LOBSTER SEASON: Steady catch, stable price
BY CLARKE CANFIELD
The 2024 lobster season has brought Maine fishermen something they haven’t experienced in recent years: A sense of normalcy.
After several years of volatile price swings for their catches, unpredictable harvests, and increased costs for everything from bait to fuel, this year is shaping up to be unusually ordinary, lobstermen say.
With the fall harvest still to come, fishermen so far have reported steady if unspectacular catches, stable prices, and a ready supply of bait. As they head into the home stretch, fishermen are hoping for a strong catch for the remainder of the season.
Kristan Porter, who fishes out of Cutler in Washington County, said the lobster season in his neck of the woods has started sooner than usual in recent years, with shedders showing up in traps weeks earlier than their customary time. This year, however, the shedders began arriving at their usual time, a welcome change from the recent past.
“In the past few years it’s been a few weeks early, but this year seems to be a little more normal and hopefully [the catch] holds on later,” said Porter, who’s president of the Maine Lobstermen’s Association. “The jury’s still out. It’s still early, but
CHARGED UP—
August was pretty decent. We’ll see what happens after that.”
At Fifield Lobster Co., a lobster dealer in Stonington, owner Travis Fifield said this year for the most part has been steady—prices are up a bit, fuel
costs are down somewhat, and the offshore catch has been picking up.
“I’ve been telling people it’s an average sort of middling year,” he said.
TOURISM SEASON: Slow start, strong finish
BY DORATHY MARTEL
With the leaves beginning to turn, Maine businesses that cater to tourists are shifting their focus from peak occupancy to peak color. Looking back at
the June-through-August season, the consensus seems to be that business has been about like last year, or maybe a bit better.
According to the Maine Office of Tourism’s 2023 Summer Visitor Tracking Report, there were 8,537,000
visitors to Maine last summer. In the course of 42,380,000 visitor days, their direct spending totaled $5.1 billion.
• 30% were from New England
• 23% from the Mid-Atlantic states
• 6% from Canada
• 2% from other countries
• and the balance from the rest of the U.S. The Office of Tourism has not yet released 2024 data.
On Aug. 28, the Maine Turnpike Authority posted on its website a prediction that there would be 1.1 million transactions on the Maine Turnpike from Friday to Monday of Labor Day weekend, up 0.9% from 2023.
The Inn, owned by Greg and Lauren Soutiea, is located in Spruce Head, just south of Rockland. They’ve lodged “a lot of French Canadians this summer, but the bulk of our visitors are from New England,” Bedell said.
“Guests are saying it’s so darn hot in Florida, Georgia, Texas…”
Several coastal businesses have reported similar trends this summer.
Jillian Bedell, marketing manager for the Craignair Inn, said, “It was a busy summer here at the Craignair.”
She noted that in addition to the inn being a destination in itself, “We’re a point on the way. Folks are eager to get outside.”
For some, the climate plays a role in the decision to come to Maine.
“Guests are saying it’s so darn hot in Florida, Georgia, Texas. I get more guests wondering if there are more places to go… scoping out Maine for the future.”
For many seasonal businesses, finding workers has been difficult in recent years—in part because housing is so expensive. The Craignair Inn’s
continued on page 8
Luke Maker, 8, of Machiasport runs the family skiff through a cove earlier this summer using an electric outboard purchased through a grant from Island Institute, publisher of The Working Waterfront. Luke and his father, Ryan, fish for lobster. PHOTO: JACK SULLIVAN
When you can’t get there from here
Islesboro
to raise road, plan for bridge at Narrows
BY JACK BEAUDOIN
The town of Islesboro will be moving ahead with a twopronged approach to maintain a vital road connection between the island’s northern and southern communities after four 100-year storms damaged the roadway over the last 12 months.
The Main Road crossing the Narrows—a low-lying stretch of land at the midisland’s belt—was briefly severed by the Jan. 10 winter storm. Its protective riprap seawall was overtopped by high tides and wave action, cutting off emergency services, ferry access, and other down-island services to residents living up-island.
While the island’s road crew and contractors patched the roadway back together once the tide receded, the following January 13 storm undid much of their work.
“The road was impassable not just at the height of the storm, but for at least a half-day until local contractors could come in,” said select board chairwoman Shey Conover. “Those January storms were a huge wake-up call. The destruction we saw and experienced bolded, underlined, and accelerated our plans to develop a more resilient solution.”
“It just ripped the road right out,” Town Manager Janet Anderson agreed. “If they can’t cross it—can’t get a firetruck or ambulance through—a lot of people are worried about that.”
Now armed with a $75,000 Maine Infrastructure Adaptation Fund grant awarded to the town on Aug. 8, Islesboro officials hope to advance engineering plans that call for a slightly higher roadway in the near-term (phase one) and a bridge in the next decade (phase two).
While the recent winter storms highlighted the fragility of the road connection across the Narrows, Islesboro residents have long fretted about the Main Road’s vulnerability to the elements. Nearly 10 years ago, in 2015, the town won its first grant to study the flood risks at the Narrows and Grindle Point, another vulnerable area on the island.
A subsequent 2017 report recommended adaptions such as hardened seawalls, nature-based features such as marsh creation, and warning systems. It also led to the formation of the town’s Sea Level Rise Committee (SLRC).
But it wasn’t until the fall of 2022, when Islesboro enrolled in Maine’s Community Resilience Partnership Program, that infrastructure planning accelerated. Joining the program garnered a $50,000 Community Action Grant from Maine’s Community Resilience Partnership program, which in turn enabled the town to the hire Shri Verrill of Sunrise Ecologic in 2023. An ecological restoration and watershed protection specialist, Verrill was charged with advancing the Narrows adaptation plan.
In early 2024, Verrill and the SLRC selected GZA Geotechnical Engineering to move the plan into the design phase. After six months
of analysis funded by a new Coastal Communities Grant from the state, GZA prepared about a half-dozen alternatives for the town’s consideration. Each scenario was designed in three sections: north, middle, and south Narrows.
“All of the short-term, phase one alternatives were consistent about raising the road and rebuilding the stone revetment in the south and middle sections of the Narrows,” Verrill said. But they differed about how high the revetment should be raised, how wide, and what materials should be used to provide barriers to reduce the force of wave actions during storms occurring at high tide. One proposal, for example, called for manmade reef balls to be anchored in the intertidal area east of the roadway, at the south and middle Narrows, that could lead to the development of new intertidal habitats that could help protect the shoreline.
Based on community feedback, Conover said, the SLRC recommended—and the select board agreed to—an alternative Verrill dubbed “short, wide and with a berm.” It would raise the road 2 feet immediately, maintain a planted slope of protective vegetation, and rebuild the stone revetments on the east side of the road.
“Those have been protecting the road for 40 years, but the January storms showed us that they are failing,” Conover said. “Stones are smaller, breaking up, and in the storms are becoming projectiles.”
Conover hopes it could be fully completed by 2027.
Verrill said that while the planning process may seem long to outsiders, it’s been exemplary in terms of involving the public in decision-making.
“It’s important that people are able to see the vision,” she said, explaining the value of the series of presentations and public input meetings leading up to the adoption of the current two-part plan. “They need to feel it in their gut and provide their consent.”
One question that came up frequently among community members was if the 2-foot increase was sufficient. After all, the Maine Climate Council has recommended managing for at least 1.5 feet of sea level rise by 2050 and preparing for a possible rise of up to 3 feet over that time.
Conover, who also chairs the Sea Level Rise Committee, said any height increase would require an increase in the roadway’s width, which could then impact the salt marsh on the road’s west side. Minimizing potential damage to the marsh was one of the values many community members expressed in the meetings.
“If the road goes up, it has to go wider,” Conover said. “So we felt that the 2-foot increase—which is consistent with state projections for 2050— was the most likely to receive permits.”
Conover also said some townspeople wondered if it didn’t make more sense to skip right to a bridge. But she argued that the engineering, permitting, and funding processes required would push that solution back to 2031—and probably beyond. Up-island residents can’t wait that long for a resilient, dependable road.
“With the current storms we’re getting, we need to do something as quickly as possible,” Conover said.
“If we continue to get four 100-year storms within a 12-month period, it will be a very taxing experience until the bridge is built,” Verrill agreed.
As for phase two—the bridge across the Narrows—Verrill said most of the planning and design remains incomplete. At this point, engineers envision the bridge being built from the southern end of the Narrows, and west of the current roadway. There are also discussions about a bridge option for the north Narrows, which also would likely be placed west of the existing roadway.
“There are conceptual drawings, but not designs, for what we are calling phase two,” she said. While it would guard against the possibility of relative sea level rise of 3.9 feet by 2100, the bridge—or bridges—would be built on pilings that would encroach on the salt marsh.
“There’s no way around that” said Verrill, who is a salt marsh ecologist by training. “But those impacts will be minimized at every opportunity.”
As for Anderson, the town manager, phase two remains little more than a possibility unless federal construction grants can be secured.
“Townspeople are committed to this—until they see a price tag,” she observed. “If they’re asked to come up with $20 million to build it, I don’t think that would fly.”
After the storms: Downeast coast rebuilds
Owners remain committed to staying on the shore
BY JACQUELINE WEAVER/ THE MAINE MONITOR
The owners of Chipman’s Wharf, a seafood market, lobster buying station, and restaurant in Milbridge, had a brutal awakening after the powerful January storms wiped away their 106-foot wharf.
The proprietors—brothers Chris and Jason Chipman and their wives—had insurance that would have covered damage to the pier from fire or an airplane crash, but not storms.
The two families are still reeling from the shock.
The Maine Coast Fishermen’s Association estimated at least 60 percent of Maine’s working waterfronts were heavily damaged or destroyed in the January storms.
Since then, many coastal businesses have had to decide whether to abandon their enterprises or rebuild, hoping to fortify their properties against future major storms—in some cases with a cash infusion from the state.
Earlier this summer, Gov. Janet Mills announced the state would provide $21.2 million in grants to help working waterfronts rebuild. The Chipmans applied for assistance when it was required that a wharf service at least 20 fishermen, which has since been lowered to ten.
“The damage to the working waterfront had to have a significant impact to the community,” Amity Chipman said.
Island Institute, publisher of The Working Waterfront, helped the families rebuild the wharf.
At Rest Ashoar cottages in Prospect Harbor, a village in Gouldsboro, Ashley and Jacob Knowles were heartsick as they watched three of the five cottages they just finished renovating get lifted by waves and pelted with water.
Ashley said insurance only covered damage to the siding because the cottages, which for a century have been perched over the water, were not “permanently affixed.”
“The reason they were not ‘permanently affixed’ is because there were no foundations to fix them to,” Ashley Knowles said. “The buildings were 100-yearold, non-conforming properties due to the proximity to the ocean, which prohibited us from putting foundations in.”
The Knowles have moved the five cottages back 80 feet from the shoreline and each now rests on a slab. They repaired the siding—the only thing their insurer covered—and replaced appliances, doors, and windows that had water damage.
“Every single porch had to be completely redone,” said Ashley. “There was dirt, seaweed and mud. Some of the doors blew open so the water got inside.”
Jacob Knowles, a lobster fisherman and social media celebrity, said the builder, who was a relative, worked quickly and was able to prepare the cottages for the rental season. He said the repairs were covered by their savings and equity lines. Ashley Knowles said they applied to the state for assistance but have not heard back.
After Rest Ashoar opened to renters in May, there has been a steady stream of bookings, with some guests renting all five cottages so extended families can vacation together.
Ashley Knowles said the storms had a silver lining: Ocean water washed up so far back that the properties now have extensive sand beaches, where visitors can lounge and gather around fire pits.
“I prefer how it is now than how it was then,” she said.
Meanwhile, over in Winter Harbor, friends Larry Lawfer and Gene Kelley watched their investment in the Donut Hole—a former breakfast spot that hovers over Henry’s Cove—tip into the water as wind and waves battered the local landmark.
Seaweed and water traveled across the property, the road, and up to the doorstep of the local supermarket, Winter Harbor Provisions.
The two purchased the property less than a year earlier with the idea of renting it and using it themselves. Photos of the building toppling into the water spread online as a testament to Mother Nature’s unforgiving nature.
“It took them nine hours to lift it up,” Lawfer said of the rescue effort by a local contractor, Dale Church.
