If you don't like it, goes the saying, wait five minutes. . . it'll change. . .
[This quote is actually attributed to Mark Twain, in reference to New England; I'm not sure Ol' Sam ever even set foot in the State of Michigan. I'm also reasonably sure that pretty much every state not named California has 'borrowed' this quote for itself.
The meteorologist-types of my acquaintance tell me that the Great Lakes actually have a 'moderating' effect on Michigan's climate. But the saying is common among my fellow-Michiganders (or are we Michiganians? I can never remember), whether justly or not. . .]
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My Tigers having finished their season early this year, I'm left to talk about . . . the weather.
No, not really. I'll just revert to my other favorite autumnal blogging topic: tracking my bicycling miles.
This has been a tough cycling season for me. First off, last winter was extraordinarily long and cold, and whereas I'm usually out on my bike in early March, this year the snow and ice and cold temperatures didn't abate, so as to allow me to get out on the road, until the very last weekend of March. So I lost nearly a full month at the beginning of the season.
Then in April, I came down with a nasty respiratory virus. My normal protocol in such instances is to get plenty of rest, and cut back on my miles (riding, say, 17 miles instead of 25 or 30; gotta keep the legs working, dontchaknow), and in the fullness of time, the virus runs its course, and I haven't lost too much of my conditioning edge (heck, sometimes, a ride can even have a 'blow-the-gunk-out' effect on my respiratory system). This time, though, every time I put on even very modest miles, my lungs responded by getting even sicker, and threatening to fling small chunks of themselves through the air. I finally went to see my doctor, who prescribed an oral steroid for me, and that, plus a couple weeks off the bike, finally brought me back to my normal, radiant good health. But by that time, it was early May, and I was basically starting over at building up my miles, two months behind schedule.
And so it went. My schedule seemed to conspire against me more than usual, as well. Events like funerals, or marriage-enrichment conferences (Jenn and I started working in marriage-prep classes for our parish this year) kept coming up, pushing my rides to a less-convenient time, and obliging me to ride fewer miles than I'd planned. And then I had a mild relapse of the respiratory virus in August, so I had to skip another ride or two again.
So now, here I am, in mid-October, when I'd normally have something like 1200 miles on my legs and lungs (a couple years ago, I was over 1600 by late October), and wondering how many hundred more I'd be able to get in before the snow flies and the shoulders of the roads are covered with ice, relegating me to the stationary bike for the winter. And I've got 811 miles in for the year.
My 'basic goal' every year is 1000 miles, and I've usually reached that by early/mid-September, so I can set my sights higher. In recent years, I've averaged about 1400 miles a year, give-or-take, but this year, I'll have to be pretty diligent just to make my 'basic goal'.
Which brings us back to the weather. Fall weather can be unpredictable in my part of Michigan, as the seasonal transition takes hold. It is more prone to be rainy and windy during this time of the year, and the temperatures are trending downward. For several years now, I've been blessed to have most of our 'Weather' happen during the week, while I'm at work, and can't get out on the road, anyway. This year, though, the 'weather' has come on the weekends to a greater extent than usual, forcing me to consult forecasts, trying to work my riding schedule around the particular 3 hours when the rain will be taking a break. And of course, that leaves me subject to the, uh, accuracy of the forecasts.
So, three or four times in the last few weeks, I've targeted a three-hour window in the rain pattern, and gotten out on the road at the first sign of non-threatening skies, only to find that, 15 miles out in the countryside, the weather had a different schedule. Riding in the rain is not my favorite thing to do, but once you're out on the road, you don't have much choice. One recent Saturday, I was a little late getting out on the road, when I knew I had about a three-hour rain-free window. So, when I was about five miles from home, the skies opened up, and the wind-machine turned on (20-25 mph, directly into my face, which seemed kinda over-the-top on Mother Nature's part). It only lasted for a mile or so, but you can get awfully cold and wet in a mile of downpour, against a stiff wind. Another time, I left the house under blue skies, with the promise of the weatherman that I had a good, solid three hours before the rain returned. Within three miles, I was being pelted with sleet (SLEET! add my normal 12-mph to the wind-borne velocity of the falling ice-needles against my face, and you have a distinctly unpleasant experience), all the while seeing blue skies off to the west. For the rest of the ride, I was mostly riding under sunny blue skies, but as I turned onto the final 7-mile run back toward home, there was a large, dark, ominous-looking cloud directly ahead of me. Nothing to do but keep riding, and by the time I was even with where the black cloud had been, it had moved off to the east, and I missed getting rained on, for once. Which, you know, was just fine with me.
