News from Maine’s Island and Coastal Communities volume 37, no. 9 n november 2023 n free circulation: 50,000
publishedby byisland islandinstitute institute nn workingwaterfront workingwaterfront.com .com published
Power play: to Pine Tree or not
ISLAND WELCOME —
State takeover of utilities debated BY TOM GROENING
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here wasn’t much the proponents and opponents agreed on during a Sept. 19 discussion in Augusta of the referendum that would have the state purchase Central Maine Power and Versant. Proponents argued that with a nonprofit, stateowned or consumer-owned utility—Pine Tree Power—profits that otherwise leave the state would be kept in Maine, thereby reducing rates. They also asserted that Mainers would be able to chart a course toward cleaner electric generation if they were able to elect representatives to run the utility. Opponents said the purchase would be costly, take as long as ten years to come to fruition as the parties argued over compensation for the privately owned companies, bring uncertainty, and could very well result in higher rates. The forum was hosted by E2 Tech, also known as Environmental and Energy Technology of Maine. That group is not taking a position on the Question 3 referendum measure. Proponents on the panel included Rep. Seth Berry, a former Democratic legislator from Bowdoinham
Patty Zimmerman of Peaks Island transports three children from the Mabuie family of Mozambique. Several Peaks Island families have taken young people who are recent immigrants from African countries, now living in Portland, into their homes for short- and long-term visits. See Kelli Park’s story and more photos on pages 2-3.
who sponsored the bill that ultimately led to the referendum question, and Lucy Hochshartner, also a Democrat and deputy campaign manager for the Pine Tree Power initiative. Opposing the question were Tina Riley, former Democratic legislator who initially supported the creation of a publicly owned utility, and Jim Cohen, a
lawyer and former Portland mayor and city councilor. The agreed upon facts of the proposal, according to moderator Jeff Thaler, are that if passed, the referendum would have the state purchase the two electric utilities using bond funding; the new privately owned nonprofit Pine Tree Power would be governed by a continued on page 7
Fortifying Portland Harbor’s sentinel Fort Preble is stabilized after violent winter storm BY CLARKE CANFIELD
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orkers have moved threeton granite blocks and taken measures to mitigate erosion and improve drainage in an effort to stabilize Fort Preble, a historic
fortress near the entrance to Portland Harbor that has endured for more than 200 years. Dating back to 1808 and active in all major wars from the War of 1812 through World War II, Fort Preble today serves as a living reminder of Maine’s
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role in U.S. naval history and the abun- fort’s 19 casemates because they were dance of historic forts that pepper the unsafe. They have been labeled and set coast. But it has deteriorated in recent off to the side, ready to be reinstalled years from the weather and the sea, and it in the future when more funding suffered substantial damage in a violent becomes available. storm that pummeled the coast last The job isn’t large, but it has its December, dislodging complexities. and toppling over Bourassa and his The fort was built many of the fort’s crew have laid granite blocks. concrete to tempoto prevent cargo The fort is now rarily take the place part of the Southern of granite blocks ships from leaving Maine Community that were washed port and later to College campus out in the December in South Portland, storm, and to replace defend the harbor which is spending washed-out concrete from enemy attacks… about $200,000 in one location. They on the stabilizahave installed undertion project. Great Falls Construction ground piping and used riprap to ease of Gorham began the work in early erosion and help with drainage. They September and was expected to finish also reinforced some of the granite by mid-October. blocks by covering them with polyAaron Bourassa, the project ester fabric, over which they applied manager for Great Falls, said six granite concrete; engineers designed it like this blocks—each weighing roughly 6,000 so when the concrete is removed in pounds—were removed from atop the continued on page 6
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The Working Waterfront . november 2023
Peaks Island families welcome New Mainers African youth embrace new community off Portland STORY AND PHOTOS BY KELLI PARK
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slanders are no strangers to helping their neighbors. But residents of one Casco Bay island have been going above and beyond by opening their doors to newcomers. Families on Peaks Island have been welcoming New Mainers—recent immigrants—into their lives and into their homes in a grassroots effort to build community with their newer neighbors. The zeal with which this endeavor has been embraced in the last year has catalyzed a change in the community that will last for years to come. Candace and Mike Myers welcomed Chadai Gatembo, 18, into their home on Peaks Island in June 2022 after meeting him at Portland High School, where Candace had recently started working with multilingual learners after retiring from teaching high school Spanish in Topsham. As an unaccompanied minor from the Democratic Republic of Congo, Gatembo was living at a teen shelter when he expressed a desire to be part of a family in Maine, at which point Candace invited him to visit the island for a day of bicycle riding to the beach. Gatembo recalled asking about living with Candace when he realized they had similar personalities. “When she wants to do something, she’s going to try and try to do something. I am the same,” he said. Candace was moved to consider a longer relationship with her new friend. “A lot of people like us have kids who have been out of the house for years. Then you start wondering,” Candace explained. “We were going to Florida every winter and that’s nice, but what is my purpose? What am I doing? We see this need that we can fill. We’ve got room. We’ve done this before. We’ve had kids. These kids need us.” The couple invited Gatembo to stay as long as he wanted. “I stayed for one week, two weeks… then I stayed,” said Gatembo. “They consider me like a son. Here, on Peaks Island, I have everything I need. This is the best thing that’s happened to me since I’ve been in the U.S.” It was a difficult transition because of the language barrier, but he quickly found his footing on the island, and within six months began to feel at home,
From left, Edlazio Antonio, Rita Mena, and Isaac Rodriguez.
immersing himself in island life with bicycle rides, without a Social Security number?” said Candace. “I call soccer, pickleball, and learning the ropes on a lobster the network ‘American Families with African Children.’” This laid the foundation for building relationships boat through a program offered by Luke’s Lobster. And Gatembo and the Myers have served as a in ways that have extended beyond housing. “Some of these kids have families back in Angola model for other families. “We haven’t advertised anything and I’m just and are OK with just living with a family for now to amazed at how, when people see these kids, they ask learn about the culture, like an exchange student,” said Candace. “But others are like, ‘No, I need a new themselves, ‘Can I do it?’’’ said Candace. Susan Seraichik and her husband Pete have family. I’m alone in the world.’ The island is a great welcomed two African youths into their home on a community for healing, especially for those who have suffered community trauma.” temporary basis. For some, the family connection has been immediate. “We’ve always had people in our spare rooms— “When I met Isaac [Rodriguez] on that first day in exchange students, exchange teachers, political candidates,” she said “We just don’t like to have December, it just felt right. We had a great time on that first night. He never left,” said Dan Fisher. empty bedrooms.” In his six months on the island, Isaac Rodriguez, Several families were ready to open their doors in 18, has struck a chord with islanders thanks in part the summer of 2022. to his musical talents. He plays “Chadai wanted to help the other in two local bands, including kids find places, but a lot of them “The island is a great The Hedgehogs and Paper were afraid to make the leap,” Roads, and performs at a variety Candace said, attributing the hesicommunity for healing, of local venues. He recently tation to differences in language, received a scholarship from the food, and culture, and apprehension especially for those Peaks Island Music Association about the ferry, the water, and dogs. who have suffered and Portland High School to “Last year at this time, we were attend Maine Jazz Camp at the all ready. We had the families, but community trauma.” University of Maine/Farmington we didn’t have anyone living with —Candace Myers to continue developing his skills them,” said Candace. “You saw as a musician. people getting used to the idea on “When they play at Jones both sides—islanders seeing that it was working and coming forward, and, on the other Landing, everybody whoops and hollers. He makes people sing along. He says, ‘Sing with me!’ He’s a side, kids at the shelter knowing kids out here.” Then, with the changing of the seasons, came a natural, not just as a musician. He’s a performer,” change of heart. “Finally, in November, it seemed to said Fisher, who attends Rodriguez’s performances as happen right away,” said Candace and things quickly often as possible. “The one that always gets me choked up is John began to fall into place. Since then, through word of mouth referrals and Lennon’s ‘Imagine,’” said Fisher. “That’s the one grassroots networking, several families on the island where everybody says, ‘We only want to hear Isaac have been providing long-term, permanent housing sing.’ He’s got a voice like you would not believe.” Food also has been a universal connection, with for African youths, while other families have been providing temporary housing and support services, dinner on Tuesdays with the Cooking Club, a gathincluding a taxi fare fund for those living on the back- ering of islanders who prepare and share dishes based side of the island and English classes on front porches. on a different theme each week. “My favorite is Feijoada, a black bean stew from “For a while, it was like we were new mothers again. We would check in with each other and ask, ‘What do Brazil,” said Rita Mena, 20, who lived in Brazil for a you do about a bank account? How do you get one year after leaving Angola. “You can eat it with rice and
www.workingwaterfront.com . november 2023 eggs. That one is the best!” Mena also cooks Angolan and Congolese food. The island immersion has helped in learning English across a variety of contexts, from the ferry to the streets to community festivities. “The people around here are so friendly. They talk to them on the ferry and everywhere on the island. They are constantly speaking English with them,” said Candace. “Their English has just shot up so fast!” Bill and Patty Zimmerman have been offering one of their family homes to African families for two-year periods in an effort they call The Launching Pad. “We wanted to prove that there were some nice, generous people in the world, rather than people saying, ‘No, you can’t come to our country,’” said Patty Zimmerman. “It’s not for everybody. We’ve had many families come out who didn’t want to live here. Some people are afraid of the water and the ferry.” One of the goals in providing housing is to boost the population of the island school, which serves Pre-K to 5th grade with 38 students. Although island life is not for everyone, the decision to move to the island a year ago came easily for the Mabuie family of Mozambique. “When they asked me if I was interested in this house, we said yes. They said, ‘You need to go see the house and after that, you can decide,’ and I said, ‘No, everything on an island is good. Everything on an island is beautiful. I want to move to the island,’” said Saute Mabuie, 40, who, with his family, made the move without ever having been on Peaks. Mabuie’s daughter, Nicole, 15, shared in her father’s enthusiasm from the beginning. “I couldn’t even believe that we’d be living on an island one day! I’d never been on an island before!” Ten island families are providing short- and longterm housing for African youths in Portland. “These kids are going to be great participants in our society and make it so much better. That’s the push for me,” said Candace. “My hope is that it spreads to the mainland.”
Cristiano Kamunga, center, with Peter and Sue Seraichick.
Chadai Gatembo playing soccer in the street with friends.
Young immigrants from African countries living in the Portland area pose with families on Peaks Island who have hosted the “New Mainers” at their island homes at a gathering in early August.
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The Working Waterfront . november 2023
Solo sail around the world—for the win Kirsten Neuschäfer spoke of her achievement in Rockport are faxed from shore-based stations or interpreted from an onboard baromn a solo round-the-world eter. A dozen of those solo sailors were sailing race, Kirsten Neuschäfer unable to complete the course. While crossing the Indian Ocean, had a teammate—her boat the Minnehaha. More than a tool, her Neuschäfer rescued a fellow competboat was a partner in a race that takes itor—Tapio Lehtinen, whose boat had incredible skill, determination, and a sunk leaving him adrift for 24 hours in the southern Indian Ocean. She then large dose of luck, she explained. It’s dubbed a race for “those who transferred him to a passing ship and continued to victory in France. dare.” Neuschäfer dared and won. Solar panels and hydro generators The race website describes it as: “One sailor, one boat facing the great are the only new technology required oceans of the world.” The rules call for to make the race greener. In all other participants crossing every meridian ways, if it wasn’t available in 1968, it isn’t available to at least once and racers in 2022. the Equator twice; But this race the race must end isn’t the first time at the same port Boats in the race are Neuschäfer has dared where it started built for endurance greatly. At just 22, she and the three biked from Europe great capes—Cape and the ability to back home to South Leeuwin, Cape Africa, ending her Horn, and Cape of navigate them solo trip in Cape Agulhas. Good Hope—each rather than for speed. As she stood at the must be passed. dividing line between Neuschäfer is the Indian Ocean and the first woman to the Atlantic, looking win the race and out to sea, she remembers thinking, the only woman to attempt it in 2022. On Sept. 22, almost a year from the “What now?” Lots of people tried to talk her out day Neuschäfer, 41, a South African native, began the Golden Globe Race, of the bike trip. When she would ask a near-capacity crowd turned out to if they had tried it, or if anyone had the Rockport Opera House to hear tried it, the answer was always no. Her response was that she wanted to try. her speak. In Rockport, she said, “The next The 30,000-nautical mile race is much the same as the original 1968 time you have a dream, before anyone competition. The 18 racers departed dissuades you, see if you can do it.” And from Les Sables-d’Olonne, France. that guided her through the race, which They rely on celestial navigation and was a test of endurance and seamanship. dead reckoning rather than GPS tech- Neuschäfer had built both while delivnology, and even their weather reports ering yachts around the world. BY KATE TAGAI
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Sailing with nature documentary film crews made her familiar with the southern oceans. Maine is where her dream started to become a reality with key people helping her find the right partner for the race in the Minnehaha, a 36-foot Cape George built in Port Townsend, Washington. The pandemic increased the challenges as the borders closed between Neuschäfer in Maine and the boat, which was anchored in Newfoundland. She spent a year in Prince Edward Island repairing and outfitting the boat before sailing it home to South Africa and then back north to France. Before the race Kirsten Neuschäfer PHOTO: ROBERT MITCHELL even started, Neuschäfer and the Minnehaha were waiting to be stowed. She also took connecting points on the globe. The boat is heavy by design with a along books as “food for the mind.” When an audience member asked fiberglass hull. Boats in the race are built for endurance and the ability to navigate her if her boat would go in a museum, she replied that the Minnehaha was them solo rather than for speed. People often ask her how she provi- taking a well-deserved rest, but she is sioned the boat for a nine-month sail. still in good shape and wants to sail. “Nine months goes by in the blink of As she was making final preparations in France before the start of the race, an eye.” She said, “I’d do it again for the she was offered almost 100 glass jars sailing, but maybe not for the race.” Proceeds from her Rockport appearfull of food. “Everyone was going to have to take ance benefited the Camden Area Youth a heavy load, but not everyone was Seamanship Program, a nonprofit going to have French gourmet food,” that provides sailing and seamanship she quipped, showing the audience a instruction to kids in the Camden photo of the glass jars lined up on deck community.
Newschäfer at Lyman-Morse boatyard in Thomaston in September 2020. PHOTO: ROBERT MITCHELL
www.workingwaterfront.com . november 2023
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Don Carrigan PHOTO: COURTESY WCSH-TV
Don Carrigan’s 50 years of storytelling From his home in Lincoln County, Maine is TV reporter’s beat Don Carrigan of WCSH-TV is considered by many to be one of Maine’s most trusted journalists and broadcasters. His 50-year career in Maine news has taken him from Portland to Bangor and everywhere in between. In 2016, Carrigan was inducted into the Maine Association of Broadcasters Hall of Fame. Carrigan lives in the Lincoln County coastal community of Walpole, where he grew up. This story first appeared in the Lincoln County News, and is reprinted with permission and gratitude. BY JOHNATHAN RILEY
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hen Don Carrigan isn’t landscaping or working in the garden of his home in Walpole where he lives with his wife Donna, he’s working at maintaining the trust he’s built with Maine communities as one of the state’s most beloved media figures. The award-winning broadcast journalist for WCSH-TV 6 has been broadcasting the news in Maine communities from Bangor to Portland for the last 50 years. “You report on the life all around you,” Carrigan said, sitting at his kitchen table, in the same house he grew up in. Carrigan graduated high school from Lincoln Academy in Newcastle in 1969.
