Well, it has happened: after two decades of writing about this place, and seeing people still react as though life on an unbridged, offshore island is indeed peculiar, and that full-time island…

Anybody, these days, might understandably feel conflicted. A resourceful and resilient citizen cheerfully looking for silver linings to the crisis one minute, singing with others on the computer…

“Does this count as school?”  

That question, now a wise-aleck remark uttered with rolled eyes or a wink, is a Murray family one-liner.

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This is the time of year when many of us tackle our big scary household jobs. In these winter months, while the summer people think we have nothing to do, the DIY-ers among us (meaning most…

Back around Thanksgiving, if you recall, the news was filled with reports of the “busiest travel days of the year.” By airliner and by car--occasionally tossing in “by train” for good measure--…

The veterans of World War II are in their 90s now. There is a monument in Washington, D.C., recognizing their efforts to basically save the world from tyranny, and a great many of these veterans…

On Sunday, June 23, at about 9:30 a.m., about 40-some residents of (and a few regular visitors to) Matinicus Island assembled at the harbor, waiting for the arrival of a small group of lobster…

Sharon Daley, RN is the first and to date the only nurse associated with the telemedicine program on the Maine Seacoast Mission vessel Sunbeam, which makes regular visits to many of Maine’s…

Part 1: A discussion with the captain and the engineer about breaking ice, the needs of a steel boat, and the substitute mission vessel Moonbeam

For over a century the Maine…

A few out-of-state friends have asked how things are going. I enjoy this time of year, but they don’t believe me. 

I don’t like the cold rain we are getting as I write (and yes, that was…

Birding “well out to sea” isn’t just about the puffins.

My mother-in-law always swore that she had once seen a mountain bluebird on Matinicus Island, back when she lived here in the 1970s…

Our kitchen floor is scattered with bits of the woods out back — twigs, fir needles, and the occasional snarl of pale green lichen, usnea I think, “Old Man’s Beard” — or that’s what I’ve…

These notes begin aboard the ferry bound for Matinicus. I sit in the cab of my 36-foot U-Haul; in front of me, a fisherman’s ton truck laden with a couple of frighteningly unsecured bait boxes,…

It’s time for many among us to begin thinking about closing up for the winter. Well—you, maybe; not me. As I write, rocking and rolling on the state ferry vessel Everett Libby Rockland-…