The Upper Peninsula of Michigan--also known as Upper Michigan or colloquially the U.P.--is the northern and more elevated of the two major landmasses that make up the U.S. state of Michigan; it is separated from the Lower Peninsula by the Straits of Mackinac.  It is bounded primarily by Lake Superior to the north, separated from the Canadian province of Ontario at the east end by the St. Marys River, and flanked by Lake Huron and Lake Michigan along much of its south.  First inhabited by Algonquian-speaking Native American tribes, the area was explored by French colonists, then occupied by British forces, before being ceded to the newly established United States in the late 18th century.  After being assigned to various territorial jurisdictions, it was granted to the newly formed state of Michigan as part of the settlement of a dispute with Ohio over the city of Toledo.  Early settlers included multiple waves of people from Nordic countries, and people of Finnish ancestry make up 16% of the peninsula's population; the UP is home to the highest concentration of Finns outside Europe and the only counties of the United States where a plurality of residents claim Finnish ancestry.  The Finnish sauna and the concept of sisu have been adopted widely by residents of the Upper Peninsula.  The television program Finland Calling was for a long period the only Finnish-language television broadcast in the United States; it aired on Marquette station WLUC-TV from March 25, 1962, until March 29, 2015.  Finlandia University, America's only college with Finnish roots, is located in Hancock.  Other sizable ethnic communities in the Upper Peninsula include French-Canadian, German, Cornish, Italian, and Ojibwe ancestry.  Upper Peninsula natives speak a dialect influenced by Scandinavian and French-Canadian speech.  A popular bumper sticker, a parody of the "Say YES to Michigan" slogan promoted by state tourism officials, shows an outline of the Upper Peninsula and the slogan, "Say ya to da UP, eh!"  The dialect and culture are captured in many songs by Da Yoopers, a comedy music and skit troupe from Ishpeming, Michigan.  Residents are known as Yoopers (from "UP-ers"), and many consider themselves Yoopers before they consider themselves Michiganders.  (People living in the Lower Peninsula are commonly called "trolls" by Upper Peninsula residents, as they live "Under the Bridge".)  This regionalism is not only a result of the physical separation of the two peninsulas, but also the history of the state. The Upper Peninsula has a distinctive local cuisine.  The pasty (pronounced "pass-tee"), a kind of meat turnover originally brought to the region by Cornish miners, is popular among locals and tourists alike.  Pasty varieties include chicken, venison, pork, hamburger, and pizza.  Many restaurants serve potato sausage and cudighi, a spicy Italian meat.  Finnish immigrants contributed nisu, a cardamom-flavored sweet bread; limppu, an Eastern Finnish rye bread; pannukakku, a variant on the pancake with a custard flavor; viili (sometimes spelled "fellia"), a stretchy, fermented Finnish milk; and korppu, hard slices of toasted cinnamon bread, traditionally dipped in coffee.  Some Finnish foods such as juusto (squeaky cheese, essentially a cheese curd, like Leipäjuusto) and saunamakkara (a ring-bologna sausage) have become so ubiquitous in Upper Peninsula cuisine that they are now commonly found in most grocery stores and supermarkets.  Maple syrup is a highly prized local delicacy.  Fresh Great Lakes fish, such as the lake trout, whitefish, and (in the spring) smelt are widely eaten.  Smoked fish is also popular.  Thimbleberry jam and chokecherry jelly are a treat.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Upper_Peninsula_of_Michigan 

COMIC STRIP HUMOR  naughty=alternative behavior (Baby Blues)

Black Hawk, born Ma-ka-tai-me-she-kia-kiak (1767–1838), was a band leader and warrior of the Sauk Native American tribe in what is now the Midwest of the United States.  Although he had inherited an important historic sacred bundle from his father, he was not a hereditary civil chief.  Black Hawk earned his status as a war chief or captain by his actions:  leading raiding and war parties as a young man and then a band of Sauk warriors during the Black Hawk War of 1832.  During the War of 1812, Black Hawk fought on the side of the British against the US in the hope of pushing white American settlers away from Sauk territory.  Later, he led a band of Sauk and Fox warriors, known as the British Band, against white settlers in Illinois and present-day Wisconsin during the 1832 Black Hawk War.  After the war, he was captured by US forces and taken to the Eastern US, where he and other war leaders were taken on a tour of several cities.  Shortly before being released from custody, Black Hawk told his story to an interpreter.  Aided also by a newspaper reporter, he published Autobiography of Ma-Ka-Tai-Me-She-Kia-Kiak, or Black Hawk, Embracing the Traditions of his Nation . . .  in 1833 in Cincinnati, Ohio.  The first Native American autobiography to be published in the US, his book became an immediate bestseller and has gone through several editions.  Black Hawk died in 1838, at age 70 or 71, in what is now southeastern Iowa.  He has been honored by an enduring legacy: his book, many eponyms, and other tributes.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Hawk_(Sauk_leader) 