At the University of Maine, he extra level of care when I’m reporting pursued a marine biology degree, but about home.” While he doesn’t do the daily news after the throes of high level science courses, he made a degree change anymore, he is still the state house where leaned into something he already bureau chief for NewsCenter and does loved being involved in: WMEB 91.9, weekly stories for 207, the station’s nightly news magazine show. the university’s radio station. “I have to take a slightly different “I was fascinated by the idea that you approach for could sit in a little room stories for and your voice go out to the 207 than I world,” Carrigan said. “And would with it quickly became apparent “I was fascinated by daily stories,” to me that I was not a dediCarrigan said. cated enough student to the idea that you “I try to find pull off that degree.” could sit in a little a larger theme He graduated in 1974 to use.” with a Bachelor of Arts in room and your voice Carrigan speech, with a concentrago out to the world.” accolades tion in broadcasting. include two Carrigan’s broadcasting New England career started during the E m m y summer of 1973, before his last semester at the University of Maine, Awards, one in 2015 for his story “What when he juggled part-time media jobs. Makes Them Run?,” a gubernatorial By the fall, he was working full time for candidate profile, and another in 2023 WLBZ-TV in Bangor, where he became for “Lombard’s Genius,” a story about the station’s news director over his 19 Maine native Alvin Lombard, who invented the endless track, now used on years there. In the early 1990s, Carrigan worked everything from bulldozers to tanks. “Larger theme or not, you always for U.S. Sen. Bill Cohen before going on to work for Maine Public Broadcasting, try to find character,” Carrigan said. now known as Maine Public, and then “Alvin Lombard was the character in WCSH 6 in Portland to report on poli- that story, but you could argue it was his invention.” tics and the Midcoast. Carrigan has interviewed and “I cared a lot about what I did in Bangor,” Carrigan said. “But there’s an broadcast with the best of them, but
perhaps his most famous on-screen companion was his 26-pound orange Maine Coon cat, Togus, who passed away in 2012. Togus grew famous in the early 2000s doing Carrigan’s StormCenter updates from the kitchen table These days Carrigan and his wife have two golden retrievers, Shyanne and Xavier, and two cats, Togus Jr. and Wally. Carrigan’s love for his work hasn’t diminished, although a few things have pushed him to slow down. In 2009 Carrigan’s sight had deteriorated to the point where he was no longer able to drive “With enough planning, and with immense gratitude of my wife, Donna, photographers, to friends, I’m able to get most places,” Carrigan said. “I’m in a young person’s business at an age when almost nobody still is. I’m well aware of that, but it’s still fun, it’s still challenging, and creative.” Carrigan’s longevity may stem from his fascination for how the world around him works, and his love for his home. “I’m a terrible mechanic myself, but I love machines and I’m fascinated with how stuff works,” he said. “Might that be mechanical, or political; the delight I get in being able to explain, to make something make sense, is incredible.”
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The Working Waterfront . november 2023
FORT PREBLE
continued from page 1 the future, it will break away clean rather than being stuck to the granite. The fort was built to prevent cargo ships from leaving port and later to defend the harbor from enemy attacks in times of war. Today, it serves as a breakwater to protect the campus during high tides and storms. As Bourassa provided an overview of the project, waves crashed against the fort at high tide. “It’s important to me,” said Bourassa, who lives nearby in South Portland. “All of the forts in this area important. They make Portland Harbor what it is.” In announcing the project, SMCC interim President Tiffanie Bentley said SMCC is a steward of “this treasured landmark.” The project is a stopgap measure to make it safe and prevent further damage, but it would probably require millions of dollars—money that is not available—to restore the fort to where it should be, she said. “We will do everything within our means to keep it from further degradation so that it remains a source of inspiration and education for students and visitors for years to come,” she said. Fort Preble was built to help enforce the short-lived 1807 Embargo Act enacted by President Thomas Jefferson that prohibited U.S. ships from trading with the British and French. It was named after Navy officer Edward Preble, a Portland native who rose to the rank of commodore. The fort was expanded through the decades and served as a military post in the War of 1812 against Britain, the Civil War, and up through World War II. The granite-block casemates at the edge of the ocean were erected during the Civil War, and many of the fort’s red-brick buildings are still used today by SMCC for offices and classrooms. Deeming the fort and others like it obsolete, the federal government deactivated Fort Preble in 1950 and gave the property to the state of Maine. Two years later, the site became the home to the Maine Vocational Technical Institute, which later became SMCC. The fort is located next to the 900-foot breakwater leading to the Spring Point Ledge Lighthouse and is open for the public to explore. It’s important to preserve Maine’s historical structures because they are part of the state’s heritage, said Herb Adams, a Maine historian and SMCC professor. Previous generations passed the forts along to us, he said, and it is incumbent upon us to do the same for future generations. With climate change bringing more extreme weather and rising seas, coastal forts are under more pressure than ever, he said, as evidenced by the December storm that damaged parts of Fort Preble. “It used to be these were once-in-every 100 years storms,” he said. “Now they’re every five years, or maybe every other year. Maine’s whole coast is in danger.” A video of the December storm shows huge waves crashing into the fort with the ferocity of a boxer catching an opponent with a succession of vicious uppercuts. “The British,” Adams said, “failed to do what Mother Nature did—knock over Fort Preble.”
An aerial view of the Southern Maine Community College campus, built within the confines of Fort Preble. PHOTO: COURTESY SMCC
Loose granite blocks inside the fort. PHOTO: CLARKE CANFIELD
Aaron Bourassa, project manager overseeing the stabilization project at Fort Preble on the Southern Maine Community College campus. PHOTO: CLARKE CANFIELD
“It used to be these were once-in-every 100 years storms. Now they’re every five years,.” —Herb Adams
An aerial view of the fort shot in the 1950s. PHOTO: COURTESY SMCC
www.workingwaterfront.com . november 2023 PINE TREE
continued from page 1 13-member board, with some of its members being elected by the public; the new entity would be regulated by the Public Utilities Commission; and Pine Tree Power would go into effect in early 2025. Hochshartner explained her support for the initiative came after hearing stories of people struggling to pay their electric bills as well as her concerns, as a farmer, about the impacts of a warming climate. “I want to see a climate future that works for all of us,” she said. She said in the early 20th century, there were an equal number of investor-owned and consumerowned electric utilities. That balance tilted as the so-called robber barons of the Gilded Age purchased the utilities. CMP’s and Versant’s combined profits were $187 million in 2022, she said, while bills were hiked 20% and 94,000 disconnection notices were sent. Analysis found that a publicly owned utility would save $9 million over 30 years, and that savings would be seen in the first year. The parent companies of CMP and Versant have spent $27 million to sway public opinion against Pine Tree Power, she said. Berry said opponents have used fear tactics, not facts, and that viable examples of publicly owned utilities exist. Nebraska created a publicly owned electric utility in the 1940s, he said, and rates are lower than elsewhere. Messina, N.Y. also established a publicly
owned electric utility in 1981 and rates have dropped 21%, Berry said. Other examples exist in Oregon and Winter Park, Fla., he added. Cohen, speaking for the opponents, disputed the examples of success with the public model. “It hasn’t been tested,” he said. “It is not a model for success.” The governing board of Pine Tree Power would have just seven elected members, Cohen said, who only need to be 21 or older and live in Maine. They, in turn, would select six people to run the utility. “There is no confirmation process for those six,” he said. After the purchase, the new board would hire a grid operator, likely a private company, which is what two other publicly owned utilities have done— the Long Island Power Authority and the Puerto Rico Power Authority. “We could have someone from another country,” running Pine Tree Power, Cohen said. It could even be CMP or Versant. A point opponents made repeatedly is that the value of the companies—which they estimate at $13.5 billion—will be disputed by the parties. “We are billions of dollars apart,” Cohen said. Resolution through the courts will take years. When a publicly-owned utility was formed in Long Island, N.Y., he said, resolution on compensation took 13 years. “None of us in this room know what these assets are,” Cohen said of the Maine utilities, and cited the case of a water district in Rangeley where the
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QUESTION 3: An Act to Create the Pine Tree Power Company, a Nonprofit, Customer-owned Utility. Do you want to create a new power company governed by an elected board to acquire and operate existing for-profit electricity transmission and distribution facilities in Maine? ownership of old wooden pipes was disputed. “We’re going to be fighting about Maine Yankee,” the shuttered nuclear plant and other property which is why “This is going to be a five-year battle.” Cohen added that the union representing CMP and Versant’s workers is opposing Question 3. Riley said the interest on the borrowing to buy the utilities would be passed onto ratepayers. “The rosy predictions of the proponents are far from accurate,” she said. Berry said the bill creating the referendum defines assets as “utility facilities” and that properties such as Maine Yankee are optional. Hochshartner said utilities frequently are bought and sold, including both CMP and Versant, and that the difficulty in doing so was exaggereated. She also noted that Avangrid, CMP’s parent company, posted a $2.7 billion profit in the first half of this year, and that the utilities typically produce 8% to 12% return on investment. To Riley’s statement that Pine Tree Power “is a huge risk,” Hochshartner replied, “There are certain things that are known—CMP and Versant are not working for us. They’re not designed to work for us.”
Mariners call for navigational aid maintenance Pingree writes letter to support concerns BY TOM GROENING
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ighthouses and buoys aren’t the only navigational aids on which mariners rely for safe transit. Structures known as day shapes or beacons, often built on ledges, also warn boaters away from danger, and some mariners have complained that as they deteriorate, the Coast Guard is failing to maintain them. Rep. Chellie Pingree, representing Maine’s 1st Congressional District, which includes Penobscot Bay, has written a letter to federal agencies opposing the decision to “disestablish” two such navigational aids on what are deemed hazardous areas near the Fox Island Thorofare. Pingree lives on North Haven, and the Maine State Ferry Service boats pass Drunkard and Fiddler’s ledges, both of which had day shapes. John Worth of Belfast, a 40-year veteran captain on various vessels who is a fill-in captain for the Maine State Ferry Service and often works on the North Haven and Vinalhaven runs, wrote the Coast Guard about the collapse of the navigational aids, naming the “abandonment of the day shape on Drunkard Ledge” as his most immediate concern. The Coast Guard abandoned this navigational aid, Worth wrote, concluding it “does not have any navigational significance.” Worth argued this is incorrect: “In heavy weather, creating high winds and high seas, the Maine State Ferry Service vessels often must take alternate routes [rather] than the straightest route, to maintain vessel safety. It is precisely in bad weather conditions that a day shape like the one formerly on Drunkard Ledge is most important.” Worth also urged the Coast Guard to work to reestablish the Maine and New Hampshire Port Safety Forum. He also noted he hadn’t seen a
solicitation by the Coast Guard for public comment on abandoning the navigational aids. Several have fallen into disrepair, he wrote, including the spindle on Dogfish Ledge and the day shape on Shag Rock. Further, I understand that it is USCG policy that the monument on Fiddler’s Ledge will no longer be maintained.” Pingree, in her letter, asserted that “the day beacons and their radar reflectors are routinely used as a visual signal, and for radar location, to help boats navigate Penobscot
Bay while avoiding the dangerous ledges below, which are especially difficult to locate during high tide. These day beacons are a vital navigational tool for the North Haven ferry, which safely transported approximately 55,000 passengers and over 20,000 vehicles in 2021.” Worth and Pingree’s concerns have been supported by Dan McNichol, port captain for the ferry service; Jon Emerson of North Haven, a member of the ferry service advisory board; and by the Penobscot Bay & River Pilots Association, Worth noted.
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The Working Waterfront . november 2023
from the sea up
Maine islands are the frontier Climate change is a real-world problem here BY KIM HAMILTON
FOR THOSE OF you who track island life, you’ll likely know there are 15 year-round, unbridged islands along the Maine coast. Distinguished by their differences more than their commonalities, these islands span the coast from Cliff Island, the smallest of the Casco Bay islands, to Matinicus, the most distant island located 20 miles off the coast of Owls Head, and Swan’s Island, off the coast of Mount Desert Island with its unofficial motto, “Six miles east of ordinary.” These islands—the “famous 15”—are notable because they support communities, provide jobs, have deep fishing and family traditions, and are wellknown tourist destinations. These 15 islands are a tiny portion, however, of the more than 4,000 bridged, privately owned, and uninhabited islands that dot the Maine coast. Some are home to committed seasonal communities—quiet in the winter but hives of activity in the summer—while others are uninhabited wildlands and wetlands with allure for boaters, kayakers, and adventurers. Importantly, many of these wild islands are sites for world class
scientific research at the intersection of rise, the intensity of storms, and coastal a changing Gulf of Maine and our local erosion that are at the center of their concerns. The impact of climate change ecological systems. On their own, each Maine island repre- on health and the viability of marine sents a unique opportunity to understand species is increasingly evident and has a and celebrate the Maine coast from a direct impact on livelihoods and lives. Here in Maine, Island Institute is different natural vista, through the eyes of a well-established community, or from a anticipating and preparing for these working waterfront that connects Maine’s challenges in several ways, working directly with island communities, iconic lobsters to the rest of the world. building local Together this capacity through collective composes Islands are the our Island Institute a vast frontier Fellows Program, between the mainsentinels, the canaries translating climate land and the larger in the coal mine, and science into actionocean ecosystem. able information for Like islands around offer us a chance to communities, and the world, Maine’s exploring cutting islands are on the address the earliest edge ways to reduce frontlines of climate impacts of coastal coastal carbon change. Islands are emissions. the sentinels, the climate change. Our partnership canaries in the coal with the Governor’s mine, and offer us a chance to address the earliest impacts Office for Policy Innovation and the Future is designed to help communiof coastal climate change. Islands on the frontline of climate ties develop their own priorities and change is not a new concept. Most of us plans to address climate change. To date, we’ve worked with nine island are keenly aware of the particularly acute challenges facing small island nations that committees to engage community have banded together as the Small Island members in assessing their climate risks Developing States. It’s not only sea level and priorities. In my own hometown of
Chebeague Island, this partnership with Island Institute led to the formation of our town’s climate action team. Increasingly, we’re seeing Island Institute Fellows placed in communities that need an extra set of hands advancing their climate action plans. Bri Cunliffe, a Bowdoin graduate, is one of our current Fellows who has been placed on Mount Desert Island to support its “A Climate to Thrive” initiative. Using her community development skills and training from Island Institute, Bri is helping the MDI community move toward clean, reliable energy. In each of these examples, community members are leading the approach because they are closest to the challenges, and they are best placed to read and hear the signs in their own communities. They know that Maine islands have a lot to teach us, if we take the time to look and listen carefully. Kim Hamilton is president of Island Institute, publisher of The Working Waterfront. She may be contacted at khamilton@islandinstitute.org.
rock bound
Port Clyde’s loss is seared in pain Working waterfront fire is a blow to family BY TOM GROENING
WE CAN WATCH live satellite images of a typhoon on the other side of the planet. We can record thousands of photographs in a device not much bigger than a deck of playing cards. We can inject a genetic replica of a virus to boost immunity. But something as elemental and indiscriminate as fire remains a devastating force in our lives. The blaze that destroyed the heart of Port Clyde’s working waterfront in late September is a stunning reminder that for all our advances, our lives, our homes and businesses, and our communities can be destroyed in a matter of hours by fire. It leaves me heartsick, especially when I think of the people who built those businesses and buildings. Four years ago, I had a pleasant conversation with Amy Barstow, who with her husband Andy owns and operates the Monhegan Boat Line, about their plans to construct a new building and pier. The pier would be higher, to protect it from rising seas, and the new two-story building—65feet by 30-feet—would replace an old and sagging warehouse of sorts. They purchased the business in 2010 from Andy’s parents. Amy has worked at the business since 1996.
