The Working Waterfront submitted four questions on issues we felt were of importance to residents of Maine’s coast and islands to the three gubernatorial candidates. We asked that answers be kept to 300 words or fewer. What follows are their answers. 1: Residents of Maine’s islands face dauntingly high electricity and home heating costs. What
A life history: Robert Chute’s ‘Excuse for Being Here’
BOOK REVIEW First, an anecdote. Bear with me, there is a point to this about the book at hand. A reliable source close to my inner circles related to me the following. Recently, upon a time in a galaxy not far away, some high school students met with a school administrator who wanted to tell
Bristol says no to power lines, caffeine grows business
The few weeks before Election Day are ripe with expectation and prediction. The leaves fall and cover the sidewalks, while political signs compete in color and volume. It’s somehow appropriate, too, that elections coincide with the World Series. One group will celebrate with champagne, the other will mope, in both. Those who care about the
Energy Vikings and a Maine island delegation
I traveled to Samsø Island in Denmark to witness the Fund for Maine’s Islands partnership between the Island Institute and College of the Atlantic take flight. But so much more happened, as I became part of a U.S. delegation discussing issues facing island communities around the world. The delegation included COA students and faculty, Island
Microplastics in Maine waters: are they in our food?
Have you washed a fleece jacket this week? Does your face wash or body wash have skin-smoothing microbeads? If you’ve answered “yes,” you might want to consider where those fleece fibers and microbeads end up. Likely you already know marine debris is an issue in our oceans. You’ve heard of the “Great Pacific Garbage Patch,”
Business as usual is no day at the beach
Hers was a family owned business. But not LL Bean, Cianbro or Renys. No, the woman who sat beside me during lunch at July’s Sustain ME conference on Chebeague Island helps run her family’s small earthworks business. She schedules the work, does the billing, timesheets, payroll, workers comp, taxes. You know, all those little details
Natural history: ‘Take nobody’s word for it’
Deep Things Out of Darkness: A History of Natural History By John Anderson University of California Press, 2013. In the preface to this altogether remarkable book, John Anderson, the William H. Drury Professor of Ecology and Natural History at College of the Atlantic, relates how, as the sole undergraduate in a mammalogy course at Berkeley
Island life promotes raising ‘free range kids’
The news was full of it this summer—articles, blog posts and opinion pieces about the importance of kids playing outside, and then more articles showing the consequences that could occur when parents let their kids do just that. Mothers arrested for allowing kids to walk to the park by themselves, or letting their kids play
The year of the woman: a stern woman remembers
A few weeks ago, when I was about to unload the groceries from my car in Northeast Harbor, I got a call on my cell phone from my husband Bruce. “I’m on my way over to drop Paul [his sternman] in Northeast; are you anywhere near the dock? I’ll give you a ride back.” I
Big, scary food I have loved
You won’t catch me jumping out of an airplane, rappelling down a cliff, or sleeping overnight in a hammock strung over a chasm. I do, however, regularly indulge myself in what some people seem to consider the culinary equivalent of bungee jumping: cooking for a big crowd. Most perfectly competent home cooks have qualms about