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 capable of choose up a extra uncommon merchandise: the Ukrainian flag, offered 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 satisfaction partly replicate a big diaspora group, there are few folks of Ukrainian heritage in Maine. But the flag’s widespread presence within the state reveals one other type of solidarity. Mainers prefer 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 mentioned. “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 mentioned. “He did.”
Mr. McCarthy has no familial connection to Ukraine, though he did as soon as host an trade 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 mentioned. “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, mentioned he had wanted to Google what the Ukrainian flag appeared like when his neighbor referred to as. Mr. Swain usually makes drapes for lodges and flags embellished with a pine tree and star, the previous Maine state emblem.
The specific shade of blue on the highest half of the Ukrainian flag needed to be ordered specifically, he mentioned. 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 quite a lot of fabric in Pantone 2935. Mr. McCarthy, who purchased a five-by-eight-foot flag from him, instructed him the Ukrainian image would show fashionable.
Since making his first Ukrainian flag in April, Mr. Swain has offered 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 is not only 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 mentioned. “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 certainly one of two states the place districts forged their electoral school 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,” mentioned 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 tell apart the buoys floating above their traps. This yr, she has been portray quite a lot 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 mentioned.
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 a bit of woman, buying and selling one snowy land for one more.
“We know how it feels for the Ukrainians, with Putin acting like that,” Ms. Johnston mentioned.
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 companies and apply their conventional agricultural acumen to a colder local weather. (A minority inhabitants in Somalia, Bantus had 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 mentioned.
Still, he famous that whereas many Ukrainians discovered refuge exterior their nation shortly after the invasion, he spent 20 years in a refugee camp in Kenya earlier than profitable his probability to to migrate to the United States.
“I think part of it comes down to people associating with the whiteness of Ukrainians,” Mr. Libah mentioned. “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 only some 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 mentioned, “but I realized I could help people more from here than from there.”
Mr. Opalnyk has to date supported 24 Ukrainians who’ve arrived in Maine below a Department of Homeland Security program that enables 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 mentioned.
Only one of many 24 Ukrainians who’ve arrived to date has gotten permission to work, Mr. Opalnyk mentioned, making a sustained welcome from the group much more necessary. Residents of the cities of Lewiston and Auburn, the place the Ukrainians have settled in flats 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 mentioned, referring to the brand new arrivals. “Americans, and Mainers especially, they have sensitive hearts to people who are suffering.”