Push & Pull Factors Assignment, Results from Spring 2011

Every semester in my introductory classes, I do an assignment on push and pull factors, and how they relate to migration.  Of course, push and pull factors are a relatively easy concept to understand, in that push factors are those ideas about a place that “push” people away from living there, while “pull” factors are those perceptions which attract people.  It’s (really) old news for population geographers, and there have been plenty of critiques on the conceptualization, but it’s nice and tidy for getting intro-level undergrads interested in migration.

Usually, textbooks contain some sort of perception map to talk about this, based on mental maps of some undergrads at a random institution at which the textbook authors teach.  Like this one from whichever textbook:

That’s all well and good that a textbook shows this map, but it’ll maybe warrant a few seconds glance from the students (IF they open the text) and that’s it.  So, why not expand on the idea but have the students see what they think?

The assignment I give them is based on their own perceptions.  I have them simply pretend that they’ve graduated with their bachelors degrees and are now sought after by firms in every single state.  Then, I give them a map and have them rate, on first gut reaction, each of the 50 states a score of 1 (personal hell) to 10 (a land of milk and honey) as a potential place to live.  In groups, they come up with maps displaying averages of their ratings, and then the groups discuss why places are rated highly or lowly.  They’ve never got the resolution of analysis that the map above has, but it’s far more personal and links much better with what student interests are.

This, of course, leads into larger course discussions, like those about brain drain — few ever rate Ohio very well, and the power of perceptions — usually California and Hawaii are the most positively rated states, but few students have ever even visited either.  Of course, the discussion almost always touches on the lack of spatial resolution in this exercise, when one student gives New York a rating of 10 because they think NYC, but another gives it a 2 because the only New York they know is Buffalo.  It also leads nicely into topics like qualitative versus quantitative data, and serves as a really good gateway into healthy skepticism about statistical analysis, examining issues like sample size, interpolated data and other such critical thinking skills.

This semester, I put the assignment to two different classes at the University of Akron:

• One Introduction to Geography course, mostly freshman with a few sophomores, 8:50am MWF.  The course enrollment is 41, but 30 were there to complete the assignment.
• One Geography of Cultural Diversity course, all sophomores and juniors with two semesters of English composition as prerequisites., 11:00am TR.  The enrollment is 34, but only 25 were present that day.

Students were told to rate each state from 1 to 10, with 10 being the absolute best.  Beyond the ratings, they were to designate the absolute best with a star, and the absolute worst with a frown face.  After their group exercises and discussions, I collected the assignments and combined the data into some quickie maps, purposely ignoring cartography for sake of clarity, consistency and speed (really, I can do better!) and posted them on the course Facebook pages.  The results are what you see below.  I think they’re exceptionally interesting, not only in terms of which states are desired, but the differences between classes.

Map Set One: Raw Averages from Each Class. Averaged ratings from all students. Easy.

California’s the highest, followed by Hawai’i, Florida, North Carolina and South Carolina. Rhode Island is the worst, followed by North Dakota, South Dakota, Delaware and Connecticut.

In this class, North Carolina gets the highest accolades, followed by South Carolina, California, Ohio and New York. This class thinks that South Dakota’s the worst, followed by North Dakota, Nebraska, Minnesota and Idaho.

Map Set Two: “Stretched” Ratings from Each Class. Using some simple arithmetic, transformed the lowest rated state into a rating of 1, the highest rated into a rating of 10, and stretched the ratings in-between.  A good way to open the discussion about data manipulation as a true window into respondent intention.  Of course, the rankings will be identical.

 

Map Set Three: Best State Votes. A simple count of how many students, in each class, rated a state as the most preferred.

Not surprisingly, California received the most votes. More surprisingly, Florida got many more votes than Hawai’i (the second-highest rated state in this class).

In the course with more upperclass students, Ohio actually received the most votes, followed by the highest rated North Carolina, then California.

 

Map Set Four: Worst State Votes. A simple count of how many students, in each class, rated a state as the least preferred.

North Dakota and Alaska tie for being rated the worst most often, followed by Kansas. Note that Ohio received two votes, and class-wide favorite California was deemed the worst by one student.

In this case, North Dakota is joined by both Alaska Louisiana, followed by South Dakota and Texas. Notice that another favorite of this class, Florida, received one worst state vote.

