Re: Turn Michigan back to buffaloes and native Americans
by
Zarniwoop
06/19/2009, 2:24 PM #
Its a sad day when an Ohio native feels compelled to defend Michigan against geographically illiterate westerners, but for some reason I will.
Michigan, Ohio, Eastern Wisconsin, Northern Illinois, and Western Pennsylvania are not so much the "Midwest" as they are the "Great Lakes" region. They are so different from the truly midwestern states like Kansas, Iowa, the Dakotas, etc.
The large cities in these regions - Detroit, Chicago, Madison, Milwaukee, Cleveland, Columbus, Pittsburgh - have just as much, and in many cases more, cultural activities than cities in the west. This stems from a history of economic booms that most western cities haven't seen yet. For instance, Detroit was the center of the auto industry, Cleveland was the center of the oil industry, and Pittsburgh was the center of the steel industry. Industry leaders were often large philanthropists (like Rockefeller and Carneige) and that led to large investments in cultural activities. For instance Univeristy Circle in Cleveland has the highest concentration of museums, non-profits, eductaional institutions, and research institutions in the US.
However, the weather is an issue. It's hard for someone from the Great Lakes region to comprehend the extent to which people from, say the SF Bay (where I live now), are incapable of handling cold weather. Out here it can be cold and rainy. In the Great Lakes, if it is cold, it would be snowing instead of raining. Out here people complain if it rains at all between May and November.