She answered my questions back then no doubt represent equally committed in a “just the facts” manner; polite, yes, owners and managers. And original but I remember being struck by the art by Jamie and N.C. Wyeth was also sense that for her and her husband, this destroyed, a cultural loss to Maine. Until the businesses have new strucwas a scary proposition, this substantial financial commitment, and the fear may tures, workers won’t have paychecks and the community will miss its have spilled over into the interview. In fact, rereading my story about the beating heart. Fires have marked turning points in project, I see that I mentioned her facial expression betraying the enormity of the history of many Maine communithe commitment, though she declined ties. In 1947, a blaze swept through Bar Harbor and Acadia National Park, to tell me the budget for the work. forever changing I have interviewed the town and even my fair share of the undeveloped entrepreneurs over True to form, they have expanses of the park. the decades, and kept the boats running Anniversaries of the the good ones—if I conflagration are may impose a moral to Monhegan, shielding duly marked with judgement here— that island community TV news specials and betray the weight newspaper coverage. they carry of being from most of the Much of the responsible for eastern end of people’s paychecks. effects of the fire. Portland’s peninsula The Barstows fit burned on July 4 this profile. Which 1866, possibly started by a firecracker. makes their loss that much more tragic. In Belfast, fires destroyed various True to form, they have kept the boats running to Monhegan, shielding parts of the downtown and waterfront that island community from most of in 1865, 1873, 1885, 1896, and 1899. The city’s beautiful brick downtown buildthe effects of the fire. The Port Clyde General Store and ings were a response to the vulnerability the Dip Net restaurant also were effec- to fire of the wooden structures that tively destroyed by the fire, and both preceded them.
In Eastport, a blaze in 1886 destroyed ten wharves and 50 buildings. Several years ago, I dined in a restaurant there, called Landmark 1887, located in the first floor of a large brick building. Several of the brick buildings in town sported the 1887 date. And that’s the odd thing about tragedy and history. We offhandedly rattle off the long-ago dates of these events as if they were barren of emotion and crushing economic impact. Today, we have fresh reminders that this is not so, including the devastating conflagration in Maui. Will a new Port Clyde emerge, as happened in other Maine towns after fires? Here’s a clue from our 2019 story about the new building: “We are doing it with our customers in mind, and the community,” Amy said of the upgrades. “It will make for better service,” Andy said, and noted that, “long after we’re gone,” the new infrastructure will remain. May it be so, again. Tom Groening is editor of The Working Waterfront. He may be contacted at tgroening@islandinstitute.org.
www.workingwaterfront.com . november 2023
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PORT CLYDE MEMORIES— This photograph from the early 1940s shows part of Port Clyde’s working waterfront.
guest column
Saco Bay conference addressed timely concerns Erosion, storm surge, dune restoration discussed BY PETER M. HANRAHAN
MORE THAN 100 people attended the second annual SOS Saco Bay Coastal Conference on Sept. 27. The full day conference featured classroom sessions, a trade show, and outdoor field stations on the beach. Save Our Shores Saco Bay, a nonprofit advocacy group committed to the restoration and preservation of its shoreline and natural beauty, hosted the conference. Saco’s Camp Ellis beach has been seriously impacted by the installation of stone jetties at the mouth of the Saco River in the late 19th century, with 38 homes having been lost to coastal erosion. Lori Gramlich, serving her third term in the Maine House of Representatives and chairing the House Environment and Natural Resources Committee, gave the keynote speech. A strong advocate for coastal protection, she resides in Old Orchard Beach. Rep. Gramlich discussed an important bill that she sponsored recently, LD 498, “An Act to Improve Coastal Sand Dune Restoration Projects.” The bill was passed in both the House and Island Institute Board of Trustees
Kristin Howard, Chair Douglas Henderson, Vice Chair Charles Owen Verrill, Jr. Secretary Kate Vogt, Treasurer, Finance Chair Carol White, Programs Chair Megan McGinnis Dayton, Philanthropy & Communications Chair Shey Conover, Governance Chair Michael P. Boyd, Clerk Sebastian Belle David Cousens Michael Felton Nathan Johnson Emily Lane Bryan Lewis Michael Sant Barbara Kinney Sweet Donna Wiegle John Bird (honorary) Kimberly A. Hamilton, PhD (ex officio)
Senate and was signed into law by Gov. Janet Mills in May. The event featured a dedicated student track, and attracted delegations from the University of Southern Maine, Thornton Academy, the University of Rhode Island, Portland High School, and the University of New Hampshire. Instructors in that track included Holly Parker, director of the Schiller Coastal Studies Center at Bowdoin College; Abbie Sherwin of the Southern Maine Planning and Development Commission; Hannah Baranes of the Gulf of Maine Research Institute; Zach Lacasse of Everett J. Prescott, Inc.; and Nathan Robbins of the Maine Department of Environmental Protection. Robbins discussed his work as a climate change specialist for the state, and his agency’s efforts to protect Maine’s coastline, which is threatened by rising seas, increasing storm surges, and coastal flooding. In the main session, consulting engineer Anders Bjangard, principal at GZA Geoenvironmental of Amesbury, Mass., provided an overview of his work confronting
accelerated shoreline erosion at Plum Island in Newburyport, Mass. Cassie Bethony, a design consultant with the Weston and Samson Design Studio of Boston, led a discussion titled “Protecting Critical Infrastructure at Prescott Park in Portsmouth, New Hampshire.” Her work involved protection and raising coastal infrastructure on the waterfront of that city. In August of last year, that project was featured in an article in Stormwater magazine titled “Times Change, Designs Adapt.” Marybeth Richardson is Southern Maine office director for the Maine Department of Environmental Protection, and provided an overview of regulatory issues relative to coastal protection. Alison McKellar, vice chair of the Camden Select Board, reviewed the loss of private structures and loss of public access in Camden Harbor. This of course is a threat that is being taken seriously by communities along the Maine coast. Another speaker, Rachel Stearns of the Rachel Carson National Wildlife Refuge in Wells, detailed the restoration work her agency is doing to protect salt marshes in
THE WORKING WATERFRONT
Published by Island Institute, a non-profit organization that works to sustain Maine's island and coastal communities, and exchanges ideas and experiences to further the sustainability of communities here and elsewhere. All members of Island Institute and residents of Maine island communities receive monthly mail delivery of The Working Waterfront. For home delivery: Join Island Institute by calling our office at (207) 594-9209 E-mail us: membership@islandinstitute.org • Visit us online: giving.islandinstitute.org
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coastal zones. Coastal wetlands, vitally important for both habitat and coastal flood protection, have been devastated by development all over the U.S. For example, Florida, highly vulnerable to flooding and coastal storms, has lost 44% of its wetlands since 1845. David Plavin, vice president of SOS Saco Bay, was heavily involved in the planning and execution of the conference. “These issues are so important and we are trying to provide a forum to exchange ideas and educate,” he said. Planning is already under way for the 3rd Annual SOS Saco Bay Coastal Conference for the early fall of next year. Peter M. Hanrahan of Topsham is a consultant who worked with SOS Saco Bay to plan the event. Hanrahan has worked on coastal training events since 2008 and organized events in Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Maine. His firm is Hanrahan Environmental, LLC, and he may be reached at hanrahanenvironmental@ yahoo.com.
Editor: Tom Groening
tgroening@islandinstitute.org Our advertisers reach 50,000+ readers who care about the coast of Maine. Free distribution from Kittery to Lubec and mailed directly to islanders and members of Island Institute, and distributed monthly to Portland Press Herald and Bangor Daily News subscribers.
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The Working Waterfront . november 2023
essays
Evidence of insanity: Black swans and B-O-A-T Restoring a sailboat brings no surprises about surprises STORY AND PHOTOS BY DAVID D. PLATT
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’ve been a boat owner for well over 50 years. So I should know something about the rocks and shoals that lie in wait for someone like me, right? The costs? The heartbreak? The disasters that lurk out there on, in or under the water? I thought I did—all of us boat owners think we know—until we forget. Over the years I’ve forgotten lots of times. Last summer my memory failed me, yet again: at the age of 80, I bought another boat. I’d been boatless, more or less, at least in a serious way, for several years. I’d satisfied my cravings with a rowboat attached to a running line in front of our house that took me out into Casco Bay when things were calm and the tide was right. Rowing that boat’s fun and keeps me in better shape than some old guys, but when I’m out there I get to thinking… wouldn’t it be fun to go for a sail? In a sailboat? Just a little one, safe, manageable, not too much trouble? You know what happened next. Blame it on the internet. I began (back on shore, not out in the rowboat) surfing boat listings here and there, narrowing them down to boats under 20 feet, older, fiberglass (I’ve owned and written about wooden boats, taken care of them, and knew I wanted to sail, not caulk and paint, in the years I’ve got left). I was willing to take on a project as long as it could get me back out there. Finally, after months of surfing and imagining, I found something really interesting and unusual. Practical? Sensible? Safe? Something a guy my age should undertake? I leave the answers to those questions up to you. All I had to do was drive to Connecticut to see the boat for myself, decide whether to buy it, somehow get it to Maine without a trailer, cover it for the winter, and then in spring put it back together, fix what might need fixing, launch it, rig it, get from a launch site to the mooring I still owned, and go sailing. Evidence of insanity? Let’s be honest here: of course! The early fall drive down to Connecticut in my pickup was easy. I went alone—no wife, no dog, just a checkbook—and pulled into a small cluster of buildings where I parked and went into what looked like an office. I explained my mission to a pleasant woman (I was expected) who told me I’d need to speak with her husband. I did, and he took me out to show me the boat I was looking for in a plasticcovered shed. I prowled around and went aboard, poked and prodded while he told me the boat’s interesting story. Built in 1971, this Cape Dory Typhoon was one of several hundred produced by a successful firm in Massachusetts working from designs
by Carl Alberg. Alberg’s hulls are It was a project I could do traditional, with full keels and reason- over the winter, the sort of able overhangs, generally good sailers thing I’ve loved to do since that can handle most sea conditions I retired a few years back. (In my years since then I’ve without scaring people. I’d had a Cape Dory 30—a bigger overseen the construction version of this boat—for a couple of a summer cottage, built a of seasons a few years back, and I couple of small boats, crafted remember loving its sailing qualities. lots of furniture and turned Memories of that boat, in fact, had a one-time Odd Fellows hall gotten me thinking about Cape Dory into a home for myself. Why not another project?) for my old-age boat. Janice demonstrated her I’d looked at a number of Typhoons in Maine in the preceding months, tolerance and understanding The Cape Dory Typhoon. mostly on the internet and a couple as I appropriated part of our in person, but hadn’t found anything home’s lawn for the hull, that wouldn’t overwhelm me with some of the garage for the spars, and All at my advanced age! I was finishing up my shop work a piece of the cellar for the rest of rebuilding work. It’s amazing to me how people let the nautical junk I’d bought at such a when spring finally came. Conditions outdoors improved. Between rains I boats go. If they’re wooden boats, bargain price. Next, after considerable investi- began untying my tarp and exploring they rot and fall apart; if they’re fiberglass they get tired and shabby, slowly gating, I arranged for a transporter to the hull out in the yard, figuring out turning into junk cars or old refrigera- truck my red hull to Maine (“B-O-A-T” what kind of projects I could expect tors out in people’s yards. Not enticing! again but had to be); once the boat got next. The first, I could see, was stiffening The boat in Connecticut was here, I painted the decks so they’d be different. An earlier owner had turned ready when spring came. I bought a the set of plywood knees beneath the it over to the man I was talking to last heavy tarp and tied it down so the boat through-deck chainplates—the old summer in his plastic shed so it could wouldn’t fill up with ice and snow after knees had been soaked by deck leaks be refurbished from end to end. He’d its protected time in the Connecticut and were delaminating. Crawling into begun the work by removing all the shed. I hung up the mast in the garage the cramped cabin space I made cardfittings, coamings, hatch, and anything and went through the nautical junk board patterns of the originals. In my to see what shop I cut out a new set of knees. else that could be unscrewed, Making and installing the knees was I might stashing it all in boxes and bags accomplish the first indication that I was in for in the shed. I’d had a Cape Dory over the some below-decks experiences that Once he’d cleared the decks, would be different from those aboard winter. so to speak, he went to work 30—a bigger version J a n i c e , my earlier boats—not just because this on the hull, sanding and then p e r h a p s boat is smaller and more cramped, but painting it a shiny bright red. of this boat—for a relieved that because I don’t bend or move around as This part of his job was—and couple of seasons a I wouldn’t well as I once did. remains—absolutely beautiful, More than a few minutes down there sail away and I can only wish he’d been few years back, and too soon, would leave me stiff and sore, someable to finish the rest of his I remember loving l i s t e n e d times requiring various cures: muscleproject. to my relaxing drugs, stiff drinks, simply time But as is often the case its sailing qualities. b a b b l i n g s to stretch out. with boats, a black swan—an But I got this job done and moved on, about this unforeseen event—intervened. project and fixing and re-installing the hatch and its The client died. There sat the accompanying cockpit slides; putting boat, now bright red, in the shed. went on with normal life. The weather got colder. I headed for portholes back in place, fitting the Unfinished. In the way. Time must have gone by, I’m not sure my shop in the cellar where I laid out refinished cockpit coamings into their how much of it. Suffice it to say that coamings and other mahogany trim places, starting on deck fittings, most of which required the man I was dealing with had been and began sanding and more below-decks left with a project just begun without refinishing. I re-created crawling, slithering, a clear end in sight. His solution missing parts here and and soreness in order (presumably agreed to by the client’s there and finished them. to tighten down the Winter came and heirs because he owned the boat by washers and nuts. the time I looked at it) was to put the went. From time to By June or therehull, its fittings, and associated parts, time I’d check on things abouts I was getting mast, boom and sails—on the market. under the boat cover, there—running out The price was $1,500, way below any at least once chipping of fittings to put on, other Typhoon I’d looked at. I knew and digging out ice bottom and boot top most of this story before driving down, that accumulated in the painted, cabin space and—even knowing that “B-O-A-T” bilge—cold work, no vacuumed out, mast really stands for “bring out another damage, promises to and rigging moved thousand,” I skipped the dickering and myself that I’d build a from the garage onto better cover frame next agreed to his price. sawhorses outside That evening I arrived home with a year. The restored boat at her mooring. and checked over. I All evidence of truckload of boat parts and a new project bought a supply of in prospect: figuring out to get my new insanity, of course. But cotter pins and clevis I was having fun down red hull from Connecticut to Maine. Janice, my wife, is an understanding in my shop, refinishing and refreshing pins to use when we stepped the mast. I person. She let me finish what I started various nautical tchotchkes while began hatching a launching plan. Rain was more-or-less continuous to say when I drove in with my truck- dreaming of spring work inside the load—that this boat didn’t mean I boat and more painting and finishing in June, keeping the decks washed but planned to leave her and sail away. on the outside—plus, of course, sailing! causing an unexpected problem: leaks
www.workingwaterfront.com . november 2023 through a bunch of quarter-inch holes in the deck, places for fittings I either didn’t have or had elected to install later. Twice, at least, I was obliged to pump out a foot of water in the bilge that had come in through the deck holes. Fortunately I’d bought a wonderful hand pump with a hose I could hang over the side, meaning I was in for fewer sponge-and-bucket jobs. Still, the rain made me keep all appropriate bilge and cockpit draining tools at hand, and at least it told me the boat wasn’t going to leak—the bilge was keeping water inside very well, I reasoned, so it shouldn’t come in through the bottom. As for those quarter-inch deck holes, I covered them with duct tape. The tape didn’t look great, but at least the bilge stopped filling up. Somewhere around this time I got a message from the co-owner of the mooring I planned to use, reporting that he’d heard from the harbormaster that the mooring’s ball had gone adrift and the chain to the bottom. Time for a fix, so I called the guys who’d serviced it this season. They went and looked, dove down, found the chain on the bottom, and re-attached it to a new ball. All fixed (at my expense – B-O-A-T.) so we were good to go. Of course it was still raining so there was no need to worry about launching yet. I gave a lot of thought to launching, however. This was a new boat to me, and it hadn’t been in the water for some years, so I didn’t want to find myself setting up a 24-foot aluminum mast with a friend or two (I’d done that before) and tightening down the turnbuckles alongside some float while
we held things in place. No—better to book a session at a boatyard where a rigging crew does the job. I settled on a yard downtown where I could stay dockside for a day or so while I sorted out lines, bags of sails, and other stuff that had come with the boat and had sat in my garage over the winter. This plan required an outboard motor I could put on the stern bracket that would get me to the mooring, three miles away in Falmouth. The launch went well. The yard crew installed the mast and stays. I spent a day at a float getting everything shipshape. The outboard motor, an old Seagull I’d owned for years, proved balky so I had it serviced before I hung it on the bracket and started it up. All fine, until…. With a friend I’d recruited I boarded early the next morning. The outboard started in its usual plume of smoke. We cast off, and about ten feet off the dock the motor stopped and wouldn’t start again. We drifted back to the dock, tied up and told the yard our troubles. The outboard went back to the shop. It was on my way home that the thought jumped into my head: if the point was to get this boat to the Falmouth mooring and go sailing, it was time to replace my 40-year-old outboard (scarce parts, oily gas mix, too many comments from passers-by on my “antique” engine) with something modern and presumably reliable. So reader, I did; B-O-A-T. The next afternoon I hung a brandnew Suzuki 3-5-hp four-stroke outboard on my bracket and started it up on the first pull. Shortly thereafter, a new crew
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and I set off in the direction of Falmouth, reaching the mooring (new ball in place) a couple of hours later. No sailing yet, but at least we were in place. I took a photo of the boat at the mooring and promptly sent it off to the guy in Connecticut, informing him we were in commission and ready to go sailing. He responded appreciatively. By now it was August. It Underway, at last. had stopped raining, sort of. The trip by outboard had been sunny if not particularly windy. I the anchorage, unrolled the jib, hoisted recruited another crew (the man who’d the main, and off we sailed. The day was beautiful and the wind was been there when the Seagull conked out). We rowed out to the boat and brisk. The jib worked, the main worked began what I’d assumed would be a for most part, the motor cooperated, routine job: feeding the jib into its slot the boat sailed well. Out past Sturdivant on roller-furling rig, wrapping it up Island, up toward Yarmouth and back, an hour or so to get a sense of things before getting the furler set to go. heading back to the mooring. Well, as we say, not so fast. I can’t say our sail was uneventful, The halyard wrapped, the drum jammed, and so on. This day was windy of course. A clevis pin holding down and we concluded that messing around one lower shroud slipped out and on a pitching foredeck wasn’t for a the stay flew loose (we later fixed it at couple of elders. We packed it in and I the mooring); the main halyard had paid a visit to the service department at been rigged on the wrong side of the Handy Boat in Falmouth, arranging for spreaders (had to fix it with a boat hook a crew to bring the boat to their dock underway) and we got splashed as the waves built in the afternoon breeze, but and fix things—I hoped. Which they did, very quickly. we were SAILING at last. A few weeks later, not long before B.O.A.T. A few days went by. I feared running Hurricane Lee, I hauled the boat out. out of crews. But then one appeared— Short season. Evidence of insanity, indeed. a friend with lots of sailing experience who’d expressed great interest in joining my sailing enterprise. We arranged to David D. Platt worked for Island meet at the Falmouth Town Landing, Institute for 18 years as editor of The rowed out to the boat, motored out of Working Waterfront and Island Journal.
