So, I've officially moved back to Southern Indiana after two years in East Lansing, Michigan, and although this is just a stop over until Kirsten and I move to South Carolina in August, I thought this might be a fun time to talk briefly about living in the Mitten State, some things I liked and didn't like about it, and some differences between living there and living in Indiana.
The College Towns
The only truly apt comparison between living in East Lansing and living in Indiana I can comment on is living in Bloomington. Having grown up in very rural southern Indiana where half an hour trips to Louisville, Kentucky, occurred at most two or three times a month, making the move to Bloomington, Indiana, as an eighteen-year-old college freshman felt a lot like moving to the big city. Of course, once you've been to a few of them, you begin to see that college towns have a particular feel to them that isn't quite small town, isn't quite big city, and isn't quite anything in between. So, the only real basis of comparison I have between Michigan and Indiana can be found in the comparison between East Lansing and Bloomington. In general, to be short, I liked Bloomington better. East Lasing is immediately adjacent to Lansing, which is about as industrial as cities get and the oppressive feel of the factories was ever present in a way not found in the generally quaint and idyllic Bloomington. Age probably had a lot to do with it, and I imagine that if I had moved to East Lansing at eighteen I might be singing a different tune. This is not to say that East Lansing had no endearing charm to it, and as a college that has a particular emphasis on agriculture, plant, and soil sciences, Michigan State's campus was actually rather lovely, and somewhat comparable to Indiana University's: while Indiana's was more aesthetic and focused more on landscaping, Michigan State's was more about variety and utility, and the great diversity of trees and flowering plants was refreshing. However, while East Lansing is certainly as large and diverse as Bloomington, I felt like Kirsten and I exhausted all there was to do there (that we cared to do) in relatively short amount of time. There are, to be sure, some ways in which East Lansing more than met my expectations. While Louisville and Bloomington generally have better cuisine and edible fare to be found, East Lansing blew the two previous towns out of the water in the sushi department, which I certainly developed a taste for while in East Lansing. Though the lack of good Mexican and Irish kind of depressed me. Michigan is also something of a Mecca of microbrews; I think it may be among the largest concentrations of them outside Oregon and New England, which was wonderful, but it turned out to be actually rather difficult to find many of them in bars. Liquor stores (excuse me, "party stores") carried most of them (Bell's, Dark Horse, and Arcadia being the best), but the breweries themselves were spread out and there were no particularly good ones in East Lansing (Harper's was nearly laughable), so it often left me feeling rather like the Twilight Zone man in the library with broken glasses.
Sports was also another interesting topic. I must confess that I can't be particularly objective when it comes to sports, since I am a lifelong Hoosiers fan and was instilled with this type of fandom in a nearly religious childhood indoctrination. Looking at it as objectively as possible, I'll say that the basketball fan comparison between East Lansing and Bloomington is a bit of a draw, both marshaling equally rabid support among the student body (though I must say, in Indiana, you can drive hours away from Bloomington in any direction and still see a multitude of IU paraphernalia, whereas a trip very far into the countryside surrounding East Lansing and the MSU gear much more rapidly disappears). And, I've been impressed (or weirded out) on more than one occasion by large crowds of MSU students randomly erupting into the school fight song in bars. However, football is very different. IU has very little football tradition and the state of Indiana in general has stricter alcohol laws than Michigan, so the tailgating culture at MSU was nothing like I had experienced at IU. My only memory, in fact, of Bloomington's tailgating scene, is that it was confined to a few roped-in parking lots just outside the stadium, generally there were nearly as many fans of the opposing team, and alcohol was strictly regulated and confined to designated areas. Not so, East Lansing. To put it mildly, the entire campus of MSU (which is, by area, even larger than IU) turns into one enormous outdoor party. When Kirsten and I went to our first tailgating, the amount of cars and trucks and blankets overflowing with lounging students, parents or just rabid fans, grills and coolers completely amazed us. And apparently, alcohol on essentially any part of campus was permitted. We saw some students walking down the streets of East Lansing, beers in hand, waiting for the moment they crossed onto university property so they could pop the tab. It certainly made Kirsten and I wonder how IU was ever voted "biggest party school" in 2000 when this was the typical Saturday morning on MSU's campus.
