of joy, loneliness, even peace that may not be accessible in another landscape.

In my home I do not collect anything tangible, no Depression glass, no trinkets or baubles. I collect islands. My collection includes time, now adding up to many years. Those years swirl around me like water. These islands are mine only because of the time I have spent on them, in close inspection and in the grandest of daydreams. They are mine because of the attention I paid them.

M E L I S S A WAT E R M A N is a Maine freelance writer who focuses on the marine environment. She often finds herself in, on, or around the water in an unending effort to augment the salt within her veins. Her articles have appeared in the Boston Globe, Maine Boats, Homes & Harbors, and other New England publications.

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More Than a Pile of Shells

A new understanding of Maine’s shell middens S TO RY A N D P H OTO S B Y C AT H E R I N E S C H M I T T

“These oyster beds were so productive that it gave a supply to all that wished for the period of many times 70 years, so that the shells of this food fish was piled up almost mountain high on the shore of a river bank for a long distance… Although the people stay around those oyster beds or near them almost the year round, but those who lived far away did not visit the place until just before the leaves began to fall, they then go there and gather oysters, clams and acorns for winter use…when harvest time comes the place contained many people from all parts of the country, and here they exchanged a great deal of information…” —Joseph Nicolar, Life and Traditions of the Red Man

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p a tidal river, around a blue-green bend where the banks begin to steepen, the wooded shoreline is interrupted by a tall, white cliff. Weathered bits of shell and dust tumble down the exposed face, revealing layer upon layer of oyster shells.

Pockets of charcoal and fire-cracked rock are signs of human activity from millennia ago, when ancestors of the Wabanaki people came together to harvest oysters from the warm, brackish river in what is now known as Damariscotta and Newcastle. On both banks, they deposited the shells, one at a time, basketful by basketful, season after season. Eventually, the piles grew into small mountains some 30 feet tall.

Around 2,000 years ago, the local people stopped adding to the piles. Soil and trees grew over the tops, but the middens were massive and the river kept the edges washed clean, so they continued to attract attention after Europeans came

on the scene.

Some thought perhaps the middens were a sign of a lost city, the famed Norumbega. Archaeologists, perpetuating beliefs of racial supremacy, believed the shell heaps to be evidence of a very ancient and long-lost people. Entrepreneurs estimated the volume and monetary worth of the minerals and artifacts contained in the middens.

They attacked the piles with shovels, trowels, and rakes, extracting thousands of objects from a single heap. They filled their pockets with shells and artifacts. They burned the shells for lime and carted wagonloads away for chicken feed. They dug out the things they deemed worth saving, and left the rest.

In their published reports, past archaeologists called the middens disorderly and unremarkable; they described the pottery as crude and poorly made, and the makers as mysterious people, cannibals, or Esquimaux, perhaps.

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What they could not imagine was that their habits may have encoded messages or warnings …

Back at home in their towns and cities, the archaeologists presented their findings. “They are refuse piles of early man— their back-yards—just what a man’s back-yard of today, filled with old tin cans, hoop skirts, dirt heaps, and other rubbish would be if unearthed a thousand years hence,” said one. The crowd laughed and applauded—a response that revealed their thoughts about superiority and progress.

Historians and archaeologists interpreted the middens to be garbage piles, built a very long time ago. They speculated about how the piles were built and by whom. But not one of them ever asked why.

Last year at a University of Maine undergraduate research conference, a student presented a poster about Damariscotta River middens. Alice Kelley, a geoarchaeologist who uses geological techniques to study past interactions of people and climate and who was studying shell middens coastwide, fell into conversation with Jim Roscoe, who was also looking at the poster.

The giant shell heap reminded Roscoe, an anthropologist, of structures he knew from work in the South Pacific.

Roscoe spent two years in Papua New Guinea, among the Yangoru Boiken of East Sepik Province.

“The Yangoru Boiken are a densely populated people who practice horticulture and pig exchange,” Roscoe explained.

“They used to build large men’s cult houses with large sloping facades ornately decorated with painting and sculpture.”