 

Map Five: My Ratings. I always end up being asked what my ratings are, so I figured it’s fair to share.  I always make my own map and post it alongside the combined maps that I put on Facebook.  Here’s mine for this year… and oddly enough, it too changes every year.

 

That’s enough for now. Maybe I’ll revisit this topic later this week and include some of the students’ explanations behind their ratings.

Detroit, Eminem and Chrysler’s Geographic Imagination

Like many geographers, I found myself intrigued by the Super Bowl advertisement that Chrysler ran, a two-minute piece featuring musician Eminem and trumpeting the city of Detroit.  It’s an interesting ad for a number of reasons.  Certainly part of the intrigue comes from Detroit’s position as the butt of jokes, and the focus of umpteen photo essays of its landscape of decline.  The left points at the city as evidence of the failures of capitalism, while the right claims its decline was caused by strong labor unions and too-big civic governance.  Either way, with a city population rapidly declining — down below 900,000 by latest estimates, less than half its 1950 peak — and the associated economic and fiscal problems, we can all agree that Detroit has its problems.

A lot of the debate over this ad thus far has been about the Detroit imagination presented in the ad.  Some praised the ad as being (finally) a positive piece about a city that desperately needed it, and truth of life in the city for disbelievers.  Others said the ad was full of falsehood, empty praise for a place beyond broken.  Of course, we should all remember that Chrysler’s presentation of this place, whether “true” or “false” was a message with a purpose, and that purpose is to sell cars.  The most powerful tool that advertisers have is the evocation of emotional response, and doing so effectively sells product.  I mean, think about it: the other advertisement to gain rave reviews from this year’s Super Bowl was the “Little Vader” piece from Volkswagen, one of Chrysler’s competitors.  Why?  Well, who hasn’t imagined themselves trying to use The Force, or hasn’t seen their kids doing the same and wished it’d come true if only for an instant?

Two effective car commercials, neither of which featured much about the cars on display.  That’s not an accident.  Cars themselves don’t typically arouse the same emotions as childhood memories.  Chrysler tapped into something different, an emotional response that is perhaps nearly as powerful: the tendency to root for the underdog.  It happens in sports — what basketball fan hasn’t cheered for a tiny 16-seed school in the NCAA tournament who find themselves tied with Duke as the clock runs out? — it’s used in movies and television, and Chrysler’s asking you to root for the underdog with your next car purchase. It’s an interesting emotion to ask for, and the ad does so effectively, by presenting an imaginary that’s on track with what we’ve seen in those photo essays, to a point.  The ad brings something different to the mix: that amongst these ruins, there’s still 900,000 people, and those people are proud of their city with all of its faults.  I’ve always rooted for Detroit, but at the end of the first viewing, I was genuinely excited to see the big comeback this ad was inherently promising.  I don’t think I was alone.

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“Imported from Detroit.”  That’s the advertisement’s tagline, and it’s from this line that I think we can sense a certain disconnect.  Of course, there’s the obvious one, that something from Detroit is obviously not imported, because this city is still part of the United States, though it’s an obvious hat-tip to Italian automaker Fiat’s freshly minted ownership of Chrysler.  In that alone, it seems nothing more than a clever play on words.  I think there’s more to it, geographically speaking.

I think the concept that these cars are “Imported,” in a way, necessarily distances Chrysler from urban geographic imagination that it’s promoting in this commercial.  Certainly, Detroit has its problems and the ad embraces those to a point, strictly for an emotional response.  By suggesting that something could be imported from Detroit, a political, economic and ultimately spatial separation is suggested through language.  It’s implied that Detroit’s many problems, those which give it the underdog status, are distant from those viewers who are supposed to be rooting the city on.  Those problems, while scary, don’t actually threaten the viewer/consumer.  Indeed, to threaten the viewer/consumer with images of economic instability undermines the goal of the commercial (spending) by prompting thrift, and the purchase of a brand new car is never a thrifty decision.

But as Foucault reminds us, in any discourse, what is left unsaid is just as important as what is said.  In this case, Chrysler conveniently discards causality in this advertisement.  Regardless of your opinion of the genesis of Detroit’s decline, I think we can agree that Chrysler played a big role.  Chrysler automobiles have never been known as terribly reliable, nor very high quality.  This reputation had drastic, long-term consequences: the company nearly collapsed in the late 1970s, before being rescued by Lee Iacocca. Despite inventing the minivan and buying the plucky Jeep brand in the 1980s, Chrysler again nearly died in the 1990s before being purchased by Daimler.  Even Daimler, the folks behind Mercedes-Benz, couldn’t save the company, unloading Chrysler to a private capital company in the mid-2000s before being it was purchased in bankruptcy by Fiat.

