Ward Peck's Jersey Tawk: "Waiting for Maine to inhale" (Printed Jan. 25, 2008)
For centuries the Scarborough marsh, like many across the country was
seen as something to overcome. To serve their purposes people built
dams and levies, filled it in and dissected it with causeways – all of
which resulted in the slow-motion asphyxiation of the watershed. It has
only been in the last several decades people have come to recognize the
utility of marshes to the health of an ecosystem and that utility is
directly tied to a marsh’s ability to respire – breathing in during
high tides and breathing out when the moon pulls the ocean in the
opposite direction, all the while exchanging nutrients and oxygen,
sequestering toxins and carbon. The marsh has begun to recover as those
structures have been dismantled – or allowed to fall apart.
Life in Maine is a bit like the marsh, except the barriers to exchange are cultural and psychological rather than physical.
In a September 2004 “advice column” for the Leader’s sister paper, the Biddeford Saco Old Orchard Beach Courier, I wrote that Mainers’ driving skills “stink” and that we generally do things better in Jersey.
That column would serve as a template for Jersey Tawk, a forum for me from time to time to vent against the peculiar provincialism and entrenched insularity with which many Mainers regard themselves and this state. At the time of that piece, I had lived in Maine for three years and was constantly shocked by the sheer number of people I encountered who never felt the need to travel beyond the state’s borders and the hostility toward anyone or anything originating somewhere else. In my adopted hometown of Portland, I often found myself arguing with people (sometimes in dark bars in the middle of the day) who believed Maine was being overrun by Somali and other east African immigrants who were stealing “their” jobs and even “their” government handouts. Such xenophobic ranting may get some traction in San Diego, but Maine?
My purpose with Jersey Tawk is to get under the skin of such people by boasting about some place as reviled as New Jersey. But far from a simple desire to annoy people with my version of hometown pride, I truly believe the myth of “the way life should be” is damaging the reality of the way life is or could be.
But aside from this gut feeling, I’ve always had difficulty quantifying or qualifying just how damaging Maine’s rejectionist isolationism is to the state’s cultural and economic health.
Last week, I opened a copy of the Portland Forecaster and to my surprise found my own company, Mainely Media LLC, mentioned, if obliquely, in a rather long article about our corporate owner’s attempt to get publicly supported financing for a new acquisition. The article mentions near the top that the pursuit of the financing is “not unusual” and mentions further down that the Forecaster’s owners also have availed themselves of the financing. Nowhere did the article make clear how the story was relevant to readers in Portland and nowhere in the article did it mention that the Forecaster’s Southern edition competes directly with two of the “several weekly publications” in Southern Maine that comprise Mainely Media, LLC.
What is mentioned on several occasions in the article is that Sample News Group (which owns Mainely Media, LLC), its principals and several of its employees are from away.
In what could be spun as a good news for business in Maine story (“Company continues to see value investing in Maine”) instead paints a picture of an out-of-state company possibly abusing a subsidy to take over Maine a family-owned business and fire its employees. While it offers no direct evidence to counter the argument that the public financing will help the company preserve Maine jobs, the article does cite past incidences when the people (including the Forecaster’s current editor) left Sample newspapers’ employ either by choice or force.
Never mind the industry is currently undergoing historic changes. Never mind the fact that a number of former Sample-owned Journal Tribune employees currently work at Sample-owned Mainely Media, LLC. Never mind that Chris Miles, the “Pennsylvania-based” Sample News principal cited in the story actually lives and pays taxes in Maine. The story’s subtext is: These people are not from here and they are not trustworthy.
While all this may seem a bit “inside baseball” – an esoteric example of my larger point about Maine’s attitude toward outsiders; it is but one note in the near-constant drumbeat heard by all of us “from away” who come here and contribute to the common good and are resented for it.
Those who wish to inhabit the mythological Maine that is home to the industrious, self-reliant and woods-wise Yankee, suspicious of outsiders seeking to install foreign ideas also chooses the real Maine in which the economic conditions foster a culture of dependency, obesity and ignorance. Those who ascribe too literally to the notion that Mainers have figured out the magical formula for living “life as it should be” fail to see the irony in the fact that their neighbors depend on charity to survive the winter.
I love Maine. I really do. Otherwise I wouldn’t still be here. But that doesn’t mean I think it’s perfect.
Life in Maine is a bit like the marsh, except the barriers to exchange are cultural and psychological rather than physical.
In a September 2004 “advice column” for the Leader’s sister paper, the Biddeford Saco Old Orchard Beach Courier, I wrote that Mainers’ driving skills “stink” and that we generally do things better in Jersey.
