The Working Waterfront - July 2020

News of Maine’s Coast and Islands

THE WORKING

volume 34, № 5

published by the island institute

n

july 2020 n free circulation: 50,000 n

workingwaterfront.com

Oceania Riviera dwarfs tiny Eastport

Norwegian cruise ship finds safe harbor Downeast

By Tom Walsh//Photos by Leslie Bowman

T

he June 14 arrival of the 785-foot cruise ship Oceania Riviera at its temporary berth on Eastport’s downtown breakwater more than quadrupled the size of the Washington County city’s tallest buildings.

“There are 131 souls aboard,” said Chris Gardner, executive director of the Eastport Port Authority, of the 15-story tall ship, which spent months seeking federal, state, and local approval for the docking amid concerns about the unique role cruise ships played in the global spread of the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic. Among state agencies involved have been the office of Maine’s governor and the Maine Center for Disease Control. At the federal level, authorization for docking the ship in Eastport required buy-in from U.S. Customs, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, and the U.S. Coast Guard.

The Oceania Riviera, owned and operated by Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings, arrived at Eastport’s downtown breakwater Sunday morning, June 14. The ship had been under a “no sail” order and stuck off Miami since mid-March.

Those who remain sequestered on the ship are crew members who have been unable to go ashore due to Covid-19 screening logistics. Like dozens of other cruise ships affected by the pandemic-inspired federal “No Sail” order in effect since mid-March, the 15-deck Oceania Riviera had been anchoring off

the coast of Miami, Florida. For months, the ship’s owner—Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings—has been eager to move the ship far from what’s known as “hurricane alley,” given the 2020 hurricane season that began June 1. continued on page 3

History road trip—see how Maine became a state First of two-part series tells our story, and offers context for statehood

By Stephanie Bouchard

O

n March 16, 1820, cannons boomed and a glamorous ball (attended by the state’s thenacting governor, William King) was held at Portland’s Union Hall to celebrate Maine finally—after more than 30 years of trying—becoming a state.

The many celebrations that were planned this year to celebrate the bicentennial have largely been postponed or cancelled due to the pandemic, but you can still celebrate on your own by taking a ride in your vehicle and seeing some historic places that represent various moments in Maine’s journey toward statehood.

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To help you make your own road while also protecting their territory trip, we’re offering a two-part trail from English encroachments. map of sorts in this issue “They were very much and in the next that active agents in this story link ten physical locaand their work included That first tions, mostly along the some brilliant diplomacy coast, to moments along as well as strategic miliseparation Maine’s long journey to prowess when necesconvention didn’t tary statehood. Most of these sary,” said Ashley Smith, locations are open to the result in any great who grew up in Madison public; a few are not, and is a Native American enthusiasm for but can be seen from a studies scholar teaching the cause respectful distance from at Hampshire College in the road.

Massachusetts.

This first part of But clashes did the series covers the 1700s and the happen, and they could be violent, as second part will cover 1800 to state- was the case in 1724 when tensions hood in 1820. We begin with these five spurred by missionary priest Sebastian locations: Rasle exploded and a raid by British troops on the Native Wabanaki village 1: The Historic Pines Trail and resulted in a brutal massacre of the Father Rasle Monument, Madison Wabanaki people there.

Various histories present conflicting During the decades leading into the early 18th century, diplomats from stories of this episode in Maine history, Norridgewock (and other Wabanaki said Smith. Most of those histories communities) worked hard to build represent that the attack on the village continued on page 2 good relations with English settlers,

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The Working Waterfront . July 2020

HISTORY

continued from page 1 wiped out the Wabanakis living there and drove those that survived away, but that is not entirely true, she said.

In the mid-19th century, stories of Native peoples being vanquished by settlers were commonplace in state histories being created across New England, she said, including in Maine.

These stories are part of a long history of sidelining Native peoples here that has continued to cause challenges to the present day.

“The story that locals know—that ‘all the Indians were gone after 1724’— is not only untrue, it can actually be really damaging to the descendants of those survivors who still have connections to that place,” she said.

Some did, in fact, return to the village, at least until 1765, but even those who left the village never left their homeland, she said. Today, descendants of survivors of the 1724 attack still live in Maine and in the greater Wabanaki territories.

Visit: The Historic Pines Trail and picnic area is on the Father Rasle (Rale) Road off Route 201A. The trail is a mile long following a ridge along the Kennebec River. You’ll see historical site markers and the Father Rasle monument is accessible from the trail.

2: First Parish Church, Portland

Earlier versions of present-day First Parish Church in Portland were witness to two big moments in statehood history: the first separation convention, held in 1785, and the convention creating Maine’s constitution.

No specific event seems to have touched off the first separation movement, but those who wanted separation, including Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s grandfathers, Peleg Wadsworth and Stephen Longfellow, set forth a list of grievances, including that Maine was unfairly taxed and underrepresented, to support their argument.

That first separation convention didn’t result in any great enthusiasm for the cause. In fact, many of those attending later were accused of fostering unconstitutional and insurrectionary activity.

It’s quite fitting that when success finally did come, First Parish, the

location of that first separation convention, should, in October 1819, play host to the convention that hammered out the state’s constitution.

Visit: 425 Congress St. First Parish is an active worship community. Go to https://firstparishportland.org for more information about opportunities for visiting.

3: Benjamin Riggs House, Georgetown

While Mainers in general were tepid about separating from Massachusetts in the early years of the separation movement, those living on the coast and involved in the coasting trade were, for the most part, staunchly against it.

Georgetown, for example, consistently voted against separation until the final two votes in 1816 and 1819.

The biggest reason for their opposition was the Coasting Law, enacted in 1789, just a few years into the early separation movement. The Coasting Law directed trade vessels to stop at a custom house and pay a fee in each state not adjacent to its originating location.

As part of Massachusetts, Maine’s vessels could travel from Eastport to New Jersey without stopping and forking over any money, said Lincoln Paine, the Portland-based author of Down East: An Illustrated History of Maritime Maine.

“The people in the coastal towns were against it because it would have been a prohibitively onerous burden for them,” he said.

The Coasting Law was favorably altered in 1819, which opened the floodgates on the separation vote.

While many coastal towns still voted more against separation than for it, the yesses in those coastal communities made the difference.

View: Georgetown’s Benjamin Riggs made his fortune through his involvement in the coastal trade. In the victorysetting vote of 1819, he supported separation and was chosen as a delegate to the constitutional convention held that fall. His home, built around 1790 on Robinhood Road, is a private home, but can be seen from the road.

4: Wadsworth-Longfellow House, Portland

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s grand-

SHE’S A KEEPER— Thomas Perry shows off a halibut he caught the morning of June 10 off Milbridge. Perry works as sternman on the fishing vessel Nee’s Way. The halibut season ran this year from May 18 to June 13, two weeks shorter than last year, a conservation measure. The Department of Marine Resources issued 970 permits for halibut.

PHOTO: COURTESY THOMAS PERRY

Montpelier, which houses the Henry Knox Museum, is a replica of the “great proprietor” Henry Knox. PHOTO: TOM GROENING

fathers were among the instigators for separation. They were members of the Federalist party—the party of George Washington and Alexander Hamilton—and the dominant political party in Massachusetts at the time. But political tides changed after 1800.

As Thomas Jefferson’s DemocraticRepublican party began to gain power nationally and in Maine, Federalists in Maine who had supported separation from Massachusetts began to see separation as a bad idea and began actively lobbying against separation in an attempt to retain their political power.

Ultimately, the DemocraticRepublicans left the Federalists in the dust, but the Wadsworth-Longfellow family remained involved in the governance of the new state, with Henry’s father serving as a member of the state legislature and in the U.S. Congress.

Visit: 489 Congress St. Operated and maintained by the Maine Historical Society, the Wadsworth-Longfellow House is a museum open to the public.

Go to www.mainehistory.org/house_ overview.shtml for visitation details.

5: Henry Knox Museum, Thomaston

One of the major factors driving the rise of the Democratic-Republican party in Maine was the growing population of the interior communities here. The settlers of the interior largely supported

the Democratic-Republican party and consistently supported separation, in large part because they had a beef with the so-called “great proprietors.”

In the earliest days of colonization of what came be to called New England, who owned what land was sometimes unclear, especially in the District of Maine. Competing claims over territory were common and became outright violent after the Revolution when men like Henry Knox, a “great proprietor” who owned vast tracts of land in Maine, butted heads with so-called “liberty men,” the largely poor settlers of interior locations who believed that the sweat of their labor on wilderness lands gave them right to those lands.

With their connections to Massachusetts state government, the great proprietors often had the upper hand in land disputes with the settlers.

But the balance of power began to shift as the population of the settlers grew and they found a supporter with powerful connections of his own—the leader of the Democratic-Republican party and eventual first governor of Maine, William King.

Visit: 30 High St. The Henry Knox Museum is a 1929 re-creation of Knox’s original mansion, Montpelier, built in 1794. The original mansion was demolished in 1871. Go to https://knoxmuseum.org for visitation details.

www.workingwaterfront.com . July 2020

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The 785-foot Oceania Riviera arrived in Eastport on June 14, where it sought safe harbor after departing Miami.

OCEANIA RIVIERA

“We cannot say for certain that this is not a risk to the health and safety continued from page 1 to the people who live here,” she told Oceania Riviera’s crew members still the council.

That same day, Washington County on board were among an estimated 100,000 crew who remain stranded on had one confirmed case of Covid-19 cruise ships at or near the port of Miami, infection, the lowest among Maine’s with some Oceania Riviera crew 16 counties. That verified infection did members telling the Miami Herald that not require hospitalization, and the they haven’t been paid in months. Once infected person recovered. As of June the ship arrived in Eastport, those on 16, there have been 101 virus-related board are not able to go ashore. Upon deaths statewide, but no confirmed arrival, more than a few of the crew deaths in Washington County related waved and shouted greetings to those to Covid-19, despite the county’s on the breakwater and shot cell phone limited health care facilities and high photos of the Eastport waterfront from concentration of elderly citizens.

Bradbury said she could be wrong— the ship’s upper decks.

“There were hundreds of people and hopes she is—but sees the public who came downtown to the break- health risks as “too high to take the water on Sunday to see the ship, and gamble.” She also noted two ongoing civil actions against there were many Norwegian Cruise comments about Line Holdings are its size,” Gardner being pursued by said the next day.

Florida’s attorney “Downtown was so Oceania Riviera’s general that contend busy yesterday that crew members still on Norwegian Cruise the WaCo Diner Lines had been “less sold out of seafood. board were among an than forthcoming” The overwhelming response has been estimated 100,000 crew in efforts to track and contain Covid-19. positive. I’m not who remain stranded “There’s concern hearing Covid-19 on cruise ships about active Covid concerns.” cases, but there are The controverno active cases on sial plan generated board,” Gardner weeks of sometimes said. “The assumpheated debate among Eastport residents. On May 20, the tion seems to be that this vessel must city council voted 4-1 to approve the be dirty, that this ship can never be proposed arrangement, with Hailley trusted. It’s been suggested that I don’t Bradbury, the council’s vice-president, care about public safety. I do care. It’s voting no. During the council debate been weeks of character assassination.” preceding the vote, she expressed concerns about the public health and ‘NOT A TOURISM ISSUE’ public safety issues related to Covid-19 For months, the Oceania Riviera debate concerns associated with the impact of has consumed Gardner’s time and cruise ships as global vectors for the attention. Some of the comments, ongoing pandemic. e-mails, and other feedback Gardner

has received has been helpful, he said.

Others have been personal, vitriolic, and racist, including this comment: “Why are we helping these people?

They are not even Americans.”

For some years now, the port authority and its small staff have been increasingly successful in wooing and hosting small cruise ships at Eastport’s citycenter breakwater. Most of the vessels involved were built to accommodate 400 passengers, not the 1,250 passengers for which Oceania Riviera was designed ten years ago.

“This is not a tourism issue,” Gardner said. “It’s a maritime issue. They approached us, and we were here to help.

We’re putting them on the breakwater because it’s a new facility, engineered for

access to sewer, which is not available at the cargo port. And having cruise ships moor at the cargo port would involve cost and risk inherent in having to move vessels in and out to accommodate our cargo operations.”

The “long-term parking” agreement involves financial details that remain a work in progress. The port authority has proposed charging $2 a foot per day, with an initial 60-day stay, with additional 30-day extensions as required, payment in advance. Gardner said all revenues will be used to pay down debt on the $18 million breakwater that replaced an aging dock that collapsed in 2017 due to structural issues.

Eastport’s mermaid seems to be pleased to have the cruise ship visit.

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The Working Waterfront . July 2020

Patricia Smith Ranzoni’s ‘folk art’ poetry Bucksport’s poet laureate works on ‘deep, high’ Maine

By Dana Wilde

B

ucksport’s poet laureate has lived there nearly all her life. And from her corner of Maine, she’s also one of the state’s best-known poets, with a plaque recognizing her accomplishments set in a step of the University of Maine’s Fogler Library, and invitations to read and talk about her poetry from here to the West Coast.

