Down East Magazine, July 2021

Features

Main Street Moxie

Six of our favorite small-town downtowns — and the buildings, businesses, and boosters that make them great.

By Jesse Ellison, Will Grunewald, Brian Kevin, and Adrienne Perron

 

Strongholds

From colonial outposts to midcentury batteries, Maine’s former military forts are bastions of history and marvels of engineering, full of splendors grand and subtle.
photographed by Benjamin Williamson

 

Night of Lobster

Seventy-five years ago, the Pulitzer Prize–winning poet and essayist Robert P. Tristram Coffin penned a timeless tribute to one of Maine’s simplest pleasures. Its influence would reverberate through contemporary food writing.

 

 

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Departments

North by East

The remarkable life of artist David Driskell, at the PMA. How every Maine town got its name. The midcoast’s new semi-pro ballers. Plus, in Maine Dispatches, Fitbits for lobsters.

Food and Drink

A blueberry-esque new crop takes root in the County. At Wiscasset’s Water Street Kitchen & Bar, local seafood meets Mediterranean flavor. Beer alternatives are spilling out of Maine’s craft breweries. A Portland fermentation shop feeds the yeast.

Good Things from Maine

After 40 years, there’s no mistaking the fine craftsmanship of the Wendell Gilley Museum’s bird decoys. In North Berwick, a master crafter takes a stab at wooden swords. And a couple of prominent Maine crafts orgs stitch, weave, and forge a new future together.

Maine Homes

A family’s lakefront retreat grows out of an old YWCA camp. Flowers and veggies grow side by side in an Ellsworth garden. Also, an antiques roadshow guaranteed to cure what ails you.

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Where in Maine

Maine Moment

Dooryard

Editor’s note, reader feedback, responses to May’s Where in Maine, and more.

Columns

Talk of Maine: The Wildfire Threat. Room With a View.

My Favorite Place

Bangor radio host Rich Kimball, on Northeast Harbor’s Thuya Garden.

On Our Cover: Five Islands harbor, in Georgetown, by Benjamin Williamson.