So anyway, as things sit, I'll have to ride some pretty aggressive miles, and hope that the weather stays ride-able into December, if I hope to make 1000 miles for the season. Which is by no means given.
But then, in the last two weeks, the typically schizoid fall weather, driving rain alternating with bright sunshine, has meant that I've twice driven home at the end of a work day, under a stunningly brilliant double rainbow, so, you know, there's that. . .
Showing posts with label Michigan. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Michigan. Show all posts
Sunday, October 19, 2014
Sunday, January 13, 2013
Place Names in Michigan
I was born in Michigan, and I have lived virtually my entire life here. At one time or another, I've traveled to just about every corner of my native state. I'm sure that your states have some pretty fun place names, too (I'm thinking of one small town in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, in particular) (also Pee Pee Creek, and its eponymous township, in Pike County, Ohio), but here's a sampler from where I live. . .
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In Michigan, we have both a Hell and a Paradise. In Hell, there is, as you might suspect, a bar (called the Dam Site Inn, as it sits next to, you know, a dam), and a post-office/country store/gift shop (called The Handbasket), where you can buy a "We've Been Through Hell Together" bumper sticker, or a miniature baseball bat, bearing the inscription, "Genuine, Official Bat Out of Hell". (Incidentally, the road into Hell from the east is named Darwin Road; just sayin'. . .) On the other hand, Jen and I spent a night in Paradise on our honeymoon (really! It's the closest town to Tahquamenon Falls) (that's ta-KWA-ma-non). . .
We have both a Romulus and a Remus, which are pretty much the polar opposite of twin cities, even aside from the fact that they're 150 miles apart. Romulus is the home of Detroit / Wayne County Metropolitan Airport; Remus is the post office (and that's just about all there is there) closest to the farm where my dad grew up. . .
And not far from Remus is Mount Pleasant, which sits on some of the flattest land in the state of Michigan. Some years ago, there was a waggish bumper sticker proclaiming, "I Climbed Mount Pleasant". . .
Then there's Needmore; I've been there, and they do. . .
And Maybee; or, you know, Maybee not. . .
And speaking of bees, way Up North, there's a tiny village called Topinabee; go ahead, guess how to say it, I'll wait. . . It's top-in-a-BEE. . .
Then there's Paw Paw, which is not far from Kalamazoo, about which more below. As it turns out, it's actually named for the pawpaw fruit which was abundant in the area, once upon a time. Nowadays, it's more-or-less the center of Michigan's southern wine region, besides having a cute name. (And hey, we've got Paw Paw, Ohio's got Pee Pee; anybody care to raise their hand for Poo Poo?)
Michgan's 'Thumb' is home to a couple of my favorites: Bad Axe (which is, you know, a pretty BA name for a town) and Ubly. I understand what a bad axe is, as opposed to a good one; I'm just not sure I'd name a town after one. And then, I imagine the cheerleading squad from Ubly High chanting, "U - B - L - Y, We ain't got no alibi, we're Ubly!" And I wonder if the winner of the local beauty pageant might really be called 'Miss Ubly'. . .
Also in Michigan's Thumb is the village of Yale, pronounced just like the Ivy League university, which hosts the annual Bologna Festival, and elects a Bologna Queen to preside over the festivities. . .
