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'''Michigan''' is a northern American state located in the Great Lakes Region of the United States. It is bordered to the south by the states of Indiana and Ohio, and by Wisconsin to the west. The state borders 4 of the 5 Great Lakes (Michigan, Superior, Huron, Erie) and for this reason is known as the Great Lake State. Michigan is the only state to lie entirely on a peninsula, or (as it happens) two: the sparsely-populated Upper Peninsula (UP) in the north and the more densely-populated Lower Peninsula (LP) in the south. The LP famously looks like a mitten; when you ask Michiganders where they're from, very often they'll point to a spot on the palm of their right hand (the fingers are populated, but not as heavily), using the hand as a rough map of the state.
The state can be broadly divided into regions, as follows:
* Southeast Michigan: Centered on [[Motor City|Detroit]]
** Southeast Michigan also has the dubious honor of being the most racially-segregated metropolitan area in the United States. After the race riots of the late 1960s, wealthier white Detroiters fled to the suburbs, leaving Detroit predominantly poor and black. This has major effects on the region's dynamics; [[Serious Business|this is understandably a hot topic]], so [[Rule of Cautious Editing Judgment|we won't get into it here]].
** Worthy of note are Southeast Michigan's major institutions of higher education other than [[University of Michigan|the University of Michigan]]:
*** Wayne State University: A public school in Detroit itself, it has a reasonably decent medical school and law school, and is in a fairly safe part of the city. Nevertheless gets tarred with the "It's in Detroit, it must be dangerous" brush.
*** University of Detroit-Mercy: A private Catholic college, noted for its surprising prowess at basketball. (Still, it hasn't gotten past the second round of March Madness. Curses.
*** Oakland University: Situated in the comfortable suburb of Rochester. Formerly Michigan State University at Rochester, it won its
*** Eastern Michigan University: Located in Ann Arbor's poorer, sadder twin Ypsilanti. Originally founded as a teachers' college, it currently acts as the University of Michigan's poorer, sadder twin (noticing a theme here?). It nevertheless still has an excellent College of Education, although it was surpassed by Michigan State sometime in the 1950s or '60s.
* Mid-Michigan: Centered on the state capital, Lansing. Moderately populated, its economy is dependent on agriculture, some industry, government (around Lansing), and education (around Lansing and Mt. Pleasant). The Lansing area plays host to one major university (Michigan State University, in East Lansing), one significant second-tier law school (Cooley, in Downtown Lansing) a vocational college (Davenport University, again in downtown), besides the obligatory community college. Mount Pleasant is home to Central Michigan University, which is respectable enough for a "directional" college. Jackson, in the south-central part of the state, is roughly the midway point between between Ann Arbor and Lansing (traveling northwest) and between Ann Arbor and Kalamazoo (traveling roughly due west); it is notable in Michigan for playing host to Michigan's most important maximum-security prison and being the birthplace of the [[American Political System|Republican Party]].<ref>This last is somewhat ironic, as Jackson is named after [[Andrew Jackson]], the founder of the Democratic Party in its current institutional form.</ref>
* The Thumb: A flat region corresponding to the "thumb" of the "mitten". Mostly agricultural.
* West Michigan: Often called the West Coast, since it lies on the shore of Lake Michigan. Centered on Grand Rapids, the state's second-largest city, which was historically a major base for the furniture industry; today, the most famous company in the city is "[[Viral Marketing|multi-level marketing]]" [[We Care|consumer goods company]] [[Names to Run Away From Really Fast|Amway]]. Also home to large numbers of stern Dutch Calvinists (to the point that there's a town of Holland just west of Grand Rapids with an annual tulip festival, wooden shoes, and a Dutch Reformed seminary/college), with a predictable effect on the region's politics: although the city of Grand Rapids itself is quite liberal (having been abandoned by the Dutch and taken over by Catholic Italians, Poles, and Latinos), the region as a whole is considered a very safe seat for the Republicans.<ref>And now you know why there's [[Freestate Amsterdam]]: the stern Christians went off to Michigan.</ref>
** The more rural areas are noted for their fruit production, including viticulture (i.e. wine); Lake Michigan increases rainfall and moderates the climate, making the whole coast heaven for fruit farmers. Also heavily dependent on tourism: there are lots of nice beaches on the lake shoreline, which attract people from elsewhere in the state in the summertime.
** Southwest
*** Kalamazoo plays host to two educational
* Northern Michigan: Or should we say Northern Lower Michigan. Sparsely populated; while there's a fair amount of agriculture in the area, there's also a lot of wilderness. There's a line running roughly from
** Traverse
* The Upper Peninsula: Even more sparsely-populated and wilderness-covered than Northern Lower Michigan, with an economy broadly similar to that region. Its inhabitants ("Yoopers") are considered to be a breed of their own, with a [[American Accents|distinctive dialect]] that sounds more [[Fargo|Minnesota]] than Michigan, thanks to heavy Scandinavian (particularly Finnish) immigration. It gets thicker as you approach the border with Wisconsin. Call other Michiganders "trolls" because they live "under da bridge" (the Mackinac Bridge, which carries I-75 from St. Ignace in the UP to Mackinaw City in the LP). Yoopers have on occasion threatened to secede from Michigan and either join Wisconsin or form their own state of Superior; these proposals have gotten nowhere, but have brought attention to the UP's grievances.
Other facts about Michigan:
* The two largest Universities in the state are the [[University of Michigan]] in Ann Arbor and Michigan State University (in East Lansing, which is immediately [[Exactly What It Says on the Tin|east of Lansing]]). The two Universities are leading National Research Institutions and they share an intense, in-state rivalry with each other in sports...and everything else.<ref>Academically, consensus holds that MSU's best programs are better than their equivalents at Michigan, but that Michigan is better on
* The state has four major professional sports teams, all centered in Detroit. They include the [[Every Year They Fizzle Out|Detroit Tigers]] ([[
* See all works on the page for [[Motor City]] for works set in Detroit and Metro Detroit.
* ''
* ''[[Anatomy of a Murder]]''
* Most of the ''[[American Pie]]'' movies.
* The ballad ''Wreck of the Edmond Fitzgerald'' is about the wreck of a frighter on Lake Superior. Not so much in Michigan as near it.
* [[The Stooges]]: Formed in Ann Arbor. Iggy Pop was born in West Michigan.
*
* [[
* [[Gerald Ford]], of course.
* [[Marvin Gaye]] was raised in [[Washington DC|the District]], but moved with his family to join Motown.
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* [[James Earl Jones]] was raised in Jackson, after moving away from his family in Mississippi at age five. He's still the narrator for the "Please come here" video for the University of Michigan (from which he graduated in 1955).
* [[Law and Order|S. Epatha Merkerson]], again from Detroit.
* [[
* [[The X-Files|Gillian Anderson]], from Grand Rapids
* [[The White Stripes]], also from Detroit.
*
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