You may know Maine, but that doesn't mean everyone else does

I’m always intrigued by the degree to which provincialism holds sway in American culture. And the extent to which geographic literacy suffers as a result.

My wife Liz and I live in Maine, but we were not born and raised here, so we view this wonderful place with the perspective of transplanted outsiders. Mainers take great pride in their state, as they should. Its natural beauty is breathtaking. Its people are unaffected, hardworking, tolerant, self-reliant and blessed with an abundance of common sense. Normally, its politics are forward-looking. (With the exception of our current pathetic excuse for a governor, Paul LePage, but he’s an aberration.)

Yet native-born Mainers sometimes have an exaggerated sense of their state’s reputation elsewhere in the country. They realize Maine is a gem and a popular vacation destination, but they fail to take into account how little many people know about the world beyond their own city limits or state borders. I suspect many folks west of the Mississippi and south of the Mason-Dixon line probably have a vague notion that Maine is a Canadian island somewhere in the North Atlantic where Paul Bunyan grows lobsters in an orchard and harvests them from trees when they ripen.

Which brings us to the incident that got me thinking about provincialism and geographic illiteracy.

During a short stay in our native Massachusetts last week, my wife Liz and I visited the Emily Dickinson Museum in the Amherst home of the famed poet. Liz and I were the only people on our particular tour, so we had the gregarious and very well-informed guide all to ourselves.

At the start of the tour, this pleasant, animated woman (whose name I didn’t commit to memory) asked us where we were from. Sometimes, in these situations, I explain that we’re both from Massachusetts but we now live in Maine. At other times, I do what I did in Amherst last week. I offered a one-word answer.

“Maine.”

A strange expression settled on the guide’s face. She seemed to have lost her ability to speak. I could see that she was trying mightily to say something complimentary — anything — about Maine, so she could be polite and hold up her end of the conversation.

But she drew a blank. Absolutely nothing came to mind. We stood around waiting, but to no avail.

Clearly, this articulate and well-educated woman had no familiarity with Maine, no mental image of the state, no Maine-centered tidbit or factoid or point of reference that she could draw upon, even though Maine was once part of Massachusetts and Amherst is less than 150 miles from Kittery. (That’s a Maine town on the state’s southern border, for you non-Mainers.)

The silence was a bit long, and awkward. We brought it to a close by turning our attention to Miss Dickinson. Come to think of it, she probably didn’t know a hell of a lot about Maine either, but she more than made up for that unfortunate deficiency in other ways.