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Native-American-derived place names can be an ongoing fount of amusement, for folks whose minds twist that way -
Of course, as I promised, there's Kalamazoo - When I was in college, there was a guy from New Jersey who lived on my dorm floor, who went through most of the fall term insisting that Kalamazoo wasn't a real place, and someone had obviously made it up as a joke. Finally, we introduced him to a guy who was, you know, actually FROM Kalamazoo. . .
And heck, even Michigan itself, which derives from the Ojibwa 'mitchee-gamee' which, in turn, is related to 'gitchee-gumee' (as in Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's Song of Hiawatha), meaning 'Big Water', which seems sufficiently self-evident. . .
Also the Manitou Islands, in northern Lake Michigan.
Then there's Muskegon (mus-KEE-gun) and Ontonagon (on-tuh-NOGgin), which, in spite of what they look like, really aren't geometric figures. . .
On the border between Michigan's Upper Peninsula and Wisconsin lies the city of Menominee, which I can't say without imagining a cheesy chorus singing "doot-DOO-du-du-doo" in the background. . .
And of course, the aforementioned Tahquamenon Falls and Topinabee. And even Saginaw, though I've never hitch-hiked there. . .
Also Wequetonsing (wek-weh-TAHN-sing), just because it sounds cool. . .
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The French fur traders who roamed the Great Lakes region before the days of settled civilization bequeathed us with some place names that are wonderfully counter-intuitive to English-speakers -
Start with one with which you're probably all familiar - Sault Ste. Marie (known more coloquially as 'The Soo', which is pretty much a dead giveaway for how to pronounce the first French word in the name), meaning, 'St. Mary's Falls, since there is a long stretch of rapids in the St. Mary's River there, which, in the fullness of time, necessitated the digging of the Soo Locks.
There's Mackinac Island and the Straits of Mackinac, spanned by a majestic bridge bearing the same name. The village on the south shore of the straits punted, and called themselves Mackinaw City, with a 'w'; I suppose, because they got tired of tourists from out-of-state calling them Mackin-ACK (somewhere, Billy Joel is singing, 'ack-ack-ack-ack-ack'). . .
Twenty miles or so east of the Straits of Mackinac is Bois Blanc Island ('white woods'). Which all the locals know is pronounced 'Bob-Lo'.
And Cadillac, which is in the opposite corner of the Lower Peninsula from where luxury cars are made. . .
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We Michiganders (or Michiganians; I think it's still something of an open question) also seem to have a unique proclivity for 'mispronouncing' place names, particularly ones that have obviously been borrowed from other places and things whose pronunciation is well-established. A few examples -
Lake Orion - Not The Hunter from your star chart; this one is pronounced ORRY-un.
Charlotte - The emPHAsis goes on the second sylLABle: sher-LOTT (some locals aren't very punctilious about the 'r', and it comes out more like 'sha-LOTT'). Once, when I was in college, there was a girl named Charlotte in one of my classes (pronounced in the usual way); one might think, given the large city in North Carolina, and the eponymous children's-story spider, that the pronunciation of her name might seem somewhat obvious, but the instructor kept calling her sher-LOTT, for the entire term. . .
Milan - Named after the city in Italy, right? Maybe, but it's pronounced MY-lun. . .
Chesaning - Just look at it, and you think you know how to say it; but it's chess-NING
Pompeii - POMpey-eye; 'nuff said
And Durand - DOO-rand; I am not making any of this up.
Armada - Think of the Spanish fleet that sailed against England in the 1500s? Try ar-MAY-da. . .
Mikado - In a similar vein, it's mi-KAY-doh
Argentine - the final syllable sounds like the points of a fork (I know, right?)
