The New York Times breaks it down for you: Cook County, “collar counties,” and “downstate.”
[It’s primary day in Illinois.]
Tuesday, March 20, 2012
Illinois political geography
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Michael Leddy“Orange Crate Art” is a song by Van Dyke Parks and the title of a 1995 album by Van Dyke Parks and Brian Wilson. “Orange Crate Art” is for me one of the great American songs: “Orange crate art was a place to start.”
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Nancy, October 19, 1950.
“Who are we as a country?”
Michael Leddy
Don’t look for premiums or
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the thoughts blended in
ORANGE CRATE ART pro-
hibits the use of them.
Comments are welcome, appended to posts or by e-mail. I moderate comments to keep out spam, so please be patient.
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Νέος ἐφ’ ἡμέρῃ ἥλιος. [The sun is new every day.]
Heraclitus
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Every day is a new deal.
Harvey Pekar, “Alice Quinn”
*
Nos plus grandes craintes, comme nos plus grandes espérances, ne sont pas au-dessus de nos forces, et nous pouvons finir par dominer les unes et réaliser les autres. [Our worst fears, like our greatest hopes, are not outside our powers, and we can come in the end to triumph over the former and to achieve the latter.]
Marcel Proust, Finding Time Again
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Surely, in the light of history, it is more intelligent to hope rather than to fear, to try rather than not to try.
Eleanor Roosevelt, You Learn by Living
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I don’t really deeply feel that anyone needs an airtight reason for quoting from the works of writers he loves, but it’s always nice, I’ll grant you, if he has one.
J.D. Salinger, Seymour: An Introduction
*
I’m not afraid to get it right
I turn around and I give it
one more try
Sufjan Stevens, “Jacksonville”
*
L’attention est la forme la plus rare et la plus pure de la générosité. [Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity.]
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Nancy, October 19, 1950.
comments: 7
Manhattan, outer boroughs, Long Island and Westchester, Upstate. There, isn't that a moronic way to describe New York? You'd think "America's newspaper of record" would have a more subtle take on "downstate Illinois". They could have started with the area code boundaries, which are are coterminous with real geoographic divisions. Unglaciated 618 is a very different place from 217 and 309 (with their deeper topsoil and more prosperous agriculture).
I've always been amused by Rockford being considered "downstate", though it's further north than Chicago. And I love that Cairo is six hours from Chicago but only three hours from Mississippi - I never knew that before.
The article (which seems to reflect the thinking of an Illinoisan) does make further distinctions, but yes, the three labels are an oversimplification.
Pete, I think a fair stretch of downstate Illinois is only three hours from Mississippi, figuratively speaking at least.
This article made me say a lot of bad words. According to it, I live in "southern" Illinois and am part of a highly evangelical Christian area. I've lived here for 30 years and would never have said that about my part of the state. Strange. Also, I find it weird that the article suggests the people here did not vote for Romney because of their religious views -- in actuality, many people here did not vote for Romney because they think he's a money grubbing scoundrel. To them, Santorum seems "nicer."
It's true that religion might have had a small part in their decision making process, but most people here vote for candidates based on whether or not they like the person as a person, not for the issues the person stands for or against. This decision making process ties directly into many folks' beliefs that all politicians are snakes and it doesn't matter who you vote for, they will find a way to screw you over.
Why do many people here think that? Well, have you met our governors?
(Sure, that may be a bit of an oversimplification of the people here, but based on my experiences living here, voting for the person over "issues" is pretty much how things go down, with the exception of the "abortion issue" of course.)
I'm also confused by the "downstate" map. How is anything that is not Chicago "downstate?"
Also, why is Illinois split up based on Chicago's location?
Isn't what's labeled as "downstate" pretty much all of Illinois?
That's kind of messed up.
Certainly there are many people in “downstate” Illinois who don’t fit the Times description (you and I among them, right?). I’m reminded of going door to door for Barack Obama in Terre Haute and being surprised, again and again, at the variety of people I encountered and the (generally) positive reception they gave me. But the “downstate”/Chicago divide seems to me real.
Does the divide matter? It will, but not the way folks think. CBS reports the state debt, and divides it into our shares: "The report shows the state’s debt is so massive that it’s the equivalent of $78,000 per household." http://chicago.cbslocal.com/2011/10/11/kirk-releases-report-on-illinois-debt-crisis/
I think the divide matters for people who live here. “Downstate” tends to get little respect in many matters of policy (say, the selection of HMO options for state employees).
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