> And there is no urban sprawl in the metro DC area, or Long Island, or
> Silicon Vally, or Orange County . . . . ? Oh, come on. "Smash bicoastal
> arrogance!" as the slogan read on an Ohio State women' studies dept t-shirtI
> once yearned for. Columbus is actually a fairly nice town, surrounded by
> sprawl, but what isn't? I mean, outside South Dakota or southern Illinois,
> where sprawl might be an improvement. Actually that is not true of S.
> Dakota, which is very lovely in a stark sort of way. (Can't say as much for
> southern Illinois, right Carrol?) Columbus not as cosmopolitan as some
> places, but it's more so than others It's not much like Cleveland, no
> industry to speak of. But it really is time for them as is on the coasts,
> whether of notthey came from the heartland, to realize that it's not exile,
> that it's not sunk in rural idiocy (not all of it), and that people
> voluntarily stay there and even have good lives there. Moreover, these are
> people whom the left has to reach if it has a future. That's true of the
> south too, though I personally don't care for the south. jks
> >
>
>
Now I'm from Ohio too, and the best moment of my life was when I left. But maybe this is just a personal idiosyncrasy. I don't know Columbus well. I'm from northeastern Ohio, a rural area near Youngstown. What always got to me about the place growing up there was the overwhelming valorization of stupidity.
But again, maybe it was just me, or the time when it all happened.
Christopher Rhoades Dÿkema