oil painting of ocean cliff

Folio: David Vickery

Folio: David Vickery

The Poetry of Place

The painter David Vickery explores space: outdoor, indoor, around, above, across, beyond. He is equally expert at representing the parlor and the panorama, the intimate and the out there.

Vickery also loves light. There is a remarkable array on display here, from the glow of candles during a power outage to the luminosity of the night sky.

Vickery made his first trip to Monhegan in 1987 and in 1993 was awarded its Carina House artist residency. He has returned on numerous occasions, drawn to favorite motifs like Gull Rock, but also bent on exploring new subject matter. A pair of lawn mowers caught his attention during a 2011 stay. Turning away from the Rockwell Kent views of the island, the painter captured the handsome machines parked in a weedy lot on Monhegan.

With its curling piece of yellow paper, Vickery’s  “Message Board” recalls the trompe-l’oeil arrangements of such 19th-century painters as William Michael Harnett. Where Harnett and company focused on illusion, Vickery is more interested in the poetry of place, the why and where of this carefully realized piece of Maine. 

The painter’s home corner of Maine—the Cushing peninsula in the Midcoast where he has lived since 1991—seems to nourish realism. Alan Magee, Lois Dodd, and Nancy Wissemann-Widrig offer a rich variety of representational imagery, to which Vickery contributes his own special four-season vision.

In writing about his work, Vickery notes his tendency to integrate the natural world with the man-made. Going a step further in this self-assessment, the painter points to a need “to reconcile the inner, psychological world with the outer world of everyday experience and optical fact.”

Such reconciliation is, paradoxically perhaps, often the source of the compelling intrigue found in Vickery’s paintings: the empty wharf bathed in artificial light, the lobster boat anchored in the lee of a dark island. In melding the within and the without, the artist leads us to a fresh perspective on the world we look at every day.

—Carl Little

oil painting of church between buildings

Recessional
2011
oil on panel
23″ x 11 1/2″

David Vickery lives and paints in Cushing, Maine, and is represented by Dowling Walsh Gallery in Rockland.

Excerpts from The Poetry of Place were written for the 2012 exhibition catalog for David Vickery’s solo show at Courthouse Gallery Fine Art, Ellsworth, Maine.


Aquaculture’s Next Wave

Aquaculture’s Next Wave

Mussels, oysters, and kelp emerging along Maine’s southern coast.

By Nancy Griffin

Casco Bay, dotted with hundreds of islands and stretching over 25 miles from Cape Elizabeth to Cape Small, is seeing an upswing in what could prove to be a new economic engine for the area—shellfish and seaweed farming.

“It’s a really interesting area for aquaculture in the state,” said Sarah Redmond, marine extension associate with Maine Sea Grant at the Center for Cooperative Aquaculture Research in Franklin.

“There’s a wide diversity of companies growing different things, and it’s next to the largest city in Maine. It’s the busiest area in water-related business—shipping, recreational boating, fishing, ferries, tankers—and with year-round island communities,” she said.

“Casco Bay, especially northern Casco Bay, has lots of diversity in temperature and salinity and a lot of variety in habitat, and these are the kind of locations people have been occupying in recent years,” Redmond added.

Location is all-important for Maine marine farmers, said Redmond, because the largest expense can be transportation of products to market.

That’s one of several reasons Peter Stocks, owner of Calendar Island Mussel Company, is growing mussels off Chebeague Island in Casco Bay. “We can harvest from a clean bay, drive product to Boston in a few hours, New York in twelve hours, and to Chicago in twenty-four hours.”

Portland is an accommodating home port, he said, with the fish exchange, cold storage, and trucks to Boston every day—all key amenities. “We can buy tons of ice, and if we need a mechanic or vessel support services, it’s there,” he said. “That doesn’t exist in other parts of the state,” he added.

Because of the opportunity aquaculture provides for diversifying and stabilizing income for coastal residents, whether they’ve been involved in marine businesses or not, the Island Institute, publisher of Island Journal, has launched an aquaculture business development initiative. The project provides business support and marine resources technical assistance to 23 participants, 16 of whom are in the process of submitting lease applications to the Department of Marine Resources (DMR) or have already gotten approval to start farms. The goal is to support those working toward establishing kelp, mussel, or oyster aquaculture businesses within the next two years.

Building Bigger Mussels

Maine mussel growers are hoping to put a serious dent in the market share of Prince Edward Island growers, who currently dominate. “They produce thirty-five million to forty million pounds a year. We see their trucks crossing Maine all the time,” said Stocks, who also has a farm in Blue Hill.

But Maine mussels are prized for size.

“We command a twenty- to twenty-five-percent price premium over PEI mussels because of quality,” said Stocks. “And because we’re two to three days closer to the major markets, ours are fresher, and they’re between fifty to one hundred percent bigger.”

Calendar Island Mussels sells primarily out of state, though two Portland restaurants feature the product. Stocks plans to launch retail sales via the Internet.

crew moving mussels from raft to barge

“We can harvest from a clean bay, drive product to Boston in a few hours, New York in 12 hours…”
— Peter Stocks

Part of the appeal of being in the mussel aquaculture business is that once they begin growing, there is little for the owner to do. But rope-grown mussels constitute a pricier start-up business than, for example, oysters, explained Dana Morse, marine extension agent with Maine Sea Grant, based at the Darling Marine Center in Walpole.

“The equipment and capital involved are significant,” said Morse. “You might sell fifty thousand oysters, compared to the hundreds of thousands of mussels you would need to sell [to cover costs].”

While mussels don’t command as high a price as oysters, they do take up less space than oysters, and can be harvested nearly year-round.

“There’s some seasonality,” said Stocks. “We have to balance the needs of the farm-to-table movement with that of the natural cycles of the product, which is live, not frozen.” Generally, he harvests from August to June. Red tide, a naturally occurring ocean algae bloom that comes in the warm months, often shuts down harvest in late June and for most of July.

The summer months are when maintenance is done on the water-based equipment, and when “seed” is collected.

“We don’t purchase seed,” Stocks explained. “We collect it on ropes,” known in the business as “fuzzy ropes,” in areas where mussel beds are close to shore. “Shellfish farms create a lot of larvae because they naturally exist in the ecosystem. One female mussel can produce one thousand to one million larvae.”

Matt Moretti, 31, formed Wild Ocean Aquaculture to purchase Bangs Island Mussels with his father in 2010. He developed an interest in marine farming in graduate school for marine biology, “but I didn’t think I’d do it,” he said. When he decided to try it, he began his career working on an oyster farm in the Damariscotta River.

“Finfish you have to feed; mussels are filter feeders, [meaning] they remove algae and other inorganic nutrients from the water,” said Moretti, “so they improve water quality.” He expects to harvest 200,000 mussels a year on his farm, which covers 3.6 acres (though only about 10 percent of the surface area is used). The state issues leases for aquaculture sites after holding public hearings.

The mussels are grown on ropes that hang 35 feet into the water from rafts, with around 400 lines per raft. Moretti does most of the work on a 40-foot barge, using net reels as lift lines. He lives on his boat—an old trawler—and brings the mussels back to a Portland wharf for processing. “I’m right here, all the time.”

But Moretti’s not sticking strictly to mussels. He’s trying “integrated, multi-trophic aquaculture,” defined as providing the by-products of one aquatic species as inputs—fertilizers, food—for another. In other words, “We’re growing two species on the same site, and they benefit one another.”

His second product is kelp, a kind of seaweed. “Both extract nutrients from the water. Both help improve water quality. We’re able to produce a large amount of biomass with a small footprint,” he explained.

Oysters on the Full Shell

Bob Earnest and David Whiston started Chebeague Island Oyster Company in 2013.

“Our original goal was centered on creating jobs, local and sustainable,” Earnest recalled. “Our second goal is to make sure our activities, site selection and all, didn’t interfere with lobstering.” Both are board members of the Chebeague Island Community Association, and care about the town.

The first year, these “two old guys from away,” as Earnest describes them, bought 50,000 spat (baby oysters). “The goal was to get the farm started, get young people interested,” he said. The second year, they ordered another 50,000 spat, built up their supply of cages, built an upweller (a pump device that moves water upward to improve circulation), and acquired a couple of old boats.

hand holding oyster

A Basket Island oyster

“Year three, we ordered 250,000 spat,” said Earnest. “We wanted to start out slow and learn. We intend to buy 500,000 next year, and level off there. In Maine, it’s three to five years from spat to harvest.” A young lobsterman has joined the business, and Earnest worries that it’s hard on him because he works for “the other.” Lobstering is the island’s biggest employer, and “we made sure to stay out of their way.”

Last summer, they offered limited sales on the island to friends and family. When production increases, they still want to be sure the island is supplied first, before the other markets they hope to set up.

Mark Green, a Peaks Island resident, operates Peaks Island Shellfish and Basket Island Oyster Company. He’s been raising oysters for three years and is nearing the harvest. “It’s an absolute minimum of two years to sell an oyster. It’s a long time to invest money and not get a return,” he noted.

Green estimates the company has close to a million one-inch oysters, and in a year, after a good growing season, “We will have a lot of oysters.”

He jokes that “You’re not really an oyster farmer until you kill your first million oysters.” When he has a steady supply, he plans to sell in Boston. Now he sells to Portland restaurants through a dealer. His oysters grow in suspended cages just off the seafloor, and while tiny, are also in bags.

“Maine is really well-positioned, arguably the best in the country,” said Green, who has a PhD in oceanography and is still a professor at Saint Joseph’s College in Standish. “We can produce a lot, we have cold water, salt water, and the water is full of food.”

His advice for those who want to farm shellfish: Have realistic expectations, and take longer than you anticipate.

Jon Rogers fishes for lobster out of Bailey’s Island, but also operates Dogs Head Oysters, farming on the northern tip of Orrs Island, as of July 2015. “I signed up for a ten-week course at the Darling Marine Center. After the third class I went home and filled out an application for a four-hundred-square-foot lease,” he said.

“I took a chance. Before I got the lease, I ordered seed from an outfit in Bremen. In early July, the seed was ready and I had approval for the leases,” Rogers said. “If it works out, I’ll be done lobstering.”

Kelp on the Way

John Lewis has worked at DMR for 18 years, and in 2015 was made head of its new aquaculture division. When Paul Dobbins told Lewis in 2009 that he planned to farm seaweed, “I said publicly that he would fail,” Lewis recalled. “Now I say publicly that I was one hundred percent wrong.”

Dobbins started Ocean Approved Seaweed because he saw an opportunity in a burgeoning industry with high demand. He grows four kinds of seaweed: sugar kelp, horsetail, winged kelp, and “skinny sugar kelp,” which “grows like a weed,” Dobbins quipped. Growing seaweed is not the biggest challenge. It’s a relatively low-tech, low-cost kind of aquaculture with a quick grow-out period. The bigger trick is creating quality products with market value.

Paul Dobbins of Ocean Approved holds up a strand of sugar kelp.

“We develop products. Most aquaculturists grow and then market. First we developed products and created markets—then we grew.”

The company received grants from the US Department of Commerce and the Maine Technology Institute to bring seaweed to a commercial scale. Dobbins chose to open-source all the resources employed in developing the farm—the methods and the technical information.

“It’s all on our web page under ‘sustainability,’ ” said Dobbins. “For anyone who wants to start farming, it reads like a cookbook.” The company seeds long lines that sit seven feet below the surface, monitor weekly over the winter, and make sure there are no crossed lines.

The products are fresh-frozen, and now include a seaweed salad made with horsetail kelp; a kelp slaw; and kelp cubes, which are pureed frozen kelp, often used in smoothies. The markets are primarily school dining rooms, the retail dining facilities in hospitals, and restaurants from Portland to California.

Dobbins points out that 95 percent of US seafood is imported, and more than half of it is farmed. The United States was slow to enter the industry: “We were the twenty-ninth country to farm seaweed, and the third in North America.”

Worldwide, the seaweed industry was valued at around $6 billion in 2014, according to World Aquaculture, and most of the production goes to food products. Seaweed farming increased 50 percent around the world during the previous decade, even as wild harvest declined and demand outstripped supply.

Among the benefits of seaweed, said Lewis, are that “it’s a winter crop, needs no fertilizer, doesn’t conflict with navigation, sailing, or lobstering, or have an adverse visual impact.”

