150 Reasons to Give Thanks We Live In Maine
In no particular order
# 01 How many other states look like this?# 02 The feeling you get crossing the Piscataqua River bridge from New Hampshire.
# 03 The smell of woodsmoke on a frosty fall morning.
# 04 The Westbrook Little League team.
# 05 Rachel Carson, who stopped our springs from being silent.
# 06 No billboards.
# 07 Rabbi Harry Sky. Because even seniors need a college.
# 08 Our fall foliage isn't too shabby.
# 09 Stephen and Tabitha King chose to live in Bangor (and share the wealth).
# 10 Henry David Thoreau showed us around the North Woods.
# 11 Mary Bonauto, for fighting discrimination.
# 12 Sister Mary Norberta, for giving care.
# 13 We have four seasons: summer, fall, winter, and mud.
# 14 L-A Arts.
# 15 Great microbrews (see page 78).
# 16 WCSH's Sidewalk Art Festival.
# 17 Permissive trespass is the law of the land.
# 18 Molasses doughnuts on Friday morning at Moody's Diner.
# 19 The Maine Art Trail.
# 20 The ITS Snowmobile Trail.
# 21 Margaret Chase Smith and her anti-McCarthyist Declaration of Conscience, which should be read again today by every Mainer.
# 22 Ed Muskie's Clean Air and Clean Water acts.
# 23 Tourists and the millions they spend here.
# 24 Our great kids.
# 25 The pier fries at Old Orchard Beach. Also the fries at Scales and at Duckfat in Portland.
# 26 More than 1,500 islands.
# 27 More than 3,000 miles of coastline.
# 28 Fog.
# 29 Global Positioning Systems.
# 30 The Fabulous Bowl O' Meat at Café Miranda in Rockland.
# 31 James Russell Wiggins got it right.
# 32 Bill Nemitz gets it right.
# 33 Al Diamon's big mouth (and big beard).
# 34 The Portsmouth Naval Shipyard and Limestone Accounting Office were saved from closure.
# 35 Route 11 between Fort Kent and Ashland.
# 36 Route 201 between Bingham and Jackman.
# 37 Liv Tyler, Rachel Nichols, and Patrick Dempsey -- our Maine-bred actors are hot!
# 38 Gun ownership is high. And our crime rate is low.
# 39 John Calvin Stevens had a talent for designing houses, and he designed a lot of them.
# 40 Our forebears had the good sense to set up their own state in 1820.
# 41 Working waterfronts.
# 42 Picnicking at Two Lights.
# 43 "You can't get there from here."
# 44 E.B. White and "some pig."
# 45 The Old Sow.
# 46 Three generations of Wyeths.
# 47 The call of loons on the lake at night.
# 48 Boston is close enough to visit but far enough to avoid.
# 49 L.L. Bean.
# 50 The Beans of Egypt, Maine.
# 51 B&M Baked Beans.
# 52 The sandwiches at Big G's in Winslow.
# 53 Eartha.
# 54 Pa'tridge season.
# 55 The Sanford Mainers.
# 56 Most of us drive more slowly than our sometimes-frantic visitors from out of state.
# 57 The Penobscots, Passamaquoddies, Micmacs, and Maliseets are still here.
# 58 We had genuine heroes in Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain and the Twentieth Maine. Also the 133rd Engineer Battalion.
