Minnesota Nice
Minnesota Nice
Minnesota is noted for two things. It is “The Land 10,000 Lakes” and the people are “NICE.” We can’t take much credit for the 10,000 lakes, actually 11,000 plus lakes with an area of five acres or more. Or that the state has more shoreline than any other state. They were here long before current Minnesota residents were enjoying them.
“Minnesota Nice” is something else and harder to understand, but the word is out, Minnesota has a lot of nice people. Is it because the native people, who thought Minnesota was their home, before the Europeans arrived were nice? We really don’t know because when the Europeans cleared the land to put it to better use, they also cleared out the native people who had naively thought this was their home. That was not nice. However, Minnesota people evolved from being a little rough around the edges to becoming nice. What is strange is that people who move here from other places, like Wisconsin, become nice also. Even people from other countries. Minnesota has the country’s largest populations of recent immigrant Hmong and Somali people and they are nice. Maybe they are a little weird, having immigrated from countries where they had never seen snow to one of the coldest climates in the lower forty-eight, but they are nice.
Whatever the cause or reason, if we practice what we are accused of being, Minnesota Nice will be real.
Alfred Wellnitz Books 