After a year of providing fresh fish and shrimp to Maine area residents through Community Supported Fisheries (CSFs), the Midcoast Fishermen’s Cooperative and the Island Institute are now providing fresh seafood-shrimp in the winter and groundfish in the summer and fall-to dozens of needy residents of Rockland. The new program, called Share to Spare, began
New online resource available about Maine coastal access
Throughout the Maine coast, conflicts over access to and from the water are becoming more common, according to a press release. Now, people on the coast have a new resource to help them understand the legal background and tools available to address access concerns. Maine Sea Grant, in partnership with University of Maine Cooperative Extension,
Maine artist’s Obama dolls put her in the spotlight
Eastport artist, songwriter and musician Shana Barry was almost born on an island, Peaks Island to be exact. Then she was almost born on the Portland fireboat. But, she says, even though it was a windy March day in 1975 the fireboat “made it to Maine Med in Portland just in time.” Barry may not
Column: Venturing
It’s appropriate that this column appears only in Working Waterfront’s web edition; it’s about spending your and my tax dollars to beef up the nation’s economy by improving its infrastructure, and these days, a substantial amount of the beefing-up should be occurring in cyberspace-where the web edition of this newspaper resides. As some know, I’ve
For an island power company, dealing with outages is a community effort
Electricity customers on Matinicus Island say, “We’re not off the grid, we are the grid.” The ratepayers, and the diesel generators, on Matinicus Island, are among the few Mainers who are not part of the New England power grid system by which most electricity users and generators are interconnected. The Matinicus power company (its legal
Made in Maine?
After reading about the lobster industry crisis in the November issue of Working Waterfront, I decided to make a greater effort to purchase lobster more often. However, living in Maryland in the winter (and visiting Augusta and Vinalhaven other seasons), I soon realized that the lobsters that are available in our Maryland area are of
Suspicions rise with lobster price
No sooner had the public become used to eating lobster because of the extraordinarily low price this past fall than it lost that gustatory pleasure when the price snapped up like a rubber band. In mid-January the price of lobster in the US and Canada doubled-went up $3- in 10 days. One day in that
Snooty review
When I read a snooty book review it usually catches my interest. Such reviews have often led me to a good book. I found a review of Carolyn Chute’s School on Heart’s Content Road in the December 2008-January 2009 issue of Working Waterfront by Tina Cohen. The headline. “A passionate, but bloated critique of the
Marvelous issue!
What a marvelous issue! I mean the one for December 2008-January 2009. So full of human interest. So readable. I always enjoy reading Working Waterfront-now more than ever. I was especially moved by Eva Murray’s elegy for Christopher Whitaker, the young Matinicus lobsterman lost at sea (“It could have been any of us: The search
Essay
Justice is mine A few weeks ago the Chief Justice of the United States administered the Oath of Office as he recited it for President Barak Obama. Perhaps he was recalling his visit to Vinalhaven last summer and comparing this lofty and prestigious Washington moment with that less auspicious occasion on the island. The Chief