The Working Waterfront - August 2022

News from Maine’s Island and Coastal Communities volume 36, № 6

published by the island institute

Digging the softshells

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august 2022 n free circulation: 50,000

workingwaterfront.com

CLAM GARDENING—

Research may help reverse decline

By Sarah Craighead Dedmon

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ummer in Maine brings hungry vacationers seeking lobster rolls, blueberry pie, and the iconic softshell clam—fried, steamed, or in chowder. Clam prices are spiking in response to demand and hundreds of Maine clammers are working to meet it while the market is hot.

“I figure I’ll make 75% to 80% of my yearly income between June and October,” says David Cale, who clams in Machiasport, where he also serves on the town’s shellfish committee.

By value, softshell clams are Maine’s second largest fishery behind lobster. They’re a distant second but drew a respectable $25 million into the Maine economy last year.

There was a time when Maine’s clammers brought in much, much more. In 1977, they landed 7.8 million pounds, compared to 1.5 million pounds last year. The numbers fluctuate across the decades, but the overall trajectory is down.

“The landings data are very scary,” says Brian Beal, a marine ecology professor at the University of Maine at Machias and Director of Research at the Downeast Institute. Beal clammed his way through

Dr. Brian Beal of the Downeast Institute on Beals Island works with Madeline Williams setting up a test pot for softshell clams. PHOTO: LESLIE BOWMAN

high school and college and remembers when the harvest was better.

“If this were the pulp industry, or the lobster industry that experienced the loss of this many jobs, it would be a hue and cry,” says Beal. “But it’s just the lowly clam.”

Ask the reason for the softshell clam’s decline, and Beal does not hesitate.

“It’s warming water. We’re seeing higher and higher summer temperatures and we’re getting milder continued on page 13

Young lobsters not surviving first weeks Juvenile food sources may be key

By Fritz Freudenberger

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here is a crustacean conundrum in the Gulf of Maine. Despite increased numbers of lobsters being born in recent years, the

number of adolescents has declined.

Something is affecting the survival rates of lobsters in their first few weeks of life, and researchers from Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences and the University of Maine think it may have to do with how they eat.

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“Baby lobsters undergo such incred- bottom of the ocean has decreased ible changes during their first month,” during the same time period. said Evie Layland, one of several One possible reason is that warming UMaine graduate students conditions in the Gulf investigating the decline of Maine are changing under the guidance of their food. Scientists have Research Bigelow Laboratory scienobserved that a decline in a has already tists. “They also face a lot common prey species called of challenges. They have Calanus finmarchicus revealed to avoid predators, search strongly correlates with the that some for food that may not be decline of juvenile lobsters as plentiful as it used to be, lobster larvae and think the two may be and respond to changing show signs of related. However, despite environmental conditions. how iconic the North starvation in The little dudes just have a American lobster is to the lot on their plates.” region, the diet of young their earliest There has been a steady lobsters remains a mystery. stages… increase in the number of Alex Ascher, another adult lobsters in the Gulf UMaine graduate student of Maine over the last working at Bigelow Lab, is few decades. This has led to a record trying to answer this question. After number of baby lobsters swimming dissecting their stomachs, he uses in the water during their larval stages. DNA evidence and keen eyes to figure Paradoxically, however, the number out what’s inside. of juvenile lobsters that settle to the continued on page 13

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The Working Waterfront . august 2022

Some of the cars featured at the Seal Cove Auto Museum would have been seen on the roads of Mount Desert Island in the early 20th century, much to the consternation of some residents. From left: 1912 Ford Model T, 1904 Knox, 1915 FRP, and 1910 Pierce Arrow.

PHOTO: COURTESY SEAL COVE AUTO MUSEUM

Wiz chariots and sunken Broncos Acadia National Park at a literal crossroads “ It’s nothing but a big picnic ground for ‘Elks,’ and ‘Spiritualists,’ and ‘Holy Ghosters.’ The whole island is full of campers from Skowhegan, Bucksport, Rockland, and Ellsworth, that don’t do nothin’ but sit in front of their tents, eat bananas and read the Sunday papers.”

—Arthur Train

By Earl Brechlin

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ount Desert Island and Acadia National Park have always had a tumultuous relationship with cars.

Despite society’s embrace of automobiles in the early years of the last century, skepticism on the island was high, particularly among the wealthy elites who built lavish summer “cottages” in which to escape the sweltering heat and foul effluvia of East Coast cities.

Even with laws banning cars from driving onto the island, enterprising local residents began bringing vehicles in by barge. The summer community responded by getting the Maine Legislature to pass a law banning the transfer of cars across local wharfs and piers. So people built their own, often using boat parts.

The “Auto War” between residents and summer swells reached a fever pitch in 1913 when the legislature finally rescinded local bans and the rest, as they say, is history.

During the debate, New York newspaperman and summer resident Arthur Train, writing in the Bar Harbor Record, lamented the coming age of the “automobilists,” predicting it would spell doom in just a few years.

By 1920, Train wrote, Bass Harbor would become the island’s commercial center. He predicted, “The erstwhile little fishing village is now a thriving town with two large hotels owned by Moe Levy of New York, one of them having a thousand fully furnished rooms, 14 garages, two gasoline factories, car works, and train sheds.”

Somesville, which counts itself among those claiming to have the prettiest village in Maine, did not escape unscathed in his dystopian vision. “This place is a regular Coney Island—all except the camels,” Train predicted. “It’s nothing but a big picnic ground for ‘Elks,’ and ‘Spiritualists,’ and ‘Holy Ghosters.’ The whole island is full of campers from Skowhegan, Bucksport, Rockland, and Ellsworth, that don’t do nothin’ but sit in front of their tents, eat bananas, and read the Sunday papers.”

Looking to escape that scrum was Acadia’s biggest benefactor, John D. Rockefeller Jr. His desire to ride his horse-drawn carriages unmolested by cars, led to the creation of Acadia’s carriage road system

which remains free of cars to this day. Ironically traffic after turning on their four-way flashers, better it was the swelling profits from motorcar gasoline known locally as “park anywhere lights.”

The Bar Island sandbar got national network and sales by his family’s company, Standard Oil, that newspaper exposure this spring when the owner of an made that possible.

Rockefeller, too, understood people’s affection expensive Ford Bronco attempted to do doughnuts on for the automobile as a method of access. So he was some mudflats and became hopelessly mired. It took instrumental in creating and funding construction of days to get it out. A month earlier another group of the spectacular Park Loop Road that is the main motor joyriders learned a rental car isn’t much of a submarine route to much of the park. There is no way he, park thanks to the incoming tide on Seal Harbor Beach. So co-founders George Dorr or Charles Eliot, all contem- far this season it’s high tide 4, visitors 0.

It is almost like the ocean has developed its poraries of Train, could have predicted what chalown immune system, taking up arms against a lenges their gift would face more than a century later. noxious infection, isolating and Fast forward to today and too destroying the invaders. many cars is one of the park’s Acadia, of course, is not alone it biggest problems negatively Rockefeller…was its transportation troubles. Many impacting natural resources national parks are experiencing and visitor experiences. That instrumental in creating the same woes and are taking has spurred the adoption of and funding construction of the same steps. It remains to be a formal transportation plan the spectacular Park Loop seen if the implementation of the that calls for greater use of transportation plan’s recommenthe fare-free Island Explorer Road… dations, including the creation of shuttle buses (which have been a new gateway visitor center and supplanting tens of thousands bus hub where people can leave of cars annually for more than 20 years), a shift to smaller tour buses, and requiring their cars in Trenton, will be enough in the long run.

Doing nothing, of course, will just serve to validate reservations for the most over-loved places.

A crush of 450 cars in lots designed for just 150 Arthur Train’s prescience, however fanciful or exagat sunrise and sunset precipitated more than 70 gerated his predictions may have been.

One of the characters in Train’s essay laments what closures of the Cadillac Mountain Road in 2020.

Since 2021 reservations are required to access was lost on the island due to cars.

“When they first let in the wiz chariots, folks the popular summit between late-May and lateOctober. A timed reservation system for Ocean thought that it would whoop up business to beat the Drive has been put on hold while technology and band. The hotels all built additions and every stable was turned into a garage. The storekeepers laid in management issues are worked out.

Next up is the Jordan Pond House area where the new stock and every restaurant in town hired a corps propensity of folks to simply career off road and up of extra waiters. Then everyone got ready for the and over roadside vegetation in pursuit of a place to boom to come.”

In Train’s future, however, the flood of cars park has prompted shoulders there to be barricaded destroyed the very character people came to see. with rocks, signs, cones and metal stakes.

With more than four million visits in 2021, Mount In the decades since the Auto Wars, the island’s relationship with cars has become more of a counter- Desert Island has certainly seen boom times. With insurgency operation. The alignment of the factions Acadia’s relationship with cars at a crossroads, action has reversed—residents complaining about too many taken over the next few years will determine whether cars and traffic and today’s summer vacationers or not Train’s predicted “wiz chariot” nightmare actuunable to image visiting here without a vehicle, pref- ally comes to pass. erably a giant SUV with two kayaks, four ebikes, and a tailgate platform holding an expensive Himalayan Hailing from a family whose roots include Maine cooler that requires four people to move. author Ruth Moore and lighthouse heroine Abbie Errant and self-entitled drivers have morphed from Burgess, Earl Brechlin covered Mount Desert Island being merely irksome to become a form of entertain- as a journalist for more than 40 years. A registered ment. A Facebook page, “Welcome to Bar Harbor’s Maine Guide and award-winning Maine author, he Famous Parking Show,” shares photos of people parked resides in Bar Harbor where he is president of the Bar in crosswalks, taking up multiple spaces or blocking Harbor Historical Society.

www.workingwaterfront.com . august 2022

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Fine furniture born from island life

North Haven’s Christina Vincent’s work featured at Smithsonian

Christina Vincent sits on one of her custom benches. PHOTO: TOM GROENING

Vincent in her basement workshop. PHOTO: TOM GROENING

By Tom Groening

“I tend to be attracted to more delicate lines,” she says, while also using negative space by cutting away parts of the form. Benches, dining tables, and small accent tables are the core of her work.

Vincent met Stephanie Crossman of Vinalhaven while at the ISLE training, and Crossman told her how she had her fishing net-inspired art included at the prestigious Smithsonian Institution’s fine craft show. Vincent later applied to be featured in the show, sending a resumé and portfolio, and was one of 120 to be accepted. In fact, she was chosen to show her work there in 2020, 2021, and 2022.

“That was a huge goal of mine,” she says. “It’s an honor.” Even with tickets selling for $300, “There was a line for the opening,” Vincent says, and a couple of thousand visitors attended.

She brought a dozen pieces to the show, which provides a 10-foot by 10-foot space to exhibit. “I sold three pieces, which was great.”

Not surprisingly, the work takes concentration and focused time, with a solid two weeks being a typical start to finish process. About 80 percent of her work is commissioned by customers, most of whom are year-round or seasonal islanders.

Buyers like “the story behind it, the personality” of the piece, she says. “I would love to expand and do this more.”

“I wasn’t that handy a person 16 years ago,” when she arrived on North Haven.

“I wouldn’t have learned carpentry and then gotten into furniture-making if I didn’t live here.”

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ear the end of my visit with Christina Vincent on North Haven she casually observes that her story could only come through island living.

It’s not a dramatic story, but it is impressive. And it’s hard to see it any other way.

Vincent and her husband built their own house—an attractive saltbox that would readily fit into any subdivision, though it sits in a quiet, wooded part of the island—because that was the only way they could own a home in a place where contractors and materials aren’t readily available or affordable.

“We also built my husband’s shop,” where he is a go-to vehicle repair mechanic.

Learning building and carpentry skills led to building furniture, she says, because she needed work for the winter months. And because carpentry work can ebb and flow, she decided to launch her own landscaping business for the spring, summer, and fall.

And that furniture-making? Well, it has taken her to successive invites to an annual showcase at the Smithsonian Institution.

Vincent, 40, is a native Mainer, having grown up in Auburn. She attended the University of Rhode Island, majoring in fashion design and marketing with a minor in art. She’s been living on North Haven for 16 years. Her husband’s brother lived on the island, and visits with him convinced the couple to make the move.

In 2013, she started the landscaping business, and based on my visit on a Friday in May, it’s a going concern. Vincent had been working in gardens all morning and met me at the ferry landing in her small truck, loaded with tools and supplies.

At her home, plants had arrived via FedEx, and before driving me back to the village, she grabbed bags of soil and tossed them into the back of the truck.

“I tried my hand at carpentry,” she says, tracing the journey to her current dualbusiness life. “I liked that,” in part because it allowed her to access her design background. Then, “the landscape business took hold and became my main source of income.”