Like other Detroit brands, Chrysler was unwilling to compete with imports on quality and value through the latter decades of the 20th century.  The brazen ignorance of the Big Three automakers, including Chrysler, to changing demand and their seemingly incompetent and belated attempts to adapt proved costly to both their reputations, and to the city. The old business model no longer worked, destroying the companies’ solvency.  Instead of competing through innovation, the automakers sought profit by slashing costs, building products of diminishing quality, automating the workforce and outsourcing jobs.  Beyond all of those factors that pundits bicker about, the loss of those good-paying jobs is what put Detroit on life-support.  Chrysler was one of the guilty parties, and building decades of junk cars didn’t entice consumer demand and bring jobs back.

By the 1990s, damage was already done, to both Detroit and to Chrysler.  Residents streamed to the suburbs, leaving Detroit with a further diminishing taxbase to fund its social needs and sending the city into further down the seemingly endless cycle of decline.  Chrysler’s reputation hit rock-bottom, and its sales suffered. Chrysler wasn’t alone in its tarnished image; though less effected by the quality fallout, both GM and Ford lost millions of customers to imports.  By 2011, being labeled as a “domestic” car was a liability for the automakers.  GM promoted its cars as “German-inspired,” while Chrysler labeled its new 200 model, one that’s marketed as better than the cars it used to sell, as “Imported from Detroit.”

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The ad’s effectiveness is unquestioned. By the end, even skeptical viewers want to see Detroit succeed, making the ad’s argument, that Chrysler’s success is Detroit’s success, seem palatable.  Constructing a geographic imagination of Detroit as a soulful, proud place that just needs a hand proves to be an effective, if exploitative, device for selling.  Certainly Detroit’s decline is sad, the ad tugs at those heartstrings and makes you root for that comeback so those proud folks who live there can have a city worthy of such braggadocio.  However, by mobilizing this imagery of this city, and tagging the ad as “Imported from Detroit,” Chrysler seeks to distance itself from culpability for the city’s long decline.  It isn’t the same Chrysler that helped pull the rug out from this place, the tagline reminds you.  It’s a different Chrysler that’s learned its lesson, now featuring “imported” cars that will somehow enrich a downtrodden sorta-American city with its profits.

In essence, the geographic imaginaries Chrysler presents are a spatially cognitive dissonance.

Mapping (Geo-)Autobiography: Travel

A lot of travelers — and especially geographers — like to keep track of numbers of places they’ve been…. countries, states, continents, capitals, everything. It’s a nice way to reflect upon past experiences, and yes, of course, brag to one’s friends about those travels.

A couple of my colleagues, Nick Wise and Emily Fekete, produced what they called “County Life Maps” earlier this year, highlighting the counties they had visited in the United States, and urged me to do the same. I was more than willing to oblige, and so I came up with this (kind of hideous looking) map to share with them, showing that I had visited 1340 counties in 46 states:

I know, not my best cartographic work, but it was done in a half-hour’s time using an open-source GIS on OSX (that was back before I discovered Parallels and was still experimenting with that stuff).

Lately, though, I’ve been thinking about the importance of autobiographical geographies (“geoautobiographies?”) and how they shape personal experience, memory and perception. It is difficult to write about these geoautobiographies without going into tremendous depth because sharing the full richness of a personal sensory experience is a difficult task to verbally express.

So, I thought, what about making some maps? I’ve done it a little bit in my brief exercise in impressionist geography (“50 States, 50 Words“) and well…. making maps to express an autobiographical experience — in this case, travel — isn’t too easy. Sure, the map above shows counties that I’ve visited. It doesn’t show where I’ve visited in those counties, how often I’ve visited those counties, how long I spent there, or how recently I had visited. It’s a pretty one-dimensional display in that way. Okay for what it is, but it needs more detail.

Now, to be fair, I couldn’t add more detail to these displays at the county level without spending a considerable amount of time and energy, doing significant autoethnographic research with my family, recording each vacation and each trip with impossibly significant detail that memory simply doesn’t permit. So, I’ve zoomed out to the state level for this little exercise in geoautobiographical cartographic visualization, and used states in the U.S. Sure, I’ve been outside the U.S., but I am fairly proud of my depth of travels within this country.