Cult houses can reach enormous sizes in New Guinea, up to 100 feet at their apex and 600 feet long. Roscoe’s view is that these structures are an ingenious means for allied groups to keep the peace by demonstrating their strength—their size, the number of their allies, and their commitment to group interests.

It struck the two scientists that the Damariscotta River mounds might also be symbolic structures. Rather than dismissing the middens as mere garbage heaps, Kelley and Roscoe suggest that the middens had much more meaning to their human builders.

“There’s more to this than just a pile of shells,” said Kelley.

H There are thousands of other shell heaps around the coast of Maine—but few are made of oysters, and none are so large.

The Damariscotta River oyster piles are the largest middens on the East Coast north of Florida. Why are they so big? Oyster

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shells are large and durable, compared to the soft-shell clam shells that make up most middens. While the midden on the east side of the river was severely diminished by mining, it and other middens have survived because of the relative lack of development along the Maine coast. Also, the oyster middens sit on the edge of a river, 15 miles from the open ocean, protected from the rising seas and waves that have eroded middens in more exposed locations.

The Damariscotta middens are thickest at the water’s edge, but extend hundreds of feet into the forest. Discarded pottery and other artifacts from within and around the middens indicate people were living on site, not simply collecting and preparing shellfish. It was more than a fishing camp. People gathered there in seasons both warm and cold. They cooked and made pottery at the site and got water from a small stream.

They ate berries and nuts, clams, fish, deer, seal, moose, and bear. And lots and lots of oysters.

The piles may have started out of accident or convenience.

Or people could have intended from the outset to make their mark. They didn’t throw the shells back into the river, but instead built tall mounds, dumping shells on top and creating landmarks visible to people paddling up and down the river.

“There are lots of reasons why they’d want to make a shell pile large and noticeable,” said Kelley.

Were people trying to make a landmark visible to navigators? Were they trying to maintain peace, as Roscoe suggested?

These are the remains of structures built by people who wanted, perhaps, to send a message about their history of interaction with the land and sea.

Bonnie Newsom, assistant professor of anthropology at the University of Maine and a tribal citizen of the Penobscot Nation, said the middens could have been navigation aids, social boundary markers, resource markers, or multipurpose features on the landscape.

“Rather than features of prestige or power, the middens might have served to signal a shared resource, an invitation of sorts to share in the Earth's gifts to the people,” she said. “We know that native people would leave wigwam frames in place for others to use and simply take the bark for the next stop, and communal land is not uncommon in Wabanaki communities today,” she said.

“That there were two or three large middens closely grouped in the area demonstrates that these resources were shared by many people,” Newsom added. “There are a wide variety of possible interpretations, and it is even possible that at different times, they served different roles. It does imply

Conference participants examine the shell middens.

some sort of social organization or mutually agreed upon direction.”

Seeing is believing, Kelley argues.

“We want to show people how visually impressive these features were,” she said. “They were monuments.”

Roscoe and Kelley proposed the idea of middens as monument at the Society for American Archaeology’s annual meeting in Washington, D.C., and after publishing a paper that explores the idea in more detail, they plan to look at other Maine middens with this model in mind. By studying these and other sites, and their relationship in time and space, they hope to learn more about how people lived within the environment in the past.

“We have to remember that social values and philosophies on property, territory, and ownership vary from society to society,” said Newsom. “Understanding those values within the context of indigenous worldviews and social structures will aid in our interpretations of middens as monuments.”

H “One finds the heaps in a variety of ways, the commonest being by observing the white gleam of the shells, where the sea has cut into and exposed the heap,” wrote scholars who pondered the shell heaps a hundred years ago. They imagined “savage banquets” atop the “high and grim cliffs of shells.”

They caught faint glimpses of the long history of human presence on the earth, and imagined themselves as most civilized. But what they could not imagine and did not acknowl-

edge was that the original inhabitants had any relation to the contemporary Indians living in the same landscape, that their habits may have encoded messages or warnings, or that they built landmarks with purpose.

By the middle of the 20th century, the river had become inhospitable to oysters, and the middens had stopped yielding profits. Trees grew back over the tops of the heaps. Farmers found that the “limed” soil was fertile, the rich mineral earth a good location for apple orchards. Waves washed the foot of the cliffs, and occasional floods continued to erode the banks, regularly exposing the bright, chalky-white layers as those old theories, founded on racist assumptions, were cast aside for new ideas.