But if you ask Patricia Smith Ranzoni, all she’s really been doing is practicing Maine’s traditional lifeways. Among which, in her world, have been subsistence farming, fishing, canning, stitching, cooking, teaching, taking care of children, and, as it happens, the art of poetry. A folk art, as she sees it, practiced not as an aesthetic pursuit but as an age-old form of entertainment and communication. A commonplace of life and community Downeast.

“From my youngest years and first awareness of speech, words, listenings, and noticings, I was aware of poetry as a loved element in our, Maine, culture,” she said recently, in reply to a question about how poetry works in a community. She recalled how during the ice storm of 1998, which left hundreds of thousands of Mainers without electricity Patricia Smith Ranzoni for days and weeks, “the Bangor radio station that broadcast throughout was inundated with poems documenting the experience from the listening audience … It was a remarkable demonstration of the way poems have always been a primary way we have expressed the often overwhelming experiences and conditions The family lived for a time of our lives.” with the Penobscots and Ranzoni’s conditions in particular are those of working and underclass rural then in a “tar-papered Mainers—her own. She was born in house” a boarding house in Lincoln in 1940.

The family lived for a time with the Penobscots and then in a “tar-papered house” built by her father in Enfield: “No water, electricity, telephone, car. One lamp. Where … sacks of potatoes behind the wood stove caught fire, and we got put to bed in our snowsuits.”

The Smith family landed finally in Bucksport, near the Castine farm where Ranzoni’s mother, the granddaughter of Capt. William Snowman, had grown up.

When her father returned from World War II, the family bought a subsistence farm, and except for one sojourn to Massachusetts, Ranzoni has been anchored in Bucksport ever since.

She worked her way through the University of Maine, where she met her husband, Ed Ranzoni, and became an elementary school teacher. She founded a nursery school and kindergarten in the area, along the way earning a master’s degree in education, coordinating county child development services, and working as a child development specialist and family counselor—all while maintaining the homestead and traditional lifeways learned as a child.

One of those lifeways was poetry, and it turned out her sense of not just personal, but generational depth translated into some of the most powerful poetry any Mainer has written in the last 50 years. It’s appeared in many local and national literary journals, and her collections include Claiming (1995), Settling (2000), Greatest Hits (2008), Hibernaculum & Other North-Natured Poems (2010), Bedding Vows (2012), and others. Its prominent themes are home, hearth, and family; deeply felt connections to nature; and the presence of ancestry and history in the lives we actually live: “Our findings, story by story, in the universal mind”, in her phrasing from the poem “Steps,” read during the dedication of the plaque at Fogler Library in 2004.

Ranzoni’s concern for the legitimacy and dignity of Maine’s outback culture produced the book Still Mill in 2017, on the impact of the Verso paper mill’s closure in 2014. The Bucksport area’s collective life had been built around the mill, and so Ranzoni set about collecting personal testimonies, poems, songs, recollections, photos, drawings, and newspaper clippings from the 1920s forward to document, preserve, and enshrine the feel and depth of generations of experience shaped around the mill. A Bucksport manifestation of what PHOTO: COURTESY PATRICIA SMITH RANZONI Ranzoni calls the “deep, high, Maine.”

Ranzoni says her “documentary poetry” is devoted to “keeping the old ways.” Not just in her own writing space, kitchen, and farm, but as a force in the whole community. Poetry is an old lifeway, deeply felt, and deeply shared. Her sense of a community language is very likely what makes her poetry so recognizable and appreciated in Bucksport and elsewhere.

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www.workingwaterfront.com . July 2020

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cRanBeRRy RepoRt COA students hear Native view of challenging times

Wall Kimmerer sayseating virus may be ‘essential turning’ ing,Robin painting lines, , and throwing rocks

By Laurie Schreiber

indigenous knowledge and scientific perspectives, was awarded the John ime moves not in a line, but Burroughs Medal for Natural History in a circle of beginnings and Writing. Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous endings that can be celebrated Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the sford. with bright red withand a black stripe) and, like piece of purple rope to thewas endawarded of the Teachings of Plants (2013) gratitude compassion. izzas, every fisherman message, in Maine buoy line orOlson toggle, but all attachments the Sigurd F. Nature Writing Award.

Thatother was lobster the heartening busier in be made with a splice or a tuck. thishard winter, he read about, must The Citizen Potawatomi are Algonquiantimes, thatabout, came talked from Robin e the Wall I know it’s a stretch to compare foland experimented with purple paint.

Kimmerer, a Citizen Potawatomi speaking people who originally occuason. Nation lowing Maine whale rope requireThe latest whale regulations require member and award-winning pied the Great Lakes region. Today, the ortu- author air workshop, but all Maine lobster fishermen use new ments nation with is onea ofplein 38 federally recognized who delivered theto keynote iends address markingsduring on the an ropes they attach to a person could return home from eionline gradua- Native American tribes, headquartered rip to tion lobster traps. Depending on howofclose and say that they’d been paintin Oklahoma. ceremony for the College the ther g was Atlantic in their spare time. Iffrom Bruce were to shore Class they fish, theyon will have 72 students 20 states of 2020 June 6. to add ingAddressing re so 2-4 an essaywho on how he spent his purple on beginnings each buoy line. and 12 nations received bachelor “The placemarks where and writing u did endings winter vacation, painting would be a On warps that are 100-feet or less there meet is also a time of uncertainty of arts and a master of philosophy in ques- and part of it.

Another part would be the mustvulnerability, be one 12-inch purple mark with” she said. “We learn COA’s one major, human ecology, ber at that I heard him tellteaching his brother in alove few transcends fathoms offear. theWe trap a 36- description Kimmerer said a central of areand learning e sub- about Mark about walking to get doughnuts, inch purple mark within 2 fathoms of vulnerability and suffering in the Citizen Potawatomi is to live life meet- inequality the buoy. If theinjustice. warp is longer thatalso 100 in February, with our son Robin, and from a place of gratitude. and And we’re floor!) learning grandchildren Henry on anda day Cora. feet, theabout requirement is for a 12-inch “Gratitude is something, likeI courage, kindness, inven- our e and tiveness, purple mark near the trap, a second 12- was with friends in Portland, this,away we might take for granted,” and she and moral imagination. ” h our inch awayiswith friends in purple mark halfway to the buoy, Stephanie said. “But was gratitude so much more Kimmerer is a distinguished teaching Maine. professor and a 36-inch mark near the buoy.

Florida.

Father and son were in charge. at the State University of New than a simple thank-you. Gratitude is oal of York “Yeah, we gotGiving doughnuts Bruce figures he will be putting 1,500 strong medicine. thanks at callsThe us College of Environmental Science onsid- and Cookie Jar and then walked to the to 1,800 markings on his rope in all; two Forestry, and the founding director into kinship.” n, but of for a picnic to throwfor rocks.” to the threeCenter weeks for of extra work if he does Gratitude is alsoand medicine hard Native Peoples and beach virus- the Eating homemade donuts and it without hiring help.

A number of fishEnvironment. She co-founded and times, she said. time isermen arepresident applying paint their ropes throwing rocks at the “Together we bow to beach—if the reality that that a past of thetoTraditional to it. Ecological a mirrorevery image of many childby resting them in 3-foot long gutters has touched person around the Knowledge section of the isn’t I can Ecological made from lengthwise-halved PVC pipe. on ”Islesford, world summers in these times, she said. I don’t Society of America and hood Bruce’sasfirst attempt was with spray paint know q class to take time to She what urgedis.the serves a senior fellow for the Center paint, for butNature he soonand moved on to the more effiacknowledge all that they have in addiHumans. “time cient latex paint.

Fernald liveslost, on Islesford (Little tion to what they’ve and to cherish Herbrush 2003andbook, Gathering Moss, Barbara e and which Someincorporates fishermen will add a 3-foot Cranberry Island) with her husband Bruce. both traditional a world in need.

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down, islanders mix prep work and gatherings

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PHOTO: DALE KAKKAK

she suggested, is an essential turning and calls for leaders of all kinds to navigate the shift. She called on graduates to use their individual talents for the benefit of all.

“Unloose an epidemic of justice, an outbreak of action on behalf of the good, green Earth and her people,” she said. “Dear people, you have what it takes, you are equipped with the minds, the hearts, the knowledge, the compassion, and the openness, the leadership and the imagination for the transformations that are possible. And you aren’t impeded by what you don’t know, because you know how to learn.”

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College of the Atlantic’s single focus on human ecology itself speaks to that philosophy, she noted, referring to the premise of COA’s founding, in 1969, that education should go beyond understanding the world as it is, to enabling students to actively shape its future.

“You’ve been described as a community of idealists with elbow grease,” she added with a smile.

Noting that COA is committed to “learning from the land” in its ecological pursuits, she praised students for tackling the difficulties of carrying out their education during the pandemic.

“When you had to transition from learning on land to learning online, it wasn’t what you had on mind,” she said. “But you rose to the occasion.”

Kimmerer said the Citizen Potawatomi view of time as a circle is useful in a time of uncertainty.

“The forces of creation and the forces of destruction are meeting head-on,” she said. “They say that teachers come when we need them the most. The pandemic and the social upheaval that we’re experiencing can be a teacher for us if we’re willing to learn.”

Invoking the long view of life, she cited a philosopher, Joanna Macy, who referred to “essential turnings” or shifts in the way human life aligns with ecological processes. The pandemic,

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The Working Waterfront . July 2020

High school seniors undaunted by virus-tinged graduation Two islanders and a Downeast student have big plans and goals

By Tom Groening

A

cross the state, high school ended this spring with a whimper. Students graduated at the peak, or perhaps post-peak, of an unprecedented pandemic. And with graduation, they move into an uncertain and unknown future.

But for three graduates in coastal communities— Peaks Island, Islesboro, and Eastport—the new normal has not dampened their enthusiasm for their next steps, nor, it seems, is it likely to deter them from pursuing their goals.

Lucia Daranyi, Olivia Kelly, and Elijah Brice each shared their thoughts about this milestone, and how the unusual times have impacted their plans.

LUCIA DARANYI, 18, graduated from Casco Bay High School in Portland. She is the daughter of Ellen Mahoney and Ed Daranyi. Mahoney grew up in Portland, and Daranyi was living in Arizona, and the family ended up living on Peaks Island, Lucia said, because her older sister had friends on the island, and on visits, her parents were attracted to “Being an islander its quiet nature.

Growing up on an island is really a big part for all of her 18 years “has of my personality.” been a huge part” of her maturation, she said.

—Lucia Daranyi “Being an islander is really a big part of my personality,” and it impacted her decision to attend Colorado College in Colorado Springs in the fall, where she expects the same closeknit community that she found on the island.

She won a Geiger Scholarship, one of the Island Institute’s awards for island students.

It will be hard, Daranyi admits, to be far from the ocean. Living on the island “made me a lot more close with the ocean and nature in general.”

And it’s more than a passive appreciation. Daranyi is a founder of SolaRISE Portland, “a collective of Portland public school students” working to have the city get as much as 85 percent of its electricity from solar arrays.

She also is on the planning board for Maine Environmental Change Makers, another student organization.

“It’s been amazing to watch it come alive,” she said, and likes the action-oriented nature of the groups.

At Casco Bay, Daranyi enjoyed her AP U.S. history class and science classes. The school offers an expeditionary component, “with all of your classes centered around a world problem. We focused on the chemistry of the rivers in Maine,” and her group traveled to Millinocket to sample and analyze water from the Penobscot River.

In college, she plans to major in environmental studies, with a focus on public policy.

The virus-inspired shut-down of school has impacted her mood, Daranyi admits, which vacillates between hopeful and hopeless.

“It varies daily about how I feel about it,” she says.

“It’s been bizarre. The big idea of ‘senioritis’ has been reversed. Everyone’s been wishing they could be back in class.”

There’s one upside, though: “I’m getting lots of time at the ocean now,” she says.

OLIVIA KELLY, 18, the daughter of Bill and Gale Kelly, graduated from Islesboro Central School as its valedictorian. The family—including an older and a young brother—moved to the island full-time

five or six years ago. But she has been a student at the school for eight years, first commuting from a mainland town.

“They’ve all been very supportive,” Olivia Kelly she says of her teachers. “We’re a very small school,” with just nine in this year’s graduating class, “so it allows for personal relationships with most of your teachers. My advanced chemistry class this year was just me,” she says.

“The teachers are very interested in the individual.”

The school offers experiential learning during the sophomore year, with the opportunity for students to focus on a particular academic subject, try out a trade, or pursue personal growth. Kelly chose a project that studied the island’s groundwater.

“Islesboro has a sole-source aquifer,” Lucia Daranyi she explained, and so she read about well-water protection and worked to have water test kits available to residents at the town office.

She also looked into regulating pesticide application.

“There’s lots of landscaping that goes on in the summer,” she notes.

Though she lives on an island, Kelly already has seen a bit of the world.

Taking classes through a semester at a private school based in Idaho, she spent five weeks in Chile, and two weeks in Patagonia, backpacking and kayaking on a river.

Kelly admits that Covid-19 has colored her final months at school.

“As a senior in the spring semester, Elijah Brice it’s been difficult to stay focused,” she admits, “as everything is unraveling across the because of the uncertainty that comes with Covid-19.

