Tuesday, June 20, 2006
If you seek a pleasant peninsula, look about you*
I recently spent several days in the Midwest, including Detroit, my birthplace. I’ve been a resident alien in Boston for a couple of decades, and I was struck, as I usually am when I go back, by the subtlety of the Midwestern landscape.
Massachusetts has hills, granite outcroppings, blatant geography like that. Southeastern Michigan has changes in elevation. Not everyone appreciates it, it drives many crazy. As I sometimes observe, you’ll notice I don’t live there anymore. However, simply to say that the landscape is flat and boring is an insufficient response to it.
*That, no kidding, is the Michigan state motto. It is marginally less goony in the Latin it appears in on the state seal: Si quaeris peninsulam amoenam, circumspice.
Massachusetts has hills, granite outcroppings, blatant geography like that. Southeastern Michigan has changes in elevation. Not everyone appreciates it, it drives many crazy. As I sometimes observe, you’ll notice I don’t live there anymore. However, simply to say that the landscape is flat and boring is an insufficient response to it.
*That, no kidding, is the Michigan state motto. It is marginally less goony in the Latin it appears in on the state seal: Si quaeris peninsulam amoenam, circumspice.