Creativity thrives in salty, island environments Does island life inspire or draw those who are inspired to an artsy life? BY KATIE NORTON
T
he sun is sinking and fills the kitchen with an orange glow, signaling the end of a long week. Lobster traps hauled and stacked, gear shifted from one spot in the ocean to another. Lunches made in the dark and fishing boots brought in to dry. Nights of nodding off before supper and sunrises streaming in through salty wheelhouse windows. His hands are calloused from endless line: coiling, tying, pulling, but also from guitar strings, and tonight is for the music. So many artists have found havens on Maine’s islands, trading cityscapes and subway stairwells for slow moving ferry boats and ledges made of shale and granite. There’s no shortage of inspiration: the stark and simple beauty and the way the sky can shift from broody, heavy grays to sweeping reds and oranges. The pine forests are layered, green on green on green, disrupting the lines of the nearest shore and giving painters and photographers and poets much to ponder. There’s just something about an island that draws artists of all types. But there’s also something about an island that seems to create artists. Where I live, on Long Island in Casco Bay (and surely this is true for many yearround residents, both generational and
transplants) art can be as grounding, as foundational, as necessary as any of the work we do. And we do work hard. I’m from away. Almost 20 years ago, I married a 4th generation fisherman. He is also a father, guitar player (taught how to play music and run a boat through blinding fog by the same man), illustrator, singer, and fixer of most things. I’m also a mother, a teacher, a writer, and a fiddle player, and there hasn’t been one part of who I’ve grown to be, who we’ve grown to be, that hasn’t been touched or brushed or enhanced by our island surroundings. And the most important are the people of our community. There are plenty like me: creative folks who were drawn to this place for love or solitude or adventure. We have potters, woodworkers, singers, bakers, writers—all who came and stayed, adding new branches to tangled family trees or just planting roots of their own. But there are even more who have had their entire lives shaped by this place. People who mix work and art, people who have to make room for it, look for it, find it in each other, and share it. Creativity flows in the water and in the blood of the people here and their art—our art— the art we make together and separately, has a richness and a depth that can’t be replicated. Like the photographs of the sunset rippling on the water’s surface, songs
sung in kitchens or tiny band rooms where seaglass lines the shelves alongside the guitar picks and harmonicas. Like careful woodworking, the salvage of a 100-year-old chair or mantle or staircase, tiny scenes painted on mussel shells, jewelry crafted from what the sea left at low tide, poems written just to not forget the smell of spring or the day someone was taken by the sea. Paintings made by a granddaughter, looking out the same window over the same cove as many women before her. And art in more unconventional forms—the letters on the bow of a boat, meticulously chosen to match the captain’s demeanor, and smoothed to perfection; line and function, beauty and power, all fabricated and modified by a boatbuilder, whose handmade toy boats are scattered around the living rooms of island children; spliced rope and mended nets; the miracle hands of a mechanic, black-stained fingers coaxing a tired engine back to life. The wandering gardens with vines that overflow with enough food to share with neighbors and last deep into winter, and flowers to adorn a best friend’s driftwood wedding arbor; a workshop so tidy, you can probably find anything you need, and also a workshop so haphazard you’ll never find anything without the help of the lobsterman who spends his evenings and stormy days in there.
Seared scallops, cooked by the fisherman who plucked them from the dragger’s chain and then shucked their fat bodies from sharp shells with masterful rhythm and speed; freshly painted buoys hanging to dry in the yard, a banner of hope and determination. The necessity of ingenuity and resourcefulness in these remote places is striking, as is the deep connection to water, land, and community. And within these tightly woven traits shaped by geography and history, art lives and breathes. Intergenerational gatherings where music is at the core, and children dance alongside parents and grandparents, are common here. There are tie-dye parties and scallop shell mobiles and neighbors who know how to heal what’s broken, whether it’s with blueberry muffins or a spare part. Do we live here because we’re inspired, or are we inspired because we live here? The gifts of these islands are boundless: food from the sea, clean beaches, solace, closeness to each other. Also a house cleaner with a voice that can fill a community hall and her husband who can play anything with strings, mechanics who revive, mothers who can make something from nothing, and lobstermen, who, at the end of the week always have time for one more song. Katie Norton teaches at Long Island’s school.
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www.workingwaterfront.com . April 2020
The Working Waterfront . november 2023
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A ‘Great’ island portrait project Great Cranberry elders captured in print, image REVIEW BY CARL LITTLE
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hile artists-in-residence at the HelikerLaHotan Foundation on Great Cranberry Island in 2009, photojournalist Rebecca Buyers and artist Janet Best Badger teamed up to chronicle the lives and visages of a group of islanders. While Badger drew their portraits, Buyers interviewed them. Their project gained attention and admirers through exhibitions at the Great Cranberry Island Historical Society, the Maine State House, and College of the Atlantic. Fourteen or so years later, the result of their collaboration is available in print form in The Great Cranberry Island Portrait Project. With a vintage map of Great Cranberry on the cover the slim book combines image and text to present some of the hearts and souls of this sparsely populated island, the largest of the Cranberry Isles. With the exception of seven-year-old Sofie Dowling, all of the subjects were older islanders. A number of them have passed on since they sat for their interviews and portraits, making this collection something of a memorial. “Dependent on human memory and the spoken word, [the stories] are not folklore, not gossip, not hearsay, not rumor,” writes Buyers. Indeed, the 12 islanders share stories that are often very personal and forthright. Charlene Allen, for example, is candid about the abuse she suffered at the hands of her husband after he returned from four years in Vietnam. “You never knew whether he was going to hit you or not so we ended up divorced,” she told Buyers. The drowning in Spurling Cove of 15-year-old Elroy Alley in the 1940s is mentioned several times. As Annie Alley tells it, the teenager wanted to lobster but the battery in his boat was dead. Against the advice of some older fishermen, he decided to row out with a new battery in bad weather. When the Coast Guard found his body, Alley relates, he “still had the battery in his hands.” Badger’s portrait of Annie Alley captures her signature smile and a kind of sadness in her eyes. For those of us who knew Annie, the likeness is bound to conjure both delight and grief: she died in 2014. Wesley “Junior” Bracey (1938-2021), a legend of lobstering on the island, relates how a gigantic anchor came to be an island landmark in front of his house on the main road. Retrieved off Big Duck Island, the 12-foot long behemoth, with its 14-foot-long “stalk,” weighed about five and half tons. “The British made it,” Bracey told Buyers. “It had to be a Man o’ War or a privateer.” Many of the portraits highlight the ingenuity of the islanders. Eva Galyean left Great Cranberry in 1953 to go to high school and returned to live full-time in 2000. In addition to being the island’s post-mistress, she created a cottage industry fashioning some of her brother Junior Bracey’s discarded floating fishing line—“outlawed due to risk of entangling whales,” writes Buyers—into door mats. Gerald “Punkin” Lemoine
“Sewing kept me from going insane,” Ruth Westphal noted. “During the Bush administration, when I got really worked up, I’d go and make potholders and I’d be OK.” She reported selling 280 of them at Polly Bunker’s Whale’s Rib shop, enough to pay her taxes. Lita Pauline “Polly” Bunker (1927-2022) could not be persuaded to be interviewed for the project despite the author’s and artist’s best efforts, which included making several purchases at her shop. They also missed Michael “Mickey” Macfarlan (19252018) due to health issues. He lived in the historic Preble House for 55 years and was an iconic island figure, soft-spoken and wise. At one point Sofie Dowling was the only child on Great Cranberry. “There are fewer people that are my age that I can play with,” she tells Buyers. When asked what her favorite time of day is, she replied, “I like it in the summer when you can go to bed with the light still coming through the window.” How fortuitous that Buyers, a seasoned journalist, and Badger, a fine portraitist and printmaker, should meet up on Great Cranberry to make this record of some of the island’s most beloved residents. As they identified each islander with a defining characteristic—Alley was “constant,” Bracey “salty,” Galyean “adventurous,” etc.— the two deserve their own: brilliant.
“Anne Rich Alley,” by Janet Badger; intaglio print, 2009
The Great Cranberry Island Portrait Project is available at www.blurb.com/bookstore. Carl Little’s most recent book is Mary Alice Treworgy: John Martin, Bud Staples, and Elsie Gillespie chat around the woodstove at the annual town meeting. A Maine Painter (Marshall Wilkes).
“Eva Marie Bracy Galyean,” by Janet Badger; intaglio print, 2009
Levi Moulden “Island Girl (Sofie Lilian Nathan Dowling),” by Janet Badger; linocut, 2009.
“Lobsterman (Wesley “Junior” Bracey),” by Janet Badger; linocut, 2009. Bud Staples
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Collaborative marine science researcher retires Bob Steneck worked with fishermen to get answers
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hen Bob Steneck came to the University of Maine in 1982, there were few marine ecologists in the state, and none interacted with fishermen. He was among the first in Maine to work with lobstermen on research, traveling with them on their boats, diving to the seafloor to study lobsters, and sharing his findings with them. At that time, there was a scientific consensus that the lobster population in the Gulf of Maine was declining. By working with lobstermen and diving down to the depths of the Gulf, Steneck showed that the population was actually on the rise. Steneck’s work and that of his students and colleagues helped propel an expansion of and change in how lobster fisheries research is conducted in Maine. Over the proceeding decades, Steneck’s students continued collaborating with lobstermen and other fishermen on their studies. They focused more on work that benefitted these industries, the management of Maine fisheries, and the coastal communities that relied on them. “We were able to take a different perspective by studying lobsters in their natural habitat. My hope was to do research to help the people of Maine,” Steneck says. “What came out of this work was research that was collaborative
and directed toward improved management of the lobster fishery.” After a 41-year career at UMaine filled with numerous studies, scientific publications, outreach, and teaching the next generation of marine scientists, conservation biologists and leaders, Steneck, professor emeritus of oceanography, marine biology and marine policy has retired. Steneck’s research helped understand and manage Maine’s most lucrative fishery, now worth almost $400 million. He and his students learned how baby lobsters grow up on the seafloor, what lobsters eat, what eats them, and how they sustain their populations. This basic research was also useful for lobstermen, as well as fishery managers and policymakers who must determine the status and trends of lobster stocks. In collaboration with his former student Rick Wahle, who most recently served as director of UMaine’s Lobster Institute, and other colleagues, Steneck discovered that as ocean temperatures rose over the years, lobster nursery grounds expanded in eastern Maine (northeast of Penobscot Bay), resulting in sharp increases in lobsters there. Warming temperatures elsewhere in the Gulf of Maine, however, may increase threats of disease and interactions with invasive species.
A few years ago, Steneck and his colleagues published another study warning that lobsters’ current abundance and high value may be creating a false sense of security. Specifically, they worried that the economic value of lobsters was masking the risks related to relying almost on a single species to maintain Maine’s maritime heritage. Maine’s marine economy would be in greater danger of collapsing if something happens to the lobster. Over the past half century, Steneck has also conducted research on coral reefs in the Caribbean such as those surrounding St. Croix in the U.S. Virgin Islands, Mexico, Belize, Bonaire, and the Dominican Republic. As a result of the coral reef research, reef managers and government officials in Bonaire and elsewhere banned parrotfish harvesting, prohibited certain traps, and established no fish zones. In Bonaire, these regulations provided a boon to their $50 million tourism industry. “These are management changes that are a direct result from our coral reef class research and going down there for 20 years,” Steneck says. “It was great that students got the chance to see applications come from their studies of Bonaire’s coral reefs.”
In addition to Wahle, some former students of Steneck include Carl Wilson, director of the Maine Department of Marine Resources’ Bureau of Marine Science; Elizabeth Stephenson, director of the Marine Conservation Action Fund; Amanda Leland, executive director of the Environmental Defense Fund; Susie Arnold, senior ocean scientist and director of the Center for Climate and Community for Island Institute; Ruleo Camacho, marine ecologist for the National Park Authority for Antigua and Barbuda; Jeanne Brown, communications and outreach coordinator for the Northeast Climate Science Center at the University of Massachusetts Amherst; and Kirt Moody, a professor of biology and environmental science at Columbia College. “I’m really happy about not just getting my students through their academic programs, but also getting them started on their careers,” Steneck says. “When you teach students how to think, and you urge them to see the bigger picture, that’s really a better path to take than just teaching the traditional scientific methods,” he says. Steneck says he is still engaged in marine science, conducting microscopy research at the Darling Marine Center and writing a textbook on coral reefs.
