Articles
Long View: Presuming to speak for islanders
When Peter Ralston and I-a pair of outsiders (flatlanders, if you like)-started the Island Institute more than 25 years ago, we knew one important thing about island life. The fox is clever and knows many things; but the hedgehog knows one big thing. The one thing we knew is that we would never presume to
Objects in Mirror: Gauchos in the Beagle Channel
Last week this column described a sailing voyage from Tierra del Fuego to Cape Horn and through the Beagle Cannel I took with four old (emphasis added) friends. In addition to the rigorous sailing, the graceful seabirds and majestic scenery, we spent a day and a half at an estancia (the Spanish for ranch) at
Objects in Mirror: Never say no to an island
When I was a graduate student in 1975, more than anything else, I wanted to work in the North Maine woods, where the last unsettled acreages in the Eastern United States seemed to invite individual exploration and adventure. But that was during a serious housing recession at the time, so the big forest landowners were
Objects in Mirror: Gotcha
Benjamin Franklin once said, “Never argue with a man who buys his ink by the barrel.” I assume that the Maine Sunday Telegram buys ink by the barrel, but I’ve got a serious bone to pick with them over their January 24th front-page coverage of the Fox Islands wind-power project. “Wind Turbines Turn Into Headache
The Long View: Offshore wind and the public trust
To anyone who does not know better-which means most of Maine’s mainland residents, and lawmakers in Augusta-the waters of the state of Maine look like a featureless ocean out to the three mile limit and beyond into federal waters. Of course, the three-mile limit balloons out around Maine’s offshore islands, so the state’s territorial limits
Objects in Mirror: Weather small talk
Because Maine is a state of small towns-495 of them at last count-spread out like tiny nodes in an extensive neural landscape, we are practiced in the arts of small talk. When you run into your neighbors at the ferry, at the post office or the store, it helps to have reliable conversational gambits to
Objects in Mirror: Talking turkey
In an ongoing effort to introduce more readers to the online edition of Working Waterfront, we will feature two, new monthly columns in the Working Waterfront E-Weekly starting this week. Today we introduce “Objects in Mirror,” Island Institute President Philip Conkling’s personal reflections on life along the Maine coast. Next week marks the start of
The Long View: Flipping the switch
One day we will look back on November 2009 and mark it as a turning point in the history of the Maine coast. The turning point will come when officials at Fox Islands Wind “flip the switch” that turns (and re-turns) the power of the winds off the Gulf of Maine into a productive local
The Long View: Cheer up, things could be worse
You know the old observation that dog owners begin to look like their dogs as they age? The same might be said of Maine lobstermen, who are backed into a really tight spot and are waving threatening pincher and crusher claws at anyone who gets too close. The summer news in Maine’s iconic lobster harbors
Working waterfront celebration: “Today’s the Day I’ll Remember”
On a sunny August day at noontime, over 150 lobstermen along with their families, neighbors, state officials and working waterfront activists gathered at the Davis Wharf in Goose Cove, Tremont to celebrate the first working waterfront easement placed on a commercial fishing wharf by a Maine fishing family. It was one of the few conservation