By Susan Hand Shetterly Illustration by Jada Fitch From our April 2024 issue “Anybody want this lost dogs?” the man’s voice grated over the aisles of the Winter Harbor 5 & 10. We froze, my kids and I. We couldn’t see the man or the dog because we were four aisles away, come to pick out a broom and a screwdriver for me and art supplies for Cait, my four-year-old daughter, and Aran, my eight-year-old son. It poured outside — a drab March rain. The town of Winter Harbor, on the down east coast, borders the village of Prospect Harbor, where we lived then. Like ours, it was a fishing community ..read more

Hammering His Talent Home A longtime dabbler in carpentry, Westbrook native Sam Broaddus only started working in wood seriously after he retired as director of urology at Maine Medical Center in 2014. That summer, he shadowed his brother-in-law, a professional cabinetmaker. “I sort of apprenticed for him, installing kitchens and working in his workshop,” Broaddus says. Together, the two constructed Broaddus’s worktable with wood from the red-oak tree that once stood at his childhood home. “My workbench is made from the tree that I used to climb as a kid,” he says. Photo by Dave Waddell When Br ..read more

When Cameron Gartley accepted a position as a personal lines account executive at Allen Insurance and Financial in 2016, he wasn’t focused on the company’s employee-ownership structure. A recent college graduate, he was just happy to have a job. “Even after my onboarding, it didn’t register how that structure might benefit me long-term,” he says.  It sank in a year later, when the company went from being 33 to 100 percent employee-owned. “Now, it’s one of the things we talk about most with our clients and potential future co-owners,” Gartley says. “When you are one of a very small number ..read more

With a median age of 45 and baby boomers comprising 27 percent of the population, Maine is the oldest state in the union. As a result, Maine has a large share of adult children caring for their older parents, as well as a large number of retirees relying on out-of-state health plans. In serving both groups, the professionals at Androscoggin Home Healthcare and Hospice, Maine’s largest home healthcare organization, emphasize “navigating” the healthcare-delivery landscape, not merely “managing” it. They understand the challenge in determining what services loved ones qualify for and what supplem ..read more

By Nora Saks Photos by Aliza Eliazarov From our March 2024 issue Photographer Aliza Eliazarov For Kittery photographer Aliza Eliazarov, finding subjects for her new book of dog portraits was a walk in the park. “The human-dog bond is really special and something people want to celebrate,” says Eliazarov, an educator at a New Hampshire animal shelter who previously published a book of farm-animal portraits. She and her husband and co-writer, Ed Doty, solicited candidates in their community and on social media, then spent two years traveling around Maine (and as far away as Indiana) capturing a ..read more

The mural It’s a Beautiful Day, Whenever We’re Together, by Ryan Adams and Rachel Gloria Adams (pictured with Thompson), welcomes visitors to Thompson’s Point. By Michaela Cavallaro Photos by Bonnie Durham From our March 2024 issue On a patch of grass near the entrance to Thompson’s Point, in Portland, an art installation has grown alongside the mixed-use development that occupies a 19th-century rail yard. The Tree of 40 Fruit comprises four trees artist Sam Van Aken has grafted to produce 40 varieties of stone fruit apiece. In spring, the little orchard blooms into a mosaic of pink, white, an ..read more

By Virginia M. Wright From our February 2024 issue Last September, Lynn Bonsey, a bespectacled 70-year-old whose nickname is Clod, deadpanned her way through a 35-second TikTok chronicle of indignities suffered since she was a teenager. “This is where I got stuck in the waterslide,” she said, standing in front of Funtown Splashtown USA, in Saco. “This,” she continued outside a Falmouth church, “is where I was a bridesmaid . . . and never saw the bride again.” And, speaking from the parking lot at a South Portland department store, “This is where, moments after meeting me, a hairdresser announc ..read more

By Virginia M. Wright From our February 2024 issue In 1938, Canada’s top paleontologist penned a letter to Caribou naturalist Olof Nylander, praising his report on the strata and fossils of Square Lake township. “I have known of your good work in Maine so long that I could almost believe that you have been there ever since the ice cap left,” he wrote. A self-taught geologist, paleontologist, botanist, and conchologist, the Swedish-born Nylander excited scientists around the world with discoveries that altered theories about the ancient past of northern Maine and other regions in the U.S. and C ..read more

By Jesse Ellison Photos by Cig Harvey From our January 2024 issue We were heading out toward Jericho Bay and Eggemoggin Reach on a clear, chilly evening last fall, just before dusk, when our captain, the artist Jeffery Becton, announced that his wife was worried he had dementia. This was right after he’d revved the rigid inflatable boat’s twin 300 horsepower engines and had us skimming along at close to 44 knots (more than 50 miles per hour) “just to get it over with,” and it was before he started doing donuts in the cove near his Deer Isle home. He’d had an MRI in the spring and was told that ..read more

By Sara Anne Donnelly From our January 2024 issue The new playspace outside the Children’s Museum & Theatre of Maine, in Portland, was a long time coming. Ckuwaponahkiyik Atkuhkakonol: Wabanaki Storytelling Through Art and Traditions is the 48-year-old institution’s first permanent exhibit dedicated to Maine’s indigenous people. “We’ve always told stories about this place we call Maine, but there has been a lack of Wabanaki voices,” says education and exhibits director Starr Kelly, who began developing the project soon after joining the museum staff two years ago. A citizen of Kitigan Zibi ..read more