Values
“I put my faith in the ingenuity of Mainers to teach the rest of us Americans what it means to earn an honest living, live a modest life, and recognize the meaning of the word ‘enough.’ ”
Penny Zokaie, Cross River, New York

“For me, Maine is as much a state of the mind as a State of the Union.”
John Reisman, Columbus, Ohio

“I don’t define the ‘real Maine’ as a particular place, but as a mindset about what is important in life: creativity versus consumerism. The energy in the real Maine is not about acquiring and showing off stuff, but rather it is about humanity relating to humanity by being creative.”
Jennifer Foutty, Bloomington, Indiana

“The real Maine is something like this: You have several seasonal jobs year-round. You are always planning for the winter. Do you have enough wood and oil? Do you need new shovels, boots, gloves? You watch the seasonal sales at local stores. You put up food from your garden if you have one. Have you got your hunting permits in order? You are a thrift-shop queen for your kids’ clothing. You are not afraid to ask for a payment plan for anything.”
Emma Finn, Hillsboro, Oregon

“I believe that maine begins north of Bangor, leaving behind the commercial feel of southern Maine.”
John and Joyce Hammer, Rochester, New York

Practicality. By George Smith

We make do in Maine. For those who have no idea what this means, do is not a product that we make. Make do is what we do.

The phrase “make-do” is actually in the dictionary, a hyphenated adjective defined as “makeshift.”

Makeshift is defined as a noun meaning, “a crude and temporary expedient: substitute.”

They got it wrong. There is nothing temporary about making do. And it’s more than an adjective. It’s a permanent way of life, at least in Maine.

This occurred to me last winter as I noticed the cold seeping through the hole in the thumb of my right-hand glove. These gloves were only a year old, so I’ve been making do with them. It was nearing the end of January, so it seemed wasteful to buy a new pair. I decided to make do until spring.

Actually, I have an idea for making do with my gloves even longer. That idea came to me while watching my nephew, Nate Damm, play basketball with one white and one black sneaker. He was not making do. These were new sneakers. Apparently mismatched colors are trendy.

So why not mismatched gloves? I have a closet full of single mittens and gloves, the mates lost or worn out. I’ve started mixing and matching them and can make do for years to come.

This works for socks, too. It’s just amazing how many times two matched socks can go into the laundry basket and only one return to my bureau drawer. Now I am making do with mismatches.

Making do sometimes means aligning yourself with fate and taking whatever comes your way without complaint. I once backed out of the garage right into the side of a friend’s automobile.

This is not that unusual. Twice I’ve backed out of the garage right through the garage door. (If God had wanted me to look back, he’d have put eyes in the back of my head.)

In the case of my friend’s car, my vehicle was unharmed, but her car sported a deep dent in the left rear fender.
When I apologized and offered to pay for the repair, she said, “Oh, don’t worry about it. We don’t fix things like that.”

My home office is a make-do kind of place. Pieces of the laminated side panels of my wooden desk are missing, and the front panels on the drawers are all loose, so that the things inside are constantly slipping through the cracks and falling out onto the floor.

I have four filing cabinets in three different colors, scavenged from who knows where. But they’re all the same height, so we’re making do.

The radio on my desk once included a CD player, but that function no longer works. I can still get Maine Public Radio, so we’re making do with that.

I was making do with a very old television in my office. None of the buttons on the TV worked, and the remote no longer could punch up any stations that required a “0” but otherwise — hey, it was good enough.

Then my wife, Lin, bought me a new office TV for Christmas, and now I’m getting all the channels. (I’ve stored the old TV in the garage, if you want it.)

Making do is really about sticking with the stuff that is good enough. It’s frugality to the extreme.

We don’t throw much away, at least those of us with attics, garages, barns, or big yards. Someday that stuff will be useful, something we can make do with.

Of course, there are Mainers who don’t make do. We bless them every time we go to the dump and cart home the “good enough” stuff they discarded there.

You can tell the difference between the “making-do” Mainers and those that aren’t, when each has a yard sale.

There’s nothing at all useful at the yard sale of a “making-do” Mainer.

Camp is where we really make do.

A long crack in the middle pane of the window over our camp’s kitchen sink is covered with duct tape. I broke the window ten years ago. Despite Lin’s pleading for a new window, I find the duct tape decorative.
There’s a lot we don’t have at camp: no TV, no radio, no telephone (no cell phone coverage), no closets, no electricity, no email, no messages, no newspapers, no news at all.

