Articles
Carpenter’s Boat Shop adds a new workshop
For 27 years, apprentices at the Carpenter’s Boat Shop in Pemaquid have built peapods, dinghies and other small craft in an inadequately lighted and drafty chicken barn with low beams sure to raise a lump on many a tall worker’s head. Ruth and Bobby Ives and the first group of apprentices and volunteers had reclaimed
CREST projects connect schools, students and communities
Eleven coastal and island schools participating in CREST (Community for Rural Education Stewardship and Technology) have begun work on three-year projects. Each project provides opportunities for students to utilize training in GPS (global positioning systems) and GIS (geographic information systems), web design, digital camcorders and producing ethnographic interviews. The projects will provide opportunities for varied
“What do you suppose that tuna weighed?”
A photograph taken in 1979 in the Phippsburg village of West Point shows Dick Wallace and his son Gary standing on either side of a halibut that is a good foot taller than each of them. In another, taken in the 1930s in the Phippsburg village of Sebasco, Seth Wallace holds up a codfish that
Nature Conservancy Receives Large Tract of Land in Phippsburg
In October, an anonymous donor gave 1,910 acres of land in Phippsburg to The Nature Conservancy. The new tract, to be called “The Basin Preserve,” is one of the largest unfragmented forest blocks in the midcoast region, a wondrous mixture of steep hemlock gorges and pitch pine forest and four miles of shoreline frontage along
“CREST” Institute collaborates with NSF, colleges, schools to build technology awareness
On a beautiful day in July after a long stretch of rain, 55 middle and high school students and teachers forfeited all of the tempting opportunities for outdoor recreation and, instead, gathered at the Darling Marine Center to work. They were there for a week-long training program that would help them understand GPS (global positioning
Whole Foods and Lobsters: Humane Treatment or the Bottom Line?
Recently, Whole Foods Market announced that it would discontinue live lobster tanks in its retail stores and in the future, would carry frozen lobster products processed solely by Clearwater Seafoods of Canada, unless other processing companies and their suppliers changed to handling techniques used by Clearwater. The large chain’s decision — there are 180 Whole
The Specimen Collector A lifetime of odd jobs comes together in one odd business
Imagine three boys, one girl, ages three through 11, wearing old clothes and boots and carrying buckets. They trudge with their father across a mudflat, digging lugworms that may end up in a university lab for dissection or be studied as part of a collection of specimens from a mudflat. The children struggle to lift
Phippsburg’s cemeteries yield their secrets
Last year, a Phippsburg Elementary School student announced to his teacher, Merry Chapin, “I just thought Phippsburg was this boring old town. I didn’t know it was so interesting.” The admirable change of heart had been kindled by work on the Phippsburg Cemetery Project, an effort to reclaim long neglected family cemeteries scattered throughout the
“Less is Better” Keep those lawn pesticides out of Maine’s waterways!
The Friends of Casco Bay (FOCB) use the term BayScaping; the Maine Board of Pesticide Control (BPC) coined Yardscaping. Whatever it is called, it is a unified attempt to help Mainers understand that the herbicides, fungicides, pesticides and fertilizers they put on their lawns and in their gardens end up in varying degrees in Maine
Catamaran sparks new education program
The Chewonki Foundation is launching a new opportunity for environmental education for people of all ages, the Chewonki GRAND CHAT Sailing Program. The program has been made possible by the donation to Chewonki of the GRAND CHAT, a 1991 Offshore 40, converted to a 46- by 24-foot catamaran. Peter Arnold of Chewonki explained that the