Sade Olutola
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Kiana Khansmith
One Nice Bug Per Day
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roma★
Cosmic Funnies
Show & Tell
Not today Justin
almost home
taylor price
d e v o n
tannertan36
we're not kids anymore.
Product Placement
he wasn't even looking at me and he found me
sheepfilms
Jules of Nature
TVSTRANGERTHINGS
Game of Thrones Daily
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@allmainepoints
If you're at the Acadia Bird Fest this weekend, be sure to grab this year’s commemorative t-shirt! This is the third consecutive design I’ve created for the annual event. It featurs the charismatic northern parula and magnolia warblers perched atop bunchberry, with the classic rocky coast of Mount Desert Island in the background.
York, Maine, USA
August 2025
CNN and other outlets are trying to compare this to the group chat where a bunch of Republicans said theyvloved Hitler and dropped dozens of slurs.
…would it really be that bad (i want this to happen)
official maine post
Piping plovers have made a dramatic comeback.
Piping plovers have made a dramatic comeback.
Author: Rob Caldwell
Published: 3:53 PM EDT June 30, 2025
KENNEBUNKPORT, Maine — In a world where encouraging stories about conservation and the environment seem all too rare, it’s heartening to hear what has happened in the last 44 years to piping plovers in Maine.
In 1981, according to Maine Audubon coastal bird biologist Sophie Garland, the state had 10 pairs of plovers nesting on its beaches. This year, there are 174 pairs.
That dramatic increase did not occur by accident or happenstance. Back in 1981 , the Maine Audubon began monitoring, counting, and working to protect plovers as part of its Coastal Birds Project. The mission goes on today on 26 beaches stretching from York County to Reid State Park in Georgetown.
Garland and another Audubon coastal bird biologist, Katie Burns, spend much of the summer walking those beaches, binoculars in hand, scanning for plovers, which are an endangered species. To the untrained eye, the birds can be difficult to spot because their feathers blend in so well with the sand as they nest.
While the locations vary, a key part of the job does not.
“Know where the nests are,” Garland said as she stood on Goose Rocks Beach in Kennebunkport. “Know where the pairs are that are nesting, and know where their chicks are.”
The other part of the job is educating the public. Garland and Burns spend a lot of time talking to visitors on the beach, explaining why the tiny plovers are so vulnerable.
People who don’t know better can step on nests, get too close and stress plovers, or let dogs threaten the birds by running unleashed. Management areas have been set up and educational signs posted on parts of the beach where the birds nest.
“When you see [a management area marked with] stake and twine, don't sit right up against it,” Burns said. “Give it plenty of space—100 feet, if you can."
If you're planning to toss a frisbee or build sand castles, sharing the space is particularly important.
“If you're playing catch on the beach, do it towards the shore away from the management area so you don't disturb chicks or the nest," she added. "Basically, just give the birds as much space as you can.”
The education efforts have clearly paid off, as the growing numbers of plovers in Maine demonstrate. After talking with some folks on the beach who were delighted to receive one her “Plover Lover” stickers, Burns offered a final thought to them: “Thank you for caring about the birds.”
official maine post
June is Lupine time in Maine
Minolta MC Rokkor-PG 58mm f/1.2
Sony A7R3A
Copper-throated Sunbird (Leptocoma calcostetha), male, family Nectariniidae, order Passeriformes, Singapore
photograph by Kow Hao Rui
Appalachian urge to just start walking into the woods and never stop.
The trees, mines, caves, rushing streams and ravines fighting over who gets to eat me.
Fun fact! This urge also occurs in New England, especially in old mill towns or anywhere with heavily reforested family farms.
I know. That’s why I’m not allowing myself to go to Maine.
That's okay; eventually Maine will come to you.
*hears scratching at the door* whazthat…..ahhh the lobsahs!!!!!
obsessed with ads like this
She is out there in Maine
“Annie C. Maguire Shipwrecked Here Christmas Eve 1886”
Cape Elizabeth, ME
Sketch for June
“The Moose Shed” a hunter’s cabin in Masardis, Maine
Submitted by Leonid Tsvetkov
Mary Nasson, the Witch of York, Maine
The town of York, Maine is a quaint Colonial-era town that sits at the border of Maine and New Hampshire. The town has a rich history that is worth discussing at length, but here I will only discuss one attraction of interest - the Old Burying Yard.
