The NPR affiliate in Ashland, Oregon, KSOR, calls itself Jefferson Public Radio; there is a State of Jefferson Community Band based in Yreka, a State of Jefferson Mathematics Congress organized by Humboldt State in California and Southern Oregon State University, even—aptly, one supposes, given the grievances of November ’41—a 108-mile State of Jefferson National Scenic Byway authorized by Uncle Sam himself, in the guise of the Forest Service. There are locksmiths, plumbers, pest exterminators, and other businesses proud to embed Jefferson in their names. (Business names are a strong indicator of regional self-awareness. The great sociologist John Shelton Reed, in trying to answer the question “Where is the South?” opted for defining it as that territory wherein the percentage of “Southern” business entries in telephone books is at least 35 percent of the number of “American” listings. “This one statistic,” writes Reed, “indicates the presence of the sort of regional institutions . . . [and] regional enthusiasm” that underlay a healthy self-identity.

There is even a musical, State of Jefferson, a delightful work based on the 1941 uprising by the Oregon composer Jason Heald.

“I had just completed a musical, National Insecurity, about Ethel and Julius Rosenberg,” Heald tells me, “and was looking for a lighter historical subject for a musical drama. The ‘mythical state of Jefferson’ is a frequent reference in this region, and I was very pleased to discover that the State of Jefferson was not mythical at all!” State of Jefferson ran on the Centerstage Theater in Roseburg, Oregon, for eighteen performances in May 2006; long may it run!

I am reminded of the Puerto Rican Independence Party, which holds that the development of a national theater is more critical to the island’s health than any gross national product. The road to self-determination, or statehood, is paved with poetry, not asphalt.