The region is fertile for growing seaweed because of the nutrients, sunlight, “and the great current through our tides,” Dobbins said. As for markets, “There’s room for everybody, and more. We look at other seaweed companies as colleagues. The true competition is Asian imports. Ours comes from clear, cold water and theirs comes from the bays of Asian cities. Ours test free of heavy metals. I see no public studies on Asian seaweed, but a Korean news source said 74 percent of their harvest contained contaminants from Fukushima.”

Moretti uses Ocean Approved’s seaweed-growing method alongside his mussel farm.

“The two species on the same site have an effect on each other, and it’s beneficial. We are still developing the kelp side of the business. We’re selling directly to restaurants now, but we will ramp up and do a lot more this year.”

The downside of seaweed farming? “Processing is problematic. Drying in volume is a difficult operation. Space and processing space are limited right now,” said Lewis.

Opposition

Strong opposition to shellfish and seaweed farms early on has largely diminished, observers say. While some lobster harvesters aren’t thrilled about the farms, others, like Rogers of Bailey’s Island, have gotten into it themselves.

Jeff Putnam, 37, runs his 45-foot vessel out of his home port on Chebeague. He’s one of the island’s 31 licensed lobstermen, and began lobstering right out of high school.

“I think the guys who have done the best job are those who reached out to the lobstermen prior to applying,” he said of those getting into aquaculture. “That kind of preplanning with local harvesters will work best. In the past, we’ve been hit with surprises. We’d just get an announcement of a formal public hearing.”

Putnam is considering getting into aquaculture, and is taking part in the Island Institute’s business initiative.

“The previous generation of fishermen could work in several fisheries. In my generation, that’s not so possible,” he said. “Being able to diversify will be important in order to make a living and continue to live on the coast of Maine.”

The lease process takes at least two years, said Stocks. “That’s a challenge for any aquaculture farm in Maine.”

Lewis said DMR sends biologists to each site, maps the bottom, makes an underwater video, and then holds a public hearing. “We have ten decision criteria that must be met.”

Sebastian Belle, head of the Maine Aquaculture Association, said his group began training commercial fishermen to raise cod, but admits it turned out to be the wrong species.

The training continues but now is more broadly focused. The coursework is 16 to 20 weeks long, one day a week, Belle said. “We start with the biology of the animals they will farm, get into science and environmental monitoring and marketing, business management, gear . . . It’s comprehensive, but quick.”

The goal is to integrate fishing and farming. “If new farmers are also fishermen, it contributes to healthy communities and healthy working waterfronts,” said Morse of Maine Sea Grant.

Belle echoed that view.

“My beginning was commercial fishing, then aquaculture. It’s completely and utterly natural for preserving working waterfronts,” he said. “It’s a good way to diversify the economic base of fishing families.”

Some farmers are experimenting with other species, such as Arctic surf clams, razor clams, and sea scallops, said Morse. “I’m optimistic generally. It’s a good thing; it can go a long way,” he said.

Nancy Griffin, a former journalist and native of Newfoundland, is a freelance writer living in Thomaston. Besides being a news and political reporter, she has covered fisheries, the seafood industry, and coastal issues for decades. She is the author of three books: Making Whoopies, The Remarkable Stanley Brothers and Maine 101. Two more books will be published next year.


person walking trail along rocky coastline

Acadia's Offshore Island

Acadia’s Offshore Island

Isle au Haut includes 18 miles of national park trails.

By Abigail Curtis
Photos by Scott Sell

For generations, Kendra Chubbuck’s family has called the dark spruce forests, cobble beaches, and rocky cliffs of Isle au Haut home.

Chubbuck, who moved to the offshore island full-time about four years ago, used to live in a little red house on the shore that was built in the 1930s by her great-aunt and great-uncle. The property was rich in beautiful views, although without modern conveniences like running water and electricity. One upgrade was a simple outdoor shower she installed on her porch.

But those beautiful views also were appreciated by the tourists who hike and camp every summer on Acadia National Park’s relatively remote outpost on the 113-square-mile offshore island. They also parked their bikes in her driveway and hiked across her front yard, leading to the occasional surprise encounter.

“You have to look out the door to make sure no hikers are coming before you get out of the shower,” Chubbuck said, laughing.

That’s just how life goes on Isle au Haut, where fishermen and other islanders have to share their island—at least in the warmer months—with a few park rangers and about 7,000 park visitors every year. Acadia National Park is celebrating its centennial this year, as is the National Park Service. The portion of the park on Isle au Haut is often overshadowed by Acadia’s presence on Mount Desert Island, but not for its residents, who number around 40 in the winter and several hundred in the summer. Most have adjusted to having a national park in their backyard—but that hasn’t always been the case since its creation more than 70 years ago.

Acadia Centennial

Acadia National Park was first established as Sieur de Monts National Monument in July 1916. Three years later, its name was changed to Lafayette National Park, and it became the first national park east of the Mississippi.

Park supporters approached New England landscape architect and Isle au Haut landowner Ernest Bowditch in the last years of World War I about the possibility of expanding to the offshore island. At the time, Bowditch demurred. However, during World War II, his heirs did decide to donate a large tract of land on the southern part of the island to the National Park Service. The move came as an unwelcome surprise to islanders.

“It was a done deal before we knew anything about it,” one islander recalled years later. “We were so mad.”

Some of the year-round residents opposed the loss of the island’s tax base and the erosion of local control, anthropologist Douglas Deur wrote in a 2013 community history.

park ranger clearing trail

Isle au Haut park ranger
Nick Freedman clears a trail.

Park supporters approached Isle au Haut landowner Ernest Bowditch in the latter part of World War I about expanding to the offshore island.

 

Realities of island life are very different today than they were in the 1940s. The year-round population on Isle au Haut has been shrinking, and this year, only two children attended the one-room schoolhouse. Despite a generally sanguine relationship between the town and the park, some residents feel that sharing the island is not in the town’s best interests.

Matthew Skolnikoff, a landscaper who has lived on the island year-round for 25 years, said the national park owns nearly half of Isle au Haut and pays $8,000 annually to the town in lieu of taxes. Another 25 percent of the island is owned by other tax-exempt entities.

“I’m not saying the park should pay full taxes,” he said. “But when you have 75 percent of the island nontaxable, there’s a lot of pressure on the rest of us.”

Abigail Hiltz, a college student studying ocean and coastal resources in Galveston, Texas, also loves the island she grew up on and its national park. She is looking for a way to come back home for good, but on Isle au Haut, that’s not necessarily easy.

“You’re constantly thinking about the island,” she said of life away from it.

And she knows the 18 miles of park trails like the back of her hand, having roamed over them in every season. She aspires to be an Isle au Haut park ranger, but her bone-deep knowledge of the island may not be enough to qualify her for employment.

“It’s frustrating,” she said. “You send them your résumé, your transcripts. Then they send you a questionnaire, and the first question is, ‘Are you a veteran?’ I think that living out here and having knowledge of the trails and the history of the island ought to be enough.”

It’s the same story for Patricia Barter, who moved to Isle au Haut at the age of 18 after falling in love with an islander and his home.

“I loved him and I loved this place,” the 24-year-old said. “There’s nothing like it.”

Still, she needs a job. For two years in a row, she has applied to work for the park, but has run into the same obstacle as Hiltz.

“It’s the most frustrating thing ever,” Barter said.

Park Benefits

Although the park has not turned out to be a big job creator, there are undeniable economic benefits. One is that park visitors help to keep Isle au Haut Boat Services afloat year-round. The Stonington-based company that runs the ferry is a lifeline to the island.

“A big portion of our income comes from transporting hikers to Acadia National Park,” Captain Mike Moffatt said before piloting the mink back to the mainland. “It’s a big help. The hikers, they subsidize this ferry service. It’s a good thing.”

Park ranger Alison Richardson shares Moffatt’s assessment about park visitors. As an island resident who did manage to get into the park service, she has worked on Isle au Haut for nine summers, tending the trails and campsites and keeping an eye on the hikers. She is happy to share the island that she loves.

“I always just say, it’s so different than Mount Desert Island. It’s so much more remote and a little bit more wild, more primitive. It’s definitely more quiet. I think the pristine, wild part is what I like best,” she said.

The park’s 18 miles of trails allow visitors to explore rocky shorelines, upland forests, bogs, and a mile-long freshwater lake. Park officials urge visitors to bring adequate footwear, warm clothing, and rain gear, to be prepared for rough and sometimes wet trails.

There are five designated campsites at the park’s Duck Harbor Campground, available May 15 to October 15. Campers are limited to one stay per year. Visitors also can stay at the Keeper’s House Inn, a restored lighthouse station built in 1907 that is on the National Register of Historic Places.

people on a boat riding by a lighthouse

Isle au Haut’s mailboat, The
Mink
, full of summer visitors.

“It’s really rugged and just gorgeous,” Richardson said. “I think the people who have come out there have done their research. They’re great people. They know what they’re doing.”

Every year, the seasonal rangers struggle to find housing on the island, and don’t always succeed. One ranger last summer lived on the mainland and took the mailboat back and forth to work.

“That’s why it would be so great to have a local group of people,” Richardson said. “They live here. They know the island already,” she said of Hiltz and Barter. “The past two seasons, one guy was from Utah. The other guy was from Joshua Tree [California], in the desert. They have to spend time learning the trails, the boat schedule, everything. Islanders would know everything already—and we could just get to work.”

Some islanders think the presence of the park could do more for Isle au Haut’s economic development. Before the 1980s, when the park service built a pier at Duck Harbor on the island’s southern end, the only way to get to the park was by landing at the town dock and hiking for four miles. Islanders didn’t always appreciate those visitors.

“There were a lot of people wandering through town, not really knowing where to go,” Richardson said.

Now, with the new dock, most park visitors completely bypass the town. And Chubbuck, who owns Shore Shop Gifts near the town landing, wants that to change. She and others on the Isle au Haut comprehensive planning committee are trying to figure out a way to get visitors to spend an hour or so in town, so they can check out sights like the tiny post office and the church, and hopefully spend some money at the stores.

“We need some economic development in here,” she said. “We’ve got to survive somehow.”

Island living, and the unique challenges of Isle au Haut, are not for everyone. But for some year-rounders, the park is a big part of what makes their island special. Tucker Runge, a lobsterman, said that he uses the park all the time.

“I think I was the only one who hiked there last winter,” he said. “It’s nice to have it to yourself. It’s just a really good resource to have.”

Abigail Curtis lives in Belfast and writes for the Bangor Daily News, where she reports on such varied topics as Amish-made charcuterie, the renaissance of young farmers in Maine, and annual town meetings, Isle au Haut style. When not writing, she enjoys hiking, cooking, and working in the garden.


man with fuel tanks

Cornering the Island Fuel Market

Cornering the Island Fuel Market

Pete Pellerin took on fuel delivery for Casco Bay islands, and consumers won.

By Jennifer Van Allen
Photos by Gabe Souza

When Pete Pellerin moved to Chebeague Island in 2009, he expected some basic necessities to cost more. But he wasn’t prepared for the expense of propane to power his stove and heat his home. And even though he was juggling five jobs, he wasn’t sure how he would afford it.

“I was blown away that someone could charge $175 to fill a 100-pound tank,” he said. “And I couldn’t imagine how everyone else on the island was taking it on the chin.”

Pellerin’s quest for a more-affordable alternative led to the launch of Maine Island Energy, which now delivers propane to approximately 2,200 residents on the Casco Bay islands of Chebeague, Peaks, Long, Cliff, Bustins, Great Diamond, and Little Diamond.

Pellerin is betting that by serving multiple islands, he can achieve the economies of scale necessary to offer lower prices and more-convenient service than residents have historically been able to get. Already, he has cut the cost of refilling a 100-pound tank from $175 to $135.

What’s more, he has been able to leverage the logistics expertise he developed during a 10-year-career at UPS to get the fuel delivered faster, and reduce his own cost of doing business.

Pellerin stresses that he wants to fill islanders’ unmet needs—he does not want to step on the toes of those who are already in the market.

“I want to honor what people have been doing well for years,” he said. “And I want to work toward a good relationship that will help all islanders.”

Island Markup

Though propane prices in Maine were approaching five-year lows in late 2015, for islanders, fuel has long been more expensive, largely because of the cost and logistical hassle providers must shoulder, arranging barges and working around ferry schedules.