The Old Burying Yard at York is not hard to locate. If you take route 1A and follow it into the historical section of town, the Old Burying Yard is directly across the street from the First Parish Church. It is a small and unassuming Colonial-era cemetery, surrounded by a low stone wall. It has a number of classic 18th-Century stones, bedecked with urns, weeping willows, and grimacing death’s-heads. The town’s second cemetery, it was the last resting place of York residents from 1705 to the 1850′s.
But tucked at the far end of the yard, past a monument to the victims of the Candlemas Massacre, past several large and imposing maple trees, sitting in its own little corner, is the grave of Mary Nasson. And according to local legend, Mary Nasson was a witch.
In a cemetery of unusual and historic headstones, Mary Nasson’s is in a category all its own. Approximately three feet in height, the top of the stone bears the image of a woman, wild-eyed, bare-breasted, with two frizzy buns of hair atop her head. Covering her grave is a large slab, between five and six feet in length. The headstone, which can be seen below, notes that Mary was a mother and the wife of a Mr. Samuel Nasson.
According to the stone, Mary was only 29 when she died and some say she was executed for her witchy ways. Some say the stone covering her grave was put in place to stop her from rising from the dead, though, according to some of the locals, it was ineffective - the graveyard is notoriously haunted. Although I could find no mention of the practice online, people have taken to putting coins on her grave, perhaps as a kind of offering. I cannot help but think of the x’s on the grave of Marie Laveau. At one point in time, the grave would have had a foot stone. I can find color images of it online, but cannot find any close-ups. (If you have details about this, please message me immediately).
This story is a lot of fun, but, historically-speaking, it is full of inconsistencies. The stone that the covers the grave would not have been strange in Mary’s day. Before the advent of electric lights and wire fences, stones such as the one that covers Mary’s grave were used to prevent animals from digging up the remains of the dead. They are called, fittingly, wolf stones. It has been speculated that the other graves in the cemetery once had them as well and that they were removed when the bodies had rested long enough to be of no interest to animals.
Because Maine was formerly part of the state of Massachusetts, it cannot be said that Maine did not, in some way, play a role in the New England witch hysteria of the late 17th-Century. That being said, Mary’s grave clearly states that she died in 1774, too far into the Age of Reason for a witch trial to occur in New England. Witches were not given Christian burials during that time period, either. If Mary had been executed as a witch, she would have most likely been buried in an unmarked grave, like the accused witches of Salem.
It could be said that Mary’s reputation as a witch has been inspired solely by her unique stone. There is, however, a unique set of legends about Mary that, to my ears, smack of authentic witch-lore.
According to some local legends, Mary was not a terrible witch, crawling from the grave, cursing the innocent. According to some, she was a healer, skilled in herbalism and in performing exorcisms. She would have been a wife and mother and she would have died very young. Little is known about her beyond her marvelous headstone. Intriguingly, there are no other Nassons in the cemetery. So where is her husband? Her stone bears a message from her husband that states, “I soon shall equal be when death shall stop my breath /And end my Time/God grant my Dust /May mingle, then, with thine.” A sign, to be sure, that he wanted to be buried by her side.
This was not to be, however. According to one website, he moved to Sanford, Maine after her death. According to the website “Find a Grave”, a Maj. Samuel Nasson, Esq. is buried in Sanford, Maine. According to his stone, he was born in 1745 and died in 1800. He had two wives. His first wife was Mary Shores, daughter of Peter Shores and Susannah Ball. This, without a doubt, is the Mary Nasson of York, Maine. They were wed on August 8, 1765 in Stratham, New Hampshire. They had six children: Peter, William, Susannah, Samuel, George Hodgkins, and Mary. Samuel Nasson remarried and, on March 4, 1778, wed Joanna Tilden. They had several children as well: Thomas, Harriet Matilda, Joanna, and Sophia. According to Find a Grave, Samuel is buried beside Joanna.