We’re making do just fine.

“The real Maine is digging clams in the mud flats at low tide, your broken fingernails the evidence.”
Kathleen S. Henry, Barrington, Rhode Island

“Potentially useful stuff — it isn’t mere junk — sits around the edges of a farmyard. These people have other jobs, too, in order to keep farming.”
Martha Reifschneider, Silver Spring, Maryland

“Collecting pay from the farmer whose hay you helped get in involves driving by the place for several months until you see him out in the door-yard so you can ask, ‘Don’t ‘spose you owe me any money, do ya?’ He would answer, ‘Mos’ probly.’ ”
John Nichols, Winthrop, Maine

Serenity
“The shuffling of school kids’ feet through fallen leaves on their way to the bus stops. The first pass by the snowplow as we hunker in for a long white winter. The last lawn mowing in late October and the mowers starting up in the spring.”
William McGrath, Augusta, Maine

“We have a family home on Loud’s Island in Muscongus Bay. There is no electricity, cars, Internet, and, blessedly, no phones. It is where the toxicity of modern life washes off, and I recharge. I get to breathe air and hear sounds that are still as our maker intended. In Maine, life still makes some sense.”
John Blankinship, Cornwall, New York

“By the time we have to head home, we are refreshed, calm, and stronger people — ready to take on the world again and more centered to what is truly important in life.”
Barb and Bill Yahn, Hammondsport, New York

“A state that beckons us through serene natural beauty, rather than manufactured attractions.”
Bill and Jean Steer, Flat Rock, North Carolina

“Classical Chinese landscape painters almost always include a human figure in their paintings of nature. In the painter’s conscience, the human presence complements the land, and the land gives meaning to the human. I think of Maine this way. Within almost any scene of Maine lies the imprint of human endeavor. It is never sufficient to consider the one without considering the other. Lives are shaped by the land, and the land is altered by these lives.”
Edgar Boyd, Topsham, Maine

“I’m a resident of Maine but am obliged to spend nearly half my time elsewhere. But each time I return, my wife says she is amazed at the change in my expression the minute we cross the Portsmouth bridge. A smile begins, and she says it grows steadily as we progress, and I believe her — I can literally feel myself relaxing and sense my attitude improving with anticipation as we near home. It’s because I know how much more pleasant the people will be than those I left behind; how much I’ll enjoy the spontaneous conversations I’ll have with strangers; how much more comfortable the pace of life will be; how much more agreeable to my senses the weather and scenery will be. All of those things — call them the decency and openness of the people — are my Maine.”
Richard Stephenson, South Freeport, Maine

Memories
“Half-sitting, half-laying, picking wild blueberries on a foggy day, while my husband — who was out of sight — did a fair imitation of Louis Armstrong singing ‘Blueberry Hill.’ ”
Sallie Bailey, Fayetteville, New York

“Yes, it is scenic. True, Mainers care about others. But, at the end of the day, the real Maine, At least for you, will be found in your memories.”
Dave Howe, Cape Elizabeth, Maine

“Our real Maine is to be sitting forlornly in the pitch dark at the ferry terminal at 6:30 on a cold autumn morning, with a car full of dogs, plants, baggage and whatever else we thought was too precious to spend the winter on Vinalhaven, and have our friend Laura rap on the car window to deliver a going-away basket of hot morning glory muffins (with butter) that she had baked for us that morning!”
Sylvia and Ken Reiss, Darien, Connecticut

“Maine has a hold on my heart and won’t let it go. That little red cabin on Branch Pond in Ellsworth is, to me, as real as it gets.”
Julia Allen, West Granby, Connecticut

“Maine is a full moon playing hide and seek as we zigzagged our way down the Airline Road on our way home to Calais one summer night.”
Chris Fritz, Calais, Maine

“Maine has a hold on my heart and won’t let it go. That little red cabin on Branch Pond in Ellsworth is, to me, as real as it gets.”
Julia Allen, West Granby, Connecticut

“Maine is where I am supposed to be. On the beach in Wells, walking the Marginal Way or in the Old Port, sleeping in a yurt in Brownfield, waking to the lobsterboats in Boothbay Harbor, or just chilling with friends at a clambake in Gouldsboro. In my soul, Maine is home.”
Jill Pupkar, Boylston, Massachusetts

“Pappy’s description of Maine: ‘Son I have seen the whole world and thank almighty God for bringing me home again.’ ”
Thomas M. Gaubert, DeSoto, Texas