Twenty-four hours of continuous daylight confuses one’s body clock. After chasing the sun from Portland, Maine, to Anchorage and landing with a colorful sunset at 11:51 p.m. Alaska time, I wasn’t sure if it was time to eat, sleep or start my day. Luckily, on the ride from the airport to the dorm I’d occupy
Waterfront Communities Caught in Middle of Bond Spat
From the pull-out of the poultry industry to the loss of a large credit firm, downtown Belfast has weathered financial storms in the past. It’s taken creative thinking and planning among multiple administrations to keep Belfast shops full, but the effort has worked, according to Mayor Walter Ash. But while Belfast’s downtown bustles, its waterfront
An Island Picnic
To protect an otherwise innocent and untrammeled place, the name of the naturalist’s favorite Maine island—the one where he might someday wish to have his ashes scattered amid its heath and ledge and careening gulls—should perhaps not be revealed. But plenty of people know it well. Lobstermen fish its surrounding shoals and canyons, hauling up
The 100th Anniversary of an Island Entertainment Milestone
In 1912, Fenway Park first opened, the Oreo was invented, and the Titanic sank not far from the Maine coast. It was also the grand opening year of the Stonington Opera House on Deer Isle. Marking its 100th anniversary, this iconic building is now on the National Register of Historic Places (NHRP). Built in 1912
Preventing the Next Lobster Crisis
Early shedding, rock-bottom prices, and blockades—it’s been a terribly frustrating summer for Maine lobstermen and coastal communities. While a “perfect storm” of circumstances has made the situation especially bad, the factors behind it are not new. They are longstanding problems that coastal communities have been working to address. Maybe the only upside to this summer
Sea Hag Prepares to Process Midcoast Lobsters
Fresh-caught lobsters will be frozen and shipped to market from a renovated seaside plant where granite was once quarried and loaded aboard schooners. Kyle Murdock, head of the Sea Hag lobster processing plant in St. George, was confident in a late August interview that his new business would be up and running within a few
I Think I Will Never See
Perhaps no one better knows the locations of an island’s chestnut trees than adolescent boys, although their spreading branches no longer shelter the village smithy, and if truth be told, these imitators are not actually the American chestnut of lore and lyric. Rather, they are horse chestnuts, a very distant relative of the American species,
Islanders Connect Through Song
Outside the Chebeague Island Hall on a warm summer evening, laughter can be heard 100 feet away. Somebody’s just told a joke. Inside, the group setting up chairs around a grand piano is still chuckling. But now it’s time to get to work. The Whalers’ rehearsal is about to begin and music is on everybody’s
Canadian Protestors Temporarily Stop U.S. Lobster Exports
When Leonard Garnett of Steuben crossed the border into New Brunswick on the morning of Aug. 2, hauling over 36,000 pounds of lobster to the Shediac Lobster Shop processing plant, he had no idea what he was driving into. Northumberland Strait lobster fishermen, a week away from starting their 10-week harvest season, were told not
Campobello Library Rededication
On August 4, officials from the United States and Canada gathered at the small island library on Campobello Island overlooking Welsh Pool to rededicate the first monument erected anywhere in the world to honor Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Roosevelt spent every summer of his life as a boy on Campobello, learning to sail and fish from