THE MIDWESTERN BILL OF RIGHTS...

NONE

Posted By: Nancee(McMurtrey)Seifert (email)
Date: 1/4/2002 at 15:37:42

From: Calling the Midwest Home

by Carolyn Lieberg

'THE MIDWESTERN BILL OF
RIGHTS'

We, the people of the Midwest, in order to
form a more perfect bond
among ourselves as well as to insist on a
full place of cultural
citizenship among our countrymen and
countrywomen, assert our right to
exercise our habits, to flaunt our tastes, to
indulge in sufficient
guilt to get the job done, to gloat over our
rising sense of communal
self-esteem, to be generally bold in public,
and to demand the respect
of the rest of the country for ourselves and
our children, do present
this Bill of Rights to the Nation of the
United States and to the World.
As Midwesterners, we reserve the right to:

l. Perform actual work when wearing Carhartt
coats or Oshkosh bibs.

2. Initiate conversations with strangers in
elevators, at gas

stations, or wherever the urge strikes
us.

3. Eat dinner at twelve noon.

4. Make decisions using only common sense,
understanding that
horoscopes are there for fun, and to offer a
pulse on the mood

of the rest of the country.

5. Tune into the weather channel twenty-four
hours a day.

6. Consume a meal that is entirely composed
of pale food, including

but not restricted to: mashed potatoes,
apple sauce, boiled fish,

rice, pork chops, gravy, scrambled eggs,
white bread, and lemon

Jell-O or vanilla ice cream for dessert.

7. Mow our own lawns and clean our own
houses, even if we can afford

to hire someone else to do it.

8. Prepare molded salads with any food item
that will fit on either a

spoon or fork.

9. Conduct a meaningful conversation using
only shrugs and grunts.

l0. Own and drive a car for the purpose of
transportation rather than

status.

ll. Pump gas before we pay for it.

l2. Keep personal accounts at our local
stores even though we pay

with cash.

l3. Recognize haute cuisine but nevertheless
often prefer low cuisine.

l4. Think about cattle when we hear the work
"stock" rather than Wall

Street.

l5. Exercise patience, honesty, and charity
in life's dealings,
including the most snarled traffic jam,
because we know the bottom

line is: "Do unto others, as you would
have others do unto you."

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'LIVING MIDWESTERN'

Living Midwestern. What does it mean? The
weird facts, opinions,
quirks, and tales here accumulate to suggest
a particular way of living
by people of the Midwest--but there's more.
These stories and stories
like them resonate in Midwesterners because
they fit within what might
be called the Midwest ethic--the glue that
holds the ideas and ideals of
the Midwest together. This ethic is not a
tidy list of rules that
Midwesterners recite each morning but rather
it rests in a core deep
within us, bubbling up frequently. It is
part of what our ancestors
brought to this territory, and it has become
part of our nature; it
affects virtually everything about the way we
live. The various ways in
which the Midwest ethic expresses itself
remains attached to our
personalities no matter where we go. For the
most part, we bear the
attachments proudly, because these laws of
life--which might translate
into the Midwestern 'shoulds,' even if we
don't usually think of them in
that way--work for us.

For instance, the fact that we care for each
other--are polite and
helpful--is useful, besides being satisfying.
The fact that most of the
Midwest is a relatively safe place is
comforting and pleasant. And the
fact that we resist taking advantage of each
other (sleepless nights,
don't you know) is also good; when you can
trust the butcher, the baker,
and the mortgage-maker, it frees your mind
for worthwhile projects, like
planning dinner or reviewing the time-tables.
The rest of the world may
call us a little naive to carry such trust,
but when everybody's naive,
it works really well. (This could be why
Midwesterners who've moved to
one coast or the other have a tendency to
hang out with other
Midwesterners. We know who you are.)

Somewhere, of course, buried under all the
admonitions about what we as
Midwesterners should or shouldn't do lies the
original "law of life,"
the Golden Rule. For some reason, the maxim
of doing unto others as you
would have them do unto you was a credo that
sank deep in the Midwest,
and it continues to have a strong influence
in daily life as well as in
emergencies.

In l993 the Orlando Sentinel published a
column by CNN correspondent
Charles Jaco, in which Jaco described the
differences between people's
actions during and after the Midwest's floods
of l993 and the
Southeast's Hurricane Andrew of l990. His
observations were that
neighborly help, vigilance, and a willingness
to share available
resources marked the flood disaster while the
chaos, fear, and damage of
the hurricane calamity was intensified by
looters, hoarding, and
price-gouging for essentials.

Jaco ascribed these different responses to
the rootedness of
Midwesterners versus the transience of the
Southerners. There is "an
assumption that folks will help one another
sandbag, and will not allow
one another to be ripped off, because that's
just the way people should
behave." No one who lived in the Midwest
during those floods would
disagree.

Living midwestern, of course, "happens" all
over the country. By roots
or by association, people find themselves
dressing more casually. They
spend more time walking around their
neighborhoods and talking with
strangers at restaurants or parks. They
begin looking everybody square
in the face. These are some of the symptoms.

So some of you readers, I'm sure, are feeling
that you may have a bit of
Midwest in you, even if you've never ventured
farther east than
Sacramento or farther west than Albany.
Well, it's OK. In fact, it's
not only OK, we understand you and we welcome
you any time you want to
stop by. Five minutes' notice, and the
coffee pot's on.

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Copied December 3, 200l