Will Grunewald

Jan 13, 2025 | downeast.com | Will Grunewald

Every winter brings ice bars to Maine, although the lineup tends to ebb and flow. One year, an ice bar pops up here. The next, maybe it doesn’t, but some other restaurant or hotel hosts one instead. Chalk it up to the fundamental nature of any object cut entirely from blocks of ice: there’s no storing it in the shed till next year.

Nov 12, 2024 | downeast.com | Brian Kevin |Will Grunewald

“FLASHMOB!” is what Jon Silverman posted in all caps one recent Tuesday evening, alerting 555 members of the Central Maine Astronomical Society Facebook group that, after months of canceled events — a consequence of cloudy skies and smoke from western wildfires — conditions for the following evening were at last looking ideal: calm, clear skies and a new moon. And so, the next night, they gathered.

Nov 7, 2024 | downeast.com | Will Grunewald

The first rule of astrophotography is to go somewhere far from bright lights — rural and remote. “Light pollution is more pronounced in photos because cameras are so much more sensitive to light than our eyes are, so it’s easy for stars to get washed out,” Williamson says. The darker the sky, the greater the likelihood of success. Set your alarm for the dead of night, well after nightfall and well before dawn.

Aug 15, 2024 | downeast.com | Will Grunewald

I remember the first time I went to an old-fashioned soda fountain as a kid. I was maybe 12 or 13, and new owners had just reopened a 1920s drugstore not far from where my family lived, in Pittsburgh. The owners had ditched the drugs but retained the ice cream, the pop (the regional term for soda), and the old marble countertops, swivel stools, and stainless-steel fountain equipment. At the time, it felt like a very adult experience, like sidling up to the bar at an old-time pub.

Jul 22, 2024 | downeast.com | Will Grunewald

Driving over the Penobscot Narrows Bridge never fails to stir a certain hard-to-define feeling, a mixture of awe and calm and anticipation conjured up by the span’s swooping lines, the sight of its namesake river slowly unspooling seaward, and the impression, however foggy, of crossing a threshold. Coming from the south, the midcoast is all of a sudden in the rearview, and the down east region lies somewhere ahead. But exactly where down east begins has long been a source of disagreement.