But the highlight of the visit is her furniture. Vincent’s approach to the craft grew out of her several experiences, not just the carpentry.

In 2013, she participated in ISLE, a course focusing on developing a business plan once offered by the Island Institute, publisher of The Working Waterfront. It helped Vincent ground herself for taking on the commitment of expensive tools like table saws, planers, and joiners, as well as imported tropical woods, and the significant time required for building fine furniture.

“I think the biggest thing is being confident with tools,” she says. “I started to do woodworking in 2015, then it became furniture.”

Vincent had met Peter Korn, founder of the Rockport-based Center for Furniture Craftsmanship, “and he encouraged me to take a class.” She attended a three-month session at the school and found the creative side of building furniture connected to her artistic side.

“I was always an artist in high school,” even being voted “class artist.”

The aesthetic of her work is modern, yet not far from traditional shapes and forms. There is a minimalist use of wood, and she challenges herself to see how far she can she go without affecting the structural strength of the piece.

Vincent poses with her work at the Smithsonian Institution’s fine craft show in Washington D.C. PHOTO: COURTESY CHRISTINA VINCENT

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The Working Waterfront . august 2022

Book Review

Biblical echoes in Maine community life Reissued Ruth Moore novel still relevant Speak to the Winds

By Ruth Moore, Islandport Press edition, 2022, first published 1956

Review by Tina Cohen RUTH MOORE (1903-1989) was born on Gotts Island off Mount Desert Island. Growing up there, she witnessed the transition of that small fishing village into more of a summer colony with its seasonal residents “from away.”

She left to attend high school in nearby Ellsworth, then went to the state teacher’s college in Albany, N.Y. as an English Lit major. Her early jobs included investigating crimes for the NAACP, editor at Reader’s Digest magazine, and managing a fruit farm in California.

Increasingly focused on writing poetry and fiction, she lived for awhile in Greenwich Village, part of its artist community. Her second book

published, Spoonhandle was published in 1946 and made into a movie, Deep Waters (filmed on Vinalhaven in 1947).

The Hollywood production reworked her story, an outcome she found disillusioning and maddening. However, the income allowed her to buy land in 1947 in Northport. She and her life partner Eleanor Mayo built their own home there and stayed the rest of their lives.

Moore published 13 novels and three collections of poetry. As described on the Ruth Moore pages of the Islandport Press website, “Her works are emotionally, politically, and socially complex reflections of life in small-town Maine, written with vivid descriptions of the landscape, and including local dialect.”

Although I was familiar with the Deep Waters film because of its Vinalhaven connection, Moore was an author I had not yet read. As a fan of Elizabeth Strout and Carolyn Chute—similarly incisive and empathic writers depicting small town Maine life—I suppose I should have. But it took the recent prompting from my editor to get me there, alerting me that Islandport Press was now reissuing Ruth Moore titles.

Speak to the Winds is as relevant today as it would have been in Moore’s

time, portraying life on an island where generations of families persist, carrying on the work of lobstering, growing food, raising children, weighing choices like leaving for further education or other jobs, and accepting into the community those coming “from away.”

The title, however, still puzzled me after finishing the book. Speak to the winds? I know there seems to be an effect, when speaking into a strong wind, that the sound goes nowhere. Was that what Moore was portraying—perhaps a certain frustration with the effort to communicate—a kind of “talk to the hand”?

But once I googled it, the intended meaning seemed clearer. It’s a Biblical reference, from a chapter from the Old Testament book of Ezekiel. After Jerusalem was destroyed in 586 BC by King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon, the temple—which had been Israel’s pride and glory for almost 400 years—was reduced to ashes.

Warnings from God had gone unheeded. When God spoke to Ezekiel, telling him to “speak to the wind for me,” God intended that wind to resuscitate, breathe new life into those he saw as spiritually dead. Moore, certainly familiar with wind along the coast of Maine as

a force to be reckoned with, could have seen it as potentially enlivening as well as a means to changing direction.

There is also an implication that, as with Ezekiel, individuals can make that difference and get a community back on track, reviving the values that had brought them cohesion and cooperation before.

And that theme is at the center of Speak to the Winds. Moore’s fictional “Chin’s Island” community had lost its cooperative spirit, no longer valuing tolerance, respect, and the traditions which once united them. Instead, tension among factions blossomed, and distrust, mean-spiritedness, and gossip undermined resolution.

In our own times, the pandemic challenged us to remember that our success as communities relies on tolerance, respect, healthy communication, and valuing our neighborly connections. Resuscitating ourselves, rebuilding our lives—Moore understood these are recurring demands that come in many forms and must be grappled with constructively.

Tina Cohen is a Massachusetts-based therapist who lives seasonally on Vinalhaven.

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www.workingwaterfront.com . august 2022

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Book Review

Going deep on Russian lit

Portland novelist takes on genre and succeeds Monkey: A Russian Novel

By Agnes Bushell; Littoral Books, 2022

Review by Dana Wilde AGNES BUSHELL’S latest novel Monkey is in some ways a very conventional and in other ways a very peculiar book.

We’ll get to the peculiarity in a moment (note the subtitle, “A Russian Novel”), but meanwhile Monkey’s plot, characters, and scenic narrative will be comfortably familiar to readers of mainstream modern fiction. So will a good part of its thematic material, which includes (among other things) the threat of political authoritarianism; a stolidly contemporary view of the lot of women in society; and the strange nature of language, writing, and the writing life.

As the story opens sometime in the mid-19th century, the aging poet

Anastasia Barakova has secluded herself upstairs in the family home and claims to have stopped writing, much to the chagrin of her publishers and the Russian reading public.

Her blackout is due to her grief and anxiety over the disappearance of her son, Nikolai, also a writer and probably a revolutionary who may or may not have run afoul of the Tsar and his insidiously pervasive secret police.

Anastasia appoints her friend Marko Volchek, a well-connected female writer who poses, George Sand-style, as a male writer, to find the lost Nikolai, if he’s even still alive. It turns out he is a more-or-less legendary figure in Russian literary and underground political circles, and a lot of people are looking for him.

Among them are a dastardly captain in the secret police, an Argentine playboy/scientist, and Fyodor Fyodorov and Elena Blavatskaya, characters based loosely on the historical cosmist philosopher and theosophist spiritual medium of roughly the same names.

Various people, for various reasons, are also looking for Nikolai’s missing book, titled, as rumor has it, Monkey.

There are sketchy stories about the

possible whereabouts of its manuscript, about whether it was ever published, about whether it was ever written. Along the way there are midnight kidnappings, imprisonments, brawls, brothels, dreams, and hallucinations. When Madame Blavatskaya gets involved, there are seances that shake the confidence of the most adamant materialists, providing openings in the narrative for discussions of cosmist metaphysics and the spirit. There are so many characters, you need a list to keep track of them (and the book provides it).

This massive cast of characters should sound familiar to readers of 19th century Russian novels. The book’s subtitle invites us to think of it as an imitation of the sprawling stories written by authors such as Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, and Turgenev. Trying to write a novel in 21st century American English that actually reads like a 19th century Russian novel seems like a recipe for literary disaster.

And therein lies the chief peculiarity of the book: It succeeds. Agnes Bushell, of Portland, may be the most skillful prose stylist now writing in Maine, on or off the best-seller radars.

Monkey carries an authentic feel and

atmosphere of (a translation of) a Russian novel. This means it gives shape to a certain sense of fatalism about human relations, and a certain sense of irony about the impossibility of happiness—or for some characters even meaning—in this life. At the same time, the wholly human narrative voice, much of it in the persona of Marko, retains the conversational, wry, good-natured tone usually found in Bushell’s books, relieving Monkey of the heaviness of much Russian fiction.

This unlikely atmospheric mixture is maintained successfully, sentence for sentence, for 600 pages. This is no small feat.

The more familiar you are with 19th century Russian history, literature, and philosophy, the more you’ll get out of Monkey. But as in all really good books, this ancillary knowledge is enriching, not prerequisite to enjoying the story.

People used to read massive novels for the same reasons people watch season after season of streaming TV series today. Monkey really fills that bill.

Dana Wilde lives in Troy. He is a member of the National Book Critics Circle.

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The Working Waterfront . august 2022

Long known as Moose Island, the relationship between Eastport’s inhabitants and the wildlife that continue to call it home has always been a close one. Today’s residents see the occasional moose, but the white-tailed deer are the cervids in highest abundance.

A love letter to my hometown

Reflections on writing Images of America: Eastport

By Lura Jackson

W

Being a port on the American frontier made Eastport a place of mystery and intrigue for audiences across the nation for a host of wild tales. In this widely circulated article, an animal pulled from the depths is described.

At various points, the fish was identified as the Great Shark-Dog Fish, the Great Utopia Lake Sea Serpent, and, finally, a basking shark.

riting Images of America: Eastport—about the place I grew up—was like writing about a very old and dear friend. Doing so from a distance of more than 1,100 road miles was like remembering someone intensely missed. At first, the distance was a distraction—but then I realized I was writing about the distant past, too. And soon, I realized the distance was actually an asset.

I’ve been a journalist in Washington County since 2013, writing for The Quoddy Tides and The Calais Advertiser. That same year I became involved with the St. Croix Historical Society (SCHS) in Calais, a relationship prompted by learning of the breadth of photographs and documents the society possessed.

That led to the first book I published with Arcadia Publishing—Images of America: Calais. I started the book in 2019 while I was living in Calais, combing through the society’s 20,000 some-odd images, but then my world dramatically changed. My father, who lives in North Carolina, was diagnosed with bone cancer, and my partner and I made the difficult choice to relocate. The pandemic arrived a few months after we did—but that’s a story I know you’re familiar with.

By necessity, I finished Calais in early 2020, and it was published that same year. Then the question came from the publisher: are you ready to write another one?

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The North American sardine industry began in Eastport in 1876, peaking with 18 factories employing hundreds of people in the work of slicing and canning the fish. Men, women, and children toiled at the oftendifficult work, sometimes working shifts that started in the early morning and didn’t end until late at night.

Taking on a book at the best of times is a commitment, but doing so in a completely unfamiliar environment while dealing with challenging personal issues felt like a lot—maybe even too much.

But then I remembered Eastport. I remembered what the water looked like, how the waves always kept coming in and going out, taking away the trials of the day like a slow steady breath. How the fog felt around my ears.

When I was a teenager in the ‘90s, Eastport was a struggling ghost city. Like most families there, we barely managed to get by. It’s different now—the artistic and cultural flavor of the city is as robust as it’s been in decades. The port is alive. Seeing the energy people have put into its revival has been truly inspiring to me, though I know there is much more to do.

Reflecting on that—that I myself was the product of Eastport’s energies, and I could, in turn, do my part to keep it going—there was no way I could refuse this project.

I knew I would need an institutional resource, similar to the SCHS, and the Tides Institute & Museum of Art (TIMA) was the perfect option.

Director Hugh French readily provided on-demand access to thousands of photos, giving me the opportunity to sift through the city’s well-documented photographic past.

Between the photographs, Hugh’s knowledge, and the written records compiled in the city’s historical

books, I became enchanted with Eastport all over again. Every photograph became a portal not just to a time and place, but to the frame of mind of the photographer as they took in the scene. Narrowing it down to 181 photographs was the first major challenge.

Like Calais, Eastport is written chronologically, framing the story of the city as it developed over time. That made it easier to write a cohesive narrative, though as I got into the modern era, it became a field of emotional landmines.

Being in North Carolina helped. Having distance enabled me to not only see how Eastport fit into the larger timeline, it enabled me to understand its charms from an external and objective perspective.

It is weird to me, still, to have completed my second widely-published book as an author, to have it be about a place I used to live, and to be far removed from that place now. Time has a way of changing things. After looking closely at the history of Eastport, I better understand that that’s OK. Images of America: Eastport is available from major online retailers or in Eastport at the Tides Institute & Museum of Art (call ahead for availability).

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Eastport was the intended site of the Passamaquoddy Tidal Power Project, the first attempt by the federal government to fund an energy generating dam fueled by the tides. It was a project thoroughly supported

by President Franklin Roosevelt, seen here examining a model still viewable in Eastport today. The project was terminated after Congress didn’t support further funding, but its influence—including a push to provide housing for 5,000 workers that led to the building of Quoddy Village—left lasting impacts on the port city.

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The Working Waterfront . august 2022

Rock Bound

‘On the road’ to a life in music A song, a singer, and a neighbor

By Tom Groening AMONG MY FAVORITE summer activities is sitting by a campfire in my yard. My firepit backs up against several acres of woods and offers views over the house of the Big Dipper, North Star, and even the edge of the Milky Way on dark nights.

