Back in the MACT

Neal Stephenson, in the foreword to David Foster Wallace's Everything and More, wrote about growing up as a faculty kid in a Midwestern American College Town (MACT). The six year old Stephenson, whose father was a professor of Electrical Engineering, moved to Ames, Iowa the year I was born. He attended Ames High School as did I. When I met Stephenson in person, we compared notes and discovered that some of my friends were the younger siblings of his friends.

Now I am back in the midwest -- in the MACT of East Lansing, Michigan. Feels like home.

Everything and More foreword (2003): When I was a boy growing up in Ames, Iowa, I belonged to a Boy Scout troop whose adult supervision consisted almost entirely of professors from the Iowa State University of Science and Technology ...

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