The Working Waterfront - June 2021

News of Maine’s Coast and Islands

THE WORKING

volume 35, № 4 n jun 2021 n free circulation: 50,000

published by the island institute

n

workingwaterfront.com

‘New Mainers’ are key to seafood industry

State faces worker shortage that can only be met by immigrants

By Kelli Park

W

elcoming immigrants to Maine is more than just the polite, hospitable thing to do.

It’s critical to the state’s economic future.

That’s the view of the authors of Maine’s community development strategy for 2020-2029, who assert that the state will lose 65,000 workers to retirement by 2029 and that to remain economically viable, some 75,000 new workers must be added.

“The longer the state doesn’t take affirmative steps to try to attract more people from other states and other countries, the more dire our workforce shortage is becoming,” said Beth Stickney, who has worked as an immigration lawyer for 35 years and founded the Immigrant Legal Advocacy Project and the Maine Business Immigration Coalition.

The need will be especially felt in the industrial sector, which includes seafood processing.

“When you think of a traditional working waterfront, people have an image of that in mind,” said

Friends of Casco Bay staff scientist Mike Doan launches a new continuous monitoring station in Harpswell.

See story on page 5. PHOTO: COURTESY FRIENDS OF CASCO BAY

Curt Brown, a marine biologist at Ready Seafood in Saco, where more than half of its 400 employees are “new” Mainers who primarily hail from the Congo, Angola, Vietnam, and Cambodia.

“We are an integral part of the working waterfront because we get sustainable, traceable lobster from the coast of Maine to points all around the world,” Brown said. “That doesn’t happen without new Mainers, here and throughout Maine’s marine economy. It’s

such a huge part of the working waterfront story that doesn’t get told.”

That view was echoed by Charlie Gauvin, employment case manager in refugee and immigration services at Catholic Charities Maine, who has seen an increase in demand for workers he believes could not be met without immigrants. continued on page 2

Machias dike project raises sea level, fish concerns DOT weighing fix for bridge and dike that carry Route 1

By Stephen Rappaport

T

he Maine Department of Transportation is moving forward with plans to replace

the 90-year-old dike and bridge that carries Route 1 over the Middle River in Machias, but new concerns will mean a more careful consideration.

Late in March, the department held

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a virtual public meeting to explain and 70 years ago that prevent the inflow solicit public comment on the project of tidal water from the Machias River that will entail the replacement of the to the land above the structure while allowing the outflow of approximately 1,000water from the Middle foot causeway that River. Over time, areas carries not just the Over time, areas above the dike that highway, but also a above the dike that once were salt marsh section of the Downeast Sunrise Trail that runs once were salt marsh have grown up into wetlands that have along a former railway have grown up into supported farming and roadbed and extensive recreational uses. utilities infrastructure wetlands…

DOT has determined including water and that the dike and tide electric service among gates have outlived others. The dike also provides a parking area and space for a their design life, no longer function properly, and need to be replaced. The seasonal farmers market in Machias.

The first dike was built about 1868, but question is, replaced with what?

In 2009, when DOT first addressed the current structure, built of timber cribbing with rubble and earthen fill, dates to the issue, the answer seemed to be to replace the failing dike with another 1930 and was widened in 1944.

The dike is pierced by four timber culverts with tide gates installed some continued on page 5

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The Working Waterfront . June 2021

NEW MAINERS

This is what our new workforce looks like. It’s new Mainers.”

And Ready Seafood is “New Mainers are breathing some looking beyond entry level jobs. life back into Maine’s industrial “Our employees are seeing that economy,” he said. “It’s calling back there’s a pipeline for growth,” said to Maine’s industrial past, to more of Skoczenski. “We want everyone what it looked like once upon a time. coming in thinking they’re going to They’re making a redevelopment and be the CEO of the company.”

Ben Conniff, co-founder and chief revitalization of Maine’s industrial innovation officer at Luke’s Lobster, economies possible.”

New Mainers have joined Maine’s says a majority of the company’s economy in recent years in virtually employees come from Cambodia, the every sector across the state: forestry, Congo, Angola, and El Salvador.

“New Mainers are a lifeblood in this seafood harvesting and processing, farming, construction, manufacturing, industry. They have been for a long time, and they always will eldercare, healthcare, hospibe,” he said. Luke’s Lobster tality, and tourism. Former recently started an in-house migrant farm workers in “This is what English language training the blueberry industry have program so that more new transformed the town of our new Mainer employees can Milbridge into a thriving workforce be promoted to superviyear-round multicultural sory positions. “The kind community, and a Somali looks like. of energy in those folks is population has been credIt’s new what the state really needs ited with revitalizing downto grow,” Conniff said. town Lewiston over the past Mainers.”

And that energy often 20 years. translates into personal Ready Seafood began growth. employing new Mainers “I started seeing change in the in high numbers four years ago, at which point cohorts based on native company and change in myself, as languages and a step-up program well,” said Francisco Bumba, a 29-yeardesigned to promote from within were old petroleum engineer from Angola who started at Ready Seafood as a implemented.

“People are still thinking that they’re lobster cracker and has been promoted filling a gap in their operations, rather five times in less than three years. He than looking at new Mainers as the now works in the HR department and workforce,” said Brian Skoczenski, is responsible for hiring and training.

Moise Munamba, a 27-year-old chief operations officer at Ready Seafood. “This is our new workforce. electrical engineering student from

continued from page 1

Ready Seafood’s 52,000-square-foot lobster processing facility in Saco, built in 2019, is the largest such operation in Maine. Front row, from left are Curt Brown, Francisco Bumba, and Lori Talbot. Back row, from left, Van Bo, Pamela Lukasa, Lee Stafford, and Korina Costanzo. PHOTO: KELLI PARK

the Congo and a maintenance technician at Ready Seafood, sees the impact he and others are having.

“If you work at Ready Seafood, you’re part of the change that this company is bringing to the state of Maine,” he said. “One of the pieces that makes this company strong is that it draws its power from different people and different communities, who bring their different mindsets, different energy, and different points of view.”

Ready’s COO Skoczenski believes his company is showing others the way to success.

“We have an opportunity in the state of Maine to be one of the leaders in international workforce development,” he said, “and the more that we understand that this is our new workforce, that these are new ideas, that these are highly educated people, the more we are going to succeed.”

It’s not all about the work. The multicultural nature of the new Mainer

workforce manifests itself in the five senses, as well.

“When I go into the facility in Portland at 9 a.m., everyone is jamming out to Congolese music. Guys coming out of the prison system, guys who have been in Portland their whole lives—everyone,” said Skoczenski, who also said that a Vietnamese woman sets up a food cart at the Saco facility in the summertime, with a daily line of 40 people from all backgrounds. “Five years ago, I couldn’t have imagined that in the seafood industry.”

Stickney, the immigration lawyer, sees new Mainers as part of the American fabric.

“Just like the people who came through Ellis Island, these people have something,” she said. “They have the guts to get on the boat, the plane, to go by foot, whatever they have to do, to leave everything familiar behind and start something new.”

Why does Elaine McNeilly advertise in The Working Waterfront?

“People need to stay informed, and The Working Waterfront thoughtfully shines a light on the issues that are important to Maine’s islands and coast.

This paper is an extension of the important work of the Island Institute.”

(McNeilly’s business, Primrose Framing, is at 156 Main Street in Rockland.)

Advertising in The Working Waterfront not only puts your business in front of tens of thousands of readers, but you also have the satisfaction of supporting the Island Institute which has been doing community development work on the coast and islands for nearly 40 years.

For more information, contact Dave Jackson at djackson@islandinstitute.org

. April . June2020 www.workingwaterfront.com www.workingwaterfront.com 2021

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Native peoples should inform land use policy Study shows biodiversity followed indigenous management

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ndigenous peoples should be part of land use decisions, asserts Darren Ranco, a University of Maine associate professor of anthropology and citizen of Penobscot Nation.

“We have to be at the table,” he says.

“When indigenous people are on the land and making decisions about land management, biodiversity increases.”

An international study led by Erle Ellis, professor and director of the Laboratory for Anthropogenic Landscape Ecology at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, supports that view.

It found that indigenous peoples have shaped most of the Earth’s ecology for thousands of years and that the main cause of the current biodiversity crisis is not human destruction of uninhabited wildlands, but rather the appro- Suzanne Greenlaw, a Wolastoqiyik/Maliseet and doctoral candidate at the University of Maine, counts sweetgrass stems in Acadia priation, colonization, and use of lands National Park for a study about sweetgrass harvesting and sustainability of Wabanaki practices. PHOTO: COURTESY UNIVERSITY OF MAINE previously sustainably managed.

Ranco and Jacquelyn Gill, a UMaine “Our global maps show that even be successful without empowering associate professor of paleoecology homogeneous cultural landscapes, the and plant ecology, are co-authors of the 12,000 years ago, nearly three-quar- the indigenous, traditional, and local team found. ters of terrestrial people who know their natures in ways study titled “People Gill says the findings show that nature was inhabited, that scientists are only beginning to have shaped most of not all human activity is inherently used, and shaped by understand,” says Ellis. terrestrial nature for bad. There’s a spectrum of land use at least 12,000 years.” Even 12,000 years ago, people,” Ellis says.

Ranco, Gill, and 15 other scienactivities and intensities. Hunter“Areas untouched by tists joined Ellis to examine the early Proceedings of the gatherers and early farmers, for nearly three-quarters people were almost as and sustained global significance of National Academy of instance, created diverse, dynamic, Sciences published of terrestrial nature was rare 12,000 years ago cultural landscapes to better underand productive mosaics of lands and Martin, Bud Staples, andconserve Elsie Gillespie around at the annual town meeting. as they areJohn today. ” the study April 19. stand and landchatand the the woodstove novel ecological communities that inhabited, used, and Even lands that animals and plants that live on it. To To truly underwere sustained for millennia. shaped by people.” have been charac- do so, researchers utilized the most stand land nature The work suggests that people don’t terized as “natural” up-to-date, spatially explicit global today, Ellis says it’s have to be hands-off or not visit places and “wild” generally reconstruction of historical human necessary to grasp they care about. have long histories populations and land use. the deep human “It invites all of us to think about our history of that nature. And outside of a of use, as do protected areas and Global supply chains, mechanizaplace in nature,” she says. “To learn few remote areas, people and societies indigenous lands. tion, and chemical nutrients and pest how to be a good steward and good “Efforts to conserve and restore control have accelerated the trend have shaped nature as we know it for ancestor for our children and grandthese human-shaped natures won’t toward more intensively used and thousands of years, he says. children and great-grandchildren.”

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The Working Waterfront . June 2021

Gamage Shipyard in South Bristol begins new chapter PHOTOS BY MICHELE STAPLETON

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his spring, the historic Gamage Shipyard in South Bristol began a new chapter under new ownership. The three new owners— Mike Tatro, John Vinal, and Carol Morrison—closed on the purchase from Rory Cowan in March. The three have been working at the yard—Tatro and Morrison for about six years, Vinal for three—before the purchase.

Tatro, who served as general manager, led the purchase, joined by Morrison in finance and Vinal in operations. Tatro will serve as president and general manager, Morrison as chief financial officer and treasurer, and Vinal as service manager and vice president.

Gamage Shipyard was founded in 1871 by Albion and Menzies Gamage, who had been building large wooden sailing vessels since the early 1850s.

Over the next 50 years, they built more than 88 sail and steam-powered boats.

In 1924, Harvey F. Gamage took over the business, and from 1924-1976, he oversaw the construction of more than 288 sailboats, powerboats, draggers, scallopers, and windjammers.

Eight wooden military vessels— minesweepers and patrol boats—were built at the yard in the 1940-1944 period. After the war, the business turned to building rugged wooden fishing boats. Gamage also built a few yachts, pleasure powerboats, and lobster boats during this period.

In 1959, Gamage built the first schooner designed specifically for the windjammer passenger trade, the 83-foot Mary Day. The last schooner built at the Gamage Shipward was Appledore II. In 1978, more than 40 vessels were constructed at the yard including the Shenandoah, the Bill of Rights, the yard’s namesake, the Harvey Gamage, the Arctic research vessel Hero, and Pete Seeger’s iconic sloop Clearwater, America’s environmental flagship, built to support the Clearwater organization’s mission to clean the Hudson River.

In 1970, the yard’s first steel-hulled boat, the fishing vessel Elizabeth, was launched. This change in boat-building techniques and materials was followed by nine more steel fishing boats.

After Harvey Gamage died in 1976, his son Linwood ran the yard until its sale in 2000. During that time it was mainly a storage facility, with seasonal service work.

In December 2000, Cowan purchased the yard. A longtime resident of South Bristol, he invested heavily and brought the Gamage Shipyard into a new era. He made several infrastructure investments, removing derelict buildings and adding a new marina, a state-of-the-art shop, a new office, and heated storage facilities.

Under Tatro’s leadership, the yard has returned to offering multiple services, which the new owners believe is essential to staying commercially viable and locally competitive. The amenities offered include 44 slips and 14 moorings; refit, repower, and restoration; and the ability to build new—a

A view of the Gamage Shipyard in South Bristol.

Mike Tatro

Attaching a keel.

Holland 32 and a Mitchell Cove are among the recent projects.

The yard boasts of 25,000-square feet of storage space on the six-acre waterfront site, along with two rental cottages.

In the summer, the yard employs 20-25, said Morrison. The yard offers a community workspace where desks can be rented by the hour, day, week, or month, and a coffeeshop is being considered, she said.

Cowan, who grew up in Gloucester, Mass., said he understands the

importance of a vibrant and working waterfront, and that “successful, enduring waterfront businesses need solid, knowledgeable teams. Mike, Carol, and John are just such a team. They know the operations, the customers, and, most of all, they know boats.”

The three grew up in the Midcoast, he added.

