The first story I published in Yankee was about a potato farmer’s wife from Aroostook County, Maine. Her name was Avis Dudley. The year was 1977, and Avis Dudley’s homestead had become a local landmark in northern Maine. During the fall potato harvest, her husband’s hired hands would crowd into Avis’s dining room and be […]
Our March/April issue is now on sale where magazines are sold, and subscribers have had a head start in reading the issue — so it is time to open the mail and see what readers think: Can you stand more feedback about Yankee‘s new format? I was first introduced to Yankee Magazine when I was […]
The March/April issue arrived here at Yankee Publishing a few days ago. Up until the time I can actually hold it in my hand, the issue is more a collection of separate pages, separate galleys that I see day after day posted on the wall of our conference room. Seeing a magazine take shape that […]
Yankee‘s spring issue (March/April) leaves our Dublin, N.H., offices soon, on its way to the printing plant where in the next few weeks the intricate process of getting a magazine printed, bound, and on its way to readers takes place. This is a sneak peek. Of course I am close to the contents since I […]
New. A New Year. A New Yankee. What is not new is that Yankee‘s readers care. Big time. For the past few days my phone here has been ringing off the hook with loyal, faithful, readers, many of whom feel their longtime friend, Yankee Magazine, has gone away. At the moment, I am not their […]
Eastport, Maine, has always looked to the sea for its identity and the livelihoods of its 1,900 residents. When the last of its 18 sardine canneries closed in the 1980s, salmon farming, scalloping, and diving for sea urchins filled in—but the town’s economic life has never ceased being hard and uncertain.
WHEN I WAS GROWING up on our farm in Vanceboro, Maine, during the 1930s and ’40s, my mother always put on a Nativity play for the townspeople on Christmas Eve using mostly members of the family and various animals from the farm. I first participated at about age 5 or 6. My role the first […]
THE WEEKEND BEFORE Memorial Day is when a lot of wonderful commercial enterprises along the Maine coast open up for the summer tourist season. Bertha Nunan’s Lobster Hut, in the tiny fishing village of Cape Porpoise (just up from Kennebunkport), is a case in point. Multiple generations of Nunans have been hauling lobster traps off […]
1. Were “spring dance floors” built to spring? 2. Where, exactly, does “down east” begin? 3. Why were bridges covered? WELL, LET’S BEGIN with the term “down east.” We all know it’s a nautical way of referring to sailing with the wind or down wind when traveling northeast off the Maine coast. Where down east […]
IF I WERE TO compile a list of what I consider to be New England’s “bests,” I wouldn’t include many restaurants, resorts, specialty boutiques, museums, country fairs, and the like. Those things change too quickly and, besides, the current September issue of YANKEE Magazine, celebrating its 70th anniversary in grand style, is devoted to that […]
ASKED SOME YEARS AGO by a Boston Globe reporter for his description of the “ideal wife,” Captain Eliot Winslow, a well-known tourist boat operator out of Boothbay Harbor, Maine, replied, “She ought to be able to dig clams. She ought to be able to split wood. And she ought to be able to row my […]
I love to recall in my mind some of the old stories and jokes I’ve known for years. To me, it’s like humming a favorite tune over and over. Maybe one of the reasons these old stories live on in my mind-and in the minds of others-is that they each seem to reflect one or […]