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The Working Waterfront . november 2023
Scenes from Cuba’s working waterfronts Maine fisheries photographers find visual stories STORY AND PHOTOS BY JACK SULLIVAN
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n my six years as staff photographer at Island Institute and a contributor to its publications, I have fostered intimate relationships with many of Maine’s working waterfront communities. I’ve experienced long days shooting our fisheries—donning my oilskins, driving to lobster co-ops before sunrise, boarding fishing boats, and getting to know the community of Mainers who work on the water. I’ve told the stories of our fishing industries, all of which rely on the bounties of the Atlantic Ocean, and they are all distinctly Maine. My first opportunity to branch out from my geographical comfort zone came earlier this year on a two-week trip to Cuba with the goal of documenting the island’s working waterfront communities. In late 2022, photojournalist Jay Fleming invited me to join him on his trip to Cuba in the spring. It was an adventure I could not pass up. I drove down to Fleming’s home in Maryland, where he has documented the blue crab fishery, the watermen, and the island communities of the Chesapeake Bay. Together, we flew from Baltimore to Miami, and from Miami to Havana, Cuba, a country that visually appears to be of a long-gone era. Infrastructure from the 1950s has been repeatedly refurbished—many homes, cars, and boats have been in use since the revolution. The aesthetics Many of the fishermen in Cojímar use small Styrofoam rafts to catch their fish. were truly a photographer’s dream, but the country’s relative isolation inhibits the economic progress the Cuban people clearly desire and need. One setback for the economy is the restrictions on U.S. tourism. Jay and I needed journalist visas to enter the country. Visitors from the U.S. also struggle outside of major cities because English is rarely spoken in rural Cuba. I’ve talked my way into boatyards in English, but doing so is much harder in Spanish. Between my and Jay’s Spanish skills, we usually succeeded and got to talk to fishermen about their catch and fishing practices. Most of our time was spent in the working waterfront communities of Cojímar, Caibarién, Isabela de Sagua, and Playa Larga, each with large fishing fleets. What we found was both new and familiar. The language and accents were foreign, but the tone and expressions were the same. One of the biggest differences was the infrastructure. Plumes of smoke rose from motors that look like they belonged in museums, while other gear included chicken-wire shellfish traps, docks on the verge of collapsing into the sea, and boats made of Styrofoam. Maine’s lobster monoculture is in stark contrast to the myriad of species found at a Cuban dock. Mahi mahi, tuna, spiny lobster, and snapper are some of the commonly caught species of value, but the mantra of the Cuban fisheries seems to be “Catch whatever you can however you can.” Many of the anglers are subsistence fishermen who provide first for their families and sell the rest of their catch directly to local restaurants. The story of Cuba’s working waterfronts is visual. Character is not only written on the faces of the fishermen in my photographs, but also on the peeling paint on the buildings and the boats around them. Evelyn, a Cojímar fisherman, rows in his boat which shares his name. To see more photos, see BrassDuckPhoto.com/Cuba
The full moon sets early in the morning over Torreon de la Chorrera, a Spanish-built fortress in the fishing village of Cojímar, a suburb of Havana.
www.workingwaterfront.com . november 2023
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Net mending in Caibarién. In the background, fishermen dip the net in black paint to make it invisible to the fish.
Cuni has spent his entire life chipping oysters off rocks and pilings and selling them to local restaurants in Isabela de Sagua.
Snapper is a commonly caught fish in Cuba and is commonly served at Cuban restaurants whole and fried.
The fishermen use the Caribbean winds to their advantage in Playa Larga where most of the vessels are outfitted with sails.
Playa Larga fisherman Rey (left) reeled in a large sailfish with a handline. He and his friend pose with their catch.
Two fishermen in Isabela de Sagua handle a chicken-wire trap while fishing in their small craft kept afloat by plastic bottles and bits of Styrofoam trash.
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The Working Waterfront . november 2023
Our Island Communities Crab to bird—invasive species becomes chicken feed Indiana family establishes saltwater farm on Islesboro STORY AND PHOTOS BY TOM GROENING
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wo years ago, Ethan Spaulding, 30, his wife Caitlin, 26, and their son Forrest, 6, left the rich soils of Indiana to start a farm on a rocky island off the Maine coast. They knew logic wasn’t on their side, but they believe their God is. “We knew nobody out here,” Ethan, 30, said while driving from the ferry landing to the farm the family is establishing near the northern end of Islesboro. “But we really felt led to have a place on the coast.” Fundamentalist Christians, they heeded what they believed was God’s direction and ended up owning 35 acres with 900 feet of shorefront on Ryder Cove, the site of an old tidal mill. The property had been a farm but had not been in production for many years, effectively abandoned, Spaulding said. The couple contacted the owner from Indiana. “We sent him a letter and said, ‘We want a farm,” and the owner offered the Spauldings what Ethan said was a generous price, and Sabbathday Saltwater Farm was born. “It’s a miracle that we have the place,” he said. Ethan has carpentry skills and has begun operating as Sabbathday Home & Garden, working on some of the island’s older houses to make ends meet as the farm gets up and running. When time allows, he and Caitlin have been plugging away on the 1850 farmhouse that came with the property. A line of windows they added in the kitchen offer views across a field to the shore. For now, the farm is focusing on raising birds—ducks, geese, and chickens. “There’s about a hundred birds,” Ethan says. The highlight of my visit is a demonstration of a modified trap which is
catching green crabs, an invasive species that has been consuming softshell clams in large numbers in Maine. “They can eat 22 clam seedlings in a day,” Ethan says. If the trap catches a hundred or so every few days, he believes he’s making a difference. “We really want to help the wild clam population,” he says. Eventually, the couple plans to apply for a limited purpose aquaculture lease to grow their own softshell clams. Ethan serves on Islesboro’s shellfish committee. I join the family and two dogs in a sideby-side all-terrain vehicle and we bounce our way across the field, which includes a big patch of blackberries, to the shore. Ethan and Caitlin allow Forrest to run around the slick, low-tide mud with the dogs, and when Ethan checks the trap, set at a choke point where the remains of the tidal mill are evident, the boy is eager to see the catch. On this day, the trap contains about 200 green crabs. They’re transferred by hand into a bucket. When some escape, Ethan grabs and tosses them into a bucket, and when a nervous Forrest tries to help, his father takes time for a short lesson on why the crabs shouldn’t be hurt until it’s time to kill them. Back at the pens where the chickens and ducks are kept, Ethan takes a sledge hammer and smashes the crabs into a gooey green pulp, and then feeds them to the birds, who seem to relish the food. The calcium in the crab shells seems to support the shells of the bird eggs, Ethan says. The couple are giving the eggs to friends on the island, hoping to learn if the crab feed is affecting the taste, for the better or worse. The farm also produces sea salt and there are plans for introducing some four-legged critters to the mix next year. The Spauldings say they know the farm will take time to establish and thrive, but they are committed to the island and this life.
Ethan pours the pulverized crabs into the pen.
Caitlin and Ethan Spaulding and their son Forrest pose on the shore of their Islesboro farm.
The crab trap, which is baited with old bones.
Transferring the green crabs from trap to bucket.
www.workingwaterfront.com . november 2023
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More land conserved Downeast Pembroke property purchased by Cobscook Shores BY DAVID DAHL AND JOYCE KRYSZAK
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obscook Shores, a nonprofit organization run by a millionaire philanthropist from New York, has purchased another piece of coastal property in Washington County, the latest in a series of parcels in the area bought by the group over the past eight years. Cobscook Shores purchased the former Leighton farm, consisting of 25.5 acres along Leighton Point Road and the Pennamaquan River in Pembroke, on Aug. 31, according to real estate records. Charlie Howe, the Cobscook Shores project manager, confirmed the $420,000 purchase. He said the property will be used for cross-country skiing and biking for the organization’s youth program, aimed especially at schools on the north side of Cobscook Bay. “We’ve grown the youth program substantially this year,” Howe said. The group’s extensive waterfront park system in Washington County was created by the Butler Conservation Fund, a nonprofit started by New York philanthropist Gilbert Butler. Cobscook Shores began purchasing land in 2015, and now owns an estimated 1,300 acres in the county. The foundation
has made a roughly $5 million invest- paid $4,832 in property taxes, ment with at least one land purchase according to town records. Daniel Daley, a member of the pending, according to Howe. He added that the total investment in Lubec select board, has gathered inforthe Cobscook park system, including mation about nonprofit organizations, costs associated with the system’s including Cobscook Shores and Maine outdoor recreation program for local Coast Heritage Trust, which own land in his town. He hopes schools, is around $16 to consult with other million. local towns that also This year the program “Are we just lost tax revenue because hosted 3,500 student nonprofits purchased visits, grades K-8, going to be parcels of land. instructing them in one big park? He blamed incenpaddling, cross country tives put in place by the skiing, and cycling. Last Is that the state government that year the program was encourage nonprofits to the sole physical educagame here in buy land and take it off tion program in Lubec Washington the tax rolls. schools, which did not “Are we just going to be have a PE teacher. County?” one big park? Is that the The park system is open game here in Washington to the public, Howe said. County?” Daley asked. “These programs Howe, responding to the criticonnect directly with the schools and it’s also important for public use of cism, said the loss of tax dollars is a these lands—families in the area are “huge issue.” “We want to be part of that discususing the trails,” Howe said. But some local officials have sion and help find a solution out of it,” complained their towns are losing Howe said. He noted the Cobscook Shores park thousands of dollars in property tax revenue because Cobscook Shores system attracts visitors, and also said is a nonprofit that can apply for a tax the nonprofit helped pay for airport exemption. For example, the previous improvements and a short bike path in owner of the 25.5 acres in Pembroke the area.
“We hope the park system attracting visitors and raising the quality of life supports the local economy,” he said. Howe also pointed to the youth recreational program that costs the foundation about $93,000 per year—at no cost to the schools or towns. In its 2021 federal 990-PF federal tax filing, the most recent year available on ProPublica’s Nonprofit Explorer site, the Butler Conservation Fund contributed $2,000 and Cobscook Shores gave another $17,000 to the town of Lubec. Cobscook Shores also purchased several parcels in Dennysville in 2022, and owns about 78 acres there, according to county records and Howe. According to Howe, the Butler Conservation Fund did make a payment to the town of Dennysville, due to its small tax base, to offset tax losses there, although he did not disclose how much. Most recently, Cobscook Shores purchased 38 acres in Wesley along the East Machias River in January. The group said it will be used for a canoe launch that it says will open in 2024. This story first appeared in the Maine Monitor, a nonprofit, nonpartisan online news service, and is reprinted here with permission and gratitude.
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Top Left to Bottom Right: Swans Island, Lisa Gent, Shanna Wheelock, Island Institute, Margaret Olson, Hearth & Harrow, Nancie Morgan, Kelly Luger, Pam Cabanas, Island Institute, Zootility, Kurier
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The Working Waterfront . november 2023
Illegal rockweed harvesting threatens environment State law enforcement files charges for Cobscook Bay cutting BY LURA JACKSON
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he Maine Marine Patrol brought charges against four people in connection with alleged illegal rockweed harvesting in Washington County in what a state official said are the first prosecutions for illegally extracting the hotly contested resource in recent memory. Rockweed, a brownish algae found close to shore throughout Maine, forms a veritable underwater forest. It’s “not only a foundational species, but a keystone species, and an ecosystem engineer,” said Dr. Robin Hadlock Seeley of the Maine Rockweed Coalition. It supports biodiversity, with over 100 animals feeding on it or using it as a nursery—including lobsters, scallops, and a host of fish like pollock, cod, and herring. Rockweed is harvested for fertilizer and mulch, and also has been used as a packing material for lobsters and bait worms. In the past two decades, rockweed harvesting has increased sharply in Maine. Between 2004 and 2012, landings went up five-fold to 7,312 tons, according to the Department of Marine Resources (DMR). In 2021, preliminary data shows 7,564 tons were harvested. The value of rockweed sold off the dock fluctuates, but tends to be around 5 cents per pound. Due to its secondary role supporting other industries, Maine values its rockweed harvest at $20 million. Rockweed can be harvested throughout the year, though most is done in the summer due to the seaweed’s reproductive cycle. For residents, getting a primary license for rockweed harvesting costs $58, while a supplement license is $29. Nonresidents pay $230 and $58, respectively. Each year the number of licenses issued for seaweed harvesting fluctuates slightly, with 134 issued in 2023.
Rockweed is a vital food resource While the licenses grant the ability to harvest all seaweeds, rockweed makes for dozens of species of endangered up 90% of the state’s seaweed harvest, shorebirds that rely on what washes ashore for grazing. Earlier this year, according to DMR. Even with a clear path to legal Manomet, a group with a vision of harvesting, illegal rockweed harvesting ecosystems and human communities is rampant, according to Seeley. She and thriving together, released a study that volunteers she works with have tracked found 26 of 28 species of shorebirds dozens of illegal harvests in the past have declining populations, with the three years while mapping active areas biggest declines in the eastern U.S. and of harvest and studying harvest impacts. Atlantic Canada. Advocates like Seeley want to “Every conserved land I’ve been on in Cobscook Bay,” where harvesting is protect Maine rockweed forests from prohibited, “has had rockweed cut on illegal harvesting to maintain a food some part of the property,” Seeley said. source for shore birds and protect Instances of rockweed theft from commercial fisheries. Regardless of whether rockweed can private landowners have occurred frequently as well, despite a 2019 ruling be sustainably harvested—with Seeley from the Maine Supreme Judicial among those who feel Maine’s harvesting Court that harvesters must have direct rules are not nearly sufficient to protect permission from landowners to harvest the ecosystem—illegal harvesters go in the intertidal zone of their property. beyond what the state permits. The rockIt’s easy to tell when rockweed has weed industry, for its part, is working to loosen protections by been harvested, Seeley said, contesting the 2019 because rockweed that has Supreme Judicial never been cut is tall like a tree, “There is no Court decision on with a canopy. It can grow 6-8 rockweed ownership. feet from the ocean bottom old-growth George Seaver of and be hundreds of years old. rockweed Ocean Organics Corp., Rockweed that has been who has processed cut will grow back more like forest left. seaweed on the Maine a shrubby bush, with distinct Everything coast since 1977, is oblique slice marks from among the harvesters the sharp blade inside the has been who believe rockweed harvesting rake. Rockweed is part of the public slowly recovers its height after harvested.” trust and harvesting it cutting, as little as 2 inches or anywhere in the interless per year. Despite evidence of illegal harvesting, tidal zone should be legal. “When Maine became a state, the this is the first time prosecutions have been filed, although harvesting licenses entire intertidal zone was declared to have been suspended in the past. Part be held in trust for the benefit of all of the reason that most cases haven’t Mainers,” Seaver wrote. “This original moved forward is the burden of proof language answers the current seaweed for a conviction is “beyond a reason- ownership question and leaves the able doubt,” said Jeff Nichols, commu- management of the seaweed fishery to the Department of Marine Resources, nications director for the DMR. The four recent prosecutions are where it belongs.” In 2021, rockweed harvesters joined for alleged harvesting in Cobscook a new lawsuit that sought to make all Bay in 2022.
SEASON’S END— A lobster boat captain and sternman unload gear at Stonington’s Fish Pier on Friday, Oct. 6. PHOTO: TOM GROENING
intertidal lands public lands and thus legal for harvesting. That claim was dismissed, but a claim regarding the scope of the public’s right to recreate and otherwise use intertidal land remains pending. For now, landowners can take steps to protect their rockweed from being harvested by downloading and filling out a notice (see mainerockweedcoalition.org). Monitoring the intertidal zone to take conclusive photos or videos of offenders will help lead to a prosecution if the Marine Patrol is notified and the case meets the qualifications to proceed, according to DMR’s protocol. “A prominent marine scientist in Nova Scotia said that all the rockweed has been harvested there, and instead of rockweed trees there are now only rockweed bushes,” said Seeley, referencing comments from Dr. Heike Lotze of Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia, where no landowner rights to intertidal seaweed exist. “There is no old-growth rockweed forest left. Everything has been harvested. That is where Maine is headed unless something changes: An old growth rockweed forest on which the ecosystem depends is being turned, acre by acre, into a degraded habitat of rockweed bushes,” Seeley said. “The onus should not be on landowners and coastal land trusts and state parks and wildlife areas to be out on the shore 24/7 watching for rockweed theft. The onus should be on the companies not to steal it and on the state to provide more enforcement.”
