Tag Archives: Mount Desert Island
Jack Merrill, poet, painter… and lobsterman
If one were to attend a recent Mount Desert Island school sporting event, then attend an art exhibit reception at the Northeast Harbor Library and buy some lobster for dinner right off the fisherman’s boat, they might be convinced that the coach at that game, the painter and the lobsterman were all a part of a set of triplets. And when an identical guy showed up at a poetry read to recite his own works, you might up the ante and think you’d had a close encounter with a rare brace of quadruplets. But no, Jack Merrill, lobsterman, coach, artist and poet is just one man; albeit a man with a multitude of talents and interests that, at age 70-something, still keep him busy on a daily basis. Perhaps there is something about watching a lavender-rose sunrise and a blazing gold and scarlet sunset spread over a mackerel sky and a wine dark sea almost every workday that inspires some of our local fisherman to paint and poeticize, because, as Merrill rightly insists, he is not unique. He points out that several Cranberry Isles fishermen are also accomplished artists, including Rick and Corey Alley and Dan Fernald and, of course, island author and fisherman Trevor Corson, who included Merrill in his book, “The Secret Life of Lobsters.” more, >>click to read<< 07:08
Smugglers dumped millions in drugs off Maine’s coast. Struggling fishermen saw a jackpot.
One cold night in April 1983, narcotics officers arrived at the Northeast Harbor Marina on Mount Desert Island. The drug-sniffing dog with them strained at the end of a leash. They’d received an anonymous tip that some of the scallop boats in the area had been carrying illegal drugs along with their catches. They waited in the shadows, preparing to pounce on the evidence that would confirm the rumors. Out on the dark waters, a 42-foot scallop dragger named F/V Joshua’s Delight glided toward the harbor. One of the fishermen aboard that night was my father, Frank Ryan, then 34. That night, my father hoped his luck was changing. But he wasn’t thinking about scallops. While dredging the ocean floor that afternoon, their nets had caught something else. When they hauled them up, among thousands of scallops were chunks of a sticky, leathery substance shaped like the sole of a shoe. Dense and potent, you could smell it the instant it came on deck: hashish. >click to read< 11:11
