On a warm Saturday night you might hear some wild and crazy music down on the Matinicus Steamboat Wharf. There’s a crowd there, singing and dancing, and everybody knows each other. And they all know Nat Hussey, who has adapted to this remote Penobscot Bay island after a dozen years as a conventional lawyer on
Hurricane of Independence: The Untold Story of the Deadly Storm at the Deciding Moment of the American Revolution
Sourcebooks, Inc. 2008 299 pages, $22.95 The forgotten hurricane As another hurricane season draws to a close, Tony Williams has provided us with a look at one of the deadliest storms ever to hit the North American coast. Because it took place in 1775 at the beginning of the American Revolution, he calls it The
A busy start for children at Matinicus Island School
Five weeks into the school year, Matinicus Island School teacher Heather Wells was almost wishing things would get a little more…humdrum. “Well, not really,” she smiles, “but we haven’t had a single full week of regular school yet.” To date, her six-student group has attended the Inter-Island Event on Islesford in September. They learned about
Venturing: The skipper’s log
A lifelong interest in boats and going places on board them has brought me into contact with lots of writing on the subject. Invariably, the authors of these accounts (most are about voyages in small vessels to faraway places) reflect at some point on their relationship with the larger world, or at least how their
Peaks Island group seeks tower to test wind power
A crisp October wind rustled the yellow tinged trees of Trott-Littlejohn Park in the heart of Peaks Island in Casco Bay. A flurry of leaves drifted down onto a grassy meadow where the Peaks Wind Group, a subgroup of Peaks Environmental Action Team (PEAT), and many island residents hope a wind anemometer will be spinning
Parallel 44: Tidal power takes two steps forward
When it comes to renewable energy production in this part of the world, wind has been stealing the show. The governor of Maine and the premiers of New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island are big boosters and wind farms have been erected from Mars Hill to PEI’s eastern cape using off-the-shelf technology. PEI plans to
Teachers settle on Cliff Island after Pacific journey
At the close of each school year on the islands, people come to expect want ads seeking new teachers. High staff turnover is a fact of life in K-12 public education, but more so on the islands. And that turnover has a higher impact than on the mainland, because in some island schools, one teacher
Transportation bond on November 3 ballot helps the coast and islands
For the upcoming election, there are several major ballot questions receiving most of the media coverage. These questions are important. We want to make sure, however, that several projects that are crucial to the state’s coast and islands are not overlooked The projects are all contained in Question 6, a $71.25 million transportation bond issue.
Over 120 attend Island Institute’s teacher’s conference
The very first Island Teachers Conference took place on North Haven in 1985. Ten attendees from that very first conference were back for this year’s event. This year’s Island Teacher Conference was extremely well attended with over 120 island teachers, administrators, educational technicians and school board members. It was held on October 8 and 9
A Maine idea that could help the nation
As Maine’s working waterfront came under increasing pressure of residential development, advocates for water-dependent industries advanced an idea. The concept was simple: use state bond money, combined with private funds, to permanently preserve waterfront land used for commercial fishing. Dozens of groups persuaded voters to approve this new concept by a margin of 66 to