The States
I had a love/hate relationship with the state of Michigan. When I left Indiana in the fall of 2007, the state was among the reddest in the nation. Kerry was defeated three-to-two in 2004, and Indiana had yet to turn blue (albeit by the slimmest of margins). Michigan is a much bluer state than Indiana, though this democratic leaning is much more labor-oriented than anything else. Michigan in fact has one of the highest NRA membership rates of any state in the union and there is a certain libertarian streak to the populace, as there is with many of the other Scandinavian influenced Great Lakes States (I was told multiple times that if I found Michigan liberal, I should visit Wisconsin and Minnesota to see an even stronger version of the Michigan progressive). One of the greatest ironies of our move to Michigan, was the political weight of my vote. We moved to Michigan just as the democratic primaries were getting into full swing, and because of Michigan's moving of the primary to an earlier date, the results of our voting were deemed null and void, not to mentions that the only names on the ballot were Dennis Kucinich and Hilary Clinton. Strike one against democracy. The next blow came when Kirsten and I decided to register in Michigan rather than Indiana, because, at the time, Michigan was looking to be a battleground state in 2008 while Indiana looked to remain solidly red as it had been since 1964. Of course, history proved me wrong, since my adoptive state went for Obama big time while my home state, which I had written off, became one of the biggest battlegrounds. All I can say is that I wish I'd been able to be a part of Indiana's historic move into the blue column.
And now, after nearly six months of having a blog, I think it's finally time that I use it for what it was intended: bitching. For a state that revolutionized the automobile industry, one would really think that Michigan would be a great state to drive in. No, no. Michigan in fact has some of the weirdest traffic, driving, and parking laws I have ever seen. I will never understand the logic of the "Michigan U-Turn" (a u-turn put in place down the road in lieu of a left turn at busy intersections) nor will I understand how incessant, asinine, and absurdly arbitrary parking laws designed to catch illegal parkers and raise revenue for the city can possibly be an efficient system. I lived in Bloomington for four years and never once received a parking ticket. I received two in my first week in East Lansing - once for parking facing the wrong way down the street and once for parking in a very poorly and confusingly marked "no parking" zone. It is as absurd as it sounds. Michigan driver's ed also seems to emphasize things that are relatively downplayed in Indiana. Kirsten and I wondered for months why Michigan drivers seemed to stop so far back at stop signs and lights. It's because they're taught to be able to see the white line before the intersection. This is probably a good thing, but it could be extraordinarily annoying when trying to turn right on red.
The Weather
Finally, it's difficult to talk about Michigan without talking about the weather. Now, understandably, the climatic difference between mid-Michigan and southern Indiana is not the same as, say, the difference between North Dakota and South Carolina (one a former potential graduate school location and one the current choice), but my place of birth is several degrees of latitude south of where I lived in Michigan, not to mention the fact that mid-Michigan lies between two very large bodies of fresh water, whereas southern Indiana lies in a very low-lying river valley. Their temperatures vary depending on so many factors, but I generally found the highs to be, on average about 15 to 20 degrees cooler in mid-Michigan than southern Indiana. Case in point occurred just a few days ago, after our first few days home, when the highs soared into the mid-80s here in the Ohio Valley (with humidity around 60%) and the weather report for East Lansing was 63 degrees, sunny, and negligible humidity. But, they have a saying in Michigan (and several other northern Midwestern states): "If you can't stand the winters, you don't deserve the summers." I would agree. Upon moving to Michigan, I was expecting and preparing for the worst. And after the first winter, I felt like I had experienced a "normal" Michigan winter, but I was told by locals that it was one of the worst winters they'd experienced in years. As someone who, for the most part, dislikes snow and winter, I was pleased by my overreaching assumption of just how bad winter would be (We received nearly 100 inches of snow that winter, and the temperature dipped below zero consistently throughout January and February). There is a certain idiosyncrasy to these winters that also surprises non-natives, me among them at first. Living in southern Indiana, the winter never gets consistently cold enough to freeze a large lake over with ice, yet Kirsten and I observed on multiple occasion people who would walk a half mile across a lake to visit a friend's house on the other side and talked about how they looked forward to the winter every year so they could walk to their friend's houses who seemed so far away during the rest of the year. People also do more than ice skate and ice fish on these lakes. Our first experience at one of these lakes entailed cautiously walking a few yards onto the ice while the accustomed Michiganders drove their four-wheeler ATVs at reckless speeds across the frozen pond. How regional fun can be. And this is all relative of course. We were constantly being reminded by the Yoopers (the U.P.ers, or the people who come from the Upper Peninsula), who, by the way, like to call those from the Lower Peninsula "trolls" since we all live "under the [Mackinac] bridge") how warm our winters are or how little snow we get by comparison. I'll never forget when we received one of the last snowfalls of the year, the ones that occur just as spring is starting, and Kirsten and I saw a man in running shorts and a tank top jogging down the road as we were receiving around 8 inches of snow. He seemed entirely unfazed.