I usually have music accompanying me, though I try to remember to take a break and listen to the barred owls hooting, the fir crackling, and other, unexplained rustling in the dry leaves.

When my fire-making switches to the inside woodstove, I usually lament how few times I’ve indulged this summer ritual, one I tend to enjoy in solitude.

I was reminded of another fireside gathering a few years ago at a Belfast waterfront pub with a beer garden that features an outside fireplace. Several of my journalist friends had met and as we sat beside the fire, stories began to flow.

Most were funny and well-told. The tale I offered was, well, moving to me, and I’m still not sure I can articulate its import. But here it is.

My first two years of college at Stony Brook University on Long Island, N.Y. had me commuting from home.

This was 1977, 1978. My radio habits had migrated from New York City

commercial stations to college and smaller, hipper outlets, each with its own flavor.

A song that one of those stations would play regularly was “On The Road: The Persecution and Restoration of Dean Moriarty,” by folk duo Aztec Two-Step. The group’s name came from a line by “beat” poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti, and of course Dean Moriarty was the fictional name for Neal Cassady in Jack Kerouac’s landmark novel On The Road.

The recording, released in 1972, shivers with anarchic energy, even though its instrumentation was acoustic guitars, bongos, and a banjo, among others. I had yet to read Kerouac, but being an English major, I knew something about the beat writers and their work thrilled and excited me.

The song’s lyrics include this: Well, he may ride down the road at a hundred and ten Exclaiming his thoughts about prisons and men He may tell you his dream, maybe something obscene You can swear you’ve been through it but you don’t know just when He’s like the dancing gold prairies that will never be mowed

Or the wind in the sail that’s about to explode He’s like fire and rain, bringing pleasure and pain And he learned all he knows from the ways of the road Fast-forward to the mid-1980s, and we’re living in Maine. Aztec Two-Step played in Camden, Ellsworth, Portland, and Belfast, and we would see them half a dozen times in those years.

At a show in Belfast, Rex Fowler, the principal songwriter and singer, told the story about how he came to write “On The Road” and its Belfast connection.

Fowler was growing up in Pittsfield and at loose ends as he contemplated his future. The town’s pharmacist, Nelson Wight, had gotten to know Fowler and challenged him to do something, perhaps creative, with his life.

And he gave him a copy of On The Road.

Hearing the song on the radio on my commute, I must have been about the same age as Fowler was when he recorded it. When I got around to reading the novel in my mid-20s, it rocked my world. It was as if the frenetic be-bop vibe of the story’s universe were injected in my veins. Being married with a young

child—whom we named Cassedy for the Grateful Dead’s song “Cassidy,” which I later learned was written about Neal Cassady (aka Dean Moriarty)—I somehow resisted the urge to hop a westbound freight train.

And here is where the story comes home. Nelson Wight has lived around the corner from our home for the last 25 years. While at the Bangor Daily News, I interviewed Fowler about an upcoming show and asked if I had the details of the genesis of “On The Road” correct. I had.

At the wedding of Wight’s grandson to another neighbor a few years back, I told him the story of how his sharing a book launched a life in music. He nodded and smiled slightly. In late June, Nelson Wight died at the age of 93.

Does my story have a point? If it does, I suppose it’s that music and literature matter, and that we humans have the capacity to impact each other’s lives in profound ways.

Tom Groening is editor of The Working Waterfront. He may be reached at tgroening@islandinstitute.org.

Reflections

Human encounters are different here Contemplating community, iced coffee on the side 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 Kawai Marin IS IT POSSIBLE to write this column, titled “Reflections,” about the idea of reflection itself? Who knows.

What I can say is that throughout my time as an Island Fellow in Washington County, one of the biggest components of my experience has been just that—reflection.

Much of my day-to-day work with Sunrise County Economic Council is done remotely. I do travel to Machias almost daily, but most of my time is spent about 20 minutes away in a little house on the edge of Holmes Bay east of the county seat.

It’s been ten months since my fellowship began and a lot has shifted.

We talked for a little bit and I went Initially, I felt as though I were treading through unknown terri- on my way, yet the impression of that tory. Now I am coming to love the friendly exchange made me think that nuances of the experiences found had I been in Boston (my home) or while living on the Bold Coast. even in a small city in Maine, I probably would’ve just grabbed When I do go into my food and left. the office, I often stop Encounters like these

by Angie’s Comfort aren’t unique to Kitchen on the way, Machias, of course; and more often Had I been in Boston but I do believe than not consuming two hot dogs and or even in a small city that they are more prevalent in smaller a sausage and egg in Maine, I probably communities where burrito for breakfast. more This, I like to think, would’ve just grabbed individuals often than not rely has become the new my food and left. on each other to get gold standard for things done. successfully starting As Island Fellows, the day.

I feel as though we It’s not just the all experience this in taste of the food that compels me to keep coming back, but some form or another, and honestly, more so because in my first two visits these small moments have collectively to the food truck, I got the chance to composed some of the most rewarding meet not only Angie, but also her mom experiences I have had while working in the community. and daughter.

As I said, it’s been a long time since September and as of now the days are long and the temperatures are high. I don’t know too much about what the coming months will hold, but one thing is for certain—there are still a lot more people to meet and a lot of work yet to be done.

Is it possible to write a Reflections column about reflection itself? I guess some things, we’ll never know.

Kawai Marin works with the Sunrise County Economic Council focusing on marketing, outreach, and communications. Originally from Brazil, he spent most of his life in Massachusetts and earned a bachelor’s degree at Bates College in environmental studies and anthropology. He may be reached at kmarin@islandinstitute.org.

www.workingwaterfront.com . august 2022

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DECKED OUT ROCKLAND— This early 20th century photo shows Rockland’s Main Street decked out for the Fourth of July. Do readers know what year?

Contact Tom Groening at tgroening@islandinstitute.org.

PHOTO: COURTESY ROCKLAND HISTORICAL SOCIETY

Op-Ed

Sharing the weight of rockweed science Data needed on algae’s carbon-storing role

By Hannah Webber ON A RECENT WEDNESDAY morning, a small group of volunteers walked the shoreline in Lamoine with buckets, mesh bags, large square plastic picture frames, and fish-weighing scales. Carefully picking their way across the slippery seaweed, they laid out transects, and began to count and weigh the rockweed, hefting pound after pound of wet, heavy algae.

They are part of Project ASCO (Assessing Seaweed via Community Observations), a citizen science effort along the Maine coast helping answer the question, “How much rockweed is there?”

We are asking all our project colleagues to collect data from the places they love and access the most along the coast, and we are also focusing on places on the coast where researchers have come before us and weighed rockweed. The volunteers in Lamoine were returning to a site last studied by researchers in 1998. Other historical sites were studied in the 1980s and 1970s. Knowing how much rockweed exists in these locations now and comparing that to how much there was in the past can give us insight into how rockweed can contribute to the coastal blue carbon budget in Maine.

Rockweed is abundant along Maine’s rocky coast.

As it grows it takes carbon out of the ocean. It does not store the carbon in sediment the way salt marshes do, but instead, in its branched and fleshy fronds.

Island Institute Board of Trustees Emily B. Lane, Chair Kristin Howard, Vice Chair Charles Owen Verrill, Jr. Secretary Douglas Henderson, Treasurer, Finance Chair Carol White, Programs Chair Megan McGinnis Dayton, Philanthropy & Communications Chair Shey Conover, Governance Chair Michael P. Boyd, Clerk Sebastian Belle David Cousens Michael Felton Nathan Johnson Bryan Lewis Michael Sant Barbara Kinney Sweet Kate Vogt Donna Wiegle John Bird (honorary)

Project ASCO coordinator Maya Pelletier has When storms batter the coast, pieces of rockweed can be torn off and carried out to the ocean, where the found that our biggest challenge right now is rockweed breaks down slowly and eventually sinks to identifying and working with coastal landowners the ocean floor. Likewise, when people collect rock- to access historical study sites. We are contacting weed for use on agricultural landscapes, rockweed property owners to say, “This researcher from 1973 collected data right in front of your property, and breaks down, its carbon stored in the soil.

Carbon storage is an essential way to remove we’d like to repeat their work.” Most have granted access, and a few have come into carbon from the atmosphere and the rockweed with us! the oceans. The data that Project Back in Lamoine that ASCO volunteers are collecting Whether rockweed is Wednesday morning, the citizen adds to the understanding of scientists weighed the rockrockweed’s role in Maine’s goal of carried out to sea in weed, draped it back over the carbon neutrality by 2045. storms or harvested for rocks, watched gulls floating But whether rockweed is carried on the incoming tide and snails out to sea in storms or harvested use on crops, we don’t lumber across rocks—just one for use on crops, we don’t know know how much there is of many groups and individuals how much there is to begin with. giving their time and getting a And that’s why we started Project to begin with… little wet as they help us better ASCO. We train people along the understand this seaweed right coast to weigh seaweed, contribute outside our doors. their data, and then we share data We hope more people will join this effort: by back out with everyone courtesy of the Mount Desert allowing us to access historic survey locations, by Island Biological Laboratory’s anecdata.org platform.

We started the training and fieldwork for the participating in one of our many training events this Project ASCO effort last fall, and have been to sites summer, and by collecting and sharing data from from Kennebunk to Acadia and have weighed over rockweed-covered shorelines around the state.

1,100 pounds of rockweed and then returned the rockweed back to the rocks. This method is nonde- Hannah Webber is marine ecology program director structive, as we do not cut the rockweed to weigh it. with Schoodic Institute at Acadia National Park.

THE WORKING WATERFRONT

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The Working Waterfront . august 2022

Essay

Imagining coastal Maine

Clashing popular imagery stirs identity reflection

By Ardis Cameron

Like Robert Frost, coastal Maine towns grew Yankier and Yankier, as more than 30 million viewers WHEN I MOVED To Portland in 1988, I did not tuned in every week to embrace a mythical lost past come alone: hundreds, perhaps thousands of images and nostalgic authenticity. According to the Maine tagged along providing me with a vivid mental map Turnpike information center, the question most of this place where place still matters. Rocky coasts, frequently asked in 1993 was, “Where is Cabot Cove?”

Where indeed? lighthouses, and lobster rolls, of course, but also quaint While Murder She Wrote sent thousands of tourdowntowns of white clapboard houses, shade trees, Bud Staples, and Elsiesent Gillespie of theMartin, picturesque, my students me chat around the woodstove at the annual town meeting. and assorted shops run by old salts and hardy women. ists in search John As a labor historian, I knew the sorry limits of inland to a town called Peyton Place. Published in these colorful images especially in Maine, where the 1956, the novel Peyton Place took readers off road wrecking ball of deindustrialization had been gath- into a sexualized world seldom associated with New England. Located in ering devastating traction a small New Hampshire for years. A bitter strike at town, Peyton Place is based the Androscoggin paper on a true tale of patricide, mill in the northwestern involving a young girl who woods of Jay was still fresh had been sexually abused by in public memory as were According to the Maine Turnpike her father for years.

“New England towns are small and they are often stories of Jesse Jackson, Written by Grace pretty,” she explained to reporters, “but they are not who had come to Maine on information center, the question Metalious, the young wife of a just pictures on a Christmas card. To a tourist these behalf of the strikers to draw most frequently asked in 1993 local school principal, it took towns look as peaceful as a postcard picture, but if a line in the sand. Enough! off like fireworks, bringing you go beneath that picture, it’s like turning a rock But it was not the class was, “Where is Cabot Cove?” the open secrets of incest, with your foot—all kinds of strange things crawl out.” divisions or Jay strikers While critics split over the merits of the book, thouhomosexuality, and abortion that rose up in the national into sharp national relief. In sands of readers felt empowered by a story that finally imagination that year. It was an age when the average first reflected their lives. Hundreds wrote the author to let Murder She Wrote. novel sold 2,000 copies, it her know. “Your characters are all true to life!” a New Beginning in 1984, and sold 60,000 copies within the Hampshire woman wrote. “One of them is my uncle!” continuing for 12 seasons, Angela Lansbury (as Jessica Fletcher) solved count- first ten days. Soon, it would become the fastest selling “I live in Peyton Place,” a Belfast woman told Grace. less murders in a small Maine hamlet called Cabot book ever published and the best-seller of the century. And not a few saw redemption in the tale. “I had an A “Canuck” to her Yankee neighbors (French was abortion too. Thank you for pleading my case.”

Cove. Even as the town became the murder capital of But neither the town of Peyton Place nor its bankthe United States, its quaint olde shoppes, old-timey her first language), married to a Greek-American, folks, charming cafés, and biking simplicity, rein- Grace Metalious purposefully set her New England rupt residents stayed in New Hampshire for very forced prior cultural images that established Maine in sharp contrast to the one seen through the “rose- long. In 1957, Hollywood moved them to Camden Levi Moulden where the story underwent the first serious defanging. colored spectacles” of other writers. coastal towns as the quintessential New England.

