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We have beautiful areas up North, too, and those down South were no more or less attractive. The Flint Hills in Kansas, the lakes and rivers and forests of Wisconsin and Minnesota, the rural areas of Vermont or New York or any other area of the North in the fall when the leaves are changing, the Great Lakes shore line. I'd put any of them on a par with your beaches and marshes and hills of the South.

I agree that there are great places in the North. In fact, there are wonderful places all over the country. I've been to all 50 states, and I didn't find any of them as blah as you seem to find the South. But tastes differ.

We have amazing architecture up here as well. Frank Lloyd Wright did his best work in the Chicago area and examples of his creations are all over.

I like FLW's work. One of my sons is an architect and has toured some of Wright's homes in the Chicago area. One of my uncles, also an architect, was a student of Wright's at Taliesin West. Wright was a character.

I think that the difference is that I like diversity and people down South want everything to be the same. Growing up in Chicago you could go from one end of Lawerence Avenue to the other and literally travel the entire world by passing through different neighborhoods. Mexico, Puerto Rico, Poland, Ukraine, Sweden, Ireland, Russia, Israel, China, Korea all were clustered on or near Lawrence or Clark or points east and west. Amazing restaurants and music, fascinating people. Maybe I'm wrong but one thing I notice about the South and its people is you don't like change. You don't go for different. When you're home you want everything to be just like you, and get upset when it's not.

LOL! You are overgeneralizing.

While the areas where I grew up may not have had the melting pot kind of diversity of Chicago, I listened in Texas to local radio stations play Cajun, Mexican, and Czech oompa music, and I went to school with people from all three of those cultures as well as second generation Italians. There was even an American Indian in my Boy Scout troop. In Georgia, we would see black women carrying baskets on their heads much like people did in Africa. We'd listen to blacks speaking Gullah in the parks, and on the radio and on records we'd listen to Howlin' Wolf, Lightnin' Hopkins, and Leadbelly. When I was a boy we went to see Risa Stevens sing Carmen when the Met toured San Antonio. My personal choice in music nowadays is baroque opera/oratorios.

I liked my Irish landlady when I lived in Boston as a student. She had a nice brogue. I marched in a large annual St. Patrick's Day Parade in the South. We didn't dye our local river green or have green beer though, but as a marcher I did get squirted with green ink.

I wish nine more years in the South for you. That's the greatest kindness I could do you. Maybe you could enjoy our Cajun, Vietnamese, Thai, Indian, Mexican, Turkish, South and Middle American, French, Italian, Middle Eastern, barbeque, German, Czech, fresh seafood, soul food, etc., restaurants this time around. We even have pizza here though it may not be as good as Chicago pizza.

Cheