Fishermen’s Pottery Uniquely Downeast

By Nancy Beal

Broderick Alley is a full-time Beals Island lobster fisherman with the maximum allowable number of lobster traps — 800 — which he hauls from a 43-foot lobster boat named Miss Jennifer. 

The boat is named after his daughter, Jennifer Ciappetta, who also lives on Beals and, like her father, fishes 800 traps from her 36-foot Bigfoot & Carissa, named for her two standard poodles. They act as each other’s sternman, hauling his gang of traps one day and hers the next.

By Phil Stuart

Fred Kneeland Jr. of Cherryfield will be inducted into the Maine Baseball Hall of Fame on Oct. 26 in Portland. Freddie follows in the footsteps of Addison’s Dickie Norton who was inducted in 2023 and joins a surprising number of Downeasters selected for that honor. 

Kneeland becomes the 16th Washington County resident to enter the Hall of Fame and the second from Cherryfield, joining major leaguer Carlton Willey, who was in the initial class back in 1970. 

By Paul Sylvain

Today’s youths will one day determine the future of their community. Fort O’Brien School seventh and eighth grade students in principal Susan Almendinger’s class spent the recently completed school year learning about their town’s government and history and developing a group project that will one day lead to a recreation trail for residents and visitors to enjoy.

by Jonathan Reisman

My maternal grandfather, Abraham Plaut, left me many gifts — a love of baseball, bridge, parody, the English language, and Yiddish idioms. Lately, all of those have been combining into a recurrent thought/meme: Oy vey iz mir, or woe is/to me. The Ashkenazi cultural overlay usually brings the phrase a touch of coping comedic optimism (hand wave/press to forehead) as opposed to depressed despair (chin cup/frown), but recent events have been challenging. 

Oy Vey: 

By Paul Sylvain

Midway between a bicentennial and a tercentenary celebration is this peculiarly named anniversary called a “semiquincentennial,” and this year marked the semiquincentennial — or, in plain English, the 250th — anniversary of the Battle of the Margaretta, which is considered by the U.S. Navy and many others to be the first Naval engagement of the American Revolution.

By Nancy Beal

Jonesport’s annual town meeting was held March 10, but voting didn’t end that day. Late last month, a handful of citizens came to the elementary school gym to consider a budget for the ensuing year and, breaking from tradition, voted it down. Next, a building permit allowing a $100 million land-based fish farm was challenged and, as it developed, required a couple of ordinance changes to settle. All will be taken up in special town meetings next month.

By Paul Sylvain

Scarcely a week after the last acrid cloud of black powder gunsmoke from last weekend’s Margaretta Days celebration has faded from the mock Revolutionary War battlefields at West Branch Farms, it’s time this weekend for the dust, exhaust smoke, and fun of the 4th Annual Machias ATV Jamboree downtown at the Pellon Center.

The first Machias ATV Jamboree was held in 2022, but organizers last year said the first “real” ATV jamboree was in 2023. The 2024 jamboree was even bigger, with more of the same on tap for next weekend.

by Jonathan Reisman

The special “emergency” legislative session has mercifully almost completed its work and mission to advance leftist lunacy and screw over anyone who doesn’t agree, especially in rural Maine. 

By Paul Sylvain

If there was one song to define Sherry Preston’s five-decades-long career with Hannaford’s in Machias, it would have to be Love Will Keep Us Together by The Captain and Tennille. You’d have to love your job and the people you’ve worked with and for, to stick “together” with a job for half a century.

Voters to Consider Food Sovereignty Ordinance

By Paul Sylvain

Machiasport residents will be gathering to elect a selectboard and a school committee on Monday, June 23, with polls open at Fort O’Brien School from noon to 6 p.m. The annual town meeting to act on a 49-article combined education and municipal funding warrant follows that same evening, beginning at 6 p.m. in the FOB gymnasium.

Arlene Porter has been the Washington Academy librarian for fifteen years, but her history with WA spans a lifetime. As a child, she grew up playing in what is now the Cates Dormitory; she met her husband, Scott Porter, '80, at Washington Academy and then lived in the very same house she used to play in when Mr. Porter was the Assistant Head of School and Athletic Director.

