What states do you consider to be part of the Midwest?

it's not really "half," though, is the thing.

esteeming small town life over city life - more fail than pass, but sure, it exists

kinda funny since our most famous esteemer has nice homes on crocus hill and uh the upper west side.

although, actually, what am i talking about: NW minnesota is farmy and conservative, isn't it

lol ques

Basically if I can imagine Footloose being filmed and set in a place, that place is in the Midwest.

if you wanna continue the house analogy Iowa is like the guest room nobody goes into; it makes such a poor heart

― oɔsıqɐu (nabisco), Thursday, October 22, 2009 3:38 PM (17 minutes ago) Bookmark

i heard a great line about iowa, "it's a nice place to live, but you wouldn't want to visit there"

iowa:
whoa y'all are some bland fat corn eating motherfuckers
lmfao

ha, that sounds about right to me (xp). i grew up having a lol view of iowa as v v fat and white, but secretly the countryside in the eastern part of the state is super pretty

fwiw the Rockies can be seen when Chris Penn is on the plow. Ergo, Eastern CO counts.

I guess one way the populous bits of Colorado skirt by that definition is that they are also blessed with various sizes of chicano people and less-bland food (though this is increasingly true of a lot of the core midwest, too)

I have tried to introduce this term on ILX before without much success, but: "Front Range." Then Great Plains. Then Great Lakes. "Midwest" some imprecise context-based nexus of the latter two.

xpost Footloose was set in OKLAHOMA and filmed in UTAH

whether most of Colorado lives in the midwest!
Isn't Colorado the thinnest state in the union? (size of people, not size of state)

Colorado has too many mountains to be Midwest. Sure, you've got that hour just after you've left Kansas before you get to Colorado Springs and it's all grassy and stuff but. . no.

i like that scheme, nabs, but the Front Range (you mean eastern CO/WY/MT?) is too specifically Coloradoan.

Oklahoma is Midwest in my book.

no way.

i'm pretty comfortable actually with cutting nodak loose from the "midwest" and piling it in with eastern MT, most of Wyoming, and eastern CO as the High Plains or Cowboy Country

yeah granny, the SW and NW parts of minnesota kinda fit your list, but the eastern 2/3 def do not. iron range is far from a conservative flatland, for example, and has had a pretty radical political history for sure

actually ND is kind of the pinnacle of your checklist tbf

i have no concept of oklahoma

Oklahoma
endless prairie - PASS
farms/dairy farms/cornfields - PASS
fat white people - PASS, though meth use cuts into that number
conservative culture-wise - PASS
bland food - PASS
esteeming small town life over city life - PASS

oh right, yes, Colorado is too thin to count. and the non-bland Mexican food.

(Que keep in mind that most of the people in Colorado live on that plain, for obvious living-on-mountains-being-hard reasons. but yeah, you are taking the state-by-state rule, I guess.)

xpost - yeah, Front Range is kind Colorado-centric -- but a decent way of talking about where people live on that strip of plains that's not really Great Plains anymore. (and there's the actual population split that goes with it -- like eastern KS and NE are really in the orbit of the midwest, then there's a stretch of hardly anybody, and everything past that is more in the orbit of western states.)

i don't even think oklahoma is a thing

this shit is just The West.

doesn't get cold enough there imo

xp in OK

so would you say eastern MN is comparable to all points north, west and including Madison?

also, when i think of the "Greater Western States" (something that may exist only in my mind), they start directly west of MN, and include the Great Plains

also we are forgetting the North Woods, which, in addition to MN, WI and MI, includes upstate NY, parts of VT and NH, and all of inland Maine

q: are there cabins, and do people wear flannel and think about canoes and axes?

a: yes, you are in the north woods

avg low temp is below freezing in Tulsa in Dec, Jan, and Feb.

GD i think i am just being thick but i dont actually understand your question

i would say OK is a Western state

Q: Are there cottages and deer, and do people wear flannel and think about ice fishing?

A: Yes, you are in West Michigan.

think maybe he meant east instead of west

ok that would help a lot

u are all forgetting to factor in annual precipitation rates

gabbenb jr^^^

jj, is eastern MN comparable to the part of Wisconsin west of and north of Madison? hilly, liberal, etc.

do people ride in conestoga wagons? yes? you are in the western states.

also, not surprisingly, MN stops being similar to WI right about the point where the two states pull apart around L. Superior.

feel like the mn temperament is heavily underwritten by the fact that up north exists, and is cutting down a tree or mining something or portaging a canoe ~as we speak

while the middle band of MN/WI is small towns w/lakes that siphon their children to mpls/madison for university

GD i think that maybe answers your question?

MN = that part of WI + flat farmy NW and south + blonde giants from the north living in the woods and playing hockey

god you guys i am seriously excited about hockey this year for some reason

NEVER TO BE SEEN AGAIN

xps

gabbenb jr^^^

i do have a lot of fascinating opinions on places i havent been

speaking of: the only states in the midwest are kansas, north dakota, iowa and florida (for demographic if not geographic ones). also the canadian provinces of alberta and manitoba

http://www.rumormillnews.com/pix6/9RegionsOfNorthAmerica.GIF

like am considering buying tickets to basically most gopher home games, if i can

Q: are you seriously excited about hockey this year for some reason

A: you're in the Midwest

I haven't read the thread so probably this has been said, but, having lived in both Indiana and Kansas (among a bunch of other places) I'd consider Indiana regionally different from Kansas...Indiana is ICP country whereas KS is way more western-feeling...more like Texas (where I also lived for a number of years) than like Illinois (where I also lived for a number of years; fuck I've lived a lot of (both shitty and cool) places).

Empty Quarter

i've only recently embraced my MNan-ness, and have decided to just let it flow through me

i will go ice-fishing this year

i will learn to cross-country ski