Senator Angus King spent three days in Aroostook County last week, touring farms, meeting with civic groups and sharing an hour-long conversation with some of Aroostook County’s brightest recent high school graduates.
King, Maine’s former governor and Independent U.S. senator, visited the region during Congress’s summer recess and toured seven different farms, including Chase’s Organic Dairy and the Buck Farms Maine Malt House, both in Mapleton, and LaJoie Growers and Northern Girl, both in Van Buren.
“They aren’t doing things the way they’ve always done them, they’re trying new things,” King told a group of high school graduates from central Aroostook County in a conversation over snacks at the Hampton Inn on the last evening of his trip. “It’s all about imagination,” he said.
King gave some advice to the 12 young adults, all of them among the top in their classes and with higher education plans including pre-medicine, engineering, and maritime transportation. One of the students, Annelise Wardwell of Presque Isle, told King she’s interested in film and theatre, but that she’s taking a year off – which King said is a great idea.
“Two of my sons did that. It was the best thing they did,” King said. A year off between high school and college gives young adults an opportunity to get a better idea of what they want to do and where they want to go, while working, travelling or volunteering, he said.
He told the group that they should feel free to change their majors and career plans as they go through college and find their passions. “Nobody’s going to hold you to this,” he said of their declared majors.
King also suggested that the students find time to explore other parts of Maine, New England, America and the world if possible.
While their generation will inherit major challenges, and while their home communities face aging, shrinking populations, they also have new opportunities to live where they want and work in multiple fields during their lifetime.
“Throughout human history, people have had to live where they work,” King said. “Today with the internet, and all the changes in the way the world is, you can work where you live” – including in rural Maine, he added.
King told the group that he enjoys many aspects of the grinding lawmaker work-life in Washington D.C., especially the barbecue rib dinners he shares with fellow senators on many Saturdays when the Senate is in session. He said he’s also found a lot to like in the many places he visited in his post-governorship road trip in 2003 and other travels, but that’s he’s most at home in his adopted home state of Maine.
“There’s no place I’d rather live than Brunswick,” he said. “It’s important for you guys to get out and go see the rest of the world and then you’ll realize Maine is special.”
