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ISLAND JOURNAL

Volume 36

ISLAND JOURNAL Celebrating Island Life & Culture

2020

Island World by Jon Mort

Artist Jon Mort spends his summers at his studio in Port Clyde, where he creates work inspired by the rugged coast, natural beauty, and wildlife of Maine. Island World recalls a favorite site of childhood explorations. “The movements of the tide define the coast, the islands, and beauty of this place,” says Mort. “To watch the tide here is to feel the wonder of the world turning under you.” Jon Mort hosts his annual open studio August 1st and 2nd in Port Clyde, ME. Visit jonmortstudio.com and follow @jonmortstudio on Instagram to learn more about the artist and his work.

$14.95 ISBN 978-0-942719-40-6

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9 780942 719406

Volume Thirty-Six

Limited edition, signed prints generously made available by the artist for sale at Archipelago to benefit the Island Institute. Visit TheArchipelago.net to learn more.

In This Issue:

How Maine Sailed into Statehood // John Marin’s Islands // Saint-Pierre et Miquelon

Publishers of Island Journal and The Working Waterfront PRESIDENT Robert Snyder EDITOR Tom Groening DESIGN / PRODUCTION Sharon Pieniak PHOTO EDITOR / PHOTOGRAPHER Jack Sullivan

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

Nathan Johnson

Sebastian Belle

Emily B. Lane Board Chair

Michael P. Boyd Clerk

Support the ISLAND FELLOWS PROGRAM

Bryan Lewis Governance Committee Chair

Shey Conover David Cousens

Michael Sant

Megan Dayton

Barbara Kinney Sweet

Michael Felton

Tom Tinsley Board Vice-Chair

Douglas Henderson Treasurer & Finance Committee Chair

Charles Verrill, Jr. Board Secretary

Luke Holden

Carol White

Kristin Howard Philanthropy & Communications Committee Chair

Donna Wiegle Programs Committee Chair

HONORARY TRUSTEES: John Bird Louis W. Cabot

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 Post Office Box 648 Rockland, Maine 04841-0648 207-594-9209 inquiry@islandinstitute.org F RON T C OV ER : Wild Irish Rose, captained by Steve Train, prepares to leave Long Island as the early morning Casco Bay Lines ferry heads off to its next destination. Photo by Jack Sullivan Isle au Haut light

Meet Molly…

Molly Siegel is a second-year fellow helping the community of Isle au Haut. Among many other projects, Molly primarily works on integrating affordable housing and heating solutions for Isle au Haut’s year-round residents, along with teaching music at their one-room school.

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Interested in becoming a member and supporting fellows like Molly?

I have learned that Island Fellows are so important to tiny communities like Isle au Haut because of the massive impact that one new person can have. Island Fellows help prioritize projects that wouldn’t otherwise get done because existing leaders are so busy fulfilling more immediate needs. —MOLLY SIEGEL, ISLE AU HAUT FELLOW

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3 WAYS TO MAKE YOUR GIFT TODAY 1

Online at giving.islandinstitute.org

Call the Island Institute office at (207) 594-9209

Mail your gift to: Island Institute, PO Box 648, Rockland, ME 04841

TO O U R R E A D E R S

Our Rich History, Our Special Place State’s bicentennial seen through island and coastal eyes

s the son of a junior high history teacher, I suppose I was destined to be enthralled with the study of the past. My academic path took me to literature, and then to current events, and finally my profession of journalism, but history remains a fascination and an affection, perhaps in part because it provides an alternative to the chaos of the contemporary. Journalism is the first draft of history, or so the saying goes, but the discipline of history is appealing as it organizes political and social movements into tidy storylines, with causes and effects and colorful characters pinned down and lit in warm sepia tones, like insects in amber. Of course, the past only seems to be confined to a trunk in the attic or in glass cases in a museum, and so appears to be finite, and therefore able to be understood. Not so. Just ask groups like our Native peoples, whose role in our story has been ignored for hundreds of years. The past is barely concealed on Maine’s coast and islands— cast-off granite carvings on Vinalhaven, a sardine-packing plant repurposed as a hotel in Lubec, mansions built by gilded-age tycoons lining Gilkey Harbor in Islesboro. Illconsidered impulses like urban renewal and strip malls were slow to take root here, too. That in-plain-sight past is part of our calling card to the rest of the world. We do well to pause and understand it before stepping forward too boldly. And so it is with considerable pleasure and pride that I introduce this edition of Island Journal, which includes a package of stories that reflect on how the coast and islands mark Maine as the place it is today. Reflecting on our past is especially appropriate in light of this year, the state’s 200th anniversary of shedding its second-rate status as the District of Maine and becoming what even today is proudly asserted as the state of Maine. (Ask a native who’s visiting, say, Connecticut, where he’s from, and that’s how he’ll assert his residence: the state of Maine.) Since the Island Institute now works in coastal communities as much as it does on islands, it’s fitting that we examine the development of Maine through the vibrancy of our salt-water towns. The coast, as it turns out, played an important role in

Maine becoming a state, as you’ll find in our story about the vote in favor of secession from Massachusetts. You’ll also learn how islands were an asset to Maine’s economic success in the age of maritime transportation, when schooners and fishing vessels were as important to our state as railroads were to the West. You’ll read about Native history, too, and about a 350-year-old legal document that continues to hold sway in courtrooms today in the ongoing conflict over public access to the beach. Renowned art writer Carl Little mines painter John Marin’s letters and journals for a story about how Maine islands inspired his work. The Institute’s history is rendered in a story looking at 20 years of our Island Fellows program (and we feature a profile of a “new” Mainer who served as a Fellow), and in remembrances of Horace “Hoddy” Hildreth and Betsy Wyeth, whose support and vision helped guide the organization through the decades. We also range widely through today’s Maine, with stories about a brother and sister running a lobster-buying business in Stonington, a profile of father and son painters in Port Clyde, a look at Southwest Harbor facing a crossroads, and an ongoing tradition that has four islander women plunging into the ocean each month of the year. With this issue, we are pleased to have had the valuable contributions of Sophie Cabot Black as our poetry editor. She has published two poetry collections, The Misunderstanding of Nature, which received the Poetry Society of America’s First Book Award and The Descent, which received the 2005 Connecticut Book Award. Her third book, The Exchange, received a starred notice in Publisher’s Weekly. Her poetry has appeared in numerous magazines, including The Atlantic Monthly, The New Republic, The New Yorker, The Paris Review and Poetry. She has taught at The New School and Columbia University. As always, we hope our annual publication serves to entertain and inform, and maybe even succeed in providing insight into our home. Take your time with Island Journal’s offerings, read and reflect yourself, and let me know what you think! — Tom Groening, editor (tgroening@islandinstitute.org)

ISLAND JOURNAL 2020

Contents TABLE OF

Fishing, Fowling, and Navigation BY REBECCA PRITCHARD

Folio

From the Helm

This Moment in our Community Life Inspires Reflection

Alchemy of the Night Sky 4

BY ROB SNYDER

Maine Triumphs Through Coastal Law

BY JACQUELINE WEAVER

Islands of the Dawnland

BY REBECCA PRITCHARD

Poem

The Story of Fire BY JULIA BOUWSMA

ISLAND JOURNAL 2020

BY CARL LITTLE

Zain Padamsee Found Himself on Frenchboro 12

JIM NICKELSON

John Marinâ€™s Islands

BY STEPHANIE BOUCHARD

Islands Were First Footholds for European Settlers

STORY/PHOTOS BY SCOTT SELL

Two Decades of Fellows Changes Communities

BY KENDRA JO GRINDLE

Stonington Siblings Modernize Lobster Business BY LAURIE SCHREIBER

Islands by the Numbers

BY MEGHAN GRABILL

A Love of Sea and Sky

Southwest Harbor Works to Navigate Change 71 STORY BY GRIFFIN POLLOCK//PHOTOS BY JACK SULLIVAN

The Strange Nature of Horseshoe Crabs

BY TOM GROENING

BY DANA WILDE

Poem

In Spite of the Forecast

Islanders in the Dusk

BY MARGARET A. HABERMAN

BY CARL LITTLE

How Two French Islands Recovered, Post-Cod 60

Remembering Hoddy

STORY/PHOTOS BY NATALIE SPRINGUEL

STORY BY PHILIP CONKLING//PHOTOS BY PETER RALSTON

Islesford’s Calendar Girls Loyal to ‘Dip of the Month Club’

Betsy James Wyeth – 1921-2020

STORY/PHOTOS BY JACK SULLIVAN

The Coast by the Numbers BY MEGHAN GRABILL

STORY/PHOTOS BY PETER RALSTON

Poem

What is Poetry, Part 2

BY JEFFREY THOMSON

Long Island

ISLAND JOURNAL 2020

F RO M T H E H E L M

This Moment in our Community Life Inspires Reflection The next months and years should bring focus on sustainable solutions

BY R O B S N Y D E R

hat will we take with us from this inflection point in our history that can help guide us over the next 200 years? One thing, for certain, is that our future depends on moving forward based on making transparent ethical commitments and supporting each other to achieve them. Maineâ€™s island and coastal communities show us that we need to live in ways that support caring for our families and for our communities near and far. Neighbors everywhere are planting, building, sewing, reflecting, and caring, all while working. We are providing these kindnesses for our families

ISLAND JOURNAL 2020

and for our communities, for those who are able, and for those who are unable to support themselves. We are reconsidering happiness, consuming less, and remembering how happiness is alive and well in our network of relations.Â Businesses small and large are taking action to ensure that the community economies of the future will be resilient and give back to the earth more than they take. The fragility of our coastal economy has been laid bare. Businesses are building resilience through diversification. Some business owners are making e-commerce investments and others are learning new skills.

The Island Institute’s Tom Glenn Community Impact Fund has been making grants to help meet these professional development needs so that small business owners are prepared for a world defined by change. At the same time, the Island Institute is working with Luke’s Lobster to help diversify the lobster value chains beyond restaurants, cruise ships, and casinos. Luke’s Lobster is unique on our coast because of its “B-Corp” certification. Leadership Such benefit corporations make commitments to a triple bottom is granted by line of social, environmental, and economic outcomes that communities, emphasize sustainability. not taken. By partnering with Luke’s Lobster, the Island Institute hopes to help build an e-commerce platform for sustainable seafood brands from the region, and in turn expand markets for local products. With time, we believe this partnership will also set the stage for decarbonizing the lobster value chain.

Leadership has mattered during the pandemic. It is easy to see clearly how the actions and behaviors of our leaders shape our present and our future. Are leaders attempting to move us forward together, or are they focused on dividing us? Leaders at every level in our country, from our municipal select boards to the president, have shown their ethical commitments through words and actions. Leadership is granted by communities, not taken. Moving forward, we have the ability to vote based on whether or not we agree with the actions they’ve taken. We have a rich history to draw on in Maine when looking for examples of what we want to take with us into the future. If we look across our communities over the past six months and pause, we can recognize those things that have made us strong, and leave behind the things that have torn us apart, from each other and from our planet. Fortunately, as we look at what to take with us into the future, many Mainers hold the answers in how they have been working with and for each other during 2020. RO B S N Y D E R is president of the Island Institute, publisher of

Island Journal.

Machiasport

ISLAND JOURNAL 2020

Sailing to Statehood

How Maine’s coast and islands charted our course

ISLAND JOURNAL 2020

Stephanie Bouchard explains how voters in our coastal towns had to be persuaded to support statehood; Jacqueline Weaver explores the role islands played in Maine’s growth; poet Julia Bouwsma recounts the shameful history of Malaga; and Rebecca Pritchard dives into our indigenous people’s history, and how a 17th century ordinance holds precedence in access to our shores.

ISLAND JOURNAL 2020

Sailing to Statehood

Maine Triumphs Through Coastal Law Winning enough votes meant reworking federal rules on shipping By Stephanie Bouchard

n September 1816, William King, a politician and businessman in the District of Maine (and at one time, the wealthiest ship owner in the region), was certain that finally, after 30 years of trying to leave Massachusetts, Maine would succeed in getting the votes to become its own state. Voters of the district’s coastal communities would soon cause him to trim his sails, but in that moment of pre-disappointment, he had good reason for optimism. The outrage among Maine residents toward Boston’s failure to protect the district during the War of 1812 had not cooled, and the numbers from the last vote for independence—held just five months earlier—showed that the votes were there, so King and his colleagues with good reason thought a win was in the bag. When the vote results were tallied, the separationists did have more votes than those opposed. They didn’t, however, have a 55.5 percent majority, a stipulation required by the state government in Boston for the separation to move forward.

ISLAND JOURNAL 2020

he Coasting Law had been a problem for separationists since 1789, when Congress passed an “Act for Registering and Clearing Vessels, Regulating the Coasting Trade, and for Other Purposes,” otherwise known by the more succinct Coasting Law. This law required vessels sailing along the Atlantic seaboard to stop at a custom house in each state along the way and pay a fee (both the trip out and the return). Vessels only had to stop and pay the duty in states that didn’t border their originating location. The only state Maine shares a border with is New Hampshire. Because the district was part of Massachusetts, however, Maine ships didn’t have to stop and pay a fee until reaching New Jersey. This was a big deal for Maine’s coastal communities, said Pulitzer Prize-winning historian (and Maine native) Alan Taylor, author of Liberty Men and Great Proprietors: The Revolutionary Settlement on the Maine Frontier 1760-1820. Having to pay those fees would be a “significant bite” into anyone’s profit margins, he noted, but especially so for merchants shipping low-value commodities like cord wood— which Maine merchants were exporting a lot of at the time.

Sailing to Statehood

Frustrated that voters in the coastal communities still overwhelmingly voted against leaving Massachusetts, and that they’d be losing statehood over a technicality imposed by Boston, the separationists were desperate. When, four weeks after the district-wide vote was held, delegates of Maine communities met to review the returns and assess next steps, shenanigans ensued. In an effort to win separation, there were claims that returns from some of the towns were lost; the legality of some votes was questioned (they were “incorrectly” or “illegally” returned or the question on the ballot was not appropriately worded or unqualified voters had voted); debate on what the word “majority” meant concluded in a “truthiness” definition that allowed for some fuzzy math, and voila, the 55.5 percent majority was achieved! Anti-separationists were apoplectic. The fallout was, as we say in Maine, wicked bad. Massachusetts didn’t buy it, and those who perpetrated the scheme were castigated in the press. After such obvious foul play, the optics were just too bad for Boston leaders to allow separation. King and his cohorts laid low immediately following the fuzzy math debacle, but he was as determined as ever to bring about Maine’s statehood. In that September 1816 election, even though there were more votes for separation than not, once again, the biggest number of opponents came from coastal communities where the Coasting Law reigned. If Maine was ever going to become a state, King knew, he had to get more votes from those coastal communities, and there was only one way to crack that nut. The Coasting Law had to go.

Gilbert Stuart’s 1806 portrait of William King.

Plus, it would have been a huge time-suck to make all those stops coming and going. Just like today, the faster something ships, the better. While the population of Maine’s interior towns steadily grew after the Revolution, the folks on the coast were the ones with the juice, Taylor said. Coastal communities had the highest populations, the most political clout, were most dependent on coastal trade, and had close ties with Massachusetts. With the Coasting Law in place, folks who lived in Maine’s coastal communities (and those nearby who did a lot of business with them) had zero incentive to jeopardize ties with

Voters in the coastal communities still overwhelmingly voted against leaving Massachusetts… ISLAND JOURNAL 2020

COLLECTIONS OF MAINE HISTORICAL SOCIETY

Sailing to Statehood Bucksport Village on the Penobscot River in 1859. Painting by James Emery.

