people from islands

Another topic I wanted to cover is that people who grow up on islands or peninsulas are different from those of us who grow up in a less-enclosed land. My son (who lived for a semester in England) and I were talking about this one day. We spoke about the Japanese, the English, Hawaiians, and Michiganders. Their sense of space and of how much space they are meant to occupy seems different. Their sense of their own importance seems exaggerated. Both of us have noticed not only a physical syndrome--people who simply stop in front of others, without paying attention to the disruption of foot traffic behind them--but an emotional, psychological one, as well.

I call it the Bell Jar effect. It was especially pronounced with the native Hawaiians I encountered. They seemed to be in attack mode, as if they expected others to invade them at any moment. I guess there is historical precedence for all these people from island states or nations to feel potentially invaded, since they so often actually have been invaded. But what's the excuse for Michigan people to have the Bell Jar effect? When I look at the geography and think of the climate, I realize that Michigan might as well be an island. Only a few main highways extend up through Michigan. To enter Michigan generally means that you are deliberately going somewhere in Michigan. You don't cut through Michigan on your way to somewhere else. So the normal influx of ideas that occurs with "cross-pollination" just doesn't happen here. People in Michigan don't travel to other places as often as others seem to. They don't want to leave Michigan. When they do leave Michigan, they're always happy to return and to tell others how much better it is in Michigan. They seem especially proud of their "Michigan values." (One day I'm going to figure out just how those values are superior to other areas' values.)I've encountered incredible prejudice here for those of us from the Deep South. Most Michiganders feel that the Deep South is rather like remote areas of the Amazon Basin, where the locals are likely to eat your brains.

Stephen talked about how the Japanese are always taking photographs of themselves. They don't take a picture of the scenery. They take pictures of themselves blocking the scenery. I watched them take pictures of themselves standing in front of the signs to their hotels, as if somehow they had not been in a place unless they could prove via photographs that they had been there. And they will stop in the middle of a stream of walkers to block the sidewalks, forcing others to step into the streets or onto the lawns to get around, and they think nothing of it. I can't help wondering how traffic flows in Japan. But maybe they don't ever take photographs of themselves in Japan.

No doubt anyone reading this is thinking I'm really a judgmental person. I am. But I enter these words not as passing judgment as much as making observations. Like everyone else, I am completely aware that generalizations become stereotypes all too rapidly. Maybe having lived in Michigan now since 2001 means that I am becoming more like Michiganders: a peninsula dweller, a Bell Jar inhabitant. Nah.