For those who have studied Malaga Island’s history and recently attended the first organized tour there in almost 100 years, it was impossible not to recall the ruthless events that unfolded after the last tour. Maine Coast Heritage Trust (MCHT) bought the island in December 2001 and sponsored the June 25 tour. The nonprofit land
Swan’s Islanders seek shopping alternatives after store fire
Swan’s Island residents lost their only general store after a fire ravaged both the store and the apartment above it on July 10. About 25 Swan’s Island firefighters responded but were unable to extinguish the fire before it destroyed the building. Firefighters from Southwest Harbor and Tremont also responded to the call. Selectman Dexter Lee
Codes to Art: Signal Flags inspire a Damariscotta artist
“I started using nautical signal flags as part of a bicentennial flag,” said Damariscotta artist Franciska Needham. “I wanted something to symbolize 1976, so I did the numerals 1976 in fabric signal flags embroidered in a satin stitch.” International Signal flags are codes for the alphabet and numbers. That bicentennial flag led Needham to make
Thinking Big
The trouble we’re having getting a bond issue on the ballot to support working waterfronts and farms should tell us it’s time to think differently about the future of Maine’s endangered coast. Not that the coast itself is going extinct — it’ll be there a century from now regardless of what we do or don’t
PUMPED! Islesboro’s muscle cars invigorate their owners
Peter Coombs is an Islesboro excavator who would prefer driving his 1968 Mustang Fastback on Sundays to hauling shale in his dump truck. The four-speed Fastback was originally from the South, brought north by a NAPA franchise owner in Wiscasset who was making a business of buying and selling Texas cars. Coombs’s Mustang is a
Painting Maine: The Borrowed Views of Connie Hayes
Borrowed View Press, Rockland, ME 2004 A Room of Her Own Connie Hayes paints scenes from the coast of Maine familiar to many of us; quilted-together backyards of fishing villages, working waterfronts with their spill of gear, weathered houses, islands positioned like sentinels in coves. A native of Maine, she has been painting here for
Coastal Character: On the Maine coast, working waterfronts set the tone
A working waterfront is like an iceberg: the visible part is much smaller than the subsurface mass that keeps it afloat. The parts above water that we see are the workings and machinations of coastal marine enterprises – fishing and related piers and wharves where the catch is bought, sold, shipped, processed or auctioned off;
Small turnout passes Vinalhaven’s budget
The Vinalhaven Annual Town Meeting was held the evening of Friday, June 24 at the Vinalhaven School. Roughly 65 residents attended the meeting, which is significantly lower than in years past. This may have been due to the lovely weather, or because two of the more contentious articles on the warrant had already been decided
Fellowship brightens Long Island’s wet spring
On any given Saturday afternoon this spring, if you had walked by the parsonage of the Evergreen United Methodist Church on Long Island, you might have heard talk and laughter. You might also have heard the clicking of knitting needles. And if you had ventured inside, you would have smelled coffee, and then been warmly
“Who has the skills?”
Vinalhaven teacher and curriculum coordinator Rob Warren addressed the island’s graduates this year at their school commencement, stressing the need to learn as much as possible about the wider world. “How do we get our young people to take ownership in the future of our community?” he asked. “How do we teach them that time