Here’s a map of Garreau’s divisions:
http://www.harpercollege.edu/~mhealy/g101ilec/namer/nac/nacnine/na9intro/nacninfr.htm
In addition to the places mentioned before, the southern part of Delaware is also part of Dixie.
Three on a tree? Doesn’t that leave you a couple of gears short?
Nobody ever claimed it was a good thing.
Motors for American cars usually have a larger displacement meaning they don’t need as efficient a gearbox for adequate performance. Older Fords and Holdens commonly had three speed autos although four on the floor is more common now.
Garreau’s book looks interesting based on the Amazon reviews I read. I wonder how dated the 23 year old work has become and how dynamic these nations’ borders are. How long has that map been a good representation of North America?
Hell, boy. That ain’t barbeque…that’s just grilling. Barbeque means 12 hours in a smoker, until the meat falls off the bone. It means smoke ring and wood, not sauce and briquets. If you’d ever had any, you’d know the difference. 
You’re probably right. I’ve always partly attributed my shift towards a vegetarian diet to Aussie style barbecues and my stepmother’s shitty transformations of red meat. I’m happy with my diet and, for various reasons, don’t really want to get a taste for meat again.
At the moment, barbecue means backyard cricket, plastic garbage bins full of beer and ice, cases of red and kerosene flavoured sausages and hamburgers for everybody else. The food is secondary for me.
What a hateful creature I must seem to you now.
Not at all…I was just correcting your word choice, not critiquing your lifestyle! I love backyard get-togethers. Beer and bullshit…sometimes Life can’t get any sweeter.
dave matthew’s band…
I just wish they would go away…
I just find them ever so slightly annoying. Its not extremely annoying, but it just the volume of mildly irritating shit they put out that gets me. Maybe its because I got to a shitty college. When can punk music be college music?
Actually, yeah. :eek:
And it tastes like pennies. What? Like you never put pennies in your mouth as a young child…
I’ve never had Pepto-Bismol itself, but when I was in Cambodia I bought a bottle of similarly pink generic stuff, with a name like “Pepti-Bismuthate” or something. It was quite tasty, but it, um… turned my poop black. Actually I think there was a note on the bottle saying this was normal…
Other TATOTBPMB:
24.
Drag racing.
Vinyl siding.
Crawl spaces, and “Going under the house.”
Trucks.
Hurricanes.
Dangerous wildlife.
Snow tyres.
Sink garbage disposal units.
Twinkies.
Oreos.
Pitcher’s mounds.
Spring break.
The TV show or Jeff Gordon?
Manx cat?
Kippers?
Fairy poo?
My email is in my profile. Send me a mailing address, and I’ll send you a CARE package!
I drive by it every day.
One week this past summer, that particular location made WRAL’s “lowest scoring restaurant” in their weekly health inspector’s report. :eek: indeed.
A sprinkling of miscellaneous musings:
Instant grits are suitable only for spackle. Now, whole-corn, stone-ground grits on the other hand are heavenly. Fresh and properly cooked, takes at least 30 minutes and a lot of water (or milk) to get them creamy, they do indeed have flavor. Yellow grits a bit more flavor than the white, in my opinion. Spooned into a container and allowed to solidfy, then sliced and fried in bacon grease they are the pinnacle of culinary achievement. So there.
Not every kentuckian thinks of themselves as southern by the way. A lot of people in the eastern end of the state usually do whereas many people from the western end, like me, have never considered themselves southern. I always felt more midwesterny than anything.
And finally, not only do I know what vegemite and marmite are, I eat and enjoy them. Especially on a toasted bagel. Yum.
The discussions about whom to tip and how much.
Interesting. It looks like he includes the extreme eastern edge of New York State in New England, or is that just an artifact of that image of the map? I grew up in that part of New York and now live near Boston.
I’m an immigrant to the US (and thus perhaps more immune to regional bias than a native would be?), but have found that the central ideas of The Nine Nations of North America to be not only useful, but also to have withstood the passage of time remarkably well. I would say that the reaches of “Mexamerica” have expanded somewhat due to increased immigration since 1981, but IIRC that is exactly what Garreau predicted. I would strongly recommend the book to anyone (perhaps especially those outside the US) trying to formulate a regional perspective of North America.
A couple of Garreau-related thoughts:
Actually, Garreau classifies Washington DC and its immediate suburbs as an “Aberration”, and not part of any of the “Nine Nations” (Manhattan and Hawaii are the two other “Aberrations”). This makes sense in that there is no tradition of industrial output (the major defining point of the “Foundry”) inside the Beltway. By comparison, Baltimore (only 45 minutes from DC) is a typical “Foundry” city.
Was it, though? Southern Florida was largely swampland until the 1890s (e.g. Miami wasn’t incorporated until 1896), decades after the post-Civil War Reconstruction. The main factor opening up Southern Florida was Henry Flagler’s railroad, and Flagler was a Northerner both by birth (New York state) and by temperament (he was an industrialist who worked for Rockefeller’s Standard Oil). By my understanding, Southern Florida was never really part of the “American South”. Given that the area is stereotyped as a haven for retired New Yorkers, it seems rather appropriate that it was essentially created by one!