Massachusetts, he said. The Coasting Law then became the roadblock that held the separationists back. After the 1816 brouhaha settled down, William King, the wealthiest ship owner in the district, set his sights on the federal law. King wasn’t known as the Sultan of Bath for nothing. He had steadily gained prominence in the District of Maine and in Boston. Born and raised in Maine, he worked his way from laborer in a saw mill to owner of one. He went on to building

King and his cohorts laid low immediately following the fuzzy math debacle, but he was as determined as ever to bring about Maine’s statehood. 10

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and owning ships, owning a store, investing in substantial real estate holdings, opening the first cotton mill in Maine, and founding the first bank in Bath, a shipbuilding city on Maine’s Midcoast where he settled. He also served in Massachusetts’ House of Representatives and Senate and had connections in high places, namely, his older half-brother, Rufus King, a lawyer in New York who was a delegate to the Continental Congress and the Philadelphia Convention, a signer of the U.S. Constitution, and a U.S. senator (he later also was a presidential nominee). Late in October 1818, King made the long journey from Maine to Washington, D.C. He met with his brother, Rufus, for advice and support, and with William Crawford, who, as treasury secretary, oversaw the laws regulating the coasting trade. King hoped to sway Crawford into agreeing to a revision of the Coasting Law. King got lucky. Crawford agreed to support a revision. King returned home and started planning for what he hoped would be the final effort to become a state. In the early spring of 1819, the revision to the Coasting Law passed in Congress. The new law got rid of the stateby-state stops and fees, and instead designated the Atlantic and Gulf coasts into two districts, with the upshot being that

Maine merchants could sail the entire Atlantic coast to Florida without stopping to pay duties. With the coast (literally) cleared, the floodgates opened. A district-wide vote on separation was scheduled for July 26, 1819. It was the largest turnout ever for a separation vote. While voters in coastal communities still voted more against separation than for it, said Liam Riordan, a history professor at the University of Maine in Orono, there were more yesses than

Sailing to Statehood

In the early spring of 1819, the revision to the Coasting Law passed in Congress.

in previous votesâ€”enough to make the difference. The vote for separation passed by a margin of 10,000 votes. At last! Being admitted to the Union as a state should have beenâ€”and was expected to beâ€”easy. But to the shock and consternation of all Mainers, the path to statehood became entangled in what has been called the most explosive controversy of its time: an effort to stop the growth of slavery. In the course of a heart-pounding two months, Maine was embroiled in the political battle that resulted in the Missouri Compromise, which created a boundary for the extension of slavery into new territories, set the stage for the Civil War, and pitted members of the Maine delegation to Congress against each other. It was not the way Mainers wanted to enter the Union, but in March of 1820, the 35-year struggle to become a state was finally accomplished, with Maine becoming the 23rd state of the fledgling United States of America. S T E P H A N I E B O U C H A R D is a freelance writer and editor based on the Midcoast. Find her at www.stephaniebouchard.net.

Portland harbor circa 1853. Artist unknown.

ISLAND JOURNAL 2020

Sailing to Statehood

Islands Were First Footholds for European Settlers Safety and ease of transportation were attractive, historians say By Jacqueline Weaver

t one time, 300 of Maine’s nearly 5,000 islands had year-round communities. Today that number has dwindled to 15 islands that are occupied through all four seasons. “When Europeans got to the coast of Maine, they set themselves up on islands first, because they were uninhabited and they were, or felt, safer,” said historian Lincoln Paine,

author of Down East: An Illustrated History of Maritime Maine (2000). “Only after they had the lie of the land, and of the various Wabanaki people who lived there, did they start moving onto the mainland.” Paine said there were an estimated 400 European fishing vessels active on the Maine coast in the 1620s. Bill Caldwell, author of Islands of Maine (1981), said islands off the coast of

The remains of centuries-old settlements on Damariscove Island.

JIM KIDD / ALAMY STOCK PHOTO

ISLAND JOURNAL 2020

“ The first roots of the United States are not in the soil of the mainland, but in the fishing grounds off the coast of Maine.” —Bill Caldwell

Sailing to Statehood

New England, particularly Maine, were attractive because of the fertile fishing grounds there and around the entire Gulf of Maine. “The first roots of the United States are not in the soil of the mainland, but in the fishing grounds off the coast of Maine,” Caldwell wrote. “Fishermen began this nation in rough, temporary settlements on the Maine islands.” One of the earliest settlements by mariners from Europe was Damariscove Island off the coast of Boothbay Harbor. The two-mile long, quarter-mile wide island housed families who farmed and fished from the 1600s into the 1930s. Caldwell wrote that for centuries, fishing, boatbuilding, and lumbering drove the Maine economy, spreading down the coast from Newfoundland to the Isle of Shoals off Kittery. The fish provided a steady food supply and a product to sell, helping to establish America’s earliest trading centers, Caldwell explained. According to the late historian Samuel Eliot Morrison in The Story of Mount Desert Island (1960), the first mariner to arrive on Mount Desert Island was Estevan Gomes, a Portuguese who was sent to find a comparable and northern version of the Panama Canal to establish a link to the Pacific. What he found was Mount Desert Island, or what he called “River of Mountains,” as he navigated along Somes Sound. When Samuel de Champlain arrived in 1604, he called Mount Desert the “Isle Of Bare Mountains,” or “l’Isle des Monts-deserts.” “The economy of the island settlers was based on forest and sea,” Morrison wrote. “By 1870, almost the entire first growth of timber was cut off, if not burned down, to make lumber, ship timber, and cordwood.” A visitor in 1792 could have seen ships in Frenchman Bay sailing for London, Santo Domingo, and Boston, with cargoes of plank, timber, shooks (wood cut for barrels), bark, and cordwood. Philip Conkling, author of Islands in Time, wrote that the mostly French and English settlers were attracted to the islands for their proximity to fishing grounds and the islands’ defensive advantages. Granite also was a part of several islands’ economic engines. At the height of the granite era in the 1880s and 1890s, Vinallhaven supported a dozen large quarries, Conkling wrote. “At one time there were 33 major island quarries among Maine islands stretching from Friendship to Jonesport,” he wrote. The granite was used for breakwaters, paving blocks, libraries, monuments and memorials, and cobblestones. The granite era ended with the introduction of cement, since the material was cheaper and easier to handle, Conkling notes. Also adding to the industry’s demise, he noted, were an end to lucrative government contracts, construction of railroads on the mainland, and labor unrest.

But the true beginning of the end for Maine’s islands was the invention of the internal combustion engine. The car ended the heyday of the steamboat, which carried passengers, and the schooner and other cargo ladened vessels. Paine said that prior to development of the car and roads, boats were the easiest way to move along the coast of Maine, easily connecting to islands, peninsulas, and around the entire Gulf of Maine. A boat with one to two people could handle the equivalent of a truckload of cargo and a busload of people. But the advent of the car gave people an unprecedented mobility. “If your primary means of transportation was boats, you didn’t have much incentive or ability to go inland ever if you went to the mainland,” said Paine. “But with cars, you could go to Rockland or Portland and hit the open road.” The decline of the boat culture and the rise of the car culture is evident in the demise of the steamboat lines in the 1930s. The night boats between Boston and Bangor stopped running only four years after the opening of the WaldoHancock Bridge in 1931. “Cars connected the archipelagoes of cities and towns around the country the same way that boats had connected the archipelago of islands and towns on the coast of Maine,” Paine said. The transportation revolution had a major impact on peninsula towns as well because the towns were tied to the islands as much as, or even more than, to other mainland towns. “So you can imagine Route 1 as nipping the peninsulas off one by one as it heads down the coast,” Paine said. JACQUELINE WEAVER lives in Wonsqueak Harbor on the Schoodic Peninsula. She has reported and written for UPI, Reuters, the New York Times and, most recently, the Ellsworth American.

ISLAND JOURNAL 2020

Sailing to Statehood

Islands of the Dawnland

Native people relied on the coast for food and supplies By Rebecca Pritchard

ISLAND JOURNAL 2020

Sailing to Statehood

When Gluscabe was young, he watched his grandmother Woodchuck fish to feed the two of them, and saw she had a hard time catching fish. He decided to help her. Gluscabe built a large fish weir across the entire mouth of the river, with a single opening in the middle. He went out into the bay and said to the fish, “The ocean is about to dry up. All you fish, swim up into my river and you will be safe!” The fish swam through the opening into the weir, and Gluscabe closed it. Gluscabe went back to his grandmother Woodchuck, telling her they would never be hungry again. Grandmother Woodchuck came to see the weir full of all the fish in the sea, and told him he did wrong. Now there wouldn’t be any left for the descendants, she explained. “Put the fish back,” she said. Gluscabe did. He opened the weir, telling the fish to swim free. — The Wabanakis of Maine and the Maritimes, Maine Indian Publishing, 1989.

he above story is one told by the Wabanaki people of the region once known as the Dawnland, currently Maine and the Maritime provinces of Canada as far north as Newfoundland. Wabanaki refers to a confederacy of northeastern tribes. For thousands of years, the Penobscot, Passamaquoddy, Micmac, and Maliseet people lived on the land and sea of the Dawnland, hunting, fishing, and gathering wild plants for food and medicine. “It was our custom to follow the seasons and the migration of the animals and fish,” wrote Donald Soctoma, Passamaquoddy tribal historian, in the essay “Passamaquoddy History—A Brief Look Back.”

“In the winter we lived in the deep forest to hunt the large game animals, in the spring we gather at the first waterfalls of the river system to catch the large runs of salmon, in the summer we live along the coast to gather shellfish and fish in the deep ocean, and in the fall we follow the large game during the rut or mating season.” The name Passamaquoddy is an Anglicized version of Peskotomuhkatyik, “the people that spear pollock.” The Passamaquoddy still live in the watershed of the St. Croix River of Eastern Maine and New Brunswick, Canada, but their ancestral land extended down to the Frenchman Bay islands. Some traditional place names indicate what island areas were used for. The name for the sheltered village on the eastern shore

ISLAND JOURNAL 2020

Sailing to Statehood

When Maine became a state, it adopted the 1818 treaty between the state of Massachusetts and the Penobscot Nation. The only alteration to the document was the substitution of “Massachusetts” for “Maine.”

of a large island in Frenchman Bay was Moneskatic, meaning clam digging place. This was named for the sandbar exposed with each low tide, the same feature Bar Harbor is named for today. Sulessik, or seashell place, was the name for the island renamed Isle au Haut by the French explorer Samuel de Champlain in 1604. Shell middens throughout the islands provide archeological evidence that clams and oysters were plentiful, and a favored year-round food source. Egg Rock off the shore of Bar Harbor was given the name Wawonok, which means eggs, according to Passamaquoddy artist and educator Geo Neptune. Such rocky islands were good for collecting eggs in the spring and hunting sea birds. According to archeological record, seagulls, eider ducks, cormorants, and great auks were valuable food sources along the coast. Great auks, extinct since the 19th century, were flightless birds like penguins, but in the same family as puffins. Fish weirs were constructed of willow rods in rivers and in tidal areas to catch schooling and spawning fish. Stone fishhooks like the ones on display at the Abbe Museum in Bar Harbor were attached to Indian hemp or basswood bark fish line to catch small fish, and large fish were harpooned from canoes. Seals and porpoises were also hunted by canoe, providing meat and valuable fat that could be boiled down into oil. The skins of these and all mammals hunted were scraped and boiled down into leather for clothing. 16

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The coast had so much food in the summer that large summer villages formed. One such village was Astuwiku, the meeting place, on present day Mount Desert Island near Northeast Harbor. Early French explorers encountered a chief named Asticou, the most famous chief in early historical record. But Neptune suggested in a 2018 article “Naming the Dawnland” that Asticou was the name of the place, mistaken for the name of the person. With the coming of the French and the English and their battles to claim the “new” world that had been occupied since the last ice age, warfare and new disease such as smallpox disrupted traditional ways of life and decimated the Wabanaki population. According to Harald Prins and Bunny McBride’s 2015 book Asticou’s Island Domain, a two-volume ethnographic overview and assessment for Acadia National Park, “90 percent of the Wabanaki perished in this American Indian holocaust,” which left the land and offshore islands “largely cleared for European settlement.” Soctoma wrote that an 1812 census counted 360 people in the Passamaquoddy tribe, which “had been reduced by war and disease to a fraction of its former size.” As detailed in Prins and McBride’s study, Wabanaki people continued to travel with the seasons as much as they could without trespassing on newly settled farms, and petitioned the government for tracts of their ancestral lands for their exclusive use, which became reservations. Trading and selling products to settlers, and later to tourists on the coast, became a new way for Wabanaki families to support themselves. As Neptune explained, “Wabanaki encampments continued to make their appearance, and their locations were still chosen based on proximity to resources, but it was the resources themselves that experienced the biggest change. “While Wabanaki people traditionally harvested food from the island, the arrival of Euro-Americans eventually created the need to survive in a currency-based economy, and Wabanaki culture adapted.” Bar Harbor became known for its Indian encampments from the 1860s through the 1890s, in which Wabanaki families would camp through the summer selling ash, birch bark, and porcupine quill baskets, and guiding popular canoe excursions around the harbor. Fishing, clamming, gathering sweetgrass from coastal marshes and making and selling baskets are continued by many Wabanaki people today. Conserving waterways and protecting fish stock for future generations, as young Gluscabe learned to do, is still a primary way of life for the people of the Dawnland. R E B E C C A P R I TC H A R D lives in Bar Harbor. A reporter and former park ranger, she enjoys teaching and writing about Maine history. Her book Jeremiah Hacker: Journalist, Anarchist, Abolitionist is available in local bookstores.

In 1912 the State of Maine forcibly evicted an interracial community of roughly 45 people from Malaga Island, a small island off the coast of Phippsburg.

The Story of Fire By Julia Bouwsma

Our brushfires hung thick and black. They kept us warm, cooked our pots of clams, and every day the villagers smelled our smoke from their porches on the mainland. A stick on fire curls and curls, each fiber glows as it peels from the stalk. So it is with a story, driftwood flames green to blue: How they came in boats, how our shacks caught like a shot of light when match met kerosene. How we left in their boats; how we huddled close; how mama bent to the baby, her crooked arm clamping him silent. How a child curled mouth to smoky knees and bit them to red. A stick on fire— Now, one hundred years later, the archeologists find no ash, no scorched ground, no scraps of charred wood, just loose nails in the shell heap: evidence that when the villagers said leave, we willingly tore our houses down with our hands.

J U L I A B O U W S M A lives off-the-grid in Kingfield in the mountains of western Maine, where she is a poet, farmer, editor, and small-town librarian. She is the author of two poetry collections: Midden (Fordham University Press, 2018) and Work by Bloodlight (Cider Press Review, 2017).

PRAPAN NGAWKEAW – 123RF.COM

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Sailing to Statehood

Fishing, Fowling, and Navigation How a colonial ordinance shaped a coastline By Rebecca Pritchard

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If that list sounds antiquated, it is. Yet per Maine statute, no one can stop you from casting a fishing line into the water, digging for clams, or shooting a duck (in season) from their private intertidal land, if you can get to it without trespassing. You have the Massachusetts colonial government to thank for this right.

Colonial Influence Remains

Sailing to Statehood

n this part of the world, the tide comes in and the tide goes out twice a day. Each time the tide goes out, it exposes cobbles, mudflats, tidepools, rockweed, and cool wet sand. Who owns this intertidal zone depends on the law of the land on which the tide ebbs and flows. In New Hampshire, you could walk anywhere below the high tide line along the 238 miles of coastline and never encounter private property. Like most coastal states, the intertidal zone on the New Hampshire coast is in the public trust, like the ocean itself. In other words, the land between high and low tides is owned by the state, for public use. In Maine things are different: intertidal land can be privately owned. Why this is so, we’ll get to in a minute. But first, it’s about to get more complicated. Even on privately owned intertidal land, you may still have a right to be there, but that right depends solely on which activities you engage in while you are there. In Maine, the public has rights to the intertidal zone for fishing, fowling, and navigation.

The story of how Maine came to have this statute regulating public access to tidal areas can be traced back to before Maine became a state, when it was a territory of Massachusetts. It must be noted up front that this history has been studied almost exclusively by lawyers and judges, due to its impact on public access rights and private landowners’ rights. Massachusetts passed an ordinance in 1641 and revised it in 1647, which listed all the laws of the colony. The revised 1647 ordinance was entitled, “Laws and Liberties of Massachusetts.” This was a more than a century before the Boston Tea Party and talk of declaring independence from England.