“Getting anything out there is going to be more of a challenge,” said Jamie Py, president of the Maine Energy Marketers Association.

As a result, “Often, only one company ends up serving a community, and the lack of competition contributes to higher costs,” said Suzanne MacDonald, community energy director for the Island Institute (publisher of Island Journal).

man sitting on a porch

Pete Pellerin at his home on Chebeague Island.

Given the relatively small and static size of island populations, suppliers have struggled to spread rising expenses over a limited base of revenues that have little prospect for growth.

“People have been doing it for years, one island at a time, and we all have the same problem,” said Coley Mulkern, co-owner of Peaks Island–based Lionel Plante Associates. “[Larger providers] divide these costs up by a million customers. We divide it over 350. The volume never gets above a certain amount. And you can’t just keep charging customers more.”

The Island Institute has deployed a raft of initiatives to make energy more affordable (see sidebar below). But in the meantime, Pellerin’s plan to aggregate demand has offered relief to many islanders.

“I’m thrilled to see what Pete is doing,” said MacDonald. “He has the ability to build a market that’s big enough to get economy of scale, yet still be community-oriented.”

Island Hospitality

That observation bears out during a visit with Pellerin. He seems to embody lean efficiency, his moves crisp and precise. He doesn’t walk. He darts. He speaks with intention and eye contact. It’s as if the expertise he developed in efficient logistics during his UPS career has saturated his mannerisms, and seeped into his sinewy frame.

In an instant, he can tick off the exact number of footsteps required to refill a propane tank, and the number of minutes to allot for each delivery so he can be off the island before the tide recedes.

And yet he is as warm as he is deliberate.

Whether helping an elderly customer fix a pilot light, assuring another customer about a stove delivery, or orchestrating subcontractors, it’s clear the calm confidence he brings to the work is as critical as the fuel he delivers.

Though relatively new to Chebeague, Pellerin exudes a fierce familial devotion to the island he adopted, and the community that has embraced him.

On a sunny day last September, as I tagged along on service calls, he proudly showed off the island sites where he has established roots—the point at Bennett’s Cove where he and his wife exchanged their wedding vows, the home where his children were born, and the bulk propane dispensary he has established in the front yard of his current house, with capacity for 2,200 gallons of propane.

man with fuel tanks

Priming the Pump

The Island Institute has launched several initiatives to help reduce energy use and increase energy efficiency. In 2014, it helped to organize Community Energy Action Teams on seven islands to tackle energy issues and share solutions.

The Institute also coordinates “weatherization weeks.” To date, 375 homes—15 percent of the year-round housing stock on islands—have been assessed for heat retention and given air-sealing fixes, which deliver an average savings of $300 per household per year.

In May 2015 on Matinicus and Monhegan, Island Fellow Ben Algeo led a campaign

 to outfit homes and businesses with LED lightbulbs, which use 75 percent less electricity than incandescent bulbs. The cost to residents was just $1 per bulb, thanks to rebates from Efficiency Maine, plus logistics, and a bulk discount the Institute was able to arrange with Newport-based Gilman Electric Supply.

Last November, 140 island residents, politicians, and energy-industry leaders gathered for the Island Institute’s sixth annual Island Energy Conference in South Portland to exchange ideas, explore challenges and regulatory issues, and discuss the feasibility of alternative energy sources like solar power.

Since moving to Chebeague, Pellerin says, he’s been overwhelmed by island hospitality, which reminds him of the central Maine community where he grew up. “I felt accepted by the community immediately,” he said.

While renovating his house with his wife, Becky, 17 neighbors showed up unannounced one day to lend a hand.

“I was just stunned,” Pellerin said. “It was their way of saying, ‘Welcome to the island. If we can help each other, we do.’ ”

And Pellerin, 47, has embraced the island. He expresses pride that his two children were born on Chebeague, and takes time to serve as a selectman and on the boards of the recreation center and Casco Bay Ferry Lines.

“I want people to be able to live on an island, and not have to struggle to survive,” he said. “And I want my children to have the same opportunities I’ve had to live and thrive here.”

LAUNCHING THE BUSINESS

Pellerin said his desire to make island living more affordable is largely what drove him to get into this business in 2009.

While working as a stern man, caretaker, and maintenance man, he became trained and licensed to install propane-powered appliances like water heaters and wall-heating units.

When Thibeault Energy shut down in 2011 and left some Chebeaguers without a propane supplier, he negotiated with Bath-based M. W. Sewall to deliver a propane truck on a barge. He bought the contents of the truck, then delivered it to 25 residents.

But it quickly became clear there might not be enough customers on Chebeague to sustain a business. And juggling deliveries with his other jobs was tough.

“You have to put a lot of oars in the water to stay afloat on an island,” he said. “If I continued like that, I was going to break my arms.”

Through ISLE, the Island Sustainability through Leadership and Entrepreneurship program, which the Island Institute offers along with the group Leadership for Local Change, Pellerin met residents from other islands who also were struggling to get, and afford, propane. He realized a multi-island operation would be more viable.

“There’s been an imaginary border between the islands for generations,” said Pellerin. “I had an opportunity, as a businessperson and community member, to tie the islands together.”

Pellerin’s expansion plan was welcome news for fuel suppliers who wanted to get out of the business.

Brad Brown had delivered fuel to 300 residents on Long Island since 1985. But in 2012, he became ill and was unable to continue. Brown’s sister Towanda tried managing the business on a temporary basis, but she needed someone who could permanently manage the accounts, field service calls that came in at all times of the day, and handle the physical demands of the job, which often required hauling heavy tanks over rough terrain.

man on boat delivery fuel

“I was pulling my hair out,” she said. “It’s a really tough business. And I could barely move those tanks.”

She approached Pellerin, and was bowled over by the time he spent with customers to ensure a smooth transition. “He has been so good to so many people,” she said. “He works very hard, and has never let a customer down.”

Pellerin also acquired the oil and gas retail delivery operation from Lionel Plante Associates.

“It was time to start paring down the size of our company, and focus on excavation and barging,” said Mulkern. “So when Pete said that oil and propane was the only business he wanted to be in, it was a great match. The more customers Pete can have, the more he can spread out all his costs.”

To be sure, starting up has been a difficult and costly process. “There’s a reason why not everyone is doing this,” Pellerin said.

He has tapped his savings, loans from investors, and business revenues to finance necessities like insurance, equipment, trucks, and transportation, plus the cost of hiring five employees and five subcontractors, and installing three bulk propane tanks on his property.

But to many islanders, Pellerin has already been a great asset. Even beyond cost savings, his customers rave about the peace of mind he has provided by advising them on efficiency and safety issues, helping them to install larger tanks, and using online billing.

“Pete makes life easy on us, and the fact that he lives on the island is terrific,” said Chebeague resident Jay Corson. “His prices are quite reasonable. And it’s nice to see a youngish guy who is working very hard to provide this
service.”

Jen Van Allen is a Yarmouth-based writer and author of four books, including Run to Lose (Rodale, 2015). Her work has also appeared in the Washington Post, Runner’s World, the New York Times, the Portland Press Herald, and MaineBiz. Learn more about her work at jenvanallen.com.


man working on building bottom of wooden boat

The Highliner's Choice

The Highliner’s Choice

Peter Kass boats are the Rolls-Royces of the lobster fleet.

By Laurie Schreiber
Photos by Michael O’Neil

For a fisherman—on the water daily, subject to the vagaries of weather—a boat is the thin membrane between life and death.

Aesthetics in a fishing boat aren’t the most important consideration. A rugged, well-built structure that’s “seakindly” and will get a fisherman out and back safely and comfortably is. A boat’s finish and appointments are icing on the cake.

In the traditional plank-on-frame boats built by Peter Kass and his small crew, fishermen get both top-notch workmanship and elegant style. Some of the fleet’s top fishermen—“highliners,” as they’re called—have been known to place an order with Kass immediately after
trying one of his boats. They don’t mind paying up to $500,000 for a Kass boat, and they have no problem
waiting in line, sometimes for nyears; none other will do. And in the age of fiberglass, they’re die-hard fans of wooden boats for their ability to deliver a comfortable ride.

The amazing thing is that Kass attracts this devoted following—among both fishermen, his largest customer base, and pleasure boaters—not because he’s doing anything particularly innovative. It’s because he practices age-old design and construction techniques with the highest degree of integrity, turning out boats for customers he thinks deserve both reliability and beauty.

“I can’t imagine anyone, no matter what trade they have, not wanting to do the best they can do,” Kass says. “That baffles me. If you don’t have your reputation and your pride, and everything to show for it, why would you even do it? I can’t imagine saying, ‘Oh, it’s good enough.’ Why would you? This product is you.”

Kass doesn’t seem to age. In his 50s, he’s endowed with boyish good looks and a cheerful demeanor, possibly due to the fact that he loves what he does for a living.

“Sixty hours is a normal week,” he says. “I spend about one hour a day managing my crew and two or three hours on the phone, buying materials. Then I work. About all I ever need to say to the guys is, ‘Okay, you do this and you do that.’ ”

(“I’m a cruddy husband,” he adds. “I’m sitting there at the dinner table, and I’m thinking about the next detail at work.”)

man in front of partially built boat

Peter Kass at John’s
Bay Boat Company in
South Bristol.

Showtime

Last August, eight or nine Kass boats were rafted up at the Maine Boats, Homes & Harbors show in Rockland. Kass, the owners, and their families were hopping between decks for visits on a blazing hot Sunday. Among the fleet was Kass’s latest, outer fall, built for Spruce Head fisherman Jim Tripp. At 47 feet, it’s the largest boat Kass has ever built. With a cedar-over-oak hull painted cherry red, bright-varnished sipo (an African wood that’s an alternative to mahogany) interiors and furnishings, teak trim, paneled doors, and a Douglas fir platform (and fiberglass judiciously deployed along seams where freshwater can cause problems), it was also a gem-like standout against a backdrop of sparkling blue waters.

Tripp is more vagabond than businessman in his appearance. A bandana wraps his brow, keeping unkempt hair in place. He’s not afraid of hard-used clothes.

“You’re not going to get any truth out of me,” he jokes, after greeting two other Kass boat owners, Steve Rosen and John Williams, aboard Rosen’s boat, star fisher. A lifelong fisherman, Tripp is a man who knows what he wants. Boats aren’t just vehicles. You have to get to know your boat, he says—how it feels, how it maneuvers, what it will do in a big sea.

“You’ve got to pay attention,” Tripp says. “Every little move you make, your boat does different things, different days. It’s a learning experience.”

Except for a brief stint with fiberglass, Tripp has always had wooden boats, including an Arno Day 36 and a Bobby Rich 43, named day star, which he bought secondhand to range offshore on overnight trips, hooking longlines.

In the 1990s, Tripp came across a Kass boat that struck his eye.

“I thought it had the prettiest lines I’d ever seen in a boat,” he says. Two years later, he put in an order for a 42-footer. Named sea wife, it worked out great for the next 20 years. “I loved that boat,” he says. “I was never, ever scared in that boat. It’s a good sea boat. It takes the weather.”

A year ago, though, he decided it was time to get something a little faster and a little bigger for his trips offshore.

“You’re making your big money when the weather can get really bad, November and December,” he says. “You’re fishing all winter in brutal weather, and you’ve got to haul when it’s blowing 25, 30 miles an hour. You need something bigger.”

Construction of outer fall—named after an important fishing ground—began in July 2014. Tripp helped out the last couple of months of production, putting the rails on, sanding, caulking the deck.

“It’s hard work,” he says. “Everything’s handmade. I felt bad when I took it. The guys who work on it, they put their heart and soul in this boat. You leave and they never see it again.” Why is wood valued over fiberglass? The consensus is that wood provides a softer ride, absorbing vibration and noise, compared with the monocoque, drum-like nature of fiberglass that jolts a mariner’s joints.

Or, as Tripp says, “It just feels human to me.”

 

Wooden Boat Mecca

Kass got into boatbuilding for lack of a better idea, as he wryly says.

“Seemed fun. Got a job at a boatyard and really loved it.”

