Once a year many family members who have left their islands behind—whether from preference or necessity—return to the nest for a taste of the best of island life that August has to offer. But this year, July’s endlessly sunny weather beat August’s uncharacteristic fogs, frontal rains and its late hurricane all to pieces. It must be said, however, that August views of back-lit spruce trees silhouetted by an occluded sunset, or a reddish sky through the veil of dawn were the kind of sights that could nourish an urban spirit for an entire year. Island spirits, too.
With five of six island sons and a blended daughter making the pilgrimage back to our particular center of the universe, we got to trade island and urban stories with each other on the back deck with its view toward eternity. How are the islands doing, they wanted to know; how is Maine doing, for that matter; and is it true what your new governor said about bearded ladies?
I reply that Maine is doing ok; lower case ok. We never get that high during booms, so we don’t fall as low during busts. Right now, the lobster economy is so good, Maine’s most well known biologist has termed the fishery a “gilded cage,”—profitable in the short term, but an ecological concern since the entire coast has become dangerously dependent on this single species, like the mono-cultures of the Midwest. Boat brokers are also making record sales, I report, suggesting the recession has not hit everyone equally. Housing here has not recovered from its fourth year in the doldrums, and lots of island real estate is for sale. Main streets are hardly thriving, but niche businesses trading on local flavors are finding room to succeed. Crispy kale, for example, a simple island delicacy, easily prepared in your own kitchen, is a headliner at Nebo Lodge on North Haven. And, yes, the governor has even buttoned his lip lately. Maybe it’s not the way life should be”¦but we are used to playing the hand we are dealt.
What about life in worlds away from Maine, I ask, where the island diaspora has scattered its seeds? I learn that the computer game industry in northern California is vigorous and prosperous, although like the movie industry, huge bets on new titles regularly fail, despite their groundbreaking special effects, while independents occasionally carry off a pocketful of prizes. Companies 10 years old are dinosaurs, trying to snap up five-year-old companies before they too lose their street cred. As soon as you launch a new game, web metrics will tell you within the first few weeks whether a year’s worth of work will succeed or fail. A year is now beyond an eternity.
For another itinerant son, the architecture business on both east and west coasts has proven so slow for recent graduates that customizing and trailering an 18-foot Hobie Cat from California to Key West for a sailing adventure up the inter-coastal waterway suddenly seemed like a reasonable response. En route, he says, he completed and uploaded a video on Kickstarter, the web-based investment platform, for a friend’s new business that just succeeded in raising $10,000 for a vegan bakery. Ohh “¦kaaay. And following recent brushes with both Emily and Irene, he discovers that paper charts have more utility than I-Phone charts and that the purchase of a 2-hp outboard is a painful compromise with safety. The education you pay for with your own money is always the most compelling.
Meanwhile, for another island son, a nine-month unpaid internship in New Orleans helping develop leadership programs for kids in post Katrina schools has turned into a year-long hand-to-mouth Americorps position. But where everyone else is also making something out of nothing, life is suffused with a sense of sparse nobility. Life in the Lower Ninth Ward, he reports, which is still almost vacant, presents eerie spectacles, including looking up at the levee and watching a freighter sail by over your head on the Industrial Canal.
At the other end of the spectrum is the son in the finance industry in New York who chose Irene’s arrival for his one-week summer vacation and had his return delayed, which will cost him a day’s pay. Although significant parts of his industry are being restructured, perhaps belatedly recognizing that breathing helium for years at a time can make you giddy, but does not really enable you to fly, thankfully his company’s niche in more objective analysis seems to be doing just fine. Not flying”¦just fine.
The most recent college graduate just completed two long vessel deliveries—St. Martin’s to Baltimore and Key West to Camden before returning to the island via Washington D.C. where record numbers of young college graduates migrate to compete for record few internships to improve the world. Perhaps there is a growth opportunity there in offering a new kind of internship: a few years ago internships offered experience and paid poorly; recently they offered experience, but have paid nothing at all. Soon, college graduates may be able to offer experience, but have to pay to work.
And finally, a stepson and his wife have moved back to Midcoast Maine from Massachusetts, threading the needle of finding two good jobs, selling their existing house, buying another and enrolling their daughter in 1st grade, all in three intense and harrowing months. They could be poster children, I tell them, for the LePage administration promise of improving the business climate in Maine.
So all in all, Maine and its islands present a mixed picture, but like the Russian folk tale reminds us, things could be worse.
Philip Conkling is president of the Island Institute in Rockland, Maine.