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What to letter writers had been a welcoming airing once again, beyond words. They did not happen in of “long-buried facts in the countless graveyards of America’s Cabot Cove.

I was asked to write this piece because it is the 65th New England,” was uplifted into a “cleaned up” story where strong women fall into line under the direc- anniversary of the film and perhaps nothing put the Maine coast on the map more than Peyton Place. But tion of the film’s writers.

Tar-paper shacks receded into the tree-lined as I write, the Supreme Court has sought to set our streets and handsome white houses of coastal clocks back to another television age when fathers Maine. The central character, Selina Cross, becomes knew best, housewives were white and stayed happily at home, incest was a myth, Yankier and Yankier, her “dark, abortions never happened, and gypsy” features morphing into books like Peyton Place were the blond, blue-eyed figure of banned. With Dobbs v Jackson, starlet Hope Lange. While the the reality of women’s lives is rape is brutal and the abortion once again erased; their right to is performed, Selina becomes a Peyton Place is based on make decisions over their own romantic victim rather than the reproductive lives, denied. courageous and strong-willed a true tale of patricide, The cultural battles over repregirl who defied the town and involving a young girl who sentation in general, and Peyton succeeded on her own merits. had been sexually abused Place in particular, may seem “Andy Hardy could have lived trivial to more explicit wars here,” the Times critic snorted in by her father… over values, beliefs, and identicontempt. ties. But they are not. Rather, as By 1964, when the television Grace Metalious understood, show aired, Peyton Place grew and many readers discovered, downright respectable. Drunks if we can’t imagine the trauma sobered up (or became middleof unwanted pregnancy or the class) while the town became a cliché of New England kitsch. “It has,” a reviewer abuse young girls and women face in our own backnoted in 1965, “no discernable Negroes, no obvious yards, then we will remain powerless to stop it.

From the letters readers sent to Grace Metalious, Jews, no bigotry, no religious or political divisions.”

Abortion, incest, and child sexual abuse disap- we can see the depth of emotion her story of incest, peared, the very idea pushed beyond the realm of rape, and abortion aroused and the hopes her female the imaginable. A perfect place, in other words, characters put into play, and the pain and longing for the future television sleuth and mystery writer that echoes down to us still.

As The Working Waterfront has long made clear, Jessica Fletcher to call home. In the popular imagination of national television, murder was just fine, but coastal Maine is complex and far more diverse than abortion, incest, and sexual abuse were erased, put, outsiders might imagine. Challenges abound. Yet,

confronting change means understanding that images of people and place are always at work normalizing this and demonizing that, or just plain erasing what doesn’t fit into the postcard pictures of Maine.

Ardis Cameron is professor emeritus in American Studies at the University of Southern Maine. Her most recent book is Unbuttoning America: A Biography of Peyton Place. She lives in Stonington and South Portland.

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The Working Waterfront . august 2022

Friends of Acadia names new leader Workforce housing, climate resilience top priorities

By Laurie Schreiber

high-quality visitor experiences, and becoming a national model for climate resiliency and adaptation.

The issues are linked to growing visitation: 2021 was ith a shortage of affordable housing impacting the ability of Acadia National a record year with 4.1 million visitors, a 15% increase Park to hire enough seasonal workers, over the previous record, resulting in crowds and traffic congestion that have become top challenges.

Friends of Acadia is making the issue a top priority.

This year is trending up, too.

“If we recognize that Acadia National Park is one But the park is short-staffed by about 25 people— of our national gems, doesn’t it deserve the most not for lack of potential hires, but talented workforce in the nation?” said for lack of affordable housing, said Eric Stiles, who became the new presiSchneider. Acadia has about 75 beds dent and CEO at Friends of Acadia in “You have thriving for seasonal workers and would like July. to employ twice that number.

Stiles previously led New Jersey communities in Empty positions include fee collecAudubon. During his tenure, the the middle of this tors, trail crew, interpretative rangers, state’s largest conservation organizaand lifeguards. tion grew its philanthropic resources amazing gem.”

“This problem will only become and obtained permanent multimore acute given the real estate situabillion-dollar funding for preservation tion here,” said Schneider. and restoration projects.

Stiles said Friends of Acadia is conducting a study to At Friends of Acadia’s annual meeting last month, Acadia’s superintendent, Kevin Schneider, character- find solutions. Examples of approaches could include upgrading existing Acadia-owned structures for ized Stiles as “a huge bundle of kinetic energy.”

Stiles said he and his wife Lydia were frequent housing, adding structures on or adjacent to the park, Acadia visitors for three decades, admiring both and looking at collaboration on commercial facilities the landscape and the park’s intersection with in nearby communities. Accessibility to mass transit such as the Island Explorer will be a consideration. surrounding communities.

Park resilience in the face of climate change, “You have thriving communities in the middle of this amazing gem,” he said. “In this intersec- engaging young people, expanding diversity and tionality, you have quality of life and quality of inclusion, balancing visitor experience and use with economy that are entirely linked with the park. resource protection, and maintaining trails and carriage roads are also top issues, Stiles said.

That’s really powerful.”

“These projects today are an investment in the Now goals include boosting workforce housing to aid recruitment, supporting accessibility and future,” he said.

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continued from page 1 winters,” says Beal. “Those are formulas for disaster for the clam populations.”

Warming waters are a disaster for clams because they’re a boon for invertebrates like green crabs, its most successful predator. Green crabs arrived in Maine more than 100 years ago and today are wreaking havoc on softshell clam populations even before they’re visible to the human eye.

“Green crabs are the consummate invader,” says Beal. “They have a thermal tolerance that goes from zero degrees Celsius to 35 degrees Celsius,” or 32 to 95 Fahrenheit. “They can live underwater, they can live on mudflats, they can live under the mud, and they can eat anything from grass to clams to worms, to each other.”

Even in the midst of the invasion, there are places where clams are still doing well. Brunswick landed the most clams last year, followed by Waldoboro and Machiasport, a tiny Washington County fishing village where clamming is a way of life, and where Cale found his way to clamming later than most, at the ripe old age of 19.

“I was a late bloomer,” said Cale, now 46, and not entirely joking. “As a kid, a lot of my younger friends were out

LOBSTERS

continued from page 1 “Calanus is considered a foundational species in the Gulf of Maine, and in the North Atlantic in general,” Ascher said. “It’s at the base of many food webs and really energy rich.

Changes to its population, and the populations of other food sources, could help us understand what’s going on with lobsters.”

This February, both Layland and Ascher presented their research at the international Ocean Sciences Meeting held by the Association for the Sciences of Limnology and Oceanography.

Ascher’s research has already revealed that some lobster larvae show signs of starvation in their earliest stages, but there are less of these signals in older lobsters. This could mean that

13

digging clams, but I didn’t have a lot of pull their way across the bottom. The cloud obscures their ability to spot the fishermen in my family.”

It’s a stunning summer day and Cale elliptical clam holes dotting the mud and his brother-in-law Josh Torgan all around them.

Not far away, a family is digging are loading their rollers—some of us might call them clam baskets—into their clams just below the beach, also known as the upper Cale’s skiff, preparing intertidal zone. Most to back into Little Maine towns have their Kennebec Bay. highest concentration of Not all Downeast clams there, says Beal, clammers use skiffs to because it spends less access the flats, but it We’re seeing time underwater, giving makes the most sense higher summer green crabs less time to for Cale and Torgan temperatures and feed. But Machiasport because they’re pullers, is unusual because it not diggers. This means milder winters… also has plentiful clams that instead of a digging formulas for in the mid and lower clams out of the mud intertidal, where Cale with a hoe, they pull disaster for the and Torgan are clamthem out of the mud by clam populations.” ming today. gloved hand.

They make walking You can’t pull clams through the mud close to shore because look easy, and it isn’t. the mud is thick and Leaning forward over heavy with gravel, so a bent knee the other pullers work further leg behind them for away from the beach in balance, they bob up and down as areas more easily accessible by boat.

Today is a small tide, only 8 feet, they go, quickly sliding a hand in and which means the men will be pulling out of the mud, tossing clams into their roller. underwater.

Clams must be at least 2 inches long “You have to work ahead of the cloud,” says Torgan, referring to the to be legal in Maine, but there’s no silty mud kicked up as they walk and upper size limit on clams, unlike for

lobster, because the crustacean is more fertile as it ages.

Beal has long suspected clam reproduction functions the same way, and now he’ll have the chance to find out. Building on a promising pilot study, this year DEI secured a $300,000 grant from the National Marine Fisheries Service SaltonstallKennedy Program. Using the funds, they’ve designed a two-year study that will look at clam fecundity while asking three key questions—when do clams spawn, does their position in the intertidal zone affect their fertility, and does size matter?

If the study confirms Beal’s hypothesis, towns could use that information to plan short flat closures during spawning time, or the state might set an upper size limit on the fishery.

Beal is passionate about supporting clammers and the clam fishery with data, but says what happens after that is out of his hands.

“We’re just asking questions that people have been asking since the 1930s and ‘40s, and no one’s answered them yet,” says Beal. “If this study confirms what the pilot study said, now no one will say, ‘We don’t have the data.’ And if it doesn’t, we went down a path we shouldn’t have, but we never have to go down that path again.”

Early stages take about seven minutes to eat one brine shrimp. Around a month after they are born, lobsters get to a post-larval stage. They can move faster and have fully developed claws— and the game has changed.

“They’re just gobbling brine shrimp down in less than a second,” she said.

“They’re popping them in their mouths left and right, and you can’t even really measure how fast they’re doing it with some of their other food.”

The time it takes to eat makes a difference for them in the wild. When a lobster larva commits to something larger than a brine shrimp, like a Calanus, it can take almost an hour to eat it. That’s 60 minutes of time focused on food, which puts them at higher risk for getting eaten themselves.

Larval lobsters in the water today will be of marketable size in approximately

seven years. Better understanding the challenges they’ll face along the way can help people prepare for the changes already affecting the environment.

“If we know what goes into producing a successful larva, then we have a crystal ball into the future and to what the lobster population will be doing,” Ascher said. “If we understand what they’re eating and what is available for them to eat, it gives us a way to look seven years into the future. If we know there’s going to be less lobsters entering the fishery, it can be really helpful for management.”

whatever food the youngest lobsters are eating is limited.

Lobsters are small, slow, and hardly recognizable as lobsters during their youngest stages. No larger than a ladybug, they can’t move fast enough to eat anything with even a reasonable ability to escape. At these stages, Layland provides them with animals called brine shrimp as part of her research into their feeding habits. The shrimp are not a natural food source in the Gulf of Maine, but they are a good analog to study how lobsters eat.

“They are basically just kind of floating donuts for lobster larvae,” Layland said.

“They’re really easy for the baby lobsters to just snatch out of the water and eat.”

Layland has recorded different stages of larval lobsters on video to watch them feed, and she has discovered a wide discrepancy in their abilities.

Fritz Freudenberger is science communications manager for Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences in East Boothbay. This story first appeared on Bigelow’s website and is reprinted by permission.

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The Working Waterfront . august 2022

Dr. Robert Holmberg, whose post-doctoral work is in marine carbonite chemistry, poses with the acidification monitoring system he designed.

Dianne Tilton, executive director of Downeast Institute.

Doing marine science Downeast Downeast Institute championing marine economy

PHOTO ESSAY BY LESLIE BOWMAN Downeast Institute on Beals Island in Washington County cites the “dynamics of a changing ocean and climate, the necessity for sustainable uses of marine resources, and opportunities for restoration ecology” as the reasons for and focus of its work.

“The pristine, cold-water location and state-of-the-art venue provides exceptional capacity for scientists, marine educators, and their teams,” according to its website. Working with the University of Maine at Machias, DEI offers education for children, university students, and the visiting public.

Its work focuses on shellfish seed, restoring and creating economic opportunities for harvesters, aquaculturists, and other entrepreneurs throughout coastal Maine and beyond.

Molly’s Cove, the location of clam test sites.

www.workingwaterfront.com . august 2022

15

Colleen Haskell, left, DEI’s education director, and Hannah Greene, Island Institute Fellow, prepare for a hands-on field day with Lubec recreation students.

Sarah Zuidema, a shellfish production associate, poses with test tanks holding European oysters.

Lindsey Karwacki, a senior the University of Maine at Machias, who is majoring in marine biology.

Raymond Gzaja of Stony Brook University, left, one of two DEI fellows funded by an anonymous donor, with Dr. Brian Beal.

The lab’s microalgal (phytoplankton) culture system.

Dr. Brian Beal, director of research at DEI, with clam growing tanks.