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Sailing to Statehood 20

Massachusetts borrowed most of its ordinance from English common law, which specified that the crown owned navigable waters for the benefit of all. The English, in writing their own common law, had borrowed liberally from the Romans. In the words of Roman law (Justinian Code, 530 AD): “By the law of nature these things are common to all mankind—the air, running water, the sea, and consequently the shore of the sea. No one, therefore, is forbidden to approach the seashore…” The seashore itself was defined to include “as far as the greatest winter flood runs up.” As George M. Cole pointed out in his 1997 book Water Boundaries, the Mediterranean Sea didn’t have much daily fluctuation in tide. So the Romans defined their coastal boundary according to its seasonal fluctuations, not the daily highs and lows. Taking a cue from the Romans, the British included intertidal land in their definition of “navigable waters.” Therefore, everything below the high tide mark was owned by the Crown and available to the public, according to English common law. One detail the Massachusetts colonists did change from English common law was that a landholder’s property extended down to the low-tide mark, not the high-tide mark. To make up for taking land away from the crown and thereby the public, the ordinance granted the right to “everie

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[sic.] inhabitant… have free fishing and fowling… so far as the Sea ebs and flows.” Some historians and lawyers have said the people of Massachusetts moved the boundary of private ownership from the top to the bottom of the tidal range in order to encourage the development of docks and wharves. In a time when most transportation, commerce, and trade traveled over water, docks were crucial. According to lawyer David Slade, before the colonial ordinance was passed, coastal landowners who wanted to build a dock over land and waters owned by the Crown had to get permission from the colonial government and court. Few colonists requested permission, because they did not have the money to build a structure that would become property of the crown. Slade wrote in a 2007 document prepared for the Maine Seaweed Council that colonial landowners on the coast petitioned the local government to fund the construction of wharves. Lacking the money for such “public works products,” Slade wrote, the Massachusetts colonial government decided to deed the intertidal land over to the upland property owners, in the hopes they would be encouraged to build docks on their own land. The Massachusetts ordinance remained in effect until 1774 when the colonies cut ties to the British crown, leading up

go further, extending public trust land from the ocean to the vegetation line, giving the public access to the entire beach, not just the wet sand part of it. In Maine, a proposed bill to put intertidal lands under state ownership and in the public trust died last summer after it was receded in the House. Among written statements made in opposition of the proposed bill (LD 1323), Bundy Boit of Penobscot wrote, “The takeover of the intertidal areas by the state is in direct opposition to the law as it has been stated since Colonial times.” Thus, the law governing the public’s right to intertidal land still takes what Dixon calls an “activities-based” approach. When disputes arise, the old colonial ordinance is what judges refer to. “Fishing, fowling, that’s what the courts have focused on,” said Dixon. “I think that the [current] law is made by our judges more than anything else, because they’re the ones interpreting these dusty old documents.”

Sailing to Statehood

R E B E C C A P R I TC H A R D lives in Bar Harbor. A reporter and former park ranger, she enjoys teaching and writing about Maine history. Her book Jeremiah Hacker: Journalist, Anarchist, Abolitionist is available in local bookstores.

TOM GROENING

to the 1775 battle on the village green of Lexington and the subsequent Revolutionary War. Following the war and Massachusetts’ statehood, new laws were printed in 1814 under the title “Ancient Charters and Laws of the Colony and Province of Massachusetts Bay.” As implied in the title, the laws of the old colony were transferred to the new state government. When Maine became a state six years later, legislators met in Portland from May 31 to June 28, 1820, enacting the laws that would govern the new state. Having already been living under Massachusetts law, “the state and judiciary adopted everything whole cloth,” said Agnieszka A. Dixon, a lawyer with Drummond Woodsum, who wrote a 2012 article entitled “Fishing, Fowling, and Dockominiums: Maine’s Need for a New Approach to Public and Private Intertidal Rights.” Dixon said in a recent interview that there was “no direct consideration” of individual parts of the ordinance. “They took the laws” of Massachusetts and therefore “inherited the colonial ordinance.” To this day, “fishing, fowling, and navigation” are listed as public rights on intertidal land by Maine statutes. New Hampshire and most other coastal states define private ownership as beginning at the high-water mark. Intertidal lands, like the ocean, are in the public trust. According to the Surfrider Foundation, some coastal states like North Carolina

ISLAND JOURNAL 2020

Pale Fire, Canto One I

Alchemy of the Night Sky Photographer Jim Nickelson uses the stars and moon as his palette

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Pale Fire, Canto One III

The moon’s an arrant thief, And her pale fire she snatches from the sun —Timon of Athens, William Shakespeare

I was the shadow of the waxwing slain By the false azure in the window pane; I was the smudge of ashen fluff — and I Lived on, flew on, in the reflected sky. —Pale Fire, Vladimir Nabokov

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Pale Fire, Canto One VII

Using photographs of the night sky as raw materials, I attempt to find order in the movement of celestial bodies, just as philosophers and scientists have for thousands of years, a quest for order and meaning that relates to music, numerology, our relationship to the universe, modern cosmology, and beyond.

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Pale Fire, Canto One VIII

Inspired by Vladimir Nabokov’s masterful poem novel Pale Fire, I build each piece by combining my photographs of the stars and moon. Canto One of my Pale Fire is directly inspired by the first four lines of the poem. —Jim Nickelson

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Pale Fire, Canto One IX

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Pale Fire, Canto One X

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Pale Fire, Canto One XII

Jim Nickelson is a fine art photographer, custom digital printer, and teacher and is currently represented by Kingman Gallery in Deer Isle. He has made his home in Camden with his wife and daughter for the last 14 years. Before committing himself to the photographic life, he pursued the classic artistic career path of

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NASA engineer and corporate intellectual property attorney (with a B.S. in Aerospace Engineering from the University of Texas at Austin and a J.D. from Harvard Law School). His work resides in museum, public, corporate, and private collections across the United States and Canada.

Pale Fire, Canto One XIV

Jim Nickelson’s work, including his series Pale Fire, can be seen as part of Archipelago Fine Arts Gallery show “Our Maine,” on display in the gallery at 386 Main Street, Rockland, through August 2, or online at TheArchipelago.net

through December 31. “Our Maine” features five Maine photographers: Jim Nickelson, Olga Merrill, Josie Iselin, Lisa Mossel Vietze, and Terry Hire. All prints are available for sale. For more information visit TheArchipelago.net

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John Marin’s Islands

John Marin’s cabin on Carrying Place Head in Phippsburg, photographed by Portland Press Herald arts writer Bob Keyes. Keyes notes: “The island in the distance on the right is Wood Island. The photo also shows a bit of Little Wood Island on the left. There’s a small channel between them, which you can sort of see. As kids, we fished for flounder in that channel.”

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BY C A R L L I T T L E

American modernist painted these ‘tantalizingly beautiful’ sentinels

n his poem “Sea-Change,” the late Philip Booth of Castine pays tribute to John Marin. First published in The New Yorker in 1956, the poem, written in Booth’s pared-down style, opens with the artist’s name then proceeds to accentuate his visceral connection to the Maine landscape: Marin saw how it feels: the first raw shock of Labrador current, the surfacing gasp at jut of rock, bent sails, and wedged trees. In the next several lines, Booth expands on Marin’s powers of perception while evoking the calligraphic nature of his markmaking: “He wrote it:/Stonington, Small/Point, and Cape Split,/through a pane so/cracked by the lode-/star sun that he/ swam back, blinded,/into himself to/sign the after-/image.” The poet captures what art historians have come to call modernist energy, Marin’s ability to use an innovative visual language to represent the world, in this case, Maine: “…mountains, ledged/towns (white as/Machias after/the hayrake rain),/sun-splintered/water and written/granite; dark light/unlike what you/ever saw…” Toward the end of “Sea-Change,” Booth conjures a vision of one of Marin’s favorite subjects: “…until/inland, your own/ eyes close and, out/of that sea-change,/islands rise thick…” It’s a fitting image: from his first forays at Small Point in Phippsburg, through his sojourns in Stonington, and his final residence at Cape Split in South Addison way Downeast, Marin painted the archipelago, those isles that accent nearly every coastal horizon with their rocky edges and pointed firs. He was smitten. The catalogue raisonné of Marin’s work, assembled by art historian Sheldon Reich and published in 1970, opens with several hundred thumbnails of New York City views, some European views, New Jersey landscapes, and images of Castorland in upstate New York. A resident of Cliffside, N.J., the artist had fanned out across the region—and abroad—to paint his impressions of places. Then, in 1914, the first images of Maine appear, with a flourish: around 75 watercolors painted in the summer and fall near Marin’s rustic abode at the southern tip of Carrying Place Head off the coast of West Point in Phippsburg at the northern edge of Casco Bay. As Portland Press Herald art writer Bob Keyes recounted in a January 2017 article, Marin was drawn to

COURTESY BOB KEYES

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John Marin Deer Isle Series: Mark Island Lighthouse watercolor, 1928 16½ by 21¾ inches

the place by his friend Ernest Haskell (1876-1925), the wellknown illustrator and printmaker who had taken up seasonal residence in Phippsburg in 1903. Keyes notes that the 32-acre private island in the New Meadows River was accessible from the mainland for two hours at low tide, but that Marin preferred his rowboat (he would turn to a variety of boats, some motorized, to take him places during his Maine visits). He also mentions the painter’s hatred of mosquitoes, which are renowned for plaguing the area. In the sixth edition of A Cruising Guide to the New England Coast, authors Roger Duncan and John Ware wrote that “the most voracious breed of mosquitoes ever developed has its headquarters” in Small Point Harbor, adding, “Only experienced hands can distinguish them from gulls.” Among Marin’s first Maine paintings was a view of Big Wood Island, which he could see from his “little shack.” It’s a quintessential action watercolor, the ledges and trees sketched

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COURTESY PORTLAND MUSEUM OF ART, GIFT OF MR. AND MRS. JOHN MARIN, JR.

in, lots of white paper lending light. The sea and sky are light blue washes, the island a small hump of pale green with a spine of black trees. It’s the kind of painting that led critic Alexander Brook to remark on the “extreme velocity” of Marin’s vision. “Each picture,” he observed, “gives the spectator an eyeful in the swiftest sense of the word, what one might with the good fortune see in the twinkling of an eye.” Marin came back to Phippsburg in 1915, continuing his exploration of the area. In a new Maine bicentennial-inspired book, At First Light: Two Centuries of Maine Artists, Their Homes and Studios, Bowdoin College Museum co-director Frank Goodyear relates how the painter used an advance from his New York dealer, the visionary photographer Alfred Stieglitz, to purchase a small island near West Point. In an act of proprietorship, he named it Marin Island. Although the diminutive retreat would prove inhospitable to Marin and his family, he painted it on a number of occasions.

John Marin Big Wood Island opaque and transparent watercolor over graphite on wove paper, 1914 14¼ by 163/8 inches

Indeed, even after Marin moved north and east, first to Stonington and then to Cape Split in South Addison, he would return to his original Maine home, producing numerous watercolors of the area. He painted views of Morse Mountain, Popham Beach, and Ragged Island, which would become poet Edna St. Vincent Millay’s summer retreat in the 1930s and 1940s. In a letter to Haskell’s son in March 1943 Marin described going “quite often” to Ragged “either in your Father’s Swampscott or outboard power boat.” He recalled how they both loved the island’s “bold wildness—then we’d get busy—he with his [etching] needle—I with my brush—and we’d never disturb one another and we’d get home—well—when we got home.”

COURTESY WADSWORTH ATHENEUM MUSEUM OF ART, HENRY E. SCHNAKENBERG FUND

IN 1919, MARIN AND HIS FAMILY—his wife Marie and son John Jr.—spent their first summer in Stonington. If West Point had whetted his passion for islands, this new setting sent him over the moon. “Some of the views with innumerable islands are bully,” he wrote Stieglitz on June 17 not long after arriving. By July 1 he had come to appreciate more fully the local bounty. “It seems that Old Man God when he made this part of the Earth just took a shovel full of islands and let them drop.” Back in Stonington the following summer and fall (he stayed till early November), Marin reports watching the steamboats Bandwell and Morse coming and going. In

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John Marin The Ladle oil on canvas, 1934 22 by 28 inches

August 1921, he recounts a boat ride to Isle au Haut and a fishing trip with Eddie Gross. “We got about 150 pounds of cod,” he tells Stieglitz. “I kept two. Eddie Gross can sell the rest, though it wouldn’t go bad to stop painting and sell fish.” In a Sept. 11, 1921, letter, Marin admits, “This Stonington is a cussed place, but if someone were to tell me I couldn’t come back here next year I’d be mad clear through.” As was his MO, Marin took every chance to visit islands. On Aug. 13, 1922, he recounted a trip to a new island: There is an island off here [Stonington] called Bold Island. I had never set foot on it before. Yesterday I did, and it’s rightly named. It’s Bold and that’s its name. It rises up in every direction and at the

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FROM THE COLLECTION OF MRS. NORMA MARIN

summit there are huge ledges of white granite and you sit down and look out over the sea and island and there is Scragg Island and Devil’s Island and Camp Island and many, many others and each has its special fascination. And then there is that wonderful high [Crotch Island] quarry with its sharp cutting forms. Yes, thank the Lord, at last I have an engine that has power and works. Over the years Marin made a number of paintings of the Mark Island Light at the western entrance to the Deer Isle Thorofare. In the Portland Museum of Art’s watercolor from 1928, the square brick light tower and the lightkeeper’s house (which burned down in 1958) are sketched in along with the top of the boat house and a schooner sailing past.

Marin felt increasingly at home in his seasonal quarters. “They are beginning to take me up into their bosoms here down East—they no longer class me in with the rusticators they being those who rusticate during the warm summer months—the white flannel nikers [knickers] brigade,” he proudly told Stieglitz in a Sept. 24, 1924, missive. “This place has gotten me by the nape of the neck,” he writes two years later, on Sept. 11, 1926. “Once I get here I forget other places, which is a failing I have that I am perfectly aware of.” For the most part Marin painted en plein air. In their expressionist verve, his paintings matched the dynamics of the landscape before him: the movements of sea, the twisted beauty of wind-blown trees, and the gnarly islands. He described the process in a letter from Small Point dated July 20, 1931: Out door painting as such is just a Job—to get down what’s ahead of you—water you paint the way water moves—Rocks and soil you paint the way they were worked for their formation—Trees you paint the way trees grow. If you are more or less successful these paintings will look pretty well indoors for they have a certain rugged strength which will carry them off in a room—though they seemingly bear no relationship to the room. In 1933, Marin took his family further Downeast, renting a house at Cape Split in South Addison. Once more, he found himself surrounded by islands. “This place—little cottage—has a swell outlook over the waters—with the islands scattered about,” he reported to Stieglitz (Sept. 3, 1933). In another letter, to artist friend Emil Zoler (Sept. 14, 1933), Marin noted the profusion: “There are islands here—then some more islands—then a few thrown in for good measure.” Marin would eventually paint many of them, including Jordan’s Delight, Outer Sand Island, Norton’s Island, Flint Island, and Sheep Island. He also went on painting excursions to Quoddy Head, Machias, Schoodic, and Mount Desert Island, and painted Tunk Mountain and Katahdin. As in Stonington, he made close friends with his neighbors, one of whom, Susie Thompson, would become a formidable artist-disciple. AT CAPE SPLIT, Marin began painting in oil more. As he wrote to Stieglitz on July 30, 1933, “I know that when I quit this Expression in Water Colors—the which I am now playing with—and get to the dignified—the high muck a muck medium Oils—I know that my clothes ‘l’ a’gin to have paint spots on em and that my wife ‘l’ a’gin to say things.” Marin’s oils are as dynamic as his watercolors. Witness his rendering of The Ladle, a rocky eminence with high cliffs near

the entrance to Cape Split harbor, which, looked at from one angle, resembles a long-handled spoon with a deep bowl set flat against the sea. Marin transforms the homely landmark into a kind of crazy quilt, the paint applied with gusto. The sky is alive with a swarm of seabirds while the ocean seems to leap across the bottom of the painting. When Marin couldn’t get to Maine the summer of 1943, he sent a special request to his friend, the writer Herbert Seligmann: “Send down two bottles each hermetically sealed—one containing a Sample of that real old North Atlantic and too a sample of that genuine Cape Split salty ozone I think it will extend my period on this Shaky Crust we call the Earth.” Sometime in the 1940s Marin began signing his letters with variations of “Yer ancient Mariner.” In the last letter in The Selected Writings of John Marin (1949) dated Aug. 26, 1948, and addressed to the book’s editor, photographer Dorothy Norman, the painter speaks of the islands, which remain “tantalizingly beautiful” and “work on” him. “They good company—I—I hope not too bad a—Subject.” Marin suffered a stroke soon after arriving at Cape Split in 1953. Seven weeks later, on Oct. 2, he died just shy of his 82nd birthday. He is buried in Cliffside Park, near his home in New Jersey. While Sheldon Reich stated at the end of the catalogue raisonné that “Marin was the beginning of no school of painting,” he inspired generations of painters to emulate his dynamic approach to painting. Whether in Terry Hilt’s dazzling watercolors of Monhegan or an Eric Hopkins North Haven sunset, the master’s modernist aesthetic lives on. And so do the islands Marin painted, those “tantalizingly beautiful” sentinels in the sea that kept good company and inspired some of his most memorable paintings. Philip Booth ends his homage to the artist by highlighting the power of his: riptide paint, that, flooding, tugs at your vitals and is more Maine than Maine.

