well when it comes about social behavior, not weather... My question comes from my experience of wandering the net: I have seen few places (on the US side of www) where people keep talking about anything in such balanced yet humorous way, and grex is holding on time... I know much here are not from Michigan but still is the core ? Any ideas ? PS: I'm european, so that makes maybe for my peculiar point of view... And the nearest I know from Michigan is what I'm told when staying on the other side of the lakes, and that is in fact more scaring than appealing. (well just the regular stuff about urban violence, guns everywhere, and brain-dead capitalism making Detroit one day nice and overnight De(s)tro(y)ed...)55 responses total.
Heh. Anyplace that has me in it probably can't be all that cool ... socially.
There is no denying that Detroit has a problem. All one has to do is drive through it to see all the burned out buildings and such. It really makes me sad. And it makes me mad too because I think it is wrong that we can spend so much money reconstructing Iraq while at the same time letting a city in our own country fall apart. But, Detroit is only a very small part of Michigan. The town where I live which is around 30 miles east of Detroit, is very nice.
Where are you from, khamsun?
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Probably need more people as well. Did Detroit finally drop below the million person mark? Hard to create a strong sense of civic committment when half the city is abandoned.
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No, I think Detroit had a million people as recently as the 1990 census. Detroit has some corruption, sure, and a history of brutal and racist policing, but it is NOTHING like New York, or Philadelphia, or Boston, or Chicago, or Miami. Corruption in those cities is deeply woven into the civic culture, and all kinds of bribery and abuses are just taken for granted. Detroit is not like that. Just for example, the governmental affairs VP of one of the contracting firms which built the RenCen said afterwards that Detroit was the first major U.S. city they had ever worked in where the building department was not on the take. Meanwhile, one of the Chicago newspapers secretly bought a neighborhood tavern and staffed it with investigative reporters. They documented that bribes and payoffs and kickbacks were demanded almost daily, backed by credible threats to shut down the place. People who have lived their lives in Michigan (squeaky-clean compared to the national average) have no idea what real municipal corruption is like. As someone who believes in reform and good government, it has always been a frustrating contrast that deeply corrupt Chicago is "a city that works," whereas comparatively clean Detroit is "a city that failed."
Probably a good reason to remember the value of having a diversified local economy.
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Michigan cool? At least I know some cool grexers personally, and I am from Europe as well. In truth the Grex community has rid me of most prejudices I held against americans. This realisation eventually lead to me visiting Ann Arbor on several occasions. It also has made me cycle the continent resulting in even more friends. Resuming: Grexers are cool, at least.
Re resp:7: Someone I knew from Chicago once remarked that "Detroit gives corruption a bad name" because Chicago government is corrupt but the city works, and Detroit government is corrupt but always fails utterly. In many ways, though, Detroit government isn't so much corrupt as it is ineffective. Racial conflict, backstabbing, and the tradition of every new mayor abandoning all the previous mayor's projects in order to create new ones leads to a government that's unable to accomplish anything substantial. Personally, I think a lot of Detroit's current economic problems started during the white flight of the 50's. It fell into the classic inner-city downward spiral that very few cities manage to get out of. Now it's stuck in the catch-22 of not having enough of a tax base to raise the money to make the improvements that would attract businesses and expand the tax base. It's possible that someday Detroit will be a nice place to live, but I don't expect to live to see it.
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Michigan cool? Be warned that we contenance no toadying. The grex BBS might be centered about its Ann Arbor home, but the handles seldom identify the origins of the posters. Although in support of your supposition, Michigan laws are eerily similar to both California and New York in matters of civil, criminal and consumer rights.
Michigan's cool in a low key, easy-to-get-along-with, and fun-to-be-around kind of a way, not in a flashy-clothes, self-consciously-hip kind of way, the way "cool" might be defined on the more fashionable coasts. Perhaps most of all, it's cool in a doesn't-take-itself-TOO-seriously way..
