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Baroque Bloke |
Folks from states such as Minnesota, Wisconsin, or Iowa commonly say that they’re from the upper Midwest. But I’ve never heard anyone say that they’re from the lower (or central) Midwest. Seems asymmetric. Serious about crackers | ||
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Fighting the good fight |
That's because once you go far enough down to reach the Lower Midwest, you realize you're actually in the South. | |||
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| Gracie Allen is my personal savior! |
Or, I would argue, far enough west to actually be in the West. Or both (see Dallas). I guess technically Ohio would be the central Midwest? Or perhaps Illinois, Iowa and Missouri? | |||
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Member |
The lower mid-west would pretty much be Oklahoma Arkansas, Kansas, and Iowa, wouldn't it? Hedley Lamarr: Wait, wait, wait. I'm unarmed. Bart: Alright, we'll settle this like men, with our fists. Hedley Lamarr: Sorry, I just remembered . . . I am armed. | |||
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| Fighting the good fight |
Arkansas is firmly in the South. It's not only in the South, but is often considered part of the Deep South even. Oklahoma is usually, but not always, included in the South. Kansas and Missouri might be the closest to the "Lower Midwest". Plus Oklahoma if you're one that doesn't consider it to be part of the South. And I'd even say the southernmost 10ish percent of Missouri (roughly Springfield and south) would fit pretty neatly into the South due to its shared Ozark roots/history. Iowa is definitely too far north to qualify as "lower". It's usually considered part of specifically the Upper Midwest. | |||
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| Freethinker |
“Midwest” is one of those words/concepts that I clearly remember being puzzled about when I was a kid (and still am, to a degree). The “mid” would seem to be short for “middle” and “west” means the western part of the country; therefore the “Midwest” should be in middle of the West. Being from Colorado originally, and considering it to be on sort of the eastern edge of the West, I long wondered how did Minnesota or Iowa get to be the middle of the West? (Yes, I know now that even places like Pennsylvania or Kentucky that didn’t touch the Atlantic were considered to be in the “west” at one time, but once the country expanded to the Pacific referring to Wisconsin as being somehow associated with the West still seems strange to me.) “I can’t give you brains, but I can give you a diploma.” — The Wizard of Oz This life is a drill. It is only a drill. If it had been a real life, you would have been given instructions about where to go and what to do. | |||
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Legalize the Constitution |
There’s nothing “central” about Ohio, in my estimation. It’s well into the Eastern Time Zone. Just for perspective, it’s a bit over 500 miles from Columbus, OH to NYC. It more than 800 miles to Lincoln, NE. _______________________________________________________ despite them | |||
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The Unmanned Writer |
That's like finding about the areas known as "Above Upstate New York."  Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it. "If dogs don't go to Heaven, I want to go where they go" Will Rogers The definition of the words we used, carry a meaning of their own... | |||
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delicately calloused |
Why is it the Mid West anyway? From my POV it's the Mid-East..... You’re a lying dog-faced pony soldier | |||
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| Fighting the good fight |
Comes from when the country was spreading to the lands westward from the original colonies in the early 1800s, when everything over the Appalachians was The West. That portion of the West between Canada and the South eventually became the Midwest. It was originally refered to as the Northwest, but that changed once settlers continued pushing even further west. | |||
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Member |
Many of those "Midwest" states fall into the "up north" category for me, especially those that border Canada. According to the Census Bureau's definition (via Wikipedia), the Midwest "consists of 12 states in the north central United States: Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, South Dakota, and Wisconsin." Out of these, the Upper Midwest is defined as "the states of Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota and Wisconsin; some definitions include North Dakota and South Dakota as well." I didn't see any definition for Lower Midwest, but I guess geographically, it would be Kansas and Missouri, and maybe Illinois and Indiana. I've always considered Oklahoma and Arkansas to be part of the South. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...estern_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Upper_Midwest 十人十色 | |||
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| Gracie Allen is my personal savior! |
^^^ Oklahoma and those portions of Texas that aren't on the Gulf (more or less) are in many ways Midwestern culturally, economically, etc., but the folks I've met from there really seem to consider themselves Westerners. Kansas might reasonably be considered the MidWest, but attitudinally Kansans (pace Coloradoans) really seem to be westerners.