“I’m delighted to be able to support their vision for the yard and its next phase of development. It’s a proven and reliable team.”

John Vinal

www.workingwaterfront.com . June 2021

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Group expands Casco Bay monitoring Two stations now in Harpswell, Portland

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he Friends of Casco Bay has added two continuous water quality monitoring stations in the east and west sides of the bay.

On March 31, the nonprofit advocacy group’s staff scientist Mike Doan launched a new station in Cundy’s Harbor, Harpswell. The second new station was launched in Portland Harbor in April. The two new stations join the organization’s original continuous monitoring station which has been operating off Yarmouth since 2016.

The Friends group has collected water quality data in Casco Bay for nearly three decades. The longevity of the monitoring program stands in contrast to other marine data collection efforts in Maine, which are often limited by short funding cycles.

Additionally, while the federal government has long gathered offshore oceanographic data, there are almost no long-term, year-round data sets being amassed in nearshore coastal environments like Casco Bay. “With climate change already impacting the bay, the launch of these stations is a game changer for us,” said Cathy Ramsdell, executive director of Friends of Casco Bay. “To have an array of three stations where we can compare data among locations is very unusual and essential,” she said, “if we are to understand the complexities of the impacts of climate change at the local level. The steady streams of data from the

stations will strengthen our reporting to the community and bolster our advocacy and stewardship efforts for years to come.”

Doan designed the monitoring stations, affectionately known as “cages of science.”

Oceanographic equipment in the cages collects data hourly on temperature, acidity, dissolved oxygen, carbon dioxide, chlorophyll, dissolved organic matter, turbidity, salinity, and water depth, and the stations operate year-round. This enables Friends to amass data on water quality in detail and with great precision, and in an affordable manner.

“With three stations working at once, the science only gets better from here,” said Doan.

“The Portland Harbor location is key because it is in the most heavily used part of the Bay. In eastern Casco Bay, water quality may be influenced by the Kennebec River, and our Harpswell station will track that. Across the board, these stations are deepening our knowledge of what is happening in Casco Bay.” Data from the stations can be viewed at: www. cascobay.org/continuous-monitoring-station/.

The initiative was paid for by the Friends group’s campaign to raise $1.5 million for the Climate Change and Casco Bay Fund for Technology, Monitoring and Community Engagement. More than 700 Friends members contributed.

MACHIAS

with an open span bridge that would allow free tidal flow into the Middle River watershed. The department already appears to favor this alternative for replacement of a similar dike and tide gate structure in Addison.

“This potential marsh and watershed restoration/barrier removal project is ranked among the top ten estuary restoration projects in the entire Bay of Fundy and Gulf of Maine,” Shaw said in a statement. “Not only do the tide gates impact hundreds of acres of saltmarsh, they are also a barrier to migratory fish and exacerbate tidal flooding in other nearby sections of downtown Machias.”

Public comment on DOT’s initial presentation of the proposed project closed on April 30, but the public will still have plenty of opportunity to weigh in on the project. The March public meeting can be viewed on the DOT website at meetings.mainedotpima.com. The department also plans to hold another public meeting in September which will allow for comment on a narrowed list of alternatives.

According to DOT Project Manager Nathan Howard, the department hopes to announce a “preferred alternative” for the project in March of next year and begin the design process in June.

continued from page 1 similar structure. Nothing was done and now things have changed.

First, as part of a flood mitigation study in 2018, the town of Machias determined that it should build a seawall along the Machias River to protect the downtown area from flooding by a projected sea level rise of about three feet. The outer end of that seawall would terminate at the dike. In recent years, DOT has had to plow seaweed deposited by high tides off Route 1 where it crosses the dike several times.

Second, last August, the federal environmental agencies that would have to issue permits for construction of the new project determined that any replacement structure will have to provide for adequate upstream and downstream fish passage for migratory fish, including the endangered Atlantic salmon.

DOT is now exploring alternatives to construction of a replacement for the dike that will address both the issues of fish passage and sea level rise. While the department offered several options at its public meeting in March, Dwayne Shaw, executive director of Downeast Salmon Federation said the organization would be asking that DOT replace the dike

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The Working Waterfront . June 2021

Capt. Spear joins ferry fleet

Newest vessel named for ferry service’s first employee PHOTOS BY MICHELE STAPLETON

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he Capt. Richard G. Spear, the Maine State Ferry Service’s newest vessel, was launched April 9 at the Washburn & Doughty yard in East Boothbay where it was built. The ferry, 154-feet-long and 38-foot-wide and able to carry 250 passengers and 23 vehicles, will serve on the Rockland-Vinalhaven run.

The total cost including all design, engineering, and construction work was $10.9 million.

The ferry is named for Spear, a Maine Maritime Academy graduate who in 1959 became the service’s first employee. Later, Spear served as manager, a post he held until he retired in 1989.

Spear, who died in 2018 at age 96, graduated from high school in Rockland and enrolled in the newly established Maine Maritime Academy, graduating in 1942. During World War II, he served with the Merchant Marine in the Atlantic, Pacific, and Mediterranean war zones.

In addition to his mariner work, Spear was a scuba diver and an airplane pilot, and traveled to such places as the North Pole, Antarctica, Cuba, and Australia.

The view from the catwalk.

The late Richard Spear’s daughter Linda christens the new ferry.

DOT Commissioner Bruce Van Note speaks below the bow of the new ferry.

Touring the deck.

Down the ways.

www.workingwaterfront.com . April 2020

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www.workingwaterfront.com . June 2021

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cRanBeRRy RepoRtvoyage underway MMA training

include East Coast ports ting,Stops painting lines, eating , and throwing rocks

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aine Maritime Academy students, officers, faculty, and crew departed Castine on April 19, aboard the training ship State of Maine as part of the college’s summer sea term. This cruise is the first of three training evolutions with a second sford. cruise brightstarting red withinaJuly black stripe) and, piece of purple rope to the end of the and a third in like November. pizzas, every fisherman in Maine buoy line The other cruiselobster that began in April will include portor toggle, but all attachments busier calls must be made with a splice or a tuck. this in winter, he read about, talked about, Boston; Norfolk, Virginia; and New York. The re the original I know it’s a stretch to compare foland experimented with purple itinerary included a stoppaint. in Port Canaveral eason. butThe lowing Maine whale rope requirewhale regulations require thatlatest was cancelled so the ship could avoid strong portu- storms all Maine lobster fishermen along the East Coast. to use new ments with a plein air workshop, but riends markings on thethe ropes they attach a person could return home from eiFor students, departure was to a long-awaited rip to milestone lobster traps. onbeen how put closein jeopardy ther andbysay that they’d been paintand Depending one that had g was the ing in their spare time. If Bruce were to shore they fish, add preparations, pandemic.

As they partwill of have their tofinal ere so all an essay on how he spent his 2-4students, purple marks on and eachcrew buoy aboard line. writing officers, the vessel ou did completed winter vacation, painting would be a On warps that are 100-feet or less there three rounds of testing and quarantined ques- before must be one 12-inch purple mark with- part of it. Another part would be the departure. ber at inDue a fewtofathoms of the trapprecautions, and a 36- description ongoing safety shore-side I heard him tell his brother e sub- liberty inch purple mark 2 fathoms will not bewithin granted during of portMark calls,about but walking to get doughnuts, meet- scheduled the buoy. If the will warp is longer that 100 in February, stops provide excellent training oppor- with our son Robin, and floor!) tunities grandchildren Henry and Cora. I feet, theand requirement a 12-inch the chanceistofor re-supply, and our the voyage ce and will purple mark near the second was away with friends in Portland, and enable students totrap, meeta sea time12and instruction h our requirements inch purple mark halfway to the buoy, Stephanie was away with friends in Maine. and 36-inch 16,000-ton mark nearState the ofbuoy.

Father and son were in charge.

Thea500-foot, Maine,Florida. originally oal of commissioned “Yeah, Bruce figuresashethe will be putting 1,500 USNS Tanner, served as a Navywe got doughnuts at The onsid- oceanographic Jar and then walked to the to 1,800 markings on hisvessel rope in all; two research before beingCookie converted n, but in beachoffor to 1997 three to weeks of extra work he does needs accommodate theiftraining thea picnic and to throw rocks.” virus- college. it without hiring help.

A number of the fish-name Eating The fourth vessel to bear State of homemade donuts and time Maine, ermen are to their the applying ship is apaint capable and ropes excellentthrowing platformrocks at the beach—if that t to it. for by training resting them 3-foot longmariners. gutters isn’t a mirror image of many childfutureinprofessional I can made fromislengthwise-halved PVCto pipe. hood summers on Islesford, I don’t The ship scheduled to return Castine on May know what Bruce’s first attempt was with spray paint 21. Friends, family, and fans are invited to follow is. q paint, the butship’s he soon movedthrough on to the effi-blog at cruise. journey themore cruise “time mainemaritime.edu. cient brush and latex paint.

Barbara Fernald lives on Islesford (Little e and Some fishermen will add a 3-foot Cranberry Island) with her husband Bruce.

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The Working Waterfront . June 2021

Rock Bound

The strange tale of a would-be chicken king Coastal Maine can be choosey about its business future

By Tom Groening THE ISLAND INSTITUTE, publisher of this newspaper, has done a lot of work with small island schools and one of its best efforts was helping form the Outer Islands Teaching and Learning Collaborative, or TLC, which facilitates links between students from those small schools.

Recently, the Institute’s education team asked me to participate in a Zoom career day for TLC students, a few of whom seemed sincerely interested in careers in journalism. I had mixed feelings about encouraging them.

Demand for information is as high as ever, but print publications have a hard time selling ads at rates high enough to sustain them.

I certainly was pleased to encourage these young people to learn about journalism. In fact, I think it should be a part of a civics curriculum. I’m often surprised at how little smart people know about the news business.

I also believe the skills one learns in journalism—researching, interviewing, listening, analyzing, and writing—can transfer to a host of careers.

One of the students asked me about the biggest story I had ever written.

Several passed through my head, but I quickly settled on the strange

tale of a man from Prince Edward Island, Canada, who arrived in Belfast claiming he would revive the poultry processing industry.

It was about 1990 and I was at the (Belfast) Republican Journal. The second of two poultry processing plants, established in the 1930s, had gone belly up a few years earlier, putting hundreds out of work. The man—in his late 20s or early 30s—began inquiring at city hall about permits, and a meeting of the planning board was scheduled.

About 150 people showed up and the meeting was moved to the high school cafeteria. When the board chairman introduced the would-be entrepreneur, most in the audience rose and began applauding. It was a moving moment.

But it soon became apparent the developer didn’t have the financial backing he would need. Those of us who covered the ongoing review meetings began noticing that he wore the same suit. And white socks. I’m no fashion star, but I know what dressing for success looks like.

And he had no one else with him, no lawyer or planners or managers. After a time, he hired a local woman as his secretary and a man to do such things as mow the lawn at one of the sites he was considering for his plant. Those sites changed each time he ran into regulatory hurdles.

The paperwork he filed was riddled with misspellings. People in the community told me they’d seen evidence that he was sleeping in his car.

As editor of the weekly newspaper, I began writing more sharply worded editorials urging, then demanding that he show his financial ability to start a plant.

One day his helper, dressed in a chicken suit, taunted me by name from the sidewalk across from our Main Street office.

Finally, a woman in the community who had done some reporting work was planning to go to PEI with her husband on a business trip and offered to do some poking around about our mystery man. She found court filings for unpaid work by contractors and promises and filings for a plant there that never materialized.

The final nail came when a prominent Belfast businessman put together a deal to sell poultry to Russia and enlisted our PEI friend to line up the farmers with whom he claimed to have working relationships. The poultry never materialized and soon the Canadian Broadcasting Company was interviewing many of the players in this drama.

In his interview by the CBC, the local businessman called the PEI man “the charlatan of Charlottetown.”

At that first meeting at the high school, one of the planning board

members—one of the smartest and most progressive thinkers among the city’s leaders—gave an impromptu speech about how Belfast’s sardine, potato, shoe, and poultry plants, while providing plenty of jobs, ultimately lowered educational and economic standards for the city. It went over badly, but he was right.

The guy who dressed in the chicken suit later told me he’d never seen a dime of pay for his hundreds of hours of work.

What I find interesting is that 30 years later, Belfast would have far less patience for such a pitch. A Norwegian entrepreneur is currently pursuing a land-based salmon farm, an operation that might mean a $500 million investment. There is a vocal minority opposing it, but among supporters, I don’t see the desperation that I saw in the eyes of those former poultry plant workers that night at the high school.

That’s one measure of success.

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

Reflections

Finding a community’s stories, old and new There’s as much to learn in the search as in the answer 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 Raina Sciocchetti In discovering local history, each search is worth more than an answer.

It’s summed up in the phrase, “It’s there, if you can find it,” and working at the historical society in Sullivan, I hear it more often than I like.

Whether I’m doing research for an article or archiving the collection, I tend to spend a lot of my time looking for something. Appropriately, part of my work in the archives is to make it easier to find “it,” whatever it may be.

It’s a normal Thursday afternoon—I dive into the subject files, trying to find a home for this photo I hold of a “Post Office in West Sullivan.” But there are three, very full manila folders, all labeled “Post Offices.”

The Sullivan-Sorrento Historical Society serves the present-day towns of

Sullivan and Sorrento, which encompass a handful of villages, all with individual post offices at one time or another. So, I organize the post offices, categorizing each building by location and including respective current street addresses if relevant, determine the proper home for the photo I’ve now nearly forgotten about, and move on.

I want everything to fit into neat little boxes with labels, cross-referenced and digitally searchable. I’m not an archivist or even a historian by training, but I assume that’s the general fantasy.

The reality? History is messy. It’s a living map that spans age and place; an anthology of stories long remembered and mostly forgotten.

