Articles

A Lifeboat for Fishermen

When congress revised bankruptcy laws a few years ago, they included one major provision that didn’t get media attention: fishermen gained access to Chapter 12. Available to farmers for decades, Chapter 12 allows filers to restructure debt at current value, coordinate loan expenses with income, and stops a fishing boat repossession. “It’s remarkably unused” by

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NAACP to host Malaga forum

The forced eviction of the mixed-race residents of Malaga Island in 1912 and its aftermath will be the subject of a Feb. 12 forum in Portland, sponsored by the Portland Branch of the NAACP. Malaga, today a densely wooded oasis in the New Meadows River off Phippsburg’s shore, is now owned by the Maine Coast

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Digging for Truth Malaga excavation reveals the lives of an island’s evicted residents

Since state officials orchestrated the mass eviction of Malaga Island residents in 1912, a certain amount of mystery has surrounded the actual lifeways and histories of the this racially-diverse and much maligned island community. In June, two professors and several students from the University of Southern Maine’s Department of Geography and Anthropology conducted the first

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Lizzie Bright and the Buckminster Boy

Clarion Books, 2004 Hardback, $15; paperback $6.50 224 pages Tragedy and Light Humiliation, shame and friendlessness mark Turner Buckminster III’s first day in the coastal Maine town of Phippsburg in 1911. And then life gets worse for this 13-year-old boy whose father has uprooted the family from Boston to become the First Congregational Church’s new

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Better than Duct Tape

When a small fishing boat floods and sinks, the survivors often describe the event as occurring in seconds or minutes, rather than hours. Flooding, even from what begins as a small crack or hole, can occur so quickly that some survivors recall donning survival suits in the drink — and feeling lucky to have had

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