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The Interconnectedness of Troubles

by Eva Murray

Central Business District, Matinicus

About a month ago I was asked to speak to a high school class in the mid-coast area. Their course was called “Islands,” and the idea was for each student to undertake a series of independent research projects of their choice. I, as a primary source, agreed to appear at the appointed time to answer any and all questions about island life on what was described to them as one of the more remote outposts (I gave them my usual disclaimer about having lived on the island a mere 28 years, which is a drop in the bucket, with no claims to native status.) The teacher assured me it would be alright to dispense with a prepared speech, to go wherever the conversation naturally led, and to just sort of ramble.

Ramble I did. I think I owe them all an apology.

Thinking back on what I said over that roughly 90 minutes–which flew by–I suspect that before long nobody had any idea what I was blathering on about. I was not able to answer a single question with a concise and succinct reply, without drawing in about seventeen other topics and referring to a bunch of stuff nobody had asked about yet, which then required explanation. If you had drawn a flow chart of my digressions and tangential descriptions with a marker, it would have looked like the subway map of Tokyo. I probably didn’t do those high school students much good. They likely all left the classroom with heads spinning and eyelids drooping, hoping for a more useful and entertaining class next period, such as maybe differential calculus.

That is the way of Matinicus, where there is no such thing as a simple answer to a simple question.

For example, a student asked about our one-room school, and somebody posed a perfectly sensible inquiry into how we staff such an interesting institution. After all, a teacher has to move to this odd little community lock, stock and barrel, no commute being possible, and that alone weeds out the overwhelming majority of qualified applicants who may already have a home somewhere, or an employed spouse, or an unyielding tomcat.

If time were not an issue, we could have talked all day and touched on every concern on this island, just by way of answering that question about new teachers.

Any discussion of how we search for and select a teacher leads to discussions of transportation, and how if somebody is both uneasy with small airplanes and prone to seasickness, an island berth may not be the best employment option, not to mention that every trip to the mainland is going to cost a minimum of $120, before parking, taxis, and the likelihood of needing overnight accommodations. As there are no retail establishments, regular health care providers, or normal social recreations on the island, anybody who thinks they will never need to go anywhere is deluding themselves. Then, there’s the weather, which calls all the shots anyway. That’s a lesson in itself.

Somebody at this point will interject, “Wait a minute–no health care providers? Then what do you do if…” but we’re trying to answer the question about hiring teachers (we do have the barest minimal shred of EMS, if that helps allay your fears, which it won’t). Anyway, as our school board and superintendent engage in negotiations with the applicant, they have to figure out how to gently ask a few questions which are essentially illegal in the interview process, among them, “How large is your family?” In the eyes of the law, it is nobody’s gall-derned business what sort of family a teacher has, because in theory, once they leave work at the end of the day, their life is no concern of their employer’s. Here, we have to make sure the applicant understands that there may not be housing adequate for their family. Somebody has already called around and asked everybody with winter water if they’d consider renting their home for the season, and everybody has basically said no. That leaves the small and primitive apartment over the post office, in a church-owned structure referred to as “the parsonage,” which has seen better days.

It isn’t even a matter of more pleasing rental units being too expensive for a schoolteacher; they simply don’t exist sometimes.

This brings up the whole topic of affordable housing, which is a significant issue on most of Maine’s islands, many of which have formed Affordable Housing Committees. Some have built housing stock for rental or for sale, ideally to lovely and hardworking young families, but Matinicus has not, and the logical next question is, “Why not?” In short, the town doesn’t own any property on which to build. That’s the easy answer, and most of the truth, and is also the primary and easiest answer to the very common “Why don’t you people have a wind turbine?” question, too, although again, there is more than one reason why that isn’t as simple as it seems to the outside observer. I could talk about electricity generation for days. There is also another sticky wicket with the town-owned-housing idea, which is that it is illegal to cherry-pick your tenants. This community has an acknowledged need for building trades people, small businesses, and happy, healthy, well-adjusted school kids—but not for more part-time fair-weather lobster fishermen, and not for people on the run from their myriad troubles on the mainland. But I didn’t say that.

Besides, that conversation would inevitably lead down the path of talking about how people do sometimes gravitate to this place as an avoidance tactic, because they wish to get away from creditors, or an ugly relationship, or the Knox County Sheriff’s department or anybody else, and folks on the lam don’t always pay their bills real reliably on this side of the bay either. Oh well; such is life.

Weren’t we talking about hiring teachers?

Back when I was the teacher, the parsonage was at least a full-sized house, although a single occupant such as I would invariably shut off much of it to save on heat, it being an old place and not wonderfully insulated. (If you want to know how we get our home heating oil out here, better go make a sandwich first; it’ll take a while.) Anyway, since the post office burned down a few years ago, and we had to move the U.S.P.S. into the parsonage because there was nowhere else available, the living space has shrunk (don’t even start about the post office renting from the Congregational church). That brings up the subject of how we’ve had trouble enough keeping our post office at all, with all the closures of small-town, low-revenue post offices.

(It also brings up the subject of our recent efforts toward recycling and proper solid waste disposal, as the last two major structure fires on the island have been accidental runaway garbage fires. Things are improving.)

It’s been a struggle to make the Powers That Be in the U.S.P.S. hierarchy look at a map, and recognize that Matinicus postal customers cannot just drive to the next town up the road to get their mail. Oh, and any fool who argues that “People don’t write letters these days anyway, they do everything online” could use some schooling: without a post office, and with it a zip code, we would not be able to order anything (online or any other way). Most everything we need here comes basically mail order–recall what I said about no stores–and that includes essential maintenance parts for the power company and the telephone company. Without electricity and telephone, there would be no Internet, not to mention probably no full-time residents and certainly no businesses. We don’t have a daily ferry or mail boat, but instead rely on a small air taxi service out of the Knox County Regional Airport (if you need a mental image, think Alaska). Without the contract to carry the mail, UPS and Fedex, the air service would have almost no reliable wintertime income with our population so low, meaning they probably couldn’t continue to service this island, meaning no residents would stay who weren’t boat-owning fishermen, which wouldn’t make it any easier to find a teacher, although we might not have school kids anyway if we had no electricity, telephone, Internet, or air service.

To answer the original question: That would certainly impact the staffing.

With thanks to Mr. Gray’s Horizons class, Camden Hills Regional High School. You were very patient.