Waldoboro, shaped by shifting tides of power and opportunity, is well suited to explore life at the fault lines of history’s most enduring questions.
What we take from history is not a set of practices but a spirit. We are guided by the bold American spirit of Maine: a community of independent outsiders who continue to put themselves out there—and, against the odds, come out resilient.
Acting On A Stage Of Discovery And Renewal
Our Process
OHOH does not subscribe to any orthodoxy.
We are responsive to individual and collective circumstances and core life experiences.
We are driven by curiosity to reconsider all certainties and move beyond well-worn paths of thought and feeling.
We are interested in overlooked traces, forgotten voices, and abandoned perspectives.
We look back to learn more, following people’s emotions into the tensions and mysteries of the feelscape of time.
We return to the social and emotional foundations of our lives.
We reopen our feelings about who we are by rediscovering what’s already around us.
That’s the quiet, transformative process of history: Discovery as Creation.
History is place-based
We want to know what draws people to a place.
We believe that place is made through the relationships we choose to honor. Relationships are not just between people. They exist at every level of life.
We employ local knowledge about a place to expand our reach.
OHOH takes different forms in different places.
To enter OHOH, simply listen deeply and feel forward, increasing awareness of the relationships and places that shape us.
The doors are always open to reconnect—with each other, with Waldoboro, and with our shared human story.
Our Goals
Provide opportunities for people to be their authentic self, explore their feelings and ideas, and discover their own potential.
Build mutual support.
Create genuine, empathetic connections beyond identity categories and institutional roles.
Foster long-term community relationships through collaborations with schools, churches, arts organizations, local businesses, and town leaders.
Reclaim the American tradition of reinvention—embodied by the outsider and explorer.
Cultivate the resilient, independent spirit of Maine.
Our Base
The Custom House: A Living Anchor
OHOH is based at Waldoboro’s historic 1855 Custom House. Once central to shipbuilding and global trade—and later a post office and library—the Custom House embodies generations of feelings around power, authority, access, and connection.
We continue the building’s civic legacy, not through top-down assignments of value, but through community meaning-making and exchange. We reopen the emotional layers of this historic space, inviting people to revisit its questions and rediscover its resonance.
