The Way Life Should Be

I've got a lot of pride in Maine. In Portland. In Sebago.

It has blossomed since moving out to Portland. I can't put my finger on quite why. I love The City, that's one part of it. I think another might be the fact that I'm working for the news and get to hear about The State every day.

I feel connected to it.

Every day I'll hear something that reminds me of growing up here. Of the "magic" - if you will - that brings thousands to The Pine Tree State every year. Every day is a new day with new stories and yet, it's all strangely the same. Everything has a root somewhere back in Maine History. It's a strange spiraling sort of thing. I'm not really sure I can explain it. But I do love it.

Anyway, I found an article that speaks to that very "magic" sort of feeling that can be found throughout the state. It's the same everywhere here, but it's different because every part of the state is different.

The article was written by one Heidi Julavits for Slate.com. Julavits is a native but not quite. She explains it quite artfully in her article, I think.

To wit:

But non-natives—"From Aways" in native parlance—aren't the only ones indulging in gross acts of distortion. Maine's state slogan, recently changed from "Vacationland" to "The Way Life Should Be," represents one of the boldest moves in the annals of intentional misrepresentation, depending on your notion of ideal living conditions. There are more obese people in Maine than in any other New England state. In Maine, it's illegal to bait bears with donuts and then shoot them (presumably, people, and bears, should be less fat because of this law). Maine has more cat owners than any other state. Maine's drug of choice is coffee brandy. If you want to grow your own food, which an astonishing number of people in Maine feel compelled to do, you have 122 days to accomplish this between frosts. The annual mean temperature on the coast, where I live four months per year, is 46 degrees (40 degrees up north). If you spend a year in Maine, you'll enjoy 128 days of rain, 48 days of fog, and 17 days of snow. The only state poorer than Maine in 2005, the year of Hurricane Katrina, was Louisiana. Meaning, the only state worse off financially was a state that suffered the most crippling natural disaster in the history of this country. In Maine, meanwhile, 2005 was business as usual—just a lot of fat people hanging out in the rain with their cats, drinking coffee brandy and trying, without cheating, to kill a bear.

The article is here.