And, it's not the general, common, pronunciation, but I can't resist mentioning that my mother-in-law (who, I should also mention, I dearly love, and is the best MIL anyone could ever have) pronounces Lake Huron, and the city of Port Huron, at its southern terminus, not HYER-ahn (or maybe HYOO-rawn, if you affect a slightly snooty accent), like most of us do, but homophonically with 'urine' (dropping the leading 'H', and clipping the second syllable just a bit); sometimes the city comes out sounding like 'porch urine', like your dog had an accident. I've not been above asking (teasingly) (very affectionately teasingly) if the water at the southern end of the lake had a yellowish hue, or what. . .
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And finally, we come to my favorite river, the Tittabawassee River (pronounced pretty much how it looks: titta-ba-WAH-see); just because it's fun to say 'Tittabawassee'. . .
"Tittabawassee". . . heh. . .
*************************
And wow - yesterday got up to 60F around these parts (and Friday was in the 50s, so the snow was all gone). I really wasn't feeling good. At all. I think I had some kind of very mild flu, or something; just kinda achy and lethargic. But you don't get many 60-degree days in January around here, so I dragged the bike out of the basement and got out for 10 miles, just because. Now, 10 miles is just barely enough to get out to the cornfields and wave before heading back into town. But it's miles; real, live, outdoors-on-the-road miles (and it's odd, how 45 minutes on the road will wear me out WAY more than an hour on the stationary bike indoors). And this is now the 23rd consecutive month in which I've had outdoor miles; the last time I flipped the page on the calendar without any outdoor miles was at the end of February 2011. . .
-------------------------
In Michigan, we have both a Hell and a Paradise. In Hell, there is, as you might suspect, a bar (called the Dam Site Inn, as it sits next to, you know, a dam), and a post-office/country store/gift shop (called The Handbasket), where you can buy a "We've Been Through Hell Together" bumper sticker, or a miniature baseball bat, bearing the inscription, "Genuine, Official Bat Out of Hell". (Incidentally, the road into Hell from the east is named Darwin Road; just sayin'. . .) On the other hand, Jen and I spent a night in Paradise on our honeymoon (really! It's the closest town to Tahquamenon Falls) (that's ta-KWA-ma-non). . .
We have both a Romulus and a Remus, which are pretty much the polar opposite of twin cities, even aside from the fact that they're 150 miles apart. Romulus is the home of Detroit / Wayne County Metropolitan Airport; Remus is the post office (and that's just about all there is there) closest to the farm where my dad grew up. . .
And not far from Remus is Mount Pleasant, which sits on some of the flattest land in the state of Michigan. Some years ago, there was a waggish bumper sticker proclaiming, "I Climbed Mount Pleasant". . .
Then there's Needmore; I've been there, and they do. . .
And Maybee; or, you know, Maybee not. . .
And speaking of bees, way Up North, there's a tiny village called Topinabee; go ahead, guess how to say it, I'll wait. . . It's top-in-a-BEE. . .
Then there's Paw Paw, which is not far from Kalamazoo, about which more below. As it turns out, it's actually named for the pawpaw fruit which was abundant in the area, once upon a time. Nowadays, it's more-or-less the center of Michigan's southern wine region, besides having a cute name. (And hey, we've got Paw Paw, Ohio's got Pee Pee; anybody care to raise their hand for Poo Poo?)
Michgan's 'Thumb' is home to a couple of my favorites: Bad Axe (which is, you know, a pretty BA name for a town) and Ubly. I understand what a bad axe is, as opposed to a good one; I'm just not sure I'd name a town after one. And then, I imagine the cheerleading squad from Ubly High chanting, "U - B - L - Y, We ain't got no alibi, we're Ubly!" And I wonder if the winner of the local beauty pageant might really be called 'Miss Ubly'. . .
Also in Michigan's Thumb is the village of Yale, pronounced just like the Ivy League university, which hosts the annual Bologna Festival, and elects a Bologna Queen to preside over the festivities. . .
-------------------------
Native-American-derived place names can be an ongoing fount of amusement, for folks whose minds twist that way -
Of course, as I promised, there's Kalamazoo - When I was in college, there was a guy from New Jersey who lived on my dorm floor, who went through most of the fall term insisting that Kalamazoo wasn't a real place, and someone had obviously made it up as a joke. Finally, we introduced him to a guy who was, you know, actually FROM Kalamazoo. . .
