Articles
Lyme disease and the 100 percent solution
She steps out from behind a tall bayberry bush at the edge of the tawny field of summer. An involuntary shiver ripples over her flank. She twists her head looking back as a pair of fawns, dappled with white spots, follows tentatively in her footsteps. The dog on the porch is instantly alert, every muscle
Our grand old lady
The island house is like an old lady—proud, but a bit stooped and creaky if the truth be told. We make accommodations for her, even as she makes them for us. Literally. But when we invite guests to meet the old lady, we feel required to provide a great deal of detail about her various
When nature inspires crankiness
My wife likes bird feeders. Because she has also been a cat lover her whole life, I used to call them cat feeders. But now that the long sythe of time has thinned out our felines one by one and they lie preternaturally under special commemorative beach stones in the garden, the birds have lost
Outposts in the fight for the ecosystem
I have spent some very pleasant days during the past month as the guest of a number of island field research stations and am again overwhelmed by the number of dedicated eyes and inquiring minds monitoring the birds, beasts, fish and crustaceans which inhabit the waters and islands of the coast of Maine and the
The Lobsterville Rodeo
This is not their first rodeo, you think, as you listen to the procession of lobster boats leaving the harbor one after the other beginning when the sky is still a dull gray wash on the horizon at 4 a.m. Their signatures are a series of small wakes trailing aft in the slate-still water as
The tribal nature of island friendships
The big event this past weekend was the wedding of one of our sons’ long-time island friends. Two of our boys (actually they are young men now) flew in for this epic/epochal event. These days, 23-year-olds don’t get married that often, so it promised to be a special time. The lead-up was like watching the
Little Maine wind, big bad wind
Ben Polito grew up on an island—bridged to the mainland—but at the remote end of Georgetown Island beyond the reach of CMP’s utility poles for the first seven years of his life. “Electricity was this cool thing that I saw in kindergarten and the neighbors had,” he recalled. So he got interested in how electricity
No man an island, but islands imposed deep impact on this man
I will step down officially on July 1from my role at the Island Institute, but I won’t be going far—12 miles out to Lanes Island on Vinalhaven for starters. Ever since my first visit to a Maine island in 1975, islands have never been far from my mind and will not be far away in
After work, there is life and work
My father was a practical man, shaped by the pressures of the Great Depression and the sudden death of his father that forced my own father to go to work during the late night shift at the cement plant in Chattanooga, Tenn. to keep him, his mother and sister from penury. Forty-five years later when
The IT guy makes a ‘fair’ point about Snowden and J. Edgar
Not the “‘It’ Girl,” as silent film star Clara Bow was known, but the IT Guy. That’s who I needed this past weekend now that the last of the digitally literate children has moved out of the house and for the first time in more than a decade a pair of ignorant adults has to