C A R L L I T T L E ’ S book Mary Alice Treworgy: A Maine Painter is forthcoming from Marshall Wilkes. His poetry has been featured in Maine Sunday Telegram’s “Deep Water” series and “Poems from Here” on Maine Public Radio and appears in Local News: Poetry about Small Towns (2019). He lives and writes on Mount Desert Island.

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ZAIN PADAMSEE

Found Himself on Frenchboro Former Island Fellow recalls being not quite a Mainer, not quite an islander

S TO RY A N D P H OTO S BY S C OT T S E L L

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A view along Frenchboro’s harbor.

N THE TOP DECK of the Henry Lee on his way to

live for at least a year on the island of Frenchboro, Zain Padamsee looked longingly back at the mainland fading from view, wondering if he had made a huge mistake. This is it, he thought. No escaping, at least until the next ferry back to Bass Harbor. That would be three days later. It was September 2015 and Padamsee was on his way to being Frenchboro’s new Island Fellow, tasked with working on the island’s comprehensive plan and other town projects. The community had planned a potluck that evening in his honor and there were a few hours to kill beforehand. After dumping his duffel bags at the parsonage—his new home—he decided to take a walk through the woods to clear his head and shake the anxiety of having to make a good impression. Not to mention suddenly living more than eight miles out to sea. It was a warm fall day, and he made his way to Deep Cove at the southern end of the island. Taking out his phone to snap a photo, he saw that he had less than 30 minutes to get back in time for the potluck. He also realized he had gotten turned around and lost the trail. Panicked, he started running in the direction he thought he should be going, but found himself heading deeper into the thick woods with no trail in sight. At last, he burst out onto the high road, right behind the parsonage. Drenched in sweat and with no time to change his clothes, he anxiously hustled over to the community building where he was surprised to find only one or two people gathered, setting up tables and chairs. He wasn’t late at all. But he still caught strange looks. His shirt was soaked through and he couldn’t keep beads of sweat from rolling down his face. Months later,

when people were more comfortable with him, they told him they were convinced he was covered in sweat from being so nervous. Which, of course, was only partially true. “I’m an odd dude,” he says, laughing at himself. “Being on Frenchboro allowed me to accept that part of me. I found myself early on trying to pretend I was someone I wasn’t. I learned that, on an island, people are able to figure out who you really are pretty damn quick.” Now, nearly five years later—after two years of his fellowship and another two staying on the island to be a sternman on Zach Lunt’s lobster boat—Padamsee has come to see these people as his family, the island his home, and a large part of his identity wrapped up in this place. IT WAS NOV. 17, 1990. Padamsee’s parents were attending a glitter ball at the Australian Embassy in Dhaka, Bangladesh when his mother’s water broke. As they rushed out into the streets, they saw cars on fire and a bus being turned on its side. President Ershad’s government was in the midst of being overthrown. Zain was born a few hours later, covered in glitter. His father—a Bangladeshi national—and his mother— an Idaho native—divorced shortly after. Padamsee and his mom moved to Ithaca, N.Y. where she got her doctorate in adult education and community development from Cornell University. While finishing her thesis, she started looking for teaching jobs in places that were good to raise kids and several positions were in Maine. Padamsee was five years old and remembers visiting Old Orchard Beach in between job interviews. It was the first time he saw the Atlantic Ocean.

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ABOVE: Snack time. RIGHT: Zain and Henry on Frenchboro’s Eastern Beach.

They settled in Gorham where she taught at the University of Southern Maine for ten years. When he was in middle school, his mother felt a calling to be a preacher and she went back to school to get a master’s degree in theology. Her first job as a full-time minister was at the Methodist church on Peaks Island, giving Padamsee his first taste of island life. “It was a completely new experience,” he remembers. “I went from being just another kid at Gorham High to being the preacher’s son on an island where everyone knows everyone.” For two years, he crossed the bay with commuters on the 6:15 a.m. ferry to make classes at Casco Bay High School. During his summer breaks from American University and then University of Maine at Farmington, he scooped ice cream at Down Front, near the ferry landing. He and his mom were welcomed into the community, but still, he felt like he was never really able to let his hair down, always needing to be on his best behavior in living under the microscope. It wasn’t until he got to Frenchboro that he understood what living on a remote island truly could be. “Frenchboro made me believe in love at first sight,” he says. “I instantly fell in love with its beauty.” IN FRONT OF A ROARING FIRE and slowly sipping a “Frenchboro Sunset”—vodka, cranberry juice, and tropical fruit juice, a cocktail of his own making that’s now beloved on the island—Padamsee remarks that the fading sun outside is creating colors in the sky similar to those in his glass. Henry, his chocolate lab, sniffs around the coffee table, hoping to find something that’s dropped on the floor. Padamsee takes a bite of a chunk of cheese and gives Henry the other half. “There you go, you big fool,” he says, scratching behind his ears. The two are inseparable: together on long walks

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in the woods, drives in the truck around the island, in and out of houses where Henry can scrap with other dogs. After Padamsee has been away at work on the water, Henry is excited to see him. One afternoon, the dog saw him walking toward the house and sprinted down the road to jump up and give him a kiss, but ended up giving him a bloody lip instead. “It’s worth it. He’s the perfect pup. And having him around has helped me when times have been tough.” It’s been hard to be here over this last year, Padamsee admits. The previous winter felt longer and more lonely. Whenever he doesn’t have to be on the island to fish, he’s on the mainland trying to make plans for what comes next. He finishes his drink and stands, looking out through the bay windows as the sun disappears completely, the sky turning a brilliant orange. “Let’s go outside and catch that sunset,” he says. PADAMSEE HAD A GOOD SENSE of the work he’d be doing as the Island Fellow, but didn’t know how he’d fit in with the roughly 50 people living on the island. “I was already from away and I look like I’m from away,” he says. “I’ve grown up with that as a mixed race kid, especially in a state that’s predominantly white.” He made a point of being neutral and professional and as much of a Mainer as possible. But he felt he was seen as the Island Institute Fellow and that was all. He spent the first few months figuring out the interpersonal aspects of living on the island and tried to meet everyone. And he found a clever way to do so, home brewing IPAs and brown ales in the kitchen of the parsonage—he called them “Holy Brews”— and hand delivering fresh batches. It would inevitably lead to conversations on front porches and at kitchen tables. He was

touched to learn, later on, that many of the teetotalers on the island were the same people who graciously accepted bottles of his beer. Working on the comprehensive plan also helped with his integration into the community. With municipal planning in most towns, you can get away with surveying 75 percent of the population. But on Frenchboro, with its 30-something year-round residents, Padamsee felt he would be doing the town a disservice by not getting input from everyone. That meant knocking on every door and talking to people about the plan any chance he got. He made the argument that the plan was the town’s defense against state mandates and potential development on the island. “I was the annoying guy with the surveys,” he says. “I told everybody, ‘I’m going to keep bugging you until

these are all done. We’re going to learn about this process together.’ That was a big theme of my time here: figuring it out on the fly.” PADAMSEE STANDS SLEEPILY against the wall of Zach Lunt’s kitchen, layered in sweatshirts and jackets, cradling a steaming cup of coffee. Lunt listens to what his young daughter wants for breakfast with one ear and the crackle of the VHF radio with other. He’s waiting to see how other fishermen are faring on the water before they decide to go out this morning. It’s not stormy, exactly, but with a strong easterly wind, it’s shaping up to be pretty rough seas. The two men have been going hard lately, lots of long days as they start to take some traps out of the water in addition

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Zach Lunt, left, with Padamsee.

to fishing. A couple of years ago when he first started with Lunt, and was 70 pounds heavier, it would have been difficult to keep up with the workload. But in keeping with how his fellowship had gone, his being asked to be Lunt’s sternman was another opportunity to learn on the go. “I couldn’t tie a knot. I didn’t know how to measure a lobster. I knew nothing,” he says. “People had every right to think I wasn’t cut out for it. Zach was one of the only people who believed I could do it.” Hard work wasn’t something Padamsee was afraid of: he knew he could work his ass off. There was another problem. “Holy smokes, did you get seasick!” Lunt says, belly laughing. “If I had to deal with a day like this when I first started,” Padamsee says, “I would have been green before we left the mooring.” For the first few months on the boat, he would get sick almost every day. He tried using Dramamine, ginger gum and candies, Sea Bands, anything people suggested for nausea. Nothing seemed to work. But Lunt assured him his body would eventually get used to it. “People saw me get up, go out, puke all day, go back home, wake up, and do it again day after day. And I think after a couple months when they saw I was sticking with it, it gave me some credibility.” He worked some of the hardest days of his life last winter, spending hours stacking ice-coated traps on the slippery deck of F/V Joann’s Angels, icicles forming on his beard. At one point, after rocking and rolling all day, the boat’s bow dipped deep into the trough of the waves before a wall of water overcame them, somehow not taking any traps with it. “Fishing changes a person, physically and mentally,” he says. “It will push you to do things you might not have

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known that you could do before. You learn that you can work a grueling day and get up to do it again and again. You develop a trust in the boat and the captain, that no matter the circumstances they will make sure that you make it home safe.” The wind pushes against the kitchen windows, rattling the panes. “I can’t say I’m happy to be out here,” a voice finally says over the VHF radio. “Nope, me neither,” says another. “I’m headin’ in now.” “Well,” Lunt says, pouring himself another cup of coffee, “might be a good day to stay warm.” AS HIS FELLOWSHIP NEARED ITS END, Padamsee realized he’d be taking on a new challenge: becoming a full-time islander. Without plans on the mainland, he decided to stay on the island to continue working with Lunt. But it took several months to shake his role as a Fellow. His personality didn’t change, but people started to hear opinions from him, things he might not have said when he was a Fellow. And sometimes they didn’t like what they heard. “I told them, ‘I’m living here as a resident, not as an employee for the Island Institute. I’m speaking for myself now.’ It was difficult to do after two years of having the safety net of the organization.” But islanders knew him well by this point and saw promise in his leadership, asking him to serve on the select board, which he did for a full year, from June 2018 to June 2019. “People trusted me enough to want me helping with important decisions,” he says. “That felt good. I knew enough from my fellowship to carry on something resembling civic responsibility.”

WITH FISHING OFF THE TABLE for the day, Lunt and Padamsee walk across the low road and into Lunt’s trap shop to see what they can work on inside. The shop—big enough to do repairs on traps and paint buoys and not much else—was one of the many places Padamsee called home over the years. As is the case on most year-round islands—where work is available but housing is scarce—Frenchboro has few places for sternmen or other young people to live. After his fellowship ended, he no longer had a permanent home and spent the last two years living in five different places on the island, packing up his things into duffel bags every few months. His bed in the trap shop was an army cot cozied up next to a space heater. He stayed here for three nights until his friends Danny Saxby and Sarah Brake—a fisherman and his Fellowship advisor—told him he was nuts and invited him to live with them. He quickly got absorbed into their family unit, a loving roommate to their two young sons, Arlo and Bennett. He’s perfectly comfortable living here: he wears his boxer shorts around the house and on mornings when Saxby has already left to go fishing and Brake is still sleeping, Padamsee will often cook breakfast for the boys, making them egg sandwiches just the way they like them. “It will be really cool to come back to visit in a year, in five years, and see how the family is doing,” he says. “The work they’ve done on the house, how the boys have grown. I’m sure there will be a million things that are different about the island by the time I come back.”

his glasses, looks out across the bay towards Mount Desert Island, and shivers a little. He lets out a sigh. Henry races back through the trees and nearly onto his lap. “What’d you find?” he asks and the dog licks his hands. In a few weeks, Padamsee and Henry will leave the island for good. They’ll move to Biddeford, where the rent is reasonable and he has friends living nearby. After living in camps and uninsulated houses on the island—with iffy heating and sometimes non-existent ways of cooking food— he’s excited about buying fresh vegetables. He’ll be able to go to the gym, sit at a coffee shop. He knows he’ll enjoy the convenience, more of a social life, his days being his own. He’s quick to admit that he’s unsure what the next chapter is, but he’s certain his time on Frenchboro prepared him for whatever it might be. “I think I’ll miss the quiet nights here most,” he says. “I have way too many quiet nights right now. But I know I’ll miss it as soon as I leave.” S C OT T S E L L is a freelance filmmaker and writer, focusing primarily on documentary storytelling. He served as an Island Fellow on Frenchboro from 2006 to 2008 and was the Island Institute’s media specialist for several years. He lives in Rockland with his wife, the artist Alexis Iammarino, with whom he runs Little Legs Projects, a multimedia production company.

ON A BRIGHT NOVEMBER MORNING, Padamsee walks the trail to Northeast Point while Henry happily bounds over the mossy rises of rock and through the pines. He adjusts

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Two Decades of Fellows Changes Communities Advisors who serve as island-based mentors reflect on the program’s success

BY K E N D R A J O G R I N D L E

t’s a beautiful coincidence that 2020 is the 20th year of the Island Fellows program at the Island Institute. Twenty years ago, the designers of this program may not have known the level of reach it would have. Fellows came from states thousands of miles away, their projects have touched every layer of an island community, and the power of the program has kept Fellows tethered here long after they take their final ferry to the mainland.

Long-time Vinalhaven Fellows advisor, Kathy Warren, who advised some of the first Fellows, recalls the impact as staying true to the original ideals for the program. “There have been so many ways that they have given back and contributed to the capacity building of our communities,” she says. “They are community members, leaders, and friends. The contributions that they’ve ended up making to the life of the community, seems to me, are

2004-05

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exactly all the things that I remember 20 years ago being the aspirations of when it was created.” Fellows alumni, either from Maine or “away,” are not difficult to find. Taking a moment to look around at the change makers in Maine, you will see past Fellows. Kathleen Reardon (Islesboro, 2000) now serves as the senior lobster biologist for the Department of Marine Resources. Mike Felton supported educational curriculum development on Vinalhaven in 2000, which laid the foundation for his career as superintendent for St. George school system. Ben Algeo, now a legislative aide for the Maine Senate Majority Office, worked to lower energy costs for Monhegan residents in 2014. Fellows who worked at the Island Institute office also have grown in community development skills, furthering the sustainability of Maine’s islands and coast. The program certainly has had a lasting impact on the Fellows themselves, but what about the communities and leaders the program has also shaped? Twenty years of harnessing the knowledge, professionalism, and relationships of strong community leaders and the richness of remote and rural communities has left its own unique mark.

“ Fellows bring rich, stimulating thought to my life and work.”

