Michigan

Michigan is a northern American state located in the Great Lakes Region of the United States. It is bordered to the south by the states of Indiana and Ohio, and by Wisconsin to the west. The state borders 4 of the 5 Great Lakes (Michigan, Superior, Huron, Erie) and for this reason is known as the Great Lake State. Michigan is the only state to lie entirely on a peninsula, or (as it happens) two: the sparsely-populated Upper Peninsula (UP) in the north and the more densely-populated Lower Peninsula (LP) in the south. The LP famously looks like a mitten; when you ask Michiganders where they're from, very often they'll point to a spot on the palm of their right hand (the fingers are populated, but not as heavily), using the hand as a rough map of the state.

The state can be broadly divided into regions, as follows:

• Southeast Michigan: Centered on Detroit—the state's largest city—and home to just under half of Michigan's 9.8 million people. Often called Metro Detroit, but this isn't strictly true; Ann Arbor is unquestionably in Southeast Michigan, but whether it's part of Metro Detroit is something of a hot topic. Either way, the Southeast is the home of the American automotive industry (GM's headquarters are in the iconic Renaissance Center in downtown Detroit, Ford's are in Dearborn—which is entirely surrounded by Detroit—and Chrysler's are in the northern suburb of Auburn Hills). As a result, the region is highly dependent on the industry: when the Big Three are doing well, the area (although not Detroit itself) do well, too. When it isn't, the area generally suffers.
  • Southeast Michigan also has the dubious honor of being the most racially-segregated metropolitan area in the United States. After the race riots of the late 1960s, wealthier white Detroiters fled to the suburbs, leaving Detroit predominantly poor and black. This has major effects on the region's dynamics; this is understandably a hot topic, so we won't get into it here.
  • Worthy of note are Southeast Michigan's major institutions of higher education other than the University of Michigan:
    • Wayne State University: A public school in Detroit itself, it has a reasonably decent medical school and law school, and is in a fairly safe part of the city. Nevertheless gets tarred with the "It's in Detroit, it must be dangerous" brush.
    • University of Detroit-Mercy: A private Catholic college, noted for its surprising prowess at basketball. (Still, it hasn't gotten past the second round of March Madness. Curses.)
    • Oakland University: Situated in the comfortable suburb of Rochester. Formerly Michigan State University at Rochester, it won its independence—to the relief of the MSU administration in East Lansing—in the 1960s, it currently acts as a commuter college, but it also has a strong nursing program.
    • Eastern Michigan University: Located in Ann Arbor's poorer, sadder twin Ypsilanti. Originally founded as a teachers' college, it currently acts as the University of Michigan's poorer, sadder twin (noticing a theme here?). It nevertheless still has an excellent College of Education, although it was surpassed by Michigan State sometime in the 1950s or '60s.
• Mid-Michigan: Centered on the state capital, Lansing. Moderately populated, its economy is dependent on agriculture, some industry, government (around Lansing), and education (around Lansing and Mt. Pleasant). The Lansing area plays host to one major university (Michigan State University, in East Lansing), one significant second-tier law school (Cooley, in Downtown Lansing) a vocational college (Davenport University, again in downtown), besides the obligatory community college. Mount Pleasant is home to Central Michigan University, which is respectable enough for a "directional" college. Jackson, in the south-central part of the state, is roughly the midway point between between Ann Arbor and Lansing (traveling northwest) and between Ann Arbor and Kalamazoo (traveling roughly due west); it is notable in Michigan for playing host to Michigan's most important maximum-security prison and being the birthplace of the Republican Party.^[1] Flint—essentially Detroit-like, but smaller—can be considered part of Mid-Michigan (with the Tri-Cities of Saginaw, Bay City, and Midland), Southeast Michigan, or...
• The Thumb: A flat region corresponding to the "thumb" of the "mitten". Mostly agricultural. Thomas A. Edison grew up in its largest city, Port Huron, which is a major crossing to Canada (the Blue Water Bridge connects Port Huron to Sarnia, Ontario, and is probably the most direct route for most Michiganders to Toronto).
• West Michigan: Often called the West Coast, since it lies on the shore of Lake Michigan. Centered on Grand Rapids, the state's second-largest city, which was historically a major base for the furniture industry; today, the most famous company in the city is "multi-level marketing" consumer goods company Amway. Also home to large numbers of stern Dutch Calvinists (to the point that there's a town of Holland just west of Grand Rapids with an annual tulip festival, wooden shoes, and a Dutch Reformed seminary/college), with a predictable effect on the region's politics: although the city of Grand Rapids itself is quite liberal (having been abandoned by the Dutch and taken over by Catholic Italians, Poles, and Latinos), the region as a whole is considered a very safe seat for the Republicans.^[2]
  • The more rural areas are noted for their fruit production, including viticulture (i.e. wine); Lake Michigan increases rainfall and moderates the climate, making the whole coast heaven for fruit farmers. Also heavily dependent on tourism: there are lots of nice beaches on the lake shoreline, which attract people from elsewhere in the state in the summertime.
  • Southwest Michigan—near the border with Indiana—has its own dynamic. The parts closer to the middle, like Kalamazoo,^[3] are a bit more like Mid-Michigan, but the far southwest is another story. It's closer to Chicago than anything else, and could be considered to be an outpost of Greater Chicagoland. Historically quite industrial; now quite depressed. A sort of mirror image of Detroit and its suburbs has popped up, with St. Joseph being predominantly rich and white and Benton Harbor, across the St. Joseph River, being predominantly poor and black.
    • Kalamazoo plays host to two educational institutions—Western Michigan University and Kalamazoo College. WMU is notable for being rather like Indiana's Purdue University, but of a substantially lower caliber in most areas except for Medieval Studies, while Kalamazoo is a liberal arts college notable for sending all its undergrads abroad for a year and being ridiculously expensive.
• Northern Michigan: Or should we say Northern Lower Michigan. Sparsely populated; while there's a fair amount of agriculture in the area, there's also a lot of wilderness. There's a line running roughly from Muskegon (on the West Coast) to Bay City, south of which lives over 80% of Michigan's population. Folks from south of the line often go "up north" to this part of the state to get away; hunting and fishing are popular, although other forms of tourism are also important to the economy. Very few areas of dense population.
  • Traverse City—roughly at the "pinky" of the "mitten" is noted for its fruit production (the lake effect moderating its climate), particularly cherries and grapes (so, yes, you snobs and drunkards, wine). Even crops considered to be warm-weather (like peaches) can thrive in the region. Also home to a film festival started by Michael Moore; locals have mixed feelings about this.
• The Upper Peninsula: Even more sparsely-populated and wilderness-covered than Northern Lower Michigan, with an economy broadly similar to that region. Its inhabitants ("Yoopers") are considered to be a breed of their own, with a distinctive dialect that sounds more Minnesota than Michigan, thanks to heavy Scandinavian (particularly Finnish) immigration. It gets thicker as you approach the border with Wisconsin. Call other Michiganders "trolls" because they live "under da bridge" (the Mackinac Bridge, which carries I-75 from St. Ignace in the UP to Mackinaw City in the LP). Yoopers have on occasion threatened to secede from Michigan and either join Wisconsin or form their own state of Superior; these proposals have gotten nowhere, but have brought attention to the UP's grievances.