When I leave the historical society and drive through Sullivan, I pass the houses I now recognize by old family name or prior business. There’s the Stone Store, built from local granite over 160 years ago and used first for storing salt and then as headquarters for the shipyard, and Little Sail Island, once a site for sail-making.

The town’s little general store, Dunbar’s, sits where the grandiose Waukeag House

once perched on the hill looking out at Mount Desert Island across the bay. In Long Cove, clammers pick their way across the mudflats where Capt. Daniel Sullivan, Revolutionary War hero for whom the early settlers chose to name their town, ran a tidal mill before the war.

When I’m looking in the archives for an answer, it’s easy to become discouraged with the time I spend searching and easier still to feel fulfilled when I locate the desired information. Yet living in this community reminds me that the experience is worth as much, or more, than the discovery.

In my own collection, a kind of mental story map, I layer the information I absorb from dry papers with the living town I see with my own eyes. I collect stories from those who grew up here, gossip from my neighbors, and my moments: watching the tide rush over the rocks at the reversing falls, skating on an old quarry pond, running miles along Frenchman’s Bay as the sun sets over the ridge of Cadillac Mountain and imagining the area when it was connected by water, not land, and before it was ever known as Frenchman’s Bay at all.

I become better acquainted with the place and its people, past and present, and I find that I’m no longer looking for an answer as much as I am looking for a question.

When I return to my apartment that was once a seafood store, I pass the old West Sullivan Post Office, now distinctly residential yet still recognizable. Down at the old granite wharf, I can almost make out the tall schooners of old gliding into the narrow bay. They wouldn’t fit under the Hancock-Sullivan bridge—the bridge, that used to be another bridge, that used to be a ferry.

Looking is important. When I look, I feel special, because I’ve become part of the story, too.

Originally from Northern California, Raina Schiocchetti graduated from Unity College with a degree in environmental writing and media studies. She is helping the SullivanSorrento Historical Society develop new programs and broaden support.

www.workingwaterfront.com . June 2021

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DRYING— This image from the Atlantic Fisherman Collection at the Penobscot Marine Museum in Searsport shows Capt. Charles Olsen drying fish traps for winter at Crescent Beach in Cape Elizabeth. Beginning Memorial Day weekend, the museum store on Route 1 will be open Monday-Saturday 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Sunday noon to 5 p.m. The museum will offer guided walking tours and family field trips seven days a week; pre-registration is encouraged. Tours are $25 per household, up to ten people. For information: jganskop@pmm-maine.org or call 207-548-2529.

Op-Ed

Maine should lead when it comes to recycling Packaging producers must help fund infrastructure

By Jon Southern MORE THAN 30 YEARS AGO, Maine set out to recycle or compost 50 percent of our waste annually.

Today, we’re not even close to achieving that goal.

We’re going backwards, according to a new report from the Maine Department of Environmental Protection. Just under 38 percent of our waste was recycled in 2019.

The state must find ways to boost recycling. Our leaders can start by assigning the producers of plastic, glass, and other packaging responsibility for funding and maintaining a new recycling infrastructure that would enable Maine to process its waste independently.

Recycling has grown harder in Maine—and across the country—because the market for our trash has dried up. For decades, we exported most of our recyclables to China. But in 2018, China stopped accepting our refuse. Municipalities suddenly had few places to send their recyclables.

A limited supply of domestic processing facilities, combined with huge demand for their capacity, led to higher prices. Disposing of recyclables now costs almost twice as much as disposing of trash. That’s led many cities—including Eddington, Orrington, and Holden—to end their curbside recycling programs.

People like recycling. Three-quarters of Mainers believe all packaging should be recyclable, no matter

Island Institute Board of Trustees

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

It’s also important to keep the funding stream for the cost. Two-thirds support building the infrastructure needed to increase the amount of plastic that can packaging stewardship off the state’s balance sheet.

State officials may be tempted down the line to tap be recycled.

A packaging stewardship program can address that funding for other purposes. That could jeoparthese issues. It tasks the producers of packaging—like dize the effectiveness of this recycling effort.

Fortunately, other Maine lawmakers are working retailers that supply containers or restaurants that wrap up sandwiches—with developing a comprehen- on legislation, S.P. 474, that would implement a packaging stewardship program sive recycling system to handle Maine’s the right way. trash in state.

Eight in ten Mainers believe Here’s how that program would work. companies should bear Packaging producers would charge a Those fees would responsibility for protecting small fee for each piece of packaging seed a governmentthe environment. And nearly used. Those fees would seed a governthree-quarters of people in our ment-chartered non-profit packaging chartered non-profit believe we need a coordistewardship organization to oversee the packaging stewardship state nated policy to govern how we new state recycling infrastructure. organization… dispose of packaging.

This system appropriately aligns The legislature can respond incentives to maximize the amount to those calls by creating a packwe recycle and minimizes cost. It’s in aging stewardship program. In packaging producers’ financial interests to choose materials that are easy to recycle because so doing, our leaders could put Maine on the path to meeting our 30-year-old recycling goals. they’re responsible for funding the infrastructure.

Some state officials want to put this packaging stewardship organization under the auspices of the Jon Southern is executive director of the Downeast Maine Department of Environmental Protection. But Coastal Conservancy, a land trust committed to that’s unwise. The agency has plenty of other respon- conserving natural habitats and resources of the sibilities and so would not be able to give this recy- coastal watersheds, islands, and communities of cling effort the attention it needs.

Washington County.

THE WORKING WATERFRONT

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The Working Waterfront . June 2021

Book Reviews

Doctor recounts 30 years of island practice Chuck Radis served Casco Bay islands as islander Go By Boat: Stories of a Maine Island Doctor

By Chuck Radis (Down East Books, 2021)

Review by Tina Cohen DR. CHUCK RADIS PROVIDES a front row seat to what life is like for a practicing doctor living on Peaks Island. Although he now practices rheumatology in Portland, he and his wife have lived on Peaks more than 30 years. This book traces the beginning of that career when, as he says, he didn’t even know how in over his head he was.

While attending medical school, he had been awarded a National Health Service Corps scholarship, requiring that recipients practice for a year in what the federal government deemed “health manpower-shortage areas.”

During his residency at the Osteopathic Hospital of Maine in Portland, he noticed Casco Bay islanders coming to the ER with undiagnosed or undertreated ailments like diabetes, emphysema, and hypertension, and most didn’t have a primary care physician.

He wondered if the islands of Peaks, Long, Chebeague, and Cliff—with year-round populations—would utilize a local clinic and physician. (There was one on Peaks with very part-time hours). Radis scheduled informational meetings—an introduction to islanders that, to say the least, provided a shaky start—but ultimately earned him the support needed for his placement there.

The book continues that theme: Radis convincing the unconvinced to let a doctor into their lives. This isn’t an adrenaline-pumping narrative full of actionpacked rescues or near-death saves. Instead, we get to observe a doctor’s careful analysis of symptoms and choices of treatment.

Of course, what a doctor knows and recommends is only half the story. Patients have their own reactions, and compromises are inherently involved. Some will resist hospitalizations, invasive procedures, medication regimes, or mental health care. Radis recognized the limits of his authority and found ways to stay involved, supportive, and compassionate.

We’re told at the book’s outset that only two characters are real and true to life, because they were already well-known to their communities. Other cases are composites. But the characters and issues he cobbles together are believable, especially as many reveal the quirks of native Maine islanders.And talk about personality—we should all have a doctor like Radis. He may show up having forgotten something (a running joke is the wallet he can’t find), but he did house calls, has a calm and reflective bedside manner, and believes quality medical care should be affordable for all.

Radis’ description of medical issues can be fairly graphic and clinically detailed and, for this reader, sometimes cringeworthy. It made me wonder: who is the audience for this book? Is this a teaching tool for how diagnoses are determined?

Or, an anecdotal field report for aspiring physicians, an appeal for people coming into the profession to consider lesser-paid work in a hardship locale?

The book gives Radis the opportunity to explain the difference between what he is, a D.O. (doctor of osteopathy) and an M.D. (doctor of medicine). While both are licensed to do the same things and practice medicine in its entirety, the osteopathic philosophy involves a more holistic approach, less reliant on medications and medical procedures.

Readers familiar with the difficulties of getting off-island in health emergencies will appreciate the descriptions of help provided by members of the community, whether from the rescue boat or ferry crew, or with a borrowed boat. Despite the abundance of services on the mainland, Radis found many averse to leaving, afraid of longer-term stays in a facility there.

“I found that islanders were plainspoken, hardheaded, and resilient. And they were a royal pain in the butt. They should have died—but almost never did. Once they were brought back from death’s door, they demanded to be discharged. They frequently signed out against medical advice.”

But despite that complaint, Radis’ affection and admiration for his patients is clear. He understood that their community provided another kind of “care” and could be good medicine in and of itself. To that end, these days he is active on Peaks helping develop an assisted living facility and lobbying for senior housing.

Aging in place turns out to be just what the doctor ordered.

Tina Cohen is a seasonal resident of Vinalhaven. She is employed as a mental health therapist working with families through the juvenile courts.

Reviving Rachel Field whose muse was Cranberry Isles Biography portrays beloved, troubled New England writer The Field House: A Writer’s Life Lost and Found on an Island in Maine She Writes Press

Review by Carl Little EARLY IN The Field House: A Writer’s Life Lost and Found on an Island in Maine author Robin Clifford Wood asks, “Why has no one told her story?” The “her” is Rachel Field, subject of this affectionate biography, and the question is a good one: From around 1924 to her death in 1942, the poet, novelist, and playwright gained broad acclaim for her writing.

Hitty: The First One Hundred Years won the Newbery Award in 1930 (the first given to a woman); God’s Pocket, 1934, was hailed as a Maine coast classic; and three of her novels were made into feature films, with Time Out of Mind (whose heroine is named Kate Fernald, a classic Cranberry Isles name) winning the National Book Award in 1935.

Add to that several popular plays and some memorable poetry, including the timeless “If Once You Have Slept on an Island” and that remarkable New England yarn “The Old Gods Come to Somesville, Maine,” and you have a significant figure in American letters.

One of the reasons for the oversight: Field never experienced the scandals or the bright spotlight. As Wood notes throughout her biography, Field was kind and was loved by family and friends—no celebrity airs there, although she did hang out with Bette Davis and Vincent Price later in life.

The Maine island in the Wood’s book title was Sutton, “a small member of the five Cranberry Isles,” which Field first visited in 1910 at age 15 and where she purchased a home in 1922. She called the 1898 house, “The Playhouse.”

The island became Field’s muse and summer retreat; she picked blueberries and swam in the brisk waters (her bathing suit is in the Great Harbor Maritime Museum collection in Northeast Harbor).

“As Willa Cather is welded to her prairie towns, I am fused with the coast of Maine,” she once said. It was there that she and fellow writers Dorothy Lathrop and Abbie

Huston Evans shaped the narrative of Hitty, inspired by a wooden doll purchased in an antique shop in New York City. (Evans went on to dedicate one of her most famous poems, “Northern Lights Over Sutton,” to Field while Hitty became the mascot, if you will, of the Great Cranberry Island Historical Society.)

Wood apportions a lot of text to noting the autobiographical features of Field’s writing, finding life parallels in the characters. She also offers psychological musings on what made the author tick, from her self-consciousness—she didn’t consider herself especially becoming—to the motivations for her desires to marry, to bear a child, etc.

Field was not without her flaws, and Wood reviews some of them in passing, be it the disturbing nature of the real life story of God’s Pocket, in which a Maine man exploits an Inuit family, or the “disturbingly racist outlook” found in some of her later letters. Her acclaimed young adult novel Calico Bush, which earned her a Newbery honor designation in 1932, has been criticized for its culturally insensitive portrayal of Native Americans.

A lot of research went into this book, including immersion in Field’s letters and unpublished manuscripts. The final third of the book will be a real revelation to Field fans: an account of her marriage to Broadway actor Arthur Pederson, their years in California, and the circumstances of her tragic death.

The story of how Wood came to write about Field is curious. She and her husband Jonathan bought the author’s “long-abandoned wood-frame” house on Sutton in 1994. The biography is interspersed with Wood’s personal letters to Field recounting her own challenges as a writer—a memoir within a biography.

The affection Wood displays for her subject may not be to everyone’s taste; at times, the prose is gushing (“…the first time that a strange connection between your world and mine created an electric shiver of wonder that started at the base of my spine and sparkled down to my fingertips”). The ample citations from Field’s books and letters, while welcome, at times don’t seem the best representation of her gifts as a writer.

To her credit, Wood presents her cherished subject in very human terms, brilliant and blemished alike. This biography should help solidify Field’s place in the pantheon of New England writers of the first half of the 20th century—and bring welcome attention to writer “lost and found” on an island in Maine.

Carl Little wrote the foreword to a reprint of Rachel Field’s God’s Pocket published by the Northeast Harbor Library in 1999.

www.workingwaterfront.com . June 2021

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Book Reviews

Urban stories told with urban attitude Collection gathers Minot stories from last 30 years Why I Don’t Write and Other Stories

By Susan Minot; 176 pages, hardcover, $25.

One of the complications is that Sophie saw completely through the professor’s ridiculous behavior, yet maintained an aloof, hyper-rational, almost numb bearing in response. The 60-year-old Sophie seems ambivalent about what she did and why. (At least some parts of this story are apparently autobiographical.) It is Review by Dana Wilde an affecting, emotionally probing story, either in spite of or because of the spare IN AMERICAN SHORT FICTION of the past 50 style it’s told in.

“Boston Common at Twilight,” for my money the other really memorable story or 60 years, there is to my ear a certain distinct prose style that a lot of creative writing types here, provides a sort of parallel male perspective on somewhat similar material. work hard to emulate, often, or usually, or always Ned looks back from middle age on a period of time in his high school days in hopes of getting published in The New Yorker which involved his naive rebelliousness, an extremely ugly incident stemming from it, his parents’ divorce, and the complexities these fraught circumstances magazine or its ersatz literary satellites.