Gabe McPhail, Vinalhaven’s community development and engagement coordinator and advisor to several Fellows, reflected on the enrichment the Fellows Program has brought to her. “It’s been a privilege for me personally and professionally to experience someone else’s growth and evolution through their time here. Fellows bring rich, stimulating thought to my life and work—keeping the world and mind open beyond our community,” she said. She described the systems-thinking approach Fellows bring to the community. “We recognize that there’s a challenge in the system or a lack of capacity and Fellows come, focus on the project through a new lens, and address our needs alongside us by bringing their own experience to the table. I learn from and with them every time,” she said. Echoing this sentiment is Donna Damon, who has advised Fellows on Chebeague Island and served as a trustee to the Island Institute when the Fellows program was founded. She described the impact Fellows have had on the school, historic preservation, and educating the community. “Our community embraces Fellows. We learn from them while they learn from us. Their ability to remain neutral on community matters furthers their work and support.” Fellows projects require the advisor and Fellow to strategize together towards the sustainability for the work completed over the 24-month fellowship. This sometimes means continuing through a new Fellow or leaving detailed plans for

—GABE MACPHAIL Former Vinalhaven Fellow Gillian Welch, left, sits with advisor Gabe MacPhail.

KENDRA JO GRINDLE

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“ Our community embraces Fellows. We learn from them while they learn from us. Their ability to remain neutral on community matters furthers their work and support.” —DONNA DAMON

K E N D R A J O G R I N D L E is a community development officer with the Island Institute who served as a Fellow on Islesboro.

ANDY THERIAULT

continued use. Occasionally, the work serves as a foundation for continued programming supported by the Island Institute. Anne Bardaglio, who was a Fellow on Matinicus in 2006, laid the groundwork for the Outer Islands Teaching and Learning Collaborative. Her advisor, and an Island Institute trustee, Natalie Ames, shared her enthusiasm for the program she champions. “Anne’s project strengthened our small island schools and the students. It connected and supported teachers, showed them ways to be a teacher in a one-room schoolhouse, and made sure students aren’t repeating content with new teachers,” Ames recalled. “Our students, educators, and communities are stronger and better prepared because of this work.” The program also builds goodwill for the Institute in island communities. “For islanders, Fellows changed attitudes towards the Institute. They provided a bridge to the organization’s resources and knowledge that didn’t exist before,” she said. “Their impact is tangible. Fellows are the shining stars, to me, of the Institute. They are human beings on the island, and I can’t think of anything more impactful.” For all the impact a Fellows’ project can have on a community, they also leave their own personal mark on the lives of their advisors. Kendra Chubbuck, an advisor and fifth-generation Isle au Haut resident, has made lasting relationships with each. “I get so attached to them and keep in touch after they’re gone,” she said. “I have three brothers, twin sons, and the young women I’ve advised give me something I personally need. I adore them.” Chubbuck had a moment last year that showed her just how much a Fellow could care for a community they’ve only recently become a part of. Current Fellow Molly Siegel

and a friend raised over $24,000 for the local lighthouse by swimming around the island. “I’m out on the boat watching these women swim in rough, log-filled waters for my community, now their community, and I know I couldn’t do what they’re doing,” she said. “They give me hope for the future of this island, not just because they do the work that wouldn’t get done otherwise, but the energy they bring.” As we, as an organization and network of communities, pause to reflect on the last 20 years of driven, spirited, mindful Fellows, we see the reverberations their time has left on our landscape. Each advisor tells story after story of a Fellow’s memories and describes how this program has changed them, their communities, and the path for the next Fellow. When we look ahead to the next 20 years, Kathy Warren has a piece of wisdom for future advisors: “Listen. Remember we are here to advise and frame the program. We need to trust the instincts of the Fellow brought in to do the work and allow them the space to apply their own creativity to issues and their own observations. They are a blank slate and we often know too much.”

Isle au Haut Fellow Molly Siegel, left, with advisor Kendra Chubbuck.

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Stonington Siblings Modernize Lobster Business Travis and Christina Fifield returned home to run their family business

Fifield Lobster Company sits on the southern edge of Burnt Cove in West Stonington.

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BY L AU R I E S C H R E I B E R

n the early 2000s, Travis Fifield left his hometown of Stonington for college and then a lucrative career with General Electric’s power plant construction division in Windsor, Conn. Funny thing: He chose to live and work within a day’s driving distance of Stonington because a little voice in his head told him he would want to wend his way back home one day. What he didn’t know is that he would end up taking over his family’s multi-generation wholesale lobster business,

Fifield Lobster Co., and recruiting his sister Christina Fifield to partner with him. “When I was in college looking for a job in New England, I figured that, in the future, I’d probably want to work my way back home,” he says. “Southern New England was a good hopping point. It was like, ‘Dad, I’m moving home and I’m going to work in the business.’” He laughs. “A little while later it was, ‘Christina is, too.’” Finding Fifield Lobster is a bit of a trick, but a pleasant one. It involves winding through the narrow streets of this

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Travis and Christina share responsibilities and skillsets, whether it’s transporting bait or entering data.

tiny island community, in view of clam flats, small inns and eateries, wharfs stacked with lobster traps, and fishing boats. A visitor might be tempted to look for a roadside business sign. No such luck. Along Route 15, which traverses the downtown, the thing to do is to keep going and going, keeping the ocean within view, until a street sign for Fifield Point Road appears, leading to a small, double-pointed peninsula that resembles a lobster claw. Seconds later, stacks of traps, a couple of wharfs, and a bait shed signal destination reached. Still no company shingle, but that might not be necessary in a community of 1,000 yearround residents, where everybody knows each other. More importantly, from the business standpoint, the fishermen know the Fifield family. “The guys who sell here have been selling here for generations,” says Travis. “One of the families that sells to us, their grandfather sold to our grandfather, their father sold to our father, and now they’re selling to us.” “Relationships and loyalty are big in this industry,” says Christina. Their great-great-grandfather, Tilden, bought lobsters here through the 1940s and also built the wharf. Their grandfather Willie took over, followed by their father, Wallace, who goes by the name Wally.

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Travis and Christina, now in their 30s, didn’t expect to carry on that tradition. In fact, they and their two other siblings didn’t really know what would happen to the company when their father stopped working. The kids grew up “business adjacent,” as Travis says. “He worked very, very hard and was very, very good at what he did, so he tended to do everything,” he says. “We kicked around on the wharf but weren’t really involved.” They remember the pleasures of growing up by the water, hopping into the skiff to noodle around the cove, setting traps on their student lobster licenses. Their mother Debbie, the bookkeeper until 2000, kept an eye on them from a shorefront shack that served as the business office. Travis went to High Point University in High Point, North Carolina, to study international business and Spanish. While there, he worked for a freight forwarder that specialized in furniture imports, organizing transportation logistics for getting containers from factories to their destinations. He was fascinated by the intricacies of international logistics. After graduation, he worked the next decade for G.E., handling components for its global natural gas business. “I liked the planes, trains, and trucks part of it,” he says. “My job was figuring out how to get large, heavy stuff from point A to point B.” For example, G.E. manufactures gas turbines. “We’d figure out how to get them from the factory floor, coordinate the cranes, barges, and ships to bring them downriver to a break-bulk vessel, organize transit to whatever country they’re going to, organize and clear customs, then do it in reverse on the opposite side.” Christina had also gone off, enrolling at Thomas College in Waterville for a degree in communications. She returned to Stonington to raise her daughter, now nine, got a couple of restaurant jobs, then started working with the Maine Center for Coastal Fisheries to help the Stonington nonprofit coordinate its Eastern Maine Skippers Program. Wally kept up a nonstop pace. The siblings remember him spending countless hours working, even sleeping on the dock to sell bait and fuel to fishermen coming in before dawn. He’d shovel bait by pitchfork and haul fish totes up from the boats by block-and-tackle. “We bought him a new bait shovel every Christmas,” says Christina. “My grandparents used to tell him, ‘If you don’t slow down, you’re going to blow a tube,’” says Travis.

BACK HOME Several years ago, two things happened. Reaching his 70s, Wally realized he couldn’t go on forever. And Travis got tired of the corporate culture.

“I was using all my vacations to come back here,” he says. “Every time I’d go back to Massachusetts, I’d think, ‘Oh, no.’” So he returned home, eventually recruited Christina, and the family devised a plan to transfer equity in the business. Although there was a huge learning curve, Travis’s training in logistics kicked in, plus his father, fishermen, and suppliers were glad to see the next generation stepping in and were eager to explain how things worked. Wally remains involved in the business, but the siblings are modernizing. Travis is working on permit applications to expand one of the wharfs to accommodate more and larger boats. The plan includes hydraulic hoists—a boon over their father’s backbreaking tasks. Rising sea levels also have prompted them to seek permits to raise the dock, which includes the bait shed, by at least a foot. “Some of the high tides we’ve had, the water comes up over our parking lot and onto the floor of the bait shed,” said Christina. “We’re trying get ahead of that.” In response to quota reductions in the herring fishery, they’ve diversified bait varieties to include pogies, rockfish, haddock, herring, tuna, pig hide, and more. The way bait comes in has changed, too.

“I remember boats coming in here pretty often to unload,” says Travis. “Or dump trucks would pull up and offload hand cuttings from the sardine factories.” Now it comes in massive, 2,000-pound containers, much of it frozen and from overseas. A cooler below the office can hold the bait for a short time, but another goal is to build a freezer so they can stock up. They’ve added seasonal workers and organized shift schedules to avoid the hundred-hour weeks of their father’s day. That’s all the more necessary given the growing fishery. Years ago, the wharf served 10 to 15 fishermen. Today, 35 boats bring in over 1 million pounds of lobster. Christina is building the marketing. For the first time, there’s a company logo and letterhead stationery.

“ My husband’s a lobsterman, I work as a lobster dealer, I help out at a fisheries nonprofit. My entire life revolves around it.” —CHRISTINA FIFIELD

LAURIE SCHREIBER

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“I think there’s worry about long-term viability, as a smaller, more remote town.” —TRAVIS FIFIELD

“The bar was pretty low,” Travis says with a laugh. Also new? Data tracking. “We track crates in and out, where they go and how many,” says Christina. “We track bait and fuel. We’ve updated all of our technology. We became a corporation.” In 2018, Travis became a selectman. Like much of coastal Maine, the town is grappling with affordable housing, as more homes are converted to lucrative seasonal and vacation rentals. The local schools are dealing with rising per-pupil costs and declining infrastructure. Then there’s the interdependence between the lobster fishery and the larger community. Stonington is Maine’s largest lobster port. “I think there’s worry about long-term viability, as a smaller, more remote town,” says Travis. “Without the lobster fishery, I don’t know what a lot of people would do.”

“A lot of us rely on the ocean,” says Christina. “My husband’s a lobsterman, I work as a lobster dealer, I help out at a fisheries nonprofit. My entire life revolves around it. When the industry ebbs and flows, it hits everybody.” Yet, having been out in the bigger world, that small, remote town is just right. Christina and her family live in neighboring Little Deer Isle. Travis and his partner, Jake, live in the house he and his siblings grew up in, across the street from the business. “We both want things to go well,” says Christina. “We want Dad to be proud. We want the fishermen to notice that we’re taking over but so it’s seamless, so we’re not changing too much but making lives easier.” And the community’s fate also is important. “I think there’s a push from people who move here to want to make this place similar to the place they’ve come from,” Travis says. “I really want to keep this place the way it is.” In addition to writing for Island Journal, The Working Waterfront, and other Maine publications, Laurie Schreiber is a Mainebiz staff writer and has covered topics in Maine for more than 30 years.

The Fifields have rapport with Stonington’s fishing community. Some of the fishermen have been associated with Fifield Lobster Company for many years.

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Islands by the Numbers 18

450 8

The number of miles two women swam around Isle au Haut raise money for the island’s lighthouse restoration. to e number of metric tons of CO2 emissions Th avoided annually by Casco Bay Lines by powering their ferries with a biodiesel mix.

The inches of Islesboro’s up-island spider’s reported leg span.

144

57%

umber of solar panels (or 45.4 kW) installed N on the Cranberry Isles Fishermen’s Co-op.

3,203 44

The number of black bears seen swimming to Vinalhaven.

The number of buildings in the Fort McKinley Historic District on Great Diamond Island; all but one are of masonry construction.

Amount Maine State Ferry Service passenger traffic was down Memorial Day Weekend 2020 compared to last year.

1,159

cres in the Frenchboro Long A Island Preserve (or 2 percent of land in the Maine Coast Heritage Trust-managed preserve).

e pounds of coffee Monhegan Th Coffee Roasters roasted in 2019.

The number of golf carts for rent at two companies on Peaks Island in 2019.

7,659

Pizzas made at Calderwood Hall on North Haven last season.

Compiled by the Island Institute’s M E G H A N G R A B I L L , community development officer focusing on data analytics and translation.

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A Love of Sea and Sky Islands and ‘island planet,’ inspire father-son painters Greg and Jon Mort

S TO RY BY TO M G R O E N I N G // P H OTO S BY A M Y W I LTO N

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ainter Greg Mort has a compelling case in asserting that art and science are complementary, not conflicting realms. Mort, who has been fascinated and inspired by astronomy and space exploration since he was a child, invokes the now-famous photograph of Earth, taken from Apollo 8, an image that revealed the planet in a surprisingly diminutive context and, perhaps also surprisingly, mostly blue in color. “It’s really a blue marble,” he remembers thinking, and the image became a beautiful way to understand the elements of the universe.

Mort holds that perspective close as he considers the world that he paints. In fact, he carries a card with him that, when held at arm’s length, shows the size of the moon as it would appear in the night sky to the naked eye, and also includes a shape that represents the size of the Earth as it would appear to someone standing on the moon. But both Greg Mort, 68 and his son and fellow artist, Jon, 35, whose work evokes the universe’s powerful, dynamic forces, are very much inspired by Maine. For 40 years, the senior Mort has summered in Maine. He’s painted in a post-

The Morts share a summertime studio space in the upper level of the family’s post-and-beam barn.

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The Tranquil Sea: An homage to the intimate ties of Earth and Moon.

and-beam barn and hosted an open studio in Port Clyde. Jon continues the 40-year tradition of welcoming visitors to the barn for the annual event the first weekend each August. Greg lives the rest of the year in Ashton, Maryland, and Jon lives in Washington, D.C. And it’s not just the state, but in particular, Maine’s islands that fill their vision. “Maine was the main inspiration for my art,” Greg says. “It is physically beautiful.” And on islands, especially, a raw quality emerges. “The ocean puts a patina on everything,” he says. An uninhabited island “looks as it has for thousands of years. The pure beauty of nature” is on display, he explains.

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Greg Mort marks his beginning as a professional artist in 1977, about the same time he was invited to visit the state by the woman who introduced his work to the Washington, D.C. area. She had a farm near Tenants Harbor, and when Mort visited, he was smitten. Ten years later, he and his wife purchased Fieldstone Castle—an architecturally striking house literally made from fieldstones, completed in 1914—where they live through the summer months. Returning each June is a ritual like a warm embrace from a friend. “You look around to see what’s changed, and it’s usually nothing,” he says with a chuckle. “Maybe somebody painted

A small sample of the collected objects that come together in Jon Mort’s still-life renderings.

their house.” That constancy is appealing, he says. So are the relationships he’s developed over the years with visitors to the barn workspace in what he terms “a 40-year time-lapse of friendship.” The fieldstone house itself is another touchstone for his art and passion, for it was designed and built by Russell Porter (1871-1949), one of several in the area. Porter is renowned as the father of amateur astronomy, of which Mort is a passionate acolyte. He and his wife purchased Fieldstone Castle because of Mort’s interest in Porter, who also was an artist. Porter traveled above the Arctic Circle nine times, Mort notes. He remembers a childhood friend who had a telescope. “We looked at the moon, and I just thought, ‘Wow!’ I followed the

Soviet and U.S. space programs very carefully,” he says, and after establishing himself as an artist, he was able to meet some of the Apollo astronauts, including Neil Armstrong, who was presented with one of Mort’s works. And he keeps an eye on the sky, despite it being increasingly difficult to see much. “That’s one of the things that’s so precious about Maine— what the astronomers call ‘dark skies,’” he said. “Maine is way ahead of the curve in terms of making a change.” He is active in the movement urging policy makers to consider using fewer street lights, and shading those that are used. He is a member of the International Dark Sky

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A tin filled with Mort’s carefully collected and preserved starfish rests in the studio, awaiting their role in an upcoming project.