Like the Knowles, Lawfer and Kelley knew they had to rebuild: “Our first question was what are we going to do,” Lawfer said. “We never discussed just letting it go away. We only discussed how we were going to save it.”
Once the cottage was returned to land, the owners saw the structure consisted of three shacks put together at different times that weren’t connected by a single platform.
“We gave it a solid bottom,” Lawfer said.
They also added insulation and upgraded the plumbing, as well as hired a firm to conduct mold remediation. Lawfer said the current structure is stronger, sturdier and nicer with new shingles, and grass where there was once just scrub and gravel— and it opened to renters late last month.
Lawfer said they have not received assistance from the state.
“We applied for everything we could, but I don’t think we qualify because it’s not a primary residence,” he said.
For Chipman’s Wharf, Amity Chipman said the state will pay up to $271,000, or roughly half the cost of the $540,000 repairs, once the project has been completed.
“It’s expensive, we’re dealing with time constraints and working around the tides,” she said.
She said the new wharf will be shorter and higher. Instead of a support system of pilings, there will be crib work and poles, and concrete on the surface. The Chipmans have also poured a concrete barrier on the south side to serve as a breakwater. The overall structure will be 42 inches higher than the previous wharf.
Amity Chipman said state officials want proof they are building a more resilient structure and have made many suggestions.
“It definitely was traumatic,” she said. “We spoke with an engineer and are just rebuilding in the hopes it will never happen again. When we drive down there and don’t see that pier…” Her voice trailed off.
This story was produced by The Maine Monitor, a nonprofit and nonpartisan news organization. To get regular coverage from the Monitor, sign up for a free Monitor newsletter at TheMaineMonitor.org.
John Martin, Bud Staples, and Elsie Gillespie chat around the woodstove at the annual town meeting.
Gerald “Punkin” Lemoine
Levi Moulden
Bud Staples
On the left is Chipman’s Wharf in Milbridge after it was damaged in the January storms. On the right is the wharf as it looks now with ongoing repairs.
PHOTOS: JACK SULLIVAN
Machias dike repair awaits plan
DOT to host delayed hearing in October
BY JOYCE KRYSZAK/ THE MAINE MONITOR
One recent late August evening, a few tourists gathered on the deck of Helen’s Restaurant overlooking the Machias River.
The summer holdouts tugged sweaters closer and steadied their glasses while trapping napkins that threatened to fly away. This time of year, the river’s breezes grow colder and lustier, as if crying out to Machias Bay and the open sea just around the bend.
Come winter, the sea and the bay will answer back with a roar, if last winter’s violent storms are any warning.
“We were like a little island,” said Julie Barker, co-owner of Helen’s Restaurant, a tidy, white-clad building perched at the edge of the river with the Machias dike in its dooryard. “We were surrounded by water until the tide receded.”
Over the past six years, catastrophic storms with surging tides dumped floodwaters in Machias far surpassing the base flood elevation, classifying the events as 100-year floods. Last winter alone, three floods overwhelmed the dike and much of the surrounding downtown, including forcing the town hall to move, a change that has become permanent.
Meanwhile, the erosion on the century-old dike—a significant cause of that flooding—remains inadequately mended. After 15 years of studies, hearings, and back-and-forth plans, the public still awaits a Maine Department of Transportation decision about how it will fix the problem—a dike that keeps crumbling and flood waters that keep coming.
The DOT’s decision, or even the status of the environmental impact assessment needed to arrive at a decision, has been delayed yet again—now the public hearing is not expected until fall.
‘No’ to Yard South
To the editor:
There is a brief opportunity to save waterfront on Portland Harbor, currently zoned industrial, for future marine commercial use. A 30-acre parcel that borders South Portland’s Bug Light Park and boat ramp to the east and an oil tank farm to the west is being considered for rezoning.
The current owners seek to build 1,000 residences, a mixture of six highrise condos overlooking the park and Casco Bay, luxury single family homes, and 10% affordable housing, and call it “Yard South.”
The soil, contaminated from years of use as a World War II shipyard, is full of “urban fill,” used to elevate land. The property sits in a flood zone. When the sea rises and storms surge, it will leach contaminates. Heavy high-rise structures will sink. South Portland taxpayers
Originally scheduled for the spring, the public hearing was pushed back, then pushed back again this summer. Beyond references to additional talks among stakeholders, and the public hearing possibly sometime in October, town and state officials remain tight-lipped.
“This is a complex project involving many different issues and stakeholders. I don’t expect to have anything new to add before the public hearing,” said Paul Merrill, DOT’s director of communications, in a written response to questions.
Four years ago, DOT published a “Purpose and Need for Action” report, detailing studies dating to 2016. Since then, flood waters have exceeded the base flood elevation eight times, each one chomping at the dike’s foundation.
The agency must give the green light for any plan to go forward because the dike spans Route 1, a federal highway.
But DOT’s draft assessment still hasn’t been made available to the public. Coupled with the public hearing repeatedly being pushed back, Downeast residents and other stakeholders are left in the dark, speculating on when a replacement dike will be built.
Residents and other stakeholders are left in the dark, speculating on when a replacement dike will be built.
Last November, after portions of the foundation washed away, DOT had to temporarily close the dike, which carries Route 1 over the Machias River at the nexus of Middle River and Machias Bay. Residents were forced to take lengthy detours until a temporary span was erected that month.
A permanent solution is no closer and many experts say the DOT’s preferred, “in-kind” replacement plan won’t prevent or even mitigate flooding.
Merrill, in a June email, wrote that DOT’s “draft EA (environmental assessment) analyzes alternatives and identifies the fully gated replacement culverts as the (DOT’s) preferred alternative.”
Merrill added that the Federal Highway Administration would be at a future public meeting to discuss the environmental assessment soon after it is published. The FHWA will review public comments then make its final findings.
For the last two years, representatives from various private, non-profit groups and government agencies have met as members of the Machias Downtown Resiliency Group to develop a flood mitigation plan. They have worked with DOT and voiced concerns about the agency’s preferred dike replacement plan.
Downtown Machias isn’t the only focus of concerns about the prospect of another violent storm season. The Downeast Salmon Federation and other conservation groups, including Maine Coast Heritage Trust, are in a race to restore salt marshes along the coast, including the Schoppee salt marsh just around the corner from the dike.
The marsh also gets ravaged by violent storms. Tidal surges routinely overtop the adjacent Downeast Sunrise Trail that straddles the marsh and the river. The constant deluge compromises the delicate balance of a crucial natural resource.
Last winter was literally the breaking point.
The trail was largely washed away along the river. It was closed, then reopened once repairs were completed by DOT earlier this summer.
Bigger rip rap was put in along the dike and the trail, new culverts installed, and the rebuilt trail was
letters to the editor
will be left to pay for all infrastructure repair and contamination clean up.
Fishermen, seaweed farmers, lobstermen, ferries, boating building companies, and other maritime industries should take this opportunity to make their voices heard. As a group, you will be heard by state government officials in addition to South Portland’s city council and its planning department. Once this waterfront is re-zoned to residential, the potential to increase Casco Bay’s working waterfront is forever lost.
The South Portland Planning Board is basing their determination on the city’s 2012 Comprehensive Plan, which does not account for rising seas, temperature increases, and rain flooding due to climate change. Seven City Councilors, not voting residents, have the final say as to whether this development will be rezoned and built. Oh, and try not to cough—the adjacent oil tank farm regularly exceeds what the EPA allows for cancer-causing
topped with a thick bed of crushed stone. A wide, neatly manicured berm was also added.
Flood mitigation experts say it all amounts to window dressing, with the Downeast Salmon Federation’s Charlie Foster arguing culverts won’t hold back the force of the sea.
The Downeast Salmon Federation designed a plan that includes installing a bridge over the most vulnerable parts of the trail. Foster said they have several grant applications pending, totaling roughly $30 million, to pay for the project and the group is confident it will receive the grants because the state and federal governments have made salt marsh restoration a priority.
Foster and others say the best solution for the Schoppee Marsh, as well as for Machias residents and businesses, would be to replace the dike with an elevated section and add a series of gated culverts to allow a gradual release of waters into Middle River.
Foster acknowledged it would be expensive, and cost has been a major consideration for DOT, but believes the project could easily be funded with the grant money available through the infrastructure law and from other sources. But he said they need to act fast because that money will dry up soon.
“It’s not going to be a permanent thing,” said Foster. “A lot of that extra money is based on the bipartisan infrastructure law … and you’re only looking at a couple more years of that kind of surge of money.”
Costs also are a concern for residents who have to brace for the worst.
Julie and David Barker, who own Helen’s Restaurant, spent about $5,000 this year shoring up the banks below the restaurant with more prodigious rip rap. They also pay an extra $2,000 for flood insurance.
benzene carcinogens to be emitted. The City’s decision will be made soon. Please make your voices heard. Visit “No Yard South” on Facebook.
Pamela Thomas South Portland
Blue Hill photograph
To the editor:
I’m the adjutant and finance officer for Duffy-Wescott Post 85 in Blue Hill with a family association of the town for almost 100 years and a full time resident of the town for ten.
The photo on page 9 in the September issue shows what was then known as Main Street but that now is referred to as Tenny Hill Road. The building shown was the third version of a building on that site. The first was a wood structure for the Blue Hill Academy built in 1803, the second built in the same location,
but a brick structure, and the one shown depicts the 1909 version that added the buttresses and some other modifications. It is currently undergoing its fourth “modification,” as long as money allows us to complete it.
At that time, Tenny Hill was dirt as were many of the roads in town and as I vaguely remember, it did not get paved (nor did South Street) until the early 1960s. The utility poles on the right carry telegraph and phone lines and those on the left carry power, so this was taken after about 1913 or so. A lot has changed, including the width of the road. Many on that road lost much of their front yards.
The building has experienced much, though in 1889 its purpose was modified when the Blue Hill-George Stevens Academy opened its doors as the secondary school for the area.
Butler Smythe Blue Hill
Building a better waterfront Castine replaces harbor deck with new material
BY TOM GROENING
Like many waterfront towns, Castine was hit hard by the January storms. One of its many specific victims was a harbor dock, an area about 40-feet by 40-feet, popular with tourists for its proximity to parking, views of the anchorage at the mouth of the Bagaduce River, and of Maine Maritime Academy’s State of Maine training vessel when it’s in port.
The Castine Town Dock, as it’s known, was destroyed by those storms as high water lifted the decking off the joists. The ragged remains were removed soon after.
But even as the storm raged, Harbormaster Scott Vogell was planning the rebuild. Rather than return the decking—which was the typical wood, an estimated 3-3/4-inches thick by 8-inches wide—Vogell inquired about new materials.
Two products were found—ThruFlow and Titan Open X. As the names imply, both are designed to allow rising seas to rise up through the deck without tearing it off the joists.
Vogell was the project manager on the work, conferring with the town harbor committee, and Islesboro Marine Services was hired to rebuild the dock. They decided to go with Titan Open X for decking, but there were other changes made to the structure.
Pilings were replaced, and the carrying beams now have 4-inch by 18-inch steel plates on both sides which are then lag-bolted to the pilings. The joists were set 2-feet on center, which allows more water to rise up through without encountering resistance.
But the game changer was the Titan Open X decking, which Vogell says allows more water to pass through it than the decking that it replaced.
“That has 37% or 38% of the water that hits it, it
goes up through it,” he said. And unlike wood, “This stuff sinks. The fact that it’s not buoyant” helps keep it attached to the joists.
Castine tapped $500,000 from a contingency fund to repair the dock, as well as to address other damage caused by the storms, Vogell said, including washouts at Fort Madison, which is now a waterfront park; Water Street; and a road just outside the village area. Adjacent to the Castine Town Dock is the Acadia Dock, which also will be repaired soon, he added.
The town dock project cost about $175,000. Perhaps surprisingly, using the Titan product for decking material was comparable in cost to using the traditional wood, Vogell said.
Being proactive helped the town recover, he said, and get the seasonally busy waterfront up and running.
“I had boats in the water by April 18,” he said.
Visitors enjoy sitting on the town dock in Castine’s harbor area. The dock was destroyed by the January storms, but the new decking material will allows waters from storm surge to rise through while encountering less resistance. PHOTO: TOM GROENING
We asked, you answered
Newspaper reader survey shows your interests
BY KIM HAMILTON
EARLIER THIS YEAR, Island Institute asked our readers for your thoughts and opinions about The Working Waterfront newspaper and the weekly online digest of Working Waterfront stories. As we consider ways to improve and expand our connections to those who share our deep commitment to the people and places that make the Maine coast unique, your input was instructive and practical.
