Columns

Bailey Island General Store has a rack of lovely Bailey Island postcards, and sometimes I buy a few to send to friends. Perhaps you sent a card or two this year and perhaps 100 years from now they will wind up in someone's collection.

Capt. Andrew Dunning, of Harpswell, was a master mariner and coastal trader who sailed his sloop Mary in coastal trade as far north as Cape Breton Island, Canada and as far south as the Carolinas.

Have you ever thought that the lobster fisherman's life is the life for you? Have you ever thought how nice it would be if you were independent, could work when you pleased, and could have the freedom of the ocean?

Maine author Carol Gardner’s "The Involuntary American: A Scottish Prisoner's Journey to the New World" follows the experiences of Thomas Doughty, a Scotsman brought to New England in 1650 as a prisoner of war.

The Mount Ararat National Honor Society has been very active in the community over the past few months. Under the direction of chapter advisor Rob Messier, President Megan Reed and Vice President Fern Beede, the group has completed a number of service projects to better the community.

When we landed in Harpswell, local friends told me about the fisher population. Surely they were pulling my leg; fishers would not be found here! In fact, fishers are quite common in our area, along with coyotes and the occasional bobcat.

"Why don't you write something positive about aging? You know, the good things about growing older?" I looked at this woman, whom I genuinely love with all my heart, suddenly thankful that we had kept up the payments on our long-term care policies.

In the fall of 2020, Mount Ararat High School opened a brand-new campus on Eagles Way. In the past year, not only have we gotten a new school, but we have also gotten a new principal, new teachers, new school board members and, for the first time in almost two years, the entire student body has been back together in school five days a week.

This, the plague of the 21st century, seems to me in many ways an endless case of deja vu. Some of the challenges that we faced in the past year and a half I can remember being warned about in my childhood.

During a trip to England in September of this year, my wife and I took a daytrip to Harpswell, Lincolnshire, the original Harpswell after which our Maine town was named. We first learned that Harpswell had been named after the Lincolnshire village from a book of Harpswell history gifted to us when we moved here 10 years ago.