That column would serve as a template for Jersey Tawk, a forum for me from time to time to vent against the peculiar provincialism and entrenched insularity with which many Mainers regard themselves and this state. At the time of that piece, I had lived in Maine for three years and was constantly shocked by the sheer number of people I encountered who never felt the need to travel beyond the state’s borders and the hostility toward anyone or anything originating somewhere else. In my adopted hometown of Portland, I often found myself arguing with people (sometimes in dark bars in the middle of the day) who believed Maine was being overrun by Somali and other east African immigrants who were stealing “their” jobs and even “their” government handouts. Such xenophobic ranting may get some traction in San Diego, but Maine?
My purpose with Jersey Tawk is to get under the skin of such people by boasting about some place as reviled as New Jersey. But far from a simple desire to annoy people with my version of hometown pride, I truly believe the myth of “the way life should be” is damaging the reality of the way life is or could be.
But aside from this gut feeling, I’ve always had difficulty quantifying or qualifying just how damaging Maine’s rejectionist isolationism is to the state’s cultural and economic health.
Last week, I opened a copy of the Portland Forecaster and to my surprise found my own company, Mainely Media LLC, mentioned, if obliquely, in a rather long article about our corporate owner’s attempt to get publicly supported financing for a new acquisition. The article mentions near the top that the pursuit of the financing is “not unusual” and mentions further down that the Forecaster’s owners also have availed themselves of the financing. Nowhere did the article make clear how the story was relevant to readers in Portland and nowhere in the article did it mention that the Forecaster’s Southern edition competes directly with two of the “several weekly publications” in Southern Maine that comprise Mainely Media, LLC.
What is mentioned on several occasions in the article is that Sample News Group (which owns Mainely Media, LLC), its principals and several of its employees are from away.
In what could be spun as a good news for business in Maine story (“Company continues to see value investing in Maine”) instead paints a picture of an out-of-state company possibly abusing a subsidy to take over Maine a family-owned business and fire its employees. While it offers no direct evidence to counter the argument that the public financing will help the company preserve Maine jobs, the article does cite past incidences when the people (including the Forecaster’s current editor) left Sample newspapers’ employ either by choice or force.
Never mind the industry is currently undergoing historic changes. Never mind the fact that a number of former Sample-owned Journal Tribune employees currently work at Sample-owned Mainely Media, LLC. Never mind that Chris Miles, the “Pennsylvania-based” Sample News principal cited in the story actually lives and pays taxes in Maine. The story’s subtext is: These people are not from here and they are not trustworthy.
While all this may seem a bit “inside baseball” – an esoteric example of my larger point about Maine’s attitude toward outsiders; it is but one note in the near-constant drumbeat heard by all of us “from away” who come here and contribute to the common good and are resented for it.
Those who wish to inhabit the mythological Maine that is home to the industrious, self-reliant and woods-wise Yankee, suspicious of outsiders seeking to install foreign ideas also chooses the real Maine in which the economic conditions foster a culture of dependency, obesity and ignorance. Those who ascribe too literally to the notion that Mainers have figured out the magical formula for living “life as it should be” fail to see the irony in the fact that their neighbors depend on charity to survive the winter.
I love Maine. I really do. Otherwise I wouldn’t still be here. But that doesn’t mean I think it’s perfect.
Perhaps a link to the story would be an order here (http://www.theforecaster.net/story.php?storyid=13435&ftype=search).
That way readers can determine for themselves if Mr. Peck’s ‘analysis’ of the story’s so-called xenophobic subtext is just a little off target, or worse, determine if he has omitted or distorted some key facts in his column because they didn’t serve his agenda.
Also, Peck writes that the piece could've been "spun as a good news for business in Maine story." That he thinks this story, or any story, should be spun at all reveals his contempt for the journalism trade he professes to ply. It should also serve as warning to readers that Peck, editor of the Sentry, utilizes this credo when making news decisions about the stories he writes or allows in the paper. After all, if Peck is so invested in contributing to the 'common good', as he claims here, then it's worth asking whose good he thinks he's serving - his readers or those of his employer?
- Steve Mistler (born in New Jersey, raised in New Hampshire, Maine resident for five years)
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As another immigrant to Maine, I too am amazed by the attitude that if you're "from away" your sole purpose in the state is to merely drop your money while on vacation then leave the state to those who were born here. Giving wrong directions to vacationers seems to be great sport, yet their money is still very much welcomed to keep the state's economy afloat.
We moved to Maine after innumerable summer visits from birth on. We are educated (PhD & Master's degrees), we enjoy outdoor & cultural pursuits, and we are willing to pay the high taxes and earn lower wages simply because we love this state. If we had children born here, they would still be considered "from away" -- how quaintly ignorant and xenophobic.
But hail the "real Mainers" who escape to warmer Florida or Arizona at the first sign of chilly weather, the fair weather Mainers. Don't give any credit to the people who stay through the snow & ice storms, who love the lifestyle here 365 days a year, and who choose to live here. I could have stayed in Pennsylvania, but it begs the question, "Why?!"