“I’m a little gun shy about taking out a loan.” If country.” he enrolled at MMA or another college and classes The island school, though, has been diligent in providing material for her studies in these final became online only, he feels he would not be getting his money’s worth. months.

But Brice is no slacker, and won’t be sitting out the Kelly plans on attending Tufts University in fall months.

In 2018, he participated in the Island Institute’s Massachusetts in the fall, “I’d love to have a the same school her father, Aquaculture Business Development training, and who is a lawyer, attended. then launched Mainely Seaweed. “I started a kelp normal freshman She hopes to major in farm up here,” he says, and has already harvested a year.” international relations few thousand pounds.

Soon after, he earned a lobster license, and also with a minor in Spanish.

—Olivia Kelly Studying abroad while began building fiberglass boats, the region’s Eastporter enrolled at Tufts is part of design, both the 17-foot and 24-foot versions. He secured molds from the her plan. former boat school in “I’m very much looking forward to going to school town, and some of the in the fall,” she says, and hopes on-campus living will “There’s plenty of men who had taught at the be possible. “I’d love to have a normal freshman year.” school are mentoring him marine industry in the work.

ELIJAH BRICE, 18, the son of Coleman and Manuela “We all help each other Brice, is graduating from Shead High School in opportunities here,” he says. “I’ve built Eastport, where his family lives. That rural, easterly up here.” a few 17s,” which feature community is a long ways from Los Angeles, where an open deck and center Elijah was born, and from New Jersey, where the —Elijah Brice console. family lived until about eight years ago.

And as if that weren’t Brice spent one semester at Washington Academy enough to keep him busy, he’s also rebuilding a in East Machias, but returned to Shead.

“I had a really great science teacher,” and he 32-foot lobster boat, with the help of a friend.

Brice still hopes to earn a degree, possibly at the especially liked that classes were “all hands-on, University of Maine, and he notes that his parents project-based.”

Though he was considering attending Maine have supported his decision to wait.

“There’s plenty of marine industry opportunities Maritime Academy in Castine, Brice has decided to put college on hold for now. Part of his decision came up here,” he says. “I’m taking it day by day.”

. APRIL . July2020 WWW.WORKINGWATERFRONT.COM www.workingwaterfront.com 2020

BookisRback eview Offshore wind in motion

Regulators, developer explain process to fishermen

Lives and homes of the artistic and famous

By Tom Groening

scenic character, air and water quality, or other natural resources in the area of the turbine.

A project also must conform to the federal Natural Resources Protection Act, Livesay said, and not “unreasonably interfere” with recreation or navigation, or harm estuarine or marine fisheries. A developer also must provide a navigation plan, a fish and wildlife plan, and a removal plan.

Brian Hooker of the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) outlined the federal role in offshore wind. BOEM’s jurisdiction lies in the waters that are three to 200 miles off state land. The multiphased, multi-year approval process includes planning and analysis, assessments of waters and wind potential, and construction and operation.

BOEM is reviewing the Vineyard Wind project in Massachusetts, and Hooker said a final decision is expected by the end of the year. The National Marine Fisheries Service is part of the review process and is represented on a task force that includes representatives from Maine, New Hampshire, and Massachusetts.

Annie Hawkins of Responsible Offshore Development Alliance, a Washington D.C.-based advocacy group formed to protect fishery interests in offshore wind development, said her group includes 170 members.

Regulators must consider fishing interests, she said, and “We don’t feel that’s been done very well to date.” Developers use a “divide and conquer” approach, and projects to weakLike any separating anthology,states the selection is bound to en opposition. trigger some criticism. Conspicuously missing trying to take painters—Karl the dialogue Shrag, back,” are“We’re a number of post-war Hawkins said.

John Heliker, Lynn Drexler, Elena Jahn, Reuben Fred Mattera,Kienbusch, who has fished for 40a years from Port Tam, William to name few. As much Judith, R.I., urged fi shermen to document where as one may love the work of Waldo Peirce (1884they work to makeseems the case for mitigation 1970), his now reputation to survive on hisif they are displaced by wind turbines. friendship with Ernest Hemingway. That said, his “You must stayofengaged,” he said. is one of the satirical portrait Lucy Farnsworth Beth Casoni, director of the Massachusetts delights of the book.

Lobstermen’s Association, echoed that view, sayAs for the Bowdoin Museum production, using ing “comments matter” during public review, citthe superb photography skills of Walter Smalling, ing visit a project areahomes off the Bay that was reduced we artists’ and State studios, inside and by 65 percent because of articulated concerns. out, across the state, from Winslow Homer’s This spring, UMaine’s Wardtosaid, theBryan’s project seaside retreat in Prouts Neck Ashley will hire a fi sheries liaison.

wondrous abode on Little Cranberry Island;

T Missing art? Try these books on Maine’s artistic he perception that Maine’s forays into offshore wind power have been on hold aren’t quite accurate, said Jake Ward of the University of Maine. Under the name New England Aqua Ventus I, the university is pursuing siting a floating wind turbine off Monhegan Island as a test for possible further development.

“Someone this morning said this is coming fast,” Ward saidLittle of the university’s bid, speaking at a sesBy Carl sion of the Maine Fishermen’s Forum in Rockport on March hile 5. Inwe fact, hefor hasMaine’s been involved in the wait art venues to pursuit of off shore wind power since 2007. re-open—and it will happen soon— “This is not coming community fast,” he deadpanned. had museums, art centers,“Iand kids when this started.

Now I have grandkids.” galleries are helping to fill the visual void with Several years ago,talks, UMaine had pursued—as virtual tours, special and Zoom gatherings.

Maine two as floating wind First Aqua FridaysVentus—siting are now online are many turbines off Monhegan to learn more about the openings, art courses, and art camps. In Belfast, flWaterfall oating technology and the potential to produce Arts’ founder Alan Crichton has been electricity.

To that end, a one-eighth sized floating hosting “Zoomcasts, ” featuring conversations with turbine was deployed off Castine in 2013, and has artists whose shows were canceled or postponed since retrieved.while Farnsworth Education by thebeen pandemic, Ward said the project is now operating as New Coordinator Denise Mitchell recently presented a England Aqua Ventus, and is seeking to site a sinslideshow of some of the museum’s greatest hits gle, 6-megawatt floating turbine.

Late lastnormally year, the to friends of Schoodic Arts for All, who federal Department of Energy awarded the projwould have made the trip to Rockland. ectWe’re $1.4 all million for design, and the Maine Public in this together, which is underscored Utilities Commission voted to approve a 20-year by these shared endeavors. agreement for Central Power toofpurchase One way to get your artMaine fix in this time closure electricity generated by the turbine. is books. Two publications came out just as the Offshore is the largest energy world was wind shutting down: the untapped Farnsworth Art resource “by far,” Ward said.

He explained how Museum’s massive Maine and American Art and the oating turbine use pre-cast the fl Bowdoin Collegestructure Museum will of Art’s equally concrete segments. hefty At First Light: Two Centuries of Maine “We’reTheir very Homes confident will survive” in the maArtists, andit Studios.

No curling up rine environment, he said.

“Anything happening with these volumes; a strong back, arms, and in the Gulf of Maine is going to beideally floating.” maybe knees are required—and a coffee Still, permitting remains to be secured. table or some such platform for perusing. Fishing interests will be included weighing proposals, Both institutions decidedinMaine’s Bicentennial regulators said, but fi shing advocates urged would be the occasion to revisit the state’sthose art present vigilant. history, to butbefrom different angles. The Farnsworth NicktoLivesay the statelook Department of Envichose take aofsweeping at its impressive ronmental Protection said the project off Monhecollections, while Bowdoin homed in on, well, the gan will fall under state jurisdiction.

Th e site locahomes of 26 artists, from Jonathan Fisher in Blue tion lawWilliam would Wegman hold sway,inhe said, which ensures Hill to Rangeley. there will be no adverse eff ect existingPorter uses, Beyond the sun-bleached on Fairfield

heritage

W

from Berenice Abbott’s cabin in Blanchard to painting The Dock on the cover of the Farnsworth Molly Neptune Parker’s modest house in Indian tome lies an accounting of the fruit of one Township, Princeton. woman’s dream, legacy, and Close-to-the-coast homes paternal tribute. Lucy Copeland predominate—John Marin in Farnsworth (1838-1935) gets top South Addison, the Zorachs in Both institutions billing in a terrific essay by Chief Georgetown, Bernard Langlais decided Maine’s Curator Michael Komanecky, and Lois Dodd in Cushing, which provides what must be the Richard Tuttle on Mount Desert Bicentennial would fullest portrait of the founder to Island. Rudy Burckhardt’s and According to the National Institute for OccupaBy Wanda Curtis be the occasion to date. It’s quite a tale, with plenty of Yvonne Jacquette’s farmhouse tional Safety and Health, commercial fi shing one of intrigue, surmise and revelation. in Searsmont is among theismost revisit the the state’s most dangerous occupations in the U.S. Its he Maine Coast Fishermen’s Association Despite a similarity in title, traditional New England, data an shows that commercial fishermen experienced a faart history has won a $5,000 grant to promote mental the book is quite different from assortment of connected strucdeathsset perin100,000 full-time equivahealth awarenessMaine in theincommercial fish- tality rate of 114 tures the 1999 publication the landscape. lent workers between 2000 and 2017.

That acompares ing industry.

America: American Art at the “When we experience place,” to an average of four deaths per 100,000 Monique Coombs, director of marine programs Farnsworth Art Museum by Pamela Belanger.

Maine Poet Laureate Stuart Kestenbaumfull-time notes equivalents among “we all U.S. for nonprofi t, saidofthe funds will be used to de- in Forthe one, the scope work presented is greatly his foreword, areworkers. connecting not only Common hazards include vessel disasters, falls overvelop informational materials to assist commercial expanded.

For example, there is a chapter on with a presence within that space or landscape, board, and a variety of onboard gear and equipment fi shermen in managing stress, anxiety, and depresphotography eloquently and expertly narrated by but within ourselves as well.” Texts by Bowdoin .

Coombsco-directors said fishingAnne is a very isolating industry, sion, as well as materials showing how to stay menFarnsworth Curator Jane Bianco.

Museum and Frank Goodyear with some fi shermen out on the water and away from tally fi t.

A website with phone numbers for fi sherA good deal of familiar material is featured: the and Farnsworth Chief Curator Komanecky families for days at a time, which adds to stress. men to reach out for help may also be in the works.

Robert Henri circle (Kent, Hopper, Bellows, et deepen this sense of place.

“Depression, and thoughts of suicide Ththree e grantgenerations was awardedofbyWyeth, the Fisher Charitable Trust. al.), Louise Nevelson, Both volumes anxiety, are extensively and handsomely are not uncommon in any fi shing community, no Coombs said fi shermen may be experiencing the Porter family, and Robert Indiana. These illustrated—and provide a stark reminder of how matter which coast you are on,” said Coombs.

“It stress due to changes the industry which far we’ve come in reproduction quality since, monographic chaptersin are joined byover broader is anMaine isolating, full 1740of unthey control.

The ever-present danger in say, essayshave on no subject matter: “Maine’s Woods and and dangerous Its Role in occupation, American Art, certainty and expense.” the work also adds stress.

Waters,” “Work,” “People,” etc. Komanecky 1963, the longtime art-historical standard bearer.

The grant is just beginning, she said, but it’s “It’s not the fishing thatwith produces stress fishercompletes survey “Maine and for Beyond, ” Together, these titlesa provide enlightenment and a step toward bringing issues into the open to men,” she said.

“Many of them love being out on a sampling of work by contemporary artists, from escape, badly needed in these lockdown times. be addressed. The hope is to humanize the fishing the water.

It’s dealing with a lot of uncertainty due Beverly Hallam, Will Barnet, Leonard Baskin, and industry make the public aware of stressors to things like climate and regulation changes, and William Thon, to David Driskell, Abby Shahn, Carl Little’sand book Mary Alice Treworgy: A Maine fi shermen face every day. how those things are going to impact their busiJohn Moore, Mark Wethli, and Celeste Roberge.

Painter (Marshall Wilkes) will be out in the fall.

Alex Todd, a 10th generation fisherman from ness and income.”

Fishermen’s group wants to raise mental health awareness Changing climate, resources, danger produce stress

T

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Chebeague Island, said changing regulations, such as those concerning right whale protections, are among the biggest stressors for him.

“There’s also a lot less mobility between fisheries today due to licensing issues, which makes things more stressful, too,” he added. “I know some fishermen have gotten therapy and it’s helped them, but many are reluctant to admit they need help.

“I get relief from stress by going to the gym or playing my guitar, but everybody is different,” Todd said. “I appreciate what the Maine Coast Fishermen’s Association is trying to do by drawing attention to these issues.”

8

The Working Waterfront . July 2020

Rock Bound

‘What’s goin’ on?’ is how ‘we’ solve problems Rhetoric, language, and logic must be refined

By Tom Groening WE’VE SEEN, and maybe experienced first-hand, the conflict that comes when people have different ideas about safe public conduct in light of Covid-19.