#3, aruba: I began in life as a spaniard, then I turned french, then I adopted Norway some years ago. BTW, I apologize for mistakes in english. Never took the time for some short stay in the US, despite a good friend of mine for now 15 years is a guy from Pittsburgh. Last time I was in Montreal/Canada (other old friend there) was thinking about a trip either to Boston/NY or to Michigan/Wisconsin but (canadian) beer kept me busy :-).. #10, clees: yes, so it seems to be something special (ly nice) about grexers. Say, maybe like Hobbitland in Middle Earth :-)...the Power must have been strong to carry you from the shores of Old Europe to the New World... well, on my own I don't feel prejudices against americans.I just tend to be upset by the foreign politic of the think tanks/neo-conservative/bushies fellows.But well, I will not fork() here... I mean at any place governments and peoples are not always in sync. #13, fitz: it's the fact that this Ann Arbor bbs keeps getting say, mmh, valuable ?, that is somewhat remarkable.I was wondering if that has to do with cosmic radiations at the place, or genetical variations, or proximity with Can...humm. Well I'm kidding of course. To be more serious I really was wondering about the kind of "regional identity",if one,people could have in Michigan. As an european I tend to have the cliche that regional differences are very weak in the US, because the country is young and people move around more easily than in Europe (if you are living in Germany or France or Spain,etc,differences are much much stronger). But as I have no experience of the US (a little one of Canada)... That said, if laws are similar to California or NY, Michigan can be called rather "liberal" ? All I know of Detroit is about car industry and pop music (from Iggy Pop to White Stripes).In Europe Detroit was cited as a kind of Liverpool (the english city) that has not yet recovered from a brutal breakdown.A kind of victim. #2, slynne: that must be indeed very sad.But I guess the inhabitants are working hard at getting their city strong again.By finding out other activities than car plants ? All the comments in the threads about Detroit/Chicago are anyway very instructive. Anecdote: here in Norway we get the David Letterman show.Once he invited Jack and Meg White (the White Stripes).He announced them as coming "from the beautiful city of Detroit"...I found that word to be rather cynical but it can be sometimes hard to tell what David Letterman has in mind... A good point for me about grex is that it's running under unix (still sunOS on sun4 arch ?), and unixers are way cool and open-minded...
How liberal or conservative Michigan politics are depends a lot on where you are in the state. Urban areas tend liberal, rural areas tend conservative. In many places you get a lot of the odd socially conservative/fiscally liberal mix that you find anywhere that has a heavily unionized workforce. This kind of schitzophrenic mix of opinions is why Michigan is an important swing state in national elections. Michigan does have some surprisingly liberal things in its past, though. For example, the death penalty was banned in Michigan almost immediately after it became a state.
re #15: > All I know of Detroit is about car industry and pop music > (from Iggy Pop to White Stripes). Don't forget Motown and Detroit Techno, two other major musical contributions from Detroit..
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Ann Arbor *is* a lot like being on one of the coasts. Detroit like Liverpool? Actually that's a pretty good comparison. Parts of the state are totally different than this corner, though. Hey, my brother now lives in Norway. Say "hi" if you see him, OK? ;)
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re #18: Well, OK, good point.. Ann Arbor can be a bit full of itself sometimes..
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re #22: recently? I haven't heard of anything like that lately and the local paper here is pretty heavy on Alaska news. On the other hand I've been pretty out of it for the last couple of days due to flu. I believe there were effects like that in the wake of the monster 9.2 quake that hit Anchorage in 1964, though, and it's possible to have tsunami activity in Alaska caused by earthquakes surprisingly far across the Pacific.
Yeah, for the most part, Michigan laws would be comfortable to liberals. Not liberal enough to decriminalize marijuana, but liberal enough to think nothing of the rather active socialist, communist and survivalist organizations that still believe that they will start the revolution with a memeograph machine and a street corner.
Re resp:21: Ann Arborites as a group also tend to have a slightly paranoid idea of what Detroit is like. This is especially amusing since to many of them, anything east of Carpenter Road seems to be part of Detroit. I actually had someone from Chelsea tell me once that they wouldn't want to live in Ypsilanti because it was "too close to Detroit." The physical distance between Ypsi and Detroit is signficantly larger than the distance between Chelsea and Ypsi, but the psychological distance seems to be something else entirely.
Heh. I had someone from northern Michigan tell me once that they'd be very nervous about even visiting anywhere in southeast Michigan because it's "too close to Detroit".
Southeastern Michigan tends to be more liberal than worthern and western Michigan. At least in my, admittedly narrow, experience.
Re: 16: I'd say that rural conservativism and urban left-wingism happens pretty much everywhere. In 1975 when Franco died, the supposedly proportional new democratic election system in Spain was explicitly modified to give more weight to the more conservative rural areas. RE: #25,26: In England the definition of "Northern England" and "Southern England" (or rahter, the definition of where one changes into the other) changes according to whether one is a Northerner or a Southerner. To a person from Yorkshire or further North, "the South" sdtartsd at the Southern Border of Yorkshire, whereas to someone from the very south of England, (London, Essex, Kent, over to Devon), "the North" starts somewhere above Birmingham, at least 100 miles South of the Southern border of Yorkshire. Northerners and Southerners alike therefore tend tio forget that the disputed area pretty much covers "the Midlands". Also, in the Western Isles off the West Coast of Scotland, "the mainland" is mainland Scotland, whereas in the Orkney and Shetland Isles, "the mainland" is the largest island of the group, and mainland Scotland is just "Scotland". The dialect spoken on the O. and S. Isles is not a form of Scots English, but a form of English mixed with Norwegian, as before the Isles became Scottish, they were ihabited by Vikings.
