Michigan Proud

     Do you like breakfast cereal? Health Food Stores? The modern education system in America? How about the Republican Party? Or the United States? How about driving in cars? Or how about the Middle Class in America? Or punk rock? Or pizza delivered to your house? If you like most of those things, you have Michigan to thank for all of it.

     Breakfast cereal was invented at the Kellogg Institute in Battle Creek Michigan to provide a healthy alternative to things like eggs and bacon for breakfast. Kellogg was a Seventh-Day Adventist at the time, and ran a healthy retreat that he called the Kellogg Sanitarium; his brother brought breakfast cereal to the world.

     The 7th Day Adventists emerged from Battle Creek Michigan, and are vegetarian Christians and have been so for over 150 years, providing a control group against the rest of America. They have very low rates of cancer, and they have no cholesterol problems or heart disease to speak of, and in general are in excellent health. Seventh-Day Adventists make their own food to sell in their own stores, and in the United States are largely vegan, their stores were the model for all Health Food stores to this day.

     Before Michigan was even a state and it was still Michigan Territory covering at least the current states of Michigan, Illinois, Minnesota and Wisconsin, the territory adopted what at the time was called the Austrian Method of education. You would recognize it as what we just call the American education system, because soon after Michigan Territory adopted the system the state of Massachusetts did as well, and they say that they were the first state to institute the modern education system in the United States.

     The Republican party was founded in 1854 in Jackson Michigan as an anti-slavery party, and now forms one of the two permanent political parties of the United States. They held their first convention in 1856, and then nominated Abraham Lincoln in 1860 and he won. When Lincoln sent out a call for troops and sat watching the troops that had arrived march past his bandstand, when it came to the Michigan troops he had asked each state to send a few battalions, but Michigan had stepped up and sent more than twice as many. As the battalions kept marching by, followed by a mounted unit, Lincoln asked one of his attendants, "What state is that?" And they said, "That's Michigan sir." And he said, "Well thank God for Michigan."

     During the Civil War the Iron Brigade made up of former Michigan Territory and surrounding areas took the heaviest losses at the Battle of Gettysburg, and then later it was Michigan troops that caught the Confederate president trying to escape to Mexico dressed as a woman, preventing the Civil War from continuing with him in exile. Soon after Lincoln freed the slaves, and then almost immediately after that he was assassinated.

     The automated assembly line was invented by Henry Ford in Dearborn Michigan in 1913. The assembly line reduced the time it took to build a car from more than 12 hours down to 1 hour and 33 minutes. But the assembly line work was boring, and Ford found it difficult to retain employees, so on January 5th 1914 he more than doubled their wages from $2.34 a day to $5 a day, which set in motion the eventual rise of the Middle Class in America. Around 15 years later Ford completed the River Rouge Plant in Dearborn, Michigan, which took over 10 years to construct, the River Rouge was the largest integrated factory in the world at the time, producing over 4,000 cars a day in the 1930s.

     Dominos Pizza is from Ann Arbor Michigan, and invented the concept of delivering pizza to your door, which has now expanded to become any kind of food delivered to you with something like doordash. Also, despite being from Michigan, Dominos is seen as being American pizza, not a regional variation like Detroit, Chicago, or New York style pizza.

     Punk rock was invented by Iggy Pop in Michigan at a house party in Ann Arbor in the late 1960s when he used an Oster blender half full with water and a microphone along with a ukulele and a theremin to create ambient psychedelic sounds. Later he would invent crowd surfing, which he did standing up.

     The beginnings of marijuana legalization in the United States started when John Sinclair was arrested for giving an undercover police officer two joints, for which he received 10 years in jail, creating the phrase, "10 for 2." John Lennon came to Michigan and played a concert for him in Ann Arbor on December 10th 1971 called, "The John Sinclair Freedom Rally," which was filmed and released as, "10 for 2." Soon after John Sinclair was freed, and to celebrate this the next April fool's Day in Ann Arbor they held the 1st Hash Bash, and later that summer the city council decriminalized marijuana in Ann Arbor, making possession of up to an ounce a $5 ticket. No records were kept; there was no such thing as first or second offense; it was essentially a misdemeanor just like a parking ticket. Eventually the Santa Cruz city council did the same thing two decades later, and just 2 years after that California became the first state to legalize medical marijuana, starting a trend of marijuana legalization that continues to this day all around the planet.

     Imagine a world in which Michigan had never contributed all of the above to America. Starting with the founding of the anti-slavery Republican Party and then the Civil War, the North may not have won without Michigan, the South could have seceded, and there would have been a Confederate America with slaves for decades to come.

     Without Michigan Territory instituting the Austrian method of education first, Massachusetts may never have adopted it, and we could still be using the Socratean method that was popular in America at the time.

     Without high paying assembly line jobs the Middle Class in America would have never come to exist, and America would still be like most of the rest of the planet where there are only rich and poor, and cars would still be so expensive that only the rich could afford them.

     And when it comes to food, without Michigan you would have no option to have a bowl of breakfast cereal in the morning, you would have no alternatives for vegetarian health food or for health food stores, and pizza delivery may never have been invented, both because Domino's wouldn't have invented it and because cars would have been reserved for the ultra rich.

     And finally without Ann Arbor, Michigan, the process of legalizing weed may have never started in America, and the entire genre of punk rock may have never come into existence, since both of them emerged from Ann Arbor, Michigan.

     So you are welcome America, enjoy all things Michigan today. Start with a bowl of breakfast cereal, drive your car to a decent job, stop by a Health Food store to pick up something for lunch, when you come home from work to your Middle Class home order a pizza, listen to some punk rock, and smoke some legal weed, you have Michigan to thank for all of it.