So, let’s start out with states I’ve visited. Simple enough:

Black means yes, light gray means no, easiest map to ever make. I’ve been to 46 out of 48 states. I’m hoping to get to New Hampshire and Maine this summer. Alaska and Hawaii are probably more distantly in the future. Of course, this map suffers from the same problem as the “County Life Map” in that the data is treated as a container binary — meaning, the map either has a “yes” or a “no,” with no room for additional detail in terms of spatial differentiation, frequency, or temporal occurrence.  I made it this ugly ugly black to point out the flaw of this binary.  In other words, a state I lived in for 24 years (Indiana) gets the same symbology as states I visited once for 35 minutes (Delaware).

How to remedy? How about looking at intention behind the visit.

Obviously, the number of options have increased, though I’ve used a qualitative symbology again because it’s difficult to make an intention quantitative. Instead of two classes, I’ve got four: have lived there, have visited as a destination, have visited but not as a destination, or have not visited. Part of the goal of choropleth maps, though, is to differentiate spatial data. In this case, over 75% of our data points are in the same class: states I’ve visited as a destination.

Let’s go quantitative, then. How about number of visits, which I’ve reckoned from an approximation of number of times I’ve set foot in the state. It’s a difficult thing to put together, though my memory of travels is probably better than any autobiographical memory, and in some cases these are best guess estimates.

Now, looking at this map, a couple of things stick out to me. For one, it just doesn’t feel right. Most experienced cartographers will tell you that, if they’re familiar enough with the data, the map has to present that data in a way that “feels” right. That’s one reason I think that cartography course should never, EVER be eliminated by GIS courses, but I digress. Point is, this doesn’t pass the feel test. Why? Number of visits seems to privilege proximity to home; indeed, small trips or even the running of errands can easily take someone to a neighboring state. At the same time, though, it also privileges drive-through states. I’m not saying these states are like McDonald’s, it’s just that some of these states (Tennessee, Georgia) just happen to be on the routes to destination points (Florida) and hence received two visits from me during each family vacation. One reason it doesn’t feel right, though, is that much of the traveling I did, especially as a child, was to drive somewhere and stay at that destination for a week or more. In this case, those destinations only get one visit per trip, even though the experience of being there measures far more in my autobiographic narrative. So, let’s look at how many times each state was a destination for a trip.

 

This map is a bit more reflective of my travel patterns, I think, because it manages to display that quality of intention in a quantitative fashion (number of visits). But then again, I think this is too raw. Sure, Kentucky may have been my destination seven times, but I’ve been there many many more times. Shouldn’t the fact that most of my visits to Kentucky are drive-throughs impact how I look at the state? Sure. So, here’s a map looking at percentage of times each state was a destination, out of total visits.

But I’m still not happy with it, because it doesn’t necessarily speak to how much impact the state had on me during my visit. Certainly the five destination-aimed trips to South Dakota are significant, but isn’t it more significant that I’ve chosen to spend 51 days of my life there during those four visits?

So, let’s try number of days spent in each state. Again, details are fuzzy, so in some cases, it’s an estimate, though I’m pretty confident in those estimates:

Now, this map “feels” much better. Florida and Colorado are lit up significantly, as they should be. Family vacations to Nevada, Washington DC, Michigan and Chicago also show up. Okay, maybe I should account for the fact that, after I made the effort to visit these places, I obviously spent different amounts of time in each. To do this, I went ahead and figured the number of days per visit, to combine the two quantitative maps into one normalized data set:

 

I like this one as well, because it highlights some important trips in my life. Sure, the old favorites of Florida and Colorado are still apparent, but now too are the longer times I’ve spent in the southwest, which was particularly important to forming my world views during my adolescence. These maps aren’t bad…. but they’re not everything either. Though South Dakota and Iowa also show up strongly (as they should; I spent 30 days in each for music camps during high school) they do not reflect the fact that it’s been a significant period of time since those long stays (South Dakota in 1998, Iowa in 1999).

So, now to add the temporal aspect. Year of last visit is the first step:

Of course, as is expected, it gives us nothing for frequency, but everything for currency.