16

The Working Waterfront . august 2022

Our Island Communities

Capt. Joe Litchfield joins the old salts at the Port Hole restaurant in Portland. PHOTO: KATIANA HOEFLE

Peaks Island mariner joins Amelia Earhart search Capt. Joe Litchfield reflects on seafaring life

By Katiana Hoefle

T

he ship’s operation manager heard Capt.

Joe Litchfield before he even reached the wheelhouse. It was midnight. The space smelled of cigarettes and coffee. Amadeus Mozart’s “Eine Kleine Nachtmusik” began its crescendo, creating the soundtrack of the Amelia Earhart expedition.

Spencer King traced Litchfield’s features in the black, lit only by the lights on the dashboard. The old man was cut from the mold of a salty dog with a white beard, permanent squint, and staggered walk. His voice was gruff from five decades of shouting across the deck. Wind be damned; Litchfield was going to teach his deckhand how to listen to Mozart.

“OK, we are going to do themes,” Litchfield grumbled. “A, B, A, B, C, D, C, D. You’re going to hear it now and you wait a little while and you’re going to hear this again, just in a different key.”

Litchfield was steering a research vessel in search of one of the ocean’s biggest secrets: The location of Amelia Earhart’s missing Lockheed Electra airplane.

This was one of three expeditions to try to find the plane, just a snapshot of a lifetime on the sea for Litchfield, now 75.

He pondered the memory sitting in a maroon armchair, the same living room from his childhood during summers on Peaks Island. He chuckled about what a sight that must have been for King, now a retired navy officer.

“I’d listen to music mostly in the mornings and then on my night watch, I’d listen to books,” Litchfield said.

His house, built in 1824 and one of the oldest on the island, is half decorated with mariner memorabilia Litchfield collected over the last five decades and half with photos of his most loyal crew, a copper Brittany Spaniel named Dorymate. She was fast asleep on the sofa.

“She’s famous [on the island], but she’s given me a complex because people walk right by me and they go right to Dory,” Litchfield said with an impish smile.

“She’s getting her belly rubbed, I don’t even get my ears scratched. That’s not fair.”

Outside on the lawn sat a soiled turquoise and yellow rowboat named Little Queen which belonged to his father and was one of the first boats Litchfield ever used. He said at seven years old, he had been determined to see what he thought was the end of the world, which really was Outer Green Island.

Grabbing the rowboat, a PB&J sandwich, and a drink called bug juice—named after its attraction for insects in the hot summer sun—he was prepared for whatever the ocean threw at him.

“I wanted to just see what was out there. Which I did,” Litchfield said. “I’ve always been around boats.

I love boats. I just don’t know what it is, it’s in my blood. I don’t like it at all on land.”

The whole island began searching for the little boy and when someone finally spotted him, they told his mother. She was not too happy. She and her husband already had a lot on their plate, taking care of Joe’s three brothers. But her fate was set: this would be a frequent occurrence. She would lose one too many blueberry pies to the seagulls while watching him struggle to get back on land.

In his 30s, Litchfield became a fisherman after someone offered him a half-share of a dogfish boat in Portland which pursued the small spiny sharks.

Litchfield said this was about as low as you could go in the fishing industry because fishermen are only paid by what they catch and sharing half of that was a big pay decrease. But he was ecstatic.

He eventually earned enough to buy his own Mainebuilt wooden trawler which he named Sarah-Sea after his daughter with his first wife, Wendy, a Peaks Island school teacher.

H

is boat had a crew of four, but he often enlisted the help of a couple fishermen buddies he met at the Friendship Bar—although Litchfield believes it was more accurately the “Battleship Bar.” Forty years later, they still meet over coffee and corned beef hash at the Porthole Restaurant & Pub, reminiscing about Portland’s glory years in the 1980s.

“He dropped a dredge on me,” Litchfield said, pointing an accusatory finger at Capt. Keith Lane.

“He wasn’t obeying orders,” Lane retorted. “I had to drop the scallop dredge on his head. Straighten him out. Took care of him.”

“Still hurts,” Litchfield joked. The old sailors went back and forth, laughing about the conditions they put up with to make ends meet and pointing out the aching ligaments that remind them of that work.

Litchfield credits Lane with convincing him to get a captain’s license. He sold Sarah-Sea and moved to Alaska after he and his first wife separated. He stayed there 26 years and remarried, fishing for months at a time in Dutch Harbor to catch flounder, codfish, and pollock, depending on the season. He rose quickly up the ranks, becoming captain of a 230-foot boat catching about 80 tons of fish in two hours.

The profits were astronomical. Litchfield said he could make $100,000 in three months, but it was hard, dangerous work. Fishing in icy waters with unforgiving wind led to the loss of many of his friends.

“You’re always pushing the edge of what you can do and what the boat can do,” Litchfield said. “It’s not a way to make a living, it’s a way of life.”

Once Litchfield earned enough money, he started to take jobs with research vessels that allowed him to travel to places like Fiji, Australia, and New Zealand.

Eventually, the company he worked for was hired

by Nauticos—an underwater navigation and search analysis corporation. Their current project was to find Amelia Earhart’s Lockheed Electra.

www.workingwaterfront.com . august 2022

17

Friends of Casco Bay names new director Will Everitt takes helm after 15 years with organization

W

ill Everitt has been hired as the executive director of Friends of Casco Bay after serving as the organization’s communications and development director for 15 years.

Everitt, who was the unanimous choice of the organization’s board of directors, has led the marine advocacy organization’s development and fundraising since 2008 and has served as interim director since September 2021. His strong background in environmental community organizing, communications, and fundraising makes him well qualified to lead at Friends, the board believes.

“Casco Bay inspires me. That’s why I started working here so many years ago and why it is an honor and privilege to serve as executive director,” Everitt said.

“Over the years, we have been able to accomplish so much for the health of the bay, knowing that the best solutions for clean water are also solutions for the health of our economy. A healthy Casco Bay benefits everyone who lives and works here,” he said.

“In a time of political division and environmental chaos, I am proud to say that our community includes people of all backgrounds brought together by our collective passion for clean water and this amazing bay.”

Everitt helped spearhead many major efforts at Friends of Casco Bay in recent years, including helping the organization significantly grow its membership base and successfully completing a $1.5 million campaign for the Climate Change and Casco Bay Fund. In addition to his work with the Friends, Everitt serves on the board of directors of Maine Conservation Alliance.

Elgen Long—the first person to fly around the world over both poles—had spoken to nearly every person connected to Earhart and developed a theory of where she crashed in the Pacific Ocean in 1937.

WGBH’s Nova documentary series decided to focus an episode on him, but wanted to corroborate his findings, and reached out to Nauticos.

“Not only did we think it made sense,” David Jourdan, founder and president of Nauticos, said in a Zoom interview from Titusville, Florida, but “We thought, I think we can find this plane.”

Jourdan recalled how nervous the scientists felt, wanting to make a good impression with the crew of the boat they hired, manned by rugged and tough mariners like Litchfield. It didn’t start well. While tossing a bucket of water overboard, the wind blew it back onto the ship, soaking Litchfield, who was smoking a cigarette.

Jourdan said the scientists were mortified. To their surprise Litchfield “looked up at us and gave a kind of grin, and said, ‘You know, that’s what I like about the ocean, you never know what’s going to happen out here.’”

To search for the airplane, the ship trailed a sonar with 20,000 feet of cables. At the end of a survey line, it usually took six to eight hours to turn the vessel and get all of the wire straight for the next pass.

Litchfield, accustomed to wrangling trawler gear to reach the most optimal fishing spots, said he could reduce the time by half. He yanked the wheel in one direction and then spun it in the other, over and over.

“We called it the back turn, but it’s really Joe’s turn,” King recalled. “It saved us hours every time we finished a survey line and we had dozens of these so it virtually saved days of time that we normally would be just turning.”

The search area is 6,000 square miles and so far 3,600 square miles have been searched in three expeditions, the last in 2017. If the team can come up

From left, Casco Baykeeper Ivy Frignoca, Executive Director Will Everitt, President of the Board of Directors of Friends of Casco Bay Andrew Marsters, standing on the deck of Friends’ research vessel, R/V Joseph E. Payne.

“For so many reasons, Will is just the person we need,” said Andrew Marsters, president of the Friends board of directors. “He is an even-keeled leader who inspires the best in our staff. He has institutional memory, political savviness, and an innate talent for building relationships. Our community and the bay are lucky to have him.”

Before working at Friends, Everitt directed Community Action Works’ Portland office, where he helped dozens of communities across New England

fight leaking landfills, sludge spreading, and toxic pesticide spraying. He was also Maine State Director of the League of Young Voters. He is a graduate of Rutgers University.

“Will takes the helm at a time when we are on a steady, solid course,” said Casco Baykeeper Ivy Frignoca. “His leadership will help us take innovative steps to address the impacts of climate change, rising sea level, increased storms, and other threats. Will’s intrepid vision and fiscal skill will ensure we meet the challenges ahead.”

Capt. Joe Litchfield on the Pacific Ocean during the search for Amelia Earhart’s airplane. PHOTO: COURTESY JOE LITCHFIELD

with the $3-$5 million for another voyage, Litchfield expects to be going with them.

But now, it is just Litchfield and Dorymate in their Peaks Island cottage. His children keep tabs on him as does most of the island community, helping him take care of the garden in the backyard and walking Dorymate.

“I had regrets, but it was the right decision for me.

But it was a selfish decision,” Litchfield said of his life at sea. “It cost me two wives and a lot of little league

games and brownie meetings, stuff like that. But what good would it be if I was home and being miserable?”

Litchfield rose stiffly from his chair and pulled back the curtain to watch his daughter, Sarah, working in the garden. After all this time, he said his relationship with his kids has been better than ever.

“I’ve always had this thing about life,” Litchfield said. “You’ll regret the things you didn’t do more than the things you did do. I actually believe that.”

18

The Working Waterfront . august 2022

Alewives homecoming PHOTOS BY JACK SULLIVAN

I

n Damariscotta Mills is one of Maine’s oldest and most productive alewives fisheries. Every spring, these intrepid fish return from the sea to spawn in the Damariscotta Lake and are sustainably harvested, primarily as bait for lobstering.

The restoration of the fish ladder by a community group and the towns of Nobleboro and Newcastle and the Nobleboro Historical Society has helped ensure the health of these stocks.

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The Working Waterfront . august 2022

www.workingwaterfront.com . April 2020

23

cRanBeRRy RepoRt

Islands, Bar Harbor win grants painting lines, eating Portland, ThomastonTown also landmeeting, DMR’s planning funds doughnuts, and throwing rocks

THE DEPARTMENT OF Marine was purchased with assistance from the Resources has awarded $202,500 in Land for Maine’s Future Program. The Shore and Harbor Planning grants to Shore and Harbor Planning Grant will Bar Harbor, Chebeague Island, Long fund the design of a hand-carry boat Island, Thomaston, and the Greater launch for kayaks and other paddle craft. willoftake The town Bar place HarboronisIslesford. creating Portland Council of Governments. meeting What’s for lunch?

Homemade ferry These awards, funded by DMR’s Maine a master plan for the formerpizzas, salads, and desserts.

Life gets busier By Barbara Fernald Coastal Program and NOAA, will be terminal property near downtown, as we volunteer help prepare the a boat tolaunch and public used for harbor management plans, including first community meal of the season.

ACTIVITY on the islands, at the end marina for recreational documenting and Town meeting a great opportuof February and access into March, is like a and is commercial use. increasing public nity to hear about winter from Greater friends mirror image of the action at the end Lastly, the to the shore, designing “How wasCouncil your trip of to of August into September.

Just as the and neighbors.Portland and updating water “For the first time, ...?”

“Who knew grand-parenting was summer residents of the Cranberry Governments is collabaccess facilities, and so exhausting orating or that with therethe were so Isles end their vacations right before applicants we asked nonwaterfront resiliency many cold germs involved?”

“You did fall, many year-round residents end profit Manomet and the planning. to document how same questheir winter breaks townsThese of Georgetown, Chebeague Island’sjust before the all that painting?” tions could be asked in September at spring equinox. their proposals Brunswick, Harpswell, Stone Wharf is the a school board meeting in a large subIt’s time to get back to work and and Yarmouth to help primary access point would increase urb. (Preferablythenot during the meetreconnect. commercial shellfish for islanders and the ing while someone else has the floor!) coastal waterfront Our annual town meeting takes industry maintain overtown is raising it to In January and and place on the second Saturday in March. access toBruce intertidal accommodate higher climate resilience…” landFebruary, I got to spend a lot of time with our For levels selectmen town employees, mudflats. The project sea and and storm grandchildren in Southern Maine. winter has but a vacawill identify opportunisurges.