A Return?
Overall, my two years in Michigan surprised me in a lot of ways. I disliked it at first, primarily because it was so difficult to find work and, after a short while, somewhat difficult to find things to do. But like many places, you find yourself liking it in odd ways and missing it when it's gone. It's easy to make friends when you're is in high school or college, and you're surrounded by peers and people going through the exact same things as you, and I count nearly all of my best friends in the world among those I met in high school and college. It was more difficult in East Lansing, where I worked mostly with people much older than me in the school systems and with people much younger than me at the coffee shop I worked at part time. There were very few late-20-somethings who had moved six hours from their homes while their significant others went to school. But, as it turns out, I've missed some of the people I met in Michigan terribly in just the week and half I've been gone. Michigan, much like New York, which I visited earlier this year, is a place I'd say I wouldn't mind living in, but which I wouldn't want to make a life in. And one never knows. While I imagine I'll be primarily looking in the Northeast and West Coast for graduate schools following my two years at Clemson, I wouldn't rule out altogether (after, I'm sure, a lengthy conversation with Kirsten) a return. University of Michigan does have a great history program. . .
Sports was also another interesting topic. I must confess that I can't be particularly objective when it comes to sports, since I am a lifelong Hoosiers fan and was instilled with this type of fandom in a nearly religious childhood indoctrination. Looking at it as objectively as possible, I'll say that the basketball fan comparison between East Lansing and Bloomington is a bit of a draw, both marshaling equally rabid support among the student body (though I must say, in Indiana, you can drive hours away from Bloomington in any direction and still see a multitude of IU paraphernalia, whereas a trip very far into the countryside surrounding East Lansing and the MSU gear much more rapidly disappears). And, I've been impressed (or weirded out) on more than one occasion by large crowds of MSU students randomly erupting into the school fight song in bars. However, football is very different. IU has very little football tradition and the state of Indiana in general has stricter alcohol laws than Michigan, so the tailgating culture at MSU was nothing like I had experienced at IU. My only memory, in fact, of Bloomington's tailgating scene, is that it was confined to a few roped-in parking lots just outside the stadium, generally there were nearly as many fans of the opposing team, and alcohol was strictly regulated and confined to designated areas. Not so, East Lansing. To put it mildly, the entire campus of MSU (which is, by area, even larger than IU) turns into one enormous outdoor party. When Kirsten and I went to our first tailgating, the amount of cars and trucks and blankets overflowing with lounging students, parents or just rabid fans, grills and coolers completely amazed us. And apparently, alcohol on essentially any part of campus was permitted. We saw some students walking down the streets of East Lansing, beers in hand, waiting for the moment they crossed onto university property so they could pop the tab. It certainly made Kirsten and I wonder how IU was ever voted "biggest party school" in 2000 when this was the typical Saturday morning on MSU's campus.
The States
I had a love/hate relationship with the state of Michigan. When I left Indiana in the fall of 2007, the state was among the reddest in the nation. Kerry was defeated three-to-two in 2004, and Indiana had yet to turn blue (albeit by the slimmest of margins). Michigan is a much bluer state than Indiana, though this democratic leaning is much more labor-oriented than anything else. Michigan in fact has one of the highest NRA membership rates of any state in the union and there is a certain libertarian streak to the populace, as there is with many of the other Scandinavian influenced Great Lakes States (I was told multiple times that if I found Michigan liberal, I should visit Wisconsin and Minnesota to see an even stronger version of the Michigan progressive). One of the greatest ironies of our move to Michigan, was the political weight of my vote. We moved to Michigan just as the democratic primaries were getting into full swing, and because of Michigan's moving of the primary to an earlier date, the results of our voting were deemed null and void, not to mentions that the only names on the ballot were Dennis Kucinich and Hilary Clinton. Strike one against democracy. The next blow came when Kirsten and I decided to register in Michigan rather than Indiana, because, at the time, Michigan was looking to be a battleground state in 2008 while Indiana looked to remain solidly red as it had been since 1964. Of course, history proved me wrong, since my adoptive state went for Obama big time while my home state, which I had written off, became one of the biggest battlegrounds. All I can say is that I wish I'd been able to be a part of Indiana's historic move into the blue column.
