Joseph Conforti, a professor of American and New England studies at the University of Maine who has written books about Maine culture, contends that Mainers’ sense of place is influenced by where they live.
“I think people still have attachments to their subregions of the state and tend to see their subregion as the more authentic part of Maine,” says Conforti, who is not involved with Caron’s study.
“Maine is in many respects an un-New England state in the sense that it doesn’t share the compactness of other states and the density of population. Mainers believe everything south of where they are is not the real Maine.”
“We are really a hundred different Maines,” said Caron on the road trip, somewhere between Eastport, population 1640, and Farmington, population 7410. “This isn’t going to change tomorrow, but we’ve got to find a way to see ourselves as one Maine as fast as we can.”
Made in Maine
On the road trip’s second day, the van took a detour to Augusta. Caron and Muro had been called to a meeting at the State House with representatives from the Department of Economic Development, who Caron said were concerned about whether the Brookings study would reflect negatively on the current Democratic administration. Months before, Caron met with members of the state’s Republican leadership who were worried about negatives that could affect their camp. In both cases, Caron says, his answer was the same.
“I didn’t tell them a thing,” he insisted. “All I said was, ‘We are going to paint an unvarnished picture of Maine.’”
Caron’s vision stretches far beyond his study, which a number of Mainers in the meetings worried would quickly disappear from the political debate like other, smaller studies. Caron intends to keep his alive by foisting it on politicians a month before the November elections and later by gathering interested civic leaders and citizens in a multiyear campaign to implement Brookings’s specific recommendations.
During the road trip, Katz and Muro agreed the way to protect Maine’s culture is in part to sell, sell, sell it to the sound-bite world Mainers have long distrusted. Maine’s cultural brand, as they define it, can be used to market its place and products. Outsiders buy LL Bean because it’s “Made in Maine” and therefore has a reputation for reliability. Plenty of tourists like Maine-crafted furniture and serene paintings of our rocky coast. And for people looking for a new life rather than a pretty thing, Maine’s people and environment make us competitive. In a world where bullshit seems to surround us, Maine’s close-knit neighborhoods and sense of civic engagement are rare.
This commitment to place propelled Caron to beg for the better part of a million dollars on a study that could, in the end, be ignored. It brought hundreds of Mainers to the Brookings town meetings in the middle of the workweek even though, in the end, they could be ignored. And the strength of it will decide whether Brookings’s suggestions are destined for success or doomed to fail.
Brenda Cummings, an assistant city assessor in Bath whose family first arrived in Maine during the 17th century, sat in the front row of the conference room in Brunswick’s Curtis Memorial Library on the final day of the road trip, Thursday, April 27. The room was packed with more than 100 people for the noon meeting, including former governor Angus King, area town planners and town managers, business owners, and environmental advocates.
