I know that everybody calls them "Canadian geese", but the correct name is "Canada geese". I don't know why I know that, I just do. Canada geese were saved from extinction by the invention of the mechanical corn picker because it scatters a lot of the corn on the ground, which makes it easy pickings for geese and other wildlife. Geese also eat a lot of grass, and you're right that they prefer it mowed, fertilized, and well watered. Although geese are plentiful around here, they are difficult to hunt because they have learned that nobody will shoot at them if they stay in the city limits and on the golf course. They also seem to know which farmers do not allow hunting on their property. You might catch a few of them off the reservation on opening day but, by the second day of the season, they are all back in their sanctuaries.
It's not "Down Under", which is what they call Australia, it's "Down Below", which refers to the cities of Southern Michigan and Northern Ohio. Some Yoopers call all of the Lower Peninsula "Down Below", but they don't know what they're talking about. You're right when you say that's where most of our winter visitors come from, and many of our summer visitors too. Deer hunters mostly come from Michigan cities because a nonresident license is more expensive and Ohio has lots of good deer hunting in its own state.
I have a book, "How the States Got Their Shapes" by Mark Stein. It agrees that, when the original borders were laid out in the Northwest Ordinance of 1787, the Great Lakes were not deemed to be as important to Illinois and Indiana as the rivers of the Mississippi Watershed. By 1817, the year Illinois applied for statehood, and also the year that construction commenced on the Erie Canal, people were aware of the future importance of the lakes. "For this reason, Illinois sought to have its northern border adjusted to provide the state with a window on Lake Michigan." Indiana had already adjusted its northern border for the same reason, but Illinois wanted to move its border almost 60 miles north of that. The reason being that they wanted to link the Mississippi Watershed with the Great Lakes with a series of canals, which they eventually did. There was also a strategic concern about linking Illinois to New York to provide an alternate trade route in the event that Missouri, a slave state, would ever secede from the Union, which they eventually did. That's the closest thing I could find to your assertion that "The more northern residents looked down on the southerners as lazy and not progressive, and they didn't want their state to be a backwater like, oh Indiana, so they got the border moved up."
The St. Lawrence River does not reverse itself, it always flows from the Great Lakes to the Atlantic Ocean. It's the current in the Straits of Mackinac that reverses itself, because of wind and atmospheric pressure differentials between Lake Michigan and Lake Huron, the surface elevations of which are approximately the same.
We do so have multiple political parties in the United States, it's just that the vast majority of people vote for either the Democrats or the Republicans, making them the two major parties and relegating the others to "third party" status. There is no law telling them to do that, they do it of their own free will. If the electorate ever changes its mind, one or both of the major parties could become a third party, and one of the third parties could become a major party.
When the Electoral College was put into the Constitution, they did not take political parties into account. I don't know whether or not they believed that political parties would ever be formed, but the Constitution makes no mention of them. Party politics and television have rendered the Electoral College obsolete, but nobody seems to want to change the system. I think its because it makes the states feel important, but that's just my theory.
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