The stories usually involve hyper-realistic created in his relationship with his brother. The story ends on a note of shortevents in the lives of hyper-realistic everyday circuited ambivalence altogether appropriate to Ned’s short-circuited character.

This, like most of the other nine stories in the collection, is given in flat, hyperpeople. They’re told in carefully contrived, subject-verb-object grammatical structures that objective, skillfully revealing prose. Stories that depart from this style and subject repeat throughout the narrative. The effect of the matter are “Why I Don’t Write” and “Listen,” literary experiments comprising what seem like assemblies of overheard sentences and phrases. “Café sentences is that of flat objectivity, even emotionlessness. The flatMort,” meanwhile, a more conventional narrative, is nonetheless a ness is enlivened by careful placement of grammatical variations fantasy in which a bustling café turns out to be a kind of surreal limbo on the subject-verb-object structure, and the objectivity by understated ironies that often allow a certain glibness to leak through. The 60-year-old place for dead spirits. The narrator is a waitress who (we feel) is not entirely sure what is going on but, true to one of Minot’s basic sensiThe sentences are usually so deftly crafted that they have a certain Sophie seems bilities, nonetheless seems to have a better grip on things than other aesthetic entertainment value in and of themselves. ambivalent café staff and customers. It’s my favorite story in the book.

Susan Minot, a resident of New York City and North Haven island, Another way of describing Why I Don’t Write is to say it is very is a master of this literary style. Her recent book, Why I Don’t Write about what she urban, upscale fiction. If you have a taste for, or an ambition to, The and Other Stories, is compiled from stories published from the early did and why.

New Yorker and its literary environs, you’ll probably like these stories.

1990s to the last few years. Most of the stories are, true to their genre, Minot’s other books include Rapture and Thirty Girls, among about everyday people with everyday conflicts. Some of their recurothers. Her play On Island premiered at Waterman’s Community rent themes are relationships; the tendency of men to treat women Center theater on North Haven in 2018, and she is a contributor to like naive children, when usually the opposite is true; the emotional insecurities that are sometimes imposed upon, sometimes internally manufac- the “We Belong Here” oral history project—webelonghereproject.org—of the North Haven Historical Society. tured by women; the frictions inside family relationships.

A story that starkly unfolds some of these themes is “The Language of Cats and Dogs.” Sophie, a woman presumably in her 60s, dwells on emotional tumults she suffered decades before in college. Her creative writing professor, a known Dana Wilde, a former editor and college professor, lives in Troy and writes the philanderer, made clumsy, offensive passes at her, which in tandem with the Backyard Naturalist and Off Radar columns for the centralmaine.com newspapers. sudden death of her mother threw Sophie for a complicated emotional loop.

He is a member of the National Book Critics Circle.

Getting to know our greenery And our red, blue, purple, gold…

Wildflowers of Maine Islands: The Downeast and Acadia Coasts

By Glen H. Mittelhauser; University of Maine Press, 2021

Review by Dana Wilde EVERY APRIL AND MAY in Maine the world starts to turn color again. But differently in different geographies, we gather from Glenn Mittelhauser’s new guide, Wildflowers of Maine Islands.

“There is much difference in the coastal plants found southwest of Muscongus Bay,” Mittelhauser tells us in the introduction, due to the effects of the cold Labrador Current and the diversity of habitats among the islands of Knox, Waldo, Hancock, and Washington counties. A look through the copiously illustrated guide reveals that many wildflowers seen abundantly on the Midcoast mainland are also common on the islands, but many, surprisingly, are not.

The book itself provides an identification key inspired by the popular Newcomb’s Wildflower Guide, but unlike Newcomb’s it’s illustrated with color photos instead of drawings. Images showing family characteristics help initiate the ID process.

In the main text, a photo of each species is accompanied by a brief description of physical characteristics, taxonomic information (including alternative names), distribution, and abundance ranging from common and occasional, to uncommon, rare, and very rare.

Dandelions, for example, are common everywhere in spring, including on the islands. Starting in June in my fields a few miles inland in Troy, little dancing yellow flowers that you can mistake for dandelions start popping up—we call them hawkweed, and there are a lot of different kinds. The islands share in common mouseear hawkweed (Hieracium pilosella) which Mittelhauser calls mouse ear king-devil,

and orange hawkweed (H. aurantiacum), which Mittelhauser calls orange kingdevil. (This flower is often mistakenly called Indian paintbrush, which is actually the snapdragon Castilleja coccinea, with pointed, red-tipped leaves.)

Occasional on the islands is meadow hawkweed (H. caespitosum), which Mittelhauser calls yellow king-devil. But others we see here, such as common hawkweed (H. lachenalii) and wall hawkweed (H. murorum), are rare or very rare on the islands.

We have beach rose (Rosa rugosa) commonly, and so do the islands, dense thickets of them with their more finely prickly stems, as well as Virginia rose (Rosa virginiana) with fewer and longer spines. Lowbush blueberry, white meadowsweet, and Carolina sea-lavender are common on the islands too.

Sea-side goldenrod (Solidago sempervirens) and wrinkle-leaved goldenrod (S. rugosa) are common, but other goldenrods that are equally abundant inland, such as grass-leaved goldenrod (Euthamia graminifolia) turn out to be occasional or, like Canada goldenrod (S. canadensis), uncommon to rare on the islands. This must give the late-summer islands a different tinge of gold.

Some other rampantly common coastal flowers are on the islands also are uncommon or rare. It’s strange to learn wild carrot (Daucus carota) or Queen Anne’s lace, which takes over whole fields here inland, is uncommon on the islands.

Valerian (Valeriana officinalis), a beautiful white semblance of wild carrot escaped from gardens, has a weedy presence even on roadsides in Belfast and environs, but is uncommon on the islands. In early summer, purple, blue, and rose-colored lupines light up Waldo County fields, but are “rare” on the islands. I wish the patch of stinging nettles I tripped and rolled through raking my back on Bailey Island when I was a boy had been uncommon there on Casco Bay, as it is on the Downeast islands.

Wildflowers of Maine Islands is a beautiful book, which as I write this in the dead of winter makes me long for summer. It’s as illuminating, easy to use, and ruggedly made for the field as its predecessors, The Plants of Acadia National Park and Grasses and Rushes of Maine, also by Mittelhauser. They’re all available from the University of Maine Press.

Dana Wilde, a former editor and college professor, lives in Troy and writes the Backyard Naturalist column for the centralmaine.com newspapers. He is a member of the National Book Critics Circle.

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The Working Waterfront . June 2021

Navigating change—

Cultivating resilience in fisheries, coastal

Mitchell Center studies look beyond harvest to deeper impactscommunities

A

lthough there are several ongoing programs that monitor the status of the lobster population in Maine, no equivalent system exists to understand the status of the fishery itself, and of those who work within it.

In a new project led by Joshua Stoll, assistant professor of marine policy and fellow with the Senator George J. Mitchell Center for Sustainability Solutions at the University of Maine, researchers are investigating how the Maine lobster fishery is doing, and how it can adapt in a rapidly changing world. Partners in this research include the Maine Lobstermen’s Association, Maine Center for Coastal Fisheries, and Maine Department of Marine Resources.

With a catch valued at just over $491 million in 2019, according to DMR data, the Maine lobster fishery is among the most valuable commercial fisheries in the U. S. As a central driver of the state’s economy through the fishery itself and associated economic activity, it supports thousands of jobs in coastal communities across the state.

The lobster fishery “is critical to our coastal communities for economic and cultural reasons,” says Kathleen Reardon, lead lobster biologist for DMR and a research collaborator. “It’s part of Maine’s identity.”

Yet the fishery also faces serious challenges related to climate change, trade and regulatory issues around the recovery of endangered right whales.

During the past 20 years or so, Maine has experienced an unprecedented increase in lobster

abundance. The social and economic realities of indicators provide. For example, one indicator might lobster fishermen and fishing communities have not be the number of fishing trips made in a given time period—a shift up or down could signal a change in always been on the same trajectory, however.

For example, researchers note that over the last the profitability of the fishery.

Much of the research to date on resilience indithree decades there have been three well-documented cators uses more “static” data, disruptions in the fishery that have such as from the U.S. Census, that been widely described as “crises” doesn’t reflect what’s happening by the industry. These crises were in a community—or a fishery— not triggered by declines in lobster in current or recent time. One abundance, but rather by sudden Over the last three of the goals of this project is to price changes caused by shifts in decades there have been integrate the use of real-time (or the global seafood economy. nearly so) data, which would help Recognizing this pattern, three well-documented fishermen, communities, and lobstermen, scientists, and polidisruptions in the resource managers plan and adapt cymakers have worked to gain more effectively. a better understanding of the fishery…

The research is driven by needs social and economic resilience of identified by many stakeholders— the fishery. fishermen, coastal communities, “Developing metrics to monitor resource managers, and policythe impacts of social, environmakers. Carla Guenther, chief mental, and economic changes is critically important for the lobster industry to scientist for the Maine Center for Coastal Fisheries identify successful adaptation strategies,” notes in Stonington and a collaborator on the project, notes Patrice McCarron, executive director of the Maine that input from and engagement with fishermen are Lobstermen’s Association and a research collabo- especially crucial.

“This is what fishermen have been asking for,” rator. “The results will benefit lobstermen, coastal Guenther says. “They’ve been highlighting the need communities and policymakers.”

Because resilience can’t be measured directly, for this for a long time.”

Learn more about this project and Josh Stoll’s work like water temperature or lobster size, assessing it requires identifying indicators that represent it in community-supported fisheries on the Mitchell and finding ways to capture the information those Center website: umaine.edu/mitchellcenter

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www.workingwaterfront.com . June 2021

MMA honors student for COVID efforts Korey DeBoth volunteered with Castine Fire-Rescue MIDSHIPMAN KOREY DEBOTH, a senior in Maine Maritime Academy’s marine transportation operations program, has been announced as the college’s 2021 recipient of the Phyllis Tenney Community Service and Leadership Award.

The award is presented annually in honor of Phyllis Tenney who served Maine Maritime Academy and the Castine community for more than 40 years through exemplary leadership, volunteerism, and community service. Nominees must display dedication and loyalty to MMA, commitment and service to the Castine community, overall exemplary leadership skills, and have achieved great success academically and socially at MMA. In his nomination letter, Jack Spratt, assistant chief, Castine Fire-Rescue Department, noted DeBoth’s proactive, community-minded approach to volunteerism and celebrated his unparalleled contributions in protecting the overall health and safety of Castine residents.

“His dedication, leadership, and immense personal efforts have proved critical to the success of our small community’s ability to weather the ongoing storm posed by the virus,” Spratt wrote.

In addition to his academic pursuits, DeBoth serves as an emergency responder and medical care provider with the Castine Fire-Rescue Department.

At the advent of the pandemic, he took on significant

civic responsibilities to assist MMA and the town of Castine’s response to the crisis.

DeBoth’s involvement was critical in assisting the department with developing its COVID response procedures while working closely with town, regional, and state agencies. Additionally, he was asked by Castine’s town manager to serve as Castine’s COVID response coordinator and in that role, he helped develop and post signage around town, and monitor compliance and protocol implementation.

“I am struck by the enormous responsibility and remarkable level of effort being put forth by such a young individual,” Spratt wrote. “Korey’s maturity, leadership, and personal and professional growth have all been extraordinary. His leadership and cheerful service are a testament to himself, the academy, and Castine.”

Myles Block, Maine Maritime Academy’s director of fire training, echoed Spratt’s sentiments.

“Korey has an outstanding work ethic and takes pride in everything he does. His willingness and eagerness to learn, outgoing personality, inner drive, and overall demeanor have set the standard,” he wrote. “Korey has a natural leadership ability and has not only shown this leadership with on-campus programs but has taken this to the community as a whole.”

Korey DeBoth

More on Eugene LaBar

Smallpox carrier from Maine inspired film READERS MAY REMEMBER the mention in the April issue’s Rock Bound column (“A trio of history nuggets”) of Eugene LaBar, the Maine man who unknowingly carried smallpox to New York City in 1947. The 1950 film The Killer That Stalked New York was based on the incident.

We asked readers for help finding more information about LaBar and Ian Ludder, whose recent book Didn’t Do Much But A Little Of Everything was reviewed in The Working Waterfront, responded.

He writes: “Eugene Shoemaker LaBar, who died of smallpox in New York City on March 10, 1947, was born April 26, 1899 in Wilkes-Barre, Penn. to Juanita (Adams) LaBar of North Carolina and George LaBar of Pennsylvania.

Eugene’s mother’s first name perhaps gives a clue as to why he’d been living in Mexico City for some five years before the famous smallpox bus-ride.

“His 1942 draft card shows him living at the Hotel Tivoli in Mexico City without employment; he’s fivefoot, eight-inches tall, ruddy complexion, brown eyes, brown hair. His mother, then living in Manhattan, West 114th St., is given as a reference.

It’s unclear from the document whether Eugene’s wife is living with him in Mexico or not. She was born Helen Skene in Lewiston, March 13, 1905, and married Eugene in Portsmouth, N.H., May 11, 1926, upon which they seem to have taken up residence in East Winthrop. She was a student nurse at Augusta General Hospital.

“The 1930 census finds the couple living on the Winthrop Road in Readfield. Eugene’s profession is there given as “Commercial traveler—Bonds.” Helen (Skene) LaBar lived to a ripe old age, dying two days shy of the 51st anniversary of her husband’s death, March 8, 1998, in Winthrop.”

Thanks to Ludders for doing the research.

—Tom Groening

“Another Fine Day” woodcut by Holly Berry

Fern linen tea towel by Morris and Essex

Wooden chart tray by Evan Emmott

Wall hanging by Wild Rosie

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The Working Waterfront . June 2021

Historic Castine

A view up Main Street.

