The idea of defining the South in this way is appealing, not least because it will annoy people who like the "Sean of the South" website. If we do this, however

The idea of defining the South in this way is appealing, not least because it will annoy people who like the "Sean of the South" website. If we do this, however, we won't be able to stop at Delaware. [0] Maybe thread parent could have said, "The author blogs pretty much exclusively on the cultural tapestry of USA", and I wouldn't have complained. Communication is seldom improved by more vagueness, however. Sean Dietrich has apparently honed an oeuvre that makes a certain sort of American feel better about things, which is explicitly related to a particular understanding of the South. He doesn't hesitate to invoke Maine or Colorado or wherever while layering on more saccharine banalities, but his audience doesn't love precision the way HN does. (An example of the fuzziness of his POV: the fact that the train illustration depicts tall pine trees amid steep slopes rather than the gently rolling farmland with deciduous forest and scattered cedars around Mendon.) Presumably this benefits his project of assuring us that everything is just fine and we shouldn't think too hard about possible improvements. I oppose that project, so I think we should continue excluding him from various locales until he is completely fenced into a tiny Alabamian postage stamp. So, I don't agree that Mendon is more Southern than it is Midwestern or even what Colin Woodard would call "Midlands". [0] https://legacyofslavery.harvard.edu/report https://legacyofslavery.harvard.edu/report