Born in Massachusetts, he was always one to tinker and get his hands dirty as a kid. At 17, he “kind of ran away” to Virginia, where somebody who knew somebody got him a job that didn’t last long. He found his way to Maine and started work at the Harvey Gamage Shipyard in South Bristol. It was the late 1970s, and Maine was something of a mecca, thanks in part to WoodenBoat magazine, for people who wanted to pursue wooden boat building in the face of the rise of fiberglass.

Gamage was building the 65-foot schooner appledore. “There were three old-timers—real, lifelong, excellent boat carpenters,” he recalls. “The youngest was 58, the other two were mid- to late 60s. Basically, us young guys would lug things for the older guys. And that was a super way to learn. We were right there with them. You couldn’t get a better learning experience.”

When Gamage switched to steel construction, Kass took a job at Goudy and Stevens in East Boothbay, where his duties ranged from large-scale repair jobs on draggers to working in the joiner shop. In 1982, he was hired at Padebco Custom Boats in Round Pond to help build a 30-foot Atkin cutter.

“I can’t imagine anyone, no matter what trade they have, not wanting to do the best they can do.

A year later, he stepped out on his own and opened John’s Bay Boat Company in South Bristol, on several acres—with tidal frontage he says he never would be able to afford today. In the early years, his mainstay was repair work, while building small boats in the 20-foot range. He received his first big commission in 1986, a 42-foot Carroll Lowell design named sharon rosanne, for a Portsmouth, New Hampshire, lobster fisherman.

“As soon as the boat was launched, people took notice: ‘I remember the wooden boat I used to have, and that was a nice boat, and blah blah blah,’ ” he says. “Before you know it, customers were lining up. I didn’t realize the demand was there.”

Steve Rosen of Vinalhaven was an early customer. He’s had a Peter Kass boat, named star fisher, for nearly 20 years. At the time, Rosen says, Kass was the only show in town as far as building in wood.

“When I wanted another wooden boat, I turned to Pete,” says Rosen. “He had a reputation for building great boats and for doing it on time.”

John Williams agrees. When it comes to providing what is an essential tool for a business, integrity is critical.

“The bank asked me if I had a contract with him,” Williams says. “I said, ‘No. I shook his hand. That’s all I need.’ ”

Williams, who lives in Stonington, commissioned a boat from Kass in 1995. In 2012, he traded up to a larger boat, featuring the gleaming mahogany cabinetry that’s a Kass hallmark.

“As far as boatbuilders, there’s no one better than Peter,” Williams says. “His workmanship is immaculate.”

red lobster boat moving through water

Ryan Larrabee’s boat, resolute, at the 2015 Stonington Lobster Boat Races.

Building mostly in the 30- to 40-foot range, Kass’s design process starts when he carves a half model. For a more complex product like a yacht, he might hire someone to do computer drafts that make it easier for the customer to visualize the design and make changes. But most of his production is lobster boats, and design and construction remain fairly consistent, with one to two emerging from his shop per year.

“Lobster boats are pretty simple creatures, really,” he says.

Kass’s designs are characterized by a deeper V to the bottom and a sharper bow than many other lobster boats.

“To me, that makes a better sea boat,” he says. “I think they go easily at slow speeds. If you want flat-out speed, and some guys do, you want something that will jump out of the water,” he explains.

“You look at a lot of these modern designs, they’re very flat-bottomed, and when they get going, the whole first 10, 15 feet of the boat is out of the water. And they go great! But I think on a choppy day, a fisherman will be much happier in one of my boats,” Kass says. “As one of my customers says, ‘This fast-boat stuff is cool, but lobsters were never caught at 20 miles per hour.’ You’ve got to be able to stand at the pot hauler once you get there. You don’t want something pounding at your feet.”

Construction is all about one detail at a time, says Sam Jones of South Bristol, who recently retired as Kass’s right-hand man after 25 years.

“Everything is thought out,” Jones says. “We’re not trying to reinvent the wheel, just sticking with what works in the design and the materials.”

More than anything, Kass strives for the best—so much so that sometimes, looking at his costs, he realizes he’s shot himself in the foot.

“Some of these details, after I’m done, I look at the timesheets, and say, ‘Oh, my God. Well, we’ll shave some hours off the bill,’ ” he says. “But I do always tell my guys, if I’m not around to make a call, assume it should be better, and if there’s a money problem, I’ll work it out. Either the customer is good with it or I eat some [of the cost] or whatever, but we don’t want a quality problem. Never.”

Peter and some of his clients/fans at the 2015 Maine Boats, Homes & Harbors show.

group of people posed on a boat

By now, Kass has built over 60 boats, about a dozen of them in Stonington, due to a cascading effect that happened when John Williams’s father, Bob Williams, brought his first Kass boat to town 25 years ago. He currently has five orders lined up, which is five years’ worth of work, unless he can find qualified employees to speed up the production schedule. That last point is difficult these days. Finding younger people interested in getting into the trade is his biggest problem.

“Impossible,” he says. “Working in the trades doesn’t appeal to young people anymore. I think it’s because everything they know comes off that stupid glowing screen. I can’t believe there aren’t young people knocking on my door. Jeez, I can’t wait to get to work every day.”

What’s lost, he says, is the sense of craft as a normal part of everyday life. Many people today refer to the “art” of wooden boat building. Sure, it’s creative, he says. But it’s just what people did—to work, to support a family, to live. Kass refuses to be called an artist. For him, the highest honor is to be recognized as an excellent and honest tradesman.

“These old codgers I used to work with, it was just there,” he says. “They were craftsmen, but they didn’t really think about it.”

Laurie Schreiber has written for publications in Maine and beyond for more than 25 years. Her new book, Boatbuilding on Mount Desert Island, is a collection of historical profiles with a touch of contemporary activity.


crowd standing in front of building at community center opening ceremony

MBNA and the Midcoast Miracle

MBNA and the Midcoast Miracle

Ten years ago, the credit-card lender was bought by Bank of America, but its legacy remains.

BY TOM GROENING

MBNA. Four letters that actually stood for nothing, yet oh-so-much, in the mid-1990s through 2005.

The Delaware-based credit-card lender, spun off from Maryland Bank, National Association—hence the name—dominated the Midcoast landscape for those years. From 50 jobs in Camden in 1993 to 4,500 statewide by the early 2000s, its growth here was dramatic and visible.

Some companies quietly go about their business and hope to avoid controversy and dodge media attention. They write checks to national charitable groups and stay out of local initiatives.

Not MBNA.

The company and its CEO, Charlie Cawley, were big fish in the small pond that is Maine. They introduced corporate culture to towns that had never before seen it, and sometimes, it was an uneasy marriage. In Knox and Waldo counties, MBNA’s presence was at its largest and most dramatic. The phrase “800-pound gorilla” was used more than once by media pundits.

But despite what critics said—and they said a lot—as Maine staggered out of one of the worst recessions in decades in the early 1990s, the jobs that MBNA offered were a shot of adrenaline to the Midcoast’s anemic economy. And the corporate and personal giving—particularly on the part of Cawley—gave new meaning to the word generosity.

In July, ten years will have passed since Bank of America purchased MBNA and those four letters passed into history. But the company’s impact remains. Many of the large office complexes built around the state, sold by Bank of America at bargain prices, are occupied by other businesses today.

Beyond the jobs and the infrastructure, MBNA may have had an even more profound hand in polishing—if not remaking—the public landscape of the Midcoast and some of Maine’s islands. Education and schools, libraries, YMCAs, art museums, performance spaces, parks, and several nonprofits—including the Island Institute, publisher of Island Journal—were lifted up and set on new, firm foundations. It was a level of giving that recalled 19th-century donors like Carnegie and Rockefeller.

child reading in a library

The children’s section of the
Rockland Public Library
was expanded with help
from MBNA donations.

Some of what MBNA did never got reported. One small anecdote: The company paid for teachers at elementary schools to quietly buy the ubiquitous L.L. Bean backpacks for poorer kids who didn’t have them. One secret gift, spilled to the press years later by former governor Angus King, was sending Christmas gifts and food to poorer families in Knox and Waldo counties.

In the public arena, perhaps the most stunning beneficence came when the K–8 Lincolnville Central School had to close suddenly due to mold problems. The state would build a new school on the site, but where would classes be held until then?

MBNA stepped in and built a school—in 54 days—on the grounds of its retreat center on Ducktrap Mountain, a building that most area towns would trade their schools for in a heartbeat.

Any attempt at quantifying the economic impact or listing the donations is doomed to fail. But ten years later, it’s a story that needs to be told.

I was a reporter and editor in Belfast, Rockport, and Rockland during those years, and as I think back, it seems like a dream—a vision of a train roaring through, stopping long enough for gifts to tumble out. On a July morning in 2005, it was over.

For we journalists in the Midcoast, MBNA also was a gift that kept on giving. Each announcement—a new profits peak, more jobs, new buildings, six-figure donations—left us shaking our heads in wonder. And it was good news, not the dreary reporting of a plant closing. The towns in which we lived and were raising our children were made better, with new or improved schools, parks, libraries, and on and on.

~

There were critics, of course; there was a dark side, and drama and conflict followed as a large national corporation tried to settle into small New England villages.

Critics claimed MBNA bullied the local newspapers. They said the nature of the business—lending through credit cards—hurt people, and society as a whole. The jobs paid well and the offices were far from the shoe and fish factories of the past, but many observed that the high-pressure phone sales were more like piecework than not.

Cawley was generous, but he wore his heart on his sleeve, and when his gifts and expansions were questioned or opposed, he was hurt, and that hurt sometimes led to anger. Plans to grow in Camden were rebuffed by many, and it seemed that Cawley responded by angrily shunning Camden for Belfast, where the company’s presence would grow to 2,500 jobs.

Later, Cawley would say he understood the trepidation about the rapid growth in Camden; more community input was sought for an expansion in Rockland. With less fuss, call centers were opened in college towns like Brunswick, Farmington, Fort Kent, Presque Isle, and Orono.

The conspicuousness of the company’s spending—like buying a small house, fixing it up, and then tearing it down—rankled many a Yankee’s frugal values, and the yachts, private jets, and large black SUVs enjoyed by top management also seemed to be consciously flaunted.

The dramatic arc that became a pattern for MBNA was established early on. Flipping through the pages of the Camden Herald at the Walsh History Center at the Camden Public Library—the first established through MBNA largesse, the second, greatly expanded by it—the beginnings of the story unfold.

The January 23, 1993, issue reports that MBNA officials toured several possible office locations. The company would create 70 to 100 jobs, “a good fit for the town,” a local architect told the paper.

On February 11, the news was that new offices would open on June 1, with 50 to 60 jobs, growing to 150. A company vice president noted that Camden was not unknown to senior managers. “MBNA has been holding management meetings here for over ten years,” Richard Struthers said.

The March 4, 1993, Herald announced that MBNA would match funds of up to $250,000 for a local group restoring the Camden Opera House. This, just over a month after announcing its expansion in Maine, and before a single paycheck had been issued. The initial restoration budget had been $125,000; now, much more was possible, and indeed, the opera house was remade into the stunning venue it is today.

crowd standing in front of building at community center opening ceremony

Celebrating the opening of Waterman’s Community Center on North Haven.

The story notes that MBNA “has expressed the hope that their contribution will confer a lasting benefit on the Midcoast area.”

The company planned to lease part of a former mill, but in the April 29 paper, the headline told the tale: “A New Era—MBNA Purchases the Knox Mill,” all 106,000 square feet of it.

The management retreats in Camden were not coincidental. Cawley’s grandfather had lived in Lincolnville, and run clothing businesses in Belfast and Camden.

Those Camden roots are part of an oft-told story. As a young man, Cawley was returning to college and needed new tires on his car, but was unable to afford them. Camden’s Bob Oxton, who apparently operated an auto shop, gave Cawley the tires, allowing the payment to follow.

Now, Cawley could repay Oxton more substantively, hiring him to help with the new building. Some saw a conflict of interest in Oxton, the town’s fire chief, moonlighting for a private company that owned the biggest building in town. An editorial in the May 6 paper defended Oxton and the hiring, and the fuss was over.

In fewer than four months, the pattern was set: an expansion, jobs, more jobs than originally planned, a building purchase beyond what was planned, a high-profile donation, controversy, resolution. It would continue to play out elsewhere.

