Articles
Parallel 44: Home Rule is dead! Long live home rule!
Over the past couple of years I’ve had the pleasure of speaking to audiences all over New England about the past, present and future of the Maine Coast. I relate how our peculiar history as a colony of a colony engendered a healthy suspicion of outsiders, and how, in the heady years after the American
Border Troubles, East of Downeast
Residents of New Brunswick’s Campobello Island cross the border into Maine all the time, and they don’t have any choice in the matter. For most of the year, it’s the only way they can get to the rest of their country. A short bridge ties the ten-mile-long island to Lubec, the easternmost town in the
Parallel 44: When Britian Invaded Maine
At 5pm on July 18, 1814, the passengers aboard the Lubec-to-Eastport ferry witnessed a most unusual sight: a fleet of British warships, transports and storeships rounding the eastern end of Campobello Island and heading straight for Eastport. The ferry’s skipper brought the little boat to a halt in mid-passage as the 11-vessel fleet came to
Parallel 44: The Search for Maine’s Oldest Home
I’d always heard that the oldest house in Maine was that place on the Smuttynose Beer labels, the Samuel Haley House on the Isle of Shoals. Turns out it was built about 1800, not good enough to be the oldest house in Ohio. So that got me wondering: what is the oldest house in the
Parallel 44: Hunting for a bit of Maine in the Tokyo Fish Market
It quickly became clear that there weren’t any wandering around on the street. The seafood restaurant around the corner from the hotel was closed and, in any case, turned out to specialize in minke whale sashimi, not lobster. There was, therefore, only one place to go: the mother of all seafood bazaars, the Tsukiji Wholesale
Parallel 44 – Wal-Mart in the Midcoast
In November, at the start of the holiday shopping season, the people of Damariscotta learned that Wal-Mart was coming to town, and in a big way. The world’s largest corporation wants to build a Wal-Mart Supercenter just north of town, near the junction of Route 1 and Business Route 1. The store would have over
In the English West Country the birthplace of Maine
BRISTOL, England – We’ll be marking a lot of 400th anniversaries along the coast in the coming years. Last year it was the 400th anniversary of the first failed European colony on our coast (a French one on an island near Calais). This year the residents of Thomaston celebrated English explorer George Waymouth’s 1605 landing
Groundswell: Stories of Saving Places, Finding Community
Locals saving themselves A great many of us wish there were a way to save Maine’s land, sea and culture from the forces that are dismantling it, to revitalize our hometowns without completely replacing their inhabitants, to grow without destroying every last landscape and collective memory. But what can a small community do to protect
Global Warming and the Maine Coast
For decades now, scientists have warned that global warming will result in more frequent and powerful storms, and that rising seas will exacerbate the damage they cause. Unfortunately, it has taken Hurricane Katrina and the destruction of a major metropolitan area to really bring home to the public what that really means: the potential for
Parallel 44 – Before Quoddy LNG, there was Quoddy Tidal
As if the debate over Liquefied Natural Gas terminals wasn’t hot enough already, now there are plans for not one, but two competing LNG terminals on Passamaquoddy and Cobscook Bays. Theoretically, at least, the Eastport region could become home to duplicate terminals, the nation’s first underwater LNG pipeline and two rival tank farms located within