Association, and has donated art to the cause. Darkness, he said, is “actually the real state of affairs,” as the stars and moon emerge. “The curtain’s closed in the day time,” he adds. And 80 percent of the organisms in the world are nocturnal, further suggesting that night is worthy of the artist’s attention. Islands, like the night sky and its stars and moon, hold a degree of mystery. And they hold a universal appeal. “People understand and long for it,” Mort says, in part because these bodies of land surrounded by water “are a whole different entity.”

“ The ocean puts a patina on everything.” An uninhabited island “looks as it has for thousands of years.” —Greg Mort

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The Brothers, two small islands that become one at low tide, and Hupper Island, off Port Clyde, are favorite haunts. The Brothers “has this lovely spruce tree on it. You can see it from the mainland.” The tree has become an icon, a touchstone of sorts to him, and more. “I guess it’s one of these little obsessions,” Mort admits, and it has figured in several paintings. “I’ve painted it from any number of angles.” Mort’s work reflects all of the above—a love of the Maine coast and islands, an awe of larger forces and small emblems that shape and fill them, and the light that is found only on these shores. “I’m really intrigued with the relationships between things that are very big and things that are very small,” he explains, “the realms of large and small,” and indeed, his work includes both, like a piece that features a close-up view of shells on a beach as the Milky Way rises. “The bulk of my work over the years has been watercolors.” He likes how colors can be layered, and yet retain an element of transparency, “letting it do what it wants to do, and yet

The exploration of scale is key to Jon Mort’s work, as with the two finished pieces seen here.

control it.” And “the portability” of the medium allows him to be out in the natural world. Mort’s work has been compared to that of 17th century Dutch painters like Vermeer, but he sees his work more in the tradition of the 19th and 20th century luminous painters, such as Frederick Church, George Bellows—who worked on Monhegan—and Rockwell Kent. “They were naturalist painters,” he says, singling out Kent, who “was able to capture that understated beauty” of the natural world. Mort’s work is, in some ways, minimalist, despite the scope, and it is precise. It reflects, he says, “a love of the craft of painting, this reverence for the object.” The paintings seem like still-lifes, despite the galactic sources. Greg’s son Jon Mort seems to have taken up his father’s passion for understanding the universe’s workings and gone even deeper. Like his father, the younger Mort’s work might be described as still lifes, but the elements he gathers and depicts speak of both the natural and human-made worlds.

“Heaven Trembling” includes sand dollar and periwinkle shells; a wooden frame; a model of a space capsule; and calipers, suggesting the artist is asking us to measure these elements. Mort says that, “In the end, the work is about storytelling.” “It is the endless story of the tides,” he explains. “Watching them, it’s like you can feel the world turning. As a child, some of my most vivid memories are wading into a tidal pool, watching the minnows and crabs hiding.” Another work combines shells, the bottom of a small, square tin, and stamps. The origins of each have personal connections, and, as arranged, are pleasing to the eye, but for Mort, they also speak of civil discourse, and the “aspirationally egalitarian

“Art is the true daughter of science.” —Jon Mort

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Jon and Greg outside their post-and-beam studio on Marshall Point, along with Mort family spaniel June-Bug.

society” in which we live. “The shells are from all over and facing in different directions,” he notes. In addition to the still-lifes, Jon’s work includes the human figure and the landscape. “Maine holds a lifetime of inspiration,” he says. “I credit this place for my deep appreciation for the natural world,” he continues. Inspiration is all around. “I’ll see a beautiful red squirrel, its copper colored coat, whales passing

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the boat on the way to Monhegan…” he says. The world here provides “an awfully wide window to look through.” Observation runs deep in both science and art, Mort says, and seeing leads to reverence. “Art is the true daughter of science. You don’t seek to change anything—you only seek to comprehend.” TO M G RO E N I N G is editor of Island Journal.

In Spite of the Forecast BY M A R G A R ET A . H A B E R M A N

For Benjamin R. Hoops 1973-2017 Mourners boarded one boat, and then another. Criss-crossing the bay, twelve miles out, in the path of the Labrador current, in the shadow of an ancient, invisible glacier. Arriving at low tide, we threw thick lines, braided and wet, around slippery pilings and pulled the boats closer. Many hands reached from above for purses, backpacks, the old and unsteady, lifting them all up to land. Boats secured, fastened, we gathered on rough and sloping granite, facing the sea. Looking to that beyond, past Heron Neck, and the lonely late season traverse of a red and white lobster boat. We gazed at the two October bouquets framing the center as a woman spoke of the missing one. Of nineteen sled dogs left behind, final days of fly fishing. His weatherproof smile. We came to mourn the one, in the darkâ€‹sentry trees, granite blocks blasted and chiseled, the cold silver sea, we saw the many. Then the inevitable journey in reverse, from one place, to another, to another. The steady work of an engine. The push of heavy bow plowing through swells which have traveled far to meet us and remind us of our fragility. Where we break, we are hollow.

ISLAND JOURNAL 2020

How Two French Islands Recovered, Post-Cod Saint-Pierre et Miquelon were squeezed before and during cod moratorium

S TO RY A N D P H OTO S BY NATA L I E S P R I N G U E L

am standing atop Le Belvédère, a commanding scenic viewpoint overlooking the town of Saint-Pierre, the population center of the French territory and archipelago known as Saint-Pierre et Miquelon. Beyond its harbor and breakwaters, over a mere 25 miles of North Atlantic seas, it is not the European foothills I see but the mountains of Newfoundland’s south coast, in Canada. The view is stunningly beautiful. The sea is slate blue, the sky endless. Around me, low to the ground, fall colors—reds, rusty oranges, and brilliant evergreens—explode in this boreal maritime environment of stunted vegetation. The land and seascape look so much like Newfoundland, but the words of a

young woman fisherman I interviewed a few days ago caution, “Don’t forget we are on a little piece of France here, on the other side of the Atlantic.” I use my binoculars to investigate the scene below, the waterfront, the boats, the colorful “salines,” salt houses used to process cod up until the 1992 Canadian cod moratorium. I wonder, for the hundredth time, what was it like for these folks, French citizens on a tumble of rocks that anyone could be forgiven for thinking was part of Newfoundland, to live through the cod moratorium? Was it just as devastating as Newfoundland? Did they also lose their economy, their cultural bearings, and spill into a sea of unemployment and outmigration?

ABOVE: Le Belvédère de l'Anse à Pierre offers an endless view with the town of Saint-Pierre below.

ISLAND JOURNAL 2020

Miquelon-Langlade newfoundland

Ã–

grande michelon

Saint-Pierre et Miquelon This archipelago 25 miles from Newfoundland, Canada, is the last bastion of the French empire in North America. langlade

saint-pierre

* MAP ILLUSTRATION BY SHARON PIENIAK

Saint-Pierre

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The Saint-Pierre harbor lies at the edge of the Place du Général de Gaulle.

£ I HAD BEEN STUDYING the impact of the cod moratorium in Newfoundland for nearly 15 years and could count among my friends Newfoundlanders who had lived through those dark times and come out at the other end with hope for the future. But it had been hard, no doubt about it. This time I wanted to understand the impact of the moratorium on the 6,000 or so French citizens of Saint-Pierre et Miquelon. The archipelago represents the last bastion of the French empire in North America. It was jostled between French and British control multiple times during the centuries of conflict for conquest of the New World. The archipelago’s strategic location made it ideally suited to serve as a base for the Grand Bank fishery. In 1815, as a result of the Treaty of Vienna, Saint-Pierre et Miquelon became, “une fois pour toute” (once and for all) a bona fide French territory, while Newfoundland remained British until it joined Canada in 1949. Fast forward to the 1970s. France’s and Canada’s claims for territorial seas, or “exclusive economic zones” extending 200 nautical miles from shore, conflicted. Two decades later, the International Tribunal Court of Arbitration settled Saint-Pierre et Miquelon’s EEZ at a mere 24 miles around the archipelago, with the exception of a 10.5-mile-wide swath extending 200 miles south.

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The ruling, a blow to French fishing rights, was compounded by the equal or worse blow imposed by the Canadian cod fishing moratorium in the waters surrounding Newfoundland, where the French government had counted on acquiring fishing quota to keep its own fleet afloat. Coastal communities in both lands witnessed the disastrous end of an era. Overnight, thousands of people found themselves out of work. Both economies came to a grinding halt, uniting the people by their shared crisis. Today, it is apparent that Canada and France picked up the pieces in very different ways, producing neighboring societies that are strikingly distinct. In Newfoundland, the government response included offering payments and retraining programs for those put out of work, along with regional community development strategies aimed at fostering business innovation. Well-meaning as these programs were, outmigration was massive and many Newfoundland outports lost up to half of their population to the “tar sands” of Alberta and other places with the promise of work. Paradoxically, Saint-Pierre et Miquelon’s population remained remarkably stable with employment shifting to other sectors. During my fall 2019 visit, homes appeared lived in, lights were on, people had jobs, retirement pensions, medical coverage, and an apparent lack of social need. I was not seeing neighborhoods losing residents to outmigration. On the contrary, people were coming here to work! I met people from “La Metro”

“Les Salines” or salt houses, where dory fishermen processed their catch and maintained their boats.

(continental France) working in bakeries, hotels, restaurants, government posts, and even as deckhands in the fishery, like the young woman who had come for a job on a groundfish trawler. How could it be that Saint-Pierre et Miquelon had jobs aplenty while Newfoundland outports had so few? France’s response to the fisheries crisis, it turns out, was to activate government support on a scale that was simply inconceivable in North American countries. By some accounts, government now provides for more than half the archipelago’s economy in the form of administrative jobs with local government, and federal subsidies for various enterprises such as the hospital and the electric company. Many of the people I encountered were in positions supported in some way by federal and territorial government: airport and port crews, construction workers, radio personalities.

By some accounts, government now provides for more than half the archipelago’s economy.

Americans, my new French friends scoffed, will dismiss such widespread government support as socialism; but isn’t it, as they insisted, just the French government taking care of its people? I could not help but think that this society seems to have weathered a storm that Newfoundland is still untangling. But it was not that simple. Several business owners worried that people have become complacent, assuming their kids will grow up, get a job with “l’administration,” and live the same standard of living they enjoyed. The comparatively high level of administrative backing seems to have unleashed an era of dependence. Some Saint-Pierrais I met were concerned that government investment is never guaranteed. The whims of European politics could change everything. Not all view dependence on La Metro as a sustainable path going forward. Even the territory’s government officials recently announced on La Première, the local branch of national television, the need for economic diversification, and tout tourism as one solution. Indeed, the archipelago’s natural and cultural assets truly are unparalleled, and cruise ship visits are on the rise. But one hotel and restaurant owner I spoke with struggled to find young employees to fill the jobs required in the service sector. With so many comfortable in their government jobs, the labor shortage is acute. This explains, in part, why even bakery workers, garage door installers, and, most ironic given the archipelago’s maritime history, fishing boat crew are imported.

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L’Île aux Marins, a 10 minute ferry ride from Saint-Pierre, was once home to hundreds of cod fishing families who dried their catch on gravel beds maintained mostly by children.

£ ONE RARE ENTREPRENEUR I met observed that the initiative needed to diversify the economy away from the French umbilical cord is extremely uncommon. Most people just don’t want to take the risk of venturing into the private sector. But what does that do for the businesses that are necessary to keep society functioning? What does that do for private investment? What does that do for entrepreneurialism and innovation? Back in 2008, when I lived in Newfoundland for six months, Newfoundlanders bemoaned their government’s reliance on social enterprise for pulling society back up. Newfoundlanders, having lived for centuries dependent on cod, had never developed the business capital, the skills, or even the mental disposition for entrepreneurialism to be a real option, they said. But now, 27 years post-moratorium, as Newfoundland slowly emerges from economic and social collapse, a sense of entrepreneurialism is taking root. Microbreweries, awardwinning museums, world-class hotels, a growing foodie scene, all are examples of the solutions Newfoundlanders are putting into place to breathe life back into their communities.

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Often, it is the now-adult kids of those put out of work by the cod collapse who are picking up the pieces. It has not been without cost: thousands lost to outmigration and the shattering of a centuries old identity. Challenges remain for sure, but Newfoundland in 2019 feels, as they say, “on the go.”

£ BACK UP ON Le Belvédère overlooking the town, I take a deep breath as I scan Newfoundland in the distance and notice the small cruise ship steaming out of the Saint Pierre harbor. It is my last day on the island. I turn, facing southwest, and look across the sea. My thoughts turn to Maine. I can’t help but wonder: how would Maine fare if the lobster fishery crashed? Would the aftermath be as powerful as the cod crisis has been on the colorful town beneath my feet? Would it be as catastrophic as it was on the Newfoundland outports below those mountainous silhouettes across the sea? It is hard not to draw cautionary lessons. How would we react if lobster really declined? Would we choose to take a more Canadian approach and attempt to

Tourism, focused on the archipelago's rich fisheries heritage and maritime environment, is an important strategy in the French government's plan for Saint-Pierre et Miquelon's future. This image was shot on L’Île aux Marins, and the steel map represents that island.

boost regional development while counting on market forces to usher in new industries, but risk a declining population? Or would we choose the French approach of assuaging economic crisis with an outpouring of government jobs and subsidies, while risking a dependent population? I will admit that in my comparison of the two, I found France’s commitment to the permanence of the archipelago’s population, whatever investment that might take, a hopeful counterpart to Newfoundland’s outmigration crisis, especially at first. But the realities on the ground, in both cases, led me to see that both approaches have some promise and some pitfalls for regions like Maine, where uncertainty about our future fisheries looms over any planning for a sustainable future for our coastal communities.

Maine’s coastal economy, except perhaps Washington County’s, has the advantage of greater diversity to begin with. Public-private partnerships are part of how we function. I think of examples like federal grants to our burgeoning aquaculture sector, non-profit loans to small or women-owned businesses, and regional partnerships for tourism development. One thing is certain though: if Maine ever experiences a dramatic downturn in the lobster economy, Maine’s coastal communities will undoubtedly change. Unanticipated change can come fast and furious, leading to crisis and crisis response that can have an impact on the trajectory of entire societies for decades hence. But change can also usher in new ideas, creative adaptations, and potentially better ways of doing things. It is how we respond that will make all the difference.

This society seems to have weathered a storm that Newfoundland is still untangling.

N ATA L I E S P R I N G U E L has been a marine extension associate with the University of Maine Sea Grant, based at College of the Atlantic, for 20 years. She is grateful for research and travel support from College of the Atlantic, Island Institute, CanadianAmerican Center at the University of Maine, and the University of Maine Sea Grant College Program.

ISLAND JOURNAL 2020

Islesford’s Calendar Girls Loyal to ‘Dip of the Month Club’ Women commit to a jump in the ocean—each month of the year

Left to right: Stefanie Alley, Joy Sprague, Barb Fernald, Cindy Thomas, Mary Schuch 66

ISLAND JOURNAL 2020

S TO RY A N D P H OTO S BY JAC K S U L L I VA N

stood on the shore of Islesford in early March—five women trying to coax me into the wintry Atlantic water—when a famous quote entered my mind: “I realize more and more what it takes to be a really good photographer. You go in over your head, not just up to your neck.” These words belong to Dorothea Lange, legendary photojournalist and a personal hero of mine. I believe she meant this in a metaphoric sense, but when I found myself documenting the escapades of Islesford’s famous Dip of the Month Club, this quote adopted a literal interpretation. The Dip of the Month Club has been in action for nearly 20 years, and its mission is simple: take a dip in the ocean once a month, every month. Yes, even in the winter. The club has a rotating cast of dippers—though four women, now in their 60s, make up the original ensemble: Stefanie Alley, the only lobsterwoman at the Cranberry Isles Fishermen’s Co-op; Joy Sprague, the island’s energetic postmistress; Barb Fernald, a talented jeweler and writer; and Cindy Thomas, Islesford’s affable librarian. The newest member, Mary Schuch, 30, was also in attendance for March’s chilly immersion with a commendable showing of endurance as she clocked in more time in the water than anyone else.