In retrospect, the company—which already had offices around the United States when it came to Maine—rode the tide of a booming economy through the late 1990s. Profits cracked the $1 billion mark in 1999; a year later it was $1.3 billion, then $1.7 billion in 2001, and $2.3 billion in 2003. Expansions in the UK, Ireland, and Spain followed.

Company officials regularly reported that its Maine offices performed better than others around the country. Cawley built a waterfront summer home in Camden. (In 1999, he hosted a fund-raiser for then-candidate George W. Bush at the house; former president George H. W. Bush was a guest at several MBNA events in Maine; and Cawley and his top executives were among the biggest donors to Republican campaigns.)

Describing itself as a bank without a lobby, MBNA was a cast-off division of Maryland Bank that Cawley and others took over and built around what they called affinity marketing. Credit cards with organization logos were issued to college alumni groups, professional associations, and other such groups. A portion of the purchases went to the groups, thereby ensuring they would promote their use.

Barbara Bush, left, and Elizabeth Moran
at the ribbon-cutting ceremony for the
Camden Public Library.

Cawley has been quoted as saying his goal was to give away his wealth, and he certainly gave a lot of it away. As CEO, he imbued the company with that same ethic. MBNA’s generosity would be seen across a host of arenas. After the Camden Opera House, the company in 1994 donated $1 million to Penobscot Bay Healthcare, but education and the arts were major themes. Some of the bigger-ticket donations helped to renovate and expand the Rockland Public Library, the Camden Public Library (Barbara Bush appeared at the ribbon-cutting ceremony), and the Belfast Free Library.

The MBNA Foundation, Cawley, or both also paid to expand the Farnsworth Art Museum in Rockland, building the Jamien Morehouse Wing, named for Island Institute founder Philip Conkling’s late wife, and turned an old church into the museum’s Wyeth Center. They helped pay for Belfast’s first YMCA building, and to expand Camden’s into a regional facility.

On the islands, the company donated to North Haven’s effort to create Waterman’s Community Center, and was a major source of funding for the renovated and expanded Vinalhaven school. It helped to fund the purchase of seven miles of shoreline on Frenchboro, as well as improvements to the school, library, historical society, church, and parsonage. It gave grants to 13 island libraries.

“Charlie Cawley was on every nonprofit’s radar in Maine, and particularly in the Midcoast,” Conkling remembers. “Everybody wanted to talk to Charlie.”

In the fall of 1999, Conkling and Institute cofounder Peter Ralston booked a meeting with him and explained the needs on year-round islands. Cawley wanted to see the islands, and proposed visits to Frenchboro and Swan’s Island.

“Little did we know this was going to be a tour in a helicopter,” Conkling remembered, chuckling. On Frenchboro, “We take Charlie up to see the one-room schoolhouse,” and from the small bookshelf that passed for the school library at the time, Cawley “pulled out a science reference book, published in 1964, that mentioned man going to the moon someday.”

Cawley made an immediate decision, saying, “ ‘I’m going to start an island library program,’ ” Conkling remembered.

The donations dramatically impacted not only island libraries, but also school and cultural enrichment programs, he said. On Vinalhaven, the state paid for a new school, but would fund only a shared library for the K–12 students. To build a better library, MBNA agreed to match up to the $1 million raised locally, and did.

two young girls holding up Dr. Suess books

Frenchboro School students
on Dr. Seuss’s birthday.

“Nobody in Midcoast Maine had seen that kind of grantsmanship,” Conkling said.

The company also funded the start of the Island Fellows program.

And then came a gift for the Institute. Conkling remembers a late-night call from Cawley, who said a sales agreement on the former Senter-Crane department store in Rockland would expire the next day. Did Conkling want it?

Despite the myriad concerns that raced through his brain, Conkling said a voice inside told him “Just say yes,” and he did. The new building, sold to the Institute for $1, “truly put us on the map,” allowing the growing staff room to work, and providing space for Archipelago, the store and fine arts gallery, on Main Street.

One of the most profound impacts MBNA had was through the hundreds of college scholarships it awarded to students in Knox and Waldo counties. Later, the company included students in nine island communities in Hancock and Cumberland counties. Now, long after the corporate jets have left, those young men and women carry their education throughout their lives.

Before joining the Belfast Republican Journal newspaper, I worked for a social service agency in town, doing job training. A chicken-processing plant, sardine cannery, shoe factory, and french-fry processor were among the big employers. Some of those who came to our office for help were women who had developed carpal tunnel syndrome from cutting sardines with scissors, day in, day out, or who suffered bouts of “chicken poisoning,” some kind of bacteria that took hold in the cracks in their hands.

Flash forward to 1995, when MBNA executive Shane Flynn was giving me a tour of the beautiful new Belfast office. I heard several women’s voices calling out, “Hi, Tom!” I recognized them as the same former factory workers. Instead of cold, wet, noisy conditions, they now worked in a climate-controlled office, sitting comfortably in their cubicles.

Another personal note: As someone who loves his adopted hometown of Belfast, I am regularly reminded of MBNA each time I walk or drive along the waterfront. When the sprawling concrete chicken plant that dominated much of the waterfront went belly-up in 1988, it sat vacant—covered in graffiti, decrepit and smelly—for almost ten years. City government talked about getting rid of it, but nothing was done.

The Harbor Walk at Steamboat Landing in Belfast, site of the former chicken plant.

person walking on sidewalk along water

MBNA purchased the property with the idea of building offices there, where its yachts could dock, but instead, Cawley decided to build a park for the city.

Years later, Front Street Shipyard revived the other end of the waterfront, but I believe if that park had not been built, a business like the shipyard would have looked elsewhere.

In July 2005, while reporting for the Bangor Daily News, I learned that Bank of America would be buying MBNA. On a conference call that included questions from the Wall Street Journal, LA Times, and CNBC, I was surprised to hear my name called. I asked Cawley’s successor at MBNA what he would say to those workers arriving at the Belfast office that morning when they learned of the sale. He said that if nothing had been done, there would be no more MBNA. The company, other sources said, had resisted diversifying into home mortgages and insurance, and risked running out of new markets for its credit-card lending.

Today, there is no more MBNA. But the legacy remains.

Angus King, now a US senator, was Maine’s governor during those years. When the company was bought, he summed up what it meant: “If I had sat down in 1994 with a blank sheet of paper and written down the ideal company for Maine,” he said, “it would have been MBNA.”

Tom Groening is editor of Island Journal and The Working Waterfront.


illustration of boy and seal

A Tidal Joy Ride

A Tidal Joy Ride

Boys find a surprising third for their Vinalhaven outing

BY PHIL CROSSMAN
ILLUSTRATIONS BY SCOTT NASH

Elias and Drew donned the life jackets they’d selected from the wide assortment found in the barn and scurried out onto the line of rocks and ledges that constituted a little jetty at the head of the rapids. Twelve-year-old Elias had been coming to Vinalhaven from Illinois with his folks for a dozen summers, but his friend Drew, also twelve, was enjoying his first trip. For that matter, it was Drew’s first solo trip of any consequence outside Chicago, where he lived with his folks and went to school.

Elias’s family rented a saltwater farm on seven gently rolling and magnificent acres that fronted on the southeast shore of Vinal Cove. The big, comfortable farmhouse and nearby barn sat naturally on a modest rise overlooking the cove. Once an active saltwater farm, it’s now a pastoral retreat enjoyed not only by the appreciative seasonal owners and their guests, but also by the islanders, to whom those owners have graciously extended permission for such things as a fall carnival, musical events, auctions, fund-raisers, and so forth.

For years, too, the picturesque farm has been the first choice of many a celebrant, newlyweds in particular. Photos of brides and grooms gazing adoringly at one another under an arbor facing west toward the cove, or north over the rolling little meadows, or in the big timber-frame barn after an indoor ceremony are scattered far and wide around the country.

The boys shared a bedroom on the second floor of the big rambling farmhouse, and the enchanting scent that saltwater ways dispense now and then breathed wakefulness into them each early morning, fueling their enthusiasm for what each new day might offer. Sounds of competing gulls amplified the anticipation, particularly if the tide was out and the flats exposed.

If the tide was not fully out, but on its way, the gulls and terns would be diving in and out up at the rapids, at the north end of the property where Vinal Cove quenches its thirst twice a day with each incoming tide, having expelled an identical quantity just a few hours earlier. At this restricted waterway between the cove and Winter Harbor, its patron estuary, the outgoing tide creates substantial rapids—fairly clear of rocks and obstacles—extending downstream for a hundred yards or so.

During this vacation the boys had been converging at this juncture to ride the rapids nearly every day, about two hours after high tide had turned. Then, for several exciting hours, the water was moving at full force but afforded enough depth to allow them to avoid the rocks beneath.

Of course, the outgoing tide was simultaneously rolling seaward in Winter Harbor, and its water level was dropping, too, so riding the rapids too long after the tide had turned would not have provided enough depth for the safe passage of two boys hurtling gleefully downstream.

On one of those days the boys headed for the rapids at about noon, with Elias’s watchful mom, as always, observing from shore. Their arrival coincided with a carnal frenzy of some tiny critters, maybe herring, out in the harbor just beyond the rapids. Whatever that critter was, its activity attracted a handful of predators not far from the rapids, but far from the trio’s attention.

illustration of two boys

While Elias’s mom urged caution from the sidelines—though less urgently with each passing day, since there’d been no mishaps or injuries—the boys scrambled toward their chosen launching spot. This was routine now—no lingering apprehension—and Elias flung himself confidently into the rushing water.

As soon as the current jerked him around so he faced downstream, he sensed an extraordinary, startling, and unexpected warmth underwater next to his right side. Glancing down he could easily make out a large shadow, much larger than himself, nearly touching—and then touching—his leg.

His first thought—not surpri-singly for a twelve-year-old boy—was that it was a shark or some other underwater monster, but just as quickly he deduced—also remarkable for a twelve-year-old—that given the distance from deep water and the shark’s customary habitat, this was unlikely.

In the next instant, a big harbor seal popped up right in front of him; its steely black head, much bigger than his own, had white stripes extending from the center of its forehead down and off to the right and left, on either side of its V-shaped nostrils. These were contracting and expanding, the latter effort enveloping Elias’s face with a pungent odor, not altogether unpleasant but unmistakably digestive.

The big creature’s eyes looked inquiringly into Elias’s own as the duo hurtled down the rapids—Elias facing downstream and the seal facing upstream—their heads about a foot apart, perfectly choreographed. The ride
seemed to go on forever, Elias at the mercy of the current, exercising no control whatsoever, and the seal entirely otherwise, effortlessly making adjustments where necessary to keep it facing backwards.

This business of keeping its bulk a foot away from and facing the boy for the duration of the tumultuous ride presented no challenge to the playful pinniped. Watching from shore, aghast at first, Elias’s mom saw the astonishment and wonder on her son’s face as this miraculous adventure unfolded, and began running parallel along the shore, the better to rendezvous with him the instant the ride was over.

The thrill lasted nearly a minute, one that will certainly linger, and for the duration the seal never took his inquiring eyes off Elias’s own. As the current slowed and settled into not much more than a little eddy, the boy’s feet touched bottom and the seal was gone. Elias splashed toward shore, toward his mom, eager to give voice to this extraordinary experience.

Of course, she had seen it all and was no less eager herself. Breathlessly, they blurted out the details simultaneously, and as they did, Drew, who had also seen everything, shouted out his intention to launch his own ride. Elias and his mom looked up at the head of the rapids as Drew signaled his readiness and jumped into the current.

The seal, having scurried easily back upstream during the intervening seconds for a repeat of the thrill it seemed to have enjoyed coming down with Elias, popped up as before, right in front of Drew, and gave him the same companionably breathtaking ride downstream.

This time, though, when it was over and Drew’s feet touched bottom, the seal lingered. It looked at Drew and then at the others onshore. It paddled around him, at times bumping him gently until Drew tentatively reached out a hand and stroked its back as it drifted back and forth. After a few minutes it submerged and disappeared.

Drew splashed ashore to join Elias and his mom. Each blurting out his own frenzied version of events, the two boys suddenly realized that this adventure might not be over, and raced up to the top of the rapids for another dance.

Alas, the seal had apparently had enough excitement for one day, and had moved on out into Winter Harbor—presumably to find its own family and relate its own version of this fun encounter with another species.