I can add one detail to it, and that’s the qualitative attribute of intention. Here is a a map showing year of last visit as a destination, as that second step:

In each of these maps, you can clearly see my major trips for the year: Indiana to visit family, Washington DC for AAG 2010, Pittsburgh for our anniversary, and Kansas for GPRMAAG and to visit Emily.

But are these the most current? Because we are talking about experience, mental mapping and perception, shouldn’t I also include considerations for places I have concrete plans for visiting during 2011? That certainly affects how I’m thinking about places and even perceiving them.

This one shows the states I’ve already made plans, ones that are pretty much concrete, for visiting in 2011:

Yeah, it looks like I’ve got a busy year coming up, and I do…. but many of those states that I’m visiting in 2011 are a result of the long-way trip we’re taking to get to AAG 2011 in Seattle (Amtrak to San Francisco, rental car up the coast to Seattle with some dear friends, then Amtrak back to Cleveland). Everything else is from probable conferences. Of course, one of the very plans I mentioned way back at the beginning (a trip to New Hampshire and Maine, to finish out the lower 48 on my list) isn’t highlighted because it’s not set in concrete just yet.

Once again, though, the future plans map, like the visits map, prioritizes drive-through (or in this case, rail-through) states. What if it’s destinations only?

(Cartographic notes: All data classes broken using Jenks Natural Breaks Optimization method of classification, and colors provided for my colorblind ass by the incredible ColorBrewer resource. The base map is one I personally made a very, very long time ago.)

Regions of the Continental United States (According to… Me)

My friend and colleague, Emily Fekete, who recently moved on to greener pastures and new opportunities in the geography PhD program at the University of Kansas, posted an entry trying to establish her mental map of regions of the United States.  I thought it was a good idea, and since I don’t have too many of those on my own lately, I figured I might as well replicate her efforts and provide my own map of regions so that we could compare our different thoughts, ideas and experiences. Perhaps this will filter through the community of geography blogs and we’ll get a whole bunch of mental regions floating around.

Maybe not, but…..

So, here is my map, nicely labeled, for your consumption.  Recognize, of course, that being the creation of my own mental map, it is nothing more than a compiled product of my perceptions, thoughts, ideas and experiences.  It’s not an academic statement that I believe is “truth” (not that such a thing exists in intellectual discussion, but still).  

(By the way, I can’t take credit/blame for colors.  I used colorbrewer.org because I’m as colorblind as an episode of The Andy Griffith Show.)

I’ve identified 15 regions that I consider distinct, which is of course five more regions than Emily did.  Ultimately, since she explained her regions and I intend to do the same, that mostly means more work for me.  (I never get out of things easily, do I?)  It also means my regions are 50% better, right?  Right?  (Fail.)

Okay, here goes. Alphabetical for sake of… alphabeticity.

Appalachia- Hills, hills and more hills.  Appalachian landforms contribute to landscapes of isolation, and really cool meandering settlement patterns that I always find fascinating when driving through or when flying over.  Isolation, though, has brought tremendous poverty and really, really good music (and by this, I am talking about bluegrass).

Down South- A sort of compilation of the leftovers of the old Confederate States of America, once you surgically remove Appalachia’s southern reaches, and then hack off Texas, the Gulf Coast and Florida.  Is this assumption outdated? Sure, I have no doubt.  It’s kind of a catch-all region for places with a broadly shared cultural identity.  At the risk of insulting the technological center in the Triangle of North Carolina and the tourist areas of the coast, my mind still lumps this all together even though I know better.  To the old CSA, I’ve added part of Kentucky and the southern portions of Missouri, Indiana and Ohio, where many people are seemingly still proud to fly Dixie’s flags.

East Coast- I know, tiniest region ever, right?  And not terribly accurate in its description.  In my mind, most of that Acela corridor fits together, with the urban areas of NYC, Philly, DC and Baltimore.  It’s mostly urbanized, and this region is probably the urban epicenter of the country.  Then again, when you go north of suburban Connecticut, to me it seems more a part of the “Northeast.”

Florida- Most of peninsular Florida has managed to distinguish itself culturally, in my mind, from the remainder of the south. Any Floridian will tell you that Florida’s two coasts have drastically different characteristics.  I’ve grouped most of Florida with the Atlantic coast, because I feel like the character of Florida’s gulf coast is far more similar to neighboring areas in Alabama and Mississippi.

