Articles
No man an island, but islands had deep impact
I will step down officially on July 1 from 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
Welcome to my neighborhood
Part of the reason that Maine has the oldest population of any state in the nation is that people move here after making a good living in places that may not be as attractive, but where they can become successful enough to then want to experience the way life should be. At least for four
The promise of a rose garden, lost in battle
OK, it was a serious lapse in judgment, but he was desperate. It was Mother’s Day and he was unprepared. At first blush, some might regard it as admirable that men of a certain age do not connect Mother’s Day and their wives in the same thought. Wives are forever young and beautiful in their
Contemplating a cranium collection
OK, so it sounds weird, but I have to give up my skull collection to make room for my book collection as I downsize into a smaller office. They are my pretties, these skulls, which I started collecting after a friend who was in charge of the dermestid beetle room in the local natural history
Still crazy after all these years
In the winter of 1972, I moved to a small cabin in Washington County, after coming to Maine to help a friend winterize a summer cottage where he planned to live with his young family. But tightening up the cottage was like trying to heat a lobster trap, and he gave up (or his wife
Fiddlehead fever
In a former island life, I made the best trade of my short existence up to that time. I wanted a boat to take me to Maine islands and Outward Bound wanted someone to teach its students what they could forage on their character-building “solos.” We were both perennially short of cash, so we resorted
Why we tell stories
Consider this story: “For sale: baby shoes, never worn,” attributed to Ernest Hemingway, who allegedly won a $10 a bar bet with other writers, wagering that he could write a shorter story than they could. Humans are inveterate storytellers, and apparently always have been. Before we could write a story, we drew pictographs on a
A warning from a latter-day Jonah
John Gillis is known in our part of the world as a Gotts Islander, one of the year-round island communities that went extinct during the early part of the 20th century. But to many others in the rest of the world, Gillis is known for his tireless efforts to focus the academic community’s attention on
‘Eel of Fortune,’ coming to a stream near you
Only in Maine could this be happening: a handful of commercial fishermen and women have struck it rich overnight (quite literally) from catching a baby fish that looks like a kid’s transparent gummy worm, but which happens to be a gastronomic delicacy half way around the world to people these fishermen will never meet. This
Earth Day: When serendipity met the zeitgeist
Back when Sen. Gaylord Nelson of Wisconsin first proposed that April 22 be designated annually as “Earth Day,” the Cayahoga River that runs through Cleveland, Ohio had recently caught fire. The burning river quickly became the symbol credited with sparking the birth of the environmental movement in America. But why that river at that time