Recently, the issue was put before Judith Martin, aka columnist “Miss Manners,” on NPR, and I thought her response was enlightening well beyond the matter of social distancing.

If a masked person encounters an unmasked person who stands too close in the aisle of a grocery store, what’s the best way to respond? Angrily demanding the person move back, with a sharp comment about the efficacy of wearing a mask, is one way to go. But Martin suggested saying this instead: “It seems like we need more distance here.”

The key word in that sentence is “we,” Martin explained. Rather than drawing a line in the sand, the concerned shopper has engaged the other person as a kind of partner in solving a problem. “We” need to figure something out, as an opening gambit, is far less confrontational, and likely to slow a potential slide to anger.

I have a friend who is an officer with the Waldo County Sheriff ’s Department,

and he told me that when he arrives at the often remote, rural location of a family or neighborhood dispute, he begins with a simple and intentionally casual question: “What’s goin’ on?”

It invites explanation, he says, and suggests that he brings no preconceived ideas about who is in the right.

Why is any of this important? One obvious application is in law enforcement. Community policing, which had begun to gain traction in recent years, is an approach that breaks down the division between those in uniform patrolling or responding, and those who live on those streets.

But I had planned on tackling this topic before the death of George Floyd.

As someone who majored in English, and as a former editorial writer, I’ve long been fascinated by the use of rhetoric, language, and logic to persuade.

We wring our hands about the divided state of our body politic, yet the only recourse that’s recommended is to just stop being extreme. I think a far more effective way to change this state of affairs is to pay closer attention to how we communicate.

The tactics of the civil rights, antiVietnam War, and women’s rights movements of the 1960s and 1970s were

effective, but they have become our go-to tools, and maybe we can do better.

There’s a current TV ad that paints U.S. Senate candidate Sara Gideon as “too risky for Maine” by citing her support in the Maine Legislature for a gas tax hike.

The ad features a young man standing next to his pickup, saying a fill-up would cost $10 more if Gideon had her way.

It’s mostly accurate, but fails to provide any context. Transportation officials have repeatedly said they can’t keep up with road and bridge repairs because the gas tax isn’t generating enough money. To fill funding gaps, we instead approve bonds for transportation projects.

Now, if we were to tell pickup truck guy that borrowing money, with interest, means that road repairs will actually cost more than they would under a gas tax hike, would that change his mind?

Instead of presenting the issue as “gas tax bad,” I’d like to ask our Sara Gideon critic whether the roads are in good shape, and if not, what would he (or the candidate he supports) do about it.

In Belfast, where I live, there has been opposition over the last few years to a proposed land-based salmon farm. One of the tactics opponents have used is to suggest that dredging

along the shore for pipes to bring seawater to the farm and dump filtered discharge will stir up mercury which in turn might be absorbed by lobster.

Signs proclaim the opposition’s desire to “protect our lobstermen.”

Now, there is mercury at the mouth of the Penobscot River several miles away, and lobstering is prohibited there, but there no evidence that mercury is in the bottom where the pipes would go. Who doesn’t want to protect lobstermen, right? And so a universally revered Maine icon is dragged as a proxy into a fight.

The fish farm may or may not cause environmental harm, but this tactic is disingenuous and inaccurate.

Public policy aims to solve public problems. But if we fail to talk about the problems and possible solutions, and instead twist logic and language to argue the other side will always fail to fix it, we haven’t done the work. The work is, as Miss Manners would say, to turn “you” into “we.”

Tom Groening is editor of The Working Waterfront.

Reflections

Take a break (so we can get back to work) ‘Grounding’ exercises help us step back into the world Reflections is written by Island Fellows, recent college grads who do community service work on Maine islands and in coastal communities through the Island Institute, publisher of The Working Waterfront.

By Natalie Hyde-Petersen THERE ARE A lot of big and important things going on right now, and at least for me, the need to engage productively with current events on all their different levels can be overwhelming.

A newspaper is probably not where you go for respite, reader, but for these few paragraphs, that is what I have decided to write.

It’s important to take the moments of rest that are needed to keep ourselves from burning out, especially when we collectively experience the kinds of things currently happening around us and to us. We’re going to need perseverance, which means we’re going to need rest. So let’s take a break, and then, let’s get back to work.

A few months ago, I was assisting in the classroom here on Frenchboro during

a session with the school guidance counselor. The subject of the day was coping skills; the students spent the time learning different strategies to use when they felt anxious, overwhelmed, or frustrated. The teacher and I were there to assist the guidance counselor, but ended up learning alongside the students.

What stuck with me most were the grounding exercises, my favorite of which was to identify five things you can see, four things you can hear, and so on, for the five senses. The point of such an exercise is to “ground” you by pulling you out of your own head and the anxiety that inhabits it, and bringing your awareness back to your immediate physical environment and your body, providing a brief moment of comfort and perspective.

So as I sit in my hammock, on my front porch, on an early June afternoon, working on a draft of something that will eventually go into The Working Waterfront, I’ll take a minute to do an abbreviated version of this exercise, and I encourage you, wherever you are, to give it a try yourself.

I see new leaves and flowers on my neighbor’s maple tree. I see the columbine in my garden just about to bloom at a time that would be late for the mainland but is right on schedule for us out here in the Atlantic.

I hear a nest full of baby grackles in the spruce tree across the road, begging for food, sounding more like their parents every day. I smell fresh cut grass. I live in the parsonage here on island, and my neighbors on three sides are the church, the school, and the library. All four lawns are mowed by community members who take turns volunteering for the task, and we’ve just gotten around to them for the first time this season in the past few days.

I feel the temperature slowly rising as the day goes on and summer approaches. In less than an hour the sun will hit my hammock, which is shaded now by my house, and I’ll stop writing.

I taste lettuce, which I grow in a window box on my porch and snack on when I water my other plants.

I hope you don’t mind that I haven’t tried to offer profound observations

about my work or my community’s place in the world; if I had much of value to add to the conversation, I would. This is my contribution: a little break.

While relentless uncertainty swirls around in the world outside, I think it’s important to punctuate our engagement in society with moments of rest and awareness. It doesn’t fix everything, but it helps.

Natalie Hyde-Petersen is working with the Frenchboro community to expand enrichment opportunities for students at the one-room school on the island, including planning field trips and developing school garden programs and curriculum. She is also working on projects with the Maine Coast Heritage Trust and the town’s public library. She graduated from Gordon College in Massachusetts with a degree in linguistics and a concentration in psycholinguistics.

www.workingwaterfront.com . July 2020

9

SARDINES AT EASTPORT— This photograph of sardine canneries in Eastport was made by Lewis Wickes Hines (1874-1940), first published in August 1911. The photo was part of an effort by the National Child Labor Committee to document the factory work that employed children.

Op-Ed

Maine’s climate work must aim for equitable impact Rural towns, fishing industry face unique hurdles

By Suzanne MacDonald WHEN IT COMES to confronting climate change, how can we design responses to meet the needs of Maine’s rural and natural resource–based communities? How can we expand these considerations to ensure that climate action will serve all Maine people equitably—particularly those who have been excluded in the past, and who are hit hardest by climate impacts?

While much of the world came to a screeching halt this spring, members of the Maine Climate Council’s working groups doubled down on reaching the state’s climate goals. According to the Governor’s Office of Policy, Innovation, and the Future, the entity supporting the effort, more than 200 people across seven working groups participated in 30 meetings in April alone to refine strategies and review data toward meeting an early June deadline for submitting recommendations to the full council.

Island Institute staff serve on four of the council’s subgroups (science and technical; buildings, housing, and infrastructure; marine and coastal; and community resilience, emergency management, and public health), giving us insights into the cross-cutting nature of the council’s work, and the realities of Maine communities.

The legislation behind the Climate Council, LD 1679, calls for explicit consideration of rural communities; persons of low and moderate income; economic sectors facing the biggest barriers to emission reduction; Island Institute Board of Trustees

Emily B. Lane, Chair Tom Tinsley Vice Chair Charles Owen Verrill, Jr. Secretary Douglas Henderson, Treasurer, Finance Chair Donna Wiegle, Programs Chair Kristin Howard, Development Chair Bryan Lewis, Governance Chair Michael P. Boyd, Clerk Natalie Ames Sebastian Belle Shey Conover David Cousens Megan McGinnis Dayton Michael Felton Luke Holden Nathan Johnson Michael Sant Barbara Kinney Sweet Kate Vogt Carol White John Bird (honorary) Louis W. Cabot (honorary)

vulnerable communities; and natural resource–based industries. The council’s plan must treat Maine people “fairly and equitably” and ensure “equity for all sectors and regions of the state.”

But as working groups began to compare proposals, the question arose: “How do we know we are making meaningful progress on equity and doing more than just ticking the box?”

At the Island Institute, we’ve seen how some residents of our state’s island and coastal communities can be left behind—usually unintentionally—by one-size-fits-all policy and program design. These communities are generally smaller and geographically isolated; tend to have residents who are older; have a higher share of people who are self-employed and working in natural resource–based industries; and can have limited internet access. Our work in communities has repeatedly shown that these characteristics can inhibit access to clean energy financing and other efforts to prepare for climate change.

Specifically, our 2018 “Bridging the Rural Efficiency Gap” white paper with the Maine Governor’s Energy Office highlighted the geographic, financial, and awareness gaps rural communities face trying to access energy efficiency programs.

The Island Institute recognizes that some Mainers—along the coast or in the interior—face barriers to shaping or benefiting from carbon reduction for other reasons. Structural inequities disproportionately burden people of color, indigenous peoples, and low-income people with legacies of environmental damage

and ongoing harm. How could we work with the council to consider these concepts, and ground them in real stories from across the state?

On April 28, I partnered with Ania Wright to co-present to the council’s Buildings, Infrastructure, and Housing Working Group, featuring researchand accounts of Maine communities and industries to illustrate how these ideas play out. Wright is the youth representative to the Climate Council, representing Maine Youth for Climate Justice and College of the Atlantic.

Young people are at the frontlines of the climate crisis, and yet the urgency they feel is not always heard. They see the climate crisis as a failure of our societal systems, not just an ecological crisis. Dealing with the climate crisis will take rethinking the way we solve problems by making commitments to equity and inclusion, and by acting on the needsof those who are being disproportionately affected and have historically been left out of climate action.

In our presentation, we noted: • Rural residents—61 percent of Maine, the highest rate in the nation— face high reliance on expensive heating fuel, live in older houses and higher numbers of mobile homes, and have lower incomes, contributing to a higher percentage of household income spent on electricity and heating.

• Social vulnerability—an indicator shaped by factors such as poverty, agency, age, race, and economic diversity—is higher in rural Maine, in part due to limited available resources to

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address the impacts of climate change.

• Natural resource–based industries such as fisheries and forestry are particularly vulnerable to climate change, due to direct impacts and reliance on fossil fuels. Support for these disproportionately affected and economically essential industries is key to addressing climate change.

• Addressing these inequities is possible, in part by partnering with trusted messengers and adding funding and flexible financing.

These lessons are relevant to all the climate council’s working groups as they strive to support communities to reduce carbon pollution and adapt to the impacts of a changing climate. By doing so with an commitment to equity, as required by the legislation, we can ensure that state action will benefit all Mainers.

The Island Institute is encouraged by the climate council’s progress. While communities grapple with health and economic crises, and with how to dismantle systemic racism, we know that Maine people, and especially our most vulnerable residents, will be hit by increasingly strong storms, rising seas, uncertain growing seasons, and other climate impacts. There is much work to do, but our commitment to recommendations based on these realities will help all Mainers in the months and years ahead.

Suzanne MacDonald is chief community development officer for the Island Institute, publisher of The Working Waterfront.

Ania Wright contributed to this op-ed.

Editor: Tom Groening

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10

The Working Waterfront . July 2020

Harvard grad created Dear Deer Isle show

Marvin Merritt explores how family stories shape the history of a life Editor’s note: This story first appeared in the Harvard Gazette and is reprinted with permission. Marvin Merritt IV is a 2020 graduate of Harvard.

By Manisha Aggarwal-Schifellite//Harvard Gazette

M

arvin Merritt IV was born and raised on the small island of Deer Isle, where his mother’s family fished for generations and his father’s were relative newcomers, having arrived a mere half-century ago. It is the kind of place where residents tell stories, a few of which are mostly true and others less so.

Deer Isle is the kind of place where it’s an oddity to meet a kid whose parents were raised in another state. When that happened to Merritt in high school, “I remember asking him, ‘Your parents didn’t have the same teachers you did?’ It was revolutionary to me that kids could have different teachers than their parents or relatives, and not all be from the same place. That’s how much I was a byproduct of this community,” where nobody seemed to leave.

The custom of spinning yarns inspired Merritt’s senior thesis project in Theater, Dance & Media. He created a two-character show called Dear Deer Isle that sent him on a journey back to his hometown in Penobscot Bay, population about 3,000, and helped him understand how it shaped his love of performance and his life.

“Artists have a history of telling stories with their art, and generational fishermen definitely know how to tell many stories that are mostly false, completely fabricated,”

Merritt as The White Bird from The Owl Answers, Fall 2017.

he said. “I feel like it was a natural progression for me to get interested in this oral storytelling tradition. It was an odd marriage of these two communities.”