This story first appeared in the Maine Monitor, an independent nonprofit news outlet (MaineMonitor.org) operated by the Maine Center for Public Interest Reporting, and is reprinted with permission and gratitude.
www.workingwaterfront.com . november 2023
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book review
When Vinalhaven had (lots of) fish Warning about the future is couched in resilient history
When the Island Had Fish: The Remarkable Story of a Maine Fishing Community By Janna Malamud Smith (DownEast Books, 2023) REVIEW BY TINA COHEN
I’VE BEEN TALKING about When the Island Had Fish: The Remarkable Story of a Maine Fishing Community on Vinalhaven with everyone I know. Even at a recent funeral. The story resonated among the gathered families because most remembered when islanders caught a wide variety of fish. Smith’s title refers to a time not all that long ago when there was cod, haddock, hake, and other finfish in Penobscot Bay. Now, folks hearing the title can be quick to add—as reflexively as knocking on wood—something like, “At least we’ve still got lobster.” Left unsaid is the biggest fear these days: Lobstering won’t end for us too, will it? After that funeral, we enjoyed steamed lobster, sitting on a wharf alongside Carver’s Harbor, chock full of lobster boats. That industry is what defines Vinalhaven these days, but residents could point out to me features along the waterfront dating back to earlier days. In the past, that harbor would have been just as crowded, and Main Street
even busier, with vessels to take lumber or granite or fish from the island to ports along the East Coast. Starting with Vinalhaven’s earliest inhabitants, Smith researched different groups who farmed, fished, and hunted here dating back 5,000 years and describes a group now called the Swordfish Hunters. She writes that different groups of Native peoples settled on these islands intermittently, and “the area was populated with various Abenaki tribes, the Maliseet, Passamaquoddy, Micmac, Penobscot— now called the Wabanaki Confederacy.” Vinalhaven was first mentioned in European writing in 1603 when Martin Pring sailed from England in search of sassafras, which was used as a treatment in Europe for syphilis and plague. He didn’t find that in Maine but noted Penobscot Bay had abundant cod. As more Europeans visited, some stayed. Settlers on Vinalhaven made the fishing grounds off-limits to the Native peoples living there; eventually many of them were killed, no doubt considered “savages” despite the clear success those families had had, not only fishing but hunting and raising food here. After the American Revolution, more European-Americans came. With those settlers in the late 1700s and early 1800s, Vinalhaven history looks more familiar, with recognizable place and family names still present today, including Carver, Arey, Ames, Dyer, Lane, Calderwood, and Coombs. As much as this book delves into the island’s history, with fascinating excerpts from public records, household inventories, diaries, and letters (much of it in the Vinalhaven Historical
letter to the editor How to spear a sturgeon To the editor: The story about Belfast’s sturgeon mural in the October issue of The Working Waterfront correctly noted the Wabanaki origin of the name for the Passagassawaukeag River, which means “place where sturgeon may be speared by torch light.” To understand this name, one must appreciate the difficulty of spearing these fish. Their backs and sides are protected by tough scales that spears cannot penetrate. To be successful, they must be speared on their soft underbelly. So here’s the technique the Wabanakis used, as described by the 17th century Frenchman, Nicholas Denys: “Two Indians place themselves in a canoe; the one in front is upright, with a harpoon in his hand, the other is behind to steer, and he holds a torch of birchbark, and allows the canoe to float with the current of the tide. When the sturgeon perceives the fire, he comes and
circles all around, turning from one side to the other. So soon as the harpooner sees his belly, he spears it below the scales. “The fish, feeling himself struck, swims with great fury. The line is attached to the bow of the canoe, which he drags along with the speed of an arrow. It is necessary that the one in the stern shall steer exactly as the surgeon goes, or otherwise it will overturn the canoe, as sometimes happens. It can swim well, but with all its strength it does not go with fury more than 150 or 200 paces. “That being over, the line is drawn in, and it is brought in dead against the side of the canoe. Then they pass a cord with a slip-knot over the tail, and they draw it thus to land, not being able to take it into the canoe because it is too heavy.” —Bill Haviland Deer Isle The Working Waterfront welcomes letters to the editor, which should be sent to Tom Groening at tgroening@islandinstitute. org with “LTE” in the subject line. Longer opinion pieces are also considered, but should first be cleared with the editor.
Society), more recent descriptions of Vinalhaven are interspersed, including photographs and quotes from interviews Smith began in 2008. Her focus is on understanding how Vinalhaven has faced dramatic change in the past. It is a compelling story the way she tells it, thoughtful and insightful. (She is the author of awardwinning books and a therapist, and has spent time on Vinalhaven since the early 1980s.) Smith is not only a good writer, interviewer, and researcher, but she is a personable narrator, showing empathy and respect for the community. She sees the loss of finfish here as a result of factors such as industrialized fishing, climate change, and environmental degradation. And now, she worries that those on Vinalhaven now “only have one product to sell instead of several, they no longer possess a ready fallback when global consumption falters, or climate change drives the lobsters out of reach toward cooler waters.” She closes the book with some passion, writing: “We will all be impoverished if smallscale fishing for wild ocean fish ends permanently, and fishing families—on Vinalhaven and worldwide—die away. Of course, ‘everything changes,’ but the
loss of communities... where land and water meet, is a disaster of a different order ... all fishing communities are foundational. They have existed for thousands of years. The more urban and ‘virtual’ the world becomes, the more disconnected populations are from wildness, and from food sources and hunting and gathering, the more crucial it is for some among us to continue these earth-anchored practices.” While the book could be read by some as alarming, realizing life-defining changes have indeed happened, others might feel relief knowing Vinalhaveners have come through past crises, and bring resilience and resourcefulness to facing the future. But concern should be one of a reader’s reactions. This book helps us comprehend the precariousness of a fishing community on an island off Maine. Ask: who would Vinalhaveners be if not that, and what would give meaning to this life and place? Tina Cohen is a writer and therapist who lives much of the year on Vinalhaven. Her essay “Sacred Space,” about the Pierce family who came to the island in 1796, was in the 2000 issue of Island Journal.
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20
The Working Waterfront . november 2023
The late Ted Hoskins understood fishermen Robin Alden remembers his practical, visionary support The following is an edited version of remarks by Robin Alden about Rev. Ted Hoskins’ work in fisheries in Maine and across the globe, spoken at his memorial service on Sept. 10 in Blue Hill. After years leading churches and social justice efforts in Connecticut, Hoskins was minister on the Sunbeam for the Maine Seacoast Mission and was summer minister on Isle au Haut for more than 40 years.
T
ed’s connection to fishermen and fishing started in childhood during his summers on Isle au Haut. Growing up there, Ted helped fishermen tend stop seines and the herring weir; he went lobstering, and his favorite, caught groundfish— cod, haddock, pollock, hake on the “Roaring Bull.” Later in life, he pursued his love of fishing in Florida and Alaska with friends and with his daughter, Robin. His respect for and affection for fishermen was intrinsic. I first got to know Ted in the 1990s he was working as minister to coastal communities and fisheries for the Maine Seacoast Mission. Initially, it was his informal ministry that drew us together. Ted was making pastoral calls to people he cared about, just “dropping in when he was coming by.” In this case, he was calling on the grandchildren of an Isle au Haut family. The fishermen in eastern Maine communities had been hit by a double whammy when the groundfish they caught had collapsed. In reaction, the federal government literally took away their rights, while fishermen in southern Maine and out of state were given rights to pursue groundfish everywhere, even here, in perpetuity.
A painting of Ted Hoskins.
Ted was doing pastoral care, but fishing communities in eastern Maine Ted the activist wanted change. He and beyond. MCCF was our collective understood that losing groundfishing dream and Ted was on the board until left these communities and people he his death. For MCCF’s staff and board, Ted was the flag held high: “Never, loved with no options; just lobstering. He called Ted Ames, my husband, ever forget the fishermen.” MCCF who was scientist but also a displaced would not be what it is without Ted’s groundfisherman, and me. I had just insights, his trust-building, and his resigned from the state agency. We dogged guidance. Ted developed and led MCCF’s started eating together, small potlucks of former groundfish fishermen and method for constructive meetings their wives, sharing the losses and the called Community Fisheries Action anger we felt, and exploring what we Roundtable, C-FAR for short. Ted could do. Out of that came Stonington structured the meetings to feel like kitchen table discussions. The opening Fisheries Alliance. With Ted’s guidance, we made question was always designed to prompt a good Stonington Fisheries venting session. Alliance a principle-based Then, after the organization inspired by gripes, the next fisheries connections he question: What had already made around is important the world, especially at the Ted was doing to you about Coady Institute in Nova pastoral care, but fishing? From Scotia: “Fishermen must there, we built hold authority in manageTed the activist on whatever was ment,” and “Rules must valued—feeding protect the community.” wanted change. your family, These principles, and keeping fishing others like protecting healthy for reproduction, protecting grandchildren. local stocks, and estabThen, what is lishing and recognizing limits, we used as touchstones to keep needed? What do we need to learn? our thinking honest as we planned our Where can we get the information? advocacy. They provided us a safe way What are the levers of power? Once this process started, it was to find common ground. Our advocacy had a moral power that was palpable, if essential to support fishermen who wanted to take the next steps. This not always successful. The next step was founding was long-term, community work, Penobscot East Resource Center, one person and issue at a time, which which is now Maine Center for is why, in the early 2000s, there Coastal Fisheries, a non-profit orga- were three resource centers: MCCF, nization whose mission is to secure Cobscook Bay Resource Center in a sustainable future for fishing and Eastport where Ted was a ten-year
board member, and one in Digby, Nova Scotia, the Saltwater Network. We hoped to spark more communitybased management throughout the Gulf of Maine. Ted’s fisheries work was important. He got into it instinctively, caring for the communities he served. Then, typical of him, he researched and networked and learned. In academic circles, it is now widely recognized that sustainable fishing requires those doing the fishing—the fishermen—to take responsibility for the resource. Elinor Ostrom won a Nobel Prize in economics with this finding, partly drawn from the Maine lobster fishery. The more that is learned about social and marine systems, the more significant this becomes because local observation and participation and responsibility is the only way to keep up with the changing ocean. Ted was on the front line, bringing these cutting-edge ideas into reality. He understood that people (fishermen and top policy makers) need hope and organizations that support the human capacity to trust, learn, and work together. That was his work, always starting with the fishermen. Ted worked globally. He undertook a huge effort to organize fishermen in Belize, going back and forth from Maine, creating the Federated Fishers of Belize. He brought Father Thomas Kocherry to Maine, an activist priest from South India who had mobilized more than ten million fishermen to stop factory fishing. Ted supported and sheltered his friend Susil, a Sri Lankan fisheries leader. Ted was a long-time board member of North American Fisheries Alliance. Back in Maine, Ted served as the one non-fishing member of the state Lobster Advisory Council for 15 years. The 150-mile round trip to Augusta to evening meetings most months, in one of his many older Subarus, was just the tip of the iceberg of the miles he traveled to fisheries meetings of all sorts, staying informed, staying in touch, moving the process. Ted made every room he walked into a safer place. So, I will leave you with just a peek at the impact Ted the moderator had, shaping fisheries by facilitating civil exchange over the last 30 years. He was the go-to moderator for many sessions at the annual Maine Fishermen’s Forum and for 12 years for the U.S. Canada Lobster Town Meeting that alternates between Portland and New Brunswick. One colleague said, “The guy just sent out good ripples.” In fact, those ripples from Ted touched fishing on Isle au Haut, other Maine fishing communities, New England fisheries, and fisheries in the Maritimes, Belize, and the world. We in the fishing community and all who care about fish and fishermen are graced to have been changed and inspired by Ted’s leadership.
. April 2020 www.workingwaterfront.com . november 2023 www.workingwaterfront.com
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cRanBeRRy RepoRt Fish are shrinking, according to new study
Town meeting, painting lines, eating doughnuts, and throwing rocks
Larger populations are balancing out biomass
UNIVERSITY OF MAINE ecology cod have been shrinking over recent latter will respond. That’s why the professor Brian McGill helped discover decades, with the average individual large thorny skate being replaced by that the average body sizes of fish are becoming smaller. Their species also mackerel in the Gulf of Maine might face a similar fate as experiencing shrinking as part of an international are large cod. a decline in the project with 16 other researchers. meeting will take place on Islesford. bright red with a black and,that like Thestripe) finding of individThe team, led by University of York number What’s lunch? Homemade pizzas, every other lobsteracross fisherman insystems Maine many andforthe smaller macroecologist Inês Martins, analyzed uals, In the Gulf of salads, and By Barbara Fernald about, talked about, total biomass of desserts. mack- Life gets busier this winter, he readthe the body size trends of numerous species as we volunteer to help prepare the and experimented with purple paint. remains roughly Maine, larger fish plants and animals worldwide from erel is increasing in first community meal of the season. ACTIVITY on the islands, at the end The latest whale regulations require constant, even as the 1960–2020 using data from the numbers. The net like the thorny skatelobster fishermen Town is a great opportuof February and into March, like a effect all Maine use new sizes and tonumbers is meeting a decrease BioTIME database. While sizeistrends nity to hear about winter from friends mirror image of the action at the end markings ropes they attach to particular species varied across organisms, the group saw in the average body and cod have been on the of and neighbors. “How was your trip to lobster traps. Depending August into September. Justamong as the size on how close change also is new. of a randomly aofprevalent pattern of reduction ...?” “Who knew was over summerfishresidents shrinking recent to shore they fish, they will have Beyond fish,to add the fish in grand-parenting the marine species. of the Cranberry chosen so exhausting were so 2-4 purple marksoverall Isles their vacations that right among before Gulf on each buoyisline. pattern less of Maine. or that there Theyendalso discovered decades, germs “You did with fall, many year-round On the warps that areconsistent. 100-feet or lessThere there The cold study is involved?” the certain ecosystems, theresidents number end of many all that painting?” These same questheir winter breaks just before the must be one 12-inch purple mark withare some species average individual individuals for a larger fish species are first to show that this tions could be asked in September at in a few fathoms of spring equinox. the trap and 36increasing in asize is occurring declining and are being replaced by pattern becoming smaller. a school board meeting in a large subIt’s time to get back to work and inch purple mark within 2 fathoms of and number and those from a smaller species. At the widely in fish around urb. (Preferably not during the meetreconnect. the buoy. If the warp is longer that 100 replacing smaller same time, the total combined biomass the world. The study ing while someone else has the floor!) feet, the requirement takes also ones,is for likea 12-inch bushes identifies body of Our all fishannual in thesetown placesmeeting has remained InasJanuary and February, Bruce and purple mark near and place constant on the second Saturday in March. the trap, a second 12trees in the a key factor for fairly as a result of their being size I gotsome to spend lot of time with our Arctic For selectmen inch purple mark halfway the buoy, replacing grasses andtoherbs with fish aspecies are replacing more small fish. and town employees, why grandchildren in ecosystems, Southern Maine. winter been anythingforbut a vaca- others andopposite a 36-inch mark near the parts buoy. happening in some in various which the In thehas Gulf of Maine, example, Visiting them was the main goal of tion. They have been working steadily, Bruce figures he will be putting 1,500 larger fish like the thorny skate and will help scientists predict how the of the U.S. desert Southwest. gathering information to write the most of our winter travel. We consid- to 1,800 markings on his rope in all; two warrant for town meeting. It’s the time ered trying to paint our kitchen, but to three weeks of extra work if he does of year we come together as a town to we kept catching odd coughing virus- it without hiring help. A number of fishdecide on projects and spending and es and experienced more down time ermen are applying paint to their ropes how much money is to be raised by than we wanted, so we never got to it. by resting them in 3-foot long gutters Maybe I’ll paint it in May, when I can made from lengthwise-halved PVC pipe. property taxes. Discussion of the school budget have the windows open. Bruce’s first attempt was with spray paint Bruce saw more than enough paint, alone can take well over an hour. The but he moved on to the more effiCheck us out and “like” The Working Waterfront onsoon Facebook! islands take turns hosting the meet- anyway, this winter. During his “time cient brush and latex paint. ing and the luncheon. This year, town off” he painted 600 buoys (white and Some fishermen will add a 3-foot
In all cases, however, the researchers found that a significant part of the change is actually driven by species of one size replacing species of another size, and that there is an overall piece of purple rope to the end the pattern of compensation suchofthat buoy line amount or toggle,ofbut all attachments the total biomass remains must made with a splice or a tuck. fairly be constant. IThe know it’spublished a stretch their to compare team findingsfolin lowing Maine whale rope requirethe journal Science. Determining the ments with a plein workshop, but causes behind these air trends will require aadditional person could return home from eiresearch. ther say thatit is they’d paint“Asand a scientist reallybeen fascinating ing in their If Bruce were to learn howspare sometime. aspects of nature writing an essay on how he spent his are changing drastically while other winter vacation, painting would be aspects of nature show considerablea part of ”it.McGill Another part“But would be the stability, says. economidescription I heard him tell his brother cally speaking, this has large practical Mark about walking to get doughnuts, implications in a fisheries-based state in son Robin, and likeFebruary, Maine. Bigwith fish our are preferred fishing our grandchildren andare Cora. targets, but big fishHenry species bothI was away with friends Portland, and becoming smaller andinbeing replaced Stephanie away in by smaller was species. Wewith now friends know this Florida. Father and son were in charge. is happening not only in the Gulf of “Yeah, got the doughnuts Maine butwe around world.” at The Cookie Jar and then walked to the beach for a picnic and to throw rocks.” Eating homemade donuts and throwing rocks at the beach—if that isn’t a mirror image of many childhood summers on Islesford, I don’t know what is. q
As winter winds down, islanders mix prep work and gatherings
Like our stories, columns, and photos?
