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Yesterday, my mother called me to ask how we had faired when bad weather struck our region. Confused by the question, I  looked at a weather map and local news headlines. Nope, still 90 degrees and no storms in sight. So, I called home. Mom had gone to the store, so I talked to my brother.

“We saw that Chicago had some bad storms and worried about you.”

Ummm. Okay, except that you know that Chicago is six hours north of me. Why would their bad weather affect me?  The flooding in southern Indiana is only about two hours away and the tornado southwest of St. Louis was about 3 hours away as the crow or tornado flies, but that’s really not that close to me. Did you think that because it was in Illinois it was close to me?  Think again. Illinois is up to 150 miles wide and is 400 miles long, north to south. The temperature and weather differences between here and Chicago are phenomenal.

A friend in California has the same problem. Her family thinks that she lives near Disneyland and I guess she does, if you think that 7 hours by car is “near.”

My California friend grew up in Europe, and remarked that she is appalled by the number of Americans who know nothing about Europe. My overwhelming impression of Europe is just how small it is.

A friend of my husband’s recently came to New York City for the weekend on business and emailed to see if we wanted to stop by to see here while she was there. He had to explain to her that New York is about 20 hours from here by car. There is no “stopping by”.

The problem, as I see it, is that people lose their frame of reference and have no concept of geography. Pam, the visitor from Europe, was accustomed to all sorts of countries jammed together in a small place. So, since we were within the same country as New York, it couldn’t possibly be that far away, right?

My family, though, has no excuse. They have driven through Chicago on the way to see me, knowing that Chicago is not even the halfway point and yet they assumed that the line of storms was 300 miles long and hit here too. I know they know better.

In their defense though, the Detroit-area news is incredibly insular. Last year while visiting there, I ahd to turn to cable networks to determine what the weather would be like when i came home. The local news didn’t even give a weather forecast for all of Michigan, much less the surrounding states.

Added to that, I am i suppose in a sort of no man’s land. We live in southern Illinois, close to Nashville and Memphis than to chicago. Indianapolis and Louisville are close too. St. Louis, Missouri, is the nearest big city and I get my nightly news from three states, Missouri, Illinois and Kentucky. Each station is less than 75 minutes from my front door.

And, I live in the South. Carbondale is south of the Mason-Dixon Line, (learn your history too) and on the border of the slave states. Several area landmarks are known to have been part of the Underground Railroad. Most people drink sweet tea, though I hate it, still have Southern manners, and have a bit of a problem with Yankees and people from Chicago. They are not joking when they suggest we leave Illinois and let Chicago have it.

Maybe that’s why my Senator, Barack Obama, thought there were 57 states. He was thinking of how things ought to be!

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