Thisbeen will anything guarwastothe mainorgoal of tion.

They have been working steadily, Visiting them ties preserve create antee that the wharf most of our winter travel.

We considgathering information to write the remains useable in all conditions, access locations and will evaluate the ered trying to but warrant forsafety town and meeting.

It’s the time of paint these our sites kitchen, to sea level increasing maintaining the vulnerability we kept catching odd coughing virusof year we come together as a town to rise, storm surge, and flooding. island community. and experienced more time decide projects and es“Maintaining public anddown working Ponce’sonLanding onand Longspending Island is critthan we wanted, so we never got to it. how much money is to be raised by ical to the commercial fishing industry waterfront infrastructure, increasing Maybe I’ll paint it in May, when I can property taxes. safety and structural access, and addressing the impacts and it needs have the windows open. rise on the Discussion the school flooding and sea-level upgrades to keepofit useable in the budget future. of Bruce saware morecommon than enough paint, alone can take well over owns an hour.

The waterfront challenges The town of Thomaston a parcel anyway, this winter.

During his islands take turns hosting the meetsaid of land on the upper St. George, which for Maine’s coastal communities,”“time ing and the luncheon. This year, town off” he painted 600 buoys (white and

As winter winds down, islanders mix prep work and gatherings bright red with a black stripe) and, like piece of purple rope to the end of the every other lobster fisherman in Maine buoy line or toggle, but all attachments this winter, he read about, talked about, must be made with a splice or a tuck.

I know it’s a stretch to compare foland experimented with purple paint.

The latest whale regulations require lowing Maine whale rope requireall Maine lobster fishermen to use new ments with a plein air workshop, but markings on the ropes they attach to a person could return home from eilobster traps. Depending on how close ther and say that they’d been paintto shore they fish, they will have to add ing in their spare time. If Bruce were 2-4 purple marks on each buoy line. writing an essay on how he spent his On warps that are 100-feet or less there winter vacation, painting would be a must be one 12-inch purple mark with- part of it. Another part would be the in a few fathoms of the trap and a 36- description I heard him tell his brother inch purple mark within 2 fathoms of Mark about walking to get doughnuts, Chebeague Stone Wharf that provides for some of the ferries.and the buoy. IfIsland’s the warp is longer 100 a landing in February, with ourisland’s son Robin, FILE PHOTO: GROENING feet, theTOMrequirement is for a 12-inch our grandchildren Henry and Cora. I purple mark near the trap, a second 12- was away with friends in Portland, and was away with friends in inch purple mark halfway to the buoy, Stephanie recommendations described in Maine’s DMR Commissioner Patrick Keliher. and a 36-inch mark near the buoy.

Florida.

Father and son were in charge.

“These projects show the creative ways Climate Plan.”

“Yeah, we got doughnuts The Bruce figures willcollaborators be putting 1,500 For additional information at about that towns and he their are Cookie Jar and then walked to the to 1,800 markings on his rope in all; two addressing these issues and finding the Shore and Harbor Planning Grant, beach for a picnic and to throw rocks.” to three weeks of extra work if he does solutions that will work for the future.” please visit the Maine Coastal Program Eating homemade donuts and it “This withoutround hiring help.

A number fish- website: www.maine.gov/dmr/mcp/ of grants wasof very ermen are applying paint to their ropes throwing rocks at the beach—if that competitive,” said Melissa Britsch, grants/shore-and-harbor-planningisn’t a mirror image of many childby resting them in 3-foot long gutters senior coastal planner at DMR. “For grants.html. The Shore and Harbor madefirst fromtime, lengthwise-halved PVC pipe. hood summers onbeen Islesford, I don’t Planning Grant has operating since the we asked applicants know what is.

Bruce’s first attempt was with spray paint q to document how their proposals 2006 and has distributed over $2 million but he soon movedcoastal on to thewaterfront more effi- to coastal communities. The next round would increase cient brush and latex paint.

Fernald lives onin Islesford (Little of funding is anticipated early 2023. climate resilience and address the Barbara Some fishermen will add a 3-foot Cranberry Island) with her husband Bruce.

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21

Mills offers relief for fishermen, ocean farmers

National park tourism in Maine injects $770 million

Federal funds reimburse cost of 2022 licenses

Report shows visitor spending supports 7,000 jobs

AMID HIGH COSTS, Gov. Janet Mills announced that her administration is taking action to deliver relief for Maine’s commercial fishermen and ocean farmers.

The Maine Department of Marine Resources (DMR) will use $8.3 million in federal funding to reimburse resident commercial fishermen, dealers, processors, and those in the aquaculture sector for the cost of their 2022 licenses, as well as additional fees associated with licenses such as trap tag fees for lobster license holders.

DMR will also waive lease fees for active commercial leases for the 2022 lease year through a separate process.

Examples of licenses eligible for reimbursement include but are not limited to: a Class II lobster license with 800 tags ($1,203), a scallop dragger license ($243), a Zone 2 urchin dragger license ($312), or an elver license with two pieces of gear and crew ($498).

“Maine’s commercial fishing and seafood industry is a crucial cornerstone of our economy, and they are facing unprecedented increases in costs,” said Mills. “This puts money back in the pockets of Maine’s fishermen, aquaculturists, and dealers to help them offset growing business

A NEW National Park Service (NPS) report shows that visitors to national parks in Maine spent $490 million in 2021. The total of 4.1 million visits supported 7,070 jobs and had a cumulative economic output of $770 million.

“National parks are a vital part of our nation’s economy,” said Deputy Regional Director Debbie Conway, “especially for park gateway communities where millions of visitors each year find a place to sleep and eat and make use of other local services that help drive a vibrant tourism and outdoor recreation industry.”

The national parks in Maine that were included in the report are Acadia National Park, Katahdin Woods and Waters National Monument, and St. Croix Island International Historic Site.

“Acadia National Park’s extraordinary beauty and recreational opportunities attracted a record of over 4 million visits, making it the sixth mostvisited national park in the country in 2021,” said Superintendent Kevin Schneider. “We value our relationship with the neighboring communities and appreciate the services, experiences, and amenities they provide to visitors.”

According to Katahdin Woods and Waters National Monument

expenses, hopefully providing a small measure of relief for them.”

“Cost increases continue to challenge this important Maine industry,” said Patrick Keliher, DMR commissioner. “This relief comes at a critical time.”

Eligible recipients include resident commercial license holders who renew a license held in 2021 and who are 18 years or older as of January 2022. License holders with multiple licenses will receive reimbursement for all eligible licenses. Dealers are eligible for the license cost plus the cost of supplemental licenses held in 2021 and will be reimbursed after the conclusion of the 2022 dealer licensing year, which ends March 31, 2023.

License holders will receive a paper check in the mail at the address provided to DMR in the license application.

Lobster license holders who purchased a license between Nov. 15, 2021 and March 31, 2022, but ordered trap tags, or additional tags, after June 6, 2022, will be reimbursed for the tags during the next round of reimbursements. In addition, the reimbursement applies only to the purchase of initial tags, and not replacement tags.

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Superintendent Mark Wimmer, “Visitation has gradually increased to approximately 40,000 annually, supporting local jobs in surrounding communities including Patten, Sherman, Medway, and Millinocket.

We look forward to continuing our efforts to ensure that the Monument becomes a well-known destination in northern Maine.”

The peer-reviewed visitor spending analysis was conducted by economists at the NPS and U.S. Geological Survey.

In 2021, the National Park System received over 297 million recreation visits (up 25% from 2020). Visitors to national parks spent an estimated $20.5 billion in local gateway regions (up 41% from 2020).

The estimated contribution of this spending to the national economy was 322,600 jobs, $14.6 billion in labor income, $24.3 billion in value added, and $42.5 billion in economic output. The lodging sector saw the highest direct effects, with $7 billion in economic output directly contributed to this sector nationally.

The restaurant sector saw the next greatest effects, with $4.2 billion in economic output directly contributed to this sector nationally.

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The Working Waterfront . august 2022

Saltwater Cure

Strawberries, peas, and corn

Summer memories a balm for troubling times

By Courtney Naliboff WHEN I WAS a child in Central Maine, summer meant rowing my inflatable dinghy around Silver Lake, eating macaroni salad with green olives on the screened-in porch, and reading for hours in the swing chair.

The scent of hawkweed, daisies, and Timothy grass radiated from the side of the road as we walked up the hill to visit a summer friend.

More than anything else, summer meant strawberries, peas, and corn.

For as long as the season held, we would trek the 15 miles to Pike’s PYO for quarts of strawberries, glowing like rubies, firm green peas, smooth on the tongue, and later in the summer, Silver Queen sweet corn.

We ate strawberries out of hand and in my mother’s pie, suspended in a strawberry jelly and topped with cold whipped cream. Peas were shelled by the bowlful but never cooked, only

eaten straight away. Some were sweet character coming out as gay. I wrote and juicy, others slightly starchy, and a letter to then presidential candidate Bill Clinton because his opponent had we couldn’t get enough of them.

Corn was its own marvel. In late said he would ban water guns, but not summer we’d tear into a paper bag machine guns.

A friend asked me, while of a dozen or more ears, we were playing on the shucking them into a big swing set in my back yard, silver bowl on the porch This summer, why I wouldn’t become a and stuffing the husks and Jew for Jesus, since othertassels back into the bag to more than wise I would go to hell. be carried to the compost. ever before, These things couldn’t overTheir scent was a living shadow the strawberry pie, thing, sweet and vegetal at I’ve craved or the tender ears of corn. the same time. They would the tastes This summer, more than go straight into a tall pot of and scents of ever before, I’ve craved boiling water, just until my the tastes and scents of mother could smell them. summer. summer. When several Then we’d eat them in a trips to the store proved hurry with butter and salt. literally fruitless, a friend Summers then were innocent, more or less. I learned brought me three quarts of Beth’s about homophobia from the contro- strawberries from the mainland.

I designed a long, thin raised bed for versy over the comic strip “For Better or Worse,” which in 1993 featured a the fenced-in garden for the express

purpose of growing peas to climb the chicken wire. I picked and ate the first snap peas today. My own corn plants, so close to being “knee-high on the Fourth of July,” are a source of anticipatory sweetness. I need it.

This summer, underneath the abundant sunshine and the hummingbirds sipping from nepeta blossoms, something frightening lurks. Strawberries, peas, and corn repair nothing. But they will give me strength and solace to face the future.

Courtney Naliboff teaches, writes, and plays music on North Haven. She may be reached at Courtney.Naliboff@ gmail.com.

Journal of an Island Kitchen

Getting the garden ‘out of the woods’ Vigilance is watch-word for so much

By Sandy Oliver MOST FRUIT TREES overestimate how much fruit they can ripen. I thin my peaches in early summer, the Red Haven first which ripens a little sooner than the Reliance, whose fruit is already the diameter of a quarter. The tree will naturally throw off some of its fruit sets; I can shake a branch and pea-sized fruits fall. Still, many remain and I twist the tiny peaches and tug, unscrewing them from the stem.

It’s terrible, thinning peaches because I imagine wonderful, luscious fruit in each one I pull off, though that is fiction. The ripe, un-thinned fruit would be small and too much weight stresses the tree’s branches.

As it is, all the lovely potential fruit I leave on might never get to glowing, fragrant maturity. At the last moment, it might be susceptible to brown rot and fall off as happened one year when I harvested only a handful.

Sometimes, I think, with the peaches, I am never out of the woods.

That’s true with a lot of gardening.

Missing watering on a hot sunny day can destroy a row of seedlings. A couple of days of not watching for Colorado potato beetles can result in masses of the most disgusting larvae God and Mother Nature ever created. Taking a vacation during gardening season is a terrible idea.

With vigilance, I get the garden out of “Why bother.” As her life span grew the woods to have enough to sustain us. shorter, she decided that the rest of it Sometimes I think of caterers being would be on her terms.

After the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol, I the bungee jumpers of the culinary world. No matter how often one does read about people who later couldn’t it, no matter how much confidence one understand how they became caught possesses, a last-minute disaster lurks. up in the frenzy, why they sacrificed Consider the wedding cake deliv- careers, and sometimes marriages in a ered in a van belonging to a dog-owner. moment of forgetting who they were.

One brief moment, Frosting covered in dog and one is hopelessly hair, which blew around lost in the woods. during the trip, took In my 75th year, I look venue staff too much back and rejoice that last-minute time to apartheid ended in South tweezer away the hairs Africa; that Catholic and and smooth the frosting.

Protestant Ireland have Until the food is in the Taking a vacation approached something diners’ stomachs, you’re during gardening akin to peace. It gave me never out of the woods. hope, however frail, for One is never out of season is a Israel and Palestine. the woods in marriage terrible idea.

