The State Everyone Flies Ove

July Letters-08

6th August, 2026.

(P.S: This letter was written in July 2026 by a participant in our pen-pal project, addressed to their pen pal. We’re sharing it here with permission. July’s theme was A letter from my corner of the world..)

Dear Stranger,

If you know Ohio at all, you may know it the way most people do: as a place you fly over on the way somewhere else. It sits in the middle of the American continent, in a region called the Midwest, and it has the kind of reputation that comes from being neither coast. People assume there is nothing here worth stopping for.

I would like to make a case to the contrary.

Ohio is, before anything else, a Great Lakes state. To the north, it is bordered by Lake Erie, one of the five massive freshwater lakes that sit between the United States and Canada, so large they behave more like inland seas than lakes. To the south, the Ohio River draws the boundary with Kentucky, wide and muscular, carrying the weight of history in its current. I grew up near the lake, which means I grew up with that particular quality of light off open water—that horizon that tricks you into thinking you are at the sea. I live now in the center of the state, in Columbus, and I carry both with me.

Columbus itself will surprise you. After Chicago, it is the largest city in the Midwest, and it ranks fourteenth among all American cities by population—facts that tend to land with a small thud when people hear them because Columbus has never been especially loud about itself. It does not announce itself; it simply gets on with things. It is also one of the fastest-growing cities in the country, and Food & Wine recently named it one of America’s next great food cities, which locals received with a satisfaction that felt less like surprise and more like: yes, finally, someone noticed.

Start with the Columbus Metropolitan Library, consistently ranked among the finest public library systems in the United States—a genuine civic treasure that residents treat as simply part of the furniture of daily life. Add to that sixteen independent bookstores scattered across the city’s neighborhoods, including The Book Loft in German Village, a labyrinthine place of thirty-two rooms packed floor to ceiling with books that people travel specifically to get lost in. You could make a very satisfying week of nothing else.

German Village itself is worth knowing. Just south of downtown, it was built by German immigrants in the mid-1800s, and at one point a third of Columbus’s entire population was German. Its brick-paved streets, wrought-iron fences, and beautifully restored red-brick homes have made it one of the largest and most celebrated privately funded historic districts in the world.

North of downtown, the Short North Arts District runs along High Street and hums as the city’s creative heart, with murals spilling from gallery walls onto sidewalks, nearly a thousand businesses (the great majority of them locally owned), and a Gallery Hop on the first Saturday of every month that draws people from across the state.

Two rivers run through the city, the Scioto and the Olentangy, and they give Columbus a shape you feel before you can quite name it. The light on the Scioto at dusk, in the right season, will stop you mid-sentence. Whetstone Park holds the Park of Roses, eleven acres of blooms that ask you, gently but firmly, to slow down.

Columbus is also a genuinely diverse city. It is home to one of the largest Somali communities in the United States, along with significant populations from across Asia, Latin America, and the broader African diaspora—something you taste in the food, hear in the languages on the street, and feel in the texture of daily life in ways that quietly contradict every flyover-state assumption.

Ohio State University anchors it all with a whole world of its own. It is the third-largest university in the United States, which means it is less a campus than a small city grafted onto a city, young and restless and intellectually alive. On its grounds, the Wexner Center for the Arts offers programming in film, visual art, performance, and architecture that punches well above its weight, showcasing work from internationally renowned artists.

And there are enough independent coffeehouses that each neighborhood seems to claim at least one worth knowing—places where the baristas learn your name, the Wi-Fi holds, and nobody watches the clock on your behalf.

People who move here from larger, louder cities often say the same thing: it is easier to live here than they expected, and far more vibrant. The commutes are short. The cost of living is reasonable-ish. And strangers, as a general rule, are kind. It’s the kind of place where people say “good morning” on the street and mean every word of it.

Ohio is a flyover state only if you never land.

Come sometime.

I’ll take you to a bookstore.

Warmly,

A Stranger from Ohio

This letter was written as part of our global pen-pal exchange —“With Love, Anonymous.”

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