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2001-09-20 - 6:27 a.m.

DAUGHTER OF THE RUST BELT

Milwaukee is my adopted home. There�s not much fancy about the town but there�s not much fancy about me either and it seems to suit me fairly well. I don�t bowl often, I dislike brats and beer, and I�m neither German nor Polish but I�m still a Milwaukean. Those things are just part of the stereotype, although like most stereotypes a bit of truth lurks within.

There�s something solid, if a bit stodgy, about this rust belt city just as there is something solid, if a bit stodgy, about me. Neither I nor most parts of the city are awake or at our best after 10:00 p.m. We rise early, we work hard, and we�re easily overlooked or under-appreciated. Occasionally, we put on airs. I�ve been known to dress in costume and pretend I�m a great dancer. Soon this city will put on a brise soleil as part of an art museum designed by Calatrava and pretend it is a great mecca of culture.

Like me, the city is a homebody. It welcomes family, not strangers out for a good time. It�s hard to dress this city up and take it out for company. I know. I�ve tried. I have a group of friends, including Bev, Lobotomybabe, The-Queen,, and Mary, who get together every year in a different city. The-Queen, who is a benevolent queen, puts it on the official list, but Milwaukee keeps going to the unofficial bottom of the list. I couldn�t even entice Bev and Mary with a trip to Chicago with a side trip to Milwaukee.

They don�t know what they are missing. Whatever this city lacks, Lake Michigan makes up for. Lake Michigan with its bluffs, its waves, and its vastness might as well be a fresh-water ocean. The lake is never the same two days in a row. Its blues and greens and greys combine and re-combine out from the shoreline. In the winter, the steam sometimes rises and causes great fluffy clouds above it even when there is a dearth of clouds in the rest of the sky. Like the city that sits on its southwest and me, it has depths and undertows only imagined at a casual glance.

Yes, Milwaukee still has a few factories left. Mornings, when the wind blows the right direction down by the highway, you can smell yeast from the factory. Until recently, the chocolate odor of the candy factory would waft over downtown. Luckily, I can forget about the Harley factory between almost-yearly visits from the Harley hordes. (The last time the hordes visited in their noisy motorcycles they got between me and my office and just wouldn�t stop coming. They messed up all the traffic downtown and disturbed the peaceful streets�and everyone but me seemed to love them.)

Whatever its flaws, this city has stuck on me�and not like a burr. It�s unpretentious, it�s home, and it�s mine�but what does a girl from Detroit know about cities anyway?

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