EAST IS EAST,WEST IS WEST & THE TWAIN MAY NEVER MEET

June -- the month of college graduations. Diplomas with eastern addresses and western addresses.

Two cultural forces of opposite thrust have forever helped shape the course of our country. One thrusts eastward, the other westward. One can be felt in the sleek condos of Manhattan and the ivy-walls of Harvard; the other in the coffee-shops of San Francisco and the silver-studios of Hollywood. Often the twain never meets.

This point/counterpoint is not exact, but it is fairly consistent. Since our first settlements hugged the Atlantic coastline, there has been this sense that the East is the safe, solid, original from whence we came. Whereas the West (at first just over the Appalachians, then the Mississippi, finally the Rockies) is the dangerous but exciting future toward which we're destined.

Examples are strewn all across our history, and politicians and this year's graduates ignore them at their peril.

In literature there was always been the tailored elites of Boston, New York and Philadelphia in contrast to the grungy hunters, miners and cowhands just past that invisible line easterners call the frontier. And while many in the East, from James Fenimore Cooper to Horace Greeley to the pulp magazines, have romanticized the West, they have usually remained the safe side of the frontier.

In music there has always been the Europic-centered symphony orchestras in the East, while America's unique contributions like jazz, dixie, blues and country have all sprung up from the West. Think Leonard Bernstein vs. Keith Urban.
The list of examples is long and revealing. But never more revealing than in the contrast between universities. No one has written this and no one has sworn to this, but there is an unspoken campus language that seems to say the further East your degree, the further your prospects of success will be. And while there are scores of stellar universities throughout the land, certain names ring with the resounding tones of legitimacy.

Harvard...! Yale...! Princeton....! Columbia....!

For those Skull&Bones conspiracy theorists, there is always plenty of "evidence" to convince them that only the eastern elites rise to the top in our land. And while the last three presidents hailed from Arkansas, Texas and now Chicago, it is fair to say that an impressive majority of America's hierarchy graduate eastern universities.

Oh and if you're looking for the most recent examples, consider how eight of the current nine Supreme Court Justices rose from the Ivy League. The new nominee...? Well, yes, she comes from their too. Maybe living here in Park Ridge all these years, it's time to move east. I'm thinking the next community over: Edison Park!