Other facts about Michigan:

• The two largest Universities in the state are the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor and Michigan State University (in East Lansing, which is immediately east of Lansing). The two Universities are leading National Research Institutions and they share an intense, in-state rivalry with each other in sports...and everything else.^[4] How friendly this rivalry gets depends on who you ask; since many Michiganders have relatives who went to both, there's often a desire to keep the peace, but others regard the other school as The Enemy (or at U of M, The Second Enemy, The First Enemy being Ohio State), with whom there is no reconciliation.
• The state has four major professional sports teams, all centered in Detroit. They include the Detroit Tigers (Baseball), the Detroit Lions (Football), The Detroit Red Wings (Ice Hockey) and the Detroit Pistons (Basketball).

Works set in Michigan

• See all works on the page for Motor City for works set in Detroit and Metro Detroit.
• Escanaba In Da Moonlight—Set in the UP, but beloved of all Michiganders for Jeff Daniels' role.
• Anatomy of a Murder—Set in Ishpeming, again in the UP.
• Most of the American Pie movies.
• The ballad Wreck of the Edmond Fitzgerald is about the wreck of a frighter on Lake Superior. Not so much in Michigan as near it.

Famous Michiganders

• The Stooges: Formed in Ann Arbor. Iggy Pop was born in West Michigan.
• Jeff Daniels grew up in Chelsea and attended Central Michigan University in Mt. Pleasant. He currently narrates the "Pure Michigan" tourism ads.
• Magic Johnson is originally from Lansing, and his decision to attend Michigan State was in part driven by a desire to stay close to his family.^[5]
• Gerald Ford, of course.
• Marvin Gaye was raised in the District, but moved with his family to join Motown.
• Aretha Franklin was raised in Detroit.
• As was Eminem (albeit born in Missouri). Hence those "Imported from Detroit" commercials that Chrysler's been running.
• James Earl Jones was raised in Jackson, after moving away from his family in Mississippi at age five. He's still the narrator for the "Please come here" video for the University of Michigan (from which he graduated in 1955).
• S. Epatha Merkerson, again from Detroit.
• Jamie Hyneman, from Marshall.
• Gillian Anderson, from Grand Rapids
• The White Stripes, also from Detroit.
• Madonna Louise Ciccone, born in Bay City.

1. ↑ This last is somewhat ironic, as Jackson is named after Andrew Jackson, the founder of the Democratic Party in its current institutional form.
2. ↑ And now you know why there's Freestate Amsterdam: the stern Christians went off to Michigan.
3. ↑ Yes, there is a Kalamazoo; it's in Michigan, there's a good chance that any pharmaceuticals you're taking were researched and manufactured there, and it's very nice
4. ↑ Academically, consensus holds that MSU's best programs are better than their equivalents at Michigan, but that Michigan is better on average—if only because Michigan is often the "safety school" for East Coasters who just missed the Ivy League. MSU, on the other hand—and in particular its best programs—is a highly-desired target school for less well-off kids from Indiana, Illinois, and Wisconsin. Additionally, people in the know note the remarkable number of University of Chicago grads who go on to become MSU profs and and the number of MSU grads who go on to study at [UChicago]; they tend think of MSU as a sort of public-university outpost of Chicago.
5. ↑ It might surprise you, but he actually didn't expect to make a career out of basketball. Magic took his studies in communications quite seriously until a few months before the Lakers drafted him, at which point he realized that he really was destined to be a pro baller.