And heck, even Michigan itself, which derives from the Ojibwa 'mitchee-gamee' which, in turn, is related to 'gitchee-gumee' (as in Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's Song of Hiawatha), meaning 'Big Water', which seems sufficiently self-evident. . .
Also the Manitou Islands, in northern Lake Michigan.
Then there's Muskegon (mus-KEE-gun) and Ontonagon (on-tuh-NOGgin), which, in spite of what they look like, really aren't geometric figures. . .
On the border between Michigan's Upper Peninsula and Wisconsin lies the city of Menominee, which I can't say without imagining a cheesy chorus singing "doot-DOO-du-du-doo" in the background. . .
And of course, the aforementioned Tahquamenon Falls and Topinabee. And even Saginaw, though I've never hitch-hiked there. . .
Also Wequetonsing (wek-weh-TAHN-sing), just because it sounds cool. . .
-------------------------
The French fur traders who roamed the Great Lakes region before the days of settled civilization bequeathed us with some place names that are wonderfully counter-intuitive to English-speakers -
Start with one with which you're probably all familiar - Sault Ste. Marie (known more coloquially as 'The Soo', which is pretty much a dead giveaway for how to pronounce the first French word in the name), meaning, 'St. Mary's Falls, since there is a long stretch of rapids in the St. Mary's River there, which, in the fullness of time, necessitated the digging of the Soo Locks.
There's Mackinac Island and the Straits of Mackinac, spanned by a majestic bridge bearing the same name. The village on the south shore of the straits punted, and called themselves Mackinaw City, with a 'w'; I suppose, because they got tired of tourists from out-of-state calling them Mackin-ACK (somewhere, Billy Joel is singing, 'ack-ack-ack-ack-ack'). . .
Twenty miles or so east of the Straits of Mackinac is Bois Blanc Island ('white woods'). Which all the locals know is pronounced 'Bob-Lo'.
And Cadillac, which is in the opposite corner of the Lower Peninsula from where luxury cars are made. . .
-------------------------
We Michiganders (or Michiganians; I think it's still something of an open question) also seem to have a unique proclivity for 'mispronouncing' place names, particularly ones that have obviously been borrowed from other places and things whose pronunciation is well-established. A few examples -
Lake Orion - Not The Hunter from your star chart; this one is pronounced ORRY-un.
Charlotte - The emPHAsis goes on the second sylLABle: sher-LOTT (some locals aren't very punctilious about the 'r', and it comes out more like 'sha-LOTT'). Once, when I was in college, there was a girl named Charlotte in one of my classes (pronounced in the usual way); one might think, given the large city in North Carolina, and the eponymous children's-story spider, that the pronunciation of her name might seem somewhat obvious, but the instructor kept calling her sher-LOTT, for the entire term. . .
Milan - Named after the city in Italy, right? Maybe, but it's pronounced MY-lun. . .
Chesaning - Just look at it, and you think you know how to say it; but it's chess-NING
Pompeii - POMpey-eye; 'nuff said
And Durand - DOO-rand; I am not making any of this up.
Armada - Think of the Spanish fleet that sailed against England in the 1500s? Try ar-MAY-da. . .
Mikado - In a similar vein, it's mi-KAY-doh
Argentine - the final syllable sounds like the points of a fork (I know, right?)
And, it's not the general, common, pronunciation, but I can't resist mentioning that my mother-in-law (who, I should also mention, I dearly love, and is the best MIL anyone could ever have) pronounces Lake Huron, and the city of Port Huron, at its southern terminus, not HYER-ahn (or maybe HYOO-rawn, if you affect a slightly snooty accent), like most of us do, but homophonically with 'urine' (dropping the leading 'H', and clipping the second syllable just a bit); sometimes the city comes out sounding like 'porch urine', like your dog had an accident. I've not been above asking (teasingly) (very affectionately teasingly) if the water at the southern end of the lake had a yellowish hue, or what. . .