Up close, or from a distance, the middens are as white as the Pemaquid Lighthouse and as tall as the rocks it sits on.

Millennia ago, the ancestors of the Wabanaki people built mountains out of oyster shells, and they have captured imaginations ever since. The Damariscotta River middens are lasting evidence of sustenance, gathering, a connection between past and present, a reminder of the long and continuous history of people doing great things in this place. They were—they are— monuments worthy of protection and reverence.

C AT H E R I N E S C H M I T T ' S latest book is Historic Acadia National Park and her writing on science, nature, and the Maine environment appears in literary journals, magazines, and newspapers and is archived at catherineschmitt.com. She directs communications for the University of Maine Sea Grant Program. She lives in Bangor.

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– E S S AY –

THE SOUND OF ISLAND SILENCE What does it mean to listen closely in a noisy world?

B Y S C OT T S E L L

T

here was a night on Frenchboro, a decade ago now, when I heard silence for the first time. It was during a February vacation for the school and most families were somewhere warmer on the mainland, even if it was the Holiday Inn pool in Ellsworth. All told, there were likely five or six people on the island.

Which is why, I think, my neighbors on the other side of the harbor had invited me over to their house for dinner and a movie: an attempt to keep the lone bachelor sane in the dead of winter. It was late when I left and other than their porchlight guiding my way down the hill, the entire island— itself sitting in an inky sea—was pitch dark.

Once I rounded the head of the harbor, I realized it was very quiet. More quiet than usual. Aside from the sound of my boots crunching in the snow, the whole island was still.

I stopped walking and listened. There wasn’t a breath of wind. You could hear the proverbial pin drop. It was a silence that gave me the strangest feeling that I had lost my hearing altogether. I felt like I finally understoond what Paul Simon was talking about.

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In a time when we’re constantly barraged with sound— advertisements blaring from TVs at the gas pumps, the endless white noise of air conditioning—an island might seem like a good place to escape the din of our every day. The word itself conjures the image of a place that’s defined not by what it possesses, but what it lacks: the mound of sand and lone palm tree of cartoons. An empty paradise or purgatory, depending on your perspective.

Of course, anyone who has stepped foot on a year-round Maine island knows this is a simplified way to think about these places. They are towns with commerce, government, wildlife, and problems similar to anywhere else. They just happen to be sitting in open water. Nevertheless, the quiet of an island is often why so many people live or visit or are otherwise entranced by islands, where sometimes it feels like the noises of modern life all but disappear. But what does an island sound like?

They used to be pretty noisy. Once European settlement occurred on Maine’s coast, and especially after the Industrial Revolution reared its head, things got loud. Sail beget steam

“On a really foggy night, when the foghorns get going in chorus, it's chilling and magical.” — B I L L T R E VA S K I S

beget diesel, and by the turn of the last century, everything was cranking at high volumes. Even when some islands started becoming “summer colonies” in the mid-19th century, there were still incredibly loud activities happening: quarrying on Vinalhaven, shipbuilding on Chebeague, fish processing on Swan’s Island.

Not that there weren’t eventual attempts to hush the racket.

Voters on Islesboro, many of them summer residents, helped to pass a 1913 regulation that prohibited automobiles on the island’s roads. For 20 years, there was nary a car or truck in sight, or their engines to hear. But just like anywhere else, the inevitable caught up with all Maine islands and the clamor of progress came with it.

These days, the islands can feel just as busy and sound just as boisterous as any place on the mainland, especially in the summer. But in their moments of stillness, they may very well be one of the quietest inhabitable places you can find. And with the absence of distractive noises, there are thousands of small sounds to appreciate: the subtle shift of snow, the faint creak of tree limbs rubbing against one another. And there are sounds that are unique to each island, noises that make islanders recognize that they’re home.

For Ann Caliandro of Long Island, it’s the bell buoy in Hussey Sound. It was her favorite noise as a child, lulling her to sleep when her family would spend summers there. Now she hears it every night since making the island her home fulltime in 2010.

