Articles
One Man’s Year: Dana Rice Reflects on the New England Council
“It’s the damnedest mess I ever got into,” declared Dana Rice, 57, of Birch Harbor, referring to his first year on the New England Fisheries Management Council [NEFMC]. The Gouldsboro harbormaster, selectman and lobster buyer had spent the morning on the dock in zero-degree (more like minus 30 counting the wind chill) weather, unloading bait
Island: The Complete Stories
The island of the title refers to Cape Breton, which is separated from the rest of Nova Scotia by the Strait of Canso. The author, born and raised there, wrote his 16 poignant stories of the Scots and Irish, mostly fishermen and coal miners, between 1968 and 1999. Each story is written with love and
No Great Mischief
Norton: New York, 1999 ISBN 0-393-04970-1 $23.95 In No Great Mischief, Canadian short story writer Alistair MacLeod has written a great, sprawling novel of enduring connections and family loyalty. The 20th-century MacDonalds, still known in Cape Breton as clann Chalum Ruaidh, in Gaelic, (pronounced Kwown calum rooah), “the children (or the family) of the red
Slow Monkeys and other stories
ISBN 0-88748-379-8 Carnegie Mellon University Press, 2002 $15.95 In 1991, Jim Nichols took a fiction-writing course through the Maine Writers and Publishers Alliance after having had a story published in Esquire magazine. No one in that class imagined it would take him 11 more years to get a book published. We all knew he’d be
Coin of the Realm: How the VICTORY CHIMES Finally Made it Onto Maine’s Quarter
If you were from, say, the Midwest or Colorado or some other state or country and had never seen the Maine coast, you might look at the Maine quarter and say, “Oh, that’s nice.” But if you either live here, have seen the Pemaquid lighthouse, a towering pine or spruce, or were on the state’s
Facts, more facts: Regional history conference explores just about everything
The Penobscot Bay Regional History Conference, held on Friday, Oct. 10 in Searsport, offered something for everyone who attended. Confer-ence organizer John Arrison, the Museum’s librarian and archivist, brought together professional historians, historical society and museum personnel and volunteer researchers and genealogists in a mix of subjects that gave conference attendees a sense of life
Equal Protection Joint research aims to protect the interests of whales, fishermen
“The ocean bottom isn’t like looking down a paved road,” said lobsterman Philip Bramhall, of Friendship. “It’s like looking at a topographical map.” Bramhall went on to explain that unlike any other state on the Eastern seaboard the bottom off Maine’s 3,500-mile coastline is made up of types that range from sand, mud and gravel
Whose waterfront? Gouldsboro struggles with public access
Some Gouldsboro Point residents, tired of being subjected to various annoyances caused by out-of-town mussel draggers, submitted a petition to the Gouldsboro selectmen on July 3, demanding the non-resident fishermen “be told to cease and desist of all commercial fishing and leave the landing, the moorings and the bay to the residence [sic] of Gouldsboro
Lobster “shed” comes late, and everyone has a different explanation
“The lobsters are there,” declared a veteran downeast co-op manager. Divers had reported the obstinate creatures were just milling around on the ocean floor, as if they were confused. “The fishermen are the same way,” he said. “Everybody’s almost in slow motion. They’re just kind of dragging along. They hate to be doing anything. They
In The Wake of Madness: The Murderous Voyage of the Whaleship Sharon
Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill $24.95 In a way, I wish I hadn’t read this account of murder and mutiny on a whaleship. Although it’s wonderfully researched – and by this I mean no pertinent document, no matter how tangential, was left unread and recorded – the descriptions of the sadistic and indeed murderous treatment