MONDAY MASHUP: The Michigan hand map
Strange Maps blog decodes this typical Michigan hand map. Photo: Strange Maps
If you’re a Michigander or a Michigan transplant like me, you have probably done this.
Someone asks you where you live, you lift your hand lift, revealing…the mitten. Also known as the Lower Peninsula.
Living in Lansing, I point to the middle of my palm. I live here.
Perhaps it’s a bit rough. But the hand, in this case, makes a sufficient map. And the Strange Maps blog explains just how this hand map is used and what each finger represents. Like how the thumb outlines the east side of Saginaw Bay and the pinkie represents the Leelanau Peninsula.
And don’t worry, the Upper Peninsula is explained too.
A true mashup? Debatable. But at least this map is on hand (ha!) wherever you go.
I hate to be picky but I think your illustration works best for the lower peninsula when the left hand is used and the view is from the top v. the palm.
This from someone who grew up in Michigan and who uses this illustration frequently.
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Gary, I agree. Except…when you use the left for the Lower Peninsula, the right hand has the wrong orientation for making the Upper Peninsula.
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I like to extend my little finger a bit to illustrate the location of the Leelanau pennisula.
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This as always fun to do to people when we go to conventions out of state and meet someone ,say, from Nebraska. When they ask where I live in Michigan,I point to my hand and show them , they look at me like I owe them more of an explanation or I’m nuts or something till they realize oh yeah, Michigan mitten, and of course this opens up the conversation to where they have relatives or whatever. I love it and I am a MI native that was born,raised,and still resides on the “Sunrise Side”, between the 2nd & 3rd knuckle.
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…but shouldn’t the U.P. really be part of Wisconsin anyway. Talk
about diverting natural boundaries. And maybe Michigan should sell the U.P. to Wisconsin.
1. it would provide money to invest in lower peninsula infrastructure
such as Detroit’s sewer system and the reinvention of Detroit.
2. maybe Wisconsin would do a better job of regulating the mining industry.
I know, ain’t gonna happen but…..
gw
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Unless your right pinky is double jointed
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