More than 15 million people "from away" visit Maine each year, most drawn to the rugged beauty of its rocky coast.
Returning to his roots on the Maine Coast, he has spent the rest of his life explaining how things work-teaching physics at Bowdoin College, founding America\'s first two do-it-yourself house-buildin.
He remained at MIT as a research scientist develop- ing a surface ship gravity meter for Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and the Lunar Traverse Gravimeter for NASA that flew on Apollo 19. in Physical Oceanography from MIT.
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Physics), he received a Ph.
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After grad- uating from Bowdoin College (B.
About the Author: Charlie Wing spent his first eleven summers with his maternal grandfather, a lobsterman, boatbuilder and ice harvester in Harpswell, Maine.
If you wish to know these Mainers better, Salt in Their Veins invites you into Their parlors, Their kitchens, and Their fishing shacks to join Conversations between the author and thirty-five salty Mainers.
They have Salt in Their veins, and the Maine coast is Their ecosystem.
Like barnacles on a tidal ledge, these closely-knit people cling to the edge of the sea.
But behind each lobsterman stand: a sternman, a bait dealer, a diesel mechanic, a boatbuilder, a pastor, an auto mechanic, a fuel oil dealer, a general store owner, a road commissioner, the teachers of his children, and myriad other members of his or her community.
While the west has its cowboy, the icon of the Maine coast is its lobsterman, a sort of cowboy of the sea.
In fact, Down East humor is defined by what is NOT said.
The occasional tourist, even most of the summer residents, find it difficult to elicit more than a minimal "ayuh" or "daow" in conversation.
Coastal Mainers are also taciturn, as if words are too precious to waste.
But rocks and the sea provide only the setting for a more interesting drama: the everyday lives of the honest, hard-working, and fiercely independent populations of its hundred small, tightly-knit fishing villages.
More than 15 million people "from away" visit Maine each year, most drawn to the rugged beauty of its rocky coast