Long Island also has an aural gem of its own: Singing Sands Beach. In her book The Maine Islands in Story and Legend, Dorothy Simpson tells us that there are varying descriptions of the beach’s song: “On a dry summer day and providing the wind is blowing right, it sounds ‘strange musical notes of great beauty.’” More accurately, it squeaks with each step you take, a strange, haunting noise beneath your feet.

A few years ago, Bill Trevaskis—musician and photographer on North Haven —began recording the sounds of his home island: audio tracks of his footsteps on a rocky beach, ferry horns, and animals baaing and baying at Sheep Meadow Farm.

Trevaskis says some of his favorite island sounds have to do with the fog.

“On a really foggy night, when the foghorns get going in chorus, it's chilling and magical,” he says. “They often harmonize with each other and create a pretty beautiful consonance out of dissonant intervals.”

And recently, he was boarding a boat on Vinalhaven— where he teaches music at the school—to return home to North Haven when he heard voices coming from what he thought was a boat close to him. The fog was thick and, because there was no wind, it dampened all sounds so he could hear every word of a conversation taking place across the thoroughfare on North Haven, over 500 yards away—a reminder to be careful of what you say on islands.

There were transcendent sensory moments during my years on Frenchboro: unfathomably beautiful sunrises and the smell of sun-warmed pines at Yellow Head and the taste of Lorna Stuart’s strawberry-rhubarb pie. But it’s those crystalline sounds that transport me back. I’d sit on the parsonage porch at dusk, the voices of island kids whispering make believe in their tree forts the only thing I could hear. Or I’d hike in the silent woods on a Sunday morning and hear the town singing “Amazing Grace,” the wind carrying the song, clear as a bell, across the island from the creaky church.

It’s still possible to find that clarity of sound. On every island I’ve lived or visited, there is that moment on a summer day when the flurry of morning activities gives way to a lull in the late afternoon. Fishing boats have come in and the hum of diesel engines has gone quiet. And not unlike siesta in Spain or riposa in Italy, things settle down as islanders get dinner ready, fix traps in the fish house, a few hours of calm before the next ferry arrives bringing groceries and guests, news and logistics to navigate. It might only last a few moments, but it’s there if you listen closely enough.

S C OT T S E L L lives in Rockland and has worked as a reporter, a writing and multimedia instructor, an Island Fellow on Frenchboro, and the Island Institute's in-house videographer.

He is currently a producer and editor at Compass Light Productions, a documentary film production company. His work has appeared in The New York Times, The New York Daily News, and The Washington Post.

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A lt e r e d R e a l i t i e s J E F F R E Y C . B E C TO N

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Jeffrey Becton, Portent

Working year-round from his Deer Isle studio, Jeffery Becton draws from a vast collection of photography of his natural surroundings, local homes, and personal imagery to create his striking compositions. His images, which he describes as digital montage, exist somewhere between photography, collage, and painting.

Becton is one of the pioneers of the digital revolution, and his work spans the generations of Maine’s artistic tradition.

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80 S L A N DThe J O Pilot U R NHouse AL 2018 JeffreyI Becton,

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Jeffrey Becton, Two Bush and Beyond

Hardscrabble

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Spring Tide

Upstairs Chair

Inundtion with Pink ISLAND JOURNAL 2018

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Jeffrey Becton, Off Spirit Ledge

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Jeffrey Becton, Guesthouse

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Jeffrey Becton, Home from the Sea 88

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VA R N I S H I N G B Y D AV I D S H I P L E R

Varnishing the truth is a hands-off cliché Ridden with inexperience Perhaps by a poet in search of metaphor Who saw his faint reflection in amber While gazing at the polished sheen Of careful wood For varnishing cannot conceal Except by long patience Which I do not have When varnishing the old mahogany Or is it teak?

On my boat aged half a century I cannot spend the tedium Of sanding all the years of blemishes away Or stripping, chipping, peeling down the layers As archeologists dig back in time Recording hard encounters scarcely noticed Now decades later, toughened into scars Old wood is scarred, let’s face it And varnish in the can is liquid pure Thin, transparent, sealing without hiding The scrapes and dents and multicolored bruises Stubborn unless erased, forgotten, submerged by many coats The truth cannot be varnished

D AV I D S H I P L E R is a retired journalist who has summered on Swan’s Island for more than three decades. His wife Debby made the photograph that accompanies the poem.