Barbara Fernald lives on Islesford (Little Cranberry Island) with her husband Bruce.
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The Working Waterfront . november 2023
saltwater cure
A room of one’s own Island group’s housing work pays off BY COURTNEY NALIBOFF
WHATEVER THE subject matter of my column is, the overarching theme is always life on North Haven. As Bill and I enter our 19th year on this little unbridged slice of heaven (most of the time), I’ve had occasion to think about the number one, bottom line condition that makes our lives here possible. It’s not our jobs, though we love and appreciate them—work is plentiful on the island, and remote work is becoming more common. It’s not our friends, whom we cherish and often depend on—the world is full of wonderful people. It’s not even the natural beauty and access to the water that I treasure and so often write about. It’s housing. And not just any housing. It’s year-round housing that a couple of public school teachers can afford. When Bill and I moved to North Haven in 2005, we were given the opportunity to rent a beautiful new property overlooking the North Shore. We could easily
afford it, and it had more than enough room for the two of us and our records and instruments, and it was more than a small step up from the slovenly (in my case) or sterile (in Bill’s) apartments we had inhabited in Boston. The catch was that we had to move out from late June to early September. Our first summer, we moved everything but a suitcase of clothes and toiletries into my classroom and moved into an in-law apartment above a coworker’s studio, a total of two moves for the summer. Our second summer, we moved into a downtown rental, out of the rental and into a cabin for three weeks while the owners were on-island, back into the rental, and finally into our own home—a punishing four moves in ten weeks. What made that last move a joy was that we were moving into the home we had purchased through North Haven Sustainable Housing, its first property. Applying for and purchasing that home was truly the one thing that kept us on the island, rather than pursuing
our loosely discussed dreams of moving to Japan or New Zealand (why not?). Having a home made it feel feasible to have a child, to create a recording studio, to grow flowers and vegetables. We’re even adding on to the house, building an office with a door that I can close when I need to, a space that I hope will foster more and better writing. But even as Bill and Penrose and I enjoy the privilege of housing that allows us to really inhabit the island, many on North Haven still bounce from seasonal rental to seasonal rental. They’re eager to settle here, to contribute to the community in a lasting and meaningful way, but are stymied by what is often a complete lack of homes for sale, let alone homes that are affordable for the average employee at a nonprofit or boatyard or school. As Virginia Woolf explicitly states, one needs a room of one’s own in order to do good works—how much more challenging if one doesn’t even have a house in which to put that room.
North Haven Sustainable Housing’s mission to fill that housing gap continues, and through their rentals and properties available for purchase they have housed several island families. Their next project, several stickbuilt homes between our property and the town park, is currently in the fundraising stage, and I can’t emphasize enough how important it is that they succeed (so consider donating!). The island has an abundance of talented, energetic young people and families who want to be here. Without rooms in houses of their own, they might depart for Japan, or New Zealand, or even just the mainland, and what a loss that would be for us all. Courtney Naliboff teaches writing, theater, and music on North Haven. She may be reached at Courtney. Naliboff@gmail.com.
journal of an island kitchen
Wood, fire, and rocks
The elemental way of cooking is pleasing BY SANDY OLIVER
COOKING FOOD made it possible for ancient human bodies to divert energy from digesting food to evolving larger brains, according to biological anthropologist Richard Wrangham, who wrote Catching Fire, a book to warm a cook’s heart. For millennia, pre-historic humankind cooked food before they made pottery, before metal of any kind, using rocks heated with wood, peat, or dung fires long before coal, oil, gas, or induction cooktops. Even if we think we need this or that newfangled pan or gadget, the plain fact is you can make a meal using a wood fire and rocks. A simple iron pot just makes it easier to cook sloppy things. Our island’s shores are dotted with shell middens, evidence of generations of the First Nations who traveled down the Penobscot River to summer here, dig, steam, and eat clams just as we moderns do, using wood and rocks to cook them. Humans all around the globe cooked food by heating rocks with fire, then burying food on top of them wrapped in leaves or here, in piles of seaweed. Rock and fire cookery seems to be a universal human technique, taught to succeeding generations who learned at parental knees, without going online
or looking at a YouTube video to learn and kettles from, and a brick or stone oven on the side is splendid. how to do it. Watching fire is mesmerizing, and Nowadays we do this kind of thing for fun. I went to a barbecue in Arizona once managing the coals and flames to where brisket was wrapped in fabric simmer, boil, roast, grill, and bake is alongside beans in pots, and buried in wonderfully direct. For those of us used to turning a coals-filled pit closed a knob, or these up overnight. There was days pressing a music and a cattle auction, The First Nations little key pad to all pretty festive. set a temperature, Early New Englanders traveled down the cooking over a did clam bakes for fun, Penobscot River changeable fire a summer by the seaside requires a different kind of picnic with hot to summer here, kind of engaging rocks and seaweed, clams attention not so and lobsters, and daindig, steam, and eat often called for in tier comestibles brought clams just as we modern cookery. from home. Capt. Emery I used to think Bunker, in whose house moderns do… that romanticizing I now live, attended a the quality of food clambake and ballgame baked in a brick or at the Narrows in the later 1800s. “That was resting,” he said. stove oven was a little on the balderdashy Yup. Nothing more restful than side, but bread baked in one is better than hauling a bunch of rocks around to that baked in the metal box of a modern make a large pile, dragging driftwood stove. I love watching the domed ceiling to burn, tending a fire for a couple of of a fireplace oven turn white as it heats hours, and tugging large quantities of from the flames licking upward inside it. Heating rocks for a lobster bake is wet seaweed to cover the clams that some soul dug for a vigorous period of another absorbing task, maintaining a time. Let’s hope the clams were plen- brisk, lasting fire with small diameter tiful and easy to find and that the rocks wood burning quickly for enough time to turn those rocks white, too. White were left over from a previous bake. Personally, I love cooking on fire. A hot. Hardly seems possible until you fireplace in an early period house with see them grow paler and you can feel crane and hooks to suspend the pots the sharp heat.
Thank the Lord, a kind younger man assembled the rocks and hauled seaweed and wood. All I had to worry about was keeping a brisk fire while the rocks heated and afterwards, ponder what exactly was going on under all that steaming seaweed. Then I did a bean-hole supper, cooking good old yellow eyes in iron kettles in a stone-lined fire pit in the tradition of the logging industry’s river drives when the cook traveled ahead of the drive and built fires in bean-holes, set the lumbermen’s dinner-filled kettles inside and buried them. The last time I baked beans with live fire was when I took advantage of burn pile coals, harvested and heaped around my iron bake kettle. Can’t waste good, glowing coals. Funny thing is some prehistoric human watching me heat rocks with a wood fire might puzzle about the iron kettle, but would totally get it about the cooking technique.
Sandy Oliver is a food historian who lives, gardens, cooks, and writes on Islesboro. She may be contacted at SandyOliver47@gmail.com.
www.workingwaterfront.com . november 2023
23
cr anberry report
On the lee side of Lee
Hurricane threat magnifies island resilience BY BARBARA FERNALD
ON A SUNNY September Sunday, Hurricane Lee was still six days away. The spaghetti lines of possible storm paths did not bode well for the Cranberry Isles. We knew we’d feel an impact from the storm but the severity was still anyone’s guess. Earlier in the day, Jeremy, the Islesford harbormaster, radioed fellow fishermen to remove any old traps they had on the town dock to make room. There were predictions of 13- to 20-foot seas with this storm. Many fishermen would be moving or bringing their lobster traps in from shallow water and everyone shares the space on the town dock to temporarily load and unload. There was already a slight swell in the harbor. On Monday at 6 a.m. I heard Bruce and David talking on the VHF radio about how many traps they’d each bring in and how many they could safely store on the float they shared in the harbor. On the local TV weather report the headline was, “Lee: the latest.” Large breakers, big swells and dangerous rip currents were a certainty.
At this point it looked like a direct hit the boat at once. I had one in my hand. was unlikely but still remained a possi- I scooped him out of the rope locker. bility. NewsCenter Maine advised boat Everyone was talking about it. Guys owners and marinas to have an action from Bar Harbor. Guys 15 to 20 miles plan and be ready to go with it. At off shore. Ours were mostly warblers, that point the threat was for Saturday yellow with gray on top.” If you Google “tiny songbirds on afternoon into Sunday morning. There lobster boat” there are links to a Bangor would be plenty of time to prepare. Tuesday and Wednesday looked Daily News article about the phenomto be quite rainy, but Thursday and enon. Apparently it wasn’t storm related, but no one had seen Friday would be dry, good anything like it before for putting away outdoor “You would so it sure seemed like furniture and potted plants. some kind of harbinger. For those of us on land, not believe By Saturday the the Tuesday rain encourstorm had turned aged thoughts of baking the warblers to the east, sparing and making lists of jobs to and sparrows. us from its brunt. get done before the storm We didn’t even lose arrived. At sea, among fishSometimes we power, though we ermen, the talk of tides and had four on the were without internet the latest wind predictions and land lines for the turned to birds. boat at once.” day and it was quite Thousands of them. In windy and rainy. an ill-timed migration, Sunday was a gorgeous day with tired wet song birds were landing on boats all over the place. I wish I had plenty of people walking around to been in the kitchen to hear the chatter view the after-effects. There were trees down along the north shore but not on the radio. Bruce came home and told me, “You any bad damage. I don’t like the danger of storms, but would not believe the warblers and sparrows that were everywhere around the I love the energy of our little island boat today. Sometimes we had four on community as everyone prepares. We
all look out for each other with a bit of extra care. People with generators invite those without to come anytime to charge phones or take showers or get water. Neighbors post reminders on the Cranberry Isles Facebook page. Advice that was new to me was to fill a water bottle halfway and lay it on its side in the freezer. When the water has frozen, stand the bottle upright and leave it in the freezer. If your freezer has thawed and refrozen during an outage, the ice in the bottle will have melted and shifted to the original half-full upright position. I’m glad we didn’t face the conditions that were predicted in the earlier forecasts. We were lucky this time. Our islands will likely deal with stronger storms in the winter and I have confidence we’ll be ready. There’s nothing like a possible direct hit from a hurricane to give everyone a refresher course in storm preparations for the season to come. Barbara Fernald lives on Islesford (Little Cranberry Island). She may be reached at Fernald244@gmail.com.
observer
The horror, the horror… Halloween memories of terrorizing others BY PHIL CROSSMAN
OVER THE YEARS I’ve made the most of Halloween. It came naturally because haunts and hauntings were a part of the lives of my three younger brothers and me. I and then the others, as they put in their respective appearances, bounced around the island, from one rent to another for ten years, from 1948 till 1958. During the last five of those years, beginning in 1953 at ages nine, seven, five, and one, we lived in a little Cape on Indian Creek known to every islander as “The Bucket of Blood.” No one could provide a plausible explanation; rather, it had just always been The Bucket, everyone knew it was haunted, and it was commonly assumed there was a good reason for it. Our very practical parents thought the best way to deal with that assumption and the obvious toll it would take on their four boys, was to simply acknowledge an apparition’s existence, give it a name, and welcome it into our home and into our lives. Accordingly, “Uncle Tim” was welcomed into our family. Our evening
ritual involved welcoming him to join to fulfill their fondest nightmares. The coffin lid rose up on its own as us for dinner by opening the attic stairs adjacent to our kitchen table they entered, operated by a string on a so he could descend to and sit on the pulley by a conspirator in the closet, and bottom step and join us in conversa- I sat menacingly up to greet them. The tion which, and I have no reason to results were occasionally memorable as question my memory, he did regularly. when we had to stop the entire event Later we would each wish him good and clean up the stairs when a terrified night through the second-floor attic adult attendee wet herself or when a door from the little bedroom we three brash teenager loudly suggested, “Oh hell, that’s just Crow (my nickname).” eldest shared. Perry Boyden, hiding in ambush in a Back in the ‘60s I dressed as Dracula crawl space at ankle for the first time and, with a height and waiting date in tow, wowed them at for just such a troua VFW party in Hartford. I blesome skeptic, had a beautiful black cape, Our evening yanked him off his fangs, and blood dribbling ritual involved feet and dragged from the corner of my mouth. him into the creepy Nowadays I’m still drooling welcoming him black recesses, while but that’s different. making hideous Back here at home I made to join us for noises that sounded the most of my Dracula dinner… to us all, particularly persona in the annual to the young man haunted house at the old being consumed, Latter Day Saints Church. I like bones, his occupied a coffin in the lofty perch at the top of the three-story bones, being hungrily gnawed. Later, Abe Knowlton and I conspired tower and, as each tour was led trembling up the stairs toward the horror to make the area at and around our they knew awaited, I composed myself adjacent homes particularly scary
when trick or treaters came around. Still resplendent in my long cape and teeth, I lurked around the area, sweeping down from doorways or from behind bushes on older but tremulous kids trying to score a little candy. Some parents were accompanying their little charges. Among these was an incensed mother who stood atop my lawn with her hands on her hips— as I stole up from the shadows behind her—announcing to anyone within earshot, “If he thinks I’m going to stand for him sneaking around scaring the pants off my kids, he’s got another think coming.” As she postured, I swept my cape around her and bit her on the neck. I recall I had another mess to clean up. Phil Crossman terrorizes and lives on Vinalhaven. He may be contacted at PhilCrossman.VH@gmail.com.
