Five Ohios?
While searching for local news on the hopelessly convoluted cleveland.com, I came across this oldie-but-goodie on The Five Ohios, which includes this colorfully annotated map.
First, let me get this out of the way. I find the PD map's description of Southwest Ohio - what they call the Southland, which I always considered a pejorative term used by northerners, but maybe I'm wrong - to be particularly hilarious:
"Southern accents and attitudes flavor this conservative region...."
Simply because I've been saying this nearly verbatim to Jim (who hails from Miami County) for the last five years. Despite his protests, I can now prove that he has a Kentucky accent.
(To the PD's claim that NEO represents "Ohio's only liberal political tradition," Jim retorted, "is really liberal, though? Or do a lot of people just vote Democrat?" Touché.)
So how many Ohios are there?
On a recent trip to Chillicothe, we found ourselves on a long, hilly stretch of the National Road with cows to the left, cows to the right, and not a lot else except the occasional shabby-looking pizza shop. In other words, a totally alien landscape to the one I grew up in. But it occurred to me: this is what people imagine when I say I'm from Ohio.
That's fine because I actually never say I'm from Ohio anymore, having relegated anything outside of NEO to the category of The Other Ohio -- the Ohio that approved the Defense of Marriage Act, the Ohio that kept Bob Taft in office, the Ohio that wanted to withhold precious LLGSF funding from public libraries that refused to install Internet filters.
What do I say instead? I say I'm from Cleveland, of course, but more and more I'm saying that I'm from the Great Lakes.
Although I would hazard a guess that the lakefront communities of Northwest Ohio are more appreciative of and connected to the lake, I've wondered if Cleveland doesn't have more in common with other Great Lakes cities than with the rest of Ohio. In Facing the Ocean, archaeologist Barry Cunliffe examines evidence from the prehistoric coastal cultures of Britain, Ireland, France, and Spain, and determines that they had more in common with each other than with their respective inland compatriots.
It's an interesting thought that I don't have too much to say about right now, but stay tuned.
(ps- I didn't actually find the local news. Can someone tell me where it is?)
First, let me get this out of the way. I find the PD map's description of Southwest Ohio - what they call the Southland, which I always considered a pejorative term used by northerners, but maybe I'm wrong - to be particularly hilarious:
"Southern accents and attitudes flavor this conservative region...."
Simply because I've been saying this nearly verbatim to Jim (who hails from Miami County) for the last five years. Despite his protests, I can now prove that he has a Kentucky accent.
(To the PD's claim that NEO represents "Ohio's only liberal political tradition," Jim retorted, "is really liberal, though? Or do a lot of people just vote Democrat?" Touché.)
So how many Ohios are there?
On a recent trip to Chillicothe, we found ourselves on a long, hilly stretch of the National Road with cows to the left, cows to the right, and not a lot else except the occasional shabby-looking pizza shop. In other words, a totally alien landscape to the one I grew up in. But it occurred to me: this is what people imagine when I say I'm from Ohio.
That's fine because I actually never say I'm from Ohio anymore, having relegated anything outside of NEO to the category of The Other Ohio -- the Ohio that approved the Defense of Marriage Act, the Ohio that kept Bob Taft in office, the Ohio that wanted to withhold precious LLGSF funding from public libraries that refused to install Internet filters.
What do I say instead? I say I'm from Cleveland, of course, but more and more I'm saying that I'm from the Great Lakes.
Although I would hazard a guess that the lakefront communities of Northwest Ohio are more appreciative of and connected to the lake, I've wondered if Cleveland doesn't have more in common with other Great Lakes cities than with the rest of Ohio. In Facing the Ocean, archaeologist Barry Cunliffe examines evidence from the prehistoric coastal cultures of Britain, Ireland, France, and Spain, and determines that they had more in common with each other than with their respective inland compatriots.
It's an interesting thought that I don't have too much to say about right now, but stay tuned.
(ps- I didn't actually find the local news. Can someone tell me where it is?)
posted by Christine Borne at 7:24 AM
5 Comments:
Hey, Christine:
I'm an occasional visitor to this site. Just a quick comment about the "other Ohio":
I grew up in the Cleveland area, but am uncharacteristically conservative in my politics. (And now I live in Montgomery County, Maryland, which, politically speaking, makes Cuyahoga County look like someplace in Montana.)
1) I don't think most conservatives thought very highly of Bob Taft (a very socially liberal Rockefeller-style Republican, from what I've been told). Concerning Jim's comment about Democrats versus liberals, the same can be said for many Republican politicians, many of whom aren't necessarily conservative. (Michael Bloomberg, anybody?)
