Yooper/Art Student Trashes The D in Seattle Paper

[iheartthed]

Some of you folks ought to spend a week in the UP or back out in the boonies. Afterwards consider what someone from those areas would think after spending a semester or two in Motown. Sometimes residents of the big city have lost touch with some things. I wonder how they would adjust to living in a county with no traffic light in 576 square miles, few if any houses for several square miles. Just think about it.

Are we supposed to be amused by her naiveté? I grew up in Detroit and I've also spent quite a bit of time in rural areas of Michigan. I'm not creative enough to sensationalize the time I spent in rural Michigan as she has done with her years[[?) in Detroit.

Matter of fact, both my time spent living in Detroit and the time I spent visiting rural Michigan were largely uneventful. So much so that my bullshit meter goes off when someone who spent a fraction of the time living in Detroit that I have claims to have so many "wild and crazy" experiences while living in dirty, scary Detroit.

I do realize that my experience is anecdotal, but I'm pretty sure that I know far more people in Detroit than she does. And of the people I know, most of their experiences are probably far closer to mine than hers.

[SaintMe]

I grew up in detroit and spent many summers on farms in northern mi.... they arent angels either, even 15 years or more ago. Id say she is a drama queen and is embellishing every little thing to have something to talk about in her otherwise dull, counrty life. Im sure in some way she believes it was so aweful, but I think her narrowminded perspective just fed her own panic. I stopped reading at the "potatoes out the window" part, that to me shows she probably was looking for conflict and sh*t to complain about. ...... that being said, I didnt find ther story at all amusing. Just a bunch of random happenings that I dont even believe. Glad she drove her bumperless horizon to seatle..... with any luck she will mildew over................

I dunno, it's just a random outsider's honest account of living in an imperfect, quirky city - a quirkiness, I might add, that is often celebrated on this site. I don't think she found it so awful as she did bizarre. After all, she did say she misses it. The potato incident - big deal - the actions of a bored college student. Also I don't know how you can embellish having a gun waved in your face. It either happened or it didn't. The fact that she can look upon her collective experiences with a any amount of fondness would sound ridiculous to some, except to Detroiters, who just . . . well they understand. They've been there. And they're still there.

Plus who hasn't wanted to chuck a f*cking potato at an ICP fan before?

[EastsideAl]

I'm still waiting for the story of the black Detroiter, and how warmly he/she was treated during their 5 years in the UP back country.

[ejames01]

I don't mind people bashing Detroit, but a lot of what she wrote seems to be made up.

[Hermod]

I'm still waiting for the story of the black Detroiter, and how warmly he/she was treated during their 5 years in the UP back country.

Keweenaw County is probably about as Yooper as you get [[the little finger pointing up into Lake Superior). 2.1% of the population was black as of 2008 estimates. I would imagine they get treated well enough by the 96.7% that are white. If they were being ill-treated or were victims of white criminals in the county, I suppose they would leave. There are not a lot of red necks or crackers in the UP.

[n7hn]

Ive know two people that seem to react like her to things. I think its hypersensitivity and exageration and alot of hype. Normally things that make a good storyteller and stories. I didnt find her credible or interesting at all tho. One of my friends used to tell stories like this all the time. One time she stopped for beer to bring to a picnic and couldnt make it as the store was robbed and everyone was held hostage for hours. Needless to say that never happened, could someone have grabbed her purse in the parking lot? sure, but there was no SWAT team standoff as she was saying. If this Kelly O is gonna tell these stories at least take us somewhere. Only story that had some kind of complete thought was her and the homeless guy she befriended after getting robbed. I find it hard to see what she has said as hurtful, as i dont find it credible.

[mikefmich]

Keweenaw County is probably about as Yooper as you get [[the little finger pointing up into Lake Superior). 2.1% of the population was black as of 2008 estimates. I would imagine they get treated well enough by the 96.7% that are white. If they were being ill-treated or were victims of white criminals in the county, I suppose they would leave. There are not a lot of red necks or crackers in the UP.

Huh? You're kidding, right??
Visited, hunted & fished with locals forever.
UP Property owner for decades.
I would consider the exact opposite of what I bolded to be true.

[jt1]

Keweenaw County is probably about as Yooper as you get [[the little finger pointing up into Lake Superior). 2.1% of the population was black as of 2008 estimates. I would imagine they get treated well enough by the 96.7% that are white. If they were being ill-treated or were victims of white criminals in the county, I suppose they would leave. There are not a lot of red necks or crackers in the UP.

So any minority would leave if they were treated poorly? Should we assume then that you can never make a claim that white people aren;t wanted or are treated poorly in the city of Detroit?

