Yes, not only that, but all 50 states use the same currency, and there's nothing like a border you need to cross to get into any of them. No checkpoints, you don't need a passport or anything, there's just a sign on the highway saying "Entering Missouri" or whatever. Plus, aside from regional differences and dialects/accents, we all share a common history and culture. Traveling through states is more like traveling through different cities all in the same country in Europe. You probably already know this, just re-iterating. Though there still is a rather big difference between the north and the south. When you cross the Mason\Dixon line, it's almost like entering a different country (except that they speak the same language etc). The attitudes are different, and they have a great pride in being Southern. The country almost split in two during the Civil War, and even today some people in the south think it should have. But in all legal regards of course it's all one country. Virginia is a Southern state.
Fun fact: we actually were a confederacy of states at one point. You may or may not know that we declared independence in 1776, but Washington wasn’t president until 1789. We tried a different constitutional first, and it just didn’t work. States ended up competing rather than working together and there were tons of problems with standards. We actually had a concrete example of why it didn’t work last year during a storm. Texas is weird and not connected to the rest of the US power grid. They didn’t want federal regulation that would have made them do things like weather proofing. Then when bad weather hit and their plants got knocked out, their whole network collapsed and stayed down for a week. Florida has worse weather and loses power plants all the time, but the power never goes out there because their in the shared grid and the nearby states send power to it. As said too, it’s not like Europe where you can’t really cross a border without knowing you did. Even within the EU, there are still checkpoints, right? Not here, you can cross a state border and not know. They’re far more analogous to your voivodeships. Virginia is a fairly diverse place. It’s right in between the north and south. The cities and suburbs on the east side of it are fairly liberal: there’s a decent amount of money there and full of young college educated whites as well as a mix of African Americans. On the west side the Appalachian Mountains makes everything more remote, poor, less educated, and more white, which tend to be conservative. The culture in the mountains is completely different to the culture of suburbia.
I can speak from experience that a good locksmith is VERY hard to find. I have 6 restaurants with 6 safes, 12 (at least) exterior doors, 6 offices, 6 LQ cages/rooms, and who knows how many padlocks (actually I could tell you exactly how many locks I have if I was in the office right now). And I have roughly 30 people who carry keys. Some of them open exterior doors only (prep cooks), some LQ rooms (bar keys), some all locks in each store (manager keys), and some that unlock every door/lock in every store (me and the VPs). Once a year, all of those locks get recoded unless by some miracle no key holder has quit or been fired. Any time a manager gets fired (not often) the doors and safe get recoded too. As for finding a locksmith to take care of all this in a timely fashion? Good luck. Most of them have better things to do, like coding locks for huge office buildings or massive corporations. And like everyone else in America, they have no staff to help them. I've got a good regular guy now, but every time I see him he has a new apprentice. Usually it's a nephew or a cousin of his. No experience required, no certification, nothing but a pulse and willingness to learn required. He pays them like $30/hr, and still nobody wants to do it. Not sure why... that looks like a great job to me: drive around, drink coffee, get free food (I give all of my contractors meals and buy them and their spouses dinner when they come in to ensure that they take phone call before everyone else's). As for the OPs question, anybody who wants work in America can usually find it they work hard, are willing to learn, and keep their nose clean. Seriously... I'll hire anybody so long as they're not a sex offender. Violent ex-cons are negotiable depending on how hard up I am, which these days, is all crisis all the time.
A very lady-like friend once worked for HR in a company that fabricated all sorts of industrial stuff and hired a fair number of formerly troubled young people as welders, etc. She had led a very sheltered life herself, but learned to say with a straight face and perfect aplomb, "Now, if your felony was not committed with a gun, we can work with you."
I would advise the OP not to attempt to write about life in the United States if he's never been here.
Oh, I dunno. I'm writing about West Germany in the mid-1980s and I only spent a couple-three days there in 1989. It's wonderful what you can learn by research.