>STARTRANT>
The Defense of Marriage Act (or related national and state constitutional amendment efforts) would not be necessary if it hadn't been for the absurd belief that EVERY FREAKIN' new controversy (I don't remember anybody, including gay people, even caring about gay marriage 20 years ago) must, somehow, be addressed by the Constitution. Sometimes, hard as this may seem, the Constitution simply doesn't have a position on some issues one way or the other. That is when we, the people, must discuss these issues intelligently and civilly. This means things like votes, elections, debates, etc. It does NOT mean judges issuing diktats with opinions crafted in pompous frieze-style language, asserting vague abstractions supposedly derived somewhere in the text of the constitution, and denouncing as bigots anyone who even slightly disagrees with gay marriage. The gay marriage issue is simply not in the same league as related concerns over job discrimination and over-reaching sodomy laws.
On these issues, I tend to have a live-and-let-live attitude, but I have no patience for militant, absolutist activists, who seriously seem to think there is no difference between questioning the wisdom of gay marriange and killing Matthew Shephard.
Name-calling like this does not demonstrate passion for social justice, it's just borish and anti-intellectual.
>/STARTRANT>
As for the library thing, I am not knowledgable enough to comment.
Just needed to vent,
Rob
Hi Rob,
Thanks for commenting. First of all let me say that I'm glad you were upfront about not knowing enough to comment about the library issue. I think we'd *all* be better off if people only expressed opinions about things they felt qualified to!
Bob Taft, yeah. If Strickland turns out to be a crap-ass governor that Democrats keep voting in, I'll probably be annoyed with that too. Suffice it to say I'm not thrilled with Frank Jackson, either.
I agree with you that every controversy doesn't need to be addressed by the constitution. I agree with you that we should probably just 'live and let live.' What I hate is how Republicans use gay marriage and the vague, all-encompassing "moral values" as a wedge issue, and drive this stuff to the top of the legislative agenda while other things (like jobs) go un-done-anything-about.
I hope I didn't insinuate that every person residing outside of Northeast Ohio was a bloodthirsty "sodomite"-basher. That would be absurd, and scary! However, questioning the wisdom of gay marriage is one thing. Banning it entirely is another.
I'll be honest with you - maybe I'm not looking in the right places - but I haven't seen a lot of arguments against gay marriage that don't have to do with what I would call hate. I really do have trouble seeing the point of view of someone who says gay people shouldn't have the same rights as straight people. Maybe you know of some more reasonable arguments other than those put forward by the religious right? I'd be happy to look at them.
(Incidentally, you should know my attitude is at least slightly hypocritical, in that I can't stand New Yorkers' disdain for the "rest of the state.")
Despite cleveland.com's attempt to make their website as difficult to use as possible, the actual news articles can usually be found at cleveland.com/plaindealer. Heaven help you if you want anything more than 2 weeks old, though.
Yeah, I generally just say I'm from Cleveland, even though I'm actually from Elyria. Simply saying "Ohio" is far too vague, and you're right that the term conjures up images of hoe-downs and cow-tipping.
I still love the friend-of-a-friend story about the woman who freaked out when she saw Lake Erie upon flying over Cleveland, thinking the plane was going to the wrong airport. She apparently seemed to think Erie was Buffalo's lake, not Ohio's, despite it making up the vast majority of our northern boundary. (In a related story, another person once commented, "Wow, this Avon Lake is really big!" when viewing a lakefront homeowner's backyard.)
I recall about 10 years ago, back when AOL only had a few million subscribers and you could actually carry on a decent conversation in the public chat rooms, being drowned in a deluge of commentary once I A/S/L'd that I was from Ohio. They kept calling me "rustbelt" -- and at least one person using this term apparently thought it meant that Ohioans were so rural and dirty that our belt buckles were rusty, not that we were a manufacturing center or that the salted winter roadways caused damage to our cars.
Hi Bryan-
I love the "Avon lake" and "rusty belt" stories. It reminds me of the first time we went to Liberty State Park, took one look at lower Manhattan, and said, "Boy, Jersey City sure has an impressive skyline!" (Jim then turned me around. "That's Jersey City," he said, probably thinking, who's the corn-fed simpleton now?)
As far as cleveland.com goes, I know they know it sucks. I know there was some talk about making it not suck. But in between then and now, it seems to have started to suck even more.
I have some "navigational issues" with cleveland.com/plaindealer. Where to start? It's such a headache...I've really got to sit down and map out what I think. Maybe later this week.
Being from the Mahoning Valley (generally Trumbull and Mahoning counties consider themselves the MV), I've often said that once you're south of Columbiana county, you're in the deep South and even Columbiana county might belong there. The map at the 5 Ohios link would tend to agree, I guess.
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