‘The domestic sea’
“Looking West” (photomontage on aluminum) in Deer Isle, Maine, artist Jeffrey C. Becton’s show “Framing the Domestic Sea,’’ through May 5, at the New Bedford Whaling Museum.
— Image courtesy of Mr. Becton
The museum says that Maine-based Mr. Becton is inspired by the “history of New England, maritime scenes and contemporary ecological issues. His work, digital montages of coastal scenes and New England views, is printed on aluminum and evokes a surreal, dream-like quality that is simultaneously unsettling and - for those who call New England home - very familiar.’’
Where will the coastal year-rounders live?
Stonington waterfront in1915
Aerial view of fancy summer resort town Camden, Maine, from the harbor
—Photo by King of Hearts
Adapted from Robert Whitcomb’s “Digital Diary,’’ in GoLocal24.com
‘Many coastal communities in New England face severe housing shortages for year-round residents of modest means. Around here, Nantucket, Martha’s Vineyard and Block Island are infamous for this problem.
Consider Stonington, Maine, on Deer Isle. There, 80 percent of its shorefront is now owned by non-residents (mostly summer people), as are 56 percent of that fishing (mostly lobsters) port’s downtown properties, according to a report in the Portland Press Herald
The usually affluent summer folks bid up real estate prices to levels unaffordable to most year-rounders.
So where will the carpenters, yard-work people, plumbers, electricians and schoolteachers live? Perhaps some elderly summer people will leave their summer McMansions to towns to be converted into affordable housing. Just joking. But something must be done if these towns are going to have enough of the locals who make communities viable for year-round and summer people. That includes zoning changes and/or having states subsidize the construction of new housing in some places.
Hitching a ride
Built in 1912, the Stonington Opera House, on Deer Isle, is one of the few early 20th-century performance halls in Maine. It is the current home of Opera House Arts (OHA), a non-profit organization dedicated to restoring and preserving the historic building to its original purpose as a central community institution. The building was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1991. Deer Isle used to be famous for its granite quarries. Now it’s best known as a summer vacation place.
“At the edge of the forest the thistles
were attaching themselves to the fur of animals.
What serendipity to hitch a ride to your future’’
From “How to Start Over,’’ by Stuart Kestenbaum, a Deer Isle, Maine-based poet and cultural leader.
Deer Isle in 1907. It’s more wooded now.
Glitter in the gutter
Deer Isle’s rather unsettlngly vibrating bridge
“Gather up whatever is
glittering in the gutter,
whatever has tumbled
in the waves or fallen our of the sky….’’
— From “Holding the Light,’’ by Stuart Kestenbaum, Maine’s poet laureate
A ceramicist, as well as poet, he was the director of the Haystack Mountain School of Crafts, in Deer Isle, Maine, for 27 years.