Bad borders: what US secessionists' proposals miss

The sixth installment of my "Balkanized America" series is up over at Medium, looking at how contemporary US secessionists and state-splitters -- from Ted Draper's "Six Californias" and CAL3 plans to create an independent Cascadia or Texas -- set themselves up for failure by ignoring centuries-old regional fissures.

Those are, of course, the American Nations fissures.

Earlier installments in the series have run the gamut from debunking the assertion that the greatest divide in US politics is between urban and rural voters (hint: regional cultures have a far greater effect) to how the existence of these cultures shaped the run-up to the 1787 constitutional convention and even the reproductive clustering of North Americans (which surprised even me, as the paradigm argues for cultural effects, not genetic ones.)

Ohio, Oregon media consider American Nations-guided secession

As readers of American Nations probably know, I'm not a fan of the idea of breaking up the United States, for reasons I outlined more directly in this book review I did for Washington Monthly a few years back. (In short: why would we expect it to turn out peacefully?)

Still, there's something to be said for some states wanting to reconfigure their own borders in ways that better reflect the centuries-old cultural fissures on the continent. This talk has been growing of late, with a split up of California often at the top of the list.

Consider just the past week. Newspapers in two less-discusssed states with massive cultural fault lines -- Oregon and Ohio -- floated secession ideas rooted in American Nations' map.

The first, from the Cleveland Plain-Dealer's digital arm, Cleveland.com, muses about Ohio's (New England-settled) Western Reserve becoming the 51st state. (For some more on their overarching topic -- the differences between Cleveland and Cincy -- check out this piece in Cincinnati Magazine.)

The second, from the other Portland's Willamette Week, considers multiple scenarios for dividing the state and the Pacific Northwest. Sadly, they inform us that the American Nations approach is politically unviable because, as they put it, "who wants to show a passport just to visit Pendleton?" (I had to look that up too: it's a small town in eastern Oregon.)

If you're new to this American Nations stuff and want to learn more, try this piece or, of course, the book itself.

Speaking on American Character in Portland, Oregon

I had a enjoyable whirlwind trip to Portland, Oregon last weekend to deliver the 2016 Oliver Lecture at the First Congregational Church, an event co-sponsored by the World Affairs Council of Oregon. I spoke about my new book, American Character: A History of the Epic Struggle Between Individual Freedom and the Common Good, which is something of a sequel to American Nations.

Thanks much to the excellent and engaged crowd, to Broadway Books for selling on site (and selling so many) and to the sponsors for having me. I look forward to visiting again when I have  more time.

While in town, I made the obligatory writer's pilgrimage to Powell's, the legendary Portland bookstore, which takes up an entire block and requires its cavernous rooms be color coded just to find one's way around. They now have signed copies (pictured), though Broadway Books has the grandest collection West of the Mississippi.

Also was reassured about Portland fits into American Nations' Left Coast, as the history, founders, and institutional history of the First Congregational (and, indeed, the once-rival Unitarian church up the street) illustrates the Yankee half of the equation so very well. (George Atkinson founded the church, and one of his leading biographers attended the event.)

Introducing Left Coast, the magazine

Last week saw the launch of a new web-based magazine, Left Coast, which credits American Nations as its conceptual inspiration. Here's an excerpt from their About Us page:

"Living in a Left Coast city, you have more in common with people thousands of miles away in other Left Coast cities than you do with people in inland cities much nearer to you geographically. Left Coast reflects this shared experience and culture, allowing us to get to know ourselves in a deep and meaningful way.

Perhaps like us, you’ve grown weary of the rancorous national debate that seems to go nowhere—especially when so many of the topics are a nonissue on the Left Coast. It’s like we had this debate maybe 30 years ago, and now we’re over it and we’ve moved on, and it gets exasperating to debate these things with people who live elsewhere. It can also leave us feeling like our own region is stagnating.

Wouldn’t it be great if we, like Dash in The Incredibles, could simply run as fast as we wanted to? Yes it would."

The early articles include a look at how the hybrid Appalachian/Yankee origins of the region are reflected in some of its music and a take on how to make the best of rising seas.

Good fun. Now someone needs to start Yankeedom.

Ex-con unsmaked by Maine tribe seeks job in California under another name

I have an update today on the strange case of Charles Fourcloud -- or whatever name he's going by in your state -- the former Passamaquoddy tribal finance director unmasked in September as an ex-con embezzler who stole millions from a tribe in South Dakota in the 1990s and has been bouncing around the country for the past five years, applying to finance jobs at small tribes in remote areas.

As you can read in today's Portland Press Herald, Fourcloud was in a remote corner of California last Friday, applying for another tribal finance director job under an assumed name. Officials there say they were about to offer him the position when colleagues in Alaska pointed them to one of my previous Press Herald stories, which included a photo of "Fourcloud" (dba Arlynn Knudsen at al.)

