Welcome to the Michigan Goes Global edition of Five Things you need to know about Michigan where we try and see how Michigan and Michiganians have fared on the wider stage over the last week or so. Somehow we didn't have room to fully explore Grand Rapids' title as the new Bingo Capitol of the USA with more bingo per capita than any city in the nation or Chief Executive Magazine ranking Michigan as the 3rd worst state to run a business in because with California & New York as the other two, it just didn't seem as depressing as it was intended to be. 
So maybe we're not a Single State after all
In Driving Towards Disaster, Newsweek says "If you want to see what hard times look like, come to Michigan" and suggests that maybe many of the factors that landed us in the ditch - $100-a-barrel oil, the credit crisis, globalization - also are preying on the rest of the nation and that perhaps Michigan is more of a canary in the coalmine than the hackneyed "single-state recession" we've been written off as for the past several years. If that's the case, might I suggest that a short term cash giveaway might not be sufficient to transform our national economy?
Miss America 2008, Kirstin Haglund
Farmington Hills resident Kirsten Haglund was crowned Miss America 2008 on Saturday night (YouTube video). Haglund was named Miss Michigan in 2007 and her chosen cause was raising awareness about eating disorders. In their article about her pageant win, the Detroit News notes that Michigan's last Miss America was Kaye Lani Rae Rafko of Monroe in 1988. I have to note that in an effort to re-energize the show, the people who come up with such ideas decided on Miss America: Reality Check wherein 52 beauty queens live in one house and get ready for the pageant. I'm not seeing the reality here...
The North Coast Project Takes Off
The Center for Michigan featured this article about the North Coast Project by former Farmington Hills mayor Vicki Barnett (seriously, I had no idea of the Farmington Hills thing when I clipped this last week). She notes that taken as a whole, the Great Lakes States form the third largest economy in the world with more of the world's top 100 universities of any region on Earth, 1/3 of America's university graduates and 1/3 of our nation's patents. Despite these achievements, our region commercializes only a scant percentage of these patents and continues to bleed jobs and commerce to a global economy. The solution? Form an economic alliance and develop a common North Coast agenda. Count me in.
Evergreen in Fog by Burton Warpup
Well, since the sub-theme is Farmington Hills and the stories were so darn big, there was no choice but to use this photo of a massive pine from Farmington Hills.
Farmington Hills, Michigan
Wikipedia's entry on Farmington Hills notes that the first settlers in Farmington Township were Quakers and that with a 2000 population of 82,111, it's the most populous city in Oakland County. 
As a measure of just how up-to-date Wikipedia is, the entry also says it's the home to Miss America 2008 (and also Mork & Mindy's Pam Dawber). The web site of the City of Farmington Hills says that city hosts a great concentration of advanced manufacturing research, engineering and design firms and in addition to a number of these businesses, the Absolute Michigan search for Farmington Hills notes that the city is home to the Golf Association of Michigan and The Holocaust Memorial Center, the nation's first museum dedicated to the memory of the Holocaust. As with everywhere else in Michigan, it'll be warm in Farmington Hills today: up to 50!
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