Since our first issue in April 1993, this newspaper has provided wellresearched, insightful, and local stories and perspectives on critical community conversations. We bring the flavor of life on the Maine coast to you through our long-standing contributors, and we work hard to unpack some of the most complex issues shaping our coast— from the lasting imprint of last-year’s storms to the heroic efforts across small, peninsular and island communities to adapt in the face of extraordinary change. We share the hopes, tragedies, solutions, and humor, too, that define our remarkable corner of the world. As everyone knows, the environment for local news and journalism
rock bound from the sea up
is changing. You have more options on how and when you receive your news and analysis. We learned from more than 850 of you, however, that this newspaper remains your touchstone for all things related to the Maine coast.
We also learned that there is room for innovation, especially as we work to engage new generations in the solutions and opportunities ahead.
Thank you for valuing what we take great pride in producing and for taking the time to respond. Thank you, too, for continuing to support Island Institute so we can bring the extraordinary, the complicated, and the unusual from the docks to your doorsteps.
Here are some highlights from the survey results:
You seek and trust the content provided by The Working Waterfront
• 83% of readers regularly access The Working Waterfront, far more than any other source of news.
• Readers trust us for news and information on Maine’s coast by a 5:1 margin over other sources, such as
broadcast media, daily newspapers, and more local sources.
• 65% of readers report reading every edition of the paper, with 80% reading all or most all of the content.
You especially want content about climate and the economy, but not exclusively
•You want unique coverage (64%) with a local flavor (62%) as your preferred content types.
• 82% of readers are interested in climate and sea level rise issues.
• 57% percent are looking for information related to the environment, land use, and sustainability.
• 45% of readers are interested in issues related to Maine’s economy and marine economy.
• 43% are looking for information on housing and related issues.
• There are gender differences in responses, with women showing a stronger preference for stories about climate and environment along with stories about arts/ culture/lifestyle and schools. Men showed a stronger interest in stories about maritime history.
Public, private don’t always play nicely
The community must remain involved
BY TOM GROENING
IMAGINE THE REACTION to a town renting out offices in a public library built through the beneficence of Andrew Carnegie a century ago. Or a John D. Rockefeller-donated carriage trail in Acadia National Park being turned into a for-profit go-cart track.
It’s not quite as dramatic as all that, but a nettlesome controversy has been brewing in Belfast since the University of Maine announced it would be selling its Hutchinson Center, a sort of annex to the state system, which, when built in 2000, featured the best technology, more than a dozen classrooms, an auditorium, and a bright and spacious lobby ideal for hosting lunches.
(Full disclosure: Island Institute, publisher of this newspaper, has used the center for its conferences.)
Credit-card lender MBNA, which was later purchased by Bank of America, paid to construct the facility as a gift to the University (it was named for a former president of UMaine) and to Belfast, where the company had recently expanded.
The sale is not out of left field. During and since the pandemic, the Hutchinson Center has seen less
Our older readers have an affinity for print, but not entirely
• 80% of our readers who responded are over 65 years old.
• These readers prefer the print edition of the paper to digital formats (74% prefer printed copies).
• 64% of readers do access stories online (usually delivered to their email inbox).
Island Institute remains committed to publishing The Working Waterfront as a trusted source of news and information for Maine’s island and coastal communities. We plan to incorporate this reader feedback to deliver the content you are most interested in, both in digital and print formats. You’ll be hearing more from us in the months ahead as we dive into some of the most compelling stories shaping our coast.
Kim Hamilton is president of Island Institute, publisher of The Working Waterfront. She may be contacted at khamilton@islandinstitute.org.
in nonprofits
use as much of non-campus, postsecondary education has gone online. And in-person learning is not likely to come back.
The building and grounds, which are on Route 3, require substantial upkeep, so UMaine officials say they’re trying to be fiscally responsible in selling this property.
But Belfast civic leaders have argued the Hutchinson Center was a gift to the community to support public sector endeavors like education, and now the University is cashing it in and leaving town. And to further stoke the fire, the University is selling the facility to a church, which wants to use it for worship services and to start a private school. UMaine rejected two public group bids which, admittedly, offered less money.
Having the Hutchinson Center become private isn’t going to destroy Belfast’s character, nor is it going to sharply hamper education in the community. But the move suggests a betrayal of the benefactor’s intent, and it raises important questions about the role of nonprofit institutions: Is their value understood? Can there be too many in a community? Does their existence weaken the private sector?
Long before I worked for the nonprofit Island Institute, the Rockland newspaper would regularly run stories and opinion pieces about what some saw as too many nonprofits in the downtown, the Institute among them, along with the Farnsworth Art Museum and others.
The argument was that they didn’t pay property taxes on their large Main Street buildings. But consider the impact employees of those nonprofits— most of whom don’t live in Rockland— have on the local economy.
The Farnsworth in particular can make the case for impact very easily. Visitors must put a colorful round sticker on their chest to signify they’d paid for admission, and you see those stickers on people all along Main Street, going out to lunch, shopping at stores, browsing at art galleries.
Institute employees spend money at Main Street businesses, which in turn helps their owners pay their property taxes.
On a recent visit to Eastport, I noted that the Tides Institute, a homegrown nonprofit there dedicated to culture, arts, and history, was establishing an exhibition and restaurant space in the Masonic Hall.
That building had, in the last several years, been home to a couple of forprofit restaurants, both of which did not continue in business.
On that visit, I asked someone who has lived in the community for decades about the wisdom of having a nonprofit taking over a building that might again be home to a restaurant. She replied that despite hard work and high hopes, no restaurant could seem to make it there, so why not draw visitors with art and culture?
If there is a lesson to be learned in the Belfast situation, maybe it’s that the community should be sure to have a seat—or seats—on the governing board of a larger institution like UMaine. Boosters have worked hard to persuade the University to hold onto the Hutchinson Center, but that effort may have come too late.
Tom Groening is editor of The Working Waterfront. He may be contacted at tgroening@islandinstitute.org.
SHADY SUMMER STREET—
This photograph from the Library of Congress is labeled only as “street in York Village,” and dated at 1908. Do readers have information on the street name? Are the trees still standing? Email editor Tom Groening at tgroening@islandinstitute.org.
Neighbors helping neighbors on islands
Affordable housing efforts reflect unified resources
BY LIZA FLEMING-IVES
Twenty-five years ago, residents of Vinalhaven asked the Genesis Community Loan Fund for help. Without local options, their aging neighbors were often forced to leave the island for care in mainland facilities, separating them from their homes and families.
Genesis support helped open the Ivan Calderwood Home in 2001, enabling residents to remain in their island communities.
The project revealed a larger issue Genesis has focused on ever since: Maine’s coastal and island communities need resources to create and sustain affordable and accessible homes for year-round residents—not only for older adults but for individuals and families which include school-age children and service providers and other workers.
Through our lending and guidance, in partnership with MaineHousing, Genesis is helping expand affordable housing throughout rural Maine, including on islands, where neighbors are helping neighbors, often as
Island Institute Board of Trustees
Kristin Howard, Chair
Doug Henderson, Vice-Chair
Shey Conover, Secretary, Chair of Governance Committee
Carol White, Chair of Programs Committee
Kate Vogt, Treasurer, Chair of Finance Committee
Bryan Lewis, Chair of Philanthropy Committee
Megan Dayton, Ad Hoc Marketing & Comms Committee
Mike Boyd, Clerk
Sebastian Belle
John Conley
David Cousens
Mike Felton
Nathan Johnson
Emily Lane
Nadia Rosenthal
Michael Sant
Mike Steinharter
Donna Wiegle
Tom Glenn (honorary)
Joe Higdon (honorary)
Bobbie Sweet (honorary)
John Bird (honorary)
Kimberly A. Hamilton, PhD (ex officio)
volunteers. They are organizing, fundraising, identifying housing sites, and overcoming logistical challenges that “unbridged” places face when the only way there is by boat.
Islanders with different experiences, skills, and ideas are stepping forward to create plans and projects to ensure their communities can retain services, support, and connections.
With no one-size-fits-all housing solution, they are responding creatively with a diversity of project types: building new homes, rehabilitating existing structures, bringing in modular units customized to fit on ferries, and reusing what works—one example is the former ferry-crew quarters that will become a new home.
This year, with financing and/or guidance from Genesis and funding from MaineHousing, nine of 15 eligible coastal islands have launched or completed projects to create affordable housing for year-round residents. Here are some examples:
• Chebeague Island Community Association’s newest housing project to support island families will be
a multifamily building with threebedroom homes, developed through modular construction.
• On Cliff Island, a project is in progress to rehabilitate two three-bedroom homes to help ensure the community remains accessible to individuals and families at a range of income levels.
• To meet the needs of year-round residents of all ages, Cranberry Isles Realty Trust has led projects that have built two single-family homes on Great Cranberry Island and created four homes on Islesford. New projects will increase the total number of newly created affordable homes on the Cranberry Isles to ten.
• A project on Isle au Haut aims to adapt a single-family home into a duplex, and rehab two single-family homes, including one that has lacked a septic system or running water.
• Islesboro has plans to construct two new single-family homes for yearround residents.
• North Haven plans to expand its yearround housing stock by rehabilitating two existing properties and creating accessory dwelling units (ADUs) to provide flexible housing options.
THE WORKING WATERFRONT
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• On Peaks Island, Home Start has secured a project site to develop a multifamily building offering three homes.
• Vinalhaven Housing Initiative has plans to convert former ferry-crew quarters into a three-bedroom home and construct another onebedroom home.
Each project showcases the determination of island communities to secure homes that are affordable, accessible, energy-efficient, and climate-resilient. And what’s the even larger goal? To help sustain year-round island communities that have relied on innovation and cooperation for generations.
Across the state and beyond, communities can learn from Maine islanders who are overcoming tough challenges to create housing for their neighbors. Genesis is proud to be a partner in this work.
Liza Fleming-Ives is executive director of the Genesis Community Loan Fund and has worked with island and coastal communities for nearly two decades, helping to bring together resources to create affordable housing.
Editor: Tom Groening tgroening@islandinstitute.org
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LOBSTER SEASON
continued from page 1
Lobstermen in far-flung places like Matinicus and Criehaven have reported robust catches, said Sam Belknap, director of the Island Institute’s Center for Marine Economy. Elsewhere, landings have been steady and prices seem to be a little higher than last year.
Lobstermen welcome a return to normalcy, said Belknap, who had a student lobster license when he was in high school. His grandfather was a lobster fisherman, as is his father. With shedders arriving close to the traditional time of year and stable prices for lobster, it’s easier for fishermen to run their businesses.
“By and large, this year has been as close as I can recall to the way it used to be when I was growing up,” he said.
TOURISM SEASON
“In recent years the only thing that’s been steady has been the uncertainty.”
Lobster by far is Maine’s most valuable commercial fishery, bringing in hundreds of million of dollars to the state’s thousands of lobstermen.
The catch first topped 100 million pounds in 2011 and peaked at 132.6 million pounds in 2016. Since then, there’s been a downward trend, with landings coming in at 93.7 million in 2023—the smallest harvest since 2009.
While lobster prices always fluctuate, the price swings have been particularly wild in recent years. Prices went from an average of $4.21 a pound in 2020 to $6.71 in 2021 before crashing to $3.95 in 2022, according to the Department of Marine Resources.
The catch first topped 100 million pounds in 2011 and peaked at 132.6 million pounds in 2016.
Prices rebounded to $4.95 a pound last year and appear to be higher this year. Fishermen lately have been getting over $5 a pound and the price has been holding. Chris Welch, a lobsterman in Kennebunk, said he was receiving $5.50 a pound for new-shell lobsters, and $6.75 a pound for old-shell, in late August.
“We had a good [price] drop in the spring that got us all nervous, but prices have rebounded to a comfortable spot for this time of year,” he said.
There’s also been no shortage of bait, with strong catches of menhaden (also
known as pogies) off the Maine coast fortifying the supply. Besides herring and menhaden, lobstermen often use frozen fish, such as rockfish, as bait. The prices, too, appear to be about the same as last year’s prices, and cheaper than several years ago when there was a bait shortage, Welch said.
