During my trip down you may recall that I posted pictures of as many of the state flags and welcome signs as I could.   Conspicuously absent was that of the state I now live in.  Let me do so now: The Mississippi state flag is the one closest to the foreground.  It is impossible to…

This weekend is special here in Cleveland.  It’s Pig Pickin’ Weekend!  For those of you (in other words almost all of you) who don’t know what I’m talking about, the Pig Pickin’ is a big barbeque competition held every year at Delta State.  Local businesses and some departments from DSU (such as the library) set…

This week at trivia night, a friend of mine observed that she hadn’t seen any African Americans at Hey Joe’s (which hosts the event).  That got me thinking of all of the places I’ve visited over the past few months.  It was impossible to disagree with her observation.   Now Delta State is something of an…

Septembers in the Delta are not the same as up North.  Last week it was nearly 100 degrees for several days.  This week it’ll be in the 90s.  Mid-afternoon still feels nearly as bad as July.  To a New Yorker like myself this is still summer weather. But you can feel the difference at night….

In previous posts I talked about the community garden run by several people at Delta State University.  Well things are going good.  We’ve got Okra, Serrano chilies, tomatoes, basil, tomatillos, and Indigo ready to be picked.  Sadly the melons fell victim to boring vine beetles and the blackberry and raspberry plants never really got off…

You might recall a post from several weeks back about how people are generally nicer in the South.  However the topic deserves more exploration.  As I noted mannerisms are different and there is more of an emphasis on politeness. For example it is considered polite to look at strangers passing by and smile.  In New…

When I first moved down to Cleveland my assumption was that there was absolutely nothing to do after business hours, let alone on the weekend.   And a clerk at the motel we stayed at the first night here confirmed exactly that.  Yet the real story is different.  As I’ve shown in previous posts, there is…

There are several perks to living down South.   One of them is to be within driving distance of a number of great cities, New Orleans among them.  It was thus a fortunate coincidence that the Society of American Archivists decided to hold their annual meeting there this year.   Now I am a systems librarian and…

The reason this blog post is a little late is because I was away this weekend.  Specifically I traveled back home for my mother’s birthday.  Suffice it to say it was a good time.  The party was great and I got to eat myself into a food coma two days in a row.  However the…

There are some things that Mississippi does right.  One of them concerns remote access to electronic databases.  For those non-library people reading this blog, the word “database” in this context refers to a service that gives patrons access to electronic versions of scholarly journals, magazines, and newspapers.  The largest collection is run by a company…