Military prize is now a visual delight PHOTO ESSAY BY TOM GROENING THE HANCOCK COUNTY TOWN of Castine is nearly as self-contained as an island. And that’s because it is almost an island, and was, for a time, when British occupiers dug a canal at its northern neck in the late 18th century.

The Dutch, French, English and early Americans fought over control of this headland because it provided safe harbor for a fleet that could command the upper part of Penobscot Bay and the mouth of the river of the same name. During the war for independence, a maritime attack from the south by the Americans failed to dislodge the Brits, and it marked the nation’s worst naval defeat until Pearl Harbor.

One of the town’s roads is the aptly named Battle Avenue and includes signs that recount such horrors as the cutting off of a man’s ear by combatants, who then A plaque notes the formation of the academy. forced him to eat it. The earthen works of two forts remain clearly visible, with Fort Madison now doing duty as a park with great views down the bay.

Today, the streets provide for a leisurely walking loop where one can take in the beauty of colonial-era houses. Those houses are strangely empty and quiet for most of the year but come alive in summer. Yet during the school year, the village enjoys a lively, youthful vibe because Castine hosts Maine Maritime Academy, a college that offers engineering and other degrees, most of which prepare young men and women for careers at sea.

The Pentagöet Inn on Main Street is where a group gathered in 1940 to plan the academy as it became apparent that the U.S. would enter World War II. Other notable structures are the Castine Inn, the Manor Inn, Dyce Head Lighthouse, and Eaton’s Boatyard.

The town also was home to the late poet Philip Booth.

www.workingwaterfront.com . June 2021

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The Pentagöet Inn.

One of Maine Maritime Academy’s buildings.

Fort Madison.

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The Working Waterfront . June 2021

Our Island Communities

Students rehearsing the play D&D. PHOTO: ALICE GREENWAY

It’s play time on North Haven

Theater festival mounts 17 short productions, May 21-23

By Alice Greenway

S

pring is taking a particularly “playful” form on North Haven. Twenty playwrights, tapping at their laptops over the winter, have submitted manuscripts. Seven directors are taking time away from boatyards, school, and gardens. And 38 actors of all ages are striding the boards, which this year includes the fields at Mullens Head Park and the boathouse at the North Haven Historical Society.

At a recent rehearsal of D&D, director Courtney Naliboff calls out to her cast. “Find a gobliny thing to do. Pick your nose. Play with your toes. Are we in places? Are we in character?” The goblins defend their throne, an outcrop of rock, before fleeing an onslaught of human warriors and running to a picnic table under an apple tree.

At another rehearsal on the field, Naliboff coached veteran actor and teacher Eva Hopkins in a scene from The World to Come, a play about UFO spotters.

“What was it like for women in the 1950s?” she asks.

English teacher Matt Rich, playing chief UFO spotter, offers to secure props on his next trip to the mainland. “I’ll hit all the thrift stores.”

Over three days, May 21-23, North Haven Community School’s Sixth Biennial Playwriting Festival will see 17 plays produced. Because of COVID, Naliboff is staging as many as possible outside. Plays are no more than 15 minutes, with some less than a minute. Audiences will walk from one performance to the next. Plays also will be live streamed from Waterman’s Community Center.

Naliboff founded the festival in 2011 after taking the drama and music teaching position vacated by award-winning director, writer, and artist John Wulp.

No small shoes to fill. But the festival—which solicits and stages short original works, each suitable for all ages—bears her own theatrical stamp. Playwrights

need to have a connection to the island. It is supported by a grant from Waterman’s.

“Sometimes you just need the door to open,” Naliboff says. “You need someone to look at your work. Then you can say, ‘My work was produced as part of this festival,’ and that’s a stepping-stone. Or, it’s just a really big thrill for a kid, like, ‘I wrote a play and then I got to see the play staged.’”

Playwrights this year range from Vinalhaven’s Phil Crossman with Now Phil to North Haven’s kindergarten class of two, who are twins. Everett and Russell Bartovics star in Spaceship Scary.

“My part is an echo,” Russell says. “I say, ‘We will drive you away from this planet for ever, ever, ever.’”

The festival also provides opportunity for directors.

“It’s exciting to be on the other side,” said high school student Sophie Hansen, who moved to the island four years ago. Hansen is directing three plays, including a satire on the pandemic written by Emily Hammond, a summer resident her age. “We’ve never met but we definitely have similar perspectives,” she says.

Cora Comstock, acting in Now Phil and The Best I Could, the latter about a mother and son, written by Paula Ressler, praises the experience.

“Being part of a theater group is something that brings life,” she says. “It’s a great way to get involved with the community. The relationship you have with people in a play is a different kind. There is an unstated trust and support.”

This winter, Naliboff launched a series of workshops led by writers Adam Alexander, Susan Minot, and Lily Thorne, all of whom have deep connections to North Haven theater. The workshopped plays include Shipwrecked by summer resident Dino Shiatis, about the breakup of a marriage.

But for the youngest actors, Naliboff advises confidence.

“One of the greatest elements of the festival is to be able to take the work of a five-year-old or

Courtney Naliboff directs.

Maria Keeler and Eva Hopkins.

an eight-year-old and not change anything,” she says. “The more you take something seriously, the funnier it is.”

Two Bananas, written by second-grader Oscar Mann, “is the funniest 30 seconds of your life,” Naliboff says.

“I was thinking about banana bread,” Mann said of his play. “Then I thought of like one grumpy banana and one very annoyingly enthusiastic banana.” Mann is also acting in Mystery by Addison Marquis, where he plays a 19-year-old.

“Acting,” he says, “is something (in which) you can have a lot of fun being someone you’re not.”

www.workingwaterfront.com . June 2021

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IN THE CLASSROOM—

A field trip to space

Island students connect virtually for NASA field trip

By Robin Chernow

I

n February, students from Maine’s outer islands met virtually for a field trip to NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. Students and teachers from the oneroom schools on Cliff, Monhegan, Isle au Haut, Frenchboro, Great Cranberry, Little Cranberry, and Cuttyhunk (in Massachusetts) islands met on Zoom with NASA educators to learn about space.

Over the winter, the Cranberry Isles teaching principal Hayley Fenton reached out to me about organizing a virtual field trip opportunity with NASA’s Goddard From left are seventh graders Lola Gahan and Hannah Frothingham and fifth grader Space Flight Center in Maryland. NASA’s field trip options for grades K-4 and 4-8 Lucy Lombard of the Cuttyhunk School. The students built satellite models after the virtual NASA field trip. PHOTO: MICHELLE CARVALHO required a minimum of eight students per group, which meant the small outer islands schools would need to combine to have enough students per group.

Fortunately, these schools are accustomed to collaboration through the Outer Islands Teaching and Learning Collaborative (TLC), teaming up for in person “We students got to listen to two NASA scientists talk about space, satellites, field trips, plus virtual book groups, teacher meetings, and student council and a giant space camera that NASA built. One of the scientists was inside a throughout the year.

NASA museum and stepped behind a machine that showed a After running the idea by TLC teachers and receiving an picture of the person standing behind it except it showed red for enthusiastic, positive response, I scheduled the Zoom field trip where the person was warm, and blue or green for where they with the NASA educators. The K-4 group’s trip focused on living are cold, for example their shirt. ​They also showed us a mug and “We students got to and working in space, while the 4th-8th grade trip focused on we had to guess if it had hot or cold water based on the color it satellites—how to build, test, and prepare them, plus what they showed behind the infrared machine. listen to two NASA can do in space. The NASA team also offered pre- and post-trip “We were shown photos from space with a regular lens and scientists talk about activity ideas to extend the learning experience. then the same photos through infrared light. The colors were Isle au Haut 5th grade student Isabelle Teague wrote about the space, satellites and a lighter and some stars were not visible. field trip: “After the virtual field trip my school made small satellite “Before the online meeting with the scientists from NASA, the giant space camera…” models out of used materials like empty bottles, and cardboard. participating schools had to watch several videos. In the videos This virtual field trip was amazing, and I recommend it to we learned about space satellites and learned about what people anyone who wants to learn about space.” who worked there did.

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The Working Waterfront . June 2021

A cleaner ‘farm field’

Aquaculturists join forces to clean shores of Damariscotta River PHOTOS BY KELLI PARK Representatives of seven oyster farms took to boats to gather trash from the shores of the Damariscotta River on April 30. The participating businesses were: Pemaquid Oyster Co. Glidden Point Oyster Co. Mook Sea Farms Dodge Cove Marine Farm John’s River Oysters Great Salt Bay Oyster Co. Norumbega Oyster Co.

www.workingwaterfront.com . June 2021

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Added rules to cross border upset islanders Campobello residents face bureaucracy in traveling to Canada

By Derwin Gowan

a very difficult life for hundreds in our community of 850. We do not all have reliable internet service, we are not all tech savvy or own computers. We make

ampobello Island residents appear ready to fight the latest electronic hoop so many frequent trips to Maine for essentials and travel through the United through which they must jump to get off and back on their island. Canada’s States so frequently to access our Canadian nation that the amount of registrafederal government has imposed a new rule requiring all travelers seeking tions required would be absurd.”

In a letter to New Brunswick Southwest MP John Williamson, entry by land to submit contact, quarantine and other information Newman wrote that the rule discriminates against islanders, electronically through the ArriveCAN mobile app or web portal who are Canadian citizens, based on the Charter of Rights and prior to arrival at the border port of entry.

Freedoms: “Canadian residents are being threatened with fines just Islanders are objecting to the rule because of cellphone and internet “Canadian for getting essentials or accessing our own country.” challengers, the bureaucratic hassle, and the government’s discriminaresidents Williamson, who has taken up this cause, has posted on Facebook tion against them as Canadian citizens because they live on the island. urging anyone fined, ticketed, or warned for not preregistering “Habitual residents of Campobello Island who enter Canada to are being through ArriveCAN to let him know, adding that he would go return to their place of residence may be exempt from the pre-arrival threatened to Public Safety Minister Bill Blair demanding that he extend the testing requirement and the quarantine requirement if the purpose of exemption for Campobello Island residents. their travel was to access necessities of life such as groceries or mediwith fines just CBSA says that people without electronic devices can still cine. They are not, however, exempt from submitting their informafor getting register at libraries and other public computers, but Tinker says tion through ArriveCAN,” according to an emailed statement from essentials or that glitches can bedevil the software, especially resetting the passCanada Border Services Agency. word, a hassle for the non tech savvy.

Justin Tinker with the Campobello Year-Round Ferry Development accessing our Both he and Matthews say that CBSA does not enforce Committee calls ArriveCAN “just the latest hoop for an island that’s own country.”

ArriveCAN consistently. “It very much depends on who’s working done nothing but jump through hoops for the last year and a half.” the booth and what the message of the day is,” says Tinker, adding, Cellphone service came to Campobello Island fairly recently and, “The policies and the interpretation of the policies seem to vary.” with the average age close to 50, only half of island residents actually Tinker lives and works in Saint John but grew up on Campobello have cellphones, he says.

Tinker says ArriveCAN causes more hassle for Campobello Island residents Island, which he calls home. Since he does not live on the island, he cannot driving “up river” through Maine to do business in St. Stephen because only one travel through Maine for non-essential purposes, meaning that he has to plan trip across the border into Canada can be preregistered at a time. This means visits to friends and family around the private ferry schedule.

Campobello Island and Saint John are both in the same health zone and both that islanders headed to St. Stephen must preregister before they cross the bridge to Lubec, then do it again in St. Stephen before crossing the bridge to Calais. in the yellow phase of the provincial COVID 19 recovery plan, so people should “If you’ve got a finite timeframe to pick up essential goods and services in St. be able to travel back and forth, he contends.

Stephen, and now you’re expected to hold the phone and register your return trip after your departure trip, it’s just another hoop of bureaucracy,” Tinker says.

Campobello Mayor Brett Newman posted on Facebook: “The implementation This story first appeared in The Quoddy Tides newspaper, based in Eastport, of the ArriveCAN at the Campobello border and St. Stephen border has created and is reprinted by permission.

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Island air service limited in use of private airstrip North Haven’s Watson family curtails mail flights

THE AIRLINE SERVING many of Penobscot Bay’s island communities announced a change to its service of North Haven. In an April 26 letter to the community, Penobscot Island Air president Terry Waters wrote that effective May 15, the company would “no longer be able to use the Watson’s family airstrip for daily air service to North Haven.”

The Watson family met with PIA management North Haven Town Manager Rick Lattimer on April 22, Waters wrote and learned the Watson family “would no longer allow passenger flights outside of the daily mail flights.” Future use of the strip is now restricted to:

Insuring the Midcoast since 1898.

• Two mail flights per day between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m., Monday-Friday • One mail flight between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. on Saturday • No flights on Sunday • No other passenger flights will be allowed.

The new “restrictive schedule would not meet the needs of our customers,” Waters wrote, and PIA management made that point to Watson family representatives at the meeting. PIA will move operations to the Witherspoon Airstrip, she reported.

“This change is not what Penobscot Island Air desires, but [the company] respects the Watson family’s decision regarding how they wish their airstrip to be utilized,” Waters wrote.

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The Working Waterfront . June 2021

‘Revenge travel’ driving Bar Harbor reservations Summer season looks promising as travelers prefer outdoors

By Laurie Schreiber

T

he tourist season is still gearing up, but by early May, owners of hotels, inns, and campgrounds were seeing strong reservations and looking forward to a busy year.

Many owners and operators said the numbers so far were better than 2019, which was already a strong year. They attributed the numbers to pent-up demand and a perception of Maine as a safe place to be with plenty of outdoor space.

Most of Witham Family Hotels’ nine lodgings in Bar Harbor and three in Ellsworth exceeded or matched the 2019 pace to date, said CEO David Witham.