I had a black friend who wouldn't let me drop him off at his house, just at the end of the street, because he said it wasn't safe for white people on his street in Ypsilanti.
*yawn* he was playing with your racist fears, stink-o.
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re #31: ahhh, I thought it might've been Valdez or Skagway from your
description, but that was based on the assumption that it was the '64
quake. dunno about '59. Valdez was almost completely trashed in '64,
though.
The earthquake's shaking immediately caused failure and
liquefaction of the material along Valdez' waterfront.
A giant portion of the unconsolidated sediments, with
dimensions approximately 1,220 meters long and 183
meters wide, slid into the sea. The landslide carried
the dock area of Port of Valdez and a large portion of
the waterfront. Within two to three minutes after the
landslide, a destructive local tsunami wave, 9- 12 meters
high, slammed into the remaining waterfront. The wave
demolished what was left of the waterfront facilities,
causing the loss of Valdez' fishing fleet, and inundating
about two blocks ot the town. Additionally, the waves
caused the tanks at the Union Oil Company to rupture,
starting a fire that spread across the entire waterfront,
and thus destroying the few structures that were still
standing.
Interesting photo of a fishing vessel, driven onto the shore by
the force of the wave, where it struck and destroyed a Texaco
chemical tanker:
http://www.usc.edu/dept/tsunamis/alaska/1964/photosmaps/1964valdezweb2.jp
g
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(9-12 meters is 27 to 36 feet, roughly, or between two and three storeys. Big wave.)
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I'm assuming that that second link is a put-on..
Try this one: http://www.drgeorgepc.com/Tsunami1958LituyaB.html
Re #11: That's one reason why I've argued that parts of Detroit should be able to secede and form independent cities. Smaller cities tend to work better due to greater responsiveness to citizens, and if the dysfunctional government can be progressively disempowered the overall scope of the problem shrinks. Shrink it sufficiently and the remaining people might find it manageable enough to change. I find Detroit's complaints about control of the water company to be whining. The population of 1940's Detroit spread all across the tri-county area just like its services, and the idea that the people who stayed in the city should have exclusive power over an asset which the others had a much larger role in building is just special pleading. Besides, if it keeps the Detroiters from using the water company as another patronage plum it improves things all around.
I think if the suburbs don't like the deal they're getting from Detroit they can form their own water companies. No one forced them to tie into the Detroit system, which is straining to keep up with the sprawl the suburbs have been encouraging. It seems to me that the suburbs want new areas covered and the old ones upgraded, and they don't want to pay for any of it. The suburbs hate Detroit, and if they get control of the water company they'll no doubt cut off maintenance for everything inside the city limits and just let it decay.
Except that starting a water company is not simple or easy, especially if you happen to be located on a river.
"especially if you DO NOT happen to be located on a river"
No, it's not easy. They should think about this when they grumble about someone else charging them for those costs.
I have to agree with gull. No one is forcing the suburbs to use Detroit's water system. If they dont want to buy water from Detroit at the price Detroit sets, they can start their own water utilities. One doesnt have to be near a river either. Ann Arbor isnt tied into the Detroit system and gets most of its water from wells.
Re: 38: Russ, this has been tried before in the UK and din't work. we ended up consolidating metrolitanm areas, which had previous been in a system of "county boroughs" with county-level responsibilities and home rule, into "metropolitan counties"; and even after Thatcher abolished the actual counties because they were hotbeds of opposition to her government, it was found necessary to form cross-border inter-district authorities for certain services like police, sewage, water-supply, and fire services.
Even here in Michigan, there are a lot of small cities that are having to either dissolve or merge with other cities because they're no longer able to fund services on their own. Hamtramick is one example. I'm not sure splitting up Detroit is the answer; I think you'd just end up with a bunch of Hamtramicks.
There's no "i" in Hamtramck.
Yeah, is Highland Park doing all that much better than Detroit?
Re #46: I wondered, but I did a Google search and enough hits came up with it spelled that way that I was convinced. That'll teach me to use Google as a spell checker.
Re #17: yes, Motown ! (I don't know why, I was seeing Motown in
Minneapolis or Chicago :-[..).About Detroit Techno: I had no clue, never
associated the techno movement with Detroit, but well since I generally
don't like techno, I never paid much attention...
Re #19: scott, if I meet your brother in Oslo where i live now, i
promise we'll have some drinks to Michigan. Sk l ! (And Oslo is such a
small place I maybe shop each day at the same market than him...)
Re #18 & #21: Ann Harbor snobbish ?
Re #24: >organizations that still believe that they will
>start the revolution with a memograph machine and a street
>corner.
kind of hippies or heritage of old good unionism ?
