Articles
Transportation
“Everyone in O’Hare is happy today,” begins the title poem of Kristen Lindquist’s engaging new collection. Looking around at the sunlit terminal with its “glorious packaged snack foods” and “racks of Bulls t-shirts,” the poet, too, is in an upbeat mood. Her flight arrived 20 minutes early; on her way to Chicago she saw Niagara
The Virtues of Virtual
As the world becomes more virtual (but not necessarily more virtuous), many museums and historical societies are moving their collections online. The Maine Memory Network, launched by the Maine Historical Society in 2001, is a model of this cyber museum concept, offering access to materials from archives across the state. This past November, the Penobscot
Becoming Teddy Roosevelt: How a Maine Guide Inspired America’s 26th President
Vietze pays homage to Sewall, who took the young Roosevelt under his wing and taught him the ways of the woods. His account begins with the bespectacled Harvard student, a budding naturalist and avid hunter, standing on the older man’s Island Falls farmhouse door stoop, on the evening of September 7, 1878, exhausted from the
Hidden History of Maine
The title of this tidy digest of Maine history is a bit misleading. Yes, author Harry Gratwick does, as former Island Institute Publications Director David Tyler notes in his foreword, unearth some “captivating stories about Mainers you probably haven’t heard about before.” Yet they are all part of a well-documented history-and to the author’s credit,
“Catching the Light: The Frenchboro Paintings”
“Catching the Light: The Frenchboro Paintings” by Daud Akhriev at the Island Institute’s Archipelago Fine Arts Gallery in Rockland represents the debut showing of this Russian-born painter’s work in Maine. The exhibition, which runs through Sept. 20, coincides with a feature article on Akhriev written by Scott Sell that appears in the special 25th-anniversary edition
“Water Dogs”
Random House, 2009 Hardcover, 246 pp, $25 Dysfunctional Maine family and a paintball game gone wrong Lewis Robinson’s debut novel opens with lines from the final stanza of Wallace Stevens’ famous poem “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird”: “It was evening all afternoon./It was snowing/And it was going to snow.” Stevens’ imagery fits the
Mount Desert, Swan’s island students take part in a community read
Since the Seattle Public Library’s Washington Center for the Book launched its citywide book club in 1996, inviting everyone to read and discuss Russell Banks’ The Sweet Hereafter, the “one book, one community” concept has spread across the country. This fall, the community read came to Mount Desert Island (MDI). In a remarkable partnership, the
“Lynne Drexler: Painter” at the Monhegan Museum
The painter Lynne Drexler (1928-1999) was a southerner by birth (Newport News, Virginia) and upbringing, but by the end of her life she belonged, as it were, to Monhegan Island. In the early 1960s she began to spend part of her summers there. She became a year-round islander in 1983. This exhibition, organized by Tralice
Writing on Stone: Scenes from a Maine Island Life
In December 1991, Christina Marsden Gillis and her husband, John, suffered two parents’ greatest sorrow: the death of a child. Their son Ben, 26 years old, was killed in Kenya while flying eight European tourists from Mombassa to Little Governors Camp in the Masai Mara game preserve. A large bird flew through the windscreen of
Moonsailors
WoodenBoat Books Sailing (and Drawing) Around the Moon Reading about Buckley Smith’s life at his website www.buckleysmith.com, one comes away with the distinct impression of the quintessential free spirit. Born in southern California in 1947, from an early age Smith cultivated twin passions, sailing and art. When he wasn’t building boats or sailing them along