The club’s origin story is one of impulse. A heatwave in October 2002 inspired the group of women to cool off at the aptly named Sand Beach after a hard day’s work. Everyone who swam on that fateful October afternoon felt so invigorated that one of them even tossed out the suggestion, “Imagine if we did this again next month…” And here they were, 209 months later, getting ready to complete the ritual again. The dip was on for 1 p.m., and the conditions were ideal. Several variables can interrupt a dip—especially the winter ones. Of course, there’s everyone’s personal schedule to take into account, but they must also consider the tides, the wind, the height of the waves, and even the density of seaweed. This particular Monday in early March was slated to be calm and unseasonably warm, a perfect opportunity to get the dip done early in the month. While the air temperature on the day of my visit was in the 50s, the ocean temperature was lagging behind, coming in just shy of 37 degrees. In fact, NOAA reports that the ocean is at its coldest in March (and warmest in September). On the ferry ride over, I chatted with a few residents of neighboring Great Cranberry Island. When I mentioned the Dip of the Month Club, one of the islanders voiced concern

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about immune systems being compromised by the cold temperatures. While such concerns are well intended, the Dip of the Month Club is more preoccupied with the feelings of refreshment, vitality, and comradery that its members associate with their monthly ritual. At about the appointed hour, we disembarked from Barb’s car—deemed “The Dip Mobile” on days like this—and scrambled down onto Sand Beach. The dippers splayed out their towels and hot water bottles and stripped down to their one-piece suits. It was game time. They didn’t waste any time either. It’s clear that the easiest way to go about this is to get it all over with as quickly as possible. Following a collective, “One… two… three…” came a series of splashes as the dippers sprinted headlong into the cold water. There was one resounding “WHOOO” followed by a cacophony of hoots and hollers as each of the dippers assumed the required position (a dipper must be up to one’s neck and floating horizontally in order to have officially participated in a “dip of the month”). Once everyone was back on the shore, it took all of 30 seconds for the suggestion to arise, “Are we going back in?” It wasn’t just a double-dip, either. The warm air temperature inspired a triple-dip—an unprecedented occasion for the month of March. It was right before this third dip that the club decided I had taken enough photos. The women thought it was time for me to immerse myself (pun definitely intended) and learn what it meant to be a member of the Dip of The Month Club.

ISLAND JOURNAL 2020

The dippers splayed out their towels and hot water bottles and stripped down to their one-piece suits.

My list of excuses was thin. I already had my trunks on, having waded in up to my knees on the previous two dips to photograph from an optimal position. They had brought an extra towel. And, in all honesty, I’ll do anything just to say I did it. Those hoots and hollers that could be heard anywhere on the island were not melodramatic at all. In fact, many of them belonged to me. With Dorothea Lange’s words on my mind, I committed fully. Though it’s not a requisite for becoming an honorary member of the club, I went in over my head. As I had every square inch of my body submerged in the 36.9 degree salt water, I thought to myself, “Man, these women are crazy.” I lurched out of the water like a humpback whale eager to beach itself, and another thought occurred to me: “It takes one to know one.” J A C K S U L L I VA N is a multimedia storyteller with the Island

Institute.

The Coast by the Numbers 1/3

The fraction of the coast that lacks the business case to build out 21st century internet infrastructure.

208,612 82%

1819

2 billion

Number of ports in Maine that accept cruise ships.

Number of times in four months the Maine DOT used snowplows to remove storm debris from the Machias dike.

e number of Army Corps of Engineers Th navigation projects completed in Maine.

Wet pounds of marine algae harvested in Maine in 2019.

The amount of national lobster landings caught by Maine fishermen in 2018.

e dollar value of international Th exports that flow through Maine’s nine coastal ports each year.

Number of times the 50-foot wooden hull of a boat (thought to be the Defiance) has been revealed by storms moving sand on the beach of York, since 1958.

88.5 million

The value in dollars of the total Maine aquaculture harvest for 2019.

e year Maine voters approved separation from Th Massachusetts to become a state of their own.

Compiled by the Island Institute’s M E G H A N G R A B I L L , community development officer focusing on data analytics and translation.

ISLAND JOURNAL 2020

SOUTHWEST HARBOR Works to Navigate Change Tourism is important, but working waterfront access gets prioritized over cruise ships

S TO RY BY G R I F F I N P O L L O C K // P H OTO S BY JAC K S U L L I VA N

any in Southwest Harbor remember when tourists were rare in town. The small village on the south side of Mount Desert Island has long been shielded from the forces of large scale tourism, with Somes Sound and much of Acadia National Park between it and the visitor mecca that is Bar Harbor. But as tourists continue to visit Bar Harbor and other areas in increasing numbers, so does the spillover of people into what’s known as the “quiet side” of MDI. Those searching for a more isolated hike in the park, or boaters looking for less busy stretches of water, have been making their way to Southwest Harbor.

In the late summer of 2017, the pressure came to a head. The cruise ship Pearl Mist sought to schedule a call at port, and in response, residents voted unanimously to place a temporary moratorium on such vessels entering the harbor, a restriction that continues today. Jim Colquhoun, chairman of the Southwest Harbor Shellfish Committee, said the unanimity came from a community gut feeling. “We voted based off our gut instinct,” he said. “Which for most of us was just, ‘Well, we’re inundated now, we don’t need a cruise ship out there.’”

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Lobster businesses like Black Ledge Ledge Lobster Pound exist—sometimes literally—at the intersection between the tourism industry and the working waterfront.

And it’s not just more tourists on the sidewalks that bother some residents. Cruise ships require a large piece of waterfront to be able to load and unload passengers during their stay. This can impede fishermen and others who need access to the water. Fishermen are known to object to those operating larger, recreational boats, and with good reason. Beth Gronros, You’re talking several manager of the Hamilton Marine Store in Southwest dozen year-round, Harbor, notes that while good jobs that depend lobstermen are on friendly terms with small boaters, on having access to they can lose up to $120 for each trap that might be cut the ocean.” by a cruise ship propeller, an investment that adds up if —Jim Colquhoun it occurs multiple times per season. The 180-day moratorium on cruise ships has expired, and while no cruise ships, including the Pearl Mist, have requested to dock at Southwest Harbor since, the problem remains fresh in the town’s imagination.

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And it’s not just fishermen who rely on the water. “Businesses have been able to prosper, to grow and prosper, because they have access to the ocean,” Colquhoun said. “You start to add it up—and we did for the harbor committee— you’re talking several dozen year-round, good jobs that depend on having access to the ocean.” Other changes loom in the fishing industry. As lobster has become more profitable in recent years, the relationship fishermen have with the ocean has changed. John Stanley, an older lobsterman in the community, recounts how those of his age could find their way in the fog with a compass, feel the ground with poles and lead weights, and navigate through the Cranberry Isles in the middle of the night. Those skills have not been passed down to the younger generation, Stanley says, but it’s not their fault. “Kids are exposed to so much more now,” he said, and while they’ve found success, he’s concerned about the lack of diversity in the fishing industry, which could leave some high and dry if the lobsters decline. Older fishermen remember a far more diverse fishing economy. While the collapse of cod is a memorable and dramatic example, there are many more species that are no longer harvested.

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Southwest Harbor’s small downtown accommodates tourists with its inns, restaurants, galleries, and cafes.

Jarvis Newman, a boat builder in Southwest Harbor, and his daughter, Kathe Newman, can recount when pollock could weigh up to 4 pounds, while a mature pollock today weighs about 2 pounds on average. This change is reflected in many other species, as the average size of cod, haddock, herring and more have all decreased. In comparison with the multispecies fishing of the past, lobster has risen to be the most heavily Fishermen “catch fished species in the Gulf of Maine. John Stanley notes that more and more in a fishermen “catch more and more day than we used to in a day than we used to catch in a year. And now these guys they’re catch in a year.” getting 2,000 a day.” Still, amidst these changes —John Stanley in the fishing industry, there’s a strong connection between the past and the present. Jim Colquhoun laughs as he recalls the story of how a young fisherman’s grandfather was so pleased at the idea of his grandson entering into the industry that he went out and bought him his first hip waders.

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In the tourism industry as well, many Southwest Harbor residents want to retain their small, relaxed town atmosphere and not to exclude tourists, but to attract a specific set of visitors who want to absorb the sights and feeling of a small, traditional Maine town. Are the changes good or bad? Fishermen are making good money. Tourists are bringing their business to the community, at the potential cost of a town identity and local quality of life. On a coast that is constantly changing, in the industries that are constantly changing, Southwest Harbor’s story is one that can be found along the entire coast. While these changes are not ones that can be wished away by a singular, temporary ordinance, they can be addressed through the collaboration of conscientious community members. Luckily, Maine’s tradition of community engagement shows no signs of slowing down. Southwest Harbor carries on with this tradition, with residents committed to keeping their town intact. Or at least recognizable. G R I F F I N P O L L O C K is a 2019 graduate of College of the Atlantic in Bar Harbor. This story is funded in part by the Fund for Maine Islands.

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HEARTFELT THANKS TO MEMBERS OF THE ISLANDS IN TIME SOCIETY Anonymous (4) Charles Beran* John and Mary Alice Bird Nancy McLeod Carter William and Linda Caval Larry and Mary Lynne Daigre Barbara Damon* Alessandro and Sarah DeGregori Margery Somers Foster*

Horace A. Hildreth, Jr.* Barbara Jean Holt* Rosalind S. Holt* Ellen V. Howe* David and Ann Ingram William Jackson and Carol Sullivan Theodore C. Johanson* Camilla Knapp* Philip* and Ann Lape

Elizabeth L. Limerick Virginia B. Lloyd* Jon Modica and Nicole Dubois Patricia Mordecai* Emily Lansingh Muir* Elizabeth B. Noyce* Anne P. Owsley* Eliot Payson* Jay R. Rhoads, Jr.*

Donald and Patricia Riechel Molly Potter Scheu George and Anna Shaw Helen Sisk* Wickham Skinner* Margaret L. Snow* Alan and Judy Spear Lee Stackpole Richard Stephenson

John and Martha Stewart Sarah Strouss Willoughby T. Stuart* Bobbie Sweet Charles O. Verrill, Jr. Keith and Diana Wilson H. Jeremy Wintersteen* Philip and Janet Yasinski Frances B. Youngblood* *deceased

The Strange Nature of Horseshoe Crabs Covered in eyes and sensors, their blood has served medicine for decades BY D A NA W I L D E

ges ago in the sea-green clear water of Chandler’s Cove on Chebeague Island, strange dark shapes were scuttling around the bottom. My seven-year-old face peeked out over the edge of the wharf, watching them. I remember my hands gripping the splintery planks. Horseshoe crabs, the big people called them. Gliding along the sand down there in gangs. They didn’t look like horseshoes. The name puzzled me, the way you’re not sure what to think when someone tells you the bright star off Orion’s foot is a dog’s shoulder. It does not look like a dog. In the beginning, anyway. Horseshoe crabs were shaped only vaguely like horseshoes and definitely were not crabs, which run sideways on dangerouslooking legs and do not have tails like big stingers.

Well, more than a half-century later, I clearly see a dog bounding along behind Orion, and Limulus polyphemus’ rounded, ridged shell is close enough to horseshoe-shape that I can see that too. But the deeper they get in time, the stranger they seem. Horseshoe crabs are among the most ancient of still-living beings. The earliest horseshoe crab fossil is from about 445 million years ago, which means they scuttled across the floors of Earth’s silent seas roughly 345 million years before any flower blossomed. They are the closest living relatives of the trilobites, who flourished during the first evolutionary explosion of multi-celled animals about 530 million years ago. And still living today as Limulus polyphemus, the Atlantic horseshoe crab, from Maine down the East Coast and the Gulf

ISTOCK.COM / DANIEL STEIN

ISLAND JOURNAL 2020

GREGORY BREESE

compound eyes, but horseshoe crabs’ lateral eyes are unusual of Mexico to the Yucatan Peninsula, and as three other species because they contain rods and cones similar in structure to in the Asian Pacific (Tachypleus gigas, Tachypleus tridentatus, that of humans. (In 1967 the Nobel prize in medicine was and Carcinoscorpius rotundicauda). awarded for studies involving similarities between horseshoe Their hard shells led early biologists to classify them as crab and human eyes.) The two lateral eyes are used mainly crabs, but it’s been suspected for decades that horseshoe during spawning, and their ommatidia can adjust to daytime crabs are more closely related to spiders than to crustaceans and nighttime light conditions to help locate mates. such as lobsters and crabs. And in fact, a recent genetic A rudimentary eye, used primarily by the embryo inside its study established that horseshoe crabs are, in fact, arachnids, egg, is located just behind each lateral median eye. At the front of meaning they’re aquatic evolutionary cousins of spiders, and the carapace are three eyes that can pick up ultraviolet now classified as a sister group to hooded tick light, which human eyes can’t, and that have spiders (aka ricinuleids, spiderlike relatives of special sensitivity to moonlight, which is ticks and mites). important during spawning. Underneath, Anatomically they are a living at the middle of the cephalothorax near fascination. They’re the only marine Horseshoe crabs the mouth and legs, are two more eyes animal known to breathe with book are more closely whose function is not understood. lungs, similar to those of spiders. Like Along the top of the telson are arrays of other arachnids they have two body related to spiders than simple photoreceptors, whose purpose parts. The front is the prosoma (or to crustaceans such as also is not well understood, but they cephalothorax) covered by the carapace, may help the animals synchronize light or hard, ridged shell, and underneath lobsters and crabs. and dark cycles. is its mouth flanked by ten legs (spiders In fact, horseshoe crabs have sensory have eight) for scuttling along the bottom. receptors all over their bodies, and those in the Hinged to the prosoma is the opisthosoma legs and two chelicerae (the small crablike claws (or abdomen). Unlike other arachnids, horseshoe used to place food such as worms, clams, even algae, in crabs have a long tail known as a telson, which is not a stinger at all but functions as a sort of rudder and as a lever the their mouths) can detect the chemical composition of seawater. Seawater, of course, is vitally important to horseshoe crabs. horseshoe crab uses to right itself if it gets overturned. Their migration cycle in Maine waters begins in spring, when the Horseshoe crabs also have a lot of eyes, including photoadults come in from deeper to shallower water (typically about receptors on the telson and seven eyes atop the carapace. The ten to 12 feet, as under the Chandler’s Cove wharf). In May and two lateral eyes are located about midway along the shell, June they make their way onto estuarine beaches to spawn, with either side of the central ridge. These are compound eyes, the activity peaking on the full and new moon tides. meaning they’re made up of about 1,000 individual receptors, They typically come ashore as “amplexed mated pairs,” or ommatidia, that collect light. Human eyes are simple rather meaning the male is grasping the female from behind. She than compound, meaning light is collected through one burrows into the sand to lay thousands of eggs. While she’s receptor, or adjustable lens. Insects such as dragonflies have

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light receptors (median eyes)

prosoma/cephalothorax (covered by carapace)

feeding pincers (chelicera)

walking legs

lateral compound eyes

mouth

pusher leg

opisthosoma/ abdomen

HORSESHOE CRAB telson

Limulus polyphemus

ILLUSTRATION BY MEG SODANO, MSODANOILLUSTRATION.COM

book gills

doing this, other males who are not clasping her may Strangely, horseshoe crabs have no immune system. circulate nearby, releasing sperm in hopes of In other words, they donâ€™t produce antibodies to fertilizing the eggs too. This may happen over fight infections. Instead, they make chemicals several nights and yield up to 100,000 that inactivate bacteria and viruses and that eggs from a single female. The eggs hatch create clots to seal out further intruders. Researchers decades in two to four weeks, and the young Researchers decades ago figured out how horseshoe crabs head for the water to use horseshoe blood (which is blue ago figured out how during a high tide a month or so later. because of its copper content) to detect to use horseshoe blood The young horseshoe crabs look like bacterial contamination, and itâ€™s now miniature versions of the adults. They used practically universally in medical to detect bacterial spend the first few years of their lives on serums, vaccines, intravenous drips, and contamination. tidal flats and in shallower water, molting even implant devices. toward adulthood. Meanwhile, around Horseshoe blood is harvested by September, the adults begin to make their capturing individuals and drawing it way to deeper water for the winter. Horseshoe from their bodies with needles. Typically the crabs can live to be 20 years old or more. animals are then returned to their waters, under

