National Enormity, Actually Not About Fat People

I didn't post yesterday because I was traveling (I don't have an excuse for Monday other than bad memory).

I drove from Minnesota to Florida yesterday, a trip that took about 21 hours. Afterward I determined that I had traveled to or through 20 states in my life. A decent number for a person who has only lived in three.

It was about 70 degrees in Florida today, and I spent much of a day in early March laying on the beach, reading my Kindle next to a pool. For a kid who grew up used to seven foot piles of snow on his front lawn, this is kind of like a Big Deal. Capital letters intentional.

See what that got me thinking about after the jump.


Often I'm struck by the enormity of the country that I live in. The United States is, if you know your geography, the third largest country in the world, behind Russia and Canada. But it's significantly more densely populated than either of those countries.

When I travel to Florida, I always do so by car. In this way, I travel through a variety of cultures before I arrive. The Midwest is the "all business" area of the country, states like Indiana and Missouri, Kentucky and Tennessee make up the early stages of the south in terms of atmosphere, but still have the workmanship often associated with Midwestern culture. Alabama and Mississippi, as well as the outlying Floridian towns, are the South with a capital letter, from polite Southern gentleman and southern bells, to the stereotyped Simpsons character Cletus, the Slack-Jawed Yokel.

It takes 21 hours, as I said before, to get to Florida from Minnesota. And despite the variety of cultures encountered, we speak the same language, we participate in the same cultural zeitgeist, we work under the same government. This is reassuring in a way, as it shows me that despite all of the 24-hour news networks saying otherwise, we're all fundamentally the same people: we want the best for ourselves, our friends and family, and our country.

If you drive that same 21 hours in Western Europe, not only do you end up in a country that speaks a completely different language, you end up in a country with entirely different values, a different government, different goals and different belief systems.

I've said before, that based on sheer square footage, it's a goddamn miracle that we all speak English, have similar feelings about our country, are engaged in the same traditions. And, like I said, it makes me think of us as less apart. Despite our differences in dialect, in terminology, in politic beliefs, in regional pride, there is something undeniable that ties us together.

And that gives me hope.