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The Working Waterfront . november 2023
fathoming
Why transportation matters Island ferries face heightened cost pressures BY ALEX ZIPPARO
THE PEOPLE who live on Maine’s 15 unbridged, year-round islands are inspiring and a model of resilience. Despite the many logistical and resource-based challenges they experience from living separated from the mainland, they find solutions through cooperation and pure genius. Perhaps no other topic highlights this better than island transportation. At Island Institute, it’s impossible to avoid thinking about island transportation. My own transportation history goes back to a decades-long career as a transportation professional, including seven years as a public school bus driver. So naturally, I was happy to take on island transportation in my role. My day-to-day island transportation work means I am always keeping an eye out for what’s happening on the water or in the air. On any given day, I engage in a wide variety of activities that support island transportation needs. From communicating about our comprehensive, first-of-its kind study of the Maine State Ferry Service (MSFS), to joining the new MSFS manager to meet with residents of Matinicus, helping Frenchboro secure federal approval and funding for harbor dredging, and connecting Matinicus
with experts to help select a name to create an opportunity for shared for their newest vessel, the Charles learning and use Island Institute’s Norman Shay, honoring a Penobscot advocacy and legislative capacity to tribal elder and decorated World War support needs at the state, regional, and national level. II Veteran—each day is different. For the last year I have facilitated On a quarterly basis, I attend regular meetings of the MSFS Advisory Board. these meetings, which include a wide variety of small boat, Created by statute ferry, and bush plane and made up of providers serving representatives from I am always keeping all 15 unbridged, islands, the board an eye out for what’s year-round islands informs the state’s in Maine. The largest budget, operations, happening on the of those operators and policy deciis Casco Bay Lines, sions related to the water or in the air. a nonprofit that six islands they serves the Casco Bay serve: Frenchboro, Islesboro, Matinicus, North Haven, islands, transporting more than one Swan’s Island, and Vinalhaven. The million passengers every year. Every island is unique, as is every board is a key link between islands and the state ferry service, which trans- transportation provider, but they all face similar issues, including those ported 900,000 passengers in 2021. Currently, the board is reviewing related to the difficulty of finding staff, proposed changes to the state ferry increased weather-related challenges, service tariff, which guides ferry mainland parking limitations, intense service policies, including rates. MSFS seasonal demand, and the increased Advisory Board meetings are open cost of fuel and maintenance. Across all providers, these costs must to the public. Information about the board, including meeting minutes, can be balanced through new revenue sources, which in many cases means be found on the MSFS website. While the advisory board is an higher ticket prices. This past summer important resource, it doesn’t cover all also saw a decrease in demand as islands. At the start of the pandemic, compared to the previous summer, as Island Institute began hosting a group the post-pandemic island travel rush of all island transportation providers slowed.
As we look toward the future, we have many changes ahead. There is still much more work to be done to improve the cost, quality, and reliability of island transportation—especially as climate change transforms marine and air transportation conditions in the Gulf of Maine. We are seeing stronger wind, longer fog events, more intense storms, and bigger waves than in the past, which significantly impacts the ability of boats and planes to serve our islands. Additionally, as technology advances, we will likely see a wider-spread transition away from 100% fossil fuelpowered engines, as we are seeing with the new ferries coming online with MSFS and Casco Bay Lines. For MSFS, Islesboro’s George Mitchell will be a hybrid vessel. For Casco Bay Lines, Machigonne II, a 164-passenger hybrid will serve Peaks Island. Alex Zipparo is a community development officer with Island Institute, publisher of The Working Waterfront, serving in the Center for Sustainable Communities.
reflections
New home comes in small moments Blue Hill, Brooklin rich in community components Reflections is written by Island Institute 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 GRACE CARRIER
AFTER THREE DAYS of orientation as a new Island Institute Fellow, I hit the streets—the main street of Blue Hill, to be specific, and walked through the quiet neighborhood. Everything was new. I barely knew where I was and had to pay attention to my route to remember how to get back to my apartment, my home. I was hard at work putting books on shelves and sheets on the bed to make it feel that way. The possibility of finding a community garden, a place to swim, a kind neighbor (hopefully getting rid of some furniture), and a good tree made each turn feel like the cusp of a wonderful opportunity. Now at the end of my first month as an Island Institute Fellow, I reflect on the way a new place transforms
into a known place through the small climate change. I am so grateful that moments that fill each day. One week there is a human point to my day-toin, I was sitting in the Brooklin Town day work. I have found magic every place I go. Office in a meeting whose topic was “Grace has arrived!” Introductions In mid-September, a yard sale seemed filled the hour, exemplifying how my to wait around every corner. With each first week passed by full of unfamiliar passing week, I recognize more friendly faces and places. Three weeks in, I faces at the farmers market, where was sitting in a town office meeting, recently I listened to three people already making my opinion heard spontaneously sing in tribute to Jimmy Buffet after the on committee projects. announcement, Within a few weeks, my On my first night in “I’ve got a guitar position has comfortably in my truck!” transformed. Blue Hill, I walked Although With relief, I have realinto the town park community ized that this job speaks integration to my heart. There are and looked out at the takes time and I opportunities every day clam flats that surface am still finding to contribute to a cause my crowd, the greater than myself. Even at low tide. libraries in both when I update mundane Blue Hill and resource sheets, it means that I help a community member get a Brooklin always have countless events. free heat pump water heater. No more And today, I can proudly say that I no longer need Google maps to make the cold showers and no more fossil fuels! The people around me put the word beautiful drive from my apartment “committed” in committee, and we into Brooklin. On my first night in Blue Hill, I resolve to help Brooklin prepare for and prevent the ongoing effects of walked into the town park and looked
out at the clam flats that surface at low tide. I was so happy to witness the tides and to live so close to the ocean. I went into the local bar and met the owner and two bartenders. With my roommate Alice, also an Island Institute Fellow, the five of us talked through the slow evening. “How long are you in town for?” the bar owner asked. I had my first of many experiences sharing the truth that has made everyone’s smiles beam: “Two years!” With 23 months left, I am excited to grow my roots here, to get to know Blue Hill and Brooklin even better. No longer on the cusp but fully in this wonderful opportunity, I look forward to the small moments of every day ahead. Grace Carrier works with the Brooklin Climate Response Committee to facilitate energy efficiency transitions for residents and host educational forums.
www.workingwaterfront.com . november 2023
25
in plain sight
From weir to can
Kosti Ruohamaa’s work for the sardine council saved the woman packing endless cans at the Holmes Packing plant in Rockland. Sixty years later, the last sardine IN 1951, the Maine Sardine Council hired Finnish American Kosti factory in Maine closed and a way of Ruohomaa to document the sardine life was over. It was a stroke of good fortune to industry. The Maine Legislature created the council that year to promote high find 20 rolls of film taken by one of standards for the sardine industry and Maine’s most notable photographers in made it responsible for grading and the Maine Sardine Council Collection, but this find became even more signifiinspections as well. The sardine industry was complex; cant as it led me to Ruohomaa biograone photo could not show it. pher Deanna Bonner-Ganter. When I reached out to her Ruohomaa was a about the photo master of the photo find, she made a essay. He captured the trip down to visit action and the human He knew where to the next day to see condition. He knew them herself. where to stand, where stand, where the Her passion for the sun was, and how sun was, and how to Ruohomaa was to use a scene’s natural apparently contageometry. He also use a scene’s natural gious and I soon posed subjects, took geometry. found myself multiple shots, and smitten by his used artificial lights. work. Deanna and I Look at the strain on became fast friends the faces of the fisherman at the Dix Island weir taking up and while I helped her some with the the net in the featured photos. Look how last details of her book, we lamented the suction hose, on the sardine carrier about the rest of Ruhomaa’s work, then Jacob Pike, forms a frame within the held in a warehouse in New Jersey. This frame. See the form of the worker pulling led to writing to Black Star, his agency, racks of sardine tins out of the steam to ask if Kosti could come home and to cooker and see the blur of the hands of our surprise, they said yes. BY KEVIN JOHNSON
Four images by renowned photographer Kosti Ruohomaa, shooting for the Maine Sardine Council. PHOTOS: PENOBSCOT MARINE MUSEUM
Kevin Johnson is the photo archivist at the Penobscot Marine Museum in Searsport. New among the museum’s permanent exhibits is “Rusticators on the Water.” Explore the museum’s vast photo archives at PenobscotMarineMuseum.org.
‘Hub of marine research excellence’ planned in Harpswell Quahog Bay Conservancy purchases former inn property This story first appeared in The Anchor, a nonprofit newspaper and website covering the Harpswell community. It is reprinted with permission and gratitude.
BY J.W. OLIVER
T
he Quahog Bay Conservancy plans to transform the former Quahog Bay Inn in Harpswell into a “hub of marine research excellence” and revitalize the property’s working waterfront. Patrick Scanlan, founder and president of the nonprofit conservancy, is proposing to remove all structures on the property and replace them with a saltwater laboratory, a duplex to house students and researchers, a “lobster shack” for retail sales of seafood, and a new wharf. Scanlan’s JD LLC owns the property. He said he named the limited liability company for his one-eyed cocker spaniel, Jack Daniels. Established in 2015, the conservancy says its mission “is to revitalize the ecosystem of Quahog Bay to a robust and resilient state for all communities
The lab “aims to become a hub of that depend on it. Through sustainable aquaculture, ecosystem monitoring, marine research excellence in the and community education, we aim to region,” according to the application. conserve natural habitat, protect native “By focusing on the study of microplastics in the marine wildlife, foster envienvironment, we ronmental stewards, strive to understand and support Maine’s their ecological working waterfront.” impact (and) their The Harpswell interaction with Planning Board unaniThe conservancy marine organisms, mously approved JD lab would facilitate and develop strateLLC’s application on gies for their mitigaSept. 20. The project marine research tion. Additionally, still needs federal and our research extends state permits. in a few focus to fisheries and JD LLC will build areas: microplastics, water quality, exam“e n v i r o n m e n t a l l y ining the health of friendly buildings that kelp and oyster local fish populawill help to restore, aquaculture, and tions, promoting maintain and support sustainable fishing the working waterinvasive species. practices, and front,” according to contributing to the its application to the overall health of the planning board for marine ecosystem.” the approximately $13 The application million project. says the lab will The Quahog Bay Conservancy Lab would facilitate marine provide “rigorous testing and analysis research in a few focus areas: microplas- of seafood” to ensure that “the seafood tics, kelp and oyster aquaculture, and harvested and consumed in Harpswell is of exceptional quality, free from invasive species.
harmful substances, and compliant with industry regulations.” The duplex will provide temporary housing for interns, student researchers, and visiting scientists, and the new lobster shack will offer retail sales of lobsters and oysters, and will sell bait, fuel, and ice to fishermen. The conservancy will operate the retail business and a lobster buying station, Scanlan said in a phone interview. Income from those activities will support the conservancy’s mission. The conservancy already supplements its income by growing and selling its Snow Island Oysters. In November 2022, JD LLC purchased the former inn for $2.7 million from the estate of Robert Waddle, according to town records. Waddle, a lobsterman and founder of a lobstermen’s co-op, died at 93 on May 12, 2022, according to his obituary. The inn announced its permanent closure and sale in October 2022.
J. Craig Anderson contributed reporting.
The Working Waterfront . november 2023
26
art of the waterfront
Linda Norton’s red tugboat Watercolors captured waterfront workhorse BY CARL LITTLE
WHEN LINDA NORTON (1943-2018) moved to Camden in the late 1990s, she was returning to childhood haunts. She had spent summers there with her grandparents and had a deep attachment to the town. Born and brought up in Portland, Conn., after graduating from high school Norton spent time in England and Ireland pursing equine studies. From 1978 to 1998, she managed Sundance Farm in Cobalt, Conn., a boarding stable and breeding farm for national show horses. She also ran a fine art and faux finishing studio. Later, Norton worked in the paint and wallpaper department at Route 85 Lumber in Amston, Conn., where she assisted customers with color and pattern selections and instructed faux finishing in bi-monthly classes. After moving Camden, she was a sales associate CHASLE21.PLT 2/10/2021to2:43:50 PM at Rankin’s Hardware (2004-2012). She also designed a home studio, which she opened in 2000. Her mother, Ruth Norton (1915-2000), had encouraged her to become an artist. Originally from Camden, Ruth had attended Pratt Institute and Boston University where she earned a teaching degree in fine arts. She returned briefly to her hometown to teach art at the Elm Street School before marrying and moving to Connecticut. “Mom instructed me starting at age six when I was being a very annoying child,” Norton wrote in her book Marine Watercolors: Penobscot Bay, Maine
Scale: 1:12.83 H: 36.252 L: 96.247 in
Linda Norton’s “Belfast Harbor Tug” (1999), watercolor on paper 21 by 29 inches (now in a private collection).
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www.workingwaterfront.com . november 2023 (2010). “She handed me a small tin of watercolors, a glass of water, paper, and a brush, and said ‘Go paint.’” Linda did so, beginning a lifelong love of the fluid medium, which led to exhibitions in Maine and beyond and a fervent fan base. Over the years, Norton painted many waterfront subjects: the schooner Grace Bailey hauled up for the season, a collection of colorful mooring balls, a shrink-wrapped windjammer, a wall of lobster traps in the snow, the schooner Roseway docked at Camden. She also painted a stunning series of on-board paintings, called “From the Deck Of,” highly detailed images of sails and rigging. Among the waterfront paintings is a portrait of a bright red tugboat docked in Belfast Harbor. Norton clearly relished the red of the boat and building, not to mention the deep black of the barge and hull, set against a lightly limned shoreline landscape. Her rendering of reflections is brilliant; even the bow numbers showing depth of draft appear distorted in the water. When asked how she starts a painting, Norton noted that it varied but that she tried to get the most amount of paper covered with washes very quickly “to eliminate the stark white of the paper.” In the tugboat painting she achieved a stunning balance of pale and bright hues. Ben Fuller, former curator at the Penobscot Marine Museum, notes that the “M” on the building and the boat in Norton’s watercolor is the mark of Maineport Towboats Inc. of Belfast, which operated around 1988-2005. The vessel appears to be the Mack Point, built in 1953 as the Communipaw by RTC Shipbuilding Inc. of Camden, New Jersey. Over the years the boat changed ownership, location, and name several times before Capt. Arthur Fournier of the Penobscot Bay Towing Company in Belfast purchased it in 1985 and renamed it the
“ Don’t ever ask directions of a Maine native. Somehow we think it is funny to misdirect people and we don’t smile when we do it, but we laugh inwardly. It is our nature.” —A Maine native quoted by John Steinbeck in Travels With Charley, 1962
Linda Norton at the easel in her Camden studio. PHOTO: COURTESY REBECCA HODGE
“ There are only two things that ever make the front page in Maine papers.
Brian F. In 1988 Maineport Towboats Inc. acquired it, and the single screw tug became the Mack Point. According to tugboatinformation.com, in 2006 the boat was purchased by Ocean Tug and Barge Logistics of Port-au-Prince, Haiti. In her book Marine Watercolors: Penobscot Bay, Maine, Norton wrote that she was “upset that so much of the waterfront now supports seasonal summer residents with only 20 miles of ‘working waterfront’ remaining on the thousands of miles of coast.” It was “imperative,” she believed, that everyone support “the retention of and addition to this working coastline.” Norton’s watercolors underscore her passion for this element of the Maine landscape. The waterfront provided her with plentiful subjects, including a noble tugboat in Belfast Harbor.
One is a forest fire and the other is when a New Yorker shoots a moose instead of the game warden.” — Groucho Marx in a letter to Variety, Aug. 23, 1934
“ Here’s to the state of Maine, the land of the bluest skies, the greenest earth, the richest air, the strongest, and what is better, the sturdiest men, the fairest, and what is best of all, the truest women under the sun.” —Thomas
Linda Norton is one of 100 or so painters featured in Carl and David Little’s The Art of Penobscot Bay forthcoming from Islandport Press.
Beckett Reed in a speech in Portland on Aug. 7, 1900.
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The Working Waterfront . november 2023
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