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the assumption that the horseshoe crabs are not permanently harmed. But studies have shown that in fact, tens of thousands of horseshoe crabs die despite harvesters’ efforts. Recently there has been a push for the medical community to use synthetic horseshoe blood, which has been around for more than a decade, and stop the harvest over conservation concerns. Medical industry and bait harvests are playing a role in a concerning decline in horseshoe crab populations. Most reports indicate that Limulus polyphemus numbers overall have been dwindling significantly; at least one study concluded that populations south of roughly New England seem more or less stable, but they are declining in the Northeast. The Maine Wildlife Action plan of 2015 marks L. polyphemus as a Priority 1 Species of Greatest Conservation Need, listing among its threats unintentional catch by commercial trawling and agricultural, forestry, and other effluents. Other detrimental factors are habitat alteration (due, for example, to sea level rise and ocean acidification); storms and flooding (in which storms occurring during mating and egg laying result in mass strandings and loss of eggs); and temperature extremes. The Gulf of Maine is one of the fastest-warming bodies of salt water on Earth. According to the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission, which oversees the horseshoe crab fishery, 131,101 were landed for commercial bait in Maine, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island in 2016. The commission reports that along

the East Coast, 575,760 horseshoe crabs were collected and brought to biomedical facilities in 2017, an estimated 15 percent of which subsequently died. The Maine Department of Marine Resources says it has no reports of horseshoe crab landings in Maine for the last ten years. In Maine, a permit is required to harvest horseshoe crabs, with a daily limit of 25 per person. Possessing or damaging horseshoe crabs or their eggs is prohibited in Maine from May 1 to Oct. 31. I wasn’t thinking about conservation when I was seven years old, peering into the green water beneath the Chandler’s Cove wharf at the strange, strange creatures on the bottom. It seems like I already knew, somehow, that horseshoe crabs were ancient beyond ancient. That they had survived, if I could have known, the mass extinctions of life on Earth 250 million and 66 million years ago. I thought they had been there for some kind of forever. And probably I thought, deep in the beginning of my own evolutionary innocence, that they’d be there forever yet, like starlight. I hope so. DANA WILDE is a columnist, book reviewer, former news editor and college professor. His recent books are A Backyard Book of Spiders in Maine; Summer to Fall: Notes and Numina in the Maine Woods; and Nebulae: A Backyard Cosmography. He lives in Troy.

PATRICK MOYER – STOCK.ADOBE.COM

ISLAND JOURNAL 2020

Islanders in the Dusk BY C A R L L I T T L E

In the hour or so before pure night arrives islanders leave the house lights off, or some do, as the stand of backyard alders becomes a mass even the full moon has trouble penetrating. Words

identification: new lovers next door, an artist returning from her favorite cove. Until one of them lights the corner lamp out of impatience, fear or simple necessity of food, book and bed

travel far through island air, through windows left wide to exchanges: sisters on bikes, late croquet players, the couple who missed the mailboat and must stay the night. Islanders in the dusk

the islanders will let darkness overreach the windowsill with a stealth long respected, their way of welcoming a guest whose gift, house-chilling, descends from another, darker island to the west.

listen in; their homeâ€™s darkening looks keep them safe from unexpected visitors. Across the sitting room they watch each other disappear into sofa, captainâ€™s chair, little exchanged beyond occasional

For Dorothy Eisner and John McDonald, Great Cranberry neighbors

ISLAND JOURNAL 2020

PETER RALSTON

Horace “Hoddy” Hildreth and his wife, Wooly.

Remembering Hoddy Institute founder recalls Horace ‘Hoddy’ Hildreth’s essential Maine qualities

BY P H I L I P C O N K L I N G

ISLAND JOURNAL 2020

hen I think of the essential qualities a Maine person ought to have, at the top of the list is an instinctual recognition—a gut sense—of right from wrong. A Maine person is willing to speak their mind before waiting to join a chorus. They must have the confidence to challenge prevailing opinion. They should be a good judge of character. They will be understated but speak from broad experience. They are humble—and know that their success is dependent on many, many others. They ought to have a sense of adventure—especially for the North. They should like the company of others and not mind bending an elbow with anyone. They will possess a sly and salty wit. They will read widely. Staunchly loyal to family and friends, they will also be friendly to people from all walks of life. And finally, at their core, they have an unerring sense of decency. If we are fortunate, we may possess a few of these qualities. Hoddy Hildreth was a complete Maine man who possessed all these qualities. I first met Hoddy on the Vinalhaven ferry over 30 years ago. We fell into a discussion about the Maine islands, which he loved as much as I. His wife for life, Wooly, was with him. I don’t remember much else about our conversation except that we laughed a lot. As the ferry pulled into Carver’s Harbor, he suggested I come see him in Portland in the fall to tell him about my hopes for the Island Institute. Diversified Communications was a much smaller company then. Hoddy had created it out With a keen eye to talent, of a few businesses his father had started, whom I gathered had not paid too much attention to Angus King was one of their success. There was a radio and TV station in Bangor, Hoddy’s first hires. the National Fisherman in Camden, and Fish Expo in Boston—which much later evolved into the Boston International Seafood Show under Hoddy’s leadership. After graduating from Bowdoin, where his father had also gone, Hoddy went into politics, also like his father, who had been the governor of Maine, 1945-1949. Hoddy won a seat in the Maine Senate in 1966 and then went to work at one of Portland’s white shoe law firms—not that Hoddy would have been caught dead in white shoes. Hoddy was asked to represent paper companies as a lobbyist in Augusta, but soon grew distressed by his clients’ reprehensible environmental records. His old law firm “retired” him, so he started his own firm. With a keen eye to talent, Angus King was one of Hoddy’s first hires. With Hoddy’s leadership, the Maine Legislature passed landmark environmental laws including the establishment of the Land Use Regulation Commission, or LURC, to regulate development in Maine’s 10 million acres of unorganized territories. After oil companies began prospecting for sites to build oil refineries and terminals, Hoddy established a nonprofit organization, the Coastal Resource Action Committee, and led the successful fight to keep big oil out of Maine.

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Recognizing that local planning boards could approve an application for projects like an oil refinery, which would have effects on nearby towns, Hoddy helped write and pass the Site Law of Development Act to provide oversight of development projects greater than 20 acres. These laws remain the bedrock on which Maine’s environmental movement was built. When the Island Institute was still a wobbly six-year-old start up, Hoddy became chairman of the board of trustees. His guidance over the next 17 years while he led the board was crucial to the success of the Institute. When board discussions grew fractious, Hoddy had a talent for a wry remark or a self-deprecating witticism that could relieve tension. As CEO of a family business with a board composed of relatives and in-laws, Hoddy was not immune to board room drama. On some level, we bonded over the experience of the slings and arrows launched at the head of a rapidly growing, enterprising organization. Of course, Diversified Communications was a hundred times larger than the Institute, but in both organizations, there were always other ways of doing things and no shortage of suggestions by others as to what those might be. I remember one vivid example of how similarly Hoddy and I approached issues in our respective I could always rely spheres. Hoddy had a highly talented executive on his being a good assistant, who was also a skilled Myers Briggs facilitator. She had organized various Myers listener and an even Briggs exercises for Diversified’s employees and more trusted advisor. wanted Hoddy to participate. Hoddy wasn’t so sure he wanted to be involved at the office, but he was curious and so signed up for a Myers Briggs workshop at the Island Institute. For those unfamiliar with the exercise, the process involves answering detailed questions about how one approaches situations in life in order to give you an idea of your personality “archetype.” In the work place, this tool can be useful for understanding why it is so difficult to communicate with some people and so easy to communicate with others. It turns out that Hoddy and I were both the same archetype—somewhat introverted, intuitive, and more oriented to thinking than feelings, more motivated by a “gut sense” than other ways of judging right and wrong. It was an “Ah-ha” moment for me, because I knew that Hoddy and I connected in a more fundamental, unchanging way and that I could always rely on his being a good listener and an even more trusted advisor. Hoddy’s approach to leadership, which I hope I shared, was in his words, “Hire people smarter than you and then get out of their way.” Hoddy’s instincts were rarely wrong. Once, when raising money for the Institute, a valued trustee convinced us that a big gala and auction was a tried and true method of filling the coffers. Everyone went to work to get artists and jewelers and people with fancy vacation homes or boats to

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donate to the auction, which would be held in conjunction with a fancy dinner with lots of wine under chandeliers encouraging people to bid. Although the event raised a handsome amount of money after expenses, it was inordinately painful for the both of us for inexplicable reasons beyond our similar archetypal response. As we were leaving at the end of the event, Hoddy took me aside and said, “No more f**king yard sales.” We both shared a love of Hoddy and I both retired from the Island Arctic adventures, where Institute after a nearly 30-year partnership. But we continued to see each other Hoddy had first visited regularly—both in Portland, where we met at Conservation Law Foundation meetings and as a college student on Vinalhaven when we shared many spirited with Admiral Donald dinner discussions. We both shared a love of Arctic adventures, MacMillan aboard the where Hoddy had first visited as a college student with Admiral Donald MacMillan schooner Bowdoin. aboard the schooner Bowdoin. He then returned to the Arctic four or five times, including a voyage on which we were both passengers from Iceland to Spitsbergen where we crossed the 80th latitude only 600 miles from the North Pole. On one of Hoddy’s Arctic expeditions aboard his specially designed ketch-rigged motor sailing vessel Tuak, he and his companions rounded into a small cove on the remote northern tip of Labrador and were surprised to find another vessel anchored there. As they came ashore for an unexpected rendezvous, the other party hastily packed up their gear and rowed back to their vessel without so much as a sidewise glance. The Tuak voyagers were shocked at this breach of basic maritime courtesy, but had the last laugh when they discovered the departing crew had left a movie camera behind in their haste. The camera case had the address of the owner, who may have been surprised by the irreverent visual message Tuak’s crew recorded on film of four moons rising at the head of the beach. When Hoddy was clearly failing, Institute co-founder Peter Ralston and I went to see him a final time. Peter projected some of his stunning images of the Arctic while I read some of my ice-inspired poems. I like to think that Hoddy, in the last week of his life, in addition to the surrounding love of his family, eased out of this world with images of his two favorite regions— the frozen reaches of the Arctic and the beauty and characters of the Maine islands. P H I L I P C O N K L I N G founded and served as president of the Island Institute from 1983 to 2013. He now runs Philip Conkling & Associates. See www.conklingassociates.com

ISLAND JOURNAL 2020

Betsy James Wyeth 1921-2020

The late wife of Maine’s famous painter helped put the Island Institute on firm footing S TO RY A N D P H OTO S BY P ET E R R A L S TO N

he publication you are holding this minute was inspired by Betsy Wyeth. When Betsy, whom I first met when I was eight years old, bought 450-acre Allen Island, six miles off Port Clyde, she asked me to help her figure out what to do with it; within a month or so Philip Conkling and I met and together we worked with Betsy to implement her sweeping vision for Allen. We all put a lot of time and hard work into that early island world of Betsy’s and in the process Philip conceived what became the Island Institute. Allen Island was the anvil upon which we forged a lot of our earliest ideas, and in the spring of 1983 we shared the nascent business plan for launching the Island Institute with Betsy. She

ISLAND JOURNAL 2020

liked what she saw, but really honed-in on our intention to publish something for what would be our membership base. “Look, if you are going to publish something, just don’t make it a self-congratulatory, mimeographed newsletter like all the other organizations. Make it exceptional! If you do, I’ll give you ten of Andy’s prints to sell.” We did, she did, and the Institute was off and running. We published the first Island Journal in 1984 and it was instrumental in our getting established in both the summer and year-round communities. Even as we were expanding the size and scope of the Institute’s services, we kept an oar in with Betsy on Allen, and subsequently also Benner Island, as she continued to refine and

expand upon her earliest ideas for the properties. Like Andy working on a major painting, Betsy started with an unerring vision and painstakingly built upon that. Instead of working with pencils, brushes, paint, paper, and panels, her tools included work crews, boats, skidders, barges, fire, intensity, unwavering conviction and, always, that truly extraordinary vision of hers driving it all. Betsy was not content just to preserve the land she owned out there. She was always all about the people who also worked on the islands. She built infrastructure so some of the lobstermen of Port Clyde, Cushing, and Friendship would always have a base out in their traditional grounds. To my knowledge, not another wealthy summer person has come remotely close to so genuinely accommodating those working people who preceded—and would follow—her here. I will never forget one of them, a friend, a tough man with a big heart, coming to tears as he spoke to me of his gratitude to her in encouraging him to have a berth out where his grandfather used to fish. The other working man she took care of was, of course, Andy. It is impossible to fully quantify her impact on his lifetime’s work, but as their son Jamie put it, “She should have also signed his paintings.” Andy acknowledged to me and others that he simply never would have become Andrew Wyeth without her. Years ago I wrote about them:

“ The competitive tension in this grand union is palpable but critical, and I cannot help but think of the ancient Greek word for competition, competra, which means ‘to rise together.’ And of ‘concerto,’ with its double meaning of joining together, working in concert, but also, from the Latin, to fight or to contend. “ Betsy’s and Andy’s long life together has often been tumultuous… but their carefully managed frisson has kept these two lovers passionate, edgy, and astonishingly productive. Their respective and combined genius has always fed on competition. They have worked in concert and they will each, someday, leave great masterworks behind, having risen together.” Amen. P E T E R R A L S TO N is a co-founder of the Island Institute, publisher of Island Journal. He continues to work as a photographer and displays and sells his work at Ralston Gallery in Rockport. For a deeper understanding of the Wyeths and Betsy Wyeth’s role in her husband’s work, visit the Wyeth section of Peter Ralston’s website—www.ralstongallery.com/the-wyeths. The content includes a 12-minute film about Betsy produced by the Farnsworth Art Museum.

ISLAND JOURNAL 2020

What is Poetry? By Jeffrey Thomson

Part 2

The light that points the way in the fog. The light in the fog that thickens and reveals the fog’s cold breath. The fog as well.

J E F F R E Y T H O M S O N ’ S most recent book is Half/Life: New and Selected Poems from Alice James Books. He is professor of creative writing at University of Maine Farmington.

GANNA STRYZHEKIN | DREAMSTIME.COM

ISLAND JOURNAL 2020

Publishers of Island Journal and The Working Waterfront PRESIDENT Robert Snyder EDITOR Tom Groening DESIGN / PRODUCTION Sharon Pieniak PHOTO EDITOR / PHOTOGRAPHER Jack Sullivan

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

Nathan Johnson

Sebastian Belle

Emily B. Lane Board Chair

Michael P. Boyd Clerk

Support the ISLAND FELLOWS PROGRAM

Bryan Lewis Governance Committee Chair

Shey Conover David Cousens

Michael Sant

Megan Dayton

Barbara Kinney Sweet

Michael Felton

Tom Tinsley Board Vice-Chair

Douglas Henderson Treasurer & Finance Committee Chair

Charles Verrill, Jr. Board Secretary

Luke Holden

Carol White

Kristin Howard Philanthropy & Communications Committee Chair

Donna Wiegle Programs Committee Chair

HONORARY TRUSTEES: John Bird Louis W. Cabot

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.

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ISLAND JOURNAL

Volume 36

ISLAND JOURNAL Celebrating Island Life & Culture

2020

Island World by Jon Mort

$14.95 ISBN 978-0-942719-40-6

51495>

9 780942 719406

Volume Thirty-Six

Limited edition, signed prints generously made available by the artist for sale at Archipelago to benefit the Island Institute. Visit TheArchipelago.net to learn more.

In This Issue:

How Maine Sailed into Statehood // John Marin’s Islands // Saint-Pierre et Miquelon