Great Plains- On a clear day in Topeka, you can see the Rockies, right?  Well, not really, but it sure seems like it should be true if you’ve ever taken I-70 west of the Kansas state capital to Denver.  In some ways, the Great Plains are one of the most breathtaking regions in the United States in terms of physiography, simply because of their vastness.   The region’s largely flat in topography, semi-arid in climate, and primary sector (agriculture and petroleum) in economy.  Settlement is sparse, to where tiny tiny towns have an incredible level of importance and provide many more services than a town of similar population back east.

Gulf Coast – The Gulf Coast, from the Everglades through the Texas border, are far more marshy than the Atlantic coast.  Waves are (typically) calmer, and the resort communities seem to be a slower pace.  Mobile’s a nice city, and New Orleans is unique to the world.

Midwest- A lot of people debate over where the midwest is.  To me, it has one major thing in common, and that’s an agricultural landscape. Sure, there are cities there, and many of these cities have significant industrial capacities. By and large, though, this is a predominantly rural area with active farming, including dairy, livestock, grain and fruit. Farm sizes aren’t nearly as large as the big wheat farms and ranches of the plains, though they may approach 600 acres in the midwest.  This is my homeland, and driving there from NE Ohio to see my parents, I always get a little bit of warmth in my belly when we pass Mansfield, the land flattens out, and the trees disappear in favor of farm fields.

Northeast- This is, admittedly, my least traveled region in the continental US.  I’ve never been to New Hampshire or Maine, and that’s pitiful, I admit.  I’ve only been to Massachusetts twice, and only through a tiny portion of Vermont on a train. Possibly because I am less familiar with this area, it all gets lumped together in my head as being the Northeast.

Old Industry- Some would call this the Great Lakes, but I always found that definition a little odd because a huge portion of the Great Lakes has nothing to do with this area (see “Up North”).  This is an old industrial belt that borders the southern edge of the Great Lakes, from Milwaukee to Syracuse.  Not all of it was industrialized, but most of it was at one time, and most of it is also transitioning out of those industrial economies to other use.  Some of the more striking landscapes in the United States are the industrial wastelands of this region, factories that undoubtedly cost millions upon millions of dollars to construct that now apparently aren’t worth owning at all.

Out West- It’s a huge region on my map, and maybe for good reason.  This was the prime area we’d explore when my mom would take us on the field camps she led when we were kids.  My brother and I would always talk about those trips as going “Out West” and the name has always stuck with me.  It’s probably my favorite region of the country to visit, and I’d love to live there, amongst the incredible scenic beauty of the Rockies, or even the desolate majesty of the Great Basin.

SoCal- California’s diverse enough that you could split it into seven regions or twenty and maybe still fail to do it justice.  It’s an amazing place.  One region of that state that must be set aside is SoCal (Southern California) because of its distinct Mediterranean style climate, it’s unique style of sprawling urbanism, its many cultural influences, and its rich economic engines.

Southwest- Dry, hot, beautiful in its sparseness, and large influences from Hispanic and Native American cultures. I’ll never forget camping at a teacher’s property on the Hopi reservation, using the world’s most decrepit outhouse in the middle of the night and having a cool desert breeze blow the door open (the latch was broken) as I sat there pooping, treating me to one of the most glorious views of a starry night sky I’ve ever seen in my life, all dimly illuminating the second mesa in the distance.

Texas- Texans firmly believe that they live in their own country.  In some weird ways, Texas seems a lot like Canada… basically America but with their own way of doing those American-style things.  In Canada, that means universal healthcare.  In Texas, that means giant 4,000 square foot houses with Texas-shaped swimming pools in the back yard, all selling for $150,000.  Oh, and guns… lots of guns.  The lesson here is clear: Don’t Mess with Texas.

Up North- Lots of conifer trees and cold-ass winters.  People seem to only come up here if they like hunting or fishing, snowmobiling or other winter activities.  Beautiful place, and maybe one of the last true wildernesses in the eastern half of the US, but lonely and very, very cold.

West Coast- Rainy, foggy, mild, progressive and absolutely beautiful.  Three great metropolises — San Francisco, Portland and Seattle — that rival those in any other region.  The coast of northern California through Seattle may be some of the most glorious coastline ever to exist.

So, that’s it.  My regions in a nutshell.  I just wish I had a more compelling thing to write as a closing statement.  Oddly, that’s the exact problem I’ve been facing on my dissertation lately, and the very reason I’ve been procrastinating tonight by writing this out.