The production, which Merritt originally planned to stage on campus with a team of student collaborators, was designed as a series of vignettes that cover

PHOTO: COURTESY HARVARD GAZETTE

the island’s history and Merritt’s relationship to it and the people he grew up with.

Merritt spent the summer before his senior year collecting stories about his childhood and the island from his mother, friends from high school, and neighbors, including “Grandma Tillie,” a centenarian resident

presents

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who regaled him with tales about life on the island before a bridge to the mainland was built in 1939.

He also collected materials like lobster traps and archival documents about the island and its community to decorate the set for the short scenes, called études. In one, he projected his drawings of a fake “creation myth” of the island on a big screen. In another, he layered a recording of a Fourth of July celebration on the island underneath a monologue about his dual identity as “Harvard Marvin” and “Island Marvin.”

While developing the performance, Merritt reflected on his life and background. Other members of his family went their own way, though he is one of the few to leave the area. His parents’ career paths both diverged from their families’. His mother grew up on her father’s boat but now works at a chiropractic office. His father isn’t in the family jewelry business, but at Northern Light Blue Hill Hospital.

“The process of creating was healing (and) therapeutic,” he said. “It’s like going through all of the boxes that you’ve thrown things into, and really carefully examining and pulling out the valuable things, (because) the actual performance is not for me, it’s for the audience.”

Dear Deer Isle is a culmination of Merritt’s education in theater, dance, and media and global theater.

He studied the Stanislavski acting technique in Moscow and Shakespeare in London and performed in 16 shows at Harvard and off campus, including The Danube and The Merchant of Venice.

ACTING VETERAN

By the time he applied to Harvard, Merritt had acted for ten years in community and professional productions, and was intent on pursuing theater as his livelihood. But his parents didn’t attend college, and he had few family members who had moved away from Maine, so his path forward was unclear.

He credited a mentor, Judith Keenan, for helping him see Harvard as a possibility, despite financial barriers, a small public high school with limited resources, and a family reluctant to see him go into the arts. Keenan is the widow of Edward “Ned” L. Keenan, Andrew W. Mellon Professor of History Emeritus at Harvard. She has lived on the island for years, and is involved in the town high school, where the two met.

“I would definitely not be here without her support, or at college, so I owe her a lot,” said Merritt, noting that

In the Theater, Dance & Media’s production Three Americanisms, Spring 2018.

PHOTO COURTESY: GRETJEN HELENE PHOTOGRAPHY

Debra Levine, an instructor in Theater, Dance Keenan told him about the then-new theater, dance, and media program during his senior year of high & Media and Merritt’s thesis adviser, praised his commitment to the artistic community on campus. school and helped him with the application process.

“Marvin is one of those people who really underOnce on campus, Merritt found himself navigating unfamiliar territory, from class differences among stands that you have to be a generous collaborator in students to the stimulus of living among so many the theater, and I think that all of the Theater, Dance & Media students look to him as someone who has other people for the first time.

“I had to teach myself to just shrink my scope, and just soared within the concentration,” said Levine.

Following the evacuation of campus in March, the (say to myself), ‘You don’t have to pay attention to every single person that walks by,’ but back home, you plans Merritt had made for the thesis and his life did,” he said. “I remember every single night going after graduation were up in the air. Eventually, he to bed completely exhausted, and it was literally my submitted the work as a detailed script and critical brain hurting because I was just trying to keep track paper, rather than a performance, and he plans to move to Berlin or Los Angeles after graduation to of so much.”

Merritt was also part of one of the first cohorts pursue acting.

“I can’t say it’s the most fulfilling conclusion to this of the theater, dance, and media concentrators in a still-new department. He was cast in a show his first situation, but it’s the smartest and safest choice,” said Martin, Staples, and Elsie Gillespie chat around the woodstove the annual town meeting.

Merritt, speaking from hisatfamily home.

“I really do semester, andJohn from thereBud became a fixture at performances and workshops around the department with think that at some point I will have the opportunity to put up the show, and I can look forward to that, but peers and faculty.

“Theater is… a collaborative art form, and I am deeply I’m not going to set a date.”

No matter where he goes next, this project has excited by the collaborative nature of creating a piece of theater and having many, many hands and ideas and made it clear to him that he’ll always be an islander.

“It’s been oddly freeing” to return to Maine to bodies contributing to the whole thing,” said Merritt, who noted that his original thesis plans included create art, said Merritt. “Part of the process has been extensive collaborations with other theater and dance realizing that I don’t have to (live) there in order to still feel connected to the place.” students, both onstage and behind the curtain.

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The Working Waterfront . July 2020

ALIX MORIARTY, 26 Connecticut

I am a machinery technician, which means that I do maintenance and repair on the response boats and facilities. I am proud to be a part of the workforce that ensures that our equipment is reliable, effective, and ready for any search and rescue.

I consider myself incredibly lucky to be in Washington County. I transferred units from Key West to Jonesport last year. Station Jonesport was my first choice. New England has always been home to me and the stunning ruggedness of Downeast Maine was exactly what I needed. I love the nature, and the open space that our area offers. I enjoy the sense of community and knowing your neighbor; as well as the ability to get lost in the beauty of the landscape.

MICHELLE CLIFTON, 39 from Prescott Valley, Ariz.

I serve as a boatswains mate first class, and as training and operations petty officer. I have been in the Coast Guard for almost 17 years and have been stationed in just about every corner of the country, from California to Alaska, Alabama to Maryland, back to California, and to Maine. I have been on two cutters and a search and rescue station, a tactical rescue station, and a heavy weather station.

I have gone to Russia, Micronesia, Guatemala, and Canada, and gotten to be involved in drug interdiction, migrant cases, and numerous different search and rescue cases.

I am not going to lie, when I got orders to Maine, I was less than excited, as I always pictured Maine being 6-feet of snow most of the year. I am happily disappointed. It is breathtaking here, the scenery is amazing, the people are kind and the community is welcoming. We moved here from Alameda, Calif., a very busy and highly populated area with high levels of crime. My family loves that we can let our son play in the front yard and not have to worry as much.

COLEMAN ALDRICH, 32 from Lake Jackson, Texas

I have a variety of jobs as a boatswain mate second class. I am one of four heavy weather coxswains, which means I am certified to operate the 47-foot motor life boat in sea conditions that exceed 10-feet and winds that exceed 30 knots. I am also a boarding officer and conduct the safety inspections on commercial and recreational vessels. I manage a crew of eight or nine.

I enjoy the opportunity to be outside and be surrounded by nature. I also enjoy the people I work with; it’s rewarding to train a new member who has little to no knowledge of how to perform a rescue.

Washington County is a beautiful county. When I arrived here, I had just left Houston, and the shock of moving to such a small community was a bit of an adjustment. My family and I have greatly enjoyed all the outdoor activities available here. Also, the local people are incredibly nice! My family and I have never lived in a more welcoming and friendly community.

I will be very sad to leave this area when my time to transfer comes. The raw beauty of the land scape and coastal outline is mind-blowing.

JOSHUA PACE, 21 from Newfield N.J.

I maintain the operational status of Station Jonesport’s boats, ensuring they are always ready. I also board vessels for safety inspections, which I especially enjoy, because I’m ensuring the safety of passengers. I have been in Jonesport for two years.

I enjoy the people I work with. They come from all across the U.S., each with their own story. Whenever your best friend leaves the unit, a new person comes in and you’re able to make friends with them also.

Being from New Jersey, I have always been around the water, but I haven’t seen the beauty of the coastline quite like I have in Washington County. Going out on the boat is always an astonishing sight, whether it is all of the bluffs that run the coastline, the islands that have very beautiful animals such as puffins and seals, or the history.

www.workingwaterfront.com . July 2020

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GABRIEL JACKSON, 19 from Daytona Beach, Florida

As a seaman, my main role is as a boat crew member, maintaining the mission readiness of the boats to ensure we are ready to handle a call. I also navigate for the coxswain, and work on deck, when we are mooring up, training, towing someone in need, or even pulling someone out of the water.

I like that I am always near the ocean, and that I may be able to assist someone in need.

My initial impression of coastal Washington County was most certainly shock, mainly because of how breath-taking and colorful the landscape was; as well as how comparatively small the towns were to my city.

However, in all these small towns, every single person I’ve met has been extremely friendly and I have seen landscape, coming from flat-palm-tree-filled Florida, that left me utterly flabbergasted.

I was excited and surprised to find there is a skateboarding community and shop in Machias to share a hobby I enjoy greatly.

Guarding our coast Downeast A look at the faces of Coast Guard Station Jonesport PHOTO ESSAY BY LESLIE BOWMAN We asked some of those serving at the U.S. Coast Guard station in Jonesport about their work and their view of Washington County.

HANNAH ZIRKELBACH, 23 from Clinton, Conn.

I am a petty officer third class boatswains mate. As a small boat coxswain and officer of the day, I oversee and conduct search and rescue missions. I also ensure that the crew and I train to the highest level as a member of the training board. I also work with the weapons and law enforcement division and maintain our rescue gear.

What I love about my job is that I get to meet many new people, travel around the country and the world, and drive small boats. I have been stationed in Portsmouth, N.H. on a 270-foot cutter and got to travel to some amazing places such as Cuba, Aruba, Costa Rica, and Guatemala.

My biggest joy and accomplishment came while stationed in Jonesport where I was able to qualify as a small boat coxswain and be in charge of a 47-foot and 29-foot small boat.

Coming from another small New England town I came to Downeast Maine and immediately felt at home. As an avid hiker, I love the amazing hiking trails that are in my back yard. While I am out on the water I love looking back at the coastline and seeing how beautiful it is. Something that I enjoy the most about Washington County is that we are the first place on the East Coast to see the sun rise. It makes the early morning trips worth it.

BRYAN ALLBEE, 33 from Brookline, Vt.

I work mostly in contract administration, managing yearly service contracts for several Coast Guard units across the northeast.

I never get the chance to grow tired of my job or the place I’m living, because every few years we start fresh in a new place with new challenges, new places to explore, and new people to interact with.

I love Downeast Maine! Being from a small New England town, this feels similar to home, but with that picturesque rugged Maine coastline. Washington County is the ideal place for me and my family with its great fishing and hiking. The ATV trails are some of the best I’ve ever seen. The people are friendly and the way the community takes an active role in their local schools is inspiring. Of all the places the Coast Guard has assigned me, Maine is my favorite!

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The Working Waterfront . July 2020

Our Island Communities

Vintage Vinalhaven

Photos from the 1950s, 1960s reveal a bustling community

Dana Peterson, 62, grew up on Vinalhaven, and though he now lives in Westborough, Mass., the island town holds fast to his heart. Last winter, Peterson scanned hundreds of photographs taken by his parents, the late Ambrose and Marjorie Peterson (who owned and operated the island power company), from the late 1950s through the 1960s and beyond.

Peterson was kind enough to allow us to reproduce the images here.

“You forget how things change,” he said in a brief telephone interview. “It’s just changed so much since I was a kid. It’s still great,” he hastened to add, “but it’s not what it was.”

The parade photos were likely taken by his mother, he says, because he was probably marching.

Peterson has lived 30 years in Massachusetts, where he has worked for the Boston Business Journal. He and his wife often visit Kennebunkport, he says, but they still make pilgrimages to Vinalhaven.

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The Working Waterfront . July 2020

Guest Columns

Column raises important question for schools ‘White state’ offers opportunity to reverse racism

By Caroline Fernandes THANK YOU FOR the Field Notes column by Rob Snyder (sent via email on June 5 and included in this issue of the newspaper, on page 20) about Maine and diversity. But I was surprised by this line: “But what if one of the underlying issues in a community is that they are generally unwelcoming?”

This isn’t a question that I can imagine most communities are asking themselves. I have lived on two different Maine islands; my experience in these communities is that I have felt both warmly welcomed and as if I will never be truly included.

We all know what it means to be “from away.” The familial nature of islands is one of its most alluring qualities, and I would never demand to be “let in,” but the point you are bringing up is serious and I think it is directly connected to education.

I recently worked in an island school for two years as an ed tech in special education, in a town that I care about deeply and have close personal ties to.

There were instances where I was stunned by how histories like Thanksgiving and American slavery, and general conversations about race, were being taught and handled. How outdated it was. Children dressing up in Native American outfits in class.

Children sharing stories they brought from home

with bigoted themes that were responded to, but never deeply addressed. Our treatment of the seriousness of racism in this school was at times careless.

I’m a 28-year-old white woman. I was the youngest person on staff by at least 15 years. I grew up in suburban Boston. My feeling was that these topics were being handled in a less sophisticated way than they were when I was growing up 20 years ago in Massachusetts. Why? I think we can all guess that this carelessness comes from exactly what the column addressed: that White Maine sees itself as a “white state” and we can imagine that therefore these topics are felt to be less urgent in our schools.

I could not disagree more. While working at this school, I had moments where a wave of understanding would crash over me, an understanding that I am helping to raise the next generation of white men and women, who could be tolerant anti-racists, or subconscious bigots.