Phil Crossman lives with his wife Elaine on Vinalhaven, where he owns and operates the Tidewater Motel.


windmills in the distance behind a body of water

Song of the Samsingers

Song of the Samsingers

How a Danish island is harmonizing renewable energy to redefine its future

STORY AND PHOTOS BY BROOKS WINNER

Landing on Samsø Island, part of Denmark, we were greeted by a kind of rock star.

“Hello! My name is Søren,” exclaimed the man. “I am the lead singer of the Samsingers,” he smiled, echoing a local pun (the residents of the island are known as “Samsingers”). Søren Hermansen was our host and tour guide, and though he doesn’t play or sing in a band, he is indeed a rock star, traveling the world as a spokesman for community energy projects, telling the story of how Samsø, his hometown, is building its own sustainable energy future.

Over the last decade, the Danish island of Samsø has become a beacon of sustainability throughout Europe and beyond. Remarkably, with a mix of community and privately owned wind farms (on land and offshore), straw-fired heating plants, electric vehicles, and solar panels, Samsø now produces more energy from renewables than it consumes, making it one of the first carbon-negative communities in the world.

In September 2014, five Maine islanders traveled to Samsø to learn how the community became world-renowned as an example of such smart energy development. The islanders were Marian Chioffi of Monhegan, Nate Johnson of Long Island in Casco Bay, Tom McAloon of Swan’s Island, Sam Saltonstall of Peaks Island, and Patrick Trainor of Vinalhaven. They were joined by 18 students and faculty from Bar Harbor’s College of the Atlantic and two representatives from the Island Institute’s Community Energy Program (myself included).

All are participants in the Collaborative for Island Energy Research and Action, or CIERA, a new partnership between the college and the Island Institute, supported by the Fund for Maine Islands. Over the course of our two-week visit, we explored the island, meeting the people who are leading this energy revolution and making it Denmark’s “renewable energy island.”

The Maine delegation was there to listen and learn from Hermansen and his colleagues. Our group was different from many that visit because we had two weeks on the island, much more time to explore than most who come for a day or two, and because we planned to use the knowledge we’d gain to help shape energy initiatives when we returned home.

Because the stakes were high back home, they needed more than words of inspiration. They were looking for solid, practical insights.

While Samsingers are not especially well known for their musical skills, after a few days at the Energy Academy, we began to feel as if we were watching a well-choreographed song-and-dance routine. Søren’s stories about the process by which Samsø became Denmark’s model of sustainable energy were fine-tuned, funny, and engaging. The narrative that he and his colleagues had crafted was one of unity, optimism, and change.

But the Maine islanders were looking for more than that. They wanted to know how it had been done, and what they could bring home to apply on their own islands. They were looking for some best practices, new approaches, and fresh ideas. Instead, what they were hearing seemed to be a well-rehearsed story. Because the stakes were high back home, they needed more than words of inspiration. They were looking for solid, practical insights.

Maine’s island communities face significant challenges related to energy and climate change. For example, Monhegan residents pay upwards of $0.70 per kilowatt-hour, one of the highest electric rates in the country, a challenge that contributes to the high cost of living on the island. This has become one of the biggest threats to the island remaining a year-round community.

CIERA participants in an Energy Academy brainstorming session.

four people sat around a table conversing over a laptop

Swan’s Island Electric Cooperative has operated for more than a year with a volunteer general manager and no full-time line worker, struggling to maintain its aging infrastructure with declining revenues and one of the smallest memberships of any independent electric cooperative in the United States.

Adding to the challenges are disturbing signs of climate change—sea-level rise, increasingly powerful storms, acidifying oceans—all pressing issues for islanders who are, by nature and necessity, acutely aware of changes in their environment. Far more than a mere academic exercise, the trip to Denmark was an opportunity for the CIERA participants to soak up as much as they could, and to envision fruitful solutions for problems widely recognized in their communities.

After the first week of tours and introductory presentations, the islanders were champing at the bit, ready to find the good stuff. Here was a unique opportunity to take a multi-week master class with the sultan of sustainability. They were not about to waste it.

~

“Let me stop you there,” one of the Mainers interjected during a presentation about how businesses on Samsø had embraced the community’s energy-efficiency efforts. “This is a great story, but we want to know how this all happened. What were the incentives? What were the policies that made this possible? How did you sell this to the community?”

The presenter, one of Søren’s colleagues, looked a bit puzzled at the question. We were asking him to go deeper, to give us more than the quick show-and-tell that many who attend the Energy Academy get. We had time to investigate further and dissect the actual strategies and policies that Samsø has used to achieve such impressive results.

From there, the real exploration began. The Mainers asked tough questions. The Samsingers responded with direct, honest answers. As the CIERA participants traveled around the island, talking to as many people as they could in the remaining week, the gracious Danes welcomed them warmly into their homes and businesses.

Farmers who had invested in the wind project offered contrasting views. Some loved “their” turbines, while others expressed disappointment in the financial returns. Homeowners who had retrofitted their old island homes with thick insulation and energy-efficient electric heat pumps explained that the Danish government offered a special electric rate that made heat pumps a worthy successor to fossil-fuel systems.

two men sitting on a wind turbine

Søren Hermansen, left, with the author atop one of Samsø’s wind turbines.

The Mainers also met with a leader of the municipal government to hear about the island’s ambitious plans for rolling out electric vehicles across the island and replacing its diesel ferryboat with one powered by locally produced biogas.

When they quizzed Søren about specific incentives offered by the Danish government to promote renewable energy development, he explained that much of the $80 million spent to build the energy projects on Samsø came from subsidies or large corporate investments. Multinational oil and gas giant Royal Dutch Shell even chipped in for the offshore wind project.

By taking the time to dig into these crucial details, we got a better sense of what had worked, what hadn’t, and what was worth bringing back home. We had interrupted the song of the Samsingers, but in doing so we were able to more closely examine the instruments and the composition of the piece, allowing us to learn the best of what our maestros had to offer.

Since returning to their own islands, CIERA participants have started to digest the lessons learned from the trip and to integrate them into their own island energy projects. While each came away with something slightly different, there were important common themes that emerged.

Tom McAloon, the semiretired utility engineer from Swan’s Island, observes that despite the narrative about local engagement and investment, national incentives actually played a major part in setting the Samsingers up for success—even though those national incentives didn’t always work as intended.

“There may be clever ways to take the Danish example and leapfrog it,” he said, suggesting that Maine islands could learn from the challenges the Danes have faced as renewable energy pioneers.

McAloon has examined a menu of options for the Swan’s Island Electric Cooperative to consider as it looks for ways to continue to provide safe, reliable, and affordable electricity to its members. These options could include new technologies like electric vehicles or air-source heat pumps, but they could also include rethinking the way the cooperative operates. This “menu” is helping to inform discussions about the community’s energy future and how to address high energy costs on the island.

“I was most impressed by the community investment process and the model used by Samsingers to implement renewable energy projects,” said Nate Johnson, the Long Island native who works as an environmental engineer for one of the world’s leading tidal energy companies. Samsingers were allowed to buy shares of the wind turbines built on the island, a strategy that helped to build support for the project throughout the community.

As he investigates options for building a renewable energy demonstration project, Johnson plans to look for ways to engage his community through similar approaches. “There may not be a track record of energy projects on Long Island, but there is a basis for other community-led initiatives, like the effort to secede from Portland, which could provide a foundation for future projects,” he said.

people standing under a dutch windmill

Perhaps the most valuable part of the trip for the Mainers, however, was the opportunity to connect with other islanders in a new and inspirational setting. When the CIERA participants get together, they share notes on everything from energy costs to entertainment.

“It was a wonderful experience to meet islanders from other Maine islands and Samsø,” said Patrick Trainor of Vinalhaven. “We shared stories of the higher cost of living on islands. We shared our love of island communities, the depth of our islands’ histories, and their stunning natural beauty.”

Given the space and time to explore shared energy challenges with their peers, the islanders could embrace new roles in shaping their islands’ energy futures and dare to dream big.

~

On our last day on the Danish island, after we had said most of our good-byes, we had one last meeting at the Energy Academy. A group of islanders from around Europe—members of the European Union’s “Smilegov” (smart multilevel governance) initiative—had converged on the island to discuss their plans to meet the EU’s ambitious goals for greenhouse gas reduction, renewable energy production, and energy efficiency. Søren invited us to join them.

While the Mainers could easily have felt overwhelmed by the group that included representatives from islands of over a million people and communities already implementing ambitious and innovative energy projects, instead, they felt right at home. All of them jumped right into the discussion, talking with government leaders from Malta, Cyprus, and the Orkney Islands of Scotland, sharing their experience and soaking up the insights from their European counterparts.

Later that afternoon, we said farvel (good-bye) to our hosts and hopped aboard the ferry to begin the journey back to Maine. Our two-week jam session with the leader of the Samsingers had ended, but the CIERA participants left with new ideas and new material, energized and ready to get to work creating their own energy masterpieces.

You can follow the progress of the CIERA project on the blog at http://fundformaineislands.org/category/ciera/.

Brooks Winner is a community energy associate at the Island Institute, publisher of Island Journal.


oysters on a bed of ice with a menu board in background

An Oyster Story

An Oyster Story

The source of that slurpy, salty goodness is the ‘taste of place’

BY CATHERINE SCHMITT

At three in the afternoon on a Friday in January, all the seats are full at Eventide Oyster Company in Portland. Outside, the temperatures are plummeting, but inside the sun shines through the wall of windows, illuminating the small space.

Oysters, ten varieties from Maine and another seven “from away,” all grown in carefully chosen environments, are on display in an ice-filled granite basin. The bearded guy with a pom-pommed ski hat shucking oysters, the capable bartender, the nimble servers—all stay in the background. Here, oysters are front and center.

Each variety of oyster—that craggy and somewhat mysterious shellfish—has a story to tell. But every oyster story must first include a bit of background. What are oysters? Where did they come from? Why are they here, now?

The Eastern oyster, Crassostrea virginica, is native to coastal waters from the Gulf of St. Lawrence to the Gulf of Mexico. Oyster populations in Maine have fluctuated with climate shifts and rising sea levels (evidence: giant fossil oyster shells dredged up from around the Gulf of Maine). The native Wabanaki people ate tons of oysters (evidence: huge piles of discarded shells or “middens” along the coast, especially in the Damariscotta River area).

This evidence, combined with the fact that the Ira C. Darling marine laboratory facility was located on the banks of the Damariscotta, that ancient oyster river, led Herb Hidu and other University of Maine scientists to experiment with culturing oysters in the 1970s. Their legacy can be seen today in the 50 or so oyster farms in Maine producing millions of oysters a year.

"Why then the world’s mine Oyster, which I, with sword will open."
— Shakespeare, The Merry Wives of Windsor


From Taunton Bay near Sullivan in Hancock County to the Piscataqua River at the New Hampshire line, Maine’s oyster growers ply their trade with a commitment that borders on the obsessive. By nature, oyster farmers are curious, adventurous. They are tinkerers and experimenters. They are always busy: trying out new gear, moving oysters around, evaluating shell shape and meat quality, packing, delivering, selling, talking oysters. They don’t like to be bored.

Fortunately for all of us—growers, sellers, consumers, writers—oysters are never boring. I have had the privilege of visiting a number of oyster farms during the years I’ve been writing about Maine and our seafood. Most recently, I went out to North Haven to see Adam Campbell, who grows oysters in Salt Pond.

Like some other people who get into oyster farming, Campbell was a commercial fisherman in search of another way to make a living on the water. He is part of the “second wave” of oyster farmers in Maine, who are learning from the first wave, the graduate students of Herb Hidu, who went on to start the first commercial oyster farms in the state.

An oyster is an island unto itself
full of rocks and earth,
tide-swept marsh and rain-washed forest,
salt and sun:
the taste of a place
in
one
bite.

We ate oysters because they were there.
We ate them until they were gone.
Then we found a way to grow them, and put them back so we could eat them again.

After 15 years as a shellfish farmer, oysters have turned into “a nice little gig” for Campbell, he says, as he continues to work as a lobsterman. Lobstering is more lucrative, but oysters provide “a great way for me to make part of my living,” said Campbell. “I wouldn’t give it up.”

