Transcribed by Will Gottlieb
Coastal Journal staff

As you can see, I don't paint anything special, kind of just what turns me on at any given moment. They're all acrylics – that's Thomas Point, that's down in Newbury (Mass.), on the Post Road. That one there is down at the Oven, not Popham but the next one up. This one is interesting. Just down the road here on the right is a shack, a total run-down shack with three cars in the yard, but somebody cut the grass. I can't imagine that anyone's living there. But that's what it looked like one winter, the cars were totally buried in the snow. I've been trying to find [the owners], to give them a copy. I thought they'd get a kick out of it.
So, on and on, and on. Some flowers, this one's that island that all the artists go out to, Monhegan, coming up the road from the ferry, the first house on the road. This is Popham Beach, when it was ripping up all the trees, and there was this surfer girl there, waiting for a wave she could ride, but you can't ride those things. It's a little of everything.
This one's down in Newburyport. It's an interesting painting. There was a fog coming and going...sometimes you can see the bridges, and sometimes they disappear into it. My wife likes it anyway, that's why it's hanging in here. That's the oldest boatyard in the United States, down in Newburyport. This is one of those tall ship cruises out of Rockport or wherever, and one of the kids was taking a nap on a spar. That's down in Popham on the river. Everybody paints those chairs. I've seen that painting a dozen different ways.

by Mattie Porter
Coastal Journal intern

I was born in Bangor, October 15, 1988. When I was eight my mother and aunt discovered a camp in Etna that gave horseback riding lessons so my cousin and I were signed up that summer. I have gone back every summer since and am now a riding instructor at that barn. I attended the Etna-Dixmont school (which gets its name from being on the town line, not because Etna and Dixmont are the same place) from kindergarten up through eighth grade. I attempted to play sports in my time there but after being sent to the outfield every softball game and scoring baskets for the opposing team in basketball I decided I would just stick to horseback riding.

Transcribed by Will Gottlieb
Coastal Journal staff

I was born in Ukraine, July 29, 1923. We came under Polish rule in 1918, after the First World War. Up to that point it was under the Austrian-Hungarian empire. And it [Polish rule] lasted up until 1939, when Hitler started dividing Poland. Under Austrian-Hungarian rule it was good. We were treated like everybody else. The Ukrainians under Polish rule, they were trying to make Poles out of us, and they had a hard time to do it. And we were very happy when Hitler invaded Poland, because we thought we might eventually gain independence. But that didn't happen.