By Paul Sylvain

From opening gavel to motion to adjourn, it took about two dozen Machias voters just 57 minutes to dispense with a 47-article annual town meeting warrant on June 11.

Moderator Betsy Fitzgerald wasted no time moving the meeting along from article to article. It also helped that, with the exception of a handful of articles, there was little or no discussion as each item was brought up. In the end, every article passed intact, as presented, without amendment.

As the weather warms and gardens come to life, Maine gardeners have the opportunity to support pollinators while enjoying their outdoor spaces. Simple steps, like planting native flowers that bloom all season, removing invasive species, and preserving nesting habitats, can transform any garden into a pollinator haven. To guide and inspire these efforts University of Maine Cooperative Extension offers two resources to help gardeners support pollinators: the Pollinator-Friendly Gardening course and the Pollinator-Friendly Garden Certification.

By Nancy Beal

Town meetings in the Moosabec area for the purpose of voting on proposed school budgets are traditionally low-key affairs, attended mainly by selectmen, school board members, a few teachers, and their families. This spring, it was different. A lot different.

Last month, the Jonesport Elementary School budget was rejected by a handful of voters and has since been reworked. It will go before voters on June 18. 

Board Rebukes Clam Committee for Recommending Approval

By Paul Sulvain

An application from Kennth Faas for a 2025 resident clamming license that was denied by Machiasport Town Clerk Marcia Hayward resulted in an emergency meeting of the town’s selectboard on June 4.

Holmes, Wood Crowned This Year’s Alewife King and Queen

By Will Tuell

Hundreds crowded into a steamy gym at Elm Street School in East Machias Friday night as the school bid adieu to its eighth grade class with ceremony, sentimentality, and, just as importantly, for those who know principal Tony Maker and his staff, levity. 

By Paul Sylvain

Coinciding on the 250th anniversary of the June 12, 1775, Battle of the Margaretta, local artist Tom Brennan and many of the town’s Revolutionary War reenactors will be on hand at Machias Savings Bank, 4 Center St., on June 12, for a 6:30 p.m. unveiling of an oil painting by local artist Tom Brennan, depicting one of the events of that historic day.

Burnham Tavern serves as the backdrop for the painting, which shows a group of Machias patriots on their way to capture the British vessel HMS Margaretta on that fateful day. “

By Paul Sylvain

Six months after the Machias Selectboard ordered an immediate stop to all work on a self-storage facility under construction on Dublin Street, work may soon resume on the project, depending on what the town’s planning board decides at its June 4 meeting.

By Paul Sylvain

Few jobs carry the responsibility school bus drivers have, ensuring they safely deliver what substitute driver Steven Tilney last week called “precious cargo” to school and back each day.

With that in mind, an unexpected wrinkle arose on May 27, during the annual town meeting vote on the 2025-‘26 Machias school budget. A seemingly routine funding article seeking approval for $170,886 for school transportation led to a 13-minute exchange about the need for a pay raise for substitute bus drivers.

By Paul Sylvain 

Officers with the Washington County Sheriff's Office (WCSO) and the Maine Drug Enforcement Agency (MDEA) arrested 11 people on drug trafficking and other charges in Roque Bluffs and Centerville following the simultaneous execution of two warrants on May 29. 

Maine’s Department of Public Safety said in a media release Friday that the arrests came as a result of a months-long drug trafficking investigation at 75 Duck Cove Road in Roque Bluffs and 43 Mitten Mountain Road in Centerville. 

Arrested at 75 Duck Cove, Roque Bluffs, were:

U.S. Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, has announced that five tribal communities in Maine have been awarded $6,456,253 through the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s (HUD) Indian Housing Block Grant (IHBG). These grants support the development and maintenance of affordable housing.

Downeast Institute (DEI), Maine Aquaculture Innovation Center, Maine Center for Entrepreneurs, and partners will host “Shell-ebration,” an event focused on emerging opportunities for shellfish aquaculture in Washington County, from 10:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. Sunday, June 8, at Downeast Institute, 39 Wildflower Lane, in Beals, Maine. The event is free and open to the public and will take place rain or shine.