While things overall appear steady, the lobstering varies along Maine’s long ragged coast. What is true in southern Maine may be different from what’s happening along the midcoast or eastern regions of the state.
Bob Baines, who fishes out of Spruce Head, said the fishing in his area of Penobscot Bay has been spotty. “It’s not bad fishing, but there aren’t lobsters in places where you’d expect lobsters. I don’t know, ask me around Thanksgiving and I’ll tell you then.” He added: “We’re plugging along I guess is the best way to put it.”
continued from page 1 and cook it themselves,” which saves customers money versus driving to a restaurant and eating out.
owners have mitigated that problem by purchasing property that they rent to staff at below market rates.
Said Bedell, “We’ve been lucky and we’ve been smart. Retention is high here.” Providing affordable housing is part of the reason. “We don’t want to lose the younger demographic,” she said.
Amity Chipman of Chipman’s Wharf in Milbridge said their business has been steady, too.
Chipman’s is a seafood market and lunch grill founded by Chris and Jason Chipman, both of whom are lobster fishermen.
“I think we’ve had as much traffic, probably a little more than last year,” Amity Chipman said.
Some things have changed compared to prior years, however.
“There are fewer families—smaller parties. What people have been spending has been down. People are mindful of what they’ve been spending,” she said.
Also, Chipman’s has seen more international travelers in recent years, she noted. “We do have several people who come from the U.K., Canada, Asian populations.”
Especially since COVID, Chipman said.
“We’ve finally been discovered. Bar Harbor is so busy, people are staying here and traveling to the islands. A lot of people are staying here and traveling through and going to Lubec.”
She said that the increase in Airbnb and other such short-term rentals in the area has helped. With no large hotels in the Milbridge area, having the Airbnb option enables people to “come to the seafood market and go back
Bar Harbor Chamber of Commerce Executive Director Everal Eaton, too, spoke of the summer of 2024 as on par with recent seasons.
“It started slow but picked up. Talking to a lot of our lodging facilities, they are looking at a strong year,” Eaton said.
Visitors come “from all over at different times of year,” he said. “A lot of national and a little bit of international.” Their reasons range from a desire to eat lobster and visit Acadia National Park to simply seeing “the picturesque view of the town.”
Debbie Hoverson of Searsport Shores Campground said this summer has been “good but less busy. Nobody knows why. Election year? The economy?”
Searsport Shores, owned by Astrid and Steve Tanquay, is an oceanfront campground located on Route 1 in Searsport. Most of their clientele lives within four or five hours of Maine.
“A lot of New England people— Boston, Vermont—but also people from Michigan, Indiana,” Hoverson said.
They come, Hoverson said, “Because of this park. It’s a very unique campground. It’s got art, nature. People tell us, ‘This is the best site that I’ve ever been at.’”
Moderate this season may have been, but there is still leaf peeping ahead— and the prognosis is good.
“This summer was one for the record books! An abundance of daily sunshine with just the right amount of rainfall has set the stage for a breathtaking foliage season,” according to Gale Ross, spokesperson for the Maine Department of Agriculture, Conservation and Forestry. Coastal Maine’s colors are expected to peak in mid to late October.
Acadia is still an economic driver
A new National Park Service report shows that 3.8 million visitors to Acadia National Park in 2023 spent $475 million in communities near the park. That spending supported 6,600 jobs in the local area and had a cumulative benefit to the local economy of $685 million.
“I’m so proud that our parks and the stories we tell make a lasting impact on more than 300 million visitors a year,” said National Park Service Director Chuck Sams. “And I’m just as proud to see those visitors making positive impacts of their own, by supporting local economies and jobs in every state in the country.”
“People come to Acadia National Park to experience the beauty of its amazing landscape and recreate on its historic carriage roads and hiking trails,” said Superintendent Kevin Schneider. “We’re proud that Acadia National Park not only offers visitors extraordinary experiences but significantly supports local businesses.”
The National Park Service report, 2023 National Park Visitor Spending Effects, finds that 325.5 million visitors spent $26.4 billion in communities near national parks. This spending supported 415,400 jobs, provided $19.4 billion in labor income and $55.6 billion in economic output to the U.S. economy. The lodging sector had the highest direct contributions with $9.9 billion in economic output and 89,200 jobs. The restaurants received the next greatest direct contributions with $5.2 billion in economic output and 68,600 jobs.
Farnsworth shows coastal Wyeths
College intern explores, curates art
The Farnsworth Art Museum is presenting The Wyeths: Impressions of Coastal Maine, beginning Oct. 26 through Dec. 31. The exhibition presents paintings by N.C., Andrew, and James “Jamie” Wyeth, inviting viewers into the serene and evocative landscapes of Maine’s Midcoast, including Rockland, Tenants Harbor, and Port Clyde.
These communities, which have long served as a wellspring of inspiration for the Wyeth family, are reimagined in the watercolors and oils of three generations of painters.
This summer, curatorial intern and exhibition guest curator Sarai Marshall visited some of these iconic locations for the first time. Her own impressions of the coast are thoughtfully interwoven into her interpretation and presentation of the works on display.
This exhibition marks a milestone in the Farnworth’s Eddie C. and C. Sylvia Brown Institute for Museum Studies Program and exemplifies the program’s goal of introducing career paths to the next generation of museum professionals. Marshall, a senior at Morgan State University majoring in art history, was among three students who completed the inaugural internship program.
“We are thrilled to showcase this exceptional exhibition and celebrate the work of the Wyeth family,” said Christopher J. Brownawell, executive director of the Farnsworth Art Museum. “Sarai Marshall’s fresh perspective adds a unique dimension to the presentation, reflecting our ongoing mission to support emerging talent in the museum field.”
“I am incredibly grateful for the opportunity given to me by the Eddie C. and C. Sylvia Brown Institute for Museum Studies program and the Farnsworth Art Museum,” Marshall said. “The internship was a wonderful experience and introduction to coastal Maine. Learning more about the Wyeth’s was a large part of my role and I look forward to sharing my initial impressions of coastal Maine through this exhibition.”
The Wyeths: Impressions of Coastal Maine will be on view at the Farnsworth Art Museum from October 26 through December 31, 2024. For more information about the exhibition, visit the website.
Island Institute funded for lobster work
SBA grant supports community resiliency work
ISLAND INSTITUTE has landed a $1.4 million grant from the Small Business Administration to support Maine’s lobster industry and enhance the economic resilience of the coastal communities dependent on this vital fishery.
This congressionally directed spending request championed by Sens. Susan Collins and Angus King will launch the Future of Fishing, a collaborative effort designed to expand economic opportunities for Maine’s coastal communities, building on Island Institute’s longstanding partnerships to advance a diversified, climateforward marine economy in Maine.
“This funding is not just an investment in the lobster industry, it is an investment in the communities that have built their lives around these waters,” explained Kim Hamilton, president of Island Institute. “We are immensely grateful to Sens. Collins and King for their unwavering support and recognition of the importance of Maine’s island and coastal communities. With this support, we can begin implementing transformative changes that promise a sustainable future for the coast.”
Maine’s fishing communities face historic challenges, such as rapidly warming waters, more frequent and severe storms, costly regulatory changes, and rising business costs. These communities, and the men and women that work on the water, are the backbone of Maine’s seafood sector,
a sector responsible for more than $3 billion in total economic output and more than 33,000 jobs statewide.
“Island Institute provides critical support to those who make up Maine’s iconic lobster industry, helping to ensure our coastal communities continue to thrive amid climate and economic challenges,” said Collins.
“From Damariscotta to Eastport, this federal funding will support Island Institute’s efforts to promote business development and resiliency in communities along Maine’s coast,” she said
“The lobster industry is a cornerstone of Maine’s culture and identity, fueling livelihoods and the economy,” said King.
“The hardworking men and women who power the fishery are seeing firsthand the impacts of changes in weather and the water, so we have a responsibility to empower them through boosting collaborative efforts and informationsharing across the industry. When we invest in the lobster fishery, we make an investment in the future of Maine for generations to come.”
The three-year project will offer business and career training programs for rural fishing communities and families, including business management assistance and training, opportunities to explore diversified on-the-water income streams such as aquaculture endeavors, and assistance finding financial resources and educational opportunities for current and future generations.
N.C. Wyeth (1882–1945), “Maine Headland, Black Head, Monhegan Island,” ca. 1936–1938, oil on canvas, 48 1/4 x 52 1/4 inches, Bequest of Mrs. Elizabeth B. Noyce, 1997.
Training technicians to work on electric outboards
BY YVONNE THOMAS
s a K-12 island educator for 20 years, I often witnessed the joy of students learning and it is something I miss, now that I work primarily with adults. I know adults feel happiness when they learn something new, but it’s usually a more muted response, especially in formal settings like classrooms and
development sessions.
Recently, I got to be with a group of adults who were highly engaged and excited to be teaching and learning together. This is a rare privilege and was one of the highlights of my summer.
The topic was electric outboards and the course was created with boat yard technicians in mind, but designed for a wide range of levels of familiarity with the content. It was offered in Rockland at Mid-Coast School of Technology in July and in Farmington at Foster Career and Technical Education Center in August. After over a year of planning and course development, it was thrilling to finally came to run the courses. Nearly 100% of participants
Students at work in courses on electric outboard maintenance and repair. PHOTO: YVONNE THOMAS
rated the course as good or excellent overall and all successfully completed the course.
My role was to coordinate the partners involved—Kennebec Valley Community College, the two hosting technical centers, and Island Institute. Then I got to sit back and watch the magic instructors Dan Hupp and Joel Rowland created with their students.
The 23 students were a surprisingly diverse group that included a few women, some in their 20s and 30s, and a number of Mainers born and raised in other countries. Several students had deep experience with the content and generously shared their knowledge.
A couple of oyster farmers interested in using electric outboards on their farms attended, as well as some who were experienced mariners, but new to the world of battery power and electric outboards.
would veer off into the inspirational and aspirational aspects of the subject.
Students got to experience the benefits of electric outboards, including the clean and quiet operation…
“The best part of the course was the open dialogue and mix of skills/knowledge,” one student noted. The format of the two-day bootcamp-style course included lecture on the theory and principles of electricity and electric propulsion fundamentals. The discussions were at times quite technical, but then
In the afternoon, students alternated between labs and sea trials. The sea trials were in a rigid inflatable boat powered by an Elco electric outboard motor and were done in Rockland Harbor during the Rockland class and at a lake during the Farmington class. The concept of “seeing is believing” is a powerful teaching tool. Students got to experience the benefits of electric outboards, including the clean and quiet operation, and to see how much power the battery for our electric outboard had. Our set up was not designed for high speed, but it was very steady and even after being out on the water for a couple of hours, we were able to track our use on an app and found that we’d used very little of the battery’s total capacity.
During the lab time, students worked on improving cable crimping skills, getting to know their digital volt-ohm meter, wiring electric panels, and learning about circuit boards. The opportunity to apply theoretical learning in the morning to the labs and sea trials in the afternoon created comradery and connection among both students and instructors.
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The electric boat course is part of Island Institute’s effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the marine economy by promoting the electrification of Maine’s working waterfront. Deploying demonstration electric boats to several Maine harbors and marine businesses and supporting shoreside infrastructure are key aspects to this work.
And so is the electric boat course. We will be offering a third round of the course sometime this fall in Washington County.
If you would like to receive registration information about the next round of course, please contact me at ythomas@gmail.com.
And the next time you are at a working waterfront, scan the boats for electric motors—and smile if you see some, knowing that there are now a few more folks who can maintain and repair them!
Yvonne Thomas is a senior community development officer at Island Institute, publisher of The Working Waterfront.
Lest we forget…
Sardine carrier Jacob Pike’s fate reminds us of fishery history
BY BUZZ SCOTT
If you know anything of the history of Maine’s sardine industry you understand the significance of the loss of the iconic Jacob Pike, which sank in the New Meadows River during the back-to-back January storms. The vessel was raised in early September and faces an uncertain future.
Her sinking was heartbreaking. She had fallen into disrepair and passed from owner to owner, with each hoping to rebuild and get her back in use.
Built in 1948 by Wallace and Newbert in Thomaston, the Pike is 81.5-feet long, one of the largest and most elegant carriers to work the Gulf of Maine.
She and her sistership Pauline were among the most well-known carriers, hauling herring from the late 1940s to the mid-1980s. At one time, hundreds such boats transported herring to the sardine factories that dotted the coast from the Canadian Maritimes to the shores of Massachusetts.
