In a Michigan football hype video that is shown in the beginning of every home game, the late James Earl Jones (the voice of Darth Vader and a Michigan alumnus) narrates some of the past history of what makes the University of Michigan the greatest university in the world (he verbatim says this!). Over blury black and white footage of Michigan playing football in those leather helmets, Jones declares that the University stands for "Midwestern Values".
I have often thought about what he is referring to here. Unlike other terms such as being a "Michigan Man" for instance, there is considerably more ambiguity and not much ink expounded on what exactly might constitute values espoused by the good people that abide in the states in the "midwestern" part of the country (itself a misnomer). I have lived a considerable amount of my adult life in the midwest, and did all of my higher education in the same. I got my B.A. in Grand Rapids, MI, at Calvin College, and eventually after a unintended gap year, eventually got my Masters in Architecture degree from the Greatest University in the World (see paragraph 1).
Having lived in Albany NY for sixteen years as well as the prior nine years in Brooklyn, NY, I perhaps have some distance and perspective in what Jones (and the writers of the hype video copy) may have been hinting at in this video.
Before I delve into this topic further, I will digress and mention this electronic "snitching" system in the City of Albany that I have recently discovered and subscribe to. It is not unique to Albany, and it is hosted by an app/website called "Clickfix". Citizens armed with this app or perhaps just a smart phone can upload photos of what they perceive to be dangerous or not desired conditions around the City and report it to the City for them to fix or otherwise address. There are daily numerous citizen reports of what they consider to be inadquate city street cleaning, for instance. What is particularly entertaining for me as an architect are the daily and numerous reports of people reporting "code violations" upon encountering noteworthy conditions amount buildings, such as stair cases, windows, HVAC systems, etc.
One particularly memorable Clickfix in recent weeks was an exasperated citizen who uploaded a photo of a mountain of trash left behind at a city park following what appears to have been a gender reveal party. There were of course balloons, tableclothes and other evidence of said gathering, as well as a plethora of soda/alcoholic beverages, cups, etc. What was noteworthy about this observation of trash and the subsequent request to the City of Albany to send tax payer workers to remove all this trash was that this was the marking of a baby coming soon to the presumably reside in Albany. I offered up a public comment that this child would surely grow up learning the values from his/her parents that it was in fact perfectly normal and fine to leave behind trash upon concluding your business at a public venue, and other people owed you the courtesy of the clean up. Or perhaps they didn't even care whether anyone picked up the trash at all; they were done with their party and had Elvis had left the building. This additional human being soon to be added to the family will also surely do their part to spend their lives not only leaving behind trash everywhere they go, but as a natural extension, behave in ways that put their own (and only their own) interests in the forefront. This could include behavior such as blocking busy intersections, crossing busy pedestrian intersections against the red light, but also perhaps could include more egregious examples of blantantly selfish behavior that rises past the annoying to the public and in to the terrirtory of genuinely harmful.
When we landed in Madison, WI fairly late in the day, we were surprised by the level of activity in the airport. The airport was not much bigger in feel than Albany, which feels like a deserted mall afterhours: you see tired and quiet travelers slowly making their way towards ground transportation in silence, and you see airport workers riding along waxing the shiny terrazo floors, etc. But instead, that night in Wisconsin, we saw multiple tables set up everywhere with uniformed people buzzing about, we saw boy scouts with flags, and a platoon of perhaps middle school age cheerleaders with pom poms excitedly running about. We later learned as we were waiting to check out our rental car that the festivities were in anticipation of a
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