BTW, I was recently reading again "The Jungle" of Upton Sinclair (meat
packing plants in Chicago) and I made the connection with the life of a
famous norwegian writer who spent 3 and then 2 years as a young
scandinavian immigrant in Illinois/Michigan/Minnesota/Wisconsin.He got
very interested by the anarchists and unionists movements of that time
(end 19th).Then he went back to Norway and gave out some very critical
essays against capitalism in the US.
From all that one gets the feeling that north mid-west has been the
working core of strong industrialization in the US.Truth ?
As candidates are going in the race for next year election, there must
be more "street corners" around ?
Re #28: about north/south. Considering Norway it's rather funny.The
country has a shape like Chile: very long from south to north and very
tight. One can figure you put a line in the geometrical middle to have
south and north parts.No. "south" is the very southern east cost under
the Oslo fjord and in front of Danmark, "west" is the very south-western
coast looking south to the skottish islands (O. & S.)."East" is the very
small piece between Oslo and the southern swedish border."north" is from
the polar circle to the russian border.The big gap in between is
geographically...nowhere. Then they are two words for south: "s r" is
the one to name a southern place _in_ Norway, and "syden" is the one to
name countries in the south _of_ Norway. Ie. almost the rest of the
world after you cross the danish border...
As i am not a native and I began by living in the very north whose
climatical, geographical and cultural characteristics extend to
Trondheim (about 20 hours boat south of polar circle) I always felt Oslo
(600 kms south of Trondheim) is very in the south.But osloers feel they
are really far enough north from the "south".On the phone I must pay
attention to tell people I live in Oslo and not in the south, or they
figure out I'm living about 200 ou 300 kms south of my real place...
Oops, sorry for that long speech.
In used to spend autumn in Scottland, Western Ross, in the mid-90's.
Very very pleasant places (and good whiskies...)
> From all that one gets the feeling that north mid-west has been the > working core of strong industrialization in the US.Truth ? Depending on what you mean by "mid-west"*, yes, the midwest and the north mid-atlantic states (such as Pennsylvania and New York) historically made up a large part of the industrialized part of the U.S. Just about all of the states which border one or more of the Great Lakes have been home to a fair amount of heavy industry. For some time now, however, manufacturing has been moving south (when it hasn't been fleeing the country entirely) towards less industrialized states with fewer worker protections and lower wages, so things have been evening out and industry isn't so concentrated in those parts of the country. The meaning of the term "midwest" can vary a lot in the U.S. depending on where the speaker is from. I always used to consider Michigan and its neighboring states part of the midwest, as did everyone I knew in Michigan. Then I moved out to the west coast and found out that to people that far west, Michigan was part of "the east" and "midwest" meant states like the Dakotas, Kansas, and Nebraska. Some people describe the industrialized states of the Great Lakes region as "the Rust Belt."
I forgot to mention the curious practice, indulged in by southerners, of referring to the counties around London as "the Home Counties". so what are therest of the counties? The Foreign Counties? Maybe the rest of the country should secede and see how well the South gets on witrhout aqll the manpower it getsd from people moving to the South-East.
X means Xwindows, which (unlike M$) actually works across networks.
"Home Counties" sounds like the "Out West/Back East" thing in the US. I used to hear people in MIchigan refer to the Western US as "Out West," which made sense because the Western US was a long way away. In California, I hear life-long California residents, and even life-long California residents whose ancestors never lived in the Eastern US, refering to pretty much anythin East of Nevada as "Back East." Having lots of small cities clustered together rather than having a single big city is a rather complicated issue. Smaller cities are nice in that they allow the city government to focus on local neighborhood issues that would get lost in a bigger city. On the other hand, the lack of a regional government can create some tricky issues, and the motivations for splitting an area off as its own city are often anything but good. In the case of the Bay Area (which, not being in Michigan, maybe isn't relevant to this item), with nine counties and who knows how many cities, anything involving regional coordination seems to require the creation of a special district with its own elected board. Furthermore, it means that while I have more say than I otherwise would in what happens in my own immediate neighborhood (part of the City of Berkeley), I get no vote at all three blocks away (City of Albany), or in the downtown area where I used to spend most of my waking hours (City and County of San Francisco). In the Detroit area, the situation is arguably a lot worse. While most of the Bay Area cities tend to be pretty diverse, stretching from poor areas near the Bay to rich suburban areas in the hills, the Detroit suburban boundaries have been used extensively as a way to enforce racial and economic segregation. Leaving the racial issues aside, separating the tax base from the areas which most need the government services is rather destructive.
I tend to think of the Bay area as that around Bay City, MI.
I just got back from the4 Bay Area myself - Tampa Bay. (They call it that there.)
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