The term Rock-and-Roll was coined by Cleveland disc jockey Alan Freed back in 1951 when he would play black Rhythm & Blues records on the radio for a white teenage audience. Now Cleveland is home to the rock and roll Hall of Fame. So, yeah, Cleveland rocks!
I am visiting the midwest for a few weeks and will mostly be at colleges and universities. The midwest is the heartland of America. The are cornfields everywhere and farms growing cash crops like soy beans. Some people call the area below the Great Lakes from Detroit, Michigan to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania the “rust belt” because there was once a lot of heavy industry here like steel mills and automotive plants. Many of those factories have closed down and the work moved to places with low wages like China. Unemployment is widespread. (”They took err Jerbs!” See South Park episode Goobacks)
If you want to know the real America, you must visit the midwest. The region consists of twelve states in the north central part of the United States: Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, South Dakota, and Wisconsin. The city of Cleveland is on the southern shore of Lake Erie in the state of Ohio.
When the Europeans arrived in the 1700’s there were native America tribes living all throughout the region, including the Erie, Kickapoo and Shawnee tribes.
Pioneers like Danial Boone first explored the area and the first white settlers were mostly from England, Ireland and Scotland. But many of the cities are now populated by descendants of immigrants from Eastern European countries like Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Ukraine. Cleveland, which is in Ohio, even has an ethnic neighborhood called “Slavic Village” filled with second and third generation Poles and Czechs. You also find many African-American families living in Cleveland, descendants of former slaves from the south. This is all part of American history and is makes up American popular culture.
Cleveland is now a world-class city with skyscrapers as well as historic old buildings. It has good public transportation including a metro (Rapid Transit) and buses. There are museums, art galleries and a couple of universities including Case Western Reserve (CWRU) and Cleveland State (CSU).
