The Working Waterfront submitted four questions on issues we felt were of importance to residents of Maine’s coast and islands to the three gubernatorial candidates. We asked that answers be kept to 300 words or fewer. What follows are their answers. 1: Residents of Maine’s islands face dauntingly high electricity and home heating costs. What
Microplastics in Maine waters: are they in our food?
Have you washed a fleece jacket this week? Does your face wash or body wash have skin-smoothing microbeads? If you’ve answered “yes,” you might want to consider where those fleece fibers and microbeads end up. Likely you already know marine debris is an issue in our oceans. You’ve heard of the “Great Pacific Garbage Patch,”
Energy Vikings and a Maine island delegation
I traveled to Samsø Island in Denmark to witness the Fund for Maine’s Islands partnership between the Island Institute and College of the Atlantic take flight. But so much more happened, as I became part of a U.S. delegation discussing issues facing island communities around the world. The delegation included COA students and faculty, Island
Bristol says no to power lines, caffeine grows business
The few weeks before Election Day are ripe with expectation and prediction. The leaves fall and cover the sidewalks, while political signs compete in color and volume. It’s somehow appropriate, too, that elections coincide with the World Series. One group will celebrate with champagne, the other will mope, in both. Those who care about the
A life history: Robert Chute’s ‘Excuse for Being Here’
BOOK REVIEW First, an anecdote. Bear with me, there is a point to this about the book at hand. A reliable source close to my inner circles related to me the following. Recently, upon a time in a galaxy not far away, some high school students met with a school administrator who wanted to tell
Vinalhaven’s Joey Reidy wakes from ‘nightmare’ and tells the tale
VINALHAVEN — In September 2011, Joey Reidy was like many other 18-year-olds around the country—he had just left home for the first time and was starting college, ready to take on the world. However, within his first week at Champlain College in Burlington, Vt., Reidy was struck by a car and suffered a severe brain
Natural history: ‘Take nobody’s word for it’
Deep Things Out of Darkness: A History of Natural History By John Anderson University of California Press, 2013. In the preface to this altogether remarkable book, John Anderson, the William H. Drury Professor of Ecology and Natural History at College of the Atlantic, relates how, as the sole undergraduate in a mammalogy course at Berkeley
Monhegan tourism survey reveals low worry about wind project
MONHEGAN PLANTATION — Visitors to Monhegan island are usually the ones asking the questions. Which way to the Monhegan House? Where is the nearest bathroom? Where can I get a cup of coffee? But this past summer, some 180 visitors were asked their views on the issue that has dominated island debate for the last
Business as usual is no day at the beach
Hers was a family owned business. But not LL Bean, Cianbro or Renys. No, the woman who sat beside me during lunch at July’s Sustain ME conference on Chebeague Island helps run her family’s small earthworks business. She schedules the work, does the billing, timesheets, payroll, workers comp, taxes. You know, all those little details
More affordable winter heat: an Eastport experiment
Some say you can judge a society by the condition of its prisons, but the condition of its living rooms might be a better yardstick for coastal Maine in the dead of winter. What is it like in there? Are people shivering, or raiding their bank accounts in order to stay warm? If so, something