# 59 There are still whales in the Gulf of Maine.
# 60 Gulf Hagas.
# 61 Fly fishing the caddis hatch at Shawmut Dam.
# 62 Weatherbeaten.
# 63 The Friendship Sloop.
# 64 The Mooselook Wobbler.
# 65 Percival Baxter took a personal interest in a little mountain named Katahdin.
# 66 The first morning we get to spend in the garden each spring.
# 67 Maine Reads.
# 68 Maine Speaks.
# 69 Our farmers.
# 70 The Bowdoin International Music Festival.
# 71 The Bates Dance Festival.
# 72 Marion Stocking, Maine's Belle of Letters.
# 73 Sunrise viewed from atop Cadillac Mountain.
# 74 Sunset as viewed from the benches at Monhegan Island Lighthouse, overlooking Manana.
# 75 Town meetings.
# 76 Lynx.
# 77 Reny's and Marden's.
# 78 Paper is still made here.
# 79 The Abyssinian Church in Portland.
# 80 The world's best smallmouth bass fishing is in Washington County.
# 81 Hot dogs from Flo's in York, Rapid Ray's in Saco, Wasses in Rockland.
# 82 The Sea Goddess in Rockland.
# 83 The Blueberry Queen in Machias and in Union.
# 84 Miss Dumpy in Kennebunkport.
# 85 In general we rarely experience the killer earthquakes, tornadoes, hurricanes, floods, and wildfires that plague other parts of the country -- for which we knock on wood.
# 86 "As Maine goes, so goes the nation." Even if it's no longer true.
# 87 Joe Cupo's weather forecasts.
# 88 Peabody House in Portland.
# 89 H.o.m.e. in Orland.
# 90 Bartlett's Oak Dry Wild Blueberry Wine.
# 91 The familiar voice of Irwin Gratz on Morning Edition.
# 92 The Melanzana Diavolo pizza at Ricetta's in South Portland.
# 93 Watching thousands of migrating shorebirds descend on Lubec Flats, Scarborough Marsh, and Biddeford Pool.
# 94 Listening to the Red Sox on the radio on a summer night.
# 95 Watching the Patriots on a fall afternoon.
# 96 Go Black Bears!
# 97 Shoreland zoning.
# 98 Lobster, of course.
# 99 The Hundred Mile Wilderness.
# 100 The smell of the sea.
# 101 Betty Noyce, for her generosity.
# 102 Fiddleheads, with butter, in May.
# 103 Steamed clams, with butter, in June.
# 104 Baby red potatoes, with butter, in July.
# 105 Kate's Butter.
# 106 The Park Loop Road in Acadia.
# 107 The Preble Street Resource Center in Portland.
# 108 The blackfly -- what else would we do with all that extra blood?
# 109 Popham Beach and Reid State Park, those oases of sand amid the rocky midcoast.
# 110 The weighing station in Greenville on the first day of moose season.
# 111 Height of Land in Rangeley.
# 112 We only have to cross the Piscaquata River to visit Portsmouth.
# 113 Ployes.
# 114 The workers at BIW, the best shipbuilders in the world.
# 115 Mount Blue.
# 116 Great Wass Island.
# 117 The Maine accent.
# 118 Quality of life actually means something here (whether it makes up for our smaller paychecks is another matter).
# 119 The Kenduskeag Stream Canoe Race.
# 120 The Beach to Beacon Race.
# 121 The Goldenrod's saltwater taffy.
# 122 We are a border state.
# 123 No dress code required.
# 124 Salmo sebago.
# 125 The Good Shepherd Food Bank.
# 126 Moxie.
# 127 We can always find parking spaces in Boothbay Harbor, Camden, and Bar Harbor -- in November.
# 128 When we look out to sea, we see windjammers instead of oil rigs.
# 129 Oxford Plains Speedway.
# 130 Samantha Smith gave us hope.
# 131 Ian Crocker gives us pride.
# 132 Volunteer firemen and -women.
# 133 Maine Antique Digest.
# 134 Louis Sockalexis.
# 135 The laptop program.
# 136 Maine Coon cats.
# 137 Eureka Hall in Stockholm.
# 138 We have the patience to put up with big-city travel writers calling our hometowns quaint.
# 139 Sugarloaf and Sunday River.
# 140 Gulliver's Hole.
# 141 Harold Alfond.
# 142 Snow days.
# 143 Ice out.
# 144 Church suppers.
# 145 Stinson's sardines on crackers.
# 146 We know our neighbors. (Sometimes all too well.)
# 147 Mount Kineo.
# 148 Duane Doolittle, for starting a magazine about Maine in 1954.
# 149 All the winners of the Down East Environmental Award.
# 150 There are so many more reasons we are thankful to live in Maine we can't list them all.
