Gary Dumond began flying float planes when he was in high school, flying his dad’s Piper PA-11 over to Eagle Lake to visit with Maine Warden Pilot Jack McPhee. Jack encouraged Gary to train as a military pilot and then to return to Maine and seek a position as a Maine Warden pilot. I must […]
Thank goodness West Quoddy Head Lighthouse in Lubec is not haunted like the many in Taryn Plumb’s intriguing book, Haunted Maine Lighthouses. Well, it would be kind of neat to have a conversation with my great grandfather who was the keeper at West Quoddy from 1900 to 1932. Maine has the second most lighthouses in […]
Kristin Krause put me right in that small boat drifting across the Pacific Ocean for 43 days with very little to eat and drink and almost no hope of surviving. Krause’s book, Last Voyage Of The Hornet, tells an amazing and troubling story about the clipper ship Hornet that caught fire and sank in the […]
I had no idea that so many people died on Mt Katahdin and throughout Baxter State Park. We have a camp on the edge of the park, and have enjoyed everything from it’s brooks and ponds to its mountains. Randi Minetor’s book, Death on Katahdin, published by Down East Books, includes fatalities from falls and […]
An Upriver Passamaquoddy, published by Tilbury House, is both inspiring and troubling. But I must begin by thanking Allen Sockabasin for writing this book which is both a memoir and a challenge. Allen tells us about the 20th century experiences of Maine’s Passamaquoddy people, from the good days to the very ugly rascist days. At […]
Tom Huntington’s book, Maine Roads To Gettysburg, puts you right into the worst battles of the Civil War. I thought I knew a lot about the Civil War until I read Tom’s book. Tom profiles many Maine soldiers and even includes quotes from them, and his detailed descriptions of the bloody battles are amazing. He […]
A friend recently gave me a July 1991 copy of the Maine Sportsman, featuring a photo of me on the cover with a huge bluefish. Do you remember catching bluefish back in the day? Reading through the magazine took me all the way back to the year I started working for the Sportsman’s Alliance of […]
Today I’m taking a look back at my first hunting experiences with my Dad who I hunted with for 53 years. A portion of this column was published in the Maine Times on December 21, 1990. And a short version was published in this newspaper on Father’s Day, 2005. The crisp autumn afternoon, the stiff […]
I almost didn’t read Sean Poage’s book, The Retreat To Avalon. It’s 450 pages long and a fictional account that takes us back 1500 years. Little did I know how fascinating this could be. Now I am very excited that this turns out to be the first of three historical fiction books exploring the origins […]
Lost Maine Coast Schooners by Ingrid Grenon gives us a fascinating look at those old huge wooden-hulled schooners, many of which were sunk, with crews drowned. The book is subtitled “From Glory Days to Ghost Ships.” Yes, danger lurked all along coastlines, and then there were the German U-boats. One of those sunk 6 schooners […]