The sardine industry shut down in the mid 1980s when the taste for sardines turned to tuna. Factories closed, carriers were abandoned, and some were simply taken out to sea and sunk. The loss of these magnificent vessels is a loss of Maine’s culture, heritage, and history.
As kids growing up in the 1960s and 1970s, some of us were taught by the men who ran these vessels. They were family, they taught us the meaning of hard work, and they passed down stories that helped mold us into people of the sea.
I fear with the loss of these vessels we will also lose our ability to stay people of the sea and teach our children how to be the same. The Gulf of Maine needs people who understand it, love it, and be stewards for our waters and planet.
Campbell “Buzz” Scott grew up on Matinicus Island and has worked in marine trades for decades. He runs the marine educationfocused nonprofit OceansWide.
Sardine carriers during their glory days.
The Pike was sunk during the January storms.
Carriers and seiners rafted up as captains and crew wait for the sun to go down and the herring to come in; Matinicus Harbor, early 1980s.
Pauline being loaded with herring off Matinicus Island, circa 1975.
Pauline is being restored with the hope that she will be used to teach the history of the sardine industry and will help remove marine debris from Maine’s waters.
Taylor Allen at his Rockport Marine rebuilt the William Underwood as a personal yacht. The carrier, 72-feet long, was built in 1941.
Joey, Pauline and Jacob Pike rafted up, waiting for fish.
Grayling, rebuilt as a yacht, is 65-feet long and was built in 1915.
Pauline rigged as a passenger vessel, circa 1990.
The Jacob Pike in better days.
Our Island Communities
BACK TO SCHOOL—
As they prepared to work with Island Institute’s Teaching and Learning Collaborative, teachers in island one- and two-room schools attended two days of workshops at the Island Institute’s Rockland offices. Each pointing to the islands on which they teach, are (from left): Heidi Donnelly and Mary Train (Chebeague), Jenny Baum (Cliff), Terry Wood (Monhegan), Kipp Quinby (Isle au Haut), Laura Venger (Frenchboro), and Ashley Greenleaf (the Cranberry Islands).
PHOTO: JACK SULLIVAN
Island Institute welcomes five new Fellows
Community service program in 25th year
Island Institute’s flagship fellowship program, which is celebrating its 25th year, welcomes five new Island Institute Fellows, two new community partners, and five continuing Fellows. The program brings recent college graduates to island and coastal towns to work for two years on a community’s public priorities.
THE NEW FELLOWS ARE:
Thomas McClellan will work with Monhegan Plantation on a working waterfront resiliency project as the island replaces its public wharf and shores-up other waterfront access areas. The island will redesign for sea level rise and increased storm surge pressure. Originally from Maine, McClellan recently completed a degree in Sustainability and Oceanography at Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia.
Taylor Rossini will be the Swan’s Island Fellow working with the Society of Education Board as it launches a redesign plan for the island library. The town envisions the library transitioning into a community hub that will still provide library services, but with broader offerings. One such offering will be digital literacy training with the hope of providing on-island business owners, including lobstermen, with technology training and support as federal fishing rules and regulations change. Rossini joins Island Institute from Delaware where she was completing her master’s degree.
Erin Dent is the St. George Fellow, working with the town’s comprehensive planning committee, assisting in reviewing and interpreting data and anecdotes the committee has collected from the community. She will then lead in the writing of an updated plan. Once the plan is completed, Dent will focus on a priority area identified in the plan. Dent has come to Maine from Texas.
Lucia Daranyi is the Deer Isle and Stonington Fellow working with the Adult & Community Education program, which is moving to allow for more offerings. Daranyi will join staff to assist with this growth, primarily through outreach and engagement, and she will collect stakeholder feedback. The organization sees a need to help those making career transitions or whose jobs, like lobstering, will require
new technological skills for tracking and reporting. Daranyi grew up on Peaks Island.
Mark Gorski will be joining Peaks Island Home Start, the island’s affordable housing non-profit. Part of the city of Portland, the island will soon implement new zoning regulations that will change lot size, and distance/height from sea level, as well add rules spurred by population growth and climate factors. Gorski’s responsibility is to understand the new code, communicate it to the Peaks Council, homeowners, and support Home Start. Gorski arrives in Maine from New York where he worked in the city’s office of management and budget in its community development unit.
RETURNING FELLOWS ARE:
Alice Cockerham, who works with Hancock County Planning Commission assisting towns with
comprehensive and resilience planning.
Morgan Karns who works with MDI Biological Labs to collaborate with some islands in a statewide initiative to test drinking water for heavy metals and plastics, partnering with the Maine Seacoast Mission.
Lavinia (Livy) Clarke is the Machias Fellow, working on the Sunrise Trail Coalition, engaging DownEast communities to realize the trail’s potential in alternative transportation, recreation, and community building.
Grace Carrier is the Brooklin Fellow, working with the town’s climate response committee. Alongside committee members, she connects individuals, business owners, and municipal leaders to energy and cost saving programs.
Claire Oxford is the North Haven Fellow, working with town staff and committees to shore-up the island’s working waterfront from recent and future storm surge and sea level rise.
From left, new Island Institute Fellows: Mark Gorski, Lucia Daranyi, Thomas McClellan, Erin Dent, and Taylor Rossini. PHOTO: JACK SULLIVAN
‘Island girl’ returns to teach on Isle au Haut Kipp Quinby started in island’s one-room school
BY SARAH CRAIGHEAD DEDMON
Kipp Quinby’s new job is a sort of homecoming. In September, she took over as the teacher of Isle au Haut’s one-room school house, the same room where she attended school as a child.
In fact, all of Isle au Haut’s children have attended the same wooden schoolhouse, ringing the same outdoor bell from a rope inside the classroom for at least 100 years. The school serves students ranging from Pre-K to 8th grade. Last year’s student population was two, but this year it has more than tripled, to seven students.
“We were playing the game octopus [tag] today and there were just about enough of us to make that happen,” said Quinby.
Quinby is well-prepared to teach children on an island. As a young girl, she lived with her family on Peaks Island, where she received her first commercial lobstering license at the age of six, later working as a teenage sternman. Quinby’s family relocated to Isle au Haut when she was a child, as part of the island’s affordable housing program, which offers below-marketrate rentals to families wishing to establish themselves on the island.
“My Dad saw an ad for the housing program, and he asked my mother if she would divorce him if he wrote for more information,” Quinby said, laughing. “She said no, and he said, ‘You should see its harbor!’”
In addition to the island’s exceptional harbor, almost half of Isle au Haut is part of Acadia National Park and a favorite summer attraction for campers and hikers. Quinby,
her parents, brother, and sister made the move and became part of Isle au Haut’s year-round population, which rises and falls, but averages around 50 residents.
One of those residents, Lisa Turner, is now in her 30th year as the Isle au Haut teacher’s aide. Like Quinby, Turner attended school there, and as far as anyone can tell, this is the first time two Isle au Haut graduates are working together to run the school.
Before applying for her teaching position, Quinby reached out to Turner, who served as a teacher’s aide when Quinby was a student.
“She said, ‘I think we’d work pretty well together,’ which is what I thought, too,” recalls Quinby. “She is very supportive, and she wants me to do a good job, and I want her to be proud of me.”
After graduating from the little white and green schoolhouse in 8th grade, Quinby’s high school education came in forms as unique as the island.
returning to Maine and attending the College of the Atlantic (COA), in part with a scholarship from Island Institute.
“COA offers one major: Human Ecology,” said Quinby. “It’s a flexible curriculum, so I received the equivalent of a degree in marine ecology and teaching.”
“She is very supportive, and she wants me to do a good job, and I want her to be proud of me.”
“We had a retired bishop on the island who taught me Latin and literature, and we had a carpenter who did boat design as lessons in geometry,” she said. “We are so lucky with the folks we have out here. It was also the early stages of a University of Maine distance education program.”
Quinby attended her senior year in Finland as an exchange student before
It’s difficult to imagine two degrees better suited to Quinby’s professional life, on and alongside the ocean. Today, she’s the owner of Island Girl Oysters, a sea farm located in the Blue Hill Salt Pond, where Quinby, with help from her sister, raises oysters. And for the past 12 years, she’s worked full-time in her family business, Ocean Resources.
“We collect and prepare marine specimens for schools and labs, so we do a lot of things prepared in formaldehyde and offer system coloring, where we might inject the arterial system one color and the venous system another,” said Quinby.
Speaking of the benefits to be found in a one-room schoolhouse, and also in a small island community, Quinby
Casco Bay Lines names new GM
Warnock has workforce, U.S. Navy background
Casco Bay Island Transit District, also known as Casco Bay Lines (CBL), has appointed John Warnock as the general manager following a unanimous vote by its board of directors. Warnock began work July 22.
“I am thrilled to return to Maine and get to work leading Casco Bay Lines,” Warnock said. “I look forward to starting out by riding the boats to meet captains and crew and Casco Bay islanders. My focus will be on safety first, on excellent service to islanders, good employee relations, and sound fiscal management.”
A search committee comprised of board members from Peaks, Long, Great Diamond, and Cliff islands worked with a recruiting firm to evaluate 75 applicants. The committee interviewed seven candidates and brought two in to visit Casco Bay Lines. Semifinalists rode boats to Peaks and Long islands and met with residents of several islands as well as three
members of CBL senior staff and the union president.
“Hiring the right leader to put CBL on track for the future is important to the islanders we serve and to captains, crew and staff,” said Jean Hoffman, chairwoman of the search committee.
“As a veteran of many searches, I can attest to the rigor and fairness of our process. John Warnock brings a history of learning, exceling at new challenges, effective management, and helping companies leverage technology to improve productivity and lower costs.”
Warnock will lead a team of management, marine, and shoreside personnel which grows from 40-plus year-round to 90 in the busy summer season. He will be responsible for leading day-to-day operations and long-range planning.
CBL’s mission “is to provide sufficient dependable, reliable service in a safe and secure manner, as affordably as possible, to preserve our year-round island communities.”
Nate Mills, president of the CBL union and senior captain, cited Warnock’s “strong operational background and commitment to safety” and said they will benefit “both our team and the community we serve.”
Warnock had worked at Worldwide Counter Threat Solutions based in Virginia, where he helped clients with strategic planning and communications, process improvement, and IT transformation. Most recently, as a strategic communication analyst, he provided analysis and interpretation of federal and military codes, laws, operations orders and directives, as well as effective communications, staff collaboration, and program management.
Previously, Warnock was at NGROUP Performance Partners, an organization that does workforce management and helps companies leverage technology to increase productivity and lower costs.
At the Navy Operational Support Center Norfolk, he was in charge of
says the intermingling of generations is a gift.
“In the classroom, there’s a lot of modeling that happens, and learning to be responsible for folks who are younger than you. It’s a valuable skill and it’s served me really well,” Quinby said.“Living on an island, where there are fewer options, I think it opens us up to realizing that potential friends and partners in different projects don’t exist in a single age bracket,” she said. “We can have friends of all ages, from just starting to do things, up into the 80s.”
2,500 reserve sailors in 123 units who were responsible for getting the right people on the right missions for their 25 “customers” and then managing those assets on each mission. Warnock served in the Navy for 29 years.
For more information about Casco Bay Lines, visit: www.cascobaylines.com.
John Warnock
Kipp Quinby
book reviews
Tom Moore, unleashed
Poet blends real and surreal—and has fun doing it
Unleashed
and Other Poems
By Tom Moore Moon Pie Press, 68 pages
REVIEW BY CARL LITTLE
THE TITLE OF this book, Unleashed and Other Poems, and its cover, which features a painting by Sheep Jones of a figure walking a fish on a leash, reflect a new direction for Tom Moore, former Belfast poet laureate: an unplugged sense of humor. At the same time Moore adventures into metamorphosis via a curious creature kinship that enlivens several poems.
The title poem, prompted by the Jones painting, finds the poet swimming alongside a bass after removing its leash. The
matter-of-fact quality of the account of exploring Belfast harbor and beyond— “The water’s a bit/cooler out here, clearer too”—brings to mind the synthesis of the real and the surreal found in the poetry of Russell Edson and Gregory Orr.
In “A Plague of Grackles” Moore considers a group of these birds descending on seeds he has scattered.