The University of Iowa (UI, U of I, UIowa, or simply Iowa) is a public research university in Iowa City, Iowa.  Founded in 1847, it is the oldest and the second-largest university in the state.  The University of Iowa is organized into 12 colleges offering more than 200 areas of study and seven professional degrees.  On an urban 1,880-acre campus on the banks of the Iowa River, the University of Iowa is classified among "R1:  Doctoral Universities--Very high research activity".  The university is best known for its programs in health care, law, and the fine arts, with programs ranking among the top 25 nationally in those areas.  The university was the original developer of the Master of Fine Arts degree and it operates the Iowa Writers' Workshop, which has produced 17 of the university's 46 Pulitzer Prize winners.  Iowa is a member of the Association of American Universities, the Universities Research Association, and the Big Ten Academic Alliance.  Among American universities, the University of Iowa was the first public university to open as coeducational, opened the first coeducational medical school, and opened the first Department of Religious Studies at a public university.  The University of Iowa's 33,000 students take part in nearly 500 student organizations.  Iowa's 22 varsity athletic teams, the Iowa Hawkeyes, compete in Division I of the NCAA and are members of the Big Ten Conference.  The University of Iowa alumni network exceeds 250,000 graduates.  The University of Iowa library system is the state's largest library and comprises the Main Library, the Hardin Library for the Health Sciences, five branch libraries, and the Law Library.  The University Libraries' holdings include more than five million bound volumes, more than 200,000 rare books and 1000 historical manuscript collections.  Significant holdings include Hardin Library's John Martin Rare Book Room, the Iowa Women's Archives, the Louis Szathmary culinary arts collections, the Ruth and Marvin Sackner Archive of Concrete and Visual Poetry, science fiction collections, and works of Walt Whitman.  The comic books collection in the Special Collections contains original art for 6,000 cartoons, film and television scripts, zines and other underground or amateur publications, as well as mainstream books, from throughout the 20th and 21st centuries.  Among the thousands of graduates from the University of Iowa, especially notable alumni include George Gallup, founder of the Gallup Poll (BA, 1923); Tennessee Williams, author of "A Streetcar Named Desire" and "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof" (BA 1938); Gene Wilder, comedic film and television actor (BA 1955, Communication and Theatre Arts); Andre Tippett, NFL Hall of Fame linebacker; James Van Allen, world-famous physicist and discoverer of two radiation belts (the Van Allen Belts) that surround the earth, Emeritus Carver Professor of Physics at the University of Iowa (MS 1936, PhD 1939, Physics); Mauricio Lasansky, Latin American artist known as the father of modern printmaking, founder of the University of Iowa’s ‘Iowa print group’; Albert Bandura, one of the most cited psychologists of all-time as originator of social cognitive theory (MA 1951, PhD 1952); (Mary) Flannery O'Connor, novelist and author of numerous short stories (MFA 1947, English); Sarai Sherman, a twentieth century modernist painter whose work is in major national and international collections; and John Irving, novelist who wrote The World According to Garp, A Prayer for Owen Meany, and several others (MFA 1967, English).  Jewel Prestage, the first African-American woman to earn a Ph.D. in political science, graduated with a master's and doctorate in 1954.  Tom Brokaw, Mark Mattson, and Ashton Kutcher also attended the University of Iowa.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_Iowa#Athletics 

The state of Iowa has made claim to the nickname “Hawkeyes” since the early 1800’s and in 1948, began the search for a mascot image to match the name.  Dick Spencer, a Professor of Journalism and former Look Magazine artist, sketched a smiling hawk wearing an Iowa sweater.  A contest was held to name the bird; the winner being “Herky,” as a reference to the powerful Greek God Hercules.  Herky first appeared as a costumed mascot in 1959 at a football game.  There are two possible scenarios as to where the nickname originated.  The most widely known is that the term “Hawkeye” was borrowed from the James Fenimore Cooper novel The Last of the Mohicans, where a main character is given the name “Hawkeye” by the Delaware Indians.  The connection is not clear as to why Iowans began referring to themselves as “Hawkeyes,” given that the novel takes place in and around upstate New York.  But in 1838, 12 years after the book was published, the nickname was popularized.  The second theory is that the name “Hawkeyes” is a tribute to the famous Indian Chief Black Hawk, who led the Sauk and Fox tribes and lived in what is present day eastern Iowa.  http://tourtheten.com/iowa/traditions/school-traditions/hawyekes/ 

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2416  September 7, 2021