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A TOWN OF SUPERLATIVES Cumberland County town has longest coastline in state, oldest population

B Y C A L L I E F E RG U S O N / / P H OTO S B Y M I C H E L E S TA P L E TO N

There’s a long-running joke in Harpswell that it’s really three towns in one.

The town has the longest coastline of any in Maine—216 miles of long, jagged edge that form the shape of three fingers, and serve as a home to communities with their own distinct identities.

A

handful of arterial roads run a connection from the mainland to the tips of each—Harpswell Neck, Orr’s and Bailey Islands, and Cundy’s Harbor. The peninsulas often are so narrow that ocean is visible for much of the length of the drive out their terminus. Small roads, many of them made of dirt, jut off the main ones. With nowhere else to go, they head toward the water, providing access to the coves and cloistered harbors that have for centuries supported the town’s fishing industry.

There’s a fierce pride in each of the fishing villages that have found a place on each prong of the town’s trident shape. And of course, there are rivalries.

“Having the bridge helps,” joked David Chipman, who

serves on the board of selectmen and whose great-great-greatgreat-grandfather signed the town’s articles of incorporation in 1758.

He means to the Mountain Road bridge that connects the town’s two largest peninsulas, and wasn’t built until the mid1960s. It was built to foster a greater sense of unity in town— it used to be that people had to drive inland and cross through neighboring Brunswick to get from one side of Harpswell to another—but the bridge “hasn't eliminated all the geographic separations that we have here,” Chipman said.

Because of the town’s geography, town issues often have pitted the villages against each other. Whether it’s paying to save a Harpswell Neck landmark that means nothing to the

Orrs Island, adjacent to the Bailey Island Bridge, also known as the Cribstone Bridge.

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A study by the Maine Coast Fishermen’s Association found that commercial fishing licenses have declined by 40 percent…

A B OV E L E F T: Concerned that rising property values are making it difficult for young adults raised in town to stay, the Harpswell House Trust created the Hamilton Place cluster development where affordable homes are set aside for those with community ties.

David Chipman stands in front of one of the homes, owned by a young lobsterman.

Although it closes most of its operations during the winter, Watson’s General Store in Cundy’s Harbor opens for a few hours on Sunday mornings, when fishermen hang out around the woodstove, share coffee and doughnuts, and chat about the upcoming season.

A B OV E R I G H T:

folks in Cundy’s Harbor, or to consolidate schools across town, Harpswell’s annual town meeting isn’t complete without shouting over an issue that pits the priorities of one part of town against another. One time in the 1950s, Great Island tried to secede, Chipman recalled.

Yet the villages have more in common than not. “You can’t drive through Harpswell. It’s a dead end,” Chipman remarked.

“It’s like an island.”

That’s why in recent years, the people who have long made up its historic blue-collar population have found a common identity in the face of an emerging new group of Harpswellians: the influx of people who have sought to retire and vacation there.

“You've got Harpswell, the fishing village, and Harpswell, the retirement community,” explained Chris McIntire, a 25-year-old Orr’s Island fisherman.

“There are a lot of people who move here that do a lot of incredible things in the community,” he said. “We've always been lucky for having a lot of these people who have retired and moved here and still had energy and ambition and want

to make a difference. But I hate change,” McIntire continued.

“You go Downeast some places, and you can find small fishing villages that are gorgeous with a lot of old homes. And being from here, I can't believe the shore hasn't been built up with huge new summer homes.”

Those massive houses—which have rapidly consumed the town’s shoreline—have driven up property values. In response, Harpswell’s working waterfront is shrinking.

A recently published study of the town’s fishing industry by the Maine Coast Fishermen’s Association found that the total number of commercial fishing licenses among residents has declined by 40 percent, a drop from 763 to 462.

Part of that is driven by changes within the fishing industry that have reduced opportunities to work on the water, according to researcher Kendra Jo Grindle. But it’s also because fewer fishermen are choosing to live in Harpswell because they can’t afford it, she said.