When President either.

Exercising Lyndon Johnson signed vigilance, giving up the Civil Rights law, small annoying habits, I thought, “Finally, extending tolerance thank goodness.” I was beyond whatever one relieved when Roe v. might have imagined Wade became law and possible, cultivating was happy when the amazing love. Humans, though, over their lifetime, keep Cuyahoga River stopped burning and changing and sometimes where we end I saw human greed and selfishness up hardly resembles earlier expectations. curbed by environmental law.

A historian by training, and someA couple I knew approached their 80s, and the wife asked for a divorce. thing of an anarchist by temperaThe husband said, why bother, we are ment, I looked back over the arc of so old. And she said, that’s exactly time and generally observed that our

society moved, glacially sometimes, towards a much less brutal existence.

For example, Americans generally do not draw and quarter people they don’t agree with and cockfights are not common in our streets.

We’ve approached a freer, more caring and participatory society. I am glad I vote, own property, drive, and go to the grocery store without a male relative chaperone.

I could not have imagined that I’d live long enough to see my beloved Earth at risk of irreparable harm and my treasured democracy undermined.

Thank goodness for island living where people must get along enough to thrive, where we are too interdependent to disagree for long.

I may be pretty optimistic over the long haul with scant short-term evidence to justify it, but I’ll bet on civil disobedience and individuals making better economic and personal choices in order to moderate this.

We are certainly never out of the woods.

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

She may be reached at SandyOliver47@ gmail.com.

www.workingwaterfront.com . august 2022

23

Cranberry Report

Island travel logistics rely on kindness Haircut, boat ride, and forgotten phone play roles

By Barbara Fernald ARE YOU HEADED to the mainland today? Most of us on the islands have a “going off ” ritual of checking for car keys, wallet, water bottle and phone right before we leave the house.

Quite a few years ago I was halfway to Great Cranberry, on the ferry, when I realized I was without car keys or wallet. “Argh!” I wailed to several women friends sitting nearby. “I forgot my purse!”

I would have to return home on the next boat and reschedule my plans.

At least the day was nice and I could walk up to the library to wait for the next boat back to the island. This conversation followed my discovery: “Where were you going?”

“I was going to get my hair cut in Southwest Harbor.”

“I can loan you some money.”

“I’m headed over that way, now, I’ll give you a ride.”

“Thanks, you guys. I’ll just head back and do it another day.”

“But it’s a haircut!”

All the women agreed that a haircut was a big appointment not to miss so I accepted their help and followed through with my plans. Afterwards I

On this day, though, Hannah’s reply took a happy walk to the Upper Town Dock in Southwest Harbor to catch a was, “Thanks, but I’m just going to different ferry back to Islesford. There enjoy sitting here in the quiet waiting I met my friend Sarah who was just for the ferry.” Her choice ended up about to go rowing but first offered to being lucky for me.

Our arrival on Islesford found a large pay my fare back to the island. Things worked out quite nicely for me thanks truck and trailer filled with traps that were being lowered to a the solidarity of friends lobster boat below. They who know what it feels had only just started the like to find yourself empty job. We carried our stuff handed on the boat.

All the women farther down the dock A few weeks ago I went to access my island car. off island with my friend agreed that a As I reached to my back Susie for a day of garden shopping. We ended up haircut was a big pocket for my phone I packing her car with appointment not wondered how many steps I’d made for the day. flats of plants, bags of to miss…

No phone! I realized I’d potting soil, and bags of left it in Northeast Harbor groceries. We were happy in the public bathroom! that my husband Bruce Just then, my brotherwas picking us up with his in-law Mark was coming boat so we wouldn’t have up the ramp. “Hey, do you have the to wait for an hour to catch the ferry.

Another friend, Hannah, was sitting harbormaster’s phone number? And in her car by the dock watching us may I use your phone to call him?” He unload. “Do you want a ride back dialed it and handed me his phone. “I’ve to the island?” I asked her. The usual got it in my pocket, I was just going to response to this question is “Yes!” It’s drop it off at the police station,” said the reason many of us park in those John, the harbormaster.

Bless the moral person who found spots looking over the harbor if we have a long wait for the boat. An early my phone and turned it in. It’s so reassuring when good happens. “Would ride back is good luck.

you be willing to drop it off on the 4:30 ferry?” I asked. The ferry wasn’t in yet and John was done with work for the day, so he declined that request.

Then I remembered Hannah. I described where she was parked and asked John if he’d be willing to take two minutes to find her and give her my phone. “OK, but if she’s not there I’ll drop it at the police station.”

“Fair enough, thanks so much!”

My island car was not fully loaded with our days worth of stuff when Mark walked by my car. “I just heard from John. Hannah has your phone.”

I had just enough time to drop Susie off, unload my plants and put groceries away before setting off to meet Hannah when the boat got in at 5.

Most of the time if you’re willing to ask for a little help, things work out.

Especially when you live on an island.

Barbara Fernald lives on Islesford (Little Cranberry Island). She may be reached at Fernald244@gmail.com.

Ticks surviving cold, UMaine research finds Leaf litter insulation, other factors studied WINTER COLD MAY not be what’s keeping ticks from spreading north in Maine, a new University of Maine study finds. The research shows that blacklegged tick nymphs are able to survive inhospitably cold winter temperatures with insulation from leaf litter and snowpack, which may lead to an expansion of their range into Northern Maine as climate change leads to warmer and wetter winters.

In the past few decades, ticks have expanded in both population size and range throughout the state of Maine.

Nymphal and adult blacklegged ticks are of particular public health significance as they transmit a diverse array of pathogens, including the bacteria that causes Lyme disease.

Northern Maine has been considered a safe haven, though, with low tick population density compared to other parts of the state. Previously, scientists assumed that this is due to the freezing winter temperatures in northern areas of the state. As climate change brings warmer winters to northern Maine, it has also brought anxiety about whether ticks will soon settle there and cause the myriad public health concerns that they have in other parts of the state.

“Conventional wisdom is that cold winter temperatures kill ticks, but this rarely has been tested experimentally in the field,” says Allison Gardner,

assistant professor of arthropod vector containing blacklegged tick nymphs at biology and co-author of the study, four sites across Maine that were chosen published in the journal Ticks and to span the state’s full temperature and snowfall gradients: Cape Elizabeth, Tick-borne Diseases.

“We designed our study to test the Orono, Brownville, and Presque Isle. hypothesis that insulation protects ticks From 2018–20, the scientists observed from the most extreme ambient temper- whether the tick nymphs were able to atures,” she said, “potentially enabling survive the winter, ensuring that some of the subjects’ enclosures blacklegged ticks to were covered in snow or survive even in the coldest leaf litter as they often are parts of the state.” in the wild while others A team of researchers Extremely were cleared. from the University cold winter The results showed of Maine School of that overwinter survival Biology and Ecology, temperatures was consistent across the the University of Maine don’t prevent sites—even in Northern at Presque Isle and the Maine. Snow and leaf Vector-Borne Disease ticks from Laboratory at the Maine overwintering in litter cover contributed significantly to the overMedical Center Research Northern Maine winter survival at sites Institute set out to see in both southern and whether the cold was to as long as there northern Maine. blame for the current low is significant In 2019, the scientists concentration of blackalso collected hostlegged ticks in northern insulation… seeking blacklegged Maine when compared to ticks at seven sites across the coastal southern and Maine to compare their inland central areas of the state. The study was led by Michelle experimental results to real-world Volk, at the time a master’s student conditions. They found higher densiin the Department of Ecology and ties of blacklegged ticks in coastal and Environmental Sciences, now a Ph.D. southern Maine than inland central Maine—and, perhaps most imporstudent at Michigan State University.

The researchers established enclo- tantly, no blacklegged ticks in inland sures from one-gallon plastic buckets Northern Maine.

“The findings of this study suggest that the impact of low temperatures on overwinter survival may not be the single factor limiting blacklegged tick populations in northern Maine,” Gardner says.

“While climate change likely has some role in the geographic range expansion of ticks in the state, the ecological mechanisms limiting the spread of the blacklegged tick likely are very complex.”

The disparity shows that extremely cold winter temperatures don’t prevent ticks from overwintering in Northern Maine as long as there is significant insulation in the form of leaf litter and snowfall.

On a small scale, manipulating the availability of insulation at different sites, though—for example, reducing leaf litter or snow cover through the fall and winter—could help manage tick populations in Maine. However, as climate change is expected to both increase northern winter temperatures and precipitation in the northeastern United States, the future of blacklegged tick populations in the region will have to be even more closely tracked.

“The goal of our ongoing work is to conduct more detailed studies of how abiotic conditions impact tick survival in the environment. Right now, my group is attempting to understand the role of temperature variance as opposed to temperature extremes on tick survival,” Gardner says.

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The Working Waterfront . august 2022

Field Notes

The Maine coast goes electric

Community battery back-up, outboards part of mix

By Emma Wendt SANDY OLIVER SHOULD be getting paid the big bucks by Tesla’s marketing team. Describing how she snuggles up to her smartphone to gaze lovingly at the app for her Powerwall—Tesla’s inhome backup battery system—Sandy builds a visceral connection for the otherwise esoteric and dull topic of energy resilience.

“When the world is going downhill,” she said at the end of her three-minute talk at the Islesboro Energy Jamboree this spring, “Tessy’s got my back.” Tessy, of course, being the affectionate nickname Sandy (who writes the Journal of an Island Kitchen column for The Working Waterfront) gave her Powerwall.

Giving folks the chance to experience the fun, emotional, and personal side of energy systems is one of the best ways to help us shift to cleaner, safer, and more reliable options for how we get around, heat our homes, and keep the lights on during storms.

At the Islesboro event, I saw my selfdescribed “not-a-car-person” colleague walk away from test driving an electric car with a look of glee, declaring she wants to buy one. Sales of electric lawnmowers will likely see a notable blip

after a landscaping company showed see the effects of climate change with off their brand-new smooth and quiet access to the ferry and some roads affected by rising seas. Eastport is electric mower.

I wouldn’t be surprised if we saw receiving support on how to use a a few more folks on electric bikes large battery for backup power during after trying them out at the jamboree outages, to be charged in part by tidal or hearing from a resident who gets and solar power.

Making energy tangible is around the island on her also why I’m excited to get E-bike. I’ve been itching to folks out on electric boats. ride an E-bike for years and For the first While in Eastport in April have now added one to my few seconds, as part of its DOE project, wish list after zipping by the I met with people who fish, Island Market.

I hadn’t run boat yards, manage the Talking to people about realized we port, and run aquaculture energy is literally my job. But businesses, all eager to learn unless I’m meeting with a were under about electric boats. The fellow energy nerd, bringing power, it was sooner we can get them in up the topic is rarely where so quiet. use in their working lives, I start the conversation. the sooner they’ll be able to Understanding what keeps share their real-life expepeople up at night, or what’s riences with how quiet and easy the fun and exciting, is more effective.

This is why I’m excited about vessels are, and what it was like to switch several projects at the Island Institute. over from gasoline and diesel engines.

On a recent trip to see family in Nova Through a program funded by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), Scotia, I visited the Centre for Ocean Islesboro and Eastport are getting help Ventures & Entrepreneurship on preparing for some very real chal- Halifax Harbour and saw the 37-foot lenges—electrical outages, old and hybrid electric fishing boat Alutasi, retrofitted by startup Glas Ocean leaky homes, and sea level rise.

Islesboro is looking at getting off Electric and acquired by Sma’knis, a fossil fuels, particularly since residents Mi’kmaq- and veteran-owned marine

safety and security company. While we couldn’t go for a ride during my visit, I saw her up close with a short trip on a rigid inflatable powered by a 10 hp electric outboard motor. For the first few seconds, I hadn’t realized we were under power, it was so quiet.

One thing I haven’t mentioned yet is cost. All these electric options are expensive up-front. I also understand that contemplating heat pumps, home energy storage, or electric boats is generally reserved for those with significant capital. We need to change that.

In the meantime, while we work on lowering the cost and financial risk for everyone in Maine and beyond, I can’t wait to see more neighbors and colleagues sharing their real-life experiences switching to electric options.

Emma Wendt is a community development officer working on energy issues with the Island Institute, publisher of The Working Waterfront. She may be reached at ewendt@islandinstitute.org.

Fathoming

Have you taken your broadband speed test?

Funds are coming, but need must be shown

By Nick Battista IN JULY of 2020, Maine voters overwhelming passed a $15 million broadband bond. This fall, we will see $150 million in federal funds, and at least another $100 million, awarded for projects improving internet infrastructure.

What follows is a recap of the status and how you can help Maine secure our fair share of federal funds.

