Yeah I’m a Buckeye (I said it!) through and through. I might be more partial to the part of the state that touches our awesome lake than the part that touches our awesome river, or more partial to the glaciated (hilly) part and not so much to the unglaciated (flat) part, but I still love Ohio and am proud to be an Ohioan!
SLIGHT hijack: When reading the “Letters to the editor” or any other user-generated content in a national print publication, does anyone else find that their state ALWAYS seems to be represented? Is it a confirmation bias thing (I am always looking for Ohio) or do people from Ohio just love to write in?
I do feel some loyalty to California, although the state has plenty of problems, but I feel tremendous loyalty and affection for San Francisco. I think that San Francisco really does have an independent character that it’s possible to like or dislike.
I’m originally from Rhode Island and I feel big-time loyalty for it. But that may be because of its small size… you can actually get to know the entire state, and it really has an identity of its own. I guess it’s akin to what other posters are saying about feeling loyalty to their home cities.
Yep, I feel totally connected and loyal to California, particularly Northern California. I love my state. Sure we have a ton of flaws, but we’re so awesome!
I’ve lived in New York for …holy shit… 12 years now, but I’m still from Maine, and I feel some loyalty to Maine. No loyalty to California or North Carolina or any other place I’ve lived.
I feel no loyalty for Ohio. I feel no pride for Ohio. I think its an average state in which a slight majority of the people are ignorant dumbasses.
But I love Ohio. (Southern, as opposed to ZipperJJ’s northern.) Whenever I go to Ohio, I feel like I’m going home. No matter who or what pisses me off or disappoints me about Ohio, I feel like I belong there.
And even if a slight majority of Ohioans are ignorant dumbasses, there is a significant number of Ohioans who are some of the best people in the world.
I lived in NJ until I was 18 and feel no loyalty to it. It’s not as bad as the jokes make it out to be, but…whatever.
I lived in New Mexico from 18-24 and…well, yeah, I feel some sort of connection I guess, because I love the place. I particularly love the bit where I lived, but the whole state is overall an incredibly beautiful place, home to a fascinatingly eclectic mix of people. And oh, god, the food is wonderful. I think that, unlike New Jersey, you can definitely point at something and say it’s New Mexican.
I’m not living there anymore, regrettably, so it’s also kind of like how my relationship with my sister changed when she moved away: we get along so much better now that we don’t see each other every day.
I love my home state of New Jersey but if you asked me this question before I moved away I would have given a neutral answer. Since I left 9 years ago, Las Vegas was the only city I lived in where no one cared or had clever jokes about NJ. I think a big part of that is that I rarely met anyone who was actually from Vegas. In the other cities I have lived in, people pick up that I am not from the area as soon as I open my mouth.
I definitely feel a connection and sense of loyalty to New Jersey. Its (mostly) much better than that show suggests.
I like living in Washington State. Been here for 25 years, and plan on staying. It’s a great place for me, but I don’t think it’s “better” than anywhere else.
I’ve lived in NY all my life and for all I know, there could be a better state to live in, but I’ll probably never find out, because I’m pretty attached to being a New Yorker.
Spending 18 years in greater New York only made me more consciously an Iowan than I had ever been. IMO, Iowa is an outlier amid the heartland - certainly in national politics, but also in the way we see ourselves and our country.
A lot of it is our quietness. We tend not to be grandiose or ideologues. (Bob Vander Plaats is a notable exception. On the other end of the sociopolitical spectrum, so am I - it’s the mark New York left on me). In a culture where you’re only as important as the noise you make, this is not to our benefit, but we at least have the satisfaction of not being Arizona or Florida or a dozen other states I could mention.
When someone asks me where I am from, I will say “America” or “New Jersey” depending if I think that person knows where New Jersey is. My closest attachment is with southern New Jersey, followed by Philadelphia and its burbs and eastern Pennsylvania, then New York City and northern New Jersey. After that it’s the US/Canada/UK/Australia/etc., followed by any liberal country with a large English speaking population (e.g. Netherlands/Sweden/Hong Kong), then other liberal developed countries without much English (France/Spain/Taiwan). It also helps if I have spent a lot of time in a country (e.g. China), or if its culture has affected me in a positive way (e.g. Japan). The places I have least attachment to would be places like Pakistan, Uganda and Iraq. I’ve found a correlation with how a society treats gay people and how much I feel a connection to that nation or culture.
Former Alaskan here and yes, no matter where I live in the future, that is probably how I’ll always think of myself and define myself. Alaskan. I don’t know that I’ll ever feel that kind of connection with any other state, (though if I find the right state, I hope to!). Funny, I moved back to the state where I was born and spent the first 10 3/4s years of my life (with a few years here and there in CA), but I’m loyal to Alaska.
I haven’t lived in Wisconsin for 22 years, but I still think of myself as a Wisconsinite, and I have always kept tabs on what’s going on back there.
Despite living in Illinois for these past 22 years (as well as for a while when I was a little kid), owning a house here, and being married to someone who definitely identifies with Illinois and Chicago, I don’t feel any particular tie to Illinois. Part of that is undoubtedly the rivalry between Wisconsin and Illinois, and part is probably also due to disgust with the corruption in politics here.
Same here, and I think that’s true for most people from the Chicago area. It was only when I went to college in C-U that I had much of a sense of being “in Illinois”–more businesses with Illinois in their name, more attention to state politics, more comparisons with neighboring states, etc.
At times, I feel motivated to defend DC against those who still think that the city is stuck in the 1980s.
Then stories like this come up (Marion Barry has short-changed Uncle Sam on his taxes for 9 of the last 12 years) or this (Marion Barry thinks that ex-convicts should be protected from employment discrimination on the same basis as race, age, sex, religion, and so on). I’m not even getting into the stories of my own councilman personally taking $300,000 of taxpayer money that was earmarked in the city budget to “charities” that did nothing more than receive the money and write a check back to the councilman who gave them the funds.
Then I just feel really, really embarrassed about my home “state.”
I’m a transplanted Michigander and I feel pretty intense affection for my state. It’s beautiful. Two peninsulas, great lakes, green grass and tall trees - what’s not to love? I didn’t grow up on a farm, but I was never far from one. One thing you can’t get in Jersey is those long country drives just to clear your head. Michigan is my home.
I’m not saying it’s perfect. It’s a very conservative state in general, without much diversity. And then there’s the economy.
But I love it and I really care about what happens to it. I don’t think I really appreciated it until I moved.