It’s hard for young people, too, who have trouble finding a rental cheaper than $800 a month, or one that isn’t rented on a weekly basis during the summer to accommodate tourists,

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“You've got Harpswell, the fishing village, and Harpswell, the retirement community.”

— CHRIS MCINTIRE

A B OV E L E F T:

Bailey Island’s western shoreline. The traps are stacked across the street from Mackerel Cove.

Though most of the activities fo Harpswell Aging at Home focus on helping the town’s oldest residents live independently in their own homes, the “Lunch with Friends” series—here, at Bailey Island Union Church—is open to all ages.

A B OV E R I G H T:

McIntire said. As a result, Harpswell is now the oldest town in Maine, with a median age of 56.9, according to a 2015 demographic survey.

These changes have bred resentment, although not to the point where people don’t get along. As McIntire said, there are cohorts of retirees who, with lots of time on their hands, have devoted their time to trying to solve the problems facing the town—whether it be its aging population or spurring commercial activity—by creating nonprofit community organizations or volunteering on town committees.

Still, fishermen say they’re encountering new kinds of neighborly disputes. They say they’re tired of apologizing for their boat engines making noise at 5 a.m., and for the smell of fish bait on their lawns. Some real estate agents have started to preface their sales with, “this is what it's like to live here,” Grindle said.

And what it will be like to live here in 10 years is still anyone’s guess, according to Nate Wildes.

Wildes is one of those young people who moved away because he and his fiancé couldn’t find an affordable home.

Though not a native of Harpswell, the 27-year-old volunteered on town panels and took an interest in its future. It caused him a lot of frustration.

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“It’s a town of superlatives,” he said, referring to its age and long coastline. “The culture is really good at being what they have been, and that's part of the charm. But the challenge of that is you don't know what you need to be. And my read of it is that Harpswell is not OK with that, but they don't have a plan to deal with it,” he said.

Governing is hard when preserving tradition may require embracing change, Chipman said. “It's a very fine line. You want everyone to get together and work on our problems as a town. These distinct villages have their own cultures and histories that people can't forget.”

“But that that's what makes Harpswell, Harpswell,” he quickly added.

C A L L I E F E RG U S O N is a reporter for the Bangor Daily News, covering the Bangor metro area, crime, and statewide breaking news. Before she moved to Bangor in the fall of 2017, she covered the towns of Brunswick and Harpswell for the weekly paper The Forecaster, where she especially enjoyed reporting stories about Maine's rocky coastline and the people who live on it.

Originally from Connecticut, she came to Maine in 2011 to attend Bowdoin College and never left.

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PAIRINGS and P E T E R R A L S T O N Limited and open editions of paired poems and photographs

BY PHILIP CONKLING

P O R T F O L I O | Limited Edition , Linen Boxed Twenty 13 x 19 inch images and paired poems ALSO:

Individual “pairs” available in matted, open edition formats: - 8.5 x 11 inch Pairings portfolio images with paired poem - 13 x 19 inch “new” photographs with paired poem 96

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Available only at Ralston Gallery and at select summer island readings www.ralstongallery.com/pairings 207-230-7225

ISLAND JOURNAL

Volume 34

ISLAND JOURNAL Celebrating Island Life & Culture

2018

Keith Miller and crew harvest edible seaweed in Wheeler Bay, Saint George. Keith has lobstered in these waters for decades and this is his first year growing kelp. Keith began his journey into aquaculture as part of a cohort of the Island Institute’s Aquaculture Business Development program where fishermen and others learn how to get started in shellfish and edible seaweed farming. Growing kelp requires seeding in the Fall and then harvesting in the Spring and balances the seasonal nature of lobstering. ABOVE: PHOTO BY JACK SULLIVAN, FRONT COVER PHOTO BY JEFF ROBERTS Volume Thirty-Four

© ISLAND INSTITUTE, 2018 P.O. Box 648, 386 Main Street, Rockland, ME 04841 www.islandinstitute.org

In This Issue:

Innovative Waterfronts/Waterfront Innovators // Islands in the Farnsworth Collection