I know that all forms of racism in this country begin and end with white people. Could there possibly be more opportune places to do anti-racism work than communities that are nearly 100 percent white? I did my best to correct or address the day-to-day things that would come up that felt “off,” but I believe I was ill-equipped in my position as an ed tech to address

curriculum issues and lead teachers’ own lack of education. Who was in charge of this? Who would be held responsible?

I want the Island Institute to know how your education initiatives can help to address these shortcomings in coastal communities. Can anti-racism learning and decolonizing curriculums be a required part of your next Island Teachers Conference? I think both teachers and students need this education.

Perhaps teachers even more than students, because I don’t know if a white person can feel the urgency to reform curriculums and have difficult conversations if the seriousness of the issues are not felt within.

What else can we do? Can there be a separate initiative to educate these communities on racism in Maine and being anti-racist?

We have to teach children in Maine to be antiracists in an organized, thoughtful way. There need not be any other reason for this besides morality.

But I also believe that the future and sustainability of Maine’s coastal communities does hinge on being welcoming, and they must be welcoming to all people. We have to be raising children who are themselves agents of change. They need to be taught this.

It is absolutely crucial.

Caroline Fernandes lives in Yarmouth.

Summer cancellations threaten health of nonprofits Chebeague Island’s eldercare facility relies on summer residents

By Susan Q. Stranahan SUMMER IS fundraising season for thousands of Maine nonprofits. The uncertainties of the coronavirus pandemic—the duration of shelteringin-place and fears about a resurgence—hang like a large thunderhead over organizations whose survival depends on the support of summer visitors.

Protecting the health of all Mainers must be everyone’s highest priority. And while the repeated advisories from state health authorities about the need to stay put to stay safe seems to be having the desired effect, a summer with empty tollbooths on the northbound Maine Turnpike has already forced many organizations to cancel major events—events that fill coffers and enable these nonprofits to provide essential services in their communities year-round.

Not surprisingly, this pull-up-the-drawbridge attitude has left many long-time seasonal residents of Maine with mixed feelings. No, let’s be honest: hurt feelings. It has also left many of us who work hard to ensure the financial sustainability of small nonprofits through aggressive seasonal fundraising in an awkward position.

What are we really saying? “We don’t want you here, but we want —no, make that, we need—your money.” In other words, stay home but write a check.

I’m afraid that’s how the message is being perceived.

Case in point: The Island Commons is a seven-bed assisted living facility on Chebeague Island that enables islanders to remain in their small community near family and friends when they are no longer able to live independently. Most of our residents are dependent on MaineCare, which fails to cover our operating costs by more than $100,000 a year. As a result, we survive only by our ability to raise funds, and many of our most generous donors are long-time summer residents.

They are members of families that have been coming to Chebeague for generations, with very deep roots. They return to their island homes every summer to share in the sense of community and joy of place. They may not be here for the January blizzard or the March nor’easter, they may not fill seats at the Christmas concert or vote at town meeting, but for many, the opportunity to summer on Chebeague comes with the understanding that they also need to help sustain the island they love.

Often, the easiest way to do that is to give generously to the nonprofits that keep the wheels of island life turning all year. Small wonder that the summer calendar on Chebeague and in most Maine communities is crowded with cruises, bake sales, raffles, auctions, and every other ingenious event that inspires generosity.

What will this summer hold for all of us so reliant on this fundraising blitz? Summer calendars across Maine have been stripped of most events as a precaution. Will that keep us safe?

So little is known about the spread and life cycle of Covid-19, the cancellations seem a prudent decision health-wise. But financially, they also threaten our ability to deliver needed services, for which there is now an even greater need amid the economic collapse that accompanies this pandemic.

Is bolstering our bottom-line worth jeopardizing the security of our communities? Absolutely not.

So, what’s the answer—if there is one. Will a summer of 14-day quarantines upon arrival, handwashing, and social-distancing halt the spread and keep our communities healthy? How do those of us, who have followed all the rules, deal with those who flaunt them?

Will the generosity of seasonal donors continue as a measure of their love of this fragile jewel as well as a tribute to all who labor to keep it functioning? That’s another big unknown. Yes, we’d love to receive your donations, summer people, but we’d also love to have you safely back among us (well, six feet away), adding to the vibrancy of life again this season. With care, let’s hope we can have both.

Susan Q. Stranahan of Chebeague Island is president of the board of the Island Commons. She is a journalist and author. This column first appeared in the Portland Press Herald, and is reprinted here by permission.

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Why ‘no one goes there anymore’ Long-time coastal resident reflects on visitation problems Editor’s note: This is another response to the Rock Bound column in the April issue, “Will Portland choke on its success?”

By Bob Gerber “NO ONE GOES there anymore—it’s too crowded.” As someone who has lived on the coast of Maine most of my life, including living on Peaks Island as a child, being a co-owner of Eaton Island in East Penobscot Bay for 20 years as a middleager, and living six months of the year plus many winter weekends on Isle au Haut as an older person, I know exactly what that phrase means.

I am currently 71 and was born in Bath. I spent most of my school years and a lot of my adult life in Freeport, and worked some of my adult life in Portland. I was on the Freeport Planning Board in 1971-73 when we developed the zoning ordinance that has controlled much of the town’s growth. I helped many towns with parts or all of their comprehensive planning, most recently helping Stonington re-do its plan in 2017.

The big problems with many Maine coastal towns are that they are unable to support traffic and offer inadequate parking, and so are difficult to get into or out of at times.

These problems are what make me not want to re-visit towns I grew to love when I was younger.

When I do go to these towns now, I choose my times carefully and use the local knowledge I developed to enter and leave through routes most tourists do not know or would not try.

You picked on Portland in your article, but the same problems occur to a lesser degree in a number of Maine coastal towns. However, whereas most Maine coastal towns have not grown much in terms of adding new floor space in the village areas over the years, Portland has been growing vertically as well as filling in empty lots.

With the exception of the Franklin Arterial, I-295, and Fore River Parkway, the street network is the same as in the late 1800s. In the 1960s and 1970s there were many surface parking lots, but now are gradually being replaced with mid-rise buildings, some of which provide parking for their own tenants and customers, but remove parking that used to be more generally available to all.

The city has a system of forcing cars parked on streets to be moved at least once a day by requiring parking on different sides of the street. The large, old houses on the East and West Ends have gone from single- or multi-generational family houses to multiple apartments, most of which require the tenants to park on the street.

Add to that the retail and restaurant boom that Portland has experienced, and the transient traffic and need for parking that brings, and you have a much greater demand than can be reasonably accommodated from May through December.

I worked on Exchange Street 1971-1974— Portland’s renaissance days. I never had to park more than a few blocks away from where I worked.

Now people who want to park for free and work in the Old Port have to get to the few free spaces by 7 a.m.

For the past five years, I have resigned myself to parking at a city-owned lot on Commercial Street and paying $10 a day if I want to do anything in the Old Port area, and I walk the mile each way to do it.

My daughters will spend a half hour driving around, waiting for a street parking space to open up. I would rather be walking that half-hour instead of driving.

If you can even get a space in one of the downtown parking garages in summer, you will pay $20 minimum for a couple of hours and $40 for the day.

Getting in and out of Portland during commuting hours has become ridiculous in the summer, too.

For several years about ten years ago, I took a job down on Commercial Street and commuted from Freeport each day. When I worked there in 1971-1974, the commute from Freeport was about 20 minutes; now it’s a high-stress drive that had, on average, one accident a week that added another 15 to 30 minutes to the trip.

So, yes, I don’t go into Portland these days unless I really need to do so and I allow extra time to park and walk. The city has allowed itself to become difficult to get in and out of. Planners have allowed development to gobble up cheaper parking spaces and replace it with uses that generate yet more traffic.

Without some major changes, the city is maxed out. We should realize that trying to build at higher and higher densities is going to be more and more costly, in more ways than one.

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The Working Waterfront . July 2020

Saltwater Cure

Dealing with those not-so-new pests

Garden attackers remind writer of other embedded problems

By Courtney Naliboff A SIDE EFFECT of working from home from March through the end of May was that I became an even more obsessive gardener. We’ve been in our home, purchased through North Haven Sustainable Housing, since 2008, and I have three pretty well-established vegetable gardens around the house.

I’ve managed to get some fair crops of tomatoes, green beans, turnips, and squash, with other vegetables making guest appearances from time to time.

Deer and rabbits happily munched early sprouts and late season tomato jungles and I shook my fist with ineffective rage but didn’t really do anything about it.

This year, though, we put up fortresslike deer fences around two of the vegetable beds in lieu of our planned trip to Ocracoke Island over April break.

We purchased a small greenhouse with some of our stimulus money. I put 14 tomato plants in the ground, with another 14 in the greenhouse. Arugula,

garlic, potatoes, green beans, peas, summer squash, zucchini, carrots, kale, kohlrabi, cucumbers, herbs, and turnips all found their place. I felt safe and secure in my future vegetable harvest.

And then, admiring my newly sprouted peas, I noticed something disturbing. It looked as though someone had come in with scissors and cut the tops off a few of them. No tooth marks, and it was happening inside the fence, so I didn’t suspect rabbits or even mice. A few days later, even more had been beheaded. I was down to about nine pea plants out of my initial patch. A kohlrabi, two tulips, and a kale seedling fell victim to the mysterious pest as well.

A quick online search revealed that I had cutworms. One solution was to make tiny collars for all of my sprouts. I started frantically hoarding toilet paper and paper towel tubes, and then went for the white coils of tree-trunk protecting plastic. As the beans and squash started to germinate, I proactively gave them

each a tiny collar, making almost 80 by the time I was done.

Another tactic I could have taken would have been to go out at night, with a headlamp, and find the cutworms in action. I could have then drowned them, or squashed them, or cut them in two, so they wouldn’t have a chance to finish their life cycle and make more cutworms to harass next year’s vegetables. But it seemed like too much work after dark, so I just kept making those tiny collars.

On Memorial Day weekend, as I was planting my garden, George Floyd was killed, at the hands—or knees— of Minnesota police officers. Protests erupted across the country and around the world.

Police brutality and systemic racism are not new. Neither are cutworms. But it seems like we—I mean white people and politicians, those at the top of the heap, privilege-wise—thought it was enough to put band aids on things. Thoughts and prayers, sharing memes, posting a

hashtag—tiny collars, if you will. Not nothing, but the pestilence is still there.

We have to actually do the work of eradicating systemic racism. Even if it’s uncomfortable. Even if it feels like going out in the dark and squashing caterpillars, because how could there be caterpillars in my beautiful, safe garden? But they’re there.

This country is built on stolen land and built with stolen people, and maybe this is the moment when we all finally, willingly, illuminate the fact that the problem is all of us, and then truly purge our systems of living and government and law of the destructive caterpillars that have always been there, but that it was inconvenient to acknowledge.

Courtney Naliboff lives on North Haven, where she teaches music and theater, writes.

Journal of an Island Kitchen

Nature wants us to cook

Warning signs, nudges in the right direction are in plain sight MOTHER NATURE has had it with her most pestiferous species. She has answered the species’ greed and carelessness with wildly fluctuating weather and now disease. Since she has outlived all of us and our vaunted civilizations by millions of years, we can be pretty sure she’ll come out on top of this one, too.

Nature doesn’t actually ask much of us to get back into a good relationship with her.

She probably would like us to stop using the products of the Paleozoic which she wisely buried deep in the ground where the carbon was carefully sequestered from her atmosphere. A couple of months of less driving and flying has yielded cleaner air, the result of millions of people doing one thing differently.

She likes her polar ice caps and it ought to be up to her to decide when to melt them or refreeze them, even to form glaciers to plow away our northern cities, if she wanted.

If we don’t pay attention, we can end life on the planet as we know it, and nature won’t care. The planet will continue to exist and our age, which is already a blink in earth-time, will go the way of the era that resulted in oil in the first place.

Nature would probably like fewer human beings, and certainly doesn’t approve of them consuming so greedily.

It wasn’t her idea to build malls, pave

The wealthy dodged it by fleeing, ground for parking lots, turn shopping into recreation, so we could go buy stuff while essential workers stayed on their we don’t need until we had to cry for help job and caught it. Warehoused humans, from Marie Kondo to come and sort our elders in care facilities, prisoners in excess, put it into plastic bags, and leave jails, meat cutters on speeded up lines, it on a curb to be taken to away which and farm workers in dormitories, all isn’t really away, but just someone else’s the most vulnerable.

What does she want from us? And place. Nature isn’t going to miss Nieman what does this have to do with food Marcus or J.C. Penney one bit.

And in order to shelter all these and cooking?

Humankind needs food, shelter, and humans, we have encroached on the wild places that supply both pathogens (in certain climates, in certain seasons) clothing.

We and plants and need the food organisms that in order to get often offer ingreIt looks like the greediest to the other two. dients for cures.

So it all starts That makes cures and most consumptive with food and its unavailable to us humans, we in America, preparation for and unleashes eating. pathogens that are getting our due Shorten long jump from wild and fragile food creatures to chains from humans. Enough pathogens on the loose and she can halfway across the globe to about 50 reduce our human numbers, perhaps feet outside of our kitchens whenever we can, and not let it get much farther her intent all along.