Life in the US is so diverse that even the strangest notions may make a certain amount of sense. I live in a culture where people get together to brand cattle, castrate the males, and follow up with a barbecue featuring the extractions as a main course. Lives of some Americans revolve around how to get their kids to the ten different activates they pursue every week. Some folks get together to burn police stations, lose a fortune betting on greyhound races, dress up like faeries and witches, or play curling (or do curling or participate in curling- I don't know the proper verb).
With all due respect, I don't recall things like that ever stopping Americans from writing about literary every single culture in the world
There is a quite marked differences between Brooklyn and "Da Bronx" and the other boroughs in NYC (Queens, Manhattan, Staten Island), although not quite as defined as they used to be in this era of mass media and the internet. There were times not all that long ago when there were quite delineated, very different neighborhoods within a several block radius - Germantown, Little Italy, China Town and numerous other enclaves based on country of origin, religion, and/or culture. Over the last half century most of them have disappeared, although some still remain. In my own city/town there's huge difference between the "haves" and "have nots;" it all depends upon which side of "The Ave." you live on. Mind you, it's the difference between middle/upper middle class and the wealthy. The homes in my area below "The Ave." sell for mid to high six figures; my house is LR, 2BR, Kitch, 1Bath on 1/10th of an acre. In areas above "The Ave." the homes are massive and built on multiple acres, selling for seven and eight figures.
I believe you can find these same differences within every country. So maybe my north/south divide really isn't much of a divide, though we did nearly split over it. In Ireland churches used to bomb each other (maybe still do?) over minor differences, and these if I understand correctly are all Christian churches, just different denominations. Certainly every country has differences between rich and poor, and between good neighborhoods and bad ones. My main point was that all of the US shares the same currency, history, and essentially the same culture. You don't have to go through borders with passport-checks or change your money or learn a new language before visiting a neighboring state.
Absolutely true. We all have been noting the differences between areas of the US. I was merely pointing out that even those small areas can have major differences. Most of us are very much the same no matter where we live. We want the "simple" life where we do our work, raise our families, live our lives of everyday domestic drama, and otherwise just want the world to leave us the fu<k alone. People are people. If the OP wants to set their story in an American location that's fine. For the locale to be believable OP needs to pick a specific part of the country and begin detailed research.
On top of just plain regional differences, the race cultural divide can also be quite large, and be just random things. As a white guy married to a black woman, the wife and I often notice things that are just different that you’d never notice on your own. Things like at a white BBQ, you get your own food and at a black one, you get served by the host. At white thanksgiving, the patriarch of the family cuts the bird and in a black house the matriarch does. White funerals are somber and quiet, black ones are more… (not sure what word to use here, “festive” doesn’t sound right,) but it’s more a celebration of the deceased’s life, as opposed to saying goodbye.
Tablet and projectors now. At least, in college, the professor had her tablet hooked up to an iver head projector, and with her stylist, wrote on the "board"
This has been true for a very long time, universities have more money than high school. They were using projectors and touchscreens when I was in college from 2004-2008. They have whiteboards too, they act as the projector screen, which is nice because they often use both together, projecting something onto the whiteboard, then drawing on it with the dry erase markers.
I've been thinking something similar reading through this thread--in my experience, diversity is fractal. You can find the same "amount" of it at any scale. In the US there are big differences between the southeast, northeast, midwest, west coast etc. But there are just as big differences between states within each of those regions. And just as big difference within states, and within cities, and within a neighborhood. I guess I agree with the advice to pick a specific locale and do a lot of research. You'll probably be fine. But also don't forget to work in a few off-kilter things, and don't assume everything defaults to the "average" for your city/state/region/whatever. You're writing a story about a place, not an average of several places, and so it has to have at least a few things that make it different in order to even be believable.