All funds will flow through the Maine Connectivity Authority, the state’s quasi-governmental broadband agency created to rapidly move millions of dollars in support of public private partnerships.

This fall, the Authority will undertake a statewide planning process to guide how the state spends at least $100 million as well as funding for digital equity and inclusion work. Beyond planning, the Authority is slated to invest: • $70 million in areas with limited connectivity and ready public/ private partnerships; some match will be required to access funds and projects will be expected to connect everybody in the area.

• $30 million to support technical assistance and build regional capacity to undertake these complicated partnerships.

• $30 million to enable partnerships that expand infrastructure that ultimately enables last mile projects; such infrastructure influences the cost to build a project and the cost for an internet service provider to operate the network.

• $20 million to complete line extensions for owners of existing infrastructure that want to expand and provide a connection to a small pocket of people so they aren’t left behind.

While Maine is poised to significantly improve connectivity across the state, these funds will not be enough. You can help Maine receive our fair share of federal funds by visiting MaineBroadbandCoalition.org and taking the speed test there. Even if you have good internet service, taking the test will help identify areas with good service, which makes it easier to identify areas without.

Speed tests also allow the state to challenge a new map being created by the

Federal Communications Commission that drives the allocation of funds. Each state gets a minimum of $100 million and additional funds are allocated based on each state’s proportion of unserved locations, as documented on the maps. The more unserved locations, the greater Maine’s share of the available funds—which could total $32 billion.

To build the maps, the FCC is asking internet service providers to provide detailed data about where their existing service is and what maximum advertised speeds are available there. Across the country, these maps are likely going to underestimate the number of homes with inadequate internet service. States will have a chance to share data with the FCC that better reflects reality and effectively argues for a greater share of the available funds.

Maine’s strong focus on community engagement and planning gives us a significant advantage over other states.

This spring, Maine successfully used information from this process to overcome challenges by two cable companies arguing that about a third of the census blocks covered in a $28 million grant shouldn’t be eligible because they were already providing service

to those areas. Of the more than 300 census blocks challenged, Maine was able to use detailed data to show that many homes did not actually have service and the state was awarded all of the funds. States without robust local engagement were much less successful in addressing similar challenges.

One of the key data sets that Maine uses comes from the statewide speed test project run by the Maine Broadband Coalition. So far, Mainers have taken 37,000 speeds tests in over 28,000 unique locations, providing valuable insight into broadband challenges.

The better Maine is able to identify unserved locations, the better equipped it will be challenge the FCC maps. With $32 billion to split up, let’s make sure Maine is not undercounted and that we receive our fair share of these funds.

Nick Battista is chief policy officer with the Island Institute, publisher of The Working Waterfront.

www.workingwaterfront.com . august 2022

25

In Plain Sight

Maine’s lost fixtures: The Wiscasset schooners Decline of sail explains ‘most photographed’ ships

By Kelly Page FOR MORE THAN 60 years, the fourmast schooners Hesper and Luther Little lay abandoned in the Sheepscot River. Better known as the “Wiscasset Schooners,” they served as an iconic landmark to millions of passersby travelling on Maine’s coastal Route 1.

The sight of these schooners charmed the masses, stirring visions of life at sea and serving as reminders of Maine’s historic role in commercial shipping.

Some believe them to be the most photographed vessels in the world with countless snapshots residing in the scrapbooks and slide carousels documenting decades of Maine tourism.

How the schooners came to be in Wiscasset is rooted in the story of the decline of sail.

Although steel, steam-powered vessels had been replacing wooden sailing vessels for some time in commercial shipping, a renewed demand for wooden vessels emerged in World War I. It was during this time that both Hesper and Luther Little were constructed. After the war, the need for such vessels continued to dwindle.

While some smaller commercial vessels experienced second careers as windjammers, countless seaworthy vessels fell into obscurity and became coal barges, were scuttled as breakwaters, or simply scrapped.

After spending several idle years anchored in Maine ports, Frank W.

The Hesper and Luther Little, circa 1945, near Wiscasset’s town landing. PHOTO: COURTESY MAINE MARITIME MUSEUM

Winter of Auburn purchased Hesper and Luther Little for $600 each in 1932.

Winter had also acquired the Wiscasset, Waterville & Farmington Railroad with a plan to operate a lumber company.

Until 1936 the schooners were tied up to a pier where the current town landing is located. When it became apparent that Winter’s plans were not going to pan out, they were moved to their final berth only slightly north of the pier—a backdrop to Wiscasset’s downtown village.

The Wiscasset Schooners were not the only abandoned vessels in Maine waters, but no other claimed such a prominent location. Thousands climbed aboard for photo ops made

easier while the dock (pictured here in about 1945) was still intact.

Determined explorers eventually had to brave the mud at low tide to gain access. As the condition of the schooners degraded, the hazards to those clambering on board multiplied. In recognition of their draw, a group unsuccessfully campaigned to stabilize the vessels in the 1970s.

Vandalism, fires, and severe weather continued to take their toll. By the mid-1990s, the schooners had fully transformed from romantic relics to rubble in the mud. Ultimately, the town of Wiscasset took responsibility for the 1998 excavation and gradual disposal of Hesper’s and Luther Little’s remains.

Fragments of the rigging made their way into the collection of Maine Maritime Museum, providing important examples of shipbuilding techniques common in Maine shipyards. Less distinguishable pieces were made available to the public at the Wiscasset landfill. Perhaps the most notable repurposing is Luther Little’s salvaged Douglas fir masts transformed into custom kitchen cabinets.

Kelly Page is collections and library services manager for Maine Maritime Museum in Bath. Current exhibits include “Zach Horn: Looking for Winslow Homer” and “Uncharted: Maine Artists/Maine Waters.” www.MaineMaritimeMuseum.org.

Observer

Confessions of a compulsive counter English and mathematics remain nimble in mind

By Phil Crossman I WAS LARGELY adrift in high school.

I paid little sustained attention with one intriguing exception. My English teacher was a singularly intimidating and frightful old woman named Gwendlyn Green.

One of her eyes wandered endlessly afield of whatever the other, her good and functioning eye, was focused on.

She was the brunt of, but oblivious to, cruel jokes, mostly from my fellow male students. Her only interest was in teaching to the one or two kids who were worthy and interested in learning. That one of those youngsters was myself was not apparent to me or anyone else but how else to account for the fixation on grammar and expression that emerged decades later.

I wonder if she knew that I would one day awaken.

Early on, in one of the singular moments of clarity during those 12 years of education, a moment with Miss Green, I was persuaded to never start

a sentence with “but” or with “and.” It’s done all the time nowadays, by even the most acknowledged writers and essayists, but I still can’t clear that hurdle.

I credit Miss Green, who delivered that admonition so credibly that now, 50 years later, I cannot bring myself to begin a sentence thus, even after an editor (not Tom) suggested I do so.

I only say this because I’ve begun writing an account of my three-year, 268 mile walk around the shore of Vinalhaven and I want to account for the absence of transitional words one might expect to be deployed. This is the introduction and it relates to the appeal of counting footsteps.

I have, at 76, evolved—I reserve the right to be generous—to become a fellow who, while unwilling to acknowledge being elderly, is reconciled to, even content with, being host to a mild dysfunction. Obsessive Compulsive Disorder is characterized by, among other irregularities, a consuming and irrational need to impose order, to arrange things,

alphabetically, or by height or length or weight, and to engage in compulsive behavior, particularly counting or averaging or maybe hand washing. Mine, though is an imperfect and, according to several insensitive acquaintances, thus characteristic, affliction.

I do submit to the temptation to arrange things. On the other hand, things do beg to be sorted out, do they not? I count stuff as well; in fact, I count everything, now that I think about it—footsteps between cracks in the sidewalk, footsteps between a beginning and a destination, footsteps per mile, average footsteps per minute, footsteps between my house and my therapist’s office and so forth.

But again, would those unknowns not otherwise remain elusive? Who else do you know who can name our 46 presidents or our 50 states alphabetically, or in reverse order… or their capitals?

Passengers, when I’m driving, and they realize I am not paying attention to them or much else, are disturbed to find that I am instead assigning numeric

values to the letters on oncoming license plates, adding them to the plate’s numbers, finding an average, and then pronouncing that vehicle, before it passes from view, to be the corresponding phonetic equivalent.

A car with license number 94HCL13, for example, is a Foxtrot. On the other hand, as a reminder that I must remain cognizant and keep my eyes on the road, I round to the nearest whole number.

I don’t think about irrational things and, according to my sweetheart Elaine, do not wash my hands nearly enough.

Thus, my diagnosis as “modest.”

Now about that walk.

Phil Crossman lives on Vinalhaven where he serves on the town’s select board. He may be reached at PhilCrossman.vh@gmail.com.

The Working Waterfront . august 2022

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Art of the Waterfront

Finding ‘Monument Valley’ in Friendship Harbor

Charcoal rendering of a waterfront’s patterns

By Carl Little

P

am Cabañas has been living in Friendship for going on 20 years. She keeps a skiff in the harbor and her son Eli is a sternman on the F/V Miss Kristen. A longtime member of the town’s board of assessors, which she currently chairs, Cabañas is, in her words, “pretty much immersed” in this fishing village “in terms of inspiration, community involvement, and friends.”

Friendship Harbor and the nearby coastline provide subject matter for many of Cabañas’s remarkable charcoal drawings. In one ongoing series, she focuses on what she calls “storage units,” the trap floats that dot the harbor. “Sometimes traps and ropes just need to dry out,” she explains, “and the fishermen handily toss the gear on their float.”

One section of the harbor, where many trap floats are moored, Cabañas calls Monument Valley, “always changing and always a fascinating array of gear— from order to chaos.” She loves to wander among them in her skiff.

In the drawing Pushed Off, one of the floats sits, in the artist’s words, “precariously at the edge of the harbor, just shy of the day marker, looking like she’s at the edge of the known world, ready to drift out into Muscongus Bay.” Cabañas tries to give these “edifices” life and personality, “reflecting in the inanimate the character of their owners—a bit of anthropomorphizing, I suppose.”

Pam Cabañas, Pushed Off, 2022, compressed charcoal on Baltic birch panel, 36 by 48 inches.

Photo Eli Cabañas

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She builds up the drawing with conventional charcoal and then moves to a richer, darker, and very warm black

The title refers to a lobster boat pushing off the float, its wake disturbing the serene reflections in the water. With a brilliant touch Cabañas renders the traps, which seem to be dissolving in the air. Their ghostly forms contrast with the swirling oil-slicked water. The whole image at once tilts and finds balance.

Cabañas drew the piece in her studio, working from reference photos taken on her rows around the harbor. She builds up the drawing with conventional charcoal and then moves to a richer, darker, and very warm black using compressed charcoal sticks.

Born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1952, Cabañas grew up in Bayville, a fishing village on Long Island’s North Shore. She gained art skills at Alfred University, Tamarind Institute, and the University of New Mexico where she also earned an MA in art education.

After teaching around Santa Fe for a time, she returned to Long Island. She opened an antique store in Locust Valley and later launched Cabañas Decorative Arts, creating decorative finishes and murals for architects and interior designers in the metropolitan area.

On trips to the Midcoast to visit her mother-inlaw and painting excursions to Monhegan, Cabañas

Cabañas in her skiff, the P/V (painting vessel) Skiffy with her dog Jesse in Friendship Harbor. Photo Jane Herbert

made many friends and decided to pull up stakes and move to Friendship. She left behind “the pretense of Long Island life and family and business for the independent aesthetic life” she had always desired.

These days, when she isn’t drawing, Cabañas manages Salt Pond Studio in a pre-Civil War structure, originally the East Friendship Schoolhouse, which she purchased from the Stone-Scott-Watson

VFW Post a few years ago and subsequently restored with her son’s help. She exhibits her own work and that of local artists. The gallery is another expression of her close ties to the Friendship community.

Carl Little’s latest book is Mary Alice Treworgy: A Maine Painter.

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The Working Waterfront . august 2022

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Join us in our efforts to the working waterfront!

10/8/19 1:03 PM

The Island Institute is focusing on clean energy projects—including electrifying the boats, wharves and businesses on the working waterfront—to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and make Maine’s marine economy more resilient to future changes.

OUR ELECTRIFICATION WORK INCLUDES:

Distributing Spark! grants to promote interest in and offset costs for electric outboards.

Funding solar projects on the working waterfront to stabilize energy costs and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

3 WAYS TO SUPPORT MAINE’S WORKING WATERFRONT: 1 - Online at giving.islandinstitute.org 2 - Call the Island Institute office at (207) 594-9209 ext. 141 3 - Mail your gift to: Island Institute, PO Box 648, Rockland, ME 04841 All gifts count toward membership