Maine

Washington, Maine: Medomak Family Camp

As dawn broke over the lake this morning, your daughter caught her first perch. A few hours later, your son paddled to Loon Island with a new friend while you read several chapters (in one sitting!) of a novel you’d been meaning to start for years. At dusk, after a gourmet lobster bake, you and […]

History

New England By the Numbers | Stats on the Six States

$71,000 amount generated by traffic tickets last year in Brighton, Vermont (pop. 1,200). Can you say “speed trap”? 4,180 cows now enrolled in Vermont’s “Cow Power” program, producing enough methane to power 1,229 Vermont homes 250 works of art in the permanent collection of the Museum of Bad Art (MOBA), located in Dedham, MA 216 […]

Food

Best Cook: Strawberries

For four precious weeks in early summer, strawberries by the ton come up out of Maxwell’s strawberry fields, which lie across Cape Elizabeth like random quilt squares. They come by the truckload to the Maxwell farm market, to Maine supermarkets, and into Elsie Maxwell’s kitchen and freezer. Ken and Elsie Maxwell are the fifth generation […]

Magazine

What You Like (and Don’t) in March/April

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 […]

Maine

The Pride of Eastport | Here in New England

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.

History

The Three Most-Often-Asked Questions

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 […]

Magazine

The Best of New England — Plus a “Worst”

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 […]

History

Thoughts On Ups and Downs and Overs and Outs

The New England language is probably easier to learn than one of the numerous New England accents. But like English itself, there are few rules. As soon as you’ve identified a rule, you discover more exceptions than examples. For instance, you might hear a Maine man say he intends to go gunnin’ for partridge that […]