Today I went shopping for travel guides. Once again, just like when I was gonna go to Minnesota, I feel like I'm going someplace really unpopular. The bookstores of Berkeley are stacked high with travel books for destinations all around the world, but slim pickins indeed for Mississippi & Alabama. I found a Lonely Planet guide for Louisiana & the Deep South, from 2001, & the helpful guy at my friendly local travel bookstore called Lonely Planet for me to find out if an updated edition was forthcoming. Quite the opposite: they're going to discontinue that title. Doh! So I bought it.

Despite all this fun-filled art activity, sometimes I just feel like nature does a much better job.