Long Island voters gathered at the island’s newly repainted community center on May 12 for their 15th annual town meeting. Sustained by coffee, donuts and hot dogs provided by the Recreation Department, voters decided 52 warrant articles, elected a new selectman and a school board member, and heard presentations from the Cumberland County Sheriff’s department,
Cranberry Report: Make Your Own Job
After a nasty northeaster, spring returned to the Cranberry Isles in the last week of April. Neighbors came together under beautiful skies to perform community service in observation of Earth Day. On Islesford, Island Institute fellow Eric Dyer organized a beach cleanup, followed by a community supper and a showing of the movie, “An Inconvenient
Basin Preserve protects habitat and public access
Bob Cummings, one of the founders of Phippsburg’s Land Trust, observes that Phippsburg recently acquired a status that is rare, possibly unique among Maine’s coastal towns. It can now boast of having 27 percent of the town’s property in protected status: about 900 acres at Popham Beach State Park, 300 to 400 acres owned by
A History of Island Problem-Solving
The Island Institute’s trustees voted in March not to take sides in Peaks Island’s independence effort, but Institute president Philip Conkling spoke at the public hearing, emphasizing all island communities’ ability to solve daunting challenges. Below is a portion of Conkling’s testimony: …We do not pretend to be experts on the complex financial and tax
Vinalhaven teen attends D.C. protest
In contrast to the Vietnam war era, political activism has not been particularly popular among teenagers during the Iraq war. However, Vinalhaven tenth-grader Morgan Bouton doesn’t spend a lot of time thinking about what is popular. The 16-year-old spent St. Patrick’s Day with approximately 50,000 other demonstrators at the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., protesting the
Peaks secession movement encounters choppy water at the legislature
Although a two-year effort by Peaks Island to secede from Portland looked likely to be defeated in Augusta, the committee in charge of the secession bill did prod Portland to address some of the issues raised in the secession debate. In mid-May, the Joint Standing Committee on State and Local Government voted 7 to 5
Parallel 44: Gulf of Maine’s popular ocean observing system could be cut back
For the past six years, a network of high-tech buoys and radar stations has been providing a rich stream of data about conditions in the Gulf of Maine to fishermen, mariners, scientists and search and rescue personnel. But the Gulf of Maine Ocean Observing System (GoMoos) — and others like it across the country —
Rusty’s Return
To the editor: How delightful to read Rusty Warren’s article “In the Beginning” in the latest edition of the Working Waterfront. I have missed her regular articles from the `Fisherman’s Wife.’ Thank you for publishing her again and I hope to see more, especially the continuation of this story. She is a grand story teller!
Sticking Together
To the editor: …The fact that one needs a boat to come and go from islands does, in some significant ways, make islands unique. But it does not follow that in all matters islands are unique. School consolidation is one of the latter. Issues. Your characterization (WWF May 07) that the governor’s “plan” is “ambitious”
“Nor’easter” vs. “No’theaster”
To the editor: I find the discussion of northeaster versus nor’easter (WWF May 2007) bordering on the fatuous. To charge those who use the contraction as ignorant of compass points and thus landlubbers is sea going snobbery. The contraction has nothing to do with directions to a helmsman. “Put her on north by east a