May E.B. Forgive Us

I knew that the white-footed deer mouse is one of three common small rodents of the Maine islands, along with its close cousins, the meadow vole and the red backed vole, both of which look rather mouse like, but have quite different ecological “niches.” This is a fancy way of saying they divide up resources-

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Home

Lindsay and Jason were married in the summer of 2007. They began looking at house plans the following winter. Influenced by the framing chisels Jason received as a wedding present, and with the purchase of a sawmill, the young couple worked on their dream of building a house from island wood.  They cut trees in

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New regulations for small tanker vessels

By 2015, according to the U.S. Coast Guard, even existing small tankers must have double hulls. The requirement affects Maine firms such as Portland Harbor Fuel, serving Casco Bay, and Maine Coast Petroleum of Tenants Harbor, which operates two tankers, 40 and 60 feet respectively, between Rockland and all the island communities between Monhegan and

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How the Crimes Happened

Dawn Potter’s newest collection of poems, How the Crimes Happened, is filled with brilliant contrasts. Elegant form and literary influence clash and reform up against (post)modern American English. The pope, adorned in Christmas regalia, “looks terrible. / . . . and sags to one side like a cat.” His image flickers from the television at

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The Monhegan Island Farm Project

When Kathie and I received the flyer for the Island Institute’s Sustainable Island Living Conference in the late summer of 2009, we were excited to see the conference’s focus on agriculture. For months, Kathie and I, butts in the air, hands in the dirt, shouted back and forth from flower bed to flower bed, our

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Shop by Number

In September, Whole Foods launched a color-coded grading system to help customers know whether seafood purchased at the chain’s supermarkets come from sustainable fisheries. Under the grading system, fish species sold at the store with a green rating are considered sustainably caught. A yellow-grade means there are some concerns about the viability of the stock.

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