“They must have texted/all their cousins because by noon there are/hundreds,” he writes, before describing a kind of Hitchcockian moment when the birds attack him. He ends up joining the flock, his “new comrades,” and appreciating their “raucous puns.”
Several poems are outand-out funny.
scents on an early morning walk. “Light bodied./Almost floral. Must be Olive, the eye doctor’s/Cavalier King Charles.”
A few poems complain.
“Cacophony in B Sharp Major for Blades and Blowers” takes aim at neighborhood noisemakers.
“Nothing Sucks Like an Electrolux” pays tribute to a ’67 vacuum cleaner, transforming it into a “bad-ass” babe, “leggy and ready to roll.”
In “Dirigo, Olfacio, Mingo” (Latin for “I lead, I sniff, I pee”), a dog samples
Inside an islander’s mind
Poems follow unconventional, random form
REVIEW BY DANA WILDE
STEVE LANGAN, the author of the poetry collection Bedtime Stories, keeps a residence on Cliff Island. This is helpful to know when you read his book, because the best poem in the collection, for my money, is “Island,” which is helped if you can picture a day visit to a Casco Bay island.
It’s also helpful to know that Langan is an expert in public health administration and a founder of the University of Nebraska Medical Center’s Seven Doctors Project, where healthcare workers use creative writing to deal with their profession’s stresses. He also holds an MFA in creative writing from the vaunted Iowa Writers Workshop, which might be the most useful background fact when reading his poems.
For these poems can be hard to follow for readers unfamiliar with the poetry workshops. While most of the sentences are quite plainly stated, at the same time, the sense of one thought often does not follow conversationally on the previous thought.
One of the shorter poems, “Modern Man Is Monstrous, Let’s Not Forget,” begins: “Seems like any time I have a minute/to relax here goes somebody all dressed up/on TV talking about the end of time.” These ideas are in themselves quirkily disconnected.
But then the next sentence, with no indication of how it fits, says: “I saw a photo of Michel Foucault today.” The poem concludes on how difficult it can be to make a sandwich.
This can be hard to make sense of, for some readers. But it’s not uncommon in the workshops for poets to understand their purpose is to disrupt conventional meaning.
In “Modern Man Is Monstrous,” a way to bring together some conventional meaning is to keep in mind that the dreamlike discontinuities are deliberate, and that Langan has this background in healthcare. Healthcare workers, the poem may be saying, are so busy at their jobs that they hardly have time to make a sandwich, let alone ponder society’s big problems.
A few poems complain. “Cacophony in B Sharp Major for Blades and Blowers” takes aim at neighborhood noisemakers. A final rhyming couplet suggests a solution: “We cannot hear each other when we eat,/ please jump into a slab of fresh concrete.”
A poet of carpentry and tools—previous books include Chet Sawing, The Bolt-Cutters, and Saving Nails—Moore once again pays tribute to builders. In “Truck Lust” he and his brother play with the trucks their father, a carpenter, made, “as big as breadboxes or couch cushions.”
Here’s the second section:
My father had pages of distance and pages of anger, but the wooden trucks
smiled his warmth—red paint, hinged dumps, cabs.
Moore also broaches intimations of mortality, at times tongue in cheek, at others, not so. In “Going Back: Getting Lost in Heaven” he moves from describing a house he built—“I cut studs and toe-nailed them”—to the “terrible signage” he finds in heaven. Disgusted with the “bastard at the gate,” the poet now lives for “sunrise, that moment when red slashes the underbelly/of the horizon, and all I have left is words.”
Those words are consistently deployed with consummate craft. In the final poem, “December: Belfast Waterfront,” Moore offers a tour of the harbor. An inventory of vessels includes “Abide, ketch rigged, one hundred/thirty feet of opulence” and two Fournier tugs standing by “to nudge tankers into Searsport.”
The poet knows and cherishes this world and, lucky us, shares it.
Carl Little is the author, with his brother David, of Art of Penobscot Bay (Islandport Press).
“Island,” a longer poem, has this same dreamlike, discontinuous form and atmosphere. The speaker of the poem appears to have invited friends to visit on his island—“please join us, as you are, on the Island.” He (or she) has brought them on a boat whose captain keeps being mentioned, and the friend is pointing out highlights: “There is no such thing ‘sea gull,’ only/varieties of gull.”
The day’s events are not being narrated conventionally at all. We seem to be wandering around in the mind of the speaker who is simultaneously trying to entertain his guests and make important, sometimes ironically stabbing points to and about them.
I refuse to comment on local personalities.
Can’t I just describe for you the placement of facts and ideologies without these characters, without including the one who smiles, laments, insinuates, commiserates? … you know the types.
There’s emotional tension among the unnamed characters (“Don’t nap yet; I said talk to me awhile”). By nightfall, everyone departs.
Toward the end, a few lines disclose what could be a clue to the source of the
tension and the need for an island respite: “The pact the captain has made/is if I can just make it to the morning./If we can only make it to tomorrow morning.”
Plainly stated ideas, but where did they come from? Well, the need and desire to just make it to morning are characteristic of grievous ailment.
When you put the poet’s health care expertise with it, “Island” seems to be about some fairly well-to-do people— physicians? addicts?—taking a break from harrowing lives, but escaping nothing in their minds.
What sets “Island” apart from most of the rest of “Bedtime Stories” is that it does not make fun of itself. Most of the rest of the book elicits with relentlessly ironic humor the feeling that life is ultimately a bleak, empty joke, like the trivializing sandwich-making in “Modern Man Is Monstrous.” Instead, “Island” treats postmodern suffering more seriously, probing for actual, substantial personal and social meaning.
“Bedtime Stories” could be a good introduction to how skillful the often obscure poetry coming out of the workshops can be. Steve Langan, from his vantage point on Cliff Island, is a master of this craft.
Dana Wilde is a former college English professor and newspaper editor. He lives in Waldo County.
Bedtime Stories: Poems by Steve Langan Littoral Books (2024)
book reviews
A journey to the ends of the Earth
Elizabeth Rush renders climate science in human terms
The Quickening: Creation and Community at the Ends of the Earth
By Elizabeth Rush Milkweed Editions (2023)
REVIEW BY TOM GROENING
THERE ARE A few reasons why I might have been poised to find The Quickening irritating.
For one, author Elizabeth Rush, a non-scientist, tackles the climate crisis by traveling with scientists to Antarctica’s Thwaites Glacier, which is melting at unprecedented speeds. Hey, we know this already! For another, Rush decides to link her own bid to have a child with the looming and vivid evidence of climate change. Why bring a child into this threatened world? It’s the sort of thematic merger that seems aimed at a publisher, not a reader.
And lastly, she relies on richly descriptive language to evoke the bleak scenes
she encounters in this barren environment. I have little tolerance for overwriting and an approach that suggests the author swallowed a thesaurus.
But guess what? Rush is masterful on all fronts. A lesser writer would have elicited eye rolls. Instead, The Quickening is a powerful piece of science translation, a rigorous moral inventory of a thoughtful person’s response to that threat, and an unflinchingly transparent memoir on the physical and psychological challenges of starting a family.
Hitching a ride on the science ship Nathaniel B. Palmer in South America, Rush renders the shipboard world in all its messy humanity, recording the voices and stories of the cooks, crew, and members of the several science teams. It’s a little claustrophobic, dark, and reminded me of scenes from the space science-fiction film Alien
The science is explained to the reader just as it is to Rush; she tags along with one team, then another, asking questions, and even pitching in with the work, gathering specimens. That “pitching in” work included one large error, which she owns and explains its implications on the science and scientists.
Her writing is exquisite, as she describes what she sees from the cold,
CRIEHAVEN ISLAND CARETAKER NEEDED
We are looking for a caretaker to join our lobstering village community which is home to 20 families evenly split between fishing and non-fishing. Criehaven is located on Ragged Island in outer Penobscot Bay.
We seek a person or family who can bring skills such as:
· Maintenance and service of tractors, mowers, vehicles, etc.
· Basic electrical, plumbing and carpentry knowledge
· Wood clearing and firewood splitting
· Field and lawn mowing
· Being a Jack-of-all trades
· Enjoying island living
Position for 5-7 months/year. Private housing (furnished), utilities and transportation provided. Salary/wages dependent on experience.
If interested, contact betsy@criehaven.org for more information.
windy deck of the ship and the small, cramped world of the shared rooms in the bowels of the vessel.
“The lonesome berg rides low in the water,” she writes of the early part of the voyage. “Like whipped meringue piped into a lopsided point, the whole thing lists to the right. Its closest side guttered and blue, the top dove gray. My eyes hold on to the ice, thought I don’t know what to do with it exactly, this scraggly, unorthodox thing.”
The reader experiences, through Rush, the surprise and wonder of discovering how the scientists gather soil cores, how and why they collect animal bits from an island, their anxiety when they lose touch with an underwater remote vehicle, and what they learn from observing this keystone glacier as it reacts to a changing, but undeniably warming environment.
She introduces several of her shipmates—the crew and the scientists— and as a reader, I often can’t remember to whom a writer is referring. Even though her cast is large, the short, transcribed comments on a host of issues, ranging from personal life stories to professional anecdotes are vivid and memorable.
There’s humor, too. One scientist, Lars, describes tagging seals: “It’s a
small group in a small place, so you have to get comfortable with other people’s body functions. It takes respect and trust, weirdly enough. Like, sometimes you have to take a crap on the beach...”
Rush wrestles with “the case against kids” and its assertion that population growth is unsustainable.
“The fundamental premise is clear enough,” she writes: “the Earth would be better off without us, or at the very least, with fewer of us.”
But she lands in what seemed to me a reasonable and defendable decision— her child might one day contribute to solutions to the pressing threats. Especially galling is what she digs up about the notion of an individual carbon footprint, apparently created by British Petroleum in a series of clever ads that deflected blame from corporation to individual. Shameful. It’s not surprising that her earlier book, Rising: Dispatches from the New American Shore was a Pulitzer finalist. She may just win for The Quickening. Full disclosure: Rush wrote an essay on climate change for Island Journal, published by Island Institute.
Tom Groening is editor of The Working Waterfront and Island Journal.
saltwater cure
Heaven is other people
Setting myself up for social interaction
BY COURTNEY NALIBOFF
ANOTHER NORTH HAVEN summer has come, and more or less gone. Most of our friends have departed for points south or west. All but a few boats at the Casino have been stored for the winter.
At the time of writing, I am physically, if not emotionally, prepared to begin my 20th year at North Haven Community School.
While the weather in September and even early October often stays summery and golden, and the vegetable garden makes its most impressive showing into early autumn, the most notable seasonal shift we experience on North Haven is in the number of human beings on our little rock.
Like a murmuration of starlings, summer residents and visitors descend and ascend, seemingly en masse. Those of us who enjoy yearround habitation croak like the ravens who also spend the winter here: Get out of the middle of the road! Walk against traffic! Bike in single file! Let us order some pizza too!
Yes, we kvetch. Myself included, especially on my third lap through town looking for a parking space. But the truth is that I am an extrovert, and I absolutely thrive on social interaction. The summer throngs are essential to my well-being.
One of my favorite summer activities is to bring a book to town, get an iced coffee at Waterman’s, and park myself somewhere busy. The tables in the Waterman’s courtyard are nice, and this summer I spent quite a bit of time at the Casino dock waiting for Penrose to come back from a sailing adventure. In the event that nobody stops by to chat I have my book and my coffee for entertainment, but my real motive is to invite the small talk, connection, and occasional opportunity that comes from making myself available in this way. It rarely disappoints. Although I have sworn off working in the summer (the production of the
I
play Matilda notwithstanding), I did find myself working at the Turner Farm stand a few days last summer and took a last-minute shift at the brunch cash register at the end of this season.
The location and coworkers (and cows) can’t be beat, but it’s also a handy way to put myself in front of a healthy slice of the population.
absolutely
thrive
on social interaction. The summer throngs are essential to my well-being.
chefs, cleaners, or farmers. The rhythm of our parenting changes, with kids occupied at camp or sailing during the day and time for leisurely adult lunches or frantic curriculum planning sessions while they’re gone.
The micro-interactions of ringing up someone’s brunch order are just about enough, but the longer conversations that happen as the pace of service slows are even better. The staff meal after, a mix of old friends and newer ones, was an unexpected bonus.
Most of my closest friends live here all year, of course, but summer changes the nature of our interactions. Many of us are teachers, with summers “off,” but that usually just means our schedules become less regular.
