Features

Carols were sung, love letters written, and chimneys descended during a holiday celebration at Centennial Hall in Harpswell Center on Saturday, Dec. 6. Harpswell Community Theater and the Harpswell Garden Club put on the event, which included the variety show "Tis a Night in Harpswell" and a traditional tree-lighting ceremony.

The annual lighting of the Christmas trees in Cundy's Harbor had an old-fashioned addition this year: horse-drawn wagon rides through the village. Horses Ben and Bill pulled the wagon and socialized with riders.

Like a lot of people his age, Tim McCreight smiles when he looks back on his college years in the late 1960s and early '70s. His reasons, however, might be different than most.

This month marks the 84th anniversary of the infamous Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941. The surprise assault sank four battleships, killed thousands and hurled the United States headlong into the Second World War. However, a persistent coastal Maine legend suggests the Axis powers actually fired their first fatal shot on an American vessel five months earlier, 5,000 miles east of Hawaii and not far from Bailey Island.

The Theater Project's Young Company put on "Frankenstein," playwright Dorothy Louise's adaptation of Mary Shelley's classic 1818 novel, from Nov. 7-16 to coincide with the release of a new film adaptation directed by Guillermo del Toro. The Brunswick nonprofit helps children and adults build skills and express themselves through theater.

"One night at the warming center, I looked around and thought of the movie "Groundhog Day." We were all doing the same thing every day, waking up without a home and then passing the day. Some people smoke it away or drink it away. Some people, including me, go to the library. But we all end up back in that same spot, sleeping on blankets spread across the hard floor."

More Harpswell motorists have collided with deer in recent years, leading law enforcement and town officials to recommend heightened vigilance on local roads. Some are urging more residents to hunt the animals or allow local hunters on their land.

"Swedish settlers began arriving in northern Maine in 1870, leaving behind famine and feudalism. They were paupers and most went to the Midwest, but Maine's economy needed labor to build rail lines. Bowdoin graduate W.W. Thomas Jr. was consul to Sweden during the Civil War, and he helped recruit a group of settlers who were no strangers to hard winters and rocky soil."

Atlantic bluefin tuna appear to be making a comeback, here in the Gulf of Maine and across the entire Atlantic.

Old cemeteries may seem spooky to some, but to John Collette and Tom Simpson, of Collette Monuments, they're enduring records of community history worth preserving.