Articles
The Long View – Will the Internet Change Island Life?
The old joke is that there are four seasons in Maine: almost winter, winter, still winter and construction. So as we approach the winter season when lobster traps and boats come ashore and lights become fewer and far between, we feel the pace of life shift to a different mode. We move indoors, physically and
The Long View – Sorting Out the Tax Mess
Maine is a state of small towns – 497 to be exact. Geographically speaking, all of the rest of New England can fit inside of Maine. Our 7,000 miles of saltwater coastline is compressed into 250 air miles as the crow flies from Kittery to Eastport. Throughout Maine’s history, communities along this highly indented coastline
The Longview – LURC Islands: Fishing for Trout is Not Like Fishing for Cod
Most islanders have probably never heard of the Land Use Regulation Commission (LURC) that operates primarily as a state-level planning board for 10 million acres of unorganized forested townships in northern Maine. But residents of islands such as Monhegan, Matinicus, Criehaven and Eagle, where LURC also acts as their island planning board, know LURC well;
The Longview – Does anyone remember Nero?
The Maine coast is burning. Given the long wet summer, this may seem surprising, but we’re dealing with a peat fire, now burning mostly underground, although it will shortly break out in the open. When it does in the coming months we will all see if the resulting flames can be contained and what gets
What We Have Learned about LNG
With the Passamaquoddy Tribe’s recent vote to proceed with submitting an application for a liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminal on tribal lands at Pleasant Point near Eastport, the topic of whether a new industrial energy facility is appropriate for the Maine coast is back in the headlines. When the Island Institute’s Board of Trustees voted
The Long View – Will Maine Island Communities survive in the long run?
During the Island Institute’s recent 20th anniversary celebration, we opened a new 20-year retrospective exhibit that I hope many of you will come to our Main Street headquarters to see. At the same time the Trustees of the Island Institute also unveiled a major capital campaign, “Sustaining A Way of Life,” to meet a $25
The Long View: Sea Change
Twenty years gives one the opportunity for reflection, so here I go. More than anything else that the Island Institute has accomplished is something that hardly fits in a single, neat, bulleted statement, but is as real as it is intangible. Twenty years ago – or even ten – when we headed off to places
Thinking Like an Archipelago
I recently returned from an international islands conference at Rutgers University that I attended with some skepticism. Eric Hopkins, North Haven’s great painter and glass sculptor, and I came from Maine. The conference aimed to bring together a small handful of writers, artists and academic historians and anthropologists from disparate parts of the planet’s islands
The Long View – Follow the Money
After two years of study, 15 public hearings and months of deliberations, the U.S. Oceans Commission has released its long awaited and much anticipated report on the state of the nation’s oceans. If you are a little confused in believing that this important event had already occurred, you are forgiven. Almost a year ago amid
The Long View: Triumph of the Commons
Two new books about Maine lobsters about to be released by major New York publishers (and reviewed elsewhere in this issue), remind us of a number of important things about ourselves. First, the Maine lobster is a national icon – right up there with L.L. Bean – and unfortunately way ahead of the Maine potato.