We might swim at 6 a.m., then say goodbye as many head off to become
journal of an island kitchen
Summer in a jar
It’s
been a peachy, beany, tomatoey season
BY SANDY OLIVER
GREEN BEANS, tomatoes, peaches, and corn! Late August and September give us a summery abundance in cooler portions of Maine even as chain grocery stores lay out pumpkins and move apples to the front of the produce section.
With peaches still on the tree, I’m hardly in the mood for Halloween or apple pie.
Summer is winding down, for sure. Cooler overnights (good sleeping weather) and the equinox prove fall is on the way. I’m taking stock of how this summer went. Finally, a good growing season. I’d nearly forgotten what a good one was like, especially after last summer. If you don’t remember, I’ll spare reminding you.
of two parts water to one of sugar is all that’s needed. I usually leave one pit in the jar to intensify the peach flavor.
The peaches that pick themselves and get slightly bruised when they hit the ground are the main ingredient in peach chutney, simply my favorite for chutney and cheddar sandwiches, or adding to any curry dish at all, or to enliven boring old chicken breasts.
The green beans grew heartily this summer. Plants, sturdily upright and deep green, yielded up two plentiful pickings, plus a respectable third, and 15 quarts plus five pints of dilly beans resulted, along with a handful of meals.
I’ve filled mason jars full; good use for small peaches whose skins slip off easily after being scalded…
The sorest loss in 2023 was the peaches whose buds were blasted in cold winds and 16-below-zero one February weekend. You can imagine the joy when peaches this year filled branches and turned red-cheeked.
I’ve filled mason jars full; good use for small peaches whose skins slip off easily after being scalded and slide into a jar without argument. A light syrup
Provider is my favorite variety; the beans grow straight and long, hence the need for quart jars.
One garlic clove plus a fresh, green, dill-seed head and one dill flower head per jar ensures strong dill presence. Tomatoes! Now we thank my renovated hoop house which keeps the tomatoes warm overnight and even ripens some by the end of July. Slicers, I notice, are popular among the sandwich crowd, the primary cause being, I suspect, BLTs.
However, a chopped tomato combined with chopped cucumber in the bottom of a salad bowl stirred up with a bit of mayo and slivers of basil, over which one scatters lettuce in bite sized pieces, makes my favorite self-dressing salad when you toss the whole lovely mess together.
I like plum tomatoes, myself. I scald them, slide their skins off, plop them into a canning jar, sometimes with a leaf or two of basil, or a clove of garlic, and some coarse pickling salt. Preserved in this way, they are at their most flexible in the kitchen.
I used to make quarts and quarts of sauce until a housemate simply hit a panful of whole canned tomatoes with an emersion blender to whirl it into sauce. I used to have gobs of tomato seeds which I dumped into the compost pile and which sprouted up handfuls of little seedlings in the spring, but now we eat them. Some say tomato seeds make the sauce bitter, but you couldn’t prove it by me and the local supertaster claims he can’t discern bitterness.
And now corn. We eat corn on the cob until we get silly from it. Supper after supper, corn cooked immediately after picking leaves us glassy-eyed. Some I shave off the cob to freeze for winter corn chowder or shepherd’s pie. Some I turn into corn relish, a recipe learned from my friend Sharon.
We might suddenly notice that friends we see every day from September to June seemingly vanish for the summer.
But the broadening of our friend group in the summer season doesn’t make our year-round friends any less precious, and they’re the ones we most often meet at Calderwood for pizza or at the beach for a cookout. Maintaining our connections despite the shifts in schedule is essential—once we blink and summer is over, it’s up to us nonmigratory birds to fill each other’s social cups.
Courtney Naliboff lives, teaches, writes, and plays music on North Haven. She may be contacted at Courtney. Naliboff@gmail.com.
For some reason, I had the idea I wouldn’t like it, maybe because of my predilection for butter and salt on corn. The idea of adding sugar and vinegar to corn seemed odd.
“Taste this,” said Sharon and I did. “Wow,” I said, “this is good!” “I knew I’d convert you,” she said. So now, corn relish joins the dilly bean and cucumber-based pickle and relish line-up on the shelves in the cellarway. Since last fall, through the winter and spring, jars full of favorite veges disappeared from the shelves, one by one, just as the level of potatoes, carrots, beets dropped in the storage buckets hung from joists in the cellar, like a tide receding slowly but surely.
This time of year, the tide of vegetables flows in, and by the end of October, joined by apples and bunches of onions strung on loops of string, a winter’s worth of enough is ready to eat.
On the shelves, golden peaches, scarlet tomatoes, dark green beans, and calico yellow, green and red flecked relish sit, glowing plentifully.
Summer in a jar.
Sandy Oliver is a food historian who gardens, cooks, and writes on Islesboro. She may be contacted at SandyOliver47@gmail.com.
That end of summer feeling
September offers sweet season cranberry report
BY BARBARA FERNALD
COVID CAUGHT UP with a lot of people I know during the summer. Some of them for the first time.
At the beginning of August, when an abundant summer was hitting its peak, I came down with a sore throat and headache. Two days later I tested positive for the virus I’ve managed to avoid for four years. It evolved into some sort of bronchial mess with a fever and I was out of the running for summer fun for about three weeks.
I missed several events, I missed seeing a bunch of friends, and I even missed seeing our grandkids for the week they were here. Waaah, waaah, waaaah, poor little me. But wait. No need to call in the “waaambulance.” Summer lasts at least three weeks beyond Labor Day and I intend to enjoy every bit of it.
Feeling healthy in September on Little Cranberry Island is the perfect antidote to any selfpity one could feel from missing out in August.
Barring any hurricane activity, the month of September usually provides
glorious weather with temperatures warm enough to encourage staying outside.
September in my garden still looks like summer to me. It’s the perfect time to whip the garden into shape for a few more weeks of visual enjoyment. Some of the annuals will keep flowering once I dead-head them and the Japanese anemones are starting to open up.
Feeling healthy in September on Little Cranberry Island is the perfect antidote…
Cone flowers are still blooming and so are the cosmos.
Bright blue morning glories will greet us all month from the top of the garden fence. School has started but our grandkids will come back for fall visits and my carrots will be ready for their help in harvesting.
Though there are still plenty of people around— visitors come out for the day and friends are able to stay into fall— there is a quieting down that begins in September. Children are back in
school and the songbirds have either left or are getting ready.
I set my phone outside with the Merlin app turned on to listen for 15 minutes. The only birds it heard were a chickadee, a cardinal, a crow, and a goldfinch.
This loss of birdsong used to make me sad but I know it allows me to hear the low howling of seals as they “sing” from the ledges in the Gut. Their unique lowtide symphony is a sound I get to hear all month, along with the background rumble of lobster boat engines while the weather is warm enough for open windows. The quiet is not yet lonely.
“I love it here in September,” said my friend Emily, from Boston, as we sat on the sand in late afternoon sun. “It’s so beautiful and still warm enough to be able to come to the beach. I like that it gets quieter.”
There are still a few of us who will get to the beach as long as the weather holds. Along with carefree conversation there’s always a chance for deeper discussions with fewer people.
We review the busy summer and laugh over feelings of FOMO (fear of missing out) which are inevitable with so many different schedules and so many people here in July and August.
After Labor Day the pressure lessens to reciprocate summer dinner invitations. Put those people on the list for next year and apply that entertainment energy to reconnecting with island friends and family who are still here. That’s my plan.
“There ought to be a separate name for this season in September,” said Emily. I agree. It is a month brimming with its own distinctive qualities before fall changes everything again.
In the Sami culture of Swedish Lapland they actually do have names for eight seasons of the year. The month of August, referred to as AutumnSummer or Tjaktjagiesse, is a season to harvest berries and mushrooms and to start storing food for leaner months. Autumn-Summer would describe our September season pretty well too. If I had to come up with a name for it I might just call it “potentially perfect.” It’s a great little season to make up for lost time.
Barbara Fernald lives on Islesford (Little Cranberry Island). She may be contacted at Fernald244@gmail.com.
Island visitor brings whimsy to scientific description observer
A hidden pond, an imagined friend
BY PHIL CROSSMAN
WHEN SHE WAS a young girl and way longer than might have been advisable had someone known, Sophie imagined a companion. She’d seen Disney’s Peter Pan in 1956 and from that moment on for several years, shared her life with a miniature version of that elf, a little guy, a fairy.
She named him Victor after an uncle who seemed more at ease with her than most people. Her Victor, not the uncle, lived in and around a little wetland in a barely wooded hilltop area, the features of which were clear enough but which she’d only seen in dreams and musings.
When she was ten, her folks rented a place on Vinalhaven Island and, one morning, took her and younger siblings trudging up the rocks to the top of a hill behind their cabin. As they crested a bluff on the Fox Rocks Trail, there emerged, to her astonishment, the very place where her spritely companion dwelled and where for years she’d been an observer. While the others continued slowly on, stopping to explore this or that, she lingered. She sat on the edge of
the familiar little pool and parted the nearest stalks of startled sedge grass. She didn’t really expect to find him, though he could have hidden there; he was that small. On the other hand, if he’d hopped out in a panic she’d not have been surprised. He was kind of jumpy.
Her family then rented the same cabin for several years. During that time, she felt sure Victor never got used to her regular appearances, so she always tried not to startle him, giving notice, a little cough perhaps, as she approached.
As a sixth-grader back in Massachusetts, Sophie had won first prize among papers submitted in an elementary science writing competition among a dozen or so Berkshire schools. Her paper was titled “Life in the Slow Lane” and it animated the particulars of this very singular and isolated little island bionetwork.
It explained how this paternal pool and its several offspring puddles together comprised a complete freshwater ecosystem. She described the quality of light in the pool and contrasted it, and the tiny marine creatures that thrived in such pervasive sunshine, with deeper bodies of water and creatures elsewhere.
She sat on the edge of the familiar little pool and parted the nearest stalks of startled sedge grass.
She chronicled the life forms that inhabit it and explained that certain of those creatures would not survive in a similar pool located elsewhere, if separated by only a few degrees of latitude. She made a clear distinction between the varied lives in this pool, nearly free of organic matter, with life in other tiny waterways where dissolving particulates sustained life.
She explained that this little system was a complete watery environment, fed by a laconic spring which, while under very little pressure at this altitude still brought a continual trickle down to the several tiny tributaries just downhill.
She explained that, at its deepest— only about 10 inches—the pool has a distinct upper layer, the epilimnion, somewhat warmer than the cooler stratum below. Certain creatures, swimming insects mostly, inhabit that upper layer exclusively while others make liberal use of the entire puddle. This ecosystem, she illustrated, the one encompassing the meandering water and immediate surroundings, exists nowhere else.
At 15, again exploring the habitat during one of the family’s last visits, she hoped he’d appear. Suggestions that such whimsy was foolishness flitted around her brain, but she paid no attention. She expected—she wanted— him to emerge. Then she would ask if he knew he was the difference between her adolescent life and something less pleasant, for several years there— between ten and 15.
Phil Crossman lives on Vinalhaven. He may be contacted at PhilCrossman.vh@ gmail.com.
fathoming
Ocean, land, and temperature change
NOAA predictions could mean warmer, wetter fall
BY JENNIFER SEAVEY
MAINERS CHERISH the ocean for its beauty, bounty, and mystery. Yet the ocean’s influence extends far beyond our coastlines, impacting every living thing on Earth, everywhere. It plays a crucial role in shaping the planet’s climate and weather patterns, influencing everything from local temperatures to global atmospheric conditions.To grasp how the ocean affects these patterns, we need to explore its key processes: heat distribution, ocean currents, and ocean-atmosphere interactions.
A primary way the ocean influences climate is through its ability to absorb, store, and redistribute heat. Water has a high heat capacity compared to land, meaning it can retain more heat energy with minimal temperature changes. This makes the ocean a thermal buffer, moderating temperature fluctuations over both short and long periods.
Coastal regions, for example, often have milder temperatures than inland areas because the ocean regulates heat. During summer, the ocean absorbs excess heat, and in winter, it releases this stored heat, reducing temperature extremes.
Ocean currents, which are large-scale flows of seawater driven by wind, Earth’s rotation, and water density differences, also play a vital role in heat distribution. These currents transfer thermal energy from the equator to higher latitudes.
