The American Spirit revealed

The deciding factor for our decision to purchase the home we live in was the neighborhood.  It was an established neighborhood with wide streets, well-maintained homes with well-kept Perhaps some urban planner or cynic would interpret the scene as vapid or plastic - a cliche image of suburban bliss.  But those who know how suburbia works know that neighborhoods can be like small towns where people know one another, share the same values and look out for each other.  It felt like home.  

I haven’t lived in a lot of places, but I recognize the genuine American spirit of friendliness in rural Maine neighborliness described in the podcast interview with Gigi Georges, author of Downeast: Five Maine Girls and the Unseen Story of Rural America.  Though there are clues, the soul of a place and its people is unseen.  Suburban neighborhoods have souls worth fighting for.  

Click HERE to listen to the podcast from The Federalist Radio Hour.

Discovering the ‘Unseen’ Story of Rural Maine

SEPTEMBER 24, 2021 By The Federalist Staff

On this episode of The Federalist Radio Hour, Gigi Georges joins Culture Editor Emily Jashinsky to discuss her book “Downeast: Five Maine Girls and the Unseen Story of Rural America.”

“So much of the reporting has been done in a parachuted way and too often I believe with a narrow and somewhat biased lens that I did not expect to see quite that interconnectedness that I saw in so many aspects of life there, in nearly every aspect of life there,” Georges said. “And what I came away with perhaps that biggest ‘aha’ was … I was far more isolated in this tremendous city filled with people than any of these residents in Downeast, Washington County. As geographically isolated as they are, they are anything but isolated in the sense of community and the sense of being there for one another.”