History UsefulNotes / Michigan

[[caption-width-right:350:You gotta ''hand'' it to Michigan.]]

*** Oakland University: With a mailing address in the comfortable suburb of Rochester (which, for the record, is named after [[UsefulNotes/{{Rochester}} the one]] in UsefulNotes/NewYorkState), but situated on both sides of the border between two other suburbs, namely Rochester Hills (which surrounds, and is named after, Rochester itself) and Auburn Hills. Formerly Michigan State University--Oakland, it won its independence--to the relief of the MSU administration in East Lansing--in TheSixties, it currently acts as a commuter college, but it also has a strong nursing program and (as of 2011) has added a medical school. Shocked the whole country in 2024 when its men's basketball team beat perennial great Kentucky in the first round of March Madness--as a ''16th seed''. (So yes, Kentucky was the 1 seed and considered a contender for the national championship.)

*** Oakland University: With a mailing address in the comfortable suburb of Rochester (which, for the record, is named after [[UsefulNotes/{{Rochester}} the one]] in UsefulNotes/NewYorkState), but situated on both sides of the border between two other suburbs, namely Rochester Hills (which surrounds, and is named after, Rochester itself) and Auburn Hills. Formerly Michigan State University--Oakland, it won its independence--to the relief of the MSU administration in East Lansing--in TheSixties, it currently acts as a commuter college, but it also has a strong nursing program and (as of 2011) has added a medical school.

* Snow. Lots of it. The presence of the Great Lakes coupled with the cold air masses that blow in from the west results in swaths of Western and Northern Michigan (and the U.P.) lying in "snow belts" that get subjected to the phenomenon of "lake-effect snow", leaving these places buried in the white stuff. This is a likely contributor to the "Meanwhile, in Michigan..." meme which depicts Michiganders going about their business in over a foot of snow; this is sometimes contrasted to Southerners (such as Floridians and Louisianans) panicking over a fraction of an inch of snow.

* Gilda Radner was born in Detroit.
* Ellen Burstyn was born and raised in Detroit.

* Creator/{{Motown}} entertainers, including the Supremes, Temptations, Smokey Robinson and the Miracles, Martha and the Vandellas (Martha Reeves is now a Detroit councilwoman), Four Tops, Music/StevieWonder, etc. and label founder Berry Gordy.

* David Spade is from Birmingham, but grew up in Arizona.

* Arte Johnson (Benton Harbor)

*** Oakland University: With a mailing address in the comfortable suburb of Rochester (which, for the record, is named after [[UsefulNotes/{{Rochester}} the one]] in UsefulNotes/NewYorkState), but situated on both sides of the border between two other suburbs, namely Rochester Hills (which surrounds, and is named after, Rochester itself) and Auburn Hills. Formerly Michigan State University - Oakland, it won its independence--to the relief of the MSU administration in East Lansing--in TheSixties, it currently acts as a commuter college, but it also has a strong nursing program and (as of 2011) has added a medical school.
*** Eastern Michigan University: Located in Ann Arbor's poorer, sadder twin Ypsilanti. Originally founded as a teachers' college, it currently acts as the University of Michigan's poorer, sadder twin (noticing a theme here?). It nevertheless still has an excellent College of Education, although it was surpassed by Michigan State sometime in TheFifties or '60s. Their team, the East Michigan Eagles, play in the [[UsefulNotes/GroupOfFiveConferences Mid-American Conference]].

