{"id":5545,"date":"2025-06-27T06:57:58","date_gmt":"2025-06-27T10:57:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sailingfregata.com\/?p=5545"},"modified":"2025-06-30T07:03:07","modified_gmt":"2025-06-30T11:03:07","slug":"welcome-to-2025-2-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sailingfregata.com\/?p=5545","title":{"rendered":"Mainly about Maine"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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When you\u2019re in Maine, life just feels right.<\/span><\/p>

People are kind and look out for each other. The scenery is breathtaking. There\u2019s a strong sense of community unlike many places where it feels more like people are only looking out for themselves. State and local government is focused on public service rather than divisive power mongering. Wildlife is pervasive. And the coast offers sailing second to none. Some sailors don’t like Maine because of the fog and ubiquitous lobster traps. This sailor says these are a small price to pay for what this fantastic place has to offer.<\/span><\/p>

Maine remains somewhat independent and is wary of too much outside influence. This applies to politics as well as daily life. An example of this is how Mainers refer to people from out of state as those “from away”.<\/span><\/p>

Another example is the lobster industry, responsible for around $400M of the state’s economy. Some years ago, the federal government tried to impose regulations to purportedly protect the diminishing stock. The lobstermmen and women found the regulations to be faulty, written by people with little practical knowledge of the trade. So rather than adopt them, they got together and wrote their own regulations. They also chose to self-enforce the rules, rather than rely on an outside enforcement agency. Years later, the stock has been replenished and the industry is thriving, with record-breaking yields over the last few years.<\/span><\/p>

I’ve always been interested in anthropology, understanding the cultural, social, linguisitic and physical characteristics of people from different regions. This is probably inherited from my mother who studied anthropology at university. As part of this, I’ve always been obsessed with the symbols people choose to represent themselves, such as flags and even license plates (I know… weird, right?). Interestingly, Maine voted on a referendum last November to change the state flag. The current flag is a state seal on a blue field. This was thought to be complex, and too similar to the flags of at least 15 other states. There was a contest to pick an alternative. The pine tree and star flag, Maine’s flag in the early 20th century, was chosen as the contender. The results were 55% in favor of keeping the old flag and 45% for changing.<\/p>

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However, the state recently issued a new license plate design featuring the same pine tree and star, replacing the chickadee design used during the last 20 years.<\/p>

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Yet, remaining true to an independent spirit, for those who don’t want the standard license plate, there are a variety of specialty choices featuring agriculture, conservation, lobsters, wildlife, breast cancer detection, the University of Maine, purple heart, prisoner of war, veterans, and more!<\/p>

It’s early Friday morning, and I’m excited to be heading down to Portland (by road) to pick up Admiral Sandy!<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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\n\t\t\t\t<\/path><\/svg>Prev<\/span><\/span>Previous<\/span>Loony Tunes<\/span><\/span><\/a>\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t
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What makes Maine such a special place?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5551,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5545","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-2025-new-england"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sailingfregata.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5545","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sailingfregata.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sailingfregata.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sailingfregata.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sailingfregata.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5545"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/sailingfregata.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5545\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5645,"href":"https:\/\/sailingfregata.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5545\/revisions\/5645"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sailingfregata.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/5551"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sailingfregata.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5545"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sailingfregata.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5545"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sailingfregata.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5545"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}