And now, after nearly six months of having a blog, I think it's finally time that I use it for what it was intended: bitching. For a state that revolutionized the automobile industry, one would really think that Michigan would be a great state to drive in. No, no. Michigan in fact has some of the weirdest traffic, driving, and parking laws I have ever seen. I will never understand the logic of the "Michigan U-Turn" (a u-turn put in place down the road in lieu of a left turn at busy intersections) nor will I understand how incessant, asinine, and absurdly arbitrary parking laws designed to catch illegal parkers and raise revenue for the city can possibly be an efficient system. I lived in Bloomington for four years and never once received a parking ticket. I received two in my first week in East Lansing - once for parking facing the wrong way down the street and once for parking in a very poorly and confusingly marked "no parking" zone. It is as absurd as it sounds. Michigan driver's ed also seems to emphasize things that are relatively downplayed in Indiana. Kirsten and I wondered for months why Michigan drivers seemed to stop so far back at stop signs and lights. It's because they're taught to be able to see the white line before the intersection. This is probably a good thing, but it could be extraordinarily annoying when trying to turn right on red.
The Weather
Finally, it's difficult to talk about Michigan without talking about the weather. Now, understandably, the climatic difference between mid-Michigan and southern Indiana is not the same as, say, the difference between North Dakota and South Carolina (one a former potential graduate school location and one the current choice), but my place of birth is several degrees of latitude south of where I lived in Michigan, not to mention the fact that mid-Michigan lies between two very large bodies of fresh water, whereas southern Indiana lies in a very low-lying river valley. Their temperatures vary depending on so many factors, but I generally found the highs to be, on average about 15 to 20 degrees cooler in mid-Michigan than southern Indiana. Case in point occurred just a few days ago, after our first few days home, when the highs soared into the mid-80s here in the Ohio Valley (with humidity around 60%) and the weather report for East Lansing was 63 degrees, sunny, and negligible humidity. But, they have a saying in Michigan (and several other northern Midwestern states): "If you can't stand the winters, you don't deserve the summers." I would agree. Upon moving to Michigan, I was expecting and preparing for the worst. And after the first winter, I felt like I had experienced a "normal" Michigan winter, but I was told by locals that it was one of the worst winters they'd experienced in years. As someone who, for the most part, dislikes snow and winter, I was pleased by my overreaching assumption of just how bad winter would be (We received nearly 100 inches of snow that winter, and the temperature dipped below zero consistently throughout January and February). There is a certain idiosyncrasy to these winters that also surprises non-natives, me among them at first. Living in southern Indiana, the winter never gets consistently cold enough to freeze a large lake over with ice, yet Kirsten and I observed on multiple occasion people who would walk a half mile across a lake to visit a friend's house on the other side and talked about how they looked forward to the winter every year so they could walk to their friend's houses who seemed so far away during the rest of the year. People also do more than ice skate and ice fish on these lakes. Our first experience at one of these lakes entailed cautiously walking a few yards onto the ice while the accustomed Michiganders drove their four-wheeler ATVs at reckless speeds across the frozen pond. How regional fun can be. And this is all relative of course. We were constantly being reminded by the Yoopers (the U.P.ers, or the people who come from the Upper Peninsula), who, by the way, like to call those from the Lower Peninsula "trolls" since we all live "under the [Mackinac] bridge") how warm our winters are or how little snow we get by comparison. I'll never forget when we received one of the last snowfalls of the year, the ones that occur just as spring is starting, and Kirsten and I saw a man in running shorts and a tank top jogging down the road as we were receiving around 8 inches of snow. He seemed entirely unfazed.
A Return?
Overall, my two years in Michigan surprised me in a lot of ways. I disliked it at first, primarily because it was so difficult to find work and, after a short while, somewhat difficult to find things to do. But like many places, you find yourself liking it in odd ways and missing it when it's gone. It's easy to make friends when you're is in high school or college, and you're surrounded by peers and people going through the exact same things as you, and I count nearly all of my best friends in the world among those I met in high school and college. It was more difficult in East Lansing, where I worked mostly with people much older than me in the school systems and with people much younger than me at the coffee shop I worked at part time. There were very few late-20-somethings who had moved six hours from their homes while their significant others went to school. But, as it turns out, I've missed some of the people I met in Michigan terribly in just the week and half I've been gone. Michigan, much like New York, which I visited earlier this year, is a place I'd say I wouldn't mind living in, but which I wouldn't want to make a life in. And one never knows. While I imagine I'll be primarily looking in the Northeast and West Coast for graduate schools following my two years at Clemson, I wouldn't rule out altogether (after, I'm sure, a lengthy conversation with Kirsten) a return. University of Michigan does have a great history program. . .
That guy with the broken glasses in the Twilight Zone was my favorite episode of said show.
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