Part of the science of oyster farming is finding a place where oysters will grow, where the water-flow and salinity and temperature are just right, with enough algae for the oysters to eat. The bottom should be somewhere between muddy and rocky. The oyster is a creature of the estuary, the waters in between fresh and salt, the part of the ocean that most of us know, the familiar sea we can see from land, the coastal zone.

Taunton Bay
Frenchman Bay
Blue Hill
Bagaduce River
North Haven
Weskeag
Meduncook
Medomak
John’s River
Damariscotta (Pemaquid, Glidden Point) Sheepscot
New Meadows River (Winter Point) Maquoit Bay (Flying Point) Harraseeket
Casco Bay (Basket Island, Pine Point) Scarborough (Pine Point, Nonesuch) Webhannet
Piscataqua

Feeding and growth are both tied to temperature. Oysters enter a dormant state below 40 degrees; they can even withstand freezing for short periods of time. In the 20th century, when state and university scientists were trying to start a new industry, Maine waters were too cold for oysters to spawn on their own or grow very fast.

Not anymore.

In some places, oysters now take only two years instead of four to grow to market size (two to three inches). Warmer waters are expanding areas where oyster culture is feasible.

A few years ago, it got so warm that Adam Campbell’s oysters spawned on their own. Some of the juvenile oysters settled on rocks and ledges in the tidal flats below the pond. Seeing how well they grew, Campbell used the new site for some of his cultured “seed” (oyster farmers buy their oysters from a handful of hatcheries around the state). The first year he and his crew estimated 25,000 oysters would grow there, but the harvest turned up more than 85,000.

Now Campbell uses the pond as a nursery, and the tidal inlet (he calls it “Oyster Nirvana”) as a grow-out site. He mostly harvests in the winter, hiring a crew to push shelves of ice out of the way to reach the oysters, which sit on the bottom. Campbell rides the ferry to the mainland with his oysters, delivering them to Jess’s Market in Rockland and J.P.’s Shellfish in Portland.

He has learned to stick to his schedule. “When you say you’re going to show up with oysters, you better show up with oysters.”

Eating oysters is a synesthetic experience, the sense of taste concomitant with place. Oysters eat by filtering seawater. As water and particles (algae, mostly, but also other bits of detritus) move along the gill surface, the oyster selects some particles to ingest, and ejects the rest. How an oyster does this isn’t totally clear, but likely has something to do with the chemistry between the particle surface and proteins in the mucus covering the feeding organ. Digested, the food deconstructs into protein, iron, selenium, zinc, and other trace elements combined in proportions unique to the oyster’s home.

man digging for oysters

And so oysters soak up their surroundings, synthesizing land and sea; the red clay of the upper Damariscotta, eelgrass in Taunton Bay, reversing falls of the Bagaduce, shallow sunlit waters of North Haven’s Salt Pond, and the circulation of Casco Bay are captured in their respective oysters.

An island in its own ocean surrounded by shell, every oyster tastes different. Describing the taste, however, is harder than describing wine, or art. Even the best ekphrasis fails to convey the experience.

muddy
earthy
mineral
grassy
briny
salty
cold
clean
bright

Maybe words for the flavor are so elusive because eating oysters is about more than tasting oysters.

In her classic Consider the Oyster, M. F. K. Fisher wrote, “[O]ften the place and time help make certain food what it becomes.”

Place matters, obviously. Timing matters, too, and yet timing doesn’t matter. Whatever the season or time of day, oysters transform the routine into celebration, the mundane into ceremony. Perhaps it’s the element of danger—eating raw oysters always carries some risk, although Maine has strict standards for harvesting and selling shellfish. Still, it’s best to eat raw oysters at a place that specializes in the ritual, or has an association with an oyster farm.

As successful as Eventide has been since it opened in 2012—in fact, it’s being expanded, as chefs Andrew Taylor and Mike Wiley add to their block of award-winning restaurants—not everyone is familiar with Maine oysters, or how to eat them.

“A lot of people let us choose for them, and that’s fun,” said server Janet Webber, who grew up in Boothbay on the Damariscotta River, and so is familiar with the industry that more and more people are getting to know.

Another dozen down, and I’m getting to know something, too: with oysters, the story writes itself.

Catherine Schmitt is the communications director for the Maine Sea Grant program at the University of Maine, and the author of A Coastal Companion: A Year in the Gulf of Maine from Cape Cod to Canada.


old photo of a man in a canoe

The Alluring and Enduring Maine Coast

The Alluring and Enduring Maine Coast

Historic images from the Penobscot Marine Museum

By Lisa Mossel Vietze

The Penobscot Marine Museum’s photographic collection is vast — overwhelmingly vast . . .

. . . Lucky for me, I had the privilege of working with Kevin Johnson, the museum’s photo archivist, who guided me in the right direction as we selected the group to include in this issue of Island Journal.

Hours and hours of looking through images in the museum’s collections from the Eastern Illustrating and Publishing Co., Elmer and Ruth Montgomery, and Ed Coffin left me feeling I had seen each and every harbor of our state’s coast. While they each have their unique characteristics, they all began to look the same.

I kept asking myself, what is going to engage the viewers in this folio? How am I going to tell the story of what this coast was like before my family lived here? What will give the viewer a strong sense of place? And I kept hearing one answer: People.

old photo of crashing ocean waves
old photo of women working at sardine factory

After pulling over 150 possible images for this folio and the exhibit that will follow at our Main Street, Rockland gallery, we narrowed it down to images that had characters with stories that transcend the barriers of time. Represented by a few key images here, the exhibit that opens June 26, “The Alluring and Enduring Maine Coast,” features 30-plus photographs. Characters such as the Broiler Queen of Belfast, a reminder of that town’s chicken processing past, craftsmen working granite architectural elements on Vinalhaven, and the barber on a boat out of Thomaston, each call to the viewer from the two dimensional space and ask us to imagine their lives and listen to their stories. I particularly like the women in all their finery and a girl with her doll, putting out a spread on Matinicus. I can only imagine what it felt like in all those clothes and hats, offering a picnic for the fisherman on the rocky beach.

This is the first time we have hosted an exhibition of historic images from such a broad geographic range, from down the coast to Eastport and out to Matinicus.

We invite you to see the exhibit to learn more about that broiler queen and the others, as each image will have an informative caption researched by museum volunteers. And yes, each has a story to tell.

For more information about the Archipelago Fine Arts Gallery exhibit in Rockland, please visit www.thearchipelago.net.


installation of a modular home

Islesboro ‘Homecoming’ Shows Range of Affordable Housing

Carving Out Funds for Island Affordable Housing

By Tom Groening

For a divorced mother of a five-year-old, moving to the island was a kind of retreat and a kind of homecoming. Except there was no home.

Maggy Willcox, who today publishes the Islesboro Island News, grew up in nearby Rockport in the early 1960s, and remembers the small-town nature of the community. It was the kind of town where mothers would send their kids out the door on a summer morning and not expect to see them again until lunchtime.

So in 1990 when she found herself alone with her child, the idea of spending the summer on Islesboro was appealing.

“I just needed a change of scene,” she recalled, and the island was “very much like” the small town of Rockport. “As a newly single mother, that looked very attractive. I thought, ‘Okay, that’s a good place to spend the summer.’ ”

She took a job at the food truck that operates seasonally at the ferry landing.

“It was a step back in time. It was magical,” she said, and decided to stay through the winter. Her first place was “lit-tle more than a camp. It was two rooms, not really winter-ized, and had an outhouse, where the infamous up-island spiders would hang out. You’d bang on the door before going in.”

After that, home was a summer resident’s place, also not winterized. She stayed in exchange for working on the house.

“There were always these strange little deals you could work out,” she recalled.

Enrolling her son in the island’s highly rated school made her want to find a more permanent deal. The Isles-boro Affordable Property group had formed in the early 1990s, and had completed a housing needs study and landed funding. Its first project was an eight-unit subdivi-sion on 13 acres that had been sold at a discount by the late resident Ruthie James.

“I was one of many applicants,” Willcox said, but she was chosen. The houses were designed to be owner-built, with materials precut and labeled, so “Tab A would go into Slot B.” Those selected for the houses were supposed to work together to build them, and finish them in 28 weekends.

“None of that happened,” she said. The blueprints were minimal, and as one family’s house was finished, they con-centrated on its own interior work—understandable, Will-cox said—and couldn’t stay with the building team. The housing group’s executive director quit abruptly in the middle of the project.

By this time, Willcox was working at the post office. People would routinely offer to help work on the house on the weekend, but few turned up. Chuck Whitehouse, now deceased, offered and came through.

“He spent a year and a half with me on weekends,” she said. “It was the most Christian act I have ever seen in my life.”

Her ex-husband and many others took on specific proj-ects; the island-based Central Maine Power representa-tive “took scraps from the boards we used for walls and made me custom kitchen cabinets. I baked a lot then, and he even built a tip-out bin for my forty-pound bags of flour and sugar.”

Still, there were bad moments.

“I remember sitting on my roof, nailing in boards, and sobbing,” she recalled.

It’s no wonder the island affordable housing group now buys modular homes.

The story has a happy ending, though. The home she now shares with her husband, Peter, a boat captain for the environmental activist group Greenpeace, is eye-pleasing with its steep pitched roof, and comfortable, with a soaring living-room ceiling balanced by an efficient galley kitchen. At 1,172 square feet, “It’s what the real estate people call cozy,” Willcox joked.

Exposed studs and sheathing planks create a warm effect, while the rigid foam insulation attached outside the sheathing means it heats easily.

Through a land-lease agreement, Willcox pays Isles-boro Affordable Property just under $100 month. The nonprofit owns the land and the shared wells and septic systems. Mortgage payments are in the $500 to $700 range for most, she said. If a house is sold, the home builder gets $5,000 back for the “sweat equity,” plus a percentage of the value of whatever improvements have been made (porches, decks, etc.).

Her son Sky graduated from the school—one in a class of three—so the happy ending was complete. “I’m so glad I made that commitment,” Willcox said, which made his education there possible.

These days, affordable housing includes both public efforts and a more informal, island network, Willcox said. Three of the original eight remain in the subdivision; the other five have moved off-island, she said, adding, “You come here and you appear to be useful, people will go the extra mile and find you a place.”

a barge carrying a piece of modular housing

Carving Out Funds for Island Affordable Housing

“Affordable” housing has a different meaning on the islands. Thanks to their desirability for seasonal homes and the finite land available, real estate costs are significantly higher than on the mainland.

Explaining that reality to legislators who were crafting a bond aimed at helping towns build affordable houses wasn’t easy, though. Genesis Community Loan Fund and the Island Institute were able to do so, and as a result, a $30 million bond package approved by Maine voters in 2010 included $2 million devoted to building affordable rental housing on year-round islands.

The rules for distributing the housing funds were crafted “for the needs of rural communities through flexible standards,” remembers Greg Payne, director of the Maine Affordable Housing Coalition. Those standards were written with islands in mind, he said.

Affordable housing initiatives typically target communities with lower median incomes, Payne said. Fishermen on islands would be ineligible under those standards, however, because some of those communities have high median incomes.

The rules for grant awards took island income into consideration, as well as the smaller scale of island projects; fewer units were built, which was less efficient, but made sense in small island towns, Payne said.

Construction costs are significantly higher on islands, too, a wrinkle that normally would have had legislators leaning away from such high-cost, low-return projects. Fortunately, significant lobbying of legislators persuaded them to understand and accept the island-specific challenges.

“The Island Institute had a big role in making a great success of the subset of this bond,” Payne said. He also credited Liza Fleming-Ives of Genesis.

Rental units were chosen over ownership to provide essential workforce housing, he said.

The island units built through the bond included six on Vinalhaven and two each on North Haven, Islesboro, Chebeague, Peaks, Isle au Haut, and Great Cranberry islands.


woman standing in front of house during winter

Counting Empty Houses Come Winter

Counting Empty Houses Come Winter

Affordable housing finds a foothold on Maine’s islands.

BY ANNIE MURPHY

Tiffany Tate knows the frustration of looking for affordable housing on an island where all real estate is expensive and rentals are hard to come by. She was raised in Washington County, but Tate’s family originally hails from Great Cranberry Isle; her grandfather built boats and was the Beal part of Beal and Bunker, which still runs the mailboat and ferry service.