* Mid-Michigan: Centered on the state capital, Lansing. Moderately populated, its economy is dependent on agriculture, some industry (if you're driving a Cadillac in America, it was probably made in Lansing), government (around Lansing), and education (around Lansing and Mt. Pleasant). The Lansing area plays host to one major university (Michigan State University, in East Lansing), one significant third-tier law school (Cooley, in Downtown Lansing) a vocational college (Davenport University, again in downtown), besides the obligatory community college. Mount Pleasant is home to Central Michigan University, which is respectable enough for a "directional" college. CMU has an intense rivalry with Western Michigan, and to a lesser extent Eastern as well. CMU also boasts one of the best broadcasting programs in the state, and has beaten out MSU in recent years. Jackson, in the south-central part of the state, is roughly the midway point between between Ann Arbor and Lansing (traveling northwest) and between Ann Arbor and Kalamazoo (traveling roughly due west); it is notable in Michigan for playing host to Michigan's most important maximum-security prison and being the birthplace of the [[UsefulNotes/AmericanPoliticalSystem Republican Party]].[[note]]This last is somewhat ironic, as Jackson is named after UsefulNotes/AndrewJackson, the founder of the Democratic Party in its current institutional form.[[/note]] Flint--essentially Detroit-like, but smaller and in even more dire straights, having become infamous for its heavily contaminated drinking water--can be considered part of Mid-Michigan (with the Tri-Cities of Saginaw, Bay City, and Midland), Southeast Michigan, or...

* West Michigan: Often called the West Coast, since it lies on the shore of Lake Michigan. Centered on Grand Rapids, the state's second-largest city, which was historically a major base for the furniture industry (so much so that even today it's sometimes called Furniture City). Today, the most famous company in the city is "seriously, it's [[InsistentTerminology multi-level marketing]], we swear we're not a {{Ponzi}} scheme" [[WeCare consumer goods company]] [[NamesToRunAwayFromReallyFast Amway]], although office-furniture giant Steelcase and the legendary Herman Miller company (of Aeron Chair fame) is based in the metro area, and its high-tech medical industry has been steadily growing; thankfully, this diverse economy has mostly spared the city from the woes of the state's other major cities. Also home to large numbers of stern Dutch Calvinists (to the point that there's a town of Holland just west of Grand Rapids with an annual tulip festival, wooden shoes, and a Dutch Reformed seminary/college),[[note]]And now you know why there's FreestateAmsterdam: the stern Christian Dutch (the ones who didn't go to UsefulNotes/SouthAfrica *''ahem''*to invent [[UsefulNotes/TheApartheidEra apartheid]]*''ahem''*) went off to Michigan. And we're not joking--it's seriously true. (Abraham Kuyper, a stern Reformed minister and neo-Calvinist theologian from a town near Delft, visited West Michigan in the 1890s and rather approved of what he saw, even considering moving there himself; he decided not to and later became Prime Minister of the Netherlands, in which role he was instrumental in establishing Dutch UsefulNotes/{{Pillarisation}}.)[[/note]] with a predictable effect on the region's politics: although the city of Grand Rapids itself is quite liberal (having been abandoned by the Dutch and taken over by Catholic Italians, Poles, and Latinos), the region as a whole was considered a very safe seat for the Republicans; it was securely UsefulNotes/GeraldFord's seat for years (who was once House Minority Leader before being President), and Libertarian/Tea Party darling Justin Amash represented Greater Grand Rapids for years [[BerserkButton including downtown Grand Rapids itself]]; asking "How can that be?" will earn you a long and '''loud''' lecture on what "Gerrymandering" is. However, Democratic improvement in the suburban areas have put the seat in play for Democrats, but it was still held by a Republican in the moderate Peter Meijer (heir to the popular supermarket chain[[note]]which has been running supercenters decades before UsefulNotes/{{Walmart}} and Kmart entered that business, and now has supercenters stretching from the Upper Peninsula all the way as far south as Kentucky, and from the Youngstown, Ohio area west to Illinois and Wisconsin[[/note]]) until the 2022 election, in which Democrat Hilary Scholten won the seat.