The Gulf Stream, a warm current originating in the Gulf of Mexico, flows across the Atlantic Ocean towards Europe, significantly warming Western Europe’s climate. In contrast, cold currents like the California Current can cool coastal regions and affect local weather.
Ocean currents also impact weather patterns and climate phenomena. For instance, the El NiñoSouthern Oscillation (ENSO) cycle includes El Niño and La Niña phases.
La Niña, on the other hand, is characterized by cooler-than-average sea surface temperatures in the same region, often causing opposite effects like increased precipitation in some areas and droughts in others.
El Niño involves warming surface waters in the central and eastern Pacific Ocean, disrupting normal weather patterns…
El Niño involves warming surface waters in the central and eastern Pacific Ocean, disrupting normal weather patterns and leading to extreme weather events such as heavy rainfall, droughts, and altered storm tracks.
reflections
NOAA predicts a 66% chance of La Niña conditions emerging between September and November, potentially influencing wetter and warmer conditions in the Northeast this fall and winter.
The interaction between the ocean and the atmosphere is also crucial. The exchange of heat, moisture, and gases between the ocean and atmosphere impacts weather systems and climate.
For example, evaporation from the ocean surface contributes to cloud formation and precipitation. Warm ocean waters increase evaporation rates, adding more moisture to the atmosphere,
How to say goodbye to an island
Lessons learned, a life experience savored
Reflections is written by Island Fellows, recent college grads who do community service work on Maine islands and in coastal communities through the Island Institute, publisher of The Working Waterfront.
BY OLIVIA LENFESTEY
AT SOME POINT during my final summer of living on Islesboro, the thought of how to say goodbye trickled in.
At first, I let it exist only in conversation:
“You must be finishing up the Fellowship soon,” people said to me in line at the general store. “When are you heading off?”
“End of the summer” I replied, taking the question in stride. “I’ve still got plenty of time.”
When saying goodbye to an island, denial, as with grief, is always the first step.
In June, I took to leaving my car on the mainland and committed to riding my bike everywhere. I did so partly to cut down on the expense of peak-season ferry tickets and partly in search of a new perspective.
Biking became my solace as it made the island wild to me once again. My commutes took longer, but at my slowed pace, I had time to notice new details—the dirt roads I didn’t know connected and the coves that lay hidden beyond them.
Everything became highly visible, softened through my lens of impermanence. I saw the redwinged blackbirds swinging in the cattails and the patches of erosion inching closer below them. July wrapped itself up quickly, as I worked with the members of the sea level rise committee to make a smooth transition away from my work. I tucked all that I had produced during my tenure— articles, documents, graphic timelines, website content—into a portfolio, like all of the Fellows who came before me. I attended my final committee meetings and signed out of town accounts. Saying goodbye was written into my work.
It is hard to remember now how, at the beginning, living alone on an island for two years felt like a major contract to sign. At that point, the data was oversimplified: two falls, two winters,
which can intensify storms and alter precipitation patterns.
Hurricanes and typhoons, which form over tropical oceans, derive their energy from warm waters. The current record warm waters in over 80% of the tropical Atlantic and Caribbean Sea are expected to fuel storm systems for the remainder of the 2024 season.
In summary, the ocean’s impact on Earth’s climate and weather is profound and multifaceted. Its capacity to store and redistribute heat, drive ocean currents, and interact with the atmosphere shapes regional climates, influences weather patterns, and moderates temperature extremes.
The ocean is integral to life on Earth, and understanding its influence helps us appreciate its role in Maine and beyond.
Jennifer Seavey is chief programs officer with Island Institute, publisher of The Working Waterfront. She may be contacted at jseavey@islandinstitute.org.
two springs, two summers; 730 days, 104 weeks, 3 miles offshore.
The way I look at it now, I see my fellowship not as a contained experience of living and working with an island community, but as a way of thinking that has shaped how I will forever seek connection to a place.
With less than 12 weeks left on the island, biking became my solace as it made the island wild to me once again.
I take stock of the lessons I learned from the island and assess how to carry them forward. I am leaving this position with a wealth of knowledge about municipal governance, narrative building, state resources, grant funding, and experience working on a local climate adaptation project.
While I spent a lot of time looking at flood maps and talking about the threat that climate change poses to current infrastructure, I also had the opportunity to engage in conversations about what we want the future of this place
to look like. The process of re-imaging what is possible and working in community to solve local issues has restored a sense of hope in me.
By the time August snuck up with its foggy mornings and cool nights, even the long, slow ferry lines whittled me down into something nostalgic. I leaned against the hood of my friend’s car, hot in the afternoon sun, and we chatted while we waited for the boat.
“How much longer are you around, Liv?” my friend asked.
“Until the end of the month,” I said, “and then I’ll be gone.” But as the words leave me, I know they are not true. This will always be a place I return to, in some way or another.
And, in the end, that is how I said goodbye to the island: “See you later, Islesboro.”
Olivia “Liv” Lenfestey worked with Islesboro’s Grindle Point Lighthouse Museum and the town’s sea level rise committee. She grew up in Santa Fe, N.M.
in plain sight
Former federal buildings are maritime commerce relics
Customs houses were key government income producers
BY KELLY PAGE
SCATTERED ACROSS the coast of Maine are the remnants of a network of federal buildings that were once the center for documenting maritime commerce. The activities of custom houses included recording the arrivals and clearances of vessels, examining cargoes, collecting duties, and listing passengers and crew.
For a large chunk of American history, income from customs duties and fees was actually the primary source of the United States government’s income.
Other responsibilities of the appointed position of Collector of Customs revolved around the registration of vessels, either newly built or owned in a district.
Maine custom districts were very busy in this regard. In the 1850s, Maine was the leader in shipbuilding by almost double the next prolific state (Massachusetts). This ranking was not determined by number of vessels, but by the sum of their cargo-carrying capacity, a volume measurement called tonnage.
establish more districts to enforce policies and realize income. The number expanded to 13 by 1840, each with a Port of Entry established as the Seat of Customs and home to a purpose-built custom house. Deputy collectors were assigned to other established ports of delivery working out of their homes or commercial office spaces.
The Waldoboro Custom House depicted on the accompanying postcard was built 1855-1857 following an 1854 fire that completely destroyed the previous structure. The building also served as the post office.
At the time of its construction, Waldoboro was the nation’s seventh largest customs district by tonnage. Bath was the only district that was more prolific in the state.
At the time of its construction, Waldoboro was the nation’s seventh largest customs district by tonnage.
In the late 18th century, Maine started off with only two districts— Portland and Bath. The new U.S. government quickly worked to
FIELD NOTES—
The district included towns in Lincoln and Knox counties, spanning the Damariscotta River to the southern reaches of Penobscot Bay. In 1913, with reduced maritime commerce, due in part to expanded inland infrastructure, Maine customs operations consolidated in Portland. Additionally, much of the vessel-documentation side of the Customs Service has since been diverted to the Coast Guard. Waldoboro’s Custom House and
Post office then served for many decades as the Waldoboro Public Library.
Still standing in downtown Waldoboro, on the north side of Main Street just west of the Waldo Theatre, it was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1974. Currently, it is a private residence.
Among the museum’s upcoming events is the Oct. 6, 3:30-5:30 p.m. Oyster Tasting Cruise with Jolie Rogers Raw Bar featuring Maine Ocean Farms and Merry Island Oysters. The two-hour river cruise will feature explanations of how
oysters are cultivated, harvested, taken to market, and why different watershed habitats impact the shellfish’s flavor. Each guest will receive a ticket for a dozen oysters on the half-shell and a beverage of choice from the museum’s beer and wine list. Take in spectacular river views, learn about Maine’s thriving oyster industry, and sample some of the tastiest treats the Maine coast has to offer. Additional oysters can be purchased aboard. For more information, see: MaineMaritimeMuseum.org.
Kelly Page is curator of collections Maine Maritime Museum in Bath.
On the water with Island Institute’s Phoebe Walsh
name: Phoebe Walsh
title: Community development officer in the Institute’s Center for Marine Economy focus: I contribute to Island Institute’s efforts to reduce emissions in our marine industries, with a particular emphasis on fostering the adoption of electric outboards. I also work more broadly to help businesses and individuals convert to clean energy on the working waterfront and on aquaculture farms. I offer support in my work through technical assistance and expertise, as well as administering grant money.
in this photo: On Wednesday, Aug. 28, I visited Ryan Maker and his family, who recently received a Community Impact Fund Spark! Grant from the Institute to purchase an electric outboard and a solar charger and battery backup. The outboard is used on the family skiff for near-shore lobstering and bait fishing by his son Luke, who has his student license. Ryan hopes to eventually replace the larger gas outboard that he uses for clamming. I was checking in on how the technology is working out.
The Waldoboro Custom House, circa 1890s. PHOTO: MAINE MARITIME MUSEUM
David Dewey’s Rockland
In brilliant watercolors, painter shares his sense of place art of the waterfront
IN 1986 PAINTER David Dewey, his wife Kathy, and their two daughters began summering in Owls Head village. They were drawn to the area by artist friends, most notably Lois Dodd, who lives in Cushing. At the same time, Dewey declares, “the natural, human environment, the light in Maine, and its history in American art—as a painter, I needed to be here!”
Dewey wasted little time settling into painting Owls Head, Rockland, and other nearby locales.
“I never considered myself a marine painter,” he relates, but the “luminous expansiveness” of coastal scenes compelled him to take watercolor brush in hand and paint.
In “Sea Street Place” Dewey represents a “nostalgic old-world working harbor” with its industrial buildings and boats, including the handsome and humble tug Robbins Reef. The painting is a stunning study of light and shadow, with a wonderful pale blue running from end to end lending it visual balance.
Late afternoon sun turns the background building into a plane of yellow, its geometry set off by smoke rising from a chimney. The tugboat almost seems to plow into this configuration of angular shapes.
“My ideas begin with, and are driven by, observation and recording subjects that have a structural and emotional framework,” writes Dewey. His recent Rockland works, “obsessed with” over the past three years, are underpinned by observational and studio works going back to when he
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David Dewey working on site in Rockland. PHOTO: COURTESY OF ARTIST
first began “wandering around” getting to know the city as a subject.
The watercolor’s horizontal format grew out of Dewey’s Weskeag Marsh paintings from 2020, gorgeous renderings of the tidal wetland in South Thomaston. That subject caused him to “stretch out and see things as if I was looking at a long storyboard.”
As a painter of light, Dewey explains, watercolor is a natural medium.
“It is all about light through the transparent layering of color pigments on white paper,” he writes, adding, “It both represents and symbolizes light by its very nature.”
Early morning and late afternoon with their “richness of color” are his favorite times of day to paint.
painting various subjects in watercolor, including rusting trawlers tied up along the waterfront.
Hopper’s primary interest was in “sunlight and shadow.” The structure of light, writes Dewey, “provided a dynamic abstract framework to his compositions.” Dewey supposes he was drawn to Rockland for similar reasons. “My good fortune is that I’ve spent most of my career painting here.”
As a painter of light, Dewey explains, watercolor is a natural medium.
In a statement for his recent show at Caldbeck Gallery, Dewey harks back to Edward Hopper who spent seven weeks in Rockland in 1926
A distinguished professor of art and author of the groundbreaking The Watercolor Book, Dewey was co-founder and co-director of the Joseph A. Fiore Art Center at Rolling Acres Farm in Jefferson and curator of the Firehouse Center Art Center in Damariscotta. His paintings are part of a number of
the property with a gentle slope toward the shore. This is a beautiful area and an unusual offering of waterfront land. $285,000.
important public collections, including the Bowdoin and Colby College museums, the Farnsworth and Portland museums, the Frye Art Museum in Seattle, and the Addison Gallery of American Art in Andover, Mass.
In writing about Dewey’s remarkable accomplishments in watercolor, Susan Larsen, former Farnsworth Museum curator and director of the Rabkin Foundation, praises his ability to extend its reach.
“He has added new dimensions to its technical vocabulary,” she states, “and created a body of work whose evanescent beauty stirs the soul and leaves us breathless before the wonders of a place we know and love.” That’s Dewey’s gift: a brilliant sense of place and the wherewithal to share it with us.
Dewey is represented by the Caldbeck Gallery in Rockland. You can learn more about the artist at www.daviddeweystudio.com.
David Dewey’s “Sea Street Place” (2024), watercolor, 10-inches by 38¼ inches. PHOTO: COURTESY CALDBECK GALLERY, ROCKLAND