“At this point in time, we have no reason to believe bookings will not continue to be solid well into the fall season,” he said. “But still being in a pandemic, we will remain cautiously optimistic, especially with the success the country has had with vaccination roll-out.”

Witham said this travel season has been termed in the industry “revenge travel.”

“The pace of reservations simply reflects the builtup demand from the pandemic,” he said.

Another factor supporting the pace, he said, is likely that folks who feel more comfortable traveling are choosing outdoor destinations within driving distance from their homes over urban destinations or others that require plane travel.

“The hotel business is seeing an uptick of return tourism,” said Eben Salvatore, Mount Desert Island operations chief for Ocean Properties, which owns Bar Harbor Whale Watch and four hotels in town.

“We’re excited to see the amount of demand that’s out there.”

By May, Ocean Properties’ reservations were 15 percent above the same period in 2019, he said.

“That’s a really good sign,” Salvatore said.

A notable demographic includes out-of-staters who encountered Maine’s 2020 quarantine restrictions, decided to go elsewhere, but are now returning, he added.

The first half of 2020 devastated the industry. But things changed when restrictions lifted, said Acadia Hotel and Ivy Manor Inn co-owner Peter Hastings.

“There was no making up for May, June, and the first three weeks of July,” Hastings said. “But from the last week of July through October was very strong. Not 2019 levels, but much better than anyone anticipated.”

For 2021, reservations were setting a record pace, although there was no telling yet whether that was an early surge or a trend for the rest of the year, Hastings said.

By early May, Acadia Cottage Rentals had filled almost all of its open weeks for its approximately 100 vacation rental units, said co-owner Tom Simons.

“I think there was a lot of pent-up demand from folks who didn’t travel last year,” he said.

People are eager to camp out, too. On Bar Harbor’s outskirts, Hadley’s Point Campground, with 170 campsites and 16 cabins, was seeing more reservations than 2019, said co-owner Allison Kelley.

The property’s new online reservations system was likely helping to push the surge, Kelley said. But also, many who canceled last year were looking to rebook this season.

On the island’s “Quiet Side,” Acadia Yurts in Southwest Harbor was seeing “super strong” reservations for its seven yurts and two tiny houses, said co-owner Karen Roper.

“We’re booked through mid-September at this point,” Roper said. “They also came in a lot more quickly. We were full a lot earlier than usual.”

In 2020, the property was completely full after restrictions lifted. That had never happened

before. Guests were likely attracted to the units’ self-sufficiency and the property’s self-check-in system, she explained.

The property’s wellness center—with infrared sauna, floatation room, and licensed massage therapy—also saw extensive use with various restrictions in place.

“I think lots of people want to reduce stress and are interested in taking care of themselves,” she said.

Reservations at Acadia National Park’s campgrounds are looking good, said spokesperson Christie Anastasia, who pointed to recreation.gov as the “one-stop shopping” for camping, park pass and other reservations.

The park didn’t open its campgrounds in 2020 and reduced capacity for 2021. June reservations are pretty much sold out and May has the odd night still open.

“It seems like people are very excited to come to MDI and Acadia National Park,” she said.

As reservations climb, though, staffing remains a chronic challenge—perhaps worse than ever, noted Witham.

“I often joke that hiring this season is like being on Ebay, someone drives on the island looking for a summer job and the bidding wars begin as we watch the clock tick down,” he said. “The other reality is, we have reached the point where pay is not so much the driving factor, but the fact there simply are not people around to even hire.”

The problem is compounded by lack of affordable employee housing as real estate prices skyrocket, he noted.

“There will be businesses this year that can only partially open and/or have to operate with reduced hours,” Witham said.

Typically, the shortage impacts the ability to fill housekeeping positions the most, said Hastings. This year, it’s hard to fill all positions.

“There’s not a lot you can do when no one is looking for jobs,” he said.

Folks enjoy tasty treats at Choco-Latte in downtown Bar Harbor on the first weekend in May, as tourism traffic gradually picks up.

PHOTO: EZRA SCHREIBER-MACQUAID

www.workingwaterfront.com . June 2021

21

World Ocean Observatory Designing the Places where you want to be.

UN report goes beyond warning Data drill into wide variety of health metrics

For your legacy home

By Peter Neill

And here are the key takeaways on ocean science:

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THOMASTON BOAT & ENGINE WORKS, INC. • Innovations such as increasing efficiencies in energy generation have helped while over-capacity in fisheries has hurt • Although understanding of the ecosystem services of coral reefs is improving, there are still knowledge gaps, particularly on responses of coral reef communities to climate change • Global disparities in understanding the state of the ocean remain apparent, particularly across Oceania, Africa, and South America • Many regions, in particular those with least developed countries, still lack access to technologies that can assist in using marine resources sustainably • Regional disputes and geo-political instabilities may impede the implementation of global and regional treaties and agreements, thereby affecting economic growth, the transfer of technologies, and the implementation of frameworks for managing ocean use.

There is a need for key baseline measurements and updates to contextualize the effect of the effort by so many organizations and individuals worldwide. The UN claim to be the only such enterprise seems unaware of another, equally valuable project: The Ocean Health Index, a compilation region by region, nation by nation, of data organized around themes, goals, and subgoals that collectively reveal the status and progress toward ocean sustainability year by year.

What is disturbing about both reports is that their assessments agree: the situation, generally, is not improved, despite specific progress from specific actions in specific places.

What, then, does the data tell us? Do we question the value and extent of what ocean conservationists are doing? Do we double-down on the existing strategies? Do we invent new approaches for finance and public awareness of ocean issues and actions? Do we pursue all three, and more?

So much to do and so little time.

Peter Neill is director of the World Ocean Observatory, which produces weekly radio essays heard on WERU-FM, 89.9, on podcast at apple.com/us/podcast/world-oceanradio/id425361249, and at http://www. worldoceanobservatory.org/world-ocean-radio.

He lives in Sedgwick.

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EARLIER THIS YEAR, the United Nations announced the publication of its second World Ocean Assessment, presented as “the only comprehensive global analysis that looks at social, environmental, demographic, and economic trends affecting the state of the ocean...”

The announcement described the first World Ocean Assessment, released in 2015, as a warning “that many areas of the ocean had been seriously degraded, mostly due to the failure to deal with the pressures caused by human activities, including fishing, aquaculture, shipping, oil and gas exploitation, pollution, and the release of greenhouse gases.”

The conclusion of this latest assessment notes “that the situation has not improved, and that many of the benefits that the ocean provides to people such as oxygen, food, jobs, medicine, and climate regulation are increasingly being undermined by human activities.”

Here are the report’s key takeaways on the state of the ocean: • An alarming pace of sea-level rise, combined with increasing storms and coastal urbanization, led to erosion and flooding in coastal cities • Rising carbon dioxide emissions led to ocean acidification and together with warming and deoxygenation resulted in loss of biological diversity • The ocean heat content has more than doubled since the 1990s, severely affecting marine life and ecosystems • The number of dead zones, or areas with reduced oxygen in the ocean, has increased from more than 400 globally in 2008 to about 700 in 2019 • Around 90 percent of mangrove, seagrass, and marsh plant species—as well as 31 percent of species of seabirds—are now threatened with extinction • Marine litter is present in all marine habitats, affecting the environment and marine organisms through entanglement, ingestion, and rafting of invasive species • Overfishing is estimated to have led to an annual loss of $88.9 billion in net benefits • Human-mediated movements have introduced about 2,000 marine non-indigenous invasive species, some of which pose significant biosecurity and biodiversity hazards • Approximately 15 percent of all sandy beaches worldwide are seeing retreating shorelines at an average trend of 1 meter per year or more over the last 33 years.

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The Working Waterfront . June 2021

Saltwater Cure

Rituals with fire and water

A major age milestone is marked appropriately

By Courtney Naliboff So I turned 40.

This was inevitable, and quite predictable—having been born in 1981, I would certainly turn 40 in 2021.

But it’s still strange to say: I am now a 40-year-old woman.

I remember when turning 40 was an occasion for doom and gloom. My father’s surprise 40th birthday party at his OB/GYN practice was marked with black balloons, cards sporting an “over the hill” sentiment, and a woman in a gorilla suit.

Fortunately, that attitude seems to have faded away. Turning 40 is a reason for joy—I’ve made it this far!

Plus, most of my friends are vaccinated and the weather was nice enough for an outdoor party. I knew exactly how I wanted to celebrate my own 40th birthday. I wanted to light a giant number 40 on fire and run into the sea.

I can’t remotely take credit for the giant 40. Some friends started the tradition a while ago and brought it with them when they moved to the island.

The 40 is welded out of rebar, and each new celebrant wraps it in fabric, douses it with lamp oil, and sets it aflame.

For my party, several of my good But as members of our friend group hit this milestone, it’s seeing a lot of friends, old and new, gathered at my use. As for running into the sea, I’ve favorite beach. We had a grill, people written quite a bit about my relation- brought their most delicious party ship with cold water swimming. It just foods, kids clambered over rocks together. We talked in small groups, seemed right.

Rituals of fire and water are common marveling at the appearance of the across cultures. Jewish women may bottom half of each others’ faces, grateful for the CDC’s enter a Mikvah, or recent advice that natural pool of water, in outdoor gatherings were a cleansing ritual. We The 40 is welded pretty darn safe. toss bread or pebbles into At 6 p.m. all the guests out of rebar, the water in the ritual of had arrived. I stripped off tashlich, to cast off the and each new my outer layers, leaving sins of the previous year. celebrant wraps on my tank suit and some Fire has strong implineoprene booties and cations of transformait in fabric, got everyone’s attention. tion and release, and fire douses it with I lit the giant number rituals appear in many indigenous cultures, lamp oil, and sets 40 on fire and then ran into the sea, just as I had among others. it aflame. imagined. (An intrepid It was a gorgeous day, student of mine, a fellow unseasonably warm. cold-water enthusiast, Technically I had been 40 for 24 hours already—my actual was the only one to join me.)

The water was cool, but not icy. A nearly birthday had been somewhat chillier, and I had celebrated with one vacci- full super moon glowed against the sky, nated visitor, Bill, Penrose, a tray of whose bright blue was barely beginning enchiladas, and a screening of Sisters to fade into twilight. I ducked under the water, then swam back to shore. with Transistors.

We stayed until dark, lighting bonfires below the high tide line, eating the delicious hazelnut chocolate cake my friend had made me. One of the kids found a mostly complete deer vertebrae.

A toddler stripped off her clothes and made for the ocean. I put on the warm layers I had brought as the numbness of the water gave way to shivering and stood next to one of the bonfires, enjoying the sound of friends conversing and kids forming their own little fire- and water-based civilizations.

Although the pandemic isn’t over— not even on North Haven—that night felt like a turning point. And as I enter my fifth decade, I can be intentional about the things I want to release and cast off, and the things I want to carry with me.

Courtney Naliboff lives on North Haven where she teaches music, theater, and writing and plays in the band Bait Bag.

Journal of an Island Kitchen

Adventures with a colonoscopy Sometimes ‘the end of all meals’ needs attention

By Sandy Oliver “HAVE YOU HAD A colonoscopy?” asked Owen, one of our health center’s physician assistants. I was in for a mild gastric complaint. I probably rolled my eyes. I explained how I was very skeptical of the need for such a procedure.

Having heard that so many of my peers were getting them, I cynically figured that having set up endoscopy units and eyeing a wad of aging boomers with elderly bowels, hospitals viewed colonoscopies as a new profit center. Plus there is zero, nada, no history of colon cancer in my family.

Owen acknowledged that yes, there was money involved, but recently with more consistent screening, colon cancer incidence declined noticeably. Since Owen recommended I get an EGD (camera down your esophagus to peer into your stomach and duodenum) I figured, oh, OK, I’ll add the colonoscopy. Yuk. Now this column is supposed to be about food, cooking, and kitchens. But as we all know, the end of all meals is in our colon. From stove to plate to you know where. And I learned things in this process that you, if you face a colonoscopy, might be glad to know.

My education started with my retirednurse-friend Derreth’s advice. She offered to drive me because they give you a general anesthesia (optional, by the way) so you really shouldn’t get behind the wheel when they send you home.

“No one is going to tell you this,” she said, “but when you go pick up the stuff to clean out your bowels, get a package of Depends. Because no matter what, you end up leaking at the end of the process.”

For those of us on Islesboro, it is perfectly possible to go off for the procedure and get home same day. If I lived farther out, I’d arrange to stay over on the mainland with a toilet nearby. But I faced a ferry line wait and an hour or so before the appointment.

Lots of time to lose my dignity. I added “protective briefs” to my shopping list.

Along with the prescription for a weapons-grade laxative plus a requirement for an over-the-counter stool softener, the gastroenterology department sent me a multipage set of instructions for cleaning myself out, including a series of pictures of what the stuff ought to look like when it exits your system. The final picture showed a container with fairly clear yellow liquid.

A snag came when the drug store reported the prescribed laxative was unavailable. Gastroenterology advised a massive dose of an over-the-counter product I dutifully acquired.

Gastroenterology also sent directions for a “low residue diet” for five days before the procedure: essentially a white bread menu with no “seeds, nuts, salads, fruits, tomatoes, lentils,” no multigrain anything. In short, I had to avoid anything we typically eat around here.

Then the day before I was to eat a light breakfast—I chose an egg—then after that only drink clear liquids and nothing with red or purple dye. So white grape juice, broth, yellow Jello. Thank the Lord, I could have coffee with no cream.

I took my laxative in the last afternoon. My regularly irregular system responded sluggishly, delayed its appointed chore by about three hours, and performed intermittently. I spent a miserable night in the bathroom, putting summer clothes away, pulling out winter clothes, reorganizing the closet, and not sleeping.

By morning, exhausted, I peered anxiously at my product, observing that in no way did it resemble the clear liquid I was supposed to have.