-------------------------
And finally, we come to my favorite river, the Tittabawassee River (pronounced pretty much how it looks: titta-ba-WAH-see); just because it's fun to say 'Tittabawassee'. . .
"Tittabawassee". . . heh. . .
*************************
And wow - yesterday got up to 60F around these parts (and Friday was in the 50s, so the snow was all gone). I really wasn't feeling good. At all. I think I had some kind of very mild flu, or something; just kinda achy and lethargic. But you don't get many 60-degree days in January around here, so I dragged the bike out of the basement and got out for 10 miles, just because. Now, 10 miles is just barely enough to get out to the cornfields and wave before heading back into town. But it's miles; real, live, outdoors-on-the-road miles (and it's odd, how 45 minutes on the road will wear me out WAY more than an hour on the stationary bike indoors). And this is now the 23rd consecutive month in which I've had outdoor miles; the last time I flipped the page on the calendar without any outdoor miles was at the end of February 2011. . .
Thursday, March 3, 2011
Living In the Mitten
I have lived in Michigan virtually my whole life. I really like it here, even with the bad economy (which, it must be said, hasn't always been the case). Up North, where I mainly grew up, it is really quite beautiful, with abundant beautiful lakeshore scenery (and the corresponding beautiful beaches), and wooded wilderness. Northern Michigan has one National Park - Isle Royale, in the middle of Lake Superior (it's actually considerably closer to Canada than to any land in the US) - and two National Lakeshores (which, apparently, don't quite rise to the level of being National Parks) - the Pictured Rocks, along the Lake Superior shore, and Sleeping Bear Dunes, in the northwest Lower Peninsula, on Lake Michigan.
In actual fact, Michigan can be roughly divided into three parts: the southern half of the Lower Peninsula, which is the most urban/industrial part of the state, but also the most agricultural (over 90% of Michigan's population lives in the southern Lower Peninsula, and nearly half in the three counties around Detroit); the northern half of the Lower Peninsula, which is mostly wooded, and has a heavily tourist economy, especially along the lakeshore (a hundred years and more ago, it was a lumber-based economy, but not anymore); and the Upper Peninsula (UP), which is even wilder and more sparsely-populated than the northern LP. Once upon a time, the UP economy was built on copper and iron mining, and lumber; there's still some mining going on, but the economy is way more tourist-based than it used to be.
-------------------------
We Michiganders (or Michiganians; we haven't really decided which), at least us denizens of the Lower Peninsula (the Yoopers call us 'trolls', 'cuz we live 'below the bridge' - ie, the Mackinac Bridge, which spans the strait between the two peninsulas; get it?), have an odd habit. Because of our state's unique geographic shape, we've taken to using the back of our left hand (or, conversely, the palm of our right; just so long as the thumb is to the 'east') as a handy (nyuk!) pocket-map of our state. Detroit, for example, is roughly at the base of the thumb; Mackinaw City is the tip of the middle finger; Traverse City is the little notch between the tip of the pinky-finger, and the ring-finger; Lansing is roughly in the middle; and so on. Jen's hometown is roughly the first knuckle of the thumb, and mine is the first knuckle of the index finger.
(Lest my Yooper friends feel all slighted, I should add that it is also possible to do a half-decent map of the UP with the palm of the left hand, if you fold the pinky finger over, and turn your hand sideways, so your fingers run 'east/west'. Then the Keweenaw Peninsula is the thumb, Marquette is roughly the base of the index finger, Whitefish Point is the tip of the index finger, Sault Ste. Marie is near the tip of the middle finger, and St. Ignace is near the tip of the ring finger.)
All of which, as far as I can tell, is just completely bizarre to residents of other states. When my family moved to the Chicago area two months before my high-school graduation, my fellow-students at my temporary new school were eager to learn about the 'new kids'. "Where are you from?" they'd ask.
