What's in a region?

The JFW community seems to be having a grand old time discussing the cache Midwestern origins may have in Boston-area dating game. It is an odd discussion for a couple of reasons.

Jeremy's post is primarily concerned with what he should do about his car. He states that folks have suggested a lack of wheels will limit his dating prospects. This is a preposterous suggestion. Many people who manage to get lucky all the time in Boston do so without the benefits of car ownership because many Boston residents do not own cars. Boston has about the most comprehensive and convenient mass transit system in the country. The city is not designed for the automobile. Just one example - if you want to take your date to Fenway for a game, you will quickly learn that, even if you have a car, you should not drive to the game. On the sox website they tell you not to drive. Perhaps, if you have always lived in places where cars are a necessity, then it is difficult to believe that there are places in which cars are not only unnecessary, but, in fact, a nuisance. Boston is one of those places. Just one nuisance example- Boston gets much more snow than Madison and the design of the city makes snow plowing and removal extremely difficult. Not only do you have to worry about finding street parking, you need to deal with an informal system of winter parking space ownership in which folks who shovel out spots designate those spots as their own (using cones, signs, etc).

On the value of Midwestern roots in dating: It should first be noted that most people who have lived their lives on the east coast don't even know the term Midwest (referring to Wisconsin as "out west" or something similar), don't really know anything about what life is like off the seaboard, and don't really think it is important that they find out. They have never given the "interior" much thought because it never occurs to them that it is so different from their own world (the same way that folks who have always lived in areas developed for automobile use don't realize that some places are not that way). I think that most Americans think that the part of the country they live in is quitessentially American and regional differences come as a shock.* There is not much that draws people out to spend a great deal of time doing more than driving through much of middle America outside of Chicago while the distribution of cities, universities, etc, makes it more likely folks from the Midwest get "out east" at some point or another.

As an east-coaster(which, actually, is as false an appellation as referring to everything west of Philly as out west) who has spent much of her adult life in Chicago and Wisconsin, I have observed that the folks who seem to make the most of Midwestern/East Coast differences are Midwesterners themselves. My partner's Midwestern family disdain my vegetarianism and cooking with "fancy"and "spicy" ingredients like pesto and garlic and attribute it to the fact that I'm from the east while, in fact, my been-in-New-England-since-the-white-folks-started-coming family also wishes my diet and cooking were a little more "normal." I was surprised when long-time friends from Madison (originally from Greenbay and outside of Minneapolis) visiting us in Portland last summer reacted with obvious disdain to people they encountered on the street who looked "stereotypically" east coast (e.g. were wearing white shorts and boat shoes and boat hats, etc). Almost every time we came across such people, one of them would make an ugly face and comment about how they must be a Kennedy, wonder aloud what time their next polo match was, or make some comment about how they have probably never been to a Menard's. I finally told them that they were offending me, that the folks they were ridiculing didn't do anything to deserve their disdain and, likely, did not even reciprocate it.

What's the point here? I'm not quite sure. Let me try to sum up:
1. When in Rome - in order to really experience a new place, one should endeavor to live life as the folks who live there live. That way, instead of feeling animosity toward a place and people because of all the ways in which your own taken-for-granted ways of doing things don't work there, you come to recognize and appreciate another orderly way in which life works.
2. Don't vilify people on the east coast for not taking a great deal of interest in the Midwest. For the most part it's simple ignorance. It may be painful to realize that folks think roots or even an entire region are insignificant but, likely, many of us experience similar situations frequently: when our relatives call us teachers instead of professors; folks don't want to talk about our research interests because they have no practical value; or people observe our work flexibility and comment that it is about time we "get a job."

*even the folks from Manhattan are surprised by some of the taken-for-granted things that are lost when they leave the island.