After a complicated time living Downeast, including dozens of moves, Tate came to Great Cranberry in mid-2014 as a single mother, along with her five-year-old son, John. She was looking for more stability and a sense of community. And she was happy to find an islander willing to rent a summer cottage to her at far below the market rate. But when the cold weather arrived in the fall, Tate realized she had no options for winter housing.

“I was calling people, literally knocking on doors, asking, ‘Would it be possible to rent this house for the winter?’ It was a straight ‘Nope,’ or ‘Yep, it’s winterized, but we’re not renting it,’ or, ‘Nope, not renting it,’ ” she said.

“It’s their house, and of course that’s their right. But if you walk up the road in the wintertime, you’ll just see empty house, empty house. Someone home. Then empty house, empty house, empty house.”

If you walk up the road in the wintertime, you’ll just see empty house, empty house. Someone home. Then empty house, empty house, empty house . . .

This is the paradox of living year-round on an island in Maine: Housing is everywhere, but very few homes are affordable, or available to year-round residents.

Summer residents own much of island property; they pay taxes, put money into the local economy, and contribute in many more intangible ways. But the popularity of islands as sites for second homes has also translated into property values out of step with Maine’s economy. Combine that with geographic isolation and the high cost of living, and it’s increasingly hard for locals and young families to be part of island communities. Watching year-round populations fall, yet eager to remain viable communities, places like Great Cranberry are searching for ways to attract permanent residents, and affordable housing is always at the top of the list.

It was this context that gave shape to the Cranberry Isles Realty Trust, or CIRT. Founded in the late 1990s, the organization has grown from a few acres of donated land to five houses—four on Great Cranberry, and one on Islesford (Little Cranberry)—with a board, a general manager, a caretaker, and a bookeeper. It was CIRT that eventually rented a winterized place to Tiffany Tate. For year-round residents on many of Maine’s islands, similar organizations may be their best shot at preserving a way of life.

~

The night before I visited Great Cranberry, coastal Maine got its first true snowstorm of the season, knocking out power all along the coast, including on Great Cranberry. In the morning the ground was covered in a slick of ice, and the air had turned both damp and biting; with the exception of a woman in pink ballet flats and a thin blazer, everyone on the mailboat wore hooded sweatshirts, insulated canvas jackets, and winter boots. A baker from Bar Harbor sat across from me, bundled up to visit her sister and brother-in-law, who is a builder and caretaker.

She estimated that he looked after a total of 30 houses, and as we approached the dock, she began to point them out: neat, traditional places with steep roofs, their sides mostly finished in gray shingles or white clapboard.

“That one, that one. That one, too. Pretty much all of those.” Her arm made a broad arc to indicate a whole line of homes along the shore.

I waited at the dock for a few minutes, and soon 32-year-old Tiffany Tate pulled up in a creaking Trans Am. The car was a shimmery robin’s egg blue, and it was a few years older than she. Its passenger door was jammed shut. Tate jumped out. She seemed sturdy and somewhat delicate, too, with cropped brown hair and a careful smile.

Gesturing to me to climb across the driver’s seat, she swept away clothes, shards of tree bark, and a red backpack. Three days earlier, Tate had moved into one of the rent-controlled houses that CIRT had agreed to rent to her, and was still using the car to haul her belongings there, including multiple loads of firewood, which she’d been piling into the passenger seat and balancing on the hood of the car.

In her living room, we sat in front of a woodstove on stools and drank coffee with hazelnut creamer. Along with other staples like toilet paper, pasta, and rice, she orders the coffee and creamers from Walmart or Amazon and has them shipped to the town dock. Any perishables require a trip to Southwest Harbor, or higher prices at the island store.

The room was full of the thin, silvery light of early winter. Other than us, the stove, the stools, her clothes, and a few groceries scattered in the kitchen, the place was largely empty; her son was with his dad on Islesford—he and Tate have a friendly relationship, and share custody—and all the furniture for this house was still stored in its basement. Tate said she’d planned to move the pieces upstairs bit by bit. She’d been doing a lot of sitting, just trying to get used to being on her own in the empty space.

“I’m not used to being alone, or houses that are quiet,” she said. “CIRT is really a godsend. It’s making it possible for my child to have a normal life.”

When we spoke about where she’s from, she described an absent father, her mother’s problems with addiction, and a tangled list of hard living situations. She also talked about how important her son is to her, the raw beauty of the Maine coast, a sense of gratitude for having learned the skills she’s built a life out of, like blueberry raking, wreath making, periwinkle collecting, clamming, scalloping, hunting, music, art, and writing—and the feeling that she’s finally found a home.

“I wasn’t raised here, but it’s where my heart is; I guess that’s the best way to put it. Here I’m close to my son, and I’m close to my family’s roots. My mother’s buried in the cemetery up the street. My grandfather’s buried on the island. That’s what it’s about for me.”


“I wasn’t raised here, but it’s where my heart is; I guess that’s the best way to put it.”

young girl hugging chicken

Tate stood, turned her back to me, and lifted her shirt to show a giant phoenix tattooed across her shoulders.

“I got this when I moved away from Washington County,” she said, pulling down her shirt and returning to her stool. “It’s about rebirth. Growing stronger, and all of that.”

She grinned.

“Of course, it’s also the Trans Am symbol. I mean, come on.”

We finished our coffee and bundled up for the snow. When I asked Tate for directions to the next interview, she pointed at the house next door, then drove off for another load of belongings, the back end of the Trans Am fishtailing gracefully across the ice.

~

Phil Whitney lives in his grandparents’ old house, which he inherited and moved into with his wife, Karin, after decades of working overseas for the state department. It was clear he’d been eager to return, and that he’s stayed busy ever since. Sitting in his cozy living room, surrounded by blankets and family photos, Whitney talked about being part of many of the island’s organizations, including CIRT, the logic behind making affordable housing available—and why islands like Great Cranberry truly need the young families living in the CIRT houses.

“In the 1980s, prices along the coast of Maine skyrocketed, and never really looked back,” he said. “So if islands were going to avoid becoming entirely summer residences, something had to be done to provide year-round housing for average people. Now it’s grown into the idea that we should be looking for people who not only need affordable housing, but can also bring useful skills to the island. Especially families with school-aged kids.”

According to Whitney, any islander knows that a thriving school is key to attracting and keeping families as year-round residents. Although the school on Great Cranberry “ran out” of kids in 2000, when I visited, eight school-aged children were living on-island—and five of them were in CIRT houses. There are plans to reopen the school, and residents approved a $450,000 budget for repairs and remodeling.

Around noon, Karin Whitney emerged from the kitchen with fried-egg sandwiches cooked atop a woodstove, then disappeared to deal with a water issue caused by the power outage.

Phil Whitney wants to see Great Cranberry grow, but says island life isn’t for everyone.

“Some people just aren’t cut out to be surrounded by water and to live with just fifty or sixty other people all winter. Let’s put it that way.”

During the summer, Whitney helps run a shuttle that brings people from one end of the island to the other. He speaks to hundreds of day-trippers, and says that when they come in July and August, many of them claim that it’s a paradise, and that they’d love to live on-island all year. So he sits and talks with them some more.

“I say, ‘Do you realize what it’s like in January? When you have no generator and the power goes out? Have you thought of what you’ll do for work here?’ ” He smiles. “When I get through, the percentage of people who want to live out here has narrowed considerably.”

Even those who end up happy on the island waver. When Jen Walls and her husband, Ben, decided to move into another one of the CIRT houses, Jen felt like backing out at the last minute.

“I went over to my girlfriend’s house the day before; I said ‘Call Craigslist, call my family, call my friends. Find me something else. Anything!’ ” she told me. “We didn’t have any money saved. We just had no idea what we were heading into.”

Walls has curly dark hair and wears glasses, and the day we met, she was bundled up in a peacoat, since the power was out. Though Ben has family in Otter Creek, near Bar Harbor, they’d been raising their three daughters in Southern Maine, and were eager for a change. Rent was too high, and their neighborhood in Biddeford felt so unsafe that their oldest daughter, Marla, didn’t like to leave the house.

“There was a lot of drug use and crime. Just in our building there was a rape, a burglary, and two meth labs. Every morning we’d wake up and just smell pot and cigarettes,” said Walls.

So she and Ben, who’d been working as a cook, went on Craigslist, entered in their maximum rent—$800—and their minimum number of bedrooms—three—and found the CIRT listing, at $750 for a three-bedroom home.

“Everywhere else, it was so hard to find housing,” she said. “I’d call, and they’d say, ‘How many in your family? . . . Oh, our septic can’t handle five people.’ Or, ‘The space isn’t big enough for five people.’ But when we looked at this place, [the people at CIRT] were like, ‘Oh, you have kids.’ And they were excited.”

A few weeks later, the Walls family decided to move. Now that they’re on-island, Ben does carpentry, and is studying to be an EMT; Jen, who’s trained as a nurse, has been helping out with elderly residents and doing books for the local boatyard, while also training to be registered as an accountant, cleaning houses, and working with the historical society. And all three girls are at the school on nearby Islesford, and say they love island life—even thirteen-year-old Marla, who in spite of not liking their old neighborhood, had close friends she didn’t want to leave behind.

family posing with cats and dog

“I say, ‘Do you realize what it’s like in January? When you have no generator and the power goes out? Have you thought of what you’ll do for work here?’”

“On the way to visit the island, she said she wasn’t coming if we moved out. But on the way back, she was like, ‘We are definitely moving there!,’ ” said her mother.

Everyone I spoke with told me it’s common to have a strong reaction to the island. Ingrid Gaither works at the local store, and first came out after seeing an ad in The Working Waterfront while she and her husband Ric were exploring Maine. They immediately fell in love with the island, yet they moved back to North Carolina after two years.

“It was what we thought it was—but not always easy,” Gaither remembered. She was wearing a kerchief over her hair, and heating water in a kettle to wash dishes at the store while Ric chatted with another customer over coffee, then went to collect their son.

As far as Phil Whitney was concerned, what mattered was that the Gaithers returned.

“They called me up three or four years ago, interested in coming back,” said Whitney. “The CIRT houses were occupied; a full year passed, and finally I said, ‘Why don’t you come up here; I’ll let you stay in one of my houses on Southwest Harbor, you pay utilities. It’ll give you a foothold.’”

They came up on New Year’s Day, immediately got jobs on Great Cranberry, and eventually transitioned to living on the island when a CIRT house became available.

Yet finding an affordable rental is just one part of the challenge facing anyone who really wants to live on an island. What happens after working-class, year-round residents rent for a few years, and decide they want to put down roots and own a home?

“To buy property, we have to really save,” says Gaither. “But we also have to coincide with someone selling their place—someone who specifically wants a year-round resident in there. We don’t ask for anything free, but we just can’t afford to buy in the market for summer people.”

According to Whitney, CIRT also wants to offer support to year-round residents on this front, too. He says the organization has started to consider selling CIRT houses to renters, with contracts that say the new owners won’t resell within a certain amount of time, and that when they do, they must keep the properties affordable, or simply sell them back to CIRT. He also mentioned that CIRT had started to try brokering sales by residents who want to see the island thrive and are willing to sell to year-round residents who don’t earn a lot of money at a price they can still afford.

Ownership is a particular concern for Tiffany Tate, who, like many Mainers, makes her living by piecing together income from different jobs, and knows it will be hard to get a loan.

“Right now, the way I work, it’s a blessing and a curse, because the bank looks at you and says, ‘Nope, you can’t show us a steady income. You keep changing jobs. Sorry.’ You get laughed at. It’s kind of unrealistic to imagine that I could own something out here, unless someone would directly sell me a piece of property.”

Tate was planning to focus on the immediate future. “It’s just time to work, to try to save up money,” she said. “And hopefully, someday, get a place.”

Phil Whitney also hopes that young islanders like Tate and Ben and Jen Walls will eventually have an opportunity to own property, and to stay on the island.

“If we can just keep finding housing and land opportunities for younger people with the skills to be happy here, I think we can save this island.”

He, like Tate, has spent a lot of time walking the island, contemplating the future of Great Cranberry.

“Last winter we had forty-eight people here; this year I think we’ll be up to fifty-eight,” he said. “I know, because all last winter I would walk the roads at night, and count the lights on.”

Annie Murphy is a journalist and radio producer. Her stories are published by The Atlantic, Harper’s, National Public Radio, and others. She runs a media studio called Ruraliste.