It must be at least four years since I attended the Midsummer celebration in New Sweden, a small community nestled in the rolling hills of northern Maine. In my mind’s eye, I still see children dancing with delicate flowers woven into their hair, dressed in traditional costumes. I still taste the delicious food laid out for hundreds to enjoy, and hear the laughter and chatter of friends and family. These images, tastes, aromas, and sights resonate. So, if anyone were to ask me to describe that sunny afternoon in June, I’d say, “Well, it was a celebration of the humanities.” It was a moment in time when people shared, learned, and grew with one another through culture, community, place, language, and identity.
The Saint John Valley, in the farthest reaches of northern Maine, directly on the border with New Brunswick and Québec, is where I call home. My work is about cultural development, notably the creation of an international cultural route for the region. It’s fulfilling to be immersed daily in a wide range of arts and cultural expressions. I’ve discovered that in communities all over rural, northern Maine, people express the humanities in many ways—exhibits at one of the thirteen historical societies in the Valley, a dance performance at the Caribou Performing Arts Center, an exhibition of photographs at the University of Maine at Presque Isle, open mic night at Artistree Gallery in Fort Kent, or painted street banners in Houlton. It’s a collection of Allagash stories by Faye O’Leary Hafford, a piece of music by composer Scott Brickman, or the flow of ideas that come when people get together for an opening at Café de la Place in Madawaska.
How else do we experience the humanities? Ah, it comes large, bold, fierce, and insistent. It comes in the courageous 20-year restoration of a decommissioned Catholic church in the tiny community of Lille. Emerging like an enormous ship in a land of forest and field, this church, now called the Musée culturel du Mont-Carmel, is testimony to how believing in something bigger than ourselves, literally and figuratively, can have a dramatic and enduring impact on us all.
Our historical societies, historians and genealogists, and cultural enthusiasts all over northern Maine safeguard our history and cultural memory and in so doing, strengthen our communities. I believe this is an act of civic responsibility at its highest, just as is ensuring that languages and literary traditions stay alive, along with family and community traditions like ballad singing, moon-sign gardening, blacksmithing, or snowshoe-making.
No matter where we live in Maine, we respond to what is true and authentic, and to what grows from our histories. The humanities offer us the opportunity to take pause, reflect, absorb and discover.
There are moments like this, one after another, everywhere in northern Maine. What would happen if we were to build upon, nurture, and multiply them? I don’t think I’m stretching it too far by saying simply, our communities would become better places to live.
They would celebrate, creativity, innovation, and diversity, not stifle them. We would see possibility in everything.