According to the book, “Birth of the Bill of Rights” by Robert Allen Rutland, Samuel Nasson was born in New Hampshire, was educated in a “Congregational household,” and moved to York, Maine as a young man to pursue a career as a saddler and a storekeeper. Nasson was an upstanding member of the community. He served in the Revolutionary War and rose through the ranks from quartermaster, to ensign, to captain. He served in the Maine regiment of the Continental Army, fought in the battle of Long Island, and was promoted to the rank of major. He returned to Maine and became a merchant. He became involved in local politics. He started as a town selectman and ended his political career with a position in the Massachusetts General Court (hence, Major Samuel Nasson, Esq.). He was also appointed to the Massachusetts Ratifying Convention. He believed strongly in a Bill of Rights, opposed the Three-Fifths Compromise, and opposed the burgeoning nation’s power to tax its citizens to build an army. I write these details not to ignore the subject at hand, but to paint a picture of Mary Nasson’s husband and to show that he was a man of great character. All of these events would have occurred after Mary’s death.
Samuel Nasson’s grave provides us with a fascinating clue into Mary’s life as well - the name of her parents, Peter Shores and Susannah Ball Shores. According to the book “Kittery and her Families” by Everett Schermerhorn Stackpole, published in 1903, Mary’s family would have ties to Kittery (only a few miles away from her resting place in York). Anyone interested in her lineage would be wise to obtain a copy of this book (currently on Google Books) and research the Ball family. The text contains few details about their professions or social standing. It does mention the witch legend, though. It is described as being an old legend in a book published in 1903! I have long-suspected that Mary died during childbirth (which was common at the time). This book disproves this idea. Mary’s youngest child, also named Mary, was born in September 25, 1773 and Mary died August 28, 1774.
To paint the most complete picture of Mary, here are all of the details I have gathered about her. She was born in 1745, either in the Southern Maine or Northern New Hampshire. I cannot find any details about possible siblings. This lack of information leads me to conclude that she may have been an only-child (unusual for the time period). She married Samuel Nasson on August 8, 1765 in Stratham, New Hampshire. The same year, they moved to York, Maine, where Samuel worked as a saddler and opened a shop. They had six children. The youngest was less than a year old when Mary died. Mary did not live to see her husband’s military career. Undoubtedly, he would have grieved her loss immensely, as her headstone clearly shows. He would have remarried four years after her death. I do not know how he would have been able to raise six children on his own for four years, especially considering the younger Mary was less than a year-old when her mother died. Perhaps he was well-to-do enough to have staff. Perhaps he began courting his second wife a few years before they were married.
If Mary was an herbalist, she would have been a Christian woman. She was, after all, buried across from the town church in the churchyard. If she was a magic-worker, she may have used the Bible as a sourcebook for magic, not unlike a rootworker or a pow-wower. This is consistent with the idea of the herbalist-as-exorcist. This would make her more of a “fairy doctor” or a “cunning woman” - a benevolent magic-worker. Perhaps she was such a thing. Imagine Mary Nasson - selling her herbal cures in her husband’s shop! Or maybe it was her shop all along, forced by the laws of the day to be her husband’s property. I do not think it is fair to call her a witch, though. There is no evidence that she practiced maleficia and she would have taken offense to the phrase in life, whether she practiced magic or not. She may have been a healer, she may have been an exorcist, she may have even been a midwife, but she would never have called herself a witch.
According to local legends, the children who visit the park close to the Old Burying Yard have reported playing with a kindly woman who seems to mysteriously vanish or wander off. When asked who they were playing with, one local child responded, “Mary.” They say Mary rises from the grave to play with the local children. Her ghost is not a frightening thing.
The urban legends state that Mary’s grave radiates warmth. Upon visiting it earlier this month, I cannot say that it did. Not physically, anyway. The entire Old Burying Yard in York, Maine has an almost holy presence, a calming and saintly presence. It is said to be haunted and I have no doubt that it may be. If it is haunted, it is undoubtedly haunted by the ghost of a kind woman who died too soon. If her grave does radiate warmth, it is not hot to the touch, but radiates the warmth of a mother who was not only loving, but was well-loved.
Whoever Mary Nasson was, may she rest in peace.
“A sky as pure as water bathed the stars and brought them out.“ – Antoine de Saint-Exupéry Treat yourself to a Milky Way view from Acadia National Park in Maine. You can almost hear the waves crashing 30 feet below as the darkness brings out an incredible array of stars. Taken over the summer, stargazing under is an exhilarating way to experience time on public lands and national parks. Consider this your reminder to look up. Each season brings a charming view of our unique galaxy and a celestial sense of wonder. Photo courtesy of Nevin Johnson.
Mount Desert Island, Maine
photo: David Castenson
