Articles
Parallel 44 – How Waymouth helped doom the Popham Colony 400 years ago
In case you missed it, this month marks the 400th anniversary of the Waymouth expedition, an English reconnaissance mission to midcoast Maine that yielded the first sustained contact between English explorers and Maine’s native inhabitants. The official chronicle of the 1605 expedition, written by crewman James Rosier, remains one of the finest sources of information
Parrallel 44 – Who owns Maine’s media?
Just before last year’s presidential election, the Baltimore-based conglomerate that owns Portland’s CBS affiliate, Sinclair Broadcasting, announced that it would be airing an anti-Kerry documentary on WGME and most of the 61 other television stations it controls around the country. The announcement unleashed a storm of controversy in Portland, a Democratic bastion, where many viewers
Rough seas for the Scotia Prince
As the airlines have become increasingly uncomfortable, unpleasant, and unreliable, I’ve been finding the SCOTIA PRINCE an increasingly soothing presence. Every night during the clement half of our year, she pulls out of Portland harbor, bedecked in lights, on her purposeful mission to deliver passengers and cargo to foreign lands across the waters. It reminds
Parallel 44 – Before election polls, there was Maine
Our state, with only two congressmen and four electoral votes, is usually ignored in national politics, but not this year. With the presidential race in a dead heat – and the Congress narrowly divided – both parties have been spending madly on advertising here, while the President, his wife, daughters, dad, and running mate have
Parallel 44 – The Ghost Ship from Maine
At dawn, Jan. 31, 1921, Coast Guardsman C. P. Brady climbed up to the cupola of his observation station, just down the beach from North Carolina’s famous Cape Hatteras Lighthouse. He peered out at the surf, roiling and crashing on the shifting sands of the Diamond Shoals and couldn’t believe what he saw. There, embedded
400 Years Ago Today, _New England’s First European Colony
For the first two weeks of July, the Calais region will be celebrating the 400th anniversary of a key event in this history of what is now New England: the founding of the first European colony here. While considerable ink has been spilt about later colonial enterprises – the early fishing stations at Monhegan and
Parallel 44: Does Aquaculture’s Future Lie Offshore?
The salmon aquaculture industry in Maine and New Brunswick has been buffeted by environmental, economic and legal challenges in recent years. Things are not likely to get any easier, given some of the ongoing developments in ocean fish farming elsewhere in the world. According to Leroy Creswell, an aquaculture researcher at the University of Florida
Willy, Free at Last
Willy, free at last Readers of Island Journal may recall my 2001 story on Keiko, the whale star of the 1993 movie “Free Willy,” who trainers were trying to reintroduce to the wild after a lifetime in captivity. Keiko’s story came to an end in Norway Dec. 12, when his handlers discovered him lying dead
Parallel 44:When Downeasters Colonized the Middle East
With war in Iraq, sanctions in Syria, bombings in Saudi Arabia, and an uprising in Israel’s occupied territories, you might have second thoughts about relocating to the Middle East these days. Would it make any difference if someone told you Judgment Day was at hand? It did for some 19th century residents of the Jonesport
Beaming down
Larry Mayer will always remember the day he showed Nova Scotia scallop fishermen what his high-tech sonar mapping technology could do. Mayer, then at the University of New Brunswick in Fredericton, displayed his team’s new high-resolution, three-dimensional model of a Browns Bank – a key scallop fishing ground – on a 12-by-12-foot glass screen in