The Dish

The popular thread continues: A reader points to this analysis of how ancient “black soil” helped make the South (Cretaceous rock units -139-65 million years old – are shown in shades of green. Older rock units are in gray, younger ones in yellow):

During the Cretaceous era, 139-65 million years ago, shallow seas covered much of the southern United States. These tropical waters were productive–giving rise to tiny marine plankton with carbonate skeletons which overtime accumulated into massive chalk formations. The chalk, both alkaline and porous, led to fertile and well-drained soils in a band, mirroring that ancient coastline and stretching across the now much drier South. This arc of rich and dark soils in Alabama has long been known as the Black Belt.

But many, including Booker T. Washington, co-opted the term to refer to the entire Southern band. Washington wrote in his 1901 autobiography, Up from Slavery, “The term was first used to designate a part of the country which was distinguished by the color of the soil. The part of the country possessing this thick, dark, and naturally rich soil …” Over time this rich soil produced an amazingly productive agricultural region, especially for cotton. In 1859 alone a harvest of over 4,000 cotton bales was not uncommon within the belt. And yet, just tens of miles north or south this harvest was rare. Of course this level of cotton production required extensive labor …

Another:

Your reader’s email providing “answers” on the South and social mobility leaves me with questions. “Where can someone right out of high school rise to a six figure income right away without working on an oil rig?” I’m not sure, but I am highly skeptical that the answer is “natural gas”. First off, a lot of these jobs being created in energy and natural gas in particular are not the sort of jobs you get right out of high school. Second, here are some salaries for available natural gas jobs in the Keystone state from a quick Google search (from Indeed.com):

338 available jobs making $30,000+
218 making $50,000+
105 making $70,000+
39 making $90,000+
and only 13 making $110,000+

Finally, even if there are a ton of great jobs waiting for any high-school grad, this article from Philly.com puts the total employment picture into perspective:

Even if shale-gas development has created 245,000 direct and indirect jobs – the number used by the Pennsylvania Department of Labor and Industry, and touted by industry trade groups – that still amounts to only 4 percent of total employment in a state with 5.7 million jobs.

(As an aside, it’s also worth noting that most energy analysts, and the President of the United States, recognize that in reality natural gas will almost certainly benefit MORE from efforts to address global warming – with or without fracking – than any other energy source.)

Maybe I’m wrong, and digging something out of the ground is a better route to economic mobility than cultivating a creative skill-set that provides unique, real-world value. I remain, however, unconvinced.

Another:

I had the opportunity to reflect on your thread this morning, as I left the interstate in a torrential downpour, and instead commuted to downtown Memphis via US-51, in a route that took me through the Whitehaven suburb of Memphis, directly past Graceland. I’ve lived in the Memphis area my entire life, and I can remember the same area in the early 1980s, when it was a much whiter and more affluent area. I also have been witness to the slow decline over the past decades, and this morning spent the ride dodging flash flooding and reflecting on the white flight that has occurred in Memphis, juxtaposed against the maps showing relative social mobility.

The problem isn’t the lack of social mobility, in my mind. The problem is that the post-civil rights area resulted in the mass migration of the affluent away from those who were already destitute. In so doing, the entire economic base that supported the region shifted, and further entrenched the already stagnant economics of the minorities left behind while geographically consolidating the economic fortunes of the better off. There are abandoned factories and businesses, and crumbling schools all over this area, along with the scavenger pawn shops and dollar stores that moved in to fill some of the voids.

This, to me, is what I think of when I read about the lack of social mobility. Everything that might have contributed to mobility was simply relocated, and the skeletons left to rot.

Arthur Caplan points to a recent study suggesting that the health reasons for outdoor smoking bans aren’t backed up by strong data:

In getting these bans enacted three justifications were used: Smoking on beaches and in parks posed a health hazard to nonsmokers, especially children; cigarette butts were toxic to humans and animals and constituted an unacceptable form of litter; and public smoking by adults provided a dangerous model that threatened the future well-being of children and adolescents.

The problem is that the scientific evidence supporting each of these arguments is exceedingly weak. Consider the comments of some of the toughest anti-smoking groups in the nation about the best rationale for bans–the hazards of smoking in public to others. An official of the American Lung Association, concerned that efforts to ban smoking on beaches and in parks might deflect attention from more effective public health interventions, told [study authors Ronald Bayer and Kathleen E. Bachynski] in an interview, “I don’t think we should be making claims that are not supported by the data. If you try to tie it [banning smoking on beaches and in parks] to a health outcome, that’s where you get in trouble.”  A representative of the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids was even more direct in another interview: “There is not a lot of science around outdoor smoking bans…. There is some science, but you have to be very close to the smoke in an outdoor setting…. The last thing we want to do is put our credibility on the line with regard to the science.”

A reader writes:

Your reader says that Pittsburgh cannot count as an East Coast city because it is 7+ hours from the coast. Then please explain to me why it belongs in the same region as Chicago (8 hours from Pittsburgh); Des Moines, IA (12); Lincoln, NE (14); and Rapid City, SD (19). Granted, the distance from Wilmington, NC to Shreveport, LA is a solid 14 hours, and no one thinks that North Carolina and Louisiana are in wildly different regions. I just get riled because frequently people from the East Coast actually have no idea how huge this country is, and make flippant statements like “Pittsburgh is too far from the coast so lump it in with the flyovers.” America is vast, and contains multitudes. Explore!

Another reader:

I was born and raised in the Midwest and lived in various states for 40 years, and it never ceases to amaze me how people conflate anything that’s not East Coast as Midwest. While I love my East Coast brethren, they are profoundly ignorant of the geography of this country. Pittsburgh is about as Midwestern as San Francisco. Wyoming in the Midwest? Huh?

I have one very simple rule: if it’s in the Eastern Standard Time Zone, it’s not Midwest. To extend it, there are only a few tiny portions in Mountain Time that are Midwestern. Broadly speaking, there are two basic parts of the Midwest: the Great Lakes region and the Great Plains region. They may look similar to someone sitting in DC or New York, but they are different culturally, topographically and politically. But the best map and definition that’s ever been written to date is still Joel Garreau’s Nine Nations of North America. Garreau really nailed the specific differences and demarcation points (though I would lobby for an additional “nation” that picks up the Scandinavian quality of the people in the Upper Midwest into Canada).

Another:

Here’s a definition from a born-and-raised Midwesterner who often drives to its outer reaches: Midwest = Germans + Grids + Gardens

Germans: On this map of ethnic ancestry from the 2000 census, there’s a broad swath of German-plurality counties starting from central New York, through Pennsylvania stretching westward to the Rockies and beyond. Germans help define the southern border of the Midwest (though stray Finnish, Dutch and African-American counties are certainly Midwestern as well). Germans heavily influenced Midwestern architecture, food, religion, and its devotion to public education.  The “American” cultures of Kentucky and southern Missouri are southern – the accents change, Baptists predominate, and so does the food (it gets better down South, but that’s not Paula Deen’s doing). But not all German areas are Midwestern, so a limit to this is:

Grids. A central man-made feature of the Midwest is its grid pattern, which, thanks to the Land Ordinance of 1785 and Glaciation, stretches from south of Cleveland toward Cincinnati, and then west to the Rockies, defining the eastern and southern borders of the region. There are a few pockets where “queer” roads must follow the hills, such as around Bloomington, Indiana, or Athens, Ohio, or in the Ozarks. Those areas are on the fringes of the Midwest. Driving a Detroit-made sedan or pick-up truck down a straight state highway is a Midwestern rite of passage. So straight roads and flatlands (not Appalachian or Ozark zomias) help define the Midwest. This grid was made possible in part by Glaciation, which covered the land with very fertile soil. So the last characteristic is:

Gardens. (I couldn’t find a better synonym for farms that maintained the alliteration.) Anywhere that farming occurs on a wide scale and without irrigation is Midwestern, which defines the western border from about Joplin, Missouri, northward to Topeka, Lincoln continuing to just west of Fargo. Northern Michigan and Wisconsin are also peripherally Midwestern, and I suspect residents of those regions agree, though I can’t speak to northern Minnesota.

Putting this all together, Germans, Grids and Gardens means the Midwest begins in Downtown Cleveland, south to about Athens, Ohio, then west about Cape Girardeau, Missouri, with a bump up I-55 to St. Louis, and back down I-44 to Joplin, then north to Topeka, Lincoln, west of Fargo, to Canada.

Update from a reader:

Was that “born-and-raised Midwesterner” really suggesting that the defining characteristic of the Midwest is that it’s GGG?

Heh. One more reader:

There’s a historic line of demarcation that cuts right through some of the most contentious states. The 100th meridian quite accurately separates the lower-lying, well-watered eastern half of the Great Plains from the high-country, arid western half. Rainfall drops from two feet to a foot at the meridian; altitude crosses from under to above 2000 feet. In the past, east of the 100th was lush tallgrass prairie; west, sunburned shortgrass. Today, in the east, Mother Nature does a lot of the irrigating; in the west, farmers pump the aquifers and cosset every drop of rain. East is dairy cows; west is steers raised for beef.

See where the U.S. highway system goes from a dense mesh to a loose net on this map? That’s the 100th meridian, and those roads speak volumes about the human population density on either side of it. Much has been written about the meridian – Wallace Stegner’s biography of John Wesley Powell is named for it, for example – and it remains meaningful to the regional culture today, as this 2011 article from the Pierre, South Dakota Capital Journal notes. I’d suggest that it’s what really divides the Midwest – a green and pleasant, neighbors-and-towns land – from the brown and solitary West.