By Scott Sullivan
Editor
Heart
Who knew Ypsilanti was the cultural heart of Michigan? Me thanks to Mondly, a language learning program which surveyed 3,012 respondents nationwide asking, “Which town in your state best represents your cultural identity?”
Divided by 50, that means 60.24 Michiganians ranked Ypsi our state’s “spirit town,” the place that speaks our language, cooks our comfort food and lives by the rhythms that shaped us. Escanaba and Hamtramck placed 2 and 3.
At a Muskegon art fair during my 20s I spoke with a sculptor from Ypsilanti, left her my address and she mailed back a postcard depicting “The Ypsi Dick,” that town’s original water tower.
An urban legend holds it will crumble if a virgin graduates from nearby Eastern Michigan University. In 2003 Cabinet magazine ranked the tower as the World’s Most Phallic Building.
I bring it up because next day I received a teaser from another clickbait poll — using the same fonts, format and come-on language — saying 3,021 business leaders surveyed ranked Bay City, Muskegon and Jackson as our state’s top-three economic bellwether, i.e. “signal,” towns.
On the third day Lens.me, an online colored contacts store, emailed me saying a survey of 3,021 men and women ranked laughter as Michiganders’ most attractive dating trait. Humor makes us gold. Next came voice and eyebrows.
As I tried to track down my wife’s run-off pit bull near dusk, I got thinking where is the real axis mundi of the universe.
Saga is a meek, gentle, playful pup who couldn’t have gone far and, sure enough, a woman I sometimes mistake for my spouse when I see her walking her dog on the sidewalk outside my window said another neighbor east down the block had corralled Saga, fed her, given her water and was letting her play with his dog.
As I headed that way. leash in one hand, dog treats in the other, I spotted a man maybe in his 40s passed out, ringed by open cans of some kind, on the front steps of St. Alphonsus Catholic Church.
The neighbor who’d found Saga came down the street with her on a leash, I thanked him and transferred her onto mine, then a firetruck with its lights flashing came up the street.
The woman who looked like my wife had called 911 to check on they guy passed out on the church steps, and I decided the Heart of the Universe was right here.