It looks like the greediest and most than a hundred miles. Lots of people, consumptive humans, we in America, thank goodness, got the message: new are getting our due with 4 percent of gardens everywhere and shortages of the world’s population and 28 percent seeds from sellers are great signs.

Citrus, coffee, and other luxury foods of the deaths from Covid-19, though we, in an attempt to foil her, redirected can tolerate longer, vulnerable supply the disease to a vulnerable group of routes as long as our basics—grains, elders, many women, and black and dairy, meat—are closer by. Maine could supply all the apples we can eat. Ditto brown people.

potatoes, lots of greens and vegetables, other fruits, and a great many grains.

Get rid of monoculture on land or in water. Nature never practices it: look at any uncultivated piece of ground to discover the great variety she picks to plant from her abundantly varied seed packet. Look into the forests she plants, or into the waters around us and see mind-boggling variety.

Learn to cook. A lot of people lost restaurant jobs in the pandemic, and some will come back. Lots of people subsist on take out and dining out, and when I wondered aloud how we let that happen, hinting at the insanity of it, a friend commented that it was a lifestyle choice. True. One that isn’t sustainable, hurts consumers and producers. And would keep us out of the middle aisles of the grocery stores where all the premade stuff is that too often depends on unsustainable and downright destructive commodity agriculture of soy and corn.

Nature doesn’t want much, really, and the fix can start in our kitchens.

Sandy Oliver is a food historian who lives, gardens, cooks, and writes on Islesboro.

www.workingwaterfront.com . July 2020

19

Stonington small business ramps up ‘Owl’ production Sustainable, ergonomic seats have been winner for Warner

By Laurie Schreiber

I

n 2009, Stonington fine furniture maker Geoffrey Warner began carving a comfortable wooden stool for himself.

It had two prominent holes that looked like eyes, making the seat look like an owl head. Warner called it the Owl Stool and commissioned a 2013 analysis by U.S. Ergonomics, which showed that it supports optimal postural alignment. The concept has been phenomenally successful.

Offered in four-legged and rolling pedestal versions of different heights, close to 5,000 of the stools have been sold around the world.

Warner has spun off the stool as a separate division for the shop, which has become a nexus for a cottage industry of over a dozen outside vendors, including Amish companies in Ohio that turn legs for him.

Now Warner is scaling up the business with the development of an injection-molded composite seat, with the choice of steel frame or pedestal, for volume production at a lower cost. Calling it the ErgoPro Owl, Warner envisions a primary market of institutional users such as schools and libraries.

When the pandemic struck and people started working at home, Warner added a one-time residential offer at a 10 percent discount.

“Because of these unusual times and because I want to honor community, we’ll offer the ErgoPro to everybody for a limited amount of time, to support the new work-from-home lifestyle,” he said.

The first production run will likely debut this July.

“We’re on the threshold of a pretty exciting launch,” he said.

SUSTAINABLE MATERIALS

Warner started his career inspired by Scandinavian and Eastern influences and has made many types of furniture using sustainably harvested American hardwoods and guided by a personal mission to honor economy, ecology, and community.

“When I started Owl Furniture, I realized I was supporting my mission, which is to create and inspire in a loving way,” he said.

His development of the composite model also honors that mission by making the design more accessible and affordable, he said.

“The only way to do that was to find a way to produce it so it’s 100 percent consistent,” Warner explained. “That meant going to the injection molding process.”

Development of the model began last year, thanks to a $15,000 grant from Maine Technology Institute. Sustainability was paramount.

“It needed to be made from a composite that was 100 percent recycled materials,” he said.

He went to G&G Products LLC in Kennebunk.

The company designs and produces specialty molds and thermoplastic injection molded products for niche markets, according to its website. G&G developed an aluminum mold for the owl seat and helped Warner find a Kansas firm called Green Dot Bioplastics, which mixed a composite from reclaimed polypropylene, wood waste, and fiberglass.

Thinking in terms of a stacking seat, Warner contacted Columbia Tech, an engineering and contract manufacturing firm in Westborough, Mass., to design and produce a four-legged frame that would go under the seat. The next task involved creating an understructure that marries the stacking frame with the molded seat; the understructure also had to work for a pedestal base rolling stool version that Warner envisions for the office market.

“That required a lot of coordination,” he said.

“We had to develop a 3/16-inch-thick steel plate

Geoff Warner poses with the Owl seat. Right, a drop test is conducted on a prototype of an injection-molded seat for the ErgoPro Owl stool.

PHOTO: COURTESY GEOFFREY WARNER STUDIO

that holds the seat and has eight screw points that attach the steel plate to the underside of the molded seat. Those eight screw points are the same that marry to the four-legged stacking frame.”

Warner commissioned Salem Metal Inc., a metal fabricator in Middleton, Mass., to produce the plates. Next, G&G was on tap to do a second stage of injection molding after an initial trial. The seats will be produced with several color options, including a natural wood hue.

The pedestal base version will debut first, with an initial production run of 100 seats likely ready

by July for the work-from-home market. Because of the pandemic, production for institutional use is on hold for now, he said.

But he’s hard at work creating marketing and website materials, thanks to an Island Institute Resilient Business Grant of $1,500 awarded earlier this year. He’s also wooing a Midcoast Maine college that’s demonstrated an interest in renewable products.

Warner delights in finding new avenues for creativity.

“If I’m creating something and I’m inspiring others and I’m doing good in the world, then I’m impassioned,” he said. “It’s more than just growing a business.”

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The Working Waterfront . July 2020

Field Notes

Maine must welcome diversity

Island Institute is addressing this impediment to growth

By Rob Snyder YOU’VE HEARD It said many times: “Maine is a white state,” or maybe even, “Maine is the whitest state.” Actually, Maine is not a white state. Some 74,000 Mainers are people of color.

When Mainers assert that our population includes a majority of white people, whether through statistical analysis or casual conversation we inadvertently—but inexcusably—risk erasing the voices and struggles of people of color. This further marginalizes Maine’s Native communities and the African immigrant communities that have emerged in Portland and Lewiston. And, as we look to the future, it can signal to people of color that they are not welcome here.

So how can Mainers become more welcoming and accepting? It starts with each of us learning to see racism for what it is, and seeing how it permeates our viewpoints and behaviors—even those of us who believe we are not racist.

In 2019, the Island Institute began the work of integrating these values into our community development organization. It has meant a new way

of doing our work and will include tough place to live and do business, speaking out and taking action when among many other technical factors.

In the past, the Island Institute would we see racial injustice.

We began by establishing a diversity, work to ease these burdens, and this equity, inclusion, and justice (DEIJ) would be counted as success. But what taskforce within the organization and if one of the underlying issues in a hiring professional external support to community is that they are generally advise our work. Our DEIJ taskforce is unwelcoming? In the past, the Island Institute would working to bring have stayed silent understanding, on this issue— skills, and behavwe would have ioral changes We have learned that if a considered it to the Island community is unwelcoming too difficult to Institute.

We still have a it may not matter how much address. But we have learned that lot of work to do, effort goes into solving if a community but we have made other problems is unwelcoming the commitit may not matter ment and we are how much effort heading down goes into solving this road because this work is important to the staff and other problems; the long-term outcome board of the organization, and because will still be population decline.

Can the Island Institute help leaders it is highly relevant to communities along the coast who would like their along Maine’s coast.

Many communities along the Maine communities to be more welcoming? coast are struggling with population This remains to be seen, but it is a quesdecline. What are the causes of that tion we are grappling with.

And how can we become more decline? Certainly, the high costs of housing and energy make the coast a welcoming? What would it take for

Maine’s island and coastal communities to have the hard conversations, undertake the personal reflection, develop the skills, and adopt the behaviors to become places where difference is celebrated, and people of color are welcomed? We are beginning by doing this work and answering questions within the Island Institute. My hope is that by doing this work we can contribute to a future where the Maine coast celebrates diversity, and in so doing, we would all inherit a brighter, safer, and more prosperous state.

The Island Institute expresses our deep sorrow for the people of color in Maine and around the country who are being persecuted and killed every day.

We believe that black lives matter and we are committed to doing our part to further the conversation along the Maine coast.

Rob Snyder is president of the Island Institute, publisher of The Working Waterfront.

Observer

Strained relations with ferry service

Long collaboration has deteriorated where both are hurting

By Phil Crossman ON A LATE SPRING morning in 1920, the steamboat Governor Bodwell was docked at Tillson’s Wharf in Rockland and preparing to depart for Vinalhaven.

Shoveling coal below decks was my grandfather, Edwin Maddox. His eleventh great grandparents, William and Mary Brewster, had arrived on the Mayflower 300 years earlier.

Unbeknownst to him, he was close to meeting the love of his life, a beautiful 16-year-old Phyllis Shields, soon my grandmother, sunning herself on a nearby rock wall as the Bodwell docked at the island. And remarkably, her eleventh great grandparents, Richard and Elizabeth Warren, were the Brewster’s companions there in Plymouth Colony, Richard having also made that perilous journey across the Atlantic three centuries earlier.

Ultimately, William Brewster was the fourth signer of the Mayflower Compact, Richard Warren was the twelfth.

There at the Rockland dock, after crisply attired deckhands helped passengers with their luggage, the purser emerged from his stateroom just aft of the ladies port side salon to begin collecting tickets while dispersing unrelenting goodwill to everyone. Before long they were underway, and as they

moved out onto open water, the sweet smell of Indian Pudding cooking in the galley wafted through the men’s and women’s cabins. About halfway across, it would be offered to all after a main course of baked haddock and slaw.

Forty years later, when I was in high school, a highly regarded local fellow, our town clerk and a World War II veteran, began to make a case for replacing the old 65-foot Vinalhaven II, the boat that had served as transportation between Vinalhaven and the mainland since that last world war, after the Bodwell was retired. Everett Libby ran a successful downtown insurance business on the island, and thought a state-owned ferry that could carry more than one vehicle and make more frequent trips to and from the mainland was appropriate and would have a big and positive impact on our island economy. As he persisted, more and more islanders got on board, including my aforementioned Grandfather Maddox, who, no longer shoveling coal, was by then a state legislator representing Cushing, Friendship, Owls Head, South Thomaston, St. George, Isle au Haut, Matinicus, North Haven, and Vinalhaven. He and Everett partnered in the effort to create the Maine State Ferry Service and were ultimately successful. Everett has been rightfully recognized as “Father of

the Ferry Service,” and accordingly, in 1960, the Everett Libby was launched.

When it docked in Vinalhaven the first time, Grandpa Maddox was invited by the townsfolk and, to considerable fanfare and applause, to be the first to disembark.

In 1963 he was named and sworn in by Gov. John Reed as a member of the newly formed Maine State Ferry Service Advisory Committee. In 1967 he sponsored a bill to add a fifth ferry to the fleet and, ironically, the bill was favorably reported out of committee moments after the Governor Muskie blew two pistons, stranding a boatload of passengers and vehicles about a mile off Lincolnville Beach.

Today, a half century later, I have not been elected to serve in Augusta, but I am a member of the Ferry Service Advisory Board and I wish Everett and Gramp were back here with me.

The deteriorating relationship between the ferry service and Vinalhaven began several years ago, reached what we thought was a peak three years ago with the demotion to deckhand of one of our most capable and devoted captains—a huge mistake, as evidenced by the consequences and terms of his re-instatement—and continued, most recently, with the egregious disregard for an agreement

reached earlier this year between ferry service management and the Vinalhaven Select Board. So egregious, that the town chose to file a complaint with the Maine Office of Program Evaluation and Program Accountability, having found little or no accountability farther up the Department of Transportation chain of command.

It’s come to this: the town feels the traveling public is being treated contemptuously by ferry service management. Management has, in turn, and repeatedly, expressed the opinion that we regard ourselves as a privileged population, deserving of special treatment.

The bottom line is that the resulting hostility is negatively and hugely affecting the bottom line; the ferry service’s bottom line and Vinalhaven’s bottom line. There has to be a way out of this. We are not looking for middle ground. Rather we want the common ground that was, for decades, mutually ours.

Phil Crossman lives on Vinalhaven where he serves on the town select board.

www.workingwaterfront.com . July 2020

21

Cranberry Report

Gardening is a balm for worldly worries Island evidence suggests others are investing in growth, too

By Barbara Fernald LIKE MANY OF my friends, this spring, I have found great solace in my garden. Whenever I feel pandemic depression take hold, I try to get outside.

The minute I connect my hands with the earth I feel better.

I’ve weeded grass from places I’d ignored for years and my berry bushes are thriving as a result. I will actually have the whole flower garden weeded and fed before summer starts, and I don’t think I’ve ever bothered to do that before.

This year I really need my garden and it is anything but a bother.

I think most island gardens are looking spiffier than ever. The weather has been dry, making most days good for spending time in the dirt.

It’s obvious many of us are finding serenity there. Seeds and seedlings are shared on social media. What someone needs, someone else has extra. When Cliff and Jeanne Smith arrived last week, they put out a request for spare seeds. Within

three days they planted their garden without breaking their quarantine.