"Michigan," we'd tell 'em.
"Where in Michigan?"
And we'd hold up our left hands, palm facing away from us, and we'd point to the first knuckle of our index finger. "Right there," we'd tell 'em. And they'd look at us like we'd just said we were from Uranus. "What the hell are you doing?" was not at all an uncommon response.
And so we'd tell 'em that, you know, Michigan is shaped like a mitten, and so it's handy (nyuk!), and kinda cool, to use our hand as a map. And they'd nod, and say, "Oh; yeah, I guess it is." And then they'd say, "that's really weird; don't do that anymore."
Well, you know, excuuuuuse me. . .
-------------------------
So, last summer, when I came across this T-shirt, I just had to have it. . .
-------------------------
And Happy Birthday to me! (and to Suldog, yesterday)
Sweet 55 and never been kissed (OK, that last part isn't really true. . .)
In actual fact, Michigan can be roughly divided into three parts: the southern half of the Lower Peninsula, which is the most urban/industrial part of the state, but also the most agricultural (over 90% of Michigan's population lives in the southern Lower Peninsula, and nearly half in the three counties around Detroit); the northern half of the Lower Peninsula, which is mostly wooded, and has a heavily tourist economy, especially along the lakeshore (a hundred years and more ago, it was a lumber-based economy, but not anymore); and the Upper Peninsula (UP), which is even wilder and more sparsely-populated than the northern LP. Once upon a time, the UP economy was built on copper and iron mining, and lumber; there's still some mining going on, but the economy is way more tourist-based than it used to be.
-------------------------
We Michiganders (or Michiganians; we haven't really decided which), at least us denizens of the Lower Peninsula (the Yoopers call us 'trolls', 'cuz we live 'below the bridge' - ie, the Mackinac Bridge, which spans the strait between the two peninsulas; get it?), have an odd habit. Because of our state's unique geographic shape, we've taken to using the back of our left hand (or, conversely, the palm of our right; just so long as the thumb is to the 'east') as a handy (nyuk!) pocket-map of our state. Detroit, for example, is roughly at the base of the thumb; Mackinaw City is the tip of the middle finger; Traverse City is the little notch between the tip of the pinky-finger, and the ring-finger; Lansing is roughly in the middle; and so on. Jen's hometown is roughly the first knuckle of the thumb, and mine is the first knuckle of the index finger.
(Lest my Yooper friends feel all slighted, I should add that it is also possible to do a half-decent map of the UP with the palm of the left hand, if you fold the pinky finger over, and turn your hand sideways, so your fingers run 'east/west'. Then the Keweenaw Peninsula is the thumb, Marquette is roughly the base of the index finger, Whitefish Point is the tip of the index finger, Sault Ste. Marie is near the tip of the middle finger, and St. Ignace is near the tip of the ring finger.)
All of which, as far as I can tell, is just completely bizarre to residents of other states. When my family moved to the Chicago area two months before my high-school graduation, my fellow-students at my temporary new school were eager to learn about the 'new kids'. "Where are you from?" they'd ask.
"Michigan," we'd tell 'em.
"Where in Michigan?"
And we'd hold up our left hands, palm facing away from us, and we'd point to the first knuckle of our index finger. "Right there," we'd tell 'em. And they'd look at us like we'd just said we were from Uranus. "What the hell are you doing?" was not at all an uncommon response.
And so we'd tell 'em that, you know, Michigan is shaped like a mitten, and so it's handy (nyuk!), and kinda cool, to use our hand as a map. And they'd nod, and say, "Oh; yeah, I guess it is." And then they'd say, "that's really weird; don't do that anymore."
Well, you know, excuuuuuse me. . .
-------------------------
So, last summer, when I came across this T-shirt, I just had to have it. . .
-------------------------
And Happy Birthday to me! (and to Suldog, yesterday)
Sweet 55 and never been kissed (OK, that last part isn't really true. . .)
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