Good thing islanders tend to know where all the mainland public bathrooms are. I visited each between here and Rockland. Thank goodness for the special underwear. I arrived very worried at the hospital, convinced I’d not be able to have my procedure, and told the doc that I wasn’t issuing clear yet.

“Oh, that’s OK,” he said, “we can flush it out.”

For heaven’s sakes.

The anesthesia gave me the best nap I’ve had in years. The minute they take you off it, you snap awake, well rested, and ready to roar. The doc helped himself to a couple of polyps he found in there, took pictures, which he gave me and which I do not plan to frame, of a pink and shiny Oliver interior, and said come back in five years.

We’ll see.

Sandy Oliver is a food historian who usually spends her time gardening, cooking, and writing on Islesboro. She can be contacted at SandyOliver47@ gmail.com.

www.workingwaterfront.com . June 2021

23

Guest Column

What Mainers should know about energy corridor Hydro-Quebec leverages strong advantage in selling power

By Hans Carlson

electric generation. Quebec has almost all the hydroelectric capacity, while the U.S. relies on nuclear, coal, WHILE I HATE TO disagree with a fellow Vermonter, oil, and natural gas. Quebec has spent the last six I find Richard de Grasse’s op-ed in the May issue of decades reengineering its landscape of innumerable The Working Waterfront flawed. Maine is in fact being lakes and rivers to generate electricity.

The James Bay Hydroelectric Complex is the biggest, offered a pittance for disrupting both the ecology and the heritage of its North Woods, and not for clean harnessing four massive watersheds that combined are energy, but for expanded Hydro-Quebec profits in almost twice the size of Maine, but most of the other rivers in Quebec’s southern two-thirds are also harnessed. the North America electricity market.

The 25-year post-NAFTA history of the North Hydro operates under entirely different conditions from America electricity market is important for public under- other generation, and therein lies the advantage.

What makes hydro different is how easy it is to standing. In 1996, the U.S. Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) created the market when it issued turn on and off. All other generating plants take days two landmark “open access” rulings, orders 888 and 889, and days to come to full capacity or to shut down, so they never really do shut down. At night, when we for any producer willing to pay the tariff on the grid. sleep, there is surplus power on the Hydro-Quebec soon created grid, and generators are required to TransÉnergie to make it market either stop producing or get rid of compliant, and soon after opened an the power somehow. electricity trading floor in Montreal.

We talk about Shutting down is not an option This commodity exchange, staffed “buying” power from because people will start using with traders and analysts, focused electricity in the morning and they specifically on the cross-border Quebec, but power cannot react fast enough. They must market. With these, Quebec stepped is traded north and sell power below the cost of producinto an open lane that it still dominates, and the proposed energy corridor is south, and it’s a game tion, and Quebec is more than willing to buy at these times, espekey to its New England strategy. we can never win. cially in winter when Quebecers run Temperatures in the northeastern their electric heat all night.

U.S. speak to energy use and potenQuebec on the other hand can tial profits, so a team of meteorolobe generating megawatts of power, gists staff the H-Q trading floor too.

Computers track energy prices and electricity usage selling a surplus into the market, and within a half in real time, around the clock, because the generation hour it can be generating no power and buying cheap and delivery of electricity is constantly important. on the same market. This is the incredible flexibility When prices are high, Hydro-Québec sells. When that hydroelectricity gives them.

At the same time, Quebec is storing water, ready prices fall below the cost of production, it buys, and always profitably. We talk about “buying” power from whenever the price is right, so the only real challenge Quebec, but power is traded north and south, and it’s is finding the perfect balance on the transmission lines and on the price indexes. Quebec does not have a game we can never win.

To understand Hydro-Québec’s market leverage, a huge surplus of electricity, less than ten percent, but you must understand northeastern North American it plays this market to great advantage.

In 2008, when fossil fuel prices reached record highs of $140 U.S. a barrel, Quebec made $977 million by exporting that small surplus—eight percent of its power, but 32 percent of profits.

The market obviously fluctuates, but Quebec’s costs (rain and snow) and generating capacity (installed hydro dams) are fixed, and it can ride out highs and lows easily. It can do even better if it can make its transmission infrastructure more flexible, and so it has tried for a decade to push another line through New England.

New Hampshire rejected it in 2010, and now it is trying Maine. Electricity is all about completing circuits, but the new corridor would create another profit circuit in the market. That is why it is so important.

I have travelled Quebec’s hydroelectric geography for decades, and the environmental and cultural costs of that infrastructure have been and continue to be vast. The climate implications of flooding and cutting the boreal forest are beyond what I can write here, but they are as damaging as burning the Brazilian rainforest. Like the Amazon too, indigenous people have been most impacted, so by any measure, there is nothing clean about this energy corridor.

The environmental and cultural costs in Canada and here in Maine are enough for me to oppose the corridor, but if we are going to sacrifice the beauty and heritage of the North Woods for Quebec’s profit margin, why do it for what amounts to a pittance? I cannot understand why we would sell at any price, but why we would sell cheap escapes me completely.

We can and must do better.

Hans Carlson is executive director of Blue Hill Heritage Trust and author of Home is the Hunter: The James Bay Cree and Their Land. He holds a PhD. from the University of Maine, where he was affiliated with the Canadian-American Center in Orono and has spent 30 years researching and documenting the economic, environmental, and cultural impacts of Quebec hydro power.

Letters to the Editor McConnell calls the shots To the Editor When did Maine voters elect Mitch McConnell to represent the interests of our state? How is it that our recently re-elected Sen. Susan Collins allows her thoughts, her positions, her decisions, her mind to be articulated by the senator from Kentucky? What need has she for her highly paid senatorial staff when the former majority leader informs her and us here in Maine of what her vote will be on any particular issue? How is it that, five full years out from her next campaign, she cannot muster even the semblance of independent thought on matters of the utmost import for her constituency?

Not a single Republican, representative or senator, voted in favor of the recently passed American Rescue Act. Collins followed McConnell’s

direction to deny funding to Maine’s restaurants and other small businesses crippled by the COVID closures. She voted to deny funding to the state and its municipalities to ease the fiscal shocks brought on by the pandemic.

She voted to deny another round of payroll protection funding to help employers keep workers working. She voted to deny funding earmarked to help Maine schools safely reopen; to assist Maine homeowners and renters meet their bills; to aid Maine’s rural health centers with COVID related medical care, including ease of access for vaccinations; to help laid off workers and other Mainers obtain health insurance; to assist, for heaven’s sake, in burying the dead killed

by COVID. We have also heard Sen. McConnell inform Sen. Collins and her colleagues that they will not be voting in favor of passing the upcoming infrastructure bill. The future for Maine’s economy and jobs market is going to depend on

broadband networks, preferably fiberoptic, throughout the rural reaches of this vast state. Even if they cannot understand to technologies of the future, at least they ought to recognize the roads and bridges and airports and ports that need upgrading. (How many cities and towns in Maine have “port” in their name?)

We need a senator who is committed to serve the people of Maine. The honorable gentleman from Kentucky has no business telling the honorable lady from Maine what is best for her constituents. Nor has she any business allowing it. Accountability does not only mean going to jail if caught in the cookie jar. For a public servant it means giving account, an explanation, to your constituents for your decisions and your votes. Even if that explanation is little more than, “That’s what I was told to do.”

Peter Frewen Eastport

Mariner gratitude To the editor: I want to thank you for writing your Rock Bound column in the May edition of The Working Waterfront (“Ships, the Suez Canal, and our three ports”). I’m a merchant mariner with 34 years deep sea experience carrying commerce all over the globe. As you clearly state, too many Mainers don’t have a clue how the products they use daily arrive in Maine.

More people need to understand what the merchant marine is and what we do.

The marine highway project as proposed could move tons of cargo to and from Maine while reducing carbon emissions. The import/export of goods has a big ripple effect on Maine’s economy. Maine needs to continue to invest in our ports and the general public needs to be educated on how sea borne transport is efficient and beneficial to all.

John Murphy Cape Elizabeth

24

The Working Waterfront . June 2021

Field Notes

Artists and makers prepare for reboot

Island Institute’s Archipelago continues conference, adds web resources

By Lisa Mossel Vietze MAINE’S BEAUTY AND diversity has long inspired a plethora of art and craft. Maine’s artists and makers are a varied bunch—whether crafting beer in Southern Maine, cutting earrings from recycled olive oil tins in the Midcoast, blending body care products from dulse, or painting abstractions of Downeast seascapes, they are knitted within our communities and we are richer for it.

From our small towns to urban centers, art and craft also provide opportunities to diversify livelihoods and neighborhoods and introduce innovative business models.

This year, there seems to be a collectively held breath as we wonder what the season will bring for our creative economy. As ever, artists and makers are looking forward with anticipation and hope, and with a dose of uncertainty.

Artists and makers in Maine are like many of us who may piece together income from a variety of jobs, some more seasonal than others. Many are small business owners or are working to make their creative endeavors the majority of their income.

Each spring, Archipelago, the Island Institute store on Main Street in

Rockland, aims to give creative businesses a strong foundation to make the most of foot traffic, business opportunities, and seasonal fairs and exhibitions and grow these businesses to provide year-round reliable income. It’s with this in mind that we started our annual Artists and Makers Conference back in 2014.

This past winter, after surveying 850-plus past participants, we began to think about how to engage them in this spring’s Artists & Makers Conference knowing that Zoom fatigue is real.

I knew I didn’t want to sit for hours in Zoom workshops. I also knew we couldn’t replicate 30 hours of content online and have it be engaging, inspirational, and informative.

The result was a blended live/virtual artists and makers week featuring a portfolio of events including talks, participatory art prompts, workshops, and the launch of the Island Institute’s new Creative Economy Hub website. This hub includes new and existing content that is accessible throughout the year.

Luckily for businesses looking to start or grow a website, there are many online resources and how-to YouTube channels. Maine’s SBDC (Small Business Development Center), New Ventures Maine, Coastal Enterprises

Inc. and SCORE, among many others, offer financial and start-up advice.

We wanted to provide content that wasn’t easily found elsewhere, that helps us feel connected, even while being apart. Those are the specific reasons for launching the resources in the Creative Economy Hub. The “Daily Art Voices” page is geared to sharing perspectives from the likes of Cig Harvey, David Wilson, Maggie Moore, and others on topics like “How do you practice self-care?” and “Who is your artist hero and why?”

Visitors can learn more about Downeast artist Zach Smith or Rockland painter Susan Beebe, among others, on “The Meet a Maine Artist” page. I’ve enjoyed learning more about the artists in the neighborhoods around the state and can’t wait to sit down with artists in studios and workspaces for more artist profiles.

“Instagram Worthy” with Hannah Richards provided a depth of content on how to share your story on Instagram, a powerful tool for users to reach their customers, share their stories, and develop networks with other artists and makers. It’s available to watch on the Creative Economy Hub along with other resources and event recordings.

Artists are finding ways to adapt their mindset, learn new skills, access resources, and network to meet the current and future realities of selling goods to customers, no matter where or how. With opportunities opening and closing on a moment’s notice, it’s vital to maintain flexible in approaches to market.

When an artist or creative business builds a presence in our communities, we’re all better for it, economically, socially, and culturally. Art invites a depth of conversation that brings a deeper contemplation on issues affecting our neighbors and communities. Art can also provide a healing balm.

Artists and makers continue to show heart, resilience, innovation, and grit as they meet the challenges for this summer season and in the years and decades to come.

Lisa Mossel Vietze is director of Archipelago, the Island Institute store and gallery. She can be reached at lvietze@islandinstitute.org.

Fathoming

How to crunch greenhouse gas numbers Tools to calculate emissions are being refined and improved

By Meghan Grabill CARBON POLLUTION, also known as greenhouse gas emissions, is detrimental to the current way of life on Earth. In 2003, Maine became a climate leader for the nation when it became the first state to enact legislation setting specific greenhouse gas (GHG) reduction targets. Since then, many other states have developed policies aimed at mitigating GHG emissions.

The first step in meeting climate reduction goals is to conduct a study of the state’s current and past GHG emissions.

Maine used 1990 as its baseline and set its reduction goals from that year. Maine will reduce its gross emissions by 45 percent by 2030 and 80 percent by 2050.

Measuring GHG allows Maine to determine if its actions are moving it closer to its reduction goals.

Progress toward achieving these goals continues to be tracked through annual GHG inventories developed by the Department of Environmental Protection which are reported to the legislature in biennial reports.

A GHG inventory is the process of estimating the amount of greenhouse

gasses emitted by a given entity (state, organization, city, etc.) or sector during a period of time.

To compile these data, DEP relies on the State Inventory Tool provided by the federal Environmental Protection Agency. This tool, which also adheres to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change guidelines, allows states to calculate a comprehensive and consistent total which is comparable to other states.

The tool is a computer module that combines federal- and state-sourced data to estimate total GHG emissions each year. Data used in the tool comes from many sources including facility-reported emissions, reported fuel use, and models.

Some of the emissions are difficult to pinpoint, like wood used for residential home heating, which is used by 10.7 percent of homes in Maine. To get this number the department relies on a survey that asks homeowners about the fuel they use to heat their homes.

“DEP is required by statute to compile and report greenhouse gas emissions for the state of Maine,” according to Stacy Knapp, emissions inventory section manager in DEP’s Bureau of Air Quality. “We try to be as

transparent as possible with the data, including additional pieces of data where they might be helpful for some strategies or policy decisions.”

In May, DEP began a rulemaking public hearing to share and seek comment on its plans for updating and codifying the methods used to collect the data and report the findings.

The department will further increase transparency to the public by including additional reports like net GHG emissions. In the past, only gross GHG emissions were included. Researchers at the University of Maine have developed the State of Maine Carbon Budget to estimate current carbon sequestration, and DEP is collaborating with the university as it works to further improve methods for collecting this type of data.

