So we can't just start writing about the Midwest willy-nilly. There needs to be some kind of guidelines.  As a midwesterner myself, I have found that the term "midwest" is used to cover a very large mass of land with many variances in terrain and population - a bit too many if you ask me. I'm going to try to break it into zones:

Someone from Ohio is more Midwestern than someone from Minnesota because people from Minnesota are in their own category. Just as people in Chicago consider themselves more a part of the cosmopolitan MidEast, then too, should Michigan (my birthplace) consider itself part of the Mideast- we are, after all, on eastern time. But anyone that has been to Ohio will tell you that while further east than Michigan, they are more like Iowa (true Midwesterners) than they are like Wisconsin - another state in its own zone. Throw in southern Indiana and eastern Missouri and you are practically talking about the south - I will call it the "Top South" because it isn't quite MidSouth - but I'll save the zones of the south for that page.

The zones will be our working outline. Zone One: The common Midwest, Zone Two: Wisconsin and The UP of Michigan (aka: The Pastie/Dairy Zone), Zone Three: Minnesota (The End of The Great River Zone), Zone Four: Chicago area (The Hot Dog/Architecture Zone), and Zone Five: The Top South

I hope that this springs debate and contraversy. I can already argue that Michigan, and I mean both of those beautiful penninsulas should be in its own Lake Zone...