Articles
Heart Stones
Harry N. Abrams, 2007 When a Heart Like a Stone is a Good Thing Just in time for all the sweethearts you want to wish a Happy Valentine’s Day, Heart Stones is hot off the press. Here, her images — created with a flatbed scanner and computer — portray a fascinating array of classically, and
Two cookbooks
Stonewall Kitchen Favorites: Delicious Recipes to Share With Family and Friends Every Day Clarkson Potter, 2006 The Atlas of American Artisan Cheese By Jeffrey P. Roberts Chelsea Green Publishing Company, 2007 The Truth About Good Food We New Englanders bump up against a Puritan cultural legacy: it should not feel good to feel good. And
B-20 and Be Green: Will biodiesel be the fuel of the future for Vinalhaven?
Listening to a conversation at a Vinalhaven party recently, I heard Ross Trainor describing, with gusto, how sometimes he smells just like clam baskets. I thought this was understandable because he lives near the Harbor Gawker restaurant with its always-busy fryolator. But the way he was talking about it also conveyed some sense of pride,
An Unexpected Forest
Camden, Maine: Down East Books, 2007. A fairy tale where dreams come true This novel, by Peaks Island resident Eleanor Morse, reads as a kind of fairy tale for adults, catching four people in the crux of personal crises. Horace Woodruff, a middle-aged but not yet ready to retire lawyer in Connecticut, has been fired
A generalization can get you into trouble
On Aug. 12 Vinalhaven made the news in an article in the New York Times titled, “When Conflict Washes Up On A Quiet Maine Island.” Conflict has surfaced here before, of course, as it does in any community. Maybe because of its small island setting, familiarity can breed both contempt and comfort. But to the
Seashells
Photographs by Josie Iselin & text by Sandy Carlson New York: Abrams, 2007. The Benificence of Beaches Calling to my nieces to go for a walk when they visit me on Vinalhaven, I ask, “Wanna go shopping?” They’ve learned that for me, island-bound, “shopping” means beachcombing. We give ourselves a list of what we’d like
The Trouble With Lobsters
When lobstermen began receiving crustacean demands in writing last spring, they thought of it as a joke. In an effort not to take any of it seriously, they claimed to be unable to read the handwriting. Lobsters were impugned as bad spellers, practically illiterate. All they were asking for was more respect. Well, that and
Sippewisset: Or, Life on a Salt Marsh
Chelsea Green, 2006 Home on the Marsh Tim Traver, a science writer, attempts the near-impossible with this first book. Consider the word “dumbstruck” and what it means: something hits us so hard that we are unable to find adequate words to describe it. Does this lead to an eventual effusion in an attempt at articulation?
When Collaborative Efforts Come Together
When the outside door of the Victorian-era Engine House on Main Street in Vinalhaven is open, it is an invitation to enter. You climb a steep and narrow wooden staircase, creaking underfoot, to the second floor, where you come into a high-ceiling workroom filled with light. The windows all around it invite perusing the world
Oh Canada!
A trip to Nova Scotia by coastal New Englanders may seem unnecessary; simply more of what we’re already used to here, only further north and east. That Atlantic province of Canada does have many interesting connections with us Yankees. But, as they say, vive la difference! Two of us decided to venture from the coast