by Sarah Craighead Dedmon

 Machias selectman Warren Gay proposed a town moratorium on recreational marijuana sales at the selectboard meeting last Wednesday evening. “Medical marijuana, I go along with one-hundred percent. But, I go along with having a moratorium on the recreational side,” he said. “I’m against [recreational marijuana] because I know what it does.”

by Sarah Craighead Dedmon

 Food editor Amy Traverso put her family in a small RV last summer and left Massachusetts to drive the length of the Maine coast. Her mission? To find the best lobster roll in Maine, “...which, accounting for geography and the fact that these are the freshest, sweetest lobsters you’ll find, makes it reasonable to then declare it the best in New England, and thus in the country,” she wrote.

by Ruth Leubecker

A variety of ventures, often inching forward one step at a time, are responding to the variegated urgent needs in Washington County.

COMMENTARY

It didn’t happen overnight, and many of these enterprises are dedicated to staying, albeit facing a challenging survival. The Machias Marketplace, with its mantra of “local food for local people,” is now 12 years old. After a rocky start followed by seven years under Machias Hardware, it now has a new location adjacent to Posh and across from True Value. 

This mark, known as “The King’s Broad Arrow,” was placed onto the tallest, straightest white pine of colonial Maine. Anyone cutting a tree so marked risked serious punishment. These trees were reserved for use as masts and spars of His Majesty’s Navy. If Britannia truly “ruled the waves,” it did so through harnessing the wind into sails held in place by wood taken from the forests of Maine.

by Sarah Craighead Dedmon

Machiasport voters approved 49 articles in 51 minutes at the annual town meeting last Monday night, including one which establishes Machiasport as a dry town for marijuana. 

Maine voters approved a referendum legalizing recreational marijuana for adults over the age of 21 during last November’s elections. The state then placed a moratorium delaying the sale of recreational marijuana until February 2018. 

by Sarah Craighead Dedmon

 Long before Machias’ Nash Building became a local symbol of Main Street decline and revitalization, it held a fruit and confectionary store operated by Italian immigrants. 

 Joseph Toschi came to Machias in the late 1800’s with his children and son-in-law, Ernest Mugnai. According to Mugnai’s great-grandson, Michael Hoyt, Mugnai imported fruit and candy by train from Boston to sell in his Machias fruit store.

July in Washington County disproves the theory summer is full of lazy days. In this week’s paper alone you’ll find news of something fascinating, enriching, musical or physical to do nearly every day of the month. 

This little goat ushered in a new category at the 4th Annual Moosabec Pet Show—small farm animals sampling everything that might be edible and engaging a large cat. Photo by Nancy Beal

by Ruth Leubecker

The Fourth of July aka Independence Day is etched into America’s playbook as a day of phenomenal thankfulness. As well it should be.

The Continental Congress 241 years ago declared that 13 struggling American colonies were a new nation -- the United States of America -- and no longer under the direction and dictates of the British Empire.

Nature got it right

Summer’s wild blueberry creations become autumn’s scenery -- grand beyond conception. Maine’s wild blueberries are different because nature got it right!

Our unique and special wild lowbush blueberries grow on plants that Mother Nature gives us from underground vines (rhizomes), and their above-ground fruit-bearing low bushes four to 10 inches tall.