Northern Charm

As we noted in our Celebrating the States blog last year, I was born in that city that President Kennedy dryly noted for its "northern charm" and "southern efficiency." Both of my parents and I were born there because northern Virginia -- then part of the rural South -- in those years had no maternity ward. My younger brother was born in Fairfax just a year after I would, and now the entire region is a model of suburban sprawl and development.

After spending my middle school years in Kansas City, I returned to the DC area, this time in Annapolis, Maryland -- by then the southernmost part of the metropolitan North. It was not until many years later, however, that I actually moved north of the Mason-Dixon line: JFK was speaking both culturally and latitudinally when he placed the capital of the Union in Dixie.