One small correction. Fourcloud is apparently not yet facing fresh charges here in Maine -- the new motion for the return of property was filed by his attorney, the D.A. in Calais old me this morning when he finally got back to me. The investigation into his activities in Maine is still ongoing.

Policy question: why can't Maine county courts provide basic information on cases short of receiving a written request by U.S. post  which they will only respond to in like fashion? As the twerps might say: #Obstruction #TheseArePublicRecords #JoinThe21stCentury

In any case, enjoy. And do your criminal background checks.

American Nations media frenzy

As regular readers of this space know, American Nations went viral late last week, more than two years after its publication, with interest rapidly spreading into mainstream media.

Over the past week, I'm pleased to say that has developed into a nationwide media frenzy of sorts, capped off by yesterday's interview with Chuck Todd, host of MSNBC's The Daily Rundown. My thanks and appreciation to Todd and his crew for their interest and for so efficiently and accurately setting up the book's paradigm in their introduction.

By Friday afternoon, the book's overall sales rank at Amazon hit #50, an all-time high for one of my titles.

In addition to the interviews and features described or previewed last Sunday, here is a small sample of the attention the book and framework received in this unusual week:

Columnists at a number of big city dailies weighed in on whether I'd gotten their region right, at least based on what they understood from the Washington Post or Tufts Magazine articles. (Few, understandably, got to read the actual book before their weekly deadlines.)  

The Oregonian's David Sarasohn essentially endorsed it, but thinks his state's two cultures get along better than the same ones in, say, California. Up in Washington State, this blogger used the paradigm to analyze Boeing's "regional divide."

Kevin Horrigan at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch just doesn't understand what the map and model are really about, and criticized it for things the book explicitly doesn't say, but it was still nice to have the attention. (Alas.).  By contrast, Ralph De la Cruz at the Dallas Morning News thoughtTexans have been successfully "map pegged."

[Update, 11/17/23: The Omaha World-Herald's Erin Grace had this beautifully-executed piece on The Midlands, Nebraska, and the American Nations in this morning's paper, complete with a new color map.]

South Floridians are up in arms at not being included within the eleven nations I treat in the book. (Would it help if I told you Hawaii and Newfoundland aren't either?) The Miami New Times thought I was arguing that the area "shouldn't be considered part of the United States" (sigh), but at least acknowledged they hadn't read the book. (To my surprise, a lot of their commenters seemed to endorse the idea that Miami "isn't really America", suggesting this is an emotive issue thereabouts.)

I had an enjoyable conversation with Brian O'Neill at The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette about whether Allegeheny County belongs in the Midlands or not -- he's sticking with Appalachia though. The Santa Fe Reporter offered no judgment, but expressed relief that they weren't part of New France. Jack Craver at The Capital Times in Madison, wondered aloud if Wisconsin would still qualify as part of Yankeedom under the Scott Walker administration.

Much further afield, there was the Irish Times, whose U.S. correspondent, Simon Carswell, unpacked the model for his country's readers, saying it "helps navigate a greater understanding of what drives people in this vast, eclectic country."

The Wall Street Journal's Market Watch blog had their own piece, as did Andrew Sullivan's The Dish, and the Raleigh News &Observer.

Lots of other papers reprinted the Washington Post piece, which went out on the Post's news service late in the week, from the Tampa Bay Times to Tokyo's Japan Times.

I also had fun chatting with my Portland Press Herald colleague Greg Kesich about the book and the secret of going viral in our in-newsroom television studio Thursday. Earlier today I chatted with the host of CJAD's Viewpoints in Montreal, but alas, the segment isn't up online yet. The one I did with Lakeshore Public Radio in (the Yankee bit of) Indiana earlier in the week is though, as are the previously plugged NPR, BBC, KPCC, and KPFA pieces.

And, finally, the Free Lance-Star of Fredereicksburg, Va., Friday published my recent Washington Monthly piece on the regional divide in the recent Virginia governor's race as an OpEd. Thanks for your interest.

Now to get some sleep....

Seattle takes interest in Press Herald story

Some in the Pacific Northwest still have at least a passing interest in what has become of the Portland Press Herald and its sister papers, one year after they were sold by the family that owns the Seattle Times Co.

The thoughtful Seattle-based digital news hub Crosscut has republished my piece on the state of the papers -- and the maverick philosophies of new owner Richard Connor -- from the current issue of Down East.

I'm pleased Crosscut has maintained an interest in the story. Some of the best reporting on the state of the previous owners' newspaper empire -- by former Washington Post staffer Bill Richards -- appeared on the site last year.

Maybe Maine needs one of these things.

[Update, 6/29/10: Connor offers a celebratory take on his first year of ownership; Al Diamon responds.]