Concord, NH: Accompany, 2003
Dissecting Stonington’s Character
“It’s all about fishing, but not about fish,” says producer John Gfroerer of his video about Deer Isle and Stonington.
Gfroerer, whose video production company, Accompany, is based in Concord, NH, makes documentaries on various New Hampshire and Maine towns, collecting stories about the people and places that give each town its character.
Because Stonington is a fishing village, it wouldn’t have been right to open the film with anything other than a lobsterman, so, on cue, Andy Gove, lobsterman and lobsterboat racer, appears on the screen, setting the tone.
But the most interesting segments, to this reviewer, focused on sculptor Peter Beerits, on the building of the Deer Isle Bridge and on crab-picker Tina Gray and artist Michie Stovall O’day.
Beerits is seen rooting around the Deer Isle Town dump looking for objects to use in his work. “This is one of the last frontiers for old agricultural and industrial stuff,” he says as he pulls out something he’ll use for an elephant’s head. “It takes a long time before anything gets thrown out around here.” He takes parts of old rusty pot-haulers he’ll use for horses’ eyes and the gears from a bicycle wheel for a warrior’s hat.
Mary McGuire talks about the to-do in 1939 over the building of the Deer Isle Bridge, which crosses Eggemoggin Reach, a favorite place to sail. Apparently, the New York Yacht Club objected to a bridge, and the compromise, the story goes, is one that can move up and down as well as side-to-side. Despite the swaying, Everett Barnard, of the Maine Department of Transportation, declares the bridge safe.
Tina Gray shows us at once how island women bring in additional income while staying at home with young children and how she exemplifies that “salt of the earth” philosophy. “Everything I do is the best I can do, ” she says. “That satisfies me.” She makes you want to know her.
Michie O’day is another many would like to know. She suffers from a disease that causes tumors to grow in her central nervous system, causing her to lose her hearing at age 39, but she maintains a remarkably upbeat attitude. The many operations she’s undergone, including a 30-hour one, have taught her, she says, what resilience she has. Many parts of her body may be compromised, she says, but not her ability to make art. She describes an allegorical, symbol-filled painting she’s made that underscores her feeling that she has “lots of reasons to be positive.”
The video’s title, Eight Ways to Fish, doesn’t make much sense to me because the film shows many more than eight subjects. Its secondary subjects, some more interesting than others, include the elementary and middle school chess teams, the granite quarries, a ship model maker, a wooden boat designer, arthritis-fighting sea cucumber products for humans and animals, an omnivorous collector of kitsch, a theatre company, a crafts school, a pie maker and edible wild plants.
Why Gfroere spent film on only two edible plants, blackberries and cattail roots, is beyond me. If these were unusual or the only things on the island available to sustain life other than seafood, it might have worked, but as is, this segment was gratuitous. Other than that, I found the film worth watching and recommend it.
For more information write Accompany, 44 South Main Street, Concord, NH 03301, call 603-226-3130 or 207-367-2200, or go to accompanyvideo.com or penobscotbaypress.com.