MADE IN MAINE

The International Language (continued from page 18)

know where I got my musical ability or where I got my songwriting ability. I was reading about the town my great-grandparents came from in Finland, and it’s poet central! I always wondered what happened to all that.

When you’re going through traumatic transitions, you nd that culture is a part of humanity that we can’t always see but that is critical to the health and well-being of any person. ere are things that culture can help with that other things that are arguably and understandably higher on the list (like healthcare, housing, clothing, food) can’t.

It also gives us a hinge to connect and harmonize communities when we have big in uxes of people whose languages or cultures we may not understand initially. Not just, “Oh yeah, bring your culture” but showing up at a show and having someone from Burundi sing “Hotel California.” People singing Michael Jackson or whatever. We share these things and we have a lot more in common than we realize.

What’s next? I follow the music. Cultivating Studio 224 and the Immigrant Music Connection is really important. I teach. That’s how I’m making my living right now: teaching lessons and playing some gigs. I think there’s an EP [extended play] that I want to make, and there’s another full-length record. One is going to be more reflective of Maine, and the other is going to be more reflective of this new national and international presence I’ve been able to cultivate. My internal guides are saying take your time with this. Get to know people and then see where things go. n

Culture preserves people’s lives and souls.

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Ice Man (continued from page 32) rest of the Chouinard family’s shares are going to the newly formed Holdfast Collective, a nonpro t that ‘will use every dollar received to ght the environmental crisis, protect nature and biodiversity, and support thriving communities, as quickly as possible.’”

Hey, if you get a men’s fashion magazine to write about the environment, you have a big set of hiking shoes to ll.

Chouinard has a place in Ventura, CA, and no doubt on a host of dreamy mountains scattered across the universe.

Might he make a big move back to Maine? He loves peaks but also rivers. We’re certainly on his mind: in 2020, he wrote a letter to the editor of the Lewiston Sun Journal in support of environmental candidate Sara Gideon. Chouinard and Patagonia have already been the driving force behind the deconstruction of the Edwards Dam on the Kennebec River, which spilled over into a national trend. ousands of dams have since been removed. “I’m a lover of wild rivers,” he’s told wildsalmon.org. n

—From Staff & Wire Reports