Articles
Island romance in the days of party lines and record hops
As the days warm, the crocuses sprout, peepers peep and my lawn begins to fill with deer poop, it seems the season has finally changed. Earlier this week, the first tick of the year burrowed into my shin with cheerful tidings—don’t worry, Mom, it wasn’t on for 36 hours. Ah, spring—when “a young man’s fancy
Tripping over history every day
One of the tougher aspects of being a newcomer to an island is keeping track of who people are. Decades of connections are at play. These facts are so obvious to everyone else that you feel like an idiot on a daily basis. My strategy after week two was to nod and pretend that I
Remembering Richard
The first day of spring arrived on Swan’s Island about 14 hours after a blizzard arrived. I watched the snow blur outside my window, debating over the phone with Sue Wheaton about whether knitting group ought to be canceled. It was. Spring seems to have sunk in at last, with a few rain showers driving
Islands, it turns out, are ‘character’ magnets
As a kid, I wanted to be normal. Anything that kept me away from this ideal—namely, my parents—was a threat. Middle school can be rough, and the closer I was to everybody else, the easier life would be. It took me a while to appreciate “characters,” which as far as I could tell was a
One-room schools, then and now
I grew up hearing stories of my grandmother’s days in a one-room schoolhouse, working with one ear tuned in to catch the older students’ lessons across the room. Some local history group moved a tiny renovated schoolhouse (which spent part of its life as a chicken coop) to the field across from “the Farm,” my grandmother’s
Finding winter fun on Swan’s Island hasn’t changed much
Kate Webber is an Island Institute Fellow working with the Swan’s Island Historical Society. Her projects include oral history recording, digital archiving, service-learning with 6-8th graders, and the revival of local music and contra dance. Photos and research courtesy of the Swan’s Island historical collection. There was a time when I assumed the only thing