I will continue to endure the stilted attitude from people who bristle after hearing that I'm not native to the state. They won't change. They also likely won't open their minds to getting to know somebody new who could be interesting, fun to be around, and stimulating to know. Their loss.
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http://blog.scarboroughleader.com/2007/03/09/jersey-tawk-the-cape-stereotype--by-ward-peck.aspx
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"Maine: The way life should be" Not a bad marketing tool when printed on a full page add in "The Globe or "The Times" travel section. To the readers of those publications, it must conjure up images of rocky seacoasts shrouded in a just lifting morning fog, A bull moose standing majestically in boggy heath, or of a unbroken vista of towering conifers viewed from atop a granite overlook. It must make the denzians of the concrete and steel sigh and start checking the office vacation calender. And it must be working too, because even with $3.00+ gallon gas and one of the highest tax rates in the nation, "they are a commin'" by the hundreds, not only to visit, but to stay. But at what cost? What effect did that simple, but effective slogan have on a state as a whole?
In many of your OP/Ed pieces, you express,"frustration", at how the State of Maine is resistant to change and I believe you used the term "xenophobic" in describing how "Yankees" felt about "people from away". As a life long Mainer, who is well educated, well read, and well traveled, I'll let you in on a couple of little secrets we "generational Mainers" discuss when no "outsiders" are around. We are scared, and our pride is hurt.
We are scared of losing our identity as state. Scared of losing our culture. Scared of losing the unwritten history and traditions that have been interwoven into the very fabric of who we are. We are scared of extinction as "Tradional Mainers"
Our pride as tradional Mainers and as a state is hurt because the phrase "So goes Maine, so goes the nation" no longer is used in a positive manner. The phrase "Maine Leads" now is usually followed by the words taxation, obesity, smoking, or teen pregnacy. Our children scoff at the idea of staying here upon graduation and move away to greener pastures. They start planning the new residential sub-division of the family farm or woodlands before we are even dead. Lands and buildings that may have been in families for generations are being lost every month. We have gone from a state whose lumber, granite, ships, textiles, and goods were world renown for quality and technological advancement to a begger state whose economy is driven, not from within, but upon whether or not the tourists come to buy "Made in China" trinkets.
And all of this has causation in "people from away" with their "outsider" ideas.
As a "Mainer", I'll ask of you one thing. Educate yourself in the written and unwritten history of your adopted state. Meet and discuss Maine life with people who live north of Augusta whose famlies go back generations. Imerse yourself in the Maine culture outside of any metro area. Then, use that knowledge and your mastery of the written word, to help move the state forward once again. Maybe start with new slogan?
"Maine: Respecting the past,Reaching for the future"
Please feel free to comment or contact me directly for further discussions about OUR state that we both love.
Regards,
Jeff Grinnell
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Thanks for your perspective, Jeff.It seems clear that we see the same issues and are just coming at them from different points of view, which as uncomfortable as it can be, gets us closer to finding solutions. And as you correctly point out, I tend to generalize too much. For every xenophobic Mainer I've come across, has been balanced by a thoughtful, worldly and open Mainer. I could do a better job making that clear. But there is a mythological Mainer that holds sway as "authentic" – every caricature of a Mainer is that guy – and I don't find it funny at all because most of the people I run into (granted most of those people are in the coastal swath between Portland and Biddeford) are not that guy and it is harmful. It's nice to visit Amish country and see the horses and buggies, but then we go back to our air conditioned motel rooms and see what's on cable. Looking backward is self-defeating, we can never go back. Good planning to manage change – encourage growth where it makes sense and not where it doesn't – will help preserve what we all love.
We outsiders come here for all the reasons Mainer's are proud of our state, (which of course is a generalization). But the expectation that everyone is entitled to live on a five acre lot within commuting distance to their law firm is not sustainable. Living in the country sounds like a good idea, but so does a cup of coffee from a donut shop and how about a supermarket and on it goes. Soon it doesn't look like Maine, just everywhere else. You mention the ads that beckon people with Maine's rural character and the people come and inadvertently make it somewhere else - with sprawling subdivisions or my favorite the guy who moves to one of the islands and then petitions to make it illegal to fire up a lobster boat before 8 a.m. because its disruptive to his quality of life. How about for every ad that conjures up the allagash wilderness Maine produces a commercial about the dynamic cosmopolitan Portland region. Instead of a moose in every image, we put in a surfer every once in a while. What would this do? Maybe get across that Maine is more than hunting caps and the characters on that old Newhart Show (I know, Vermont). And if people understand that, their expectations of what they are entitled to once they get here may change.
Thanks for keeping me in check. I look forward to it in the future.
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