Magazine

The Restorer

The water still calls to him. Nearly 40 years living in Down East Maine hasn’t changed that for Jon Wilson. He’s not on the ocean as much as he’d like–his work keeps him more tethered to the land than it used to, he’ll say–but the longtime sailor still gets out there when he can. He’s […]

Yankee

Expressionist Island

The gentle Cranberry Isles scattered off the shores of rugged Mount Desert Island have provided shelter and subject matter to some of the best artists in modern Maine art history – William Kienbusch, John Heliker, Robert LaHotan, Dorothy Eisner, Emily Nelligan, Ashley Bryan, Gretna Campbell, and Campbell’s son Henry Finkelstein. Like most of the artists […]

Magazine

Spend a Winter Day in New England

7:30 A.M. WHERE THE SUN RISES FIRST Sunrise from Cadillac Mountain reveals a coastline carved with a crooked knife. From that famous vantage on Mount Desert Island, the coast of Maine comes out of the dark. It’s a complicated affair of peninsulas and coves, a jigsaw of rock and water, a play of motion and […]

Yankee

Joel Babb’s Real World

Joel Babb possesses that preternatural ability to paint complex visual realities both with high fidelity and poetic expression. Hyperrealism is an aesthetic not always valued on the contemporary art scene these days but one he shares with a handful of other fine painters of Maine, among them Richard Estes, Linden Frederick, and Alan Magee. In […]

Maine

Mount Desert Island, Maine | Yankee Classic

Excerpt from “This New England: Mount Desert Island, Maine,” Yankee Magazine, August 1981. When Samuel De Champlain named Mount Desert Island, he did so because he was so struck by the barren, deserted summits of the stretch of mountains that give the island its soft, rounded profile. Though the mountains’ summits remain deserted, the island […]

Maine

Maine Dining 2009

DINING Best Catch: FISHERMAN’S CATCH, Wells It’s completely understandable why locals would rather keep the Cardinali family’s off-the-beaten-path chowder and fish joint a secret. This salt-marsh-view restaurant is renowned for its light, crispy, fresh fried fish as well as for its generous lobster rolls–but don’t even think about skipping dessert. The freshly baked blueberry pie […]

Maine

Maine Lodging: Inn at Isle au Haut

Looking for lodging on an island in Maine? Check in at Inn at Isle au Haut. Diana Santospago is best known among islanders for two things: her 1938 Pontiac named “Clydie,” which spends as much time on the side of the road awaiting repairs as it does actually on the road, and her superb cooking, […]

Yankee

Dorothy Eisner on Cranberry and in Boston

Dorothy Eisner (1906-1984) was a thoroughly modernist painter who worked her way through most of the artistic trends of the 20th century from the Ashcan School and Social Realism to Abstract Expressionism. Her mature work, however, took the form of a rather Matisse-like application of painterly expressionism, very loose, free, and colorful, to paintings of […]

New England

Camping: Acadia National Park in Maine

Most parents gauge the growth of their children by penciling their heights against the bedroom wall. My wife and I can tell the kids are getting on in years by what they accomplish at Acadia each summer. We start by setting up camp. Acadia’s more popular campground, Blackwoods, sits off the congested Park Loop, so […]

History

New England Coast Trivia | New England By the Numbers

14 Maine communities boasting dog-friendly beaches: Bar Harbor, Biddeford, Kennebunk, Kennebunkport, Kittery, Ogunquit, Old Orchard Beach, Portland, Saco, Scarborough, South Portland, Stockton Springs, Wells, and York 6 number of the nation’s 28 most important estuaries that are located in New England 1,530 weight in pounds of a shortfin mako shark harpooned 13 miles off the […]