Port City Life Archive
The Energy of Fuel
MAINE EATS: DISH-Summer 2009
by Nancy Heiser
Photographs by Stacey Cramp
Mix urban Chicago decor, French bistro food, and plenty of Maine-harvested ingredients, and you’ve got Fuel, a restaurant in downtown Lewiston that’s become a destination on the state’s culinary map. Nearly half of its customers travel from outside Lewiston/Auburn, says Eric Agren, the energetic restaurateur who spent time in the Windy City’s corporate world before returning to his home state to open Fuel two years ago with his wife, Carrie.
YOUR LETTERS-July/August 2009
Thank you for including the article “I Do, Now What?” by Maggie Knowles in the January/February 2009 issue.
As a mother, wife, and woman I truly enjoyed reading Knowles’s version of, to have a baby or not to have a baby, that is the question and then some.
A Natural Progression
July/August 2009
by Laurie Hyndman
Seven years ago I took a leap of faith when I bought Port City Life magazine. It seemed like a natural extension of my first career, which was developing and producing television programs, including soap operas. I think I have a knack for knowing good stories, and I love to tell them, so a lifestyle magazine seemed a perfect outlet. Then, what started out as a city magazine became a magazine about Maine. I wanted to celebrate people and places and events all over the state.
Maine Food by the Numbers
MAINE EATS -Summer 2009
by Peter A. Smith
Book Notes-July/August 2009
Beach Read
Maine’s Pulitzer-Prize-winning author Richard Russo (Empire Falls) tackles marriage in his new book, That Old Cape Magic. Griffin travels with his wife to their honeymoon destination, Cape Cod, for a wedding—and a trip into the past. A year later, he travels to the Maine coast for another wedding, this time after two events have turned his life upside down. The likable but flawed characters evoke laughter and tears in Russo’s novel of family ties. Knopf | $25.95
Forty Years of “Almost Anything Under the Sun”
NOTEBOOK-May/June 2009
Jessica Strelitz
Photograph by Natalie Conn
It may look the same, but Uncle Henry’s Weekly Swap or Sell It Guide, which turns 40 this year, has changed a lot over the last decade, with an out-of-state expansion, reader polls, and even a website. But the goal remains the same: helping users to “find their own value and hidden treasures,” says Kevin Webb, general manager.
Greening Up the Grocery Aisle
NOTEBOOK-July/August 2009
by Peter A. Smith
Hannaford plans to open a new 49,000-square-foot supermarket in Augusta in late July, with a refrigeration system that also heats the store, a geothermal well, and natural, in-store daylighting.
Going with the Maine Grain
NOTEBOOK-July/August 2009
by Peter A. Smith
Photograph by Natalie Conn
Dean Zoulamis built his oven from scratch: mortar, clay bricks, sand, and a stainless steel Le Panyol core. He stokes the oven with wood from his Bowdoinham farm and bakes crusty, European-style breads inside his Mother Oven. He calls them, “Bread of the peasant in the present.”
Winged Inhabitants
NOTEBOOK-July/August 2009
by Peter A. Smith
Photograph by Natalie Conn
The Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens almost became a subdivision. Now it’s 248 acres of perennials, native ferns, and white birches, all of it off-limits to condos, waterfront lodges, and coastal development. But there’s one exception.
Living the Good Life 2.0
FEATURE-July/August 2009
by Peter A. Smith
Photographs by Jonathan Levitt
Young, organic farmers are greening up the state.
At 3:15 a.m., Chris Cavendish rolls out of bed, puts on a pot of coffee, splashes water on his face, and packs his van with wooden crates of carrots, lettuce, escarole, beets, and Boothby blond cucumbers. This way, he’ll be the first one at the Portland Farmers’ Market. When the door to his Club Wagon slams shut, the Time and Temperature sign will be blinking 5:15.
A Reverence for the Sand
FEATURE-July/August 2009
by Josh Gleason
Photography by Mark Marchesi
A Desert Draws Visitors to Freeport
Gary Kearns, with the rustic bearing of a rancher surveying his land, reaches down, grabs a handful of sand, and, almost reverentially, lets it loose into the air. We’re standing on the edge of the Desert of Maine—some 40 acres of gentle sand dunes incongruously ringed by pine-tree forest.
Island Rhythms
MAINE'S ISLANDS-July/August 2009
by F. Benjamin Carr
Photographs courtesy of Dean Lunt
The day is just dawning when I turn on the radio at six for the early-morning weather report and news. I listen to familiar voices report on the latest crisis in some city, in Augusta, on the world’s battlefields. I hear about violence against this person or that group. And I am grateful for the safety I feel as I lie back against the pillows, listen to the virtuoso performance by the song sparrow in the birch outside, and know that my little island will never be the target for anyone’s bombs or violence.
Isle Au Haut Dazzles
MAINE'S ISLANDS-July/August 2009
by Maggie Knowles
Photograph by Jerry + Marcy Monkman
Why is someone shining a flashlight in my eyes? Ugh. It feels like 4 a.m. My eyelids creak open, and I realize it is the sun, stretching its amber glow over nearby hills, rocks, and ocean outside the window at the end of the bed. It only takes a few moments of this dawn splendor for me to conclude that this island is one of the most beautiful places on earth.
Summers in Rachel's House
MAINE'S ISLANDS-July/August 2009
by Robin Clifford Wood
Photograph by Bill McGuinness
“If once you have slept on an island, you’ll never be quite the same …”
You might find these lines on a yellowed copy of Rachel Field’s famous poem tacked to the wall of any coastal home in the country. But the people of Cranberry Isles, Maine, embrace both poem and author as their own. This small group of islands off the coast of Mount Desert Island captivated the heart and pen of Rachel Lyman Field, exuberant writer of poetry, plays, and novels in the early 1900s.
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