** Southwest Michigan -- near the border with Indiana -- is sometimes (along with northeast Indiana) known as Michiana and has its own dynamic. The parts closer to the middle, like Kalamazoo, are a bit more like Mid-Michigan, but the far southwest is another story. It's closer to UsefulNotes/{{Chicago}} than anything else, and could be considered to be an outpost of Greater Chicagoland. The region's proximity to South Bend, Indiana (home to the University of Notre Dame) also uniquely makes it one of the state's only areas to have a significant number of Notre Dame football fans[[note]]traditionally an ArchEnemy of both Michigan and Michigan State, and thus even among Catholic and even ''Irish'' Catholic Michiganders.[[/note]] Historically quite industrial; now quite depressed. A sort of mirror image of Detroit and its suburbs has popped up, with St. Joseph being predominantly rich and white and Benton Harbor, across the St. Joseph River, being predominantly poor and black. We should note here that Benton Harbor is home to the headquarters of Whirlpool Corporation (as in washers and dryers and dishwashers and stoves and...), and this region's fortunes rise and fall with Whirlpool much as Detroit's rise and fall with the Big Three.

*** Kalamazoo plays host to two educational institutions--Western Michigan University and Kalamazoo College. WMU is notable for being a party school (nicknamed "Wastern") rather like Indiana's Purdue University, but of a substantially lower caliber in most areas except for Medieval Studies, while Kalamazoo is a liberal arts college notable for sending all its undergrads abroad for a year and being ridiculously expensive. However, two other areas in which WMU has long held much prestige are vocal jazz (their vocal-jazz ensemble "Gold Company" has a long track record for winning the highest awards for collegiate vocal jazz music) and its aviation program. Many of the nation's air-traffic controllers earned their credentials at WMU. Another major attraction there is the Kalamazoo Aviation History Museum, known to locals as the "Air Zoo". Consisting of two buildings (which are far enough apart to require a short drive), its aircraft collection is surprisingly diverse and rich, and includes one of the only two SR-71B "Blackbird" trainer aircraft ever built (the sole surviving B) and the only remaining Curtiss XP-55 Ascender (on long-term loan from the Smithsonian, but restored in-house by Air Zoo staff). Also nearby is the Gilmore Car Museum (an automotive history collection rivalling that of even the Motor City itself).
*** East of Kalamazoo but still in the Lower Peninsula's southwestern quadrant is Battle Creek, which is somewhat famous for being the breakfast cereal capital of the world. Home of two of the nation's big three cereal brands: Kellogg's and Post (well, it's the ''birthplace'' of Post, only Kellogg's still has its world headquarters in Battle Creek) hence the town's nickname of Cereal City.

** Traverse City--roughly at the "pinky" of the "mitten" is noted for its fruit production (the lake effect moderating its climate), particularly cherries and grapes (so, yes, you snobs and drunkards, wine). Even crops considered to be warm-weather (like peaches) can thrive in the region. It does still get cold of course, but actually helps with some of the fruit; this region produces some really good ice wine (an originally German style of dessert wine that requires the grapes to freeze solid on the vine; this concentrates the sugars). Also home to a film festival started by Creator/MichaelMoore; locals have mixed feelings about this.

*** Note: Yes, the city is spelled "Mackinaw" and the bridge and island are spelled "Mackinac." Blame the French. For reference, both are pronounced "Mackinaw."

* The Upper Peninsula: Even more sparsely-populated and wilderness-covered than Northern Lower Michigan (only 3% of Michiganders live here), with an economy broadly similar to that region. Its inhabitants ("Yoopers") are considered to be a breed of their own, with a [[UsefulNotes/AmericanAccents distinctive dialect]] that sounds more [[Film/{{Fargo}} Minnesota]] than Michigan, thanks to heavy Nordic (particularly Finnish) immigration. It gets thicker as you approach the border with Wisconsin. They call other Michiganders "trolls" because they live "under da bridge" (the Mackinac Bridge, which carries I-75 from St. Ignace in the UP to Mackinaw City in the LP). Famous for pasties--the Cornish kind, little folded meat pies. Yoopers have on occasion threatened to secede from Michigan and either join Wisconsin or form their own state, named Superior (named after Lake Superior, which sits directly above it); these proposals have gotten nowhere but have brought attention to the UP's grievances. The mining industry historically dominated the area due to its rich copper and iron ore veins, but mining in the area hasn't been economically viable in several decades. To this day though, the western Upper Peninsula is frequently nicknamed "Copper Country," and is the unlikely location of one of the Midwest's best engineering schools, Michigan Technological University, which got its start as a mining school.