[Sstashmoo]

That article is embellished nonsense. Reads like it was written by a 14 year old.

[oladub]

Well written in the style of Tom Wolfe although not very PC. The author did receive criticisms in the responses for not writing enough good things about Detroit and her ongoing innuendoes suggesting that blacks commit a lot of crime in Detroit. However, she notes that she was driving drunk and speeding even after she lost her driver's license. She even threw potatoes at clowns. As one respondent wrote, Detroit was lucky to survive her. On the other hand, she grew up dirt poor herself and wasn't connecting with what poverty has to do with crime and blight. She defended herself in a follow up response.

You can also stick all the white-privilege assumptions somewhere where the sun doesn't shine. I grew up on a small farm, in the middle of nowhere - Lachine Michigan. I shared a tiny bedroom, in a tiny house, with my younger brother until high school. We heated our entire house with wood, and one year, when we were too poor to buy enough food, my parents illegally poached deer so we'd have something to make Hamburger Helper with.

You shouldn't assume, that if someone's white, that they have money, and/or are a member of suburbian middle class.

That truck wasn't full of Mommy-provided nice-new apartment furniture - it was filled with thrift and garage sale crap I'd collected, for my dreams of making it the hell out of Northern Michigan. I bought most of it myself doing in-home nursing jobs. I changed many an adult diaper to buy that beat-up dresser. And the college education? I'll be paying those loans back until I'm old and gray.

Maybe I should have written about my memories of being poor white trash.

That story, however, has already been told.
http://amzn.to/ak5Tmf
-Kelly O's response #72

[Hermod]

Huh? You're kidding, right??
Visited, hunted & fished with locals forever.
UP Property owner for decades.
I would consider the exact opposite of what I bolded to be true.

It depends on your definition of red neck or cracker. If your definition is anyone who is poor and white, then you would be right. If your definition is someone whose family migrated up from the rural south to Michigan, then you would be wrong. The roots of the UP population are largely in northern Europe with a massive disproportion of Finns.

[Hermod]

Here is a quote from a Wiki article on the UP




"Yooper differs from standard English primarily because of the linguistic background of settlers to the area. The majority of people living in the Upper Peninsula are of either Finnish, French Canadian, Flemish, Scandinavian, or German descent. Yooper is so massively influenced by these areas' languages that speakers from other areas may have difficulty understanding it. The Yooper dialect is also influenced by the Finnish language making it similar in character to the so-called "Rayncher speek" of the Mesabi Iron Range in northeast Minnesota."




The UP culture is mainland Europe, not the Scots-Irish culture of the southern poor whites.

[JBMcB]

this chicks an idiot. WSU/Cass area was never that bad.

I went to WSU in the same time frame. You don't remember the serial rapist hanging out on campus at that time? It wasn't super dangerous, but it wasn't exactly safe, either. I have a few dozen stories of physical assaults and armed robberies of people I knew, and countless petty thefts and car break-ins.

[jcole]

Cass had the reputation back in the eighties and nineties as being the hooker and junkie haven of the city. For a girl from Lachine, MI it must have been total culture shock, and she should probably be given some credit for even sticking it out as long as she did. I took a friend from Brown City, MI down there at roughly that time, and scared the living hell out of her just walking around in the New Center area.

[Mipade]

As boring as my reply....

[Downriver Gal]

Hey, I'm white and I rode the Dexter bus on a regular basis in the 80s and survived. Do I get a book deal now?

[RickBeall]

I'll give you book deal Downriver Gal. ;-)

[Gistok]

Keweenaw County is probably about as Yooper as you get [[the little finger pointing up into Lake Superior). 2.1% of the population was black as of 2008 estimates. I would imagine they get treated well enough by the 96.7% that are white. If they were being ill-treated or were victims of white criminals in the county, I suppose they would leave. There are not a lot of red necks or crackers in the UP.

Yes, but their perceptions of Detroit more often than not has likely already been tainted.

I had an acquaintance who lived and worked in Rochester Hills tell me that her family up in Alpena were afraid to visit her, since they mistakenly thought that anything even close to Detroit [[such as Rochester Hills) was ghetto....

[REL]

So, this girl boozes and drugs herself silly, vandalizes, breaks into abandoned buildings [[I'm sure all of that rave traffic doesn't do those places a lot of good), laughs at someone getting their car torched, steals things that aren't hers, is so irresponsible she nearly gets expelled, endangers the lives of others by driving drunk, is so ignorant to world culture that the DIA is her "first museum"...

... and I'm supposed to be impressed by her while looking down at those around her? And appreciate her gratuitous racism? GTFO.