It doesn’t surprise me that so many rich and famous people choose to live in Michigan. These days, there’s no reason they shouldn’t. Thanks to e-mail, fax machines, airlines, and cell phones, most people who are not tied to a machine are increasingly finding it easier to do whatever they do from wherever they want to do it.
Besides, this is one of the most fascinating states of the union. We have marvelous scenery, changing seasons, more territory than any state east of the Mississippi, and more shoreline than any state other than Alaska. We’ve got cars, cherries, and usually some fascinating oddball making news, like Jimmy Hoffa or Jack Kevorkian.
Okay, so the roads could stand a little improvement.
Still, it’s a great place. But Michigan is not for everybody. One person who ought to have moved away was the French voyageur Etienne Brule‘, who was, as far as we can tell, the first European ever to set canoe and foot in what is now Michigan.
He loved the place, and he loved the Native Americans who lived here. Brule stayed with them for years. But they had mixed emotions about him. Actually, they seem to have gotten bored with him, and in 1632, according to Michigan historian Bruce Catton, “they clubbed him to death and then they ate him.”
He wasn’t the last person to have a rough time in this state. Ask Ossian Sweet or Vincent Chin. But many others have had a lifelong love affair with this state. I myself was born here, but spent some years living elsewhere. I don’t think you can ever understand the place you grew up in unless you go somewhere else for awhile.
I am glad I ended up back here. Michigan is now in the process of reinventing itself, and I hope to see how it all turns out. And in any event, the threat of cannibalism has greatly receded.
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