Yup. Go looking at books and documents written "back when", and Louisiana and Mississippi were considered a part of "the old Southwest". (As, I think, was Arkansas.) The Natchez Trace (and "Natchez Under The Hill" near St. Louis) developed a reputation as part of the wild and wooly West back when the Mississippi opened up to Americans and river traffic started flowing heavily between Cincinatti and New Orleans. Nowadays, the Mississippi River is probably as good a dividing line between East and West as you could ask for, but it's most definitely a fuzzy concept. I'm not sure what kind of impact it's had, but I think Missouri's way of looking at itself wound up developing as an offshoot of both being the eastern boundary of the Spanish Empire back in Thomas Jefferson's day and then being explicitly a battleground between North and South in the run-up to the Civil War. Then again, St. Louis and New Orleans used to be considered the jump-off points for the West back before the Civil War too, and that kinda put them in between the East and West. Then again, New Orleans always thought of itself as New Orleans, but that's probably another long thread in and of itself. | |||
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Shall Not Be Infringed |
Back when, in the 5th or 6th grade (Catholic School in the mid-70's), we were learning geography and the teacher asked the question, "In what part of the United States is Kansas located?" One NOT particularly bright classmate of mine raised his hand enthusiastically, exclaiming 'I know, I know'! When he was finally called on to answer (we had already been playing this game for a while), he burst out with, "Kansas is located in the North-South US", and the Teacher, followed by rest of the class burst out laughing!  ____________________________________________________________ If Some is Good, and More is Better.....then Too Much, is Just Enough !! Trump 2024....Make America Great Again! "May Almighty God bless the United States of America" - parabellum 7/26/20 Live Free or Die! | |||
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| Legalize the Constitution |
 The Midwest. Might make allowances for another state or two in the Central Time Zone, although Great Lakes is better. _______________________________________________________ despite them | |||
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| Muzzle flash aficionado  |
I grew up in Detroit, Michigan and that state definitely considered itself part of the Midwest. I always associated the term with how folks talked--people in the South spoke "Southern" while Midwest folks had more neutral speech (Indiana excepted). In reality, Michiganders didn't really think much about what other states were part of the Midwest--we didn't really think much about anyone else, I guess. My family visited my grandparents and other relatives in southern Missouri and northern Arkansas every year. I thought of them a part of the South, but not the Deep South (that was Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi). Don't know how I characterized the Carolinas and Virginia, but probably just Southeast. Florida was not part of the South because it was occupied by Northerners. On the east were the Northeast (everything north of New York) and the East (New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Maryland, and probably Virginia). I had no idea how to designate West Virginia, Ohio, Tennessee, and kentucky, but would have said Illinois and Indiana were Midwest, along with the plains states. The "North" was anything above Tennessee, Kentucky, and Virginia and east of the Mississippi. FWIW, Michigan should really be in the Central Standard Time Zone--politics put it where it is time-wise, not science. So one could make a case that the Midwest includes the states in the Central Standard Time Zone north of Texas (which most folks put in the Southwest). flashguy Texan by choice, not accident of birth | |||
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| Member |
I would say that the only folks who can call themselves lower midwesterners are the ones who can stand on the north bank of the Ohio River and throw a rock into it. And quite a bit of the Yoop is on Central time. Confusing. End of Earth: 2 Miles Upper Peninsula: 4 Miles | |||
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Member |
Being from New Orleans and same was all my family since the 1800's New Orleans people and people in the south of Lousiana generally think ourselves Cajuns and different than the rest of the south, even northern Louisiana we call "Southern Mississipi" or did when I was a kid. | |||
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Down the Rabbit Hole |
Well being as there's no other place around the place, I reckon this must be the place, I reckon. Diligentia, Vis, Celeritas "People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf." -- George Orwell | |||
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| No good deed goes unpunished  |
South Carolina is deep South, both in location and culture. Agree about Florida--the North has annexed it.  | |||
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| Down the Rabbit Hole |
Well..... I guess we'll let you in. Diligentia, Vis, Celeritas "People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf." -- George Orwell | |||
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