Continental Freshwater People
In a recent blog post on the Vonnegut Library blog, Rai Peterson, an English Professor at Ball State University writes about the perception of how writers only come from
"that cluster of states on the east coast that were so small their names on maps had to be written on the ocean."
One of my favorite quotes from “A Man Without a Country”, is when Vonnegut describes himself as a “continental freshwater person”. This is one of the more interesting ways that I have heard someone describe the mindset that comes with growing up in the midwest. Despite my love for Vonnegut’s work, I am a bit ashamed to admit that until I visited the Vonnegut Museum and Library I had no idea that he was from Indianapolis.
Growing up in Cincinnati Ohio, I also dreamed of becoming a writer and the sentiment that Peterson describes rings true to me to this day.
Later in life, like many others, I escaped the continental freshwater, and found my way to a city by the ocean. Over the last few years I have been visiting every state capital and reading a ton of books along the way. Vonnegut, along with all of the other writers in those lists who did not come from a city by the ocean give me a lot of hope that although writers may end up in the same place, but they can come from anywhere.
Thank you for reading! Share your thoughts with me on bluesky, mastodon, or via email.
Check out some more stuff to read down below.
Most popular posts this month
- 2024
- Reinstalling Windows at 1am
- SQLite DB Migrations with PRAGMA user_version
- My Custom Miniflux CSS Theme
- How to Disable Wayland in Debian Testing
Recent Favorite Blog Posts
This is a collection of the last 8 posts that I bookmarked.
- Give Your Spouse the Gift of a Couple's Email Domain from mtlynch.io
- Skip the Next iPhone from Articles on Jose M.
- Have smart glasses finally hit an inflection point? from The Torment Nexus
- The McPhee method from the jsomers.net blog
- Pluralistic: LLMs are slot-machines (16 Aug 2025) from Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow
- Pluralistic: Bluesky creates the world's weirdest, hardest-to-understand binding arbitration clause (15 Aug 2025) from Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow
- Just a Little More Context Bro, I Promise, and It’ll Fix Everything from Jim Nielsen’s Blog
- The Futzing Fraction from Deciphering Glyph
Articles from blogs I follow around the net
Futureverse announces restructuring two years after raising $54 million
In 2023, there was no shortage of buzzy press coverage for Futureverse, which promised to build a metaverse and gaming-focused blockchain. They partnered with Ready Player One author Ernest Cline to build the "Readyverse". Th…
via Web3 is Going Just Great September 30, 2025New site, kinda
If you’re reading this blog using RSS or via email (when I remember to send the content via email), you likely didn’t notice it. And if you’re reading my blog in the browser but are not a sharp observer, chances are, you also didn’t notice it. A n…
via Manuel Moreale — Everything Feed September 30, 2025Pluralistic: Announcing the Enshittification tour (30 Sep 2025)
Today's links Announcing the Enshittification tour: Come say hi, why dontcha? Hey look at this: Delights to delectate. Object permanence: HP defeat device; It Gets Better; OPM hack endangers CIA in Beijing; Self-driving cars crash. Upcoming appearance…
via Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow September 30, 2025Generated by openring