WALDOBORO, Maine — Clam diggers go to Elaine and Ralph Johnston’s ironmongery store within the coastal city of Waldoboro for shellfish rakes and waders. Since Russia invaded Ukraine, they’ve additionally been in a position to choose up a extra uncommon merchandise: the Ukrainian flag, bought for $15.99.
Across Maine, the yellow and blue banner — yellow symbolizing the plentiful wheat fields of Ukraine, blue, the sky overhead — flutters from flagpoles. It decorates lobster buoys and barn doorways, clapboard homes sprayed with sea salt and cabins nestled in pine forests.
Unlike in cities like New York and Chicago, the place symbols of Ukrainian pleasure partially replicate a big diaspora neighborhood, there are few individuals of Ukrainian heritage in Maine. But the flag’s widespread presence within the state reveals one other type of solidarity. Mainers wish to say theirs is a flinty spirit, born of tolerating harsh winters and an equally harsh economic system.
“People over there are doing a good job fighting for their land and their survival, and we in Maine, we like that,” Ms. Johnston stated. “We sell flags to people who feel the way we do.”
In Skowhegan, a city in Maine’s rural inside, Tom McCarthy, a contractor who additionally runs a Christmas wreath enterprise, referred to as up a flag maker whose workshop is down the street.
“I said, ‘Make me the biggest Ukrainian flag you can,’” Mr. McCarthy stated. “He did.”
Mr. McCarthy has no familial connection to Ukraine, though he did as soon as host an alternate pupil from neighboring Belarus, which is ruled by an authoritarian chief aligned with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia.
“The majority of people in Maine know what struggle is, from the pulp woods to the potato fields, to blueberry patches to lobster waters — we know that one day you have something and another day you don’t,” Mr. McCarthy stated. “The people of Ukraine, they’re survivors, too, and putting up their flag, well, that’s a small token. But it’s something I could do.”
Bill Swain, the flag maker whom Mr. McCarthy contacted, stated he had wanted to Google what the Ukrainian flag seemed like when his neighbor referred to as. Mr. Swain sometimes makes drapes for motels and flags adorned with a pine tree and star, the outdated Maine state emblem.
The explicit shade of blue on the highest half of the Ukrainian flag needed to be ordered specifically, he stated. It is a uncommon azure (Pantone 2935, within the parlance of the corporate thought of a shade authority), not the navy blue (Pantone 281) of the Norwegian and Liberian flags or the royal blue (Pantone 293) of the Dutch and Slovenian flags.
Mr. Swain ordered loads of material in Pantone 2935. Mr. McCarthy, who purchased a five-by-eight-foot flag from him, instructed him the Ukrainian image would show common.
Since making his first Ukrainian flag in April, Mr. Swain has bought greater than 2,000 of them, a sooner tempo of gross sales than for his American and Maine flags. Orders are available in from throughout the nation — a reminder that flying the Ukrainian flag isn’t just a Maine phenomenon — and he donates 1 / 4 of the proceeds to a charity working in Ukraine. The oldest flag maker at his firm is 73. Mr. Swain attaches the grommets himself.
“When you make a flag, you want to do it right,” Mr. Swain stated. “When you see flags that are printed, not sewn like ours, you can tell right away that they’re not going to last.”
Maine is politically divided between its southern coast and an enormous inside, and it’s one in every of two states the place districts solid their electoral faculty votes individually. In the 2020 presidential election, President Biden took the coast and former President Donald J. Trump the inside.
The affinity for Ukraine, although, is bipartisan.
“Ukraine is not a red or blue issue, it’s a blue and yellow issue,” stated Mr. McCarthy, who’s a Vietnam War-era veteran.
Kimberly Richards, who lives in Friendship, Maine, is married to a third-generation lobsterman and paints white cedar buoys in customized shade mixtures. Commercial lobstermen use bands of colours to differentiate the buoys floating above their traps. This 12 months, she has been portray loads of yellow and blue, shopping for the blue paint from the Johnstons’ ironmongery store in Waldoboro.
“Pretty much everybody in Maine, we understand the injustice that’s going on over there and we want to show our support to the Ukrainian people,” Ms. Richards stated.
The household of Ms. Johnston, the ironmongery store proprietor, got here to the United States from Finland, which was invaded by the Soviet Union early in World War II. Ms. Johnston’s grandmother arrived in Maine as slightly lady, buying and selling one snowy land for one more.
“We know how it feels for the Ukrainians, with Putin acting like that,” Ms. Johnston stated.
Waves of Finns, together with Scots and Swedes, got here to Maine to work the granite quarries. Other immigrants got here to haul timber and feed paper mills on land that has been residence to the Wabanaki, a confederation of Indigenous peoples.
Still, solely 4 p.c of Maine’s present inhabitants is international born, though immigrants from Africa and Asia have arrived within the state lately, many pushed from residence by battle.
Muhidin Libah, an ethnic Bantu from Somalia, arrived in Lewiston, Maine, in 2005 after having received a visa lottery spot. He helps the state’s roughly 2,000 Bantus entry social providers and apply their conventional agricultural acumen to a colder local weather. (A minority inhabitants in Somalia, Bantus have been as soon as enslaved by different ethnic teams.)
Mr. Libah sees the Ukrainian flags flying from farmhouses as he drives round rural Maine on the lookout for land that may be cultivated by Bantus.
“The Ukrainian flags in yards in Maine, it is nice to see that support,” Mr. Libah stated.
Still, he famous that whereas many Ukrainians discovered refuge outdoors their nation shortly after the invasion, he spent 20 years in a refugee camp in Kenya earlier than successful his likelihood to to migrate to the United States.
“I think part of it comes down to people associating with the whiteness of Ukrainians,” Mr. Libah stated. “You want to help someone in trouble who looks like you. Will they feel the same for an Afghan refugee or a Bantu refugee?”
Compared with the displaced of Africa, Asia and the Middle East, Ukrainian refugees have been welcomed extra shortly and with wider arms in Europe and the United States.
Oleg Opalnyk, a Ukrainian native, got here to Maine in 2002 and now owns a contracting and actual property enterprise. There are just a few dozen Ukrainians within the state, he estimated. When Russia invaded Ukraine, he yearned to do one thing.
“At first, I wanted to go to Ukraine and fight,” he stated, “but I realized I could help people more from here than from there.”
Mr. Opalnyk has up to now supported 24 Ukrainians who’ve arrived in Maine underneath a Department of Homeland Security program that permits for some 100,000 Ukrainians to remain within the United States for as much as two years if they’ve a monetary sponsor. Mr. Opalnyk can be sponsoring one other 18 Ukrainians who will arrive in Maine within the coming weeks, he stated.
Only one of many 24 Ukrainians who’ve arrived up to now has gotten permission to work, Mr. Opalnyk stated, making a sustained welcome from the neighborhood much more essential. Residents of the cities of Lewiston and Auburn, the place the Ukrainians have settled in residences offered by Mr. Opalnyk, have donated garments, furnishings and meals.
“They see the Ukrainian flag all over here, on cars and on buildings, and they feel the good of the people of Maine,” Mr. Opalnyk stated, referring to the brand new arrivals. “Americans, and Mainers especially, they have sensitive hearts to people who are suffering.”