Reminds me of that Primus song, "American Life." Primus is interesting because nearly every song is a character study. I'm not exaggerating, nearly every one. My favorite lyrically is probably Mrs. Blaileen (how's that for a name? haha), but that wouldn't fit here. American Life Primus In a town in southernmost Sicily Lived a family too proud to be poor In the year that fever took father away They hastened for American shores Now a mother and her son are standing in line It's a cold day on Ellis Isle And they look to the Statue of Liberty For the boy we have American life Ong is a Laotian refugee He works in the audio trade The smoke from flux is filling his lungs He's earning minimum wage Spending spare time down on San Pablo Ave Once a week gets a woman for the night And he writes home tales of prosperity For the boy we have American life Bob is an unemployed veteran Born and bred in the South Bronx He's living off the streets down in east L.A. Residing in a cardboard box Now he plays a little guit and he has a small dog Searching for aluminum cans And he holds on tight to his dignity He was born into American life
Smart Boards. Yep, Catrin mentioned it above. I'm just adding tablets to the list. Tablets werent as advanced then (2004-2008) as they are now, especially for school/academic use.
OK. I'm in for an art teacher tomorrow. Don't know how useful that will be, but hey, digital is cheap. And the Art room is close to the metal and wood shops, if that would be of interest. Maybe I could slip around when nobody's there and take a few photos. (Note, nobody will mind me taking pictures of the equipment. It's just that, these past few years, things have gotten so weird that if any adult takes an unauthorized photo of a child or youth on school grounds, it's assumed it's wanted for pornographic purposes. Sad, but there it is.) The school is in a semi-rural, semi-suburban area. It has an Agricultural Sciences program affiliated with the Future Farmers of America, with a greenhouse, plant-starting nursery, and all the rest of it. That won't help you with your trades angle, but it tells you there's a good-sized working class/farming population in the area. A few years ago they stopped the Ag Sciences program, thinking it wasn't needed anymore. Result? Disaster. There are kids at that school who have not use at all in academics, but you could keep them interested enough in horticulture, agriculture, and animal husbandry to keep them out of trouble and bring them to graduation. The program was reinstated the next year.
I always dreaded it when I had to sub for a teacher who used those flat projectors. Not the overheads, but the smaller ones that go to the SmartBoard digitally. There was never enough room on the writing surface to get everything in, especially if the marker had a fat point. And with my handwriting . . . The kids could never read it. I'd rather write on the board, with chalk or with a stylus, so I can make my letters and numbers nice and big and make sure they're all there. I'm talking something like this:
Personally, I find any visual reference extremely helpful. That's why I usually sketch out more complex scenes in my stories. Thanks for the reminder. I do sometimes get caught up in research and forget that I'm writing fiction Although, I believe any central government tries to uphold some sort of standard through the entire country, right? As in, goods, laws, culture, etc. For example, correct me if I'm wrong, but almost every state teaches history similarly right? Every country in Europe teaches history differently (In elementary schools and high schools at least). Despite their historic significance, events like the partition of India or Xinhai Revolution are barely footnotes in our history books, in favor of things like the November Uprising (although, I guess it must've been a big thing worldwide since the county seat of Richmond got its name thanks to that event). Same goes for the choice of literature kids are supposed to be acquainted with (Probably most of the world studies "The sorrows of young Werther", "Faust" and "King Lear", but I bet none of your schools ever taught you about "Dziady".) Or do the differences between states go that far and I'm just unaware of it?
Wrong. Remember ... 50 states ==> 50 state boards of education. Each state board generates its own roster of acceptable textbooks for each subject. I don't know if evey public school in a particular state has to use the exact same textbook for each subject, or if the state boards promulgate a list and the schools get to choose from the list. It may work one way in some states and the other way in the rest. Standards in law? 49 states in the U.S. base their state laws on English common law. Louisiana bases its state laws on Napolenic law.
No, although education is very similar, it’s run per state and can have some very large differences. History does tend to be the biggest difference, and usually politically based. Northern states and southern states tend to treat the civil war differently. Southern states tend to teach it from the point of view of a states rights issue, and northern ones as a human rights issue. Southern states also tend to try and whitewash the racism of the past a little. I have a friend in Arkansas who did not know Andrew Jackson killed more people than Hitler, and that doesn’t seem uncommon in the South. They are also in the process of minimizing teaching of MLK, women suffrage, and the KKK under the guise of teaching pro American values. I imagine WWII is taught differently in your country than in your neighbours. Germany I know heavily teaches it’s evils, but I’ll bet Russia never mentions the pact with Hitler to carve up Poland. Same type of thing here.