My happy round garden was installed by Gary Allen about 25 years ago, when he was well known for his farm and the cedar fences and gates he built on both Little and Great Cranberry Islands. I wanted an area for growing vegetables in the center and a full perimeter of perennials.

One of the best things about Maine is it has the cool climate many perennials like. How great for this mediocre gardener to have my paltry vegetable attempts so well hidden by columbine, poppies, campanula, astilbe, and ferns.

When a visitor walks by and says, “Hey, nice garden!” I just nod and say, “Thanks!” From their angle, it looks like I’ve done a lot of hard work, but it is Mother Nature who should get the credit.

I’ve been getting ready to add to this outdoor goodness since March. For the first time in 40 years I bought seeds to start indoors. I went hunting in the shed for those little plastic pots I had

saved “in case,” and had potting soil sent over on the mailboat.

Through April and May, I lovingly tended the seedlings of tomatoes, zucchini, cucumbers, eggplants, and snapdragons on my large windowsill in the dining room. In April, I planted baby bok choy, spinach, arugula, peas, and parsley outside. By the end of May, I had planted carrots, onions, beans, lettuce, dill, cilantro, bachelor buttons, calendula, and most of my indoor seedlings.

From one packet of zinnia seeds I grew the equivalent of six, six-packs of flowers. I saved money and I didn’t have to drag boxes of plants across on the mailboat.

So far, everything is doing pretty well, though the cucumbers and the zucchini still look pissed off at me for moving them out of their cozy pots into the cold dirt. So far they’re still alive. The center of my vegetable garden looks almost as good as the periphery and it’s about to get even better.

Bruce has been fishing only two days a week and has been looking for projects

to keep busy. He just finished building an 8-foot by 10-foot green house for me.

I have a few plants to put in right away.

I’ve never tried growing eggplants until this year, but I think they will love the greenhouse. I also have a pot of Mexican sour gherkin plants which will grow tiny 1-inch cucumbers with enough warmth.

I have some learning on how to best use my greenhouse, but I am ready to try growing anything. I have dreams of sitting in it next winter, just to smell some warm dirt and perhaps pick some fallplanted greens.

Meanwhile, summer is on our doorstep and the short growing season is here. Many of us are already being nourished by our gardens well before we start harvesting the fruit.

Barbara Fernald lives, writes, and gardens on Islesford (Little Cranberry Island).

Fathoming

Coast offers climate mitigation potential Climate Council highlights conserving, restoring ‘blue carbon’

By Susie Arnold

DETERMINING MAINE’S carbon budget is a key first step in meeting Gov. Janet Mill’s 2019 pledge of achieving carbon neutrality by 2045.

Recent estimates coming out of the Maine Climate Council point to an under-recognized asset in the quest to becoming “carbon neutral”—vegetated coastal ecosystems.

Carbon neutrality essentially means the state’s emissions (which are slated to be cut by 45 percent by 2030 and 80 percent by 2050, below 1990 levels) are absorbed by local carbon sinks or offset (through the purchase of carbon offsets).

The growth of Maine’s vast forests, which make up 89 percent of our land, plays a major role in capturing and long-term storage of carbon. But, it turns out that Maine’s coastline is also home to other less well-known carbon sinks—and they pack a punch.

These habitats are termed coastal “blue carbon” and, in Maine, include saltmarshes, seagrasses, and seaweeds.

Preliminary analysis from the Climate Council’s Coastal and Marine Working Group estimates salt marshes and seagrass meadows occupy less than 0.1 percent of the state, but have the potential to bury 1-6 percent of the total carbon sequestered each year.

“The healthier the system, the higher the rates of carbon sequestration,” says Beverly Johnson, geology professor at Bates College.

In much the same way that our forests capture carbon dioxide in the atmosphere through photosynthesis and store carbon in soils, marsh and seagrasses remove carbon dioxide through photosynthesis from their surrounding environment.

Most of the carbon ends up in their roots and rhizomes and is buried and “sequestered” for centuries to millennia.

Seaweeds, like rockweed and kelp, were previously thought to have the ability to only temporarily take up carbon, since they lack roots, but rather attach to intertidal or subtidal rocks via holdfasts. Recent studies, however, indicate that up to 16 percent of these seaweeds break off and ultimately end up buried in the deep ocean, opening up a vast and yet-to-be quantified potential for storing carbon.

Because coastal blue carbon ecosystems are underwater for part or all of the tidal cycle, they also remove carbon dioxide from seawater. A quarter to a third of all atmospheric carbon dioxide ends up in the ocean, causing it to become more acidic. The uptake of carbon dioxide by kelp and seagrasses locally remediates ocean acidification in addition to the sequestration benefits.

Furthermore, Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences is investigating whether seaweeds as a feed additive for livestock can reduce their methane burps, a major source of emissions from the agriculture sector.

According to Nichole Price, a researcher at Bigelow, “Given the length of Maine’s

coastline, extensive tidal marshes, the market potential for seaweeds to bolster our working waterfront economy, and the fact that submerged aquatic vegetation sequesters carbon more efficiently than forests, blue carbon represents both profit and purpose for Maine.”

A project in the port of Seattle is aimed at enhancing blue carbon infrastructure and quantifying the benefits.

In 2019, both bull kelp and eelgrass were planted to trap carbon, reduce ocean acidification, and along with three tons of seeded oyster shells, improve water quality. The project is being monitored to see if it can sequester 10 tons of carbon per year.

Maintaining and restoring these coastal habitats are already of high importance for their “ecosystem services.” These include their natural capacity to support biodiversity, benefit fisheries, improve water quality, act as flood storage and storm barriers, remediate coastal acidification, and enhance tourism and recreation.

Fully unveiling the role coastal habitats play in carbon sequestration could elevate the priority of their management.

In addition to the difficult-tomonetize ecosystem service role of blue carbon, there is opportunity in the voluntary global carbon market.

Companies such as Gold Standard evaluate offset projects and act as benchmarks in carbon markets.

Determining how to position Maine

to trade blue carbon offsets may be an important next step if funding for some management strategies is uncertain.

Work must be done to maximize the potential of these ecosystems.

“We know that almost half of saltmarshes are restricted,” says Claire Enterline of the Maine Coastal Program.

Success for the climate council’s work on saltmarshes, says Kristen Puryear, an ecologist at Maine Natural Areas Program, would mean “increased restoration of tidal marshes impaired by road crossings, allowing them to migrate with sea level rise, preventing their degradation, and supporting resiliency of saltmarsh natural communities.”

Ultimately, coastal blue carbon ecosystems are highly efficient at burying carbon—even more than forests. Through conservation, restoration, and intentional land-use and aquaculture practices, we can optimize the suite of services these ecosystems provide and illustrate the win-win outcomes of these actions.

Susie Arnold is a marine scientist at the Island Institute (publisher of The Working Waterfront), working on the impacts of climate change and ocean acidification on marine resources and fisheries-dependent communities.

22

The Working Waterfront . July 2020

Guest Column

Small business survival means building lifeboats Art offers hope, even as harsh economic realities dull colors

By Elaine Crossman AS A SMALL BUSINESS owner, particularly one whose business resides on an island overlooking the great Atlantic Ocean, thoughts about sinking ships are probably unavoidable just now. I find myself often comparing my efforts to keep New Era Gallery here on Vinalhaven open to those of the musicians on the Titanic—doing what we know how to do, though the deck is slanting and the water is too close for comfort.

The eldest of those musicians was just 34—half my current age. Would I feel differently about the pandemic, and the collapse of the economy, if I were younger? More resilient? Would I launch into a new line of work? Building lifeboats, perhaps?

My community has stepped up to meet the Covid-19 challenge in truly remarkable ways. It hit us during the quiet part of the year, and so we were graced with time to learn a whole new set of skills.

We wash our hands, we wear masks, we look out for one another. As island businesses start to reopen, as people start to move around more, as seasonal residents trickle back in, we all fervently hope that these new skills are enough to keep us safe.

Each island micro-business is a particular thread in the overall weave of island life. My gallery, 19-yearsold this year, has become a place for people to see some of the extraordinary work done in the studios tucked away in many parts of the island, a place where people gather to learn about that work and the artists

I have learned a new set of skills in the past two who produce it. For all those years, against what sometimes felt were remarkable odds, the gallery months, skills to get the work out into the world has succeeded solely through the sales of artwork, when the world may not come to us. A new and more without the benefit of any kind of public funding or interactive website, videos of the shows, social media postings have all become so much more critical in membership fees.

This spring, as the pandemic floodwaters rose, I the time of social distancing. Will they be enough?

We don’t yet know. I see so wrote my first grant application. many others trying to reach And as I struggled through the out in these ways that seemed application process for federal secondary at best a few months relief options for small busiago, and I worry for us all. nesses, a mostly ceremonial Each island micro-business My husband Phil, a writer enterprise, I held in mind the is a particular thread in the known to so many in the glowing colors that each of these overall weave of island life.

Midcoast (whose column small enterprises represents in appears in the The Working our island tapestry. That each Waterfront), is braver, often one is important. wiser, and always calmer than The first show of the 2020 I. When I suggested that I season, called “Spring!” or alternatively, “Art in the Time of Pandemic, Volume 1” is might need to abandon a lifetime of acquired skills a beauty. Work by 34 of the more than 70 artists who and learn how to build lifeboats, he replied by telling show here at any given time fill walls and plinths and me, “What you are doing, keeping your business going through all of this uncertainty, is building a the sculpture garden.

As often happens, the show developed a palette as lifeboat.”

I hadn’t thought of it that way—that by keeping my the work came in—blue is the central color in this instance—blue water, blue skies, blue glazes, blue one little piece of the economy afloat, I am doing my fibers, blue abstractions. I am surrounded by work part to keep us all buoyant. I’m counting on him to that holds a deep optimism. I am reminded that art be right. exists in a different and larger sense of time. When we excavate ancient civilizations, what do we look for Elaine Crossman lives on Vinalhaven and operates first? The artwork.

New Era Gallery in the heart of the village there.

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TUESDAYS AT 5 P.M. JULY 7 – AUGUST 11

$ SPONSORED BY

149 ea 99

Reg 179.99

Part# Color Order# HMI-BCNI35OG Orange 773536 HMI-BCNI35BG Blue 773535

SAVE

30!

$

35 lbs of

buoyancy!

800-639-2715 • hamiltonmarine.com

All discounts apply to current store prices. Typographical errors are unintentional and subject to correction.

www.workingwaterfront.com . July 2020

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Save Maine’s Lobster Industry One of the world’s most sustainable fisheries could be shut down and we cannot let that happen.

Right whales are not dying in Maine lobster gear.

Patrice McCarron, executive director Maine Lobstermen’s Association

• The federal government has violated the Endangered Species Act. • The Maine lobster fishery could be shut down.

• This could mean the end of the lobstering tradition for our children.

The MLA is raising $500,000 for the Legal Defense Fund to save Maine’s lobster industry.

Donate Online: www.mainelobstermen.org Donate By Mail: MLA LDF, 2 Storer St, Ste 203, Kennebunk ME 04043

Maine Lobstermen’s Association Legal Defense Fund

7/1/2020

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The Working Waterfront . July 2020

OUR BUSINESS IS TO LEND YOU MONEY. OUR MISSION IS TO GROW YOUR SUCCESS. Cele b 21 Y rating In Bu ears sines s!

Hundreds of benches, tables, and chairs in stock!

You can pay more but you can’t get better quality teak garden furniture. Guaranteed for a lifetime! Check out our NEW 4500 sq. ft. showroom filled with exotic LIVE EDGE SLABS made into dining and coffee tables, side tables, and consoles. Unique home decor, too.

681 Bath Rd. ( U.S. Route 1 ), Wiscasset • 207-882-7225 and 38 Sea St., Boothbay Harbor • 207- 633-9899 Open April 15-October 15 Daily, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. www.islandteakcompany.blogspot.com

Nobody finances commercial fishing like Farm Credit East.

Like agriculture, the fishing industry has its own unique credit needs. And we’re proud to serve them both.

Financing For: Boats & Trucks Real Estate Permits Bait Storage Facilities

No other lender offers more expertise, specialized financial products, or dedicated services to achieve your goals.

Wharves

farmcrediteast.com | 800.831.4230

Operating Lines

Equipment Haul Out & Repair

11530_FISHING_Made in Ag_Our Business_4.9x7.35.indd 1

Become a member of the ISLAND INSTITUTE and help expand RELIABLE INTERNET ACCESS for Maine’s small business owners.

10/8/19 1:03 PM

“

In the past there were times that a client would tell me that they were sending me something that evening, so I’d get in the car and go to the library parking lot to do work and send emails from my car. You can do that for a little while, but it’s no way to live.

”

Jeff Boulet, a web designer and developer based in St. George, knows all about the benefits of broadband. After his family bought their house there in 2012, he met many of his neighbors by going to the library to try to access the internet and get client projects done.

INTERESTED IN BECOMING A MEMBER? 3 WAYS TO MAKE YOUR GIFT TODAY: 1 - Online at giving.islandinstitute.org 2 - Call the Island Institute office at (207) 594-9209 3 - Mail your gift to: Island Institute, PO Box 648, Rockland, ME 04841