Back in my Iowa City days, Michael Fedman came to town with his show “Whad’Ya Know.” While interviewing people in the audience, he asked one woman where she was from. She answered, “Nowheresville.” When pressed, she finally admitted to being from Burlington, Iowa, but went on to say, more or less, that Iowa was an unlivable backwater. For her, Iowa City, being a college town and all, served as a barely acceptable outpost of civilization.

I sensed the same self-contempt in the questioner at the reading.

“Culture” is not something some people have and others don’t. It’s not something that is transmitted only via NPR and validated by a university degree. It’s also where you’re from and what forms you, for good and for ill. It’s the soup you’re simmered in, and as the woman on the radio talked about Nowheresville, I wondered what one of the musicians on stage — a guy who has produced Grammy-nominated albums and toured with Lucinda Williams — was thinking. He, too, called Burlington home.

Aaargh. That’s how I felt and feel about such people and their idea of culture.

Anyhow, sorry for the ramble.

One final note: the idea that we Americans came from nothing and inherit nothing could, with equal plausibility, be turned on its head: We Americans come from everything and inherit everything.