Ah, the Midwest, the gracious “heartland” where I spent the hunk of my career when I returned to America from Europe.  I actually spent little time in Wisconsin.  I know more about Milwaukee than I do about Madison, although I suspect there is at least one physician there I helped train and get into some kind of desk job because he seemed to be scared of patients. Response to criticism was not his strong suit, either.  I blocked him out so completely I cannot remember his name now.  I do remember how grateful he was that I had figured out something that sounded good to put on his letter of recommendation for this public health type desk job.  I had asked everybody in the department for advice on how to word it.  “Is at his best dealing with patients earlier in the process of developing illness” is something like what I came up with.

Although regional generalizations are by definition rather superficial, I suspect that the mentality in Wisconsin is more similar to Kansas or Ohio than it is different.  The true colorful eccentrics — not grossly pathological, but eccentric — seem to be found in the Midwestern United States the way in France, they were found in the smaller, even semi-rural towns.  I remember the writer Richepin wrote things about such eccentrics that I loved.  He is hard to find in English, but there is at least one link. Read more on Touchy Musician: Everybody’s A Critic…