silly little elementary paintings. Tonight when I texted it to him he did not respond. When I checked to see if it went through I noticed I sent it to the one person at work who I happen to be the boss of. It is also 10 o'clock at night.

So when people make jokes about “some guy in Madawaska” worried about the border, they miss that this is a community forged by displacement, political betrayal, and cross-border family ties that go back centuries

Madawaska sits in the Upper St. John Valley, one of the strongest Acadian cultural centers in the United States. Many families there descend directly from survivors who fled or resettled after the Great Deportation, where thousands of Acadians were forced from their homes and up to 10,000 died.

I’m sure there are folks in Madawaska, like there are in every part of Maine, worried about immigration in a more "Texas style." But that completely ignores the history and the majority of people who make up Madawaska, Maine.

I saw a meme recently that had a map and pointed out Madawaska, and the text just said “some dude in Madawaska, Maine worried about border safety” or something like that. I get the joke, and I don’t think it’s completely inaccurate.

But what it tells me is that the people who voted for Obama twice didn’t suddenly become different people — something happened to them since. Something changed around them, or was taken from them, or stopped being offered to them. And we never seem interested in asking what that was.

Why do Mainers go to such great lengths to discredit, dismiss, and blame our rural northern comrades?

Aroostook County voted for Obama twice. Then it swung wildly the other way in 2016. That never seems to get brought up when people talk about the past couple of election cycles.

What I read here is that someone’s lived experiences can shape good policy and that lived experience here is being a fifth-generation logger in the northern Maine wilderness.

A place that I have been told both online and to my face is a “lost cause,” “scary to drive through,” “full of backwards racists and dummies.” The “nothing good north of Bangor” crowd is loud, both online and in real life.

This author does a great job and you should read the entire piece. I want to highlight something they don't mention. Troy is from northern Maine —

laughing at the pain = bad person
laughing at the absurdity of man/men = person

Evangelicalism can excuse predatory behavior, and by teaching girls that they are fully responsible for men’s impulses, it shifts all the blame onto us. That’s why it produces people who, knowingly or not, make such perfect bedfellows for exploitation.

I still remember being pulled out of the tabernacle at summer camp on a 94-degree day because I was wearing a tank top that showed my shoulders. I was 14, and they told me I was “tempting my brothers in Christ.”

The only thing I know about this guy is he loves running for something and lives in a 3 million dollar home in CD1.

My partner is a Mariner and is only home five months out of the year. His ability to vote absentee is a lifeline and an anchor for him. He cares deeply about the place we call home and wants to participate in every way he can in our community.