The shrill keening of Arctic terns as they dive-bomb flashes of sliver-sided brit seems to encompass all the intensity of a Maine island summer in a single second of sound and sight. Arctic terns, like most islanders, live at a furious pace during the precious few weeks between Independence and Labor days, feeding young, dodging gulls and laying in stores for the long lean months ahead. Like them, we find few moments of respite. We can at least take comfort that we do not have to wing our frail selves down to Tierra del Fuego and back, via the coast of Africa before we return to our nesting islands.
My migrations along the archipelago this summer are unremarkable compared to terns, but the pace was still furious enough. It began with an opening event at the spit-and-polished new Swan’s Island Library with old friends and new faces in the spacious main room for a slide show of iconic Ralston images that enliven a new edition of Islands in Time. At that event, I recounted the story of the first time I spoke with Swan’s Island’s Sonny Sprague, a selectman at the time for over a quarter of a century, more than a quarter of a century ago now. When I introduced the Island Institute to him, he replied, “I thought we’ve been doing a pretty good job here on the island without having you around. I’ll call you when we need saving.” That was long enough ago to be amusing, though painful at the time.
After Swan’s, I headed west to Vinalhaven for a bean supper and slide show in the new addition to the town library, but without the benefit of a key digital connector, the slide show failed to materialize on the new blank screen and even shadow puppets of hovering butterflies could not be summoned to lighten this perennial technical nightmare. The audience merely closed its eyes as the author conjured word images and stories from a quarter century of travels along the archipelago.
From the Midcoast, I steamed further west to Peaks Island to an event at the historic Trefethen-Evergreen Improvement Association Clubhouse after sharing a quick glass of lemonade and iced tea in the early swelter of July with the founders of the Peaks Island Fund, which raises money for a broad cross-section of Peaks’ organizations. As the evening on Peaks drew to a close, I caught a late boat back to Portland, which beckoned a slew of island revelers to its bejeweled horizon in the still night air and whispered to us that city islands have their powerful compensations.
After Peaks it was Chebeague two days later, to announce the launching of the Island and Coastal Innovation Fund, which will provide low-interest loans and investments to new island and coastal businesses, at a press conference at the Portland Fish Exchange. John Jordan, founder of Calendar Islands Maine Lobster, in which the fund has invested, spoke at the press conference and then joined us on Chebeague for Calendar Island lobster rolls with seasonal residents and fishermen who have also invested in the company.
I rounded out July with an evening on Isle au Haut, where its affordable housing non profit, ICDC, is planning an initiative to build two new island residences with funds it hopes to secure in part from the $2.7 million bond fund set aside to meet the unique circumstances of island housing needs. The Catch-22 for island affordable housing for decades has been that if you met federal housing loan income guidelines, you were too poor to even think about living on an island.
In the midst of the blur, a group of friends took a moment to celebrate the 90th birthday of one of the most loyal and enduring trustees of the Island Institute, Louis Cabot. At the event, attended by 150 Institute and Cabot friends, the Cabot family announced they had established and launched the Louis W. Cabot Island Education Fund to support island college students through scholarships and internships aimed at bringing the many talented island scholars back to Maine.
Next I doubled back to the westward for an event in Long Island’s simple but elegant new community center and library, completed a few years ago, and recounted the community’s successful secession battle with Portland in the mid 1990s that paved the way a decade later for Chebeague’s independence from the mainland town of Cumberland. Although controversial among a minority of islanders at the time, few residents appear to miss the days when municipal decisions were made across the small ocean that separates them from their terrestrial cousins rather than decided neighbor-to-neighbor on wharves, boats and island town meetings.
Next I was off to Islesford on Raven with Peter Ralston and Rob Snyder to pick up passengers for a trip across Frenchman Bay to Schoodic’s new Education and Research Center, where the Institute’s National Science Foundation program, Energy for ME, organized an inspiring event to highlight the work of the 10 schools and approximately 150 students and teachers who are using new technology—energy meters and software—to monitor circuit-by-circuit energy usage in their classrooms, community buildings and selected homes. After returning our guests to Islesford and Northeast Harbor that night, and after a wonderful dinner on Swan’s, we ghosted into Lunt Harbor, Frenchboro under a nearly full moon and spent the next day with 500 islanders and visitors in celebration of the 50th annual Frenchboro lobster dinner to raise funds for the church and other critical island non profit groups.
Two days later, after an exquisite dinner at North Haven’s Nebo Lodge featuring locally-grown crispy kale, squash blossoms and North Haven oysters, the digital slide show of Islands in Time images was projected on the biggest screen the archipelago offers at the Waterman’s Center. North Haven has perhaps overcome more controversy than any other island community as it has come together time and again amid intense debate to build not only its community center to anchor a once abandoned piece of waterfront, but also a new school to stand as a beacon for educational excellence on a small island in the middle of the Atlantic coast’s second largest bay.
A meeting a few nights later back on Vinalhaven was called to deal with a different controversy where the directors of Fox Island Wind (of whom I am one) and the Fox Island Electric Cooperative met to respond to legal challenges recently filed by Fox Island Wind neighbors. A handful of Co-op ratepayers have appealed DEP’s issuance of a final permit to operate the wind farm, and they and a few others have also appealed to the Public Utilities Commission challenging the notice of a rate increase to pay off $365,000 of unbudgeted costs incurred during 18 months of intense regulatory scrutiny. Sadly, the costs of responding to these new challenges may cause additional rate increases. Meanwhile, up on the hill of Amiziah’s mill, a West German crew hired by General Electric is installing new blade treatments on the trailing edges of the nine blades that may reduce turbine noise, if not complaints.
A few nights earlier in Rockland, 250 coastal and island residents attended a screening of two films from Compass Light Productions, one of which was “Islands in the Wind,” a film highlighting the community debate in Vinalhaven as the Fox Islands wind site was established, followed by a short film on the question of whether offshore wind represents a new source of energy for Maine. Adding to the drama of the evening, two protestors slowly beat a drum in front of a coffin containing a lobster. But it turned out there were more lobstermen inside the Strand Theater participating in the panel discussion that followed the films than outside beating the dream.
As the summer blur reaches its keening apogee, I am heading out to Islesboro for an event hosted by the Historical Society and then the road show heads to the mainland with events in Northeast Harbor, Stonington, Freeport, Bar Harbor, Blue Hill and Camden coming up.
Tierra del Fuego still looms on the horizon.
Philip Conkling is president of the Island Institute.