Articles
The Long View: What is the Creative Economy?
More than 30 years ago after moving to the remote eastern coast of Maine, a visiting friend wanted to know if Washington County supported an active traditional music scene. Amid all the evident privations of life thereabouts, she evidently conjured up a cultural brew of guitar and banjo pickers like those of rural Appalachia or
The Long View: Oil Demand, Supply and the Price of a Lobster
Out in the bays of Maine, in addition to all the continuing annual worries that accompany each new season of fishing, the 35 percent increase in fuel prices during the past six months will surely squeeze every fishing family’s annual income. Whether it is diesel fuel for the boat, heating oil for the furnace or
The Long View: Sticker Shock
For hundreds of thousands of young Americans who will graduate from high school this spring, D-Day, as in decision day, is fast approaching. For many islanders also: the 25 or so high school seniors from Maine’s 15 island communities who have applied to attend college in the fall have collectively received some several hundred letters
March Madness
Along the Maine coast, March madness for many people has more to do with fishing and boatbuilding than with who is playing whom in NCAA basketball. Each March, two large and increasingly significant events bring together large cross sections of Maine’s working waterfronts –the Fisherman’s Forum in Rockport and the Maine Boatbuilders Show in Portland.
The Wal-Mart Effect – How the Wold’s Most Powerful Company Really Works and How It’s Transforming the American Economy
Penguin Press, 2006, 304 pages, $25.95 Shopping Ourselves Out of Our Jobs At the recent Island Small Business Forum, I listened to an interesting discussion among three small island business owners about how difficult it is for them to compete against big chains on the mainland. One could argue that there is nothing different in
The Long View: Lessons Learned
A few weeks ago three Alaskans visited the Island Institute to pick our brains about how the Island Institute operates. One, Denby Lloyd, is Alaska’s Director of Commercial Fisheries who, among other duties, oversees the state’s salmon hatcheries program, critical to the economies of hundreds of fishing communities. The other two visitors, Duncan Fields and
The Long View – On the Cold Coast
When the darkness deepens in the winter on islands, the transition from fleeting sun to bleak and cold can come quickly, especially if you have not been born to island living. During the past seven years, the Island Institute has placed 45 island fellows in 19 different island and working waterfront communities for one to
The Year in Review
As 2005 rolls hull down in the mind, it is worth a moment’s reflection to recount what we’ve lived this year as well as to ask ourselves what we’ve learned and speculate about where we may be headed. Beginning with the most recent past, it is well worth a brief exhalation of joy to celebrate
The Long View – Boom(er) Times
In the mid to late 1980s during the last real estate boom on the Maine coast and islands, it seemed every other person became a real estate developer. The partners of a major developer in the greater Portland area who proposed a massive development for Great Diamond Island, for instance, consisted of an electrical contractor,
The End of Oil
Beyond Oil – The View from Hubbert’s Peak By Kenneth S. Deffeyes Hill and Wang, 2005, 202 pp. The End of Oil As recently as a few years ago, you could hold a gallon gasoline in one hand and a gallon of spring water in the other and still believe it was perfectly normal that