What a lovely productive day we had! Just goes to show what taking a day off will do for your general outlook & ability to get stuff done the next day. Driving north from Jackson, we stumbled upon a little Chinese take-out place that is part of a gas station. The sign outside tells you to place your order inside the gas station. We talked to the owner, Van, who is Chinese-Vietnamese & has lived in Jackson for something like 20 years. He has an accent like nothing else I've ever heard before, an amazing blend of about 30% Vietnamese & 70% Mississippi. He had lots of interesting things to say, about the restaurant business, about the racism he encountered when he first came to Jackson (intense, on a daily basis) & how it's improved in the last 20 years. He works 7 days a week, from 5 am to 9 pm. Sometimes he sleeps there instead of going home to Jackson. We also interviewed his adorable little 7-year-old girl, who began all her answers to our questions with "Yes Ma'am" & "No Ma'am". I swear people around here are so polite I feel like the rudest most uncultured clod ever. Any stranger who walks within 10 yards of you feels obliged to give a friendly greeting.


We really are in cotton country now. We're lucky to be here during the cotton harvest. Many of the fields are all fluffy white, ready to be harvested, while others are freshly harvested, with giant cotton bales sitting along the edges. I have a little fetish for cotton bales; they're just these massive truck-sized blocks of solid cotton all mushed together. They have this feeling of severe density that kinda rocks my imagination. I'll try to post some photos of them in the next couple days.