Midwest

The Midwest Notre Dame is not an Ivy League university and, in what I assume is some sort of intentional point, its buildings tend to be ivy-free. Perhaps it is the absence of ivy, perhaps I am just flat after a long day’s drive across Ohio and Indiana, perhaps it’s just winter, but the campus seems more sterile than I had expected. It’s Good Friday, and my friend Margot is studying classical architecture here. She’s showing me around the grounds. I don’t really know what I’d hoped to see. Amy Coney Barrett? Multiracial friendship groups, skipping across the green? As soon as I see the stadium, though, I am transfixed. Margot is visibly disappointed when I say that I adore the stadium above all the other buildings.

Regionalism and the idea of America’s fracture are having a moment. Recent book releases include many titles focusing on American divisions, including Carrie Gibson’s history of the southwestern El Norte region and Kristin Hoganson’s study of the local, insulated, exceptional, isolationist and provincial ‘Heartland’, and Tony Horwitz’s journey deep into the South to understand how its Antebellum roots impact American divisions today.Perhaps the most widely accepted and popular idea of regional differences comes from Colin Woodard. He carved the country into 11 regional 'nations’, each with unique histories and cultures that he believes have shaped their ideologies and politics.

The Midwest loves Christmas. Loves it with all the ingenuity in its mind and vigor in its limbs. Loves it with all the passion in its soul. All you need is a staple gun, a thousand feet of twinkly lights and, hey presto: a house roof bright enough to illuminate the season. Or guide a spacecraft down from Mars. Only Halloween can rival Christmas in the small cities, and rival is too strong a word. Better to say that Halloween is the only other holiday for which Midwesterners are willing to bring out their staple guns and inflatable lawn ornaments. But the effort is almost half-hearted, compared to Christmas.

Chris Francis stopped by my table down at the Sundog coffee shop to chat for about 20 minutes last Friday, and he didn’t ask for my vote. Now, in the give and take of daily conversation — the ebb and flow of coffee-shop chatter in a small Midwestern town — lots of people don’t canvass for votes. But Chris is a Democratic candidate for one of the District 8 seats in the state legislature here in South Dakota, and he’s going to need all the support he can get when election day comes in November. The reason Chris didn’t ask may be that he assumed I already planned to vote against him, although I’ve only met the man once or twice when I stopped by the Brickhouse, the local arts centre he runs.