Articles
Wood heat welcome as an old friend
It’s nearly impossible to disagree about anything of consequence when settled comfortably near a companionable wood fire. We live in a big three-story house right in the village. It was built around 1850 as a Greek Revival—but without the pilasters. Not long after, a two-story kitchen wing was added on the north side, 16 feet
Blind lust and other unsavory scenarios
This is a delicate subject, but one I need to touch on. I like baseball and now and then enjoy watching the Red Sox. When the occasional seasonal opportunity to do so presents itself, my wife and I settle in on the couch, perhaps with an easily portable dinner and a beer or two to
That elusive quality of ‘Maineliness’
Historically, it’s been vitally important to a native Mainer to be able to make a clear distinction between himself and others, particularly those others who live here in Maine but haven’t always and, when push comes to shove—as it often does—to acknowledge the more subtle distinctions that mark the difference between that native and those
When Vinalhaven was its own service center
When I was a kid, my friends and I went to great lengths to pick a secluded spot where we might misbehave, but the parents in this little island town were a troublesome bunch, alert and conspiratorial, and we often found our clandestine activities woefully transparent. One day in 1958 we snuck a pack of
Vinalhaven’s computer revolutionary, circa 1967
When I got out of the service in 1967, I was hired by Aetna Life & Casualty in Hartford, Conn. to be a computer programmer trainee. I was taught to write programming instructions in Cobol, Fortran and Basic, the programming languages that would compel the big IBM 360 computers to complete a certain task or
Waving the wrong way has consequences
“Away” is a suspect place. And it concerns me that some of you folks who will visit or have visited our islands once or twice, and then fallen understandably in love with these magnificent surroundings, and who then decide to move here for good, give up your day job, uproot yourselves, maybe even your families
Our past architectural grandeur in good hands
A couple of months ago Elaine and I scheduled a visit to New York City to see the Robert Indiana retrospective exhibit at the Whitney Museum of American Art. We’d lived in his shadow; well not his shadow exactly but certainly the shadow of his home, the Star of Hope Lodge, for the last 40
A man’s work on Thanksgiving morn
At 5 a.m. on Thanksgiving I came downstairs to put the turkey in the oven. On the counter was a note. “Sweetie Pie,” it began. Notes from my wife always begin with “Sweetie Pie.” It’s a softening agent. “Rinse the turkey well, inside and out, with cold water, and pat dry. Carefully put the stuffing
Good food, safe passage and a yearning
A few years ago I jumped at the chance to join three other guys in sailing a catamaran across the Atlantic. The boat was owned and the invitation extended by a friend for whom I’d built a house here on Vinalhaven 30 years earlier. While building the house he’d nearly killed me by buzzing the
Moral decay among the ducks
The Great American Duck Race is an event quite unlike any other, particular to Vinalhaven and with good reasons, all once good and noble but no longer. Begun by Jerry and Carlene Michael in 1993, the event was intended to raise funds for the construction of a badly needed school playground and more recently to