Calculating the net GHG emissions requires determining the amount of carbon sequestration. Carbon is captured and stored (or sequestered) in the forests and along our coastline in saltmarshes, seagrasses, and seaweed, also known as coastal blue carbon.

While carbon sequestration is an important part of the story, it should not be seen as a way out of reducing

emissions. Emission reduction still needs to happen to improve climate outcomes for Maine.

DEP also will be including data on renewable fuels which have been left out of the equation in the past. This includes GHG emissions that come from wood and wood waste, ethanol and biodiesel, and solid waste (landfills and methane flares). These will be added to the gross emissions total going back to 1990 and included as part of the reduction goals moving forward.

As of the last biennial “Progress toward GHG Reductions Goals” report, Maine has been on track with reducing GHG emissions. The state is headed in the right direction, but it will need to focus efforts to overcome the larger reduction challenges in the next 10-30 years.

Meghan Grabill is a community development officer with the Island Institute, publisher of The Working Waterfront, working on data analytics and translation and focusing on sea level rise. She can be reached at mgrabill@islandinstitute.org

www.workingwaterfront.com . June 2021

25

Cranberry Report

Remote meetings mirror remote island life Town meeting slated for in-person, but beware ‘mute yourself’ call

By Barbara Fernald

has offered a sense of normalcy as we get to see smiles, frowns, frustration, I WAS WORKING IN my studio last and laughter among each other while week with the television on behind holding space in our “Hollywood me when I heard one commentator Squares.”

I know I’m not the only one who say to another, “I think you win the background game today.” I didn’t turn thinks about presentation. I’m aware of around, but briefly imagined what what is behind me and I try to angle the might create a backdrop so interesting light so my glasses don’t reflect. I try as to “win the day” among news to make sure my laptop screen is level with my eyes. (The jowls I’ve acquired correspondents.

After the year of COVID 19 with so from 68 years of gravity do not need many meetings, broadcasts, and lessons to be exaggerated by my looking down from home, I believe many of us found toward a laptop camera!)

While I don’t care to entertainment in the do it myself, I am pretty details of the stamp sized entertained by the people rectangles in which others presented themselves. Even Why leave home who use a green screen on Zoom. The app allows if you have never attended to jump on a one to change their backa Zoom meeting, you grounds at a whim. I also might have witnessed your boat to get to respect those who attend favorite newscaster bravely working from home your car to drive meetings without video.

They might see me, but offering you a glimpse of two hours to a all I see is a box with the life that doesn’t show up meeting…? their name. It’s OK to be when they broadcast from private on Zoom; there a TV studio. are still plenty of people The opportunity to who allow you to peep at remotely connect with their world. people has helped many A friend I see regularly on Zoom but islanders get through the isolation of the past year. The fact that these whom I have never met in person said to encounters take place without masks me after a meeting, “Wow. I just realized

that every single thing I see in the room behind you had to get to the island on a boat.” Remote validation for island living.

My husband, Bruce, serves on the board of the Maine Lobster Collaborative which meets about six times a year.

Zoom meetings have worked well for him and he hopes they will continue even after the pandemic restrictions end.

“You can go to a meeting in any weather without worrying about your boat or the ferry schedule,” he says. It’s such a good point. Why leave home to jump on a boat to get to your car to drive two hours to a meeting when you could attend the same meeting from your own kitchen?

The board members are scattered among Ellsworth, Jonesport, Portland, Augusta, Pretty Marsh, and Islesford, so it makes a whole lot of sense to continue meeting online. When I asked him if he looked behind people during his Zoom meetings he replied, “I’m always checking out the backgrounds.” When Bruce Zooms from his favorite spot at the kitchen table, there is a steel lobster that hangs on the wall above the window behind him. He gets comments.

We’ll all be a little out of practice for live meetings when the Town of Cranberry Isles holds its annual town

meeting on Great Cranberry on May 1. It was postponed for two months in hopes to have warm enough weather to hold the meeting outside in the ball field. The daffodils are at their peak, the grass is turning green, and the trees are budding. There is birdsong in the background all day long.

A lot of us will be seeing each other for the first time in a very long time.

As much as we’ve benefitted from attending meetings remotely, no green screen or artfully arranged bookshelf can compete with the live background of a Maine island and its people in the spring. I’m looking forward to it.

The meeting will be live, but don’t be surprised if the moderator still uses a term from Zoom meetings, asking people to remember to mute themselves after they’ve spoken.

Barbara Fernald lives, writes, and makes jewelry on Islesford (Little Cranberry Island). She can be reached at fernald244@gmail.com.

Observer

It took a village to run the motel Compelling evidence that Mom was right

By Phil Crossman MY MOTHER WAS POSSESSED of a resolute conviction that people were good. Certainly, in spite of mounting evidence to the contrary, she felt my three younger brothers and I were clear examples—kind, compliant youngsters who behaved themselves and did for others at every opportunity.

In spite of our best efforts, her faith in us was unshakable and, after we had grown and left home and by the time she and my father built and opened the Tidewater Motel, her confidence in the universal goodness of us and of all mankind was undiminished and she brought that brimming optimism to her new role as innkeeper.

And so it was that when an older man and his ravishing young companion, having tucked themselves away in a nice waterfront accommodation for several nights, left behind a tiny scrap of silk which, upon close inspection, revealed itself to be a negligee, my mother wrapped it up, explained the circumstances in a nice personal note and sent it to his home address.

We have a lot of repeat business. This we’d left on the table. It rung because a fellow, however, has not been among sign on the front desk at the Tidewater Motel back on Vinalhaven island them.

My folks ran the Tidewater for 20 alerted new or prospective guests that years or so. My mother never failed to we were off-island for a few days and wade into such circumstances carrying invited them to call our mobile number her naiveté like a banner and her for information or to secure a room.

It was a lovely day on belief in the essential Vinalhaven island, as goodness of everyone is usually the case, and remained unwavering.

My mother never within the two or three In fact, I’ve come to hours we’d been gone discover she was right failed to wade into from the restaurant, and nearly everyone such circumstances several folks had called who has stayed with us during the 20 years we carrying her naiveté asking for lodging. The restaurant staff were have owned it has been like a banner… wonderfully helpful, a delight. assuring the first caller While my wife and that once we realized I were on a road trip we’d left our phone we’d years ago, we stopped at a restaurant, the Half Moon Café, in certainly be in touch and asking that Clairmont, N.H. Hours later, nearly to they call back shortly.

The second call was from first-time Connecticut, we realized we’d left our mobile phone (back then we shared island visitors looking for a room for one) back at the Half Moon where the the night. As it happened, Craig, a staff were enjoying their new responsi- repairman who’d been coming to the island and to the Tidewater for years, bilities as innkeepers.

It seems our phone rung just after we’d arrived in the lobby at the same time left, rung from beneath a newspaper to pick up a room key we’d left for him.

He quickly and correctly assessed the situation, politely interrupted the call, explained to the couple and to the Half Moon staff that such things were not at all unusual at the Tidewater and offered to help the couple find a nice waterfront room.

He also promised to come in from work every now and then and to call the Half Moon on those occasions, suggesting that between them they could stay on top of things until the owners came to their senses. Craig then showed the couple to a nice waterfront accommodation; the Half Moon kept taking reservations and between them they kept things running smoothly, more so, some might say than... well, never mind.

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

26

The Working Waterfront . June 2021

Book Review

The truth is out there… or not

A journey through the rabbit hole of biological warfare

Baseless: My Search for Secrets in the Ruins of information that is available (more on this in a the Freedom of Information Act is the product of moment); the gaps arise from the Kafka’s-castle-like Nicholson Baker’s ten-year effort to answer the ques- world of redacted and access-stonewalled national tion: Did the United States ever security documents. In fact, it’s use biological weapons against all so weird and has so many its enemies? tendrils whose links cannot be Baker, the mild-mannered documented that Baker gave reporter and novelist who now up trying to work out a convenWe learn that Willy lives somewhere within sight of tional book-length narrative Review by the Penobscot River in Bangor, and wrote up what he had in the Dana Wilde Burgdorfer, credited with Maine Boats, Homes & Harbors Magazine or possibly Veazie, I’m not sure form of a diary spanning March to May 2019.

ONE OF MY many which, titled his book after the discovering the bacteria Each day’s entry contains unproven cultural U.S. Air Force’s Korean War-era information that falls roughly theories that hasn’t program “Project Baseless,” responsible for Lyme “to achieve into three categories: 1. inforchanged much grammatical, for whose aim very carefully, checking especially for spelling, andwas factual errors.‘anPlease pay close attention to Air Force-wide combat capamation about biological warfare decades goes like this: In 1914 the world went insane. disease, was a tick expert and to all the details in physical, e-mail, and web site addresses. Please note that any colors shown are merely (BW) programs of the U.S.; 2.

It showed no signs of recovering until the 1960s. The bility in biological and chemical d on paper.

Weparanoid-fantasy make every effort 100%plaguing error free.warfare.

However, we cannot be held responsible for errors once ’” information about the people in peculiar formtoofbe insanity who worked at the Rocky It box turns out that the programs; 3. the immense our country you ask check me, is the echoing the ave approved this recently, printout.if Please appropriate below, sign,not andonly return to: and various difficulties of collective psychological damage done to America the Air Force, but seemingly Mountain Laboratory…

Boats, from Homes Harbors, through Inc., 218 Main St., 300, Box everySte. Cold WarP.O. nook of 566, the Rockland, ME 04841 finding the information. (There the &Depression, theSouth stupendous U.S. military was interested in is a fourth rail in these entries, nightmare of World War II and its spawns, the Cold 207-594-8622 • Fax: 207-593-0026 developing biological and/or too, which other reviewers War and Vietnam War. complained about but which As if an unsubstantiated hypothesis like this wasn’t chemical weapons and delivery troubling enough to carry around for so long, I had systems. The question in all this is not whether such I found refreshing because almost everything else in the book is insanely depressing: short passages the misadventure this winter to run into a book weapons existed, but whether they were ever used.

The story is so weird and has so many gaps it’s describing Baker’s tranquil home life with his wife overflowing with copious evidence that probably I’ve worthy of QAnon fantasy. The weirdness is in the and dogs in Bangor (or Veazie). (Or possibly Orono.) been right all along.

Baseless: My Search for Secrets in the Ruins of the Freedom of Information Act

By Nicholson Baker; Penguin Press, 2020

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www.workingwaterfront.com . June 2021

Every page reveals facts about BW so crazy you can 38th parallel in Korea in late 1950. China and Cuba barely believe your own reading eyes. Documents separately claimed the U.S. was responsible for crop show that research programs involving plague, diseases there. The U.S. vigorously denied all allegacholera, Q fever, anthrax, botulin, and Songo fever, tions. No wonder 1950s SF films exude paranoia.

We learn that Willy Burgdorfer, the scientist credwhich has symptoms similar to Ebola, were all researched for possible use on humans. Poisons and ited with discovering the bacteria responsible for Lyme disease, was a tick expert diseases for destroying agriwho worked at the Rocky cultural crops on large scale Mountain Laboratory in were researched.

Montana, which had contracts Delivery systems were experwith the Army’s Fort Detrick imented with, from aerosols to in Maryland, where full-scale insects, spiders, and springtails The story is so weird BW research was conducted. to turkey feathers dusted with Aviator hero Jimmy Doolittle poisons, then to be dropped and has so many gaps secretly backed BW. Military in the same bombs used to R&D wizard Vannevar Bush. distribute propaganda leaflets. it’s worthy of Gen. Nathan Twining. CIA Systems were secretly tested mastermind Frank Wisner, on Minneapolis, St. Louis, QAnon fantasy. who blew his own brains out Florida’s coast. San Francisco in 1965. reeked for a week in September Journalists, including 1950 when “experimenters Seymour Hersh, have picked made six pretend attacks” by at the Gordian knots of docuspraying aerosols with standments concerning BW, and in bacteria for anthrax and Baker frequently acknowltularemia all around the city.

Mysterious outbreaks of diseases with effects edges their work, even getting direct help from some. exactly matching those of some of the researched He appreciates the well-meaning but administratively crop diseases occurred in Hungary and Romania. All handcuffed assistance he received at, for example, kinds of people got sick in a localized belt along the the National Security Archives and the Library of

Congress. But the wake of the post-war secrecy ethos remains, seven decades later: The Freedom of Information Act, Baker indicates, gets you only so far, and often nowhere.

“The edges of old secrets are blurred and the middle is spongy and there are frangible bits of recorded truth spread around in the secrets like pieces of thin ceramic.”

The U.S. researched, developed, and tested biological weapons and delivery systems. A number of enemy countries complained about effects that some of the exact weapons under research would produce.

But whether the U.S. actually used them, is not known definitively.

How Nicholson Baker spent ten years researching this demented historical cranny without going crazy, I don’t know. My favorite books of his are The Mezzanine, an entire novel covering a man’s thoughts during a few minutes on an escalator, and Room Temperature, an entire novel covering a few minutes in a man’s afternoon caring for his baby. He wrote those books while he was living in South Berwick. Now I think he lives in Bangor. Or Orono. Or maybe Old Town. I can’t find anything that says so definitively.

Dana Wilde is a member of the National Book Critics Circle.

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Support Climate Solutions for the coast of Maine and beyond The Island Institute’s new strategic priorities will invest in: • Sea level rise adaptation

“ Climate change is impacting Maine’s coast in so many ways, from rising seas to changing

• Implementing clean, renewable energy solutions for Maine’s working waterfronts

water chemistry. It’s so critical that we all do our part to mitigate these changes and give

• Accelerating ocean acidification research and carbon sequestration in the Gulf of Maine

communities the tools needed to adapt along the way.”

Join us in leading the state in climate action!

— SUSIE ARNOLD, Ph.D. Marine Scientist, Island Institute

3 WAYS TO SUPPORT CLIMATE SOLUTIONS: 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