* The two largest Universities in the state are the Univserity of Michigan in Ann Arbor and Michigan State University (in East Lansing, which is immediately [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin east of Lansing]]). The two Universities are leading National Research Institutions and they share an intense, in-state rivalry with each other in sports thanks to them both being members of the [[UsefulNotes/PowerFiveConferences Big Ten]]--and everything else.[[note]]Academically, consensus holds that MSU's best programs are better than their equivalents at Michigan, but that Michigan is better on average--if only because Michigan is often the "safety school" for East Coasters who ''just'' missed the UsefulNotes/IvyLeague. MSU, on the other hand--and in particular its best programs--is a highly-desired target school for less well-off kids from Indiana, Illinois, and Wisconsin. Additionally, people in the know note the remarkable number of University of Chicago grads who go on to become MSU profs and and the number of MSU grads who go on to study at [=UChicago=]; they tend think of MSU as a sort of public-university outpost of Chicago. MSU is almost universally agreed, however to have a '''much''' better men's basketball program thanks to their coach Tom Izzo, widely agreed to be one of the best college basketball coaches in the nation, and somewhat infamous for his willingness to make fun of himself[[/note]] How [[FriendlyEnemy friendly]] this rivalry gets depends on who you ask; since many Michiganders have relatives who went to both, and many went to both themselves (it's actually surprisingly common for doctors and lawyers from Michigan to have attended MSU for undergrad and then Michigan for med school/law school) there's often a desire to keep the peace, but others regard the other school as The Enemy (or at U of M, The Second Enemy, The First Enemy being Ohio State), with whom there is no reconciliation. If Michigan State is playing against Ohio State, U of M will be angry no matter the result. U of M feels they're [[TheOnlyOneAllowedToDefeatYou the only school allowed to defeat Michigan State]], but they also don't want MSU to rob them of the opportunity to conquer the Buckeyes. That said, if Michigan's luck has been lousy enough to rule out a Wolverines-Buckeyes game, then most U of M fans will (grudgingly) root for the Michigan State Spartans. The rivalry against Ohio State stems all the way back to Michigan's birth as a state, during which the then-Michigan Territory declared war on Ohio over who the city of [[UsefulNotes/ToledoOhio Toledo]] belonged to. This border dispute awarded the Toledo Strip to Ohio and gave Michigan the Upper Peninsula as a ConsolationPrize. Some Michiganders remain bitter to this day about the whole debacle even though Wisconsin arguably was the state hurt the most by the "Toledo War" and in the long run Michigan actually made out quite well with the Upper Peninsula's abundant natural resources.[[note]]Not that Ohio has forgotten the grudge; every true Ohioan knows a certain ditty, to the tune of "The Old Gray Mare," that goes, ''We don't give a damn for the whole state of Michigan... 'cause we're from O-hi-o.'' Michiganders don't bother coming up with any cute songs, but instead typically respond with the far more succinct "Fuck Ohio."[[/note]]

* The wilderness and going "Up North." The northern part of the state, as mentioned, has a lot of wilderness and other protected areas--most of it forested. Michigan has the nation's largest state-forest system, with 3.9 million acres under state protection; the US Forest Service also owns about 2.8 million acres. Combined with the state park system and national parks and lakeshores in the state, about one-fifth of the land in Michigan is protected--and none of this counts privately-held land that people simply aren't developing (which amounts to at least 2 million acres). Naturally, all this natural beauty leads to all kinds of nature-related tourism. Michiganders from the heavily-populated south--particularly Southeast Michigan--commonly go "Up North" to camp, fish, swim, and hunt in the large wilderness and semi-wilderness. Many own cabins or cottages, providing a base of operations for all this outdoorsy fun. Of course, the people who live up north also know about all this and fish and hunt more than the tourists--the stereotype of the Yoopers is that all they do is hunt. Virtually everyone in the state knows when firearm hunting season starts for deer (November 15, in case you're wondering).

* West Michigan: Often called the West Coast, since it lies on the shore of Lake Michigan. Centered on Grand Rapids, the state's second-largest city, which was historically a major base for the furniture industry (so much so that even today it's sometimes called Furniture City). Today, the most famous company in the city is "seriously, it's [[InsistentTerminology multi-level marketing]], we swear we're not a PyramidScheme" [[WeCare consumer goods company]] [[NamesToRunAwayFromReallyFast Amway]], although office-furniture giant Steelcase and the legendary Herman Miller company (of Aeron Chair fame) is based in the metro area, and its high-tech medical industry has been steadily growing; thankfully, this diverse economy has mostly spared the city from the woes of the state's other major cities. Also home to large numbers of stern Dutch Calvinists (to the point that there's a town of Holland just west of Grand Rapids with an annual tulip festival, wooden shoes, and a Dutch Reformed seminary/college),[[note]]And now you know why there's FreestateAmsterdam: the stern Christian Dutch (the ones who didn't go to UsefulNotes/SouthAfrica *''ahem''*to invent [[UsefulNotes/TheApartheidEra apartheid]]*''ahem''*) went off to Michigan. And we're not joking--it's seriously true. (Abraham Kuyper, a stern Reformed minister and neo-Calvinist theologian from a town near Delft, visited West Michigan in the 1890s and rather approved of what he saw, even considering moving there himself; he decided not to and later became Prime Minister of the Netherlands, in which role he was instrumental in establishing Dutch UsefulNotes/{{Pillarisation}}.)[[/note]] with a predictable effect on the region's politics: although the city of Grand Rapids itself is quite liberal (having been abandoned by the Dutch and taken over by Catholic Italians, Poles, and Latinos), the region as a whole was considered a very safe seat for the Republicans; it was securely UsefulNotes/GeraldFord's seat for years (who was once House Minority Leader before being President), and Libertarian/Tea Party darling Justin Amash represented Greater Grand Rapids for years [[BerserkButton including downtown Grand Rapids itself]]; asking "How can that be?" will earn you a long and '''loud''' lecture on what "Gerrymandering" is. However, Democratic improvement in the suburban areas have put the seat in play for Democrats, but it was still held by a Republican in the moderate Peter Meijer (heir to the popular supermarket chain[[note]]which has been running supercenters decades before UsefulNotes/{{Walmart}} and Kmart entered that business, and now has supercenters stretching from the Upper Peninsula all the way as far south as Kentucky, and from the Youngstown, Ohio area west to Illinois and Wisconsin[[/note]]) until the 2022 election, in which Democrat Hilary Scholten won the seat.

*** University of Michigan: Even with several academic/sex scandals in recent years, U of M is still one of the most highly-regarded public universities out there. Like other Big Ten schools, they have made significant contributions to science and research, and receives ''tons'' of grants from government agencies. Some of their most notable graduates alone include Creator/JamesEarlJones, Music/{{Madonna}} (dropped out), and UsefulNotes/TomBrady. Of course, what most of America ''really'' knows them for is the game against [[InsistentTerminology The]] Ohio State Buckeyes. After all, who wouldn't want to watch two highly-prestigious public institutions with two of the most prolific football programs ever duke it out in the final Saturday of November? In Michigan's case, this is the same football team with the most wins and the largest stadium in America, one that also pioneered the two-platoon scheme that is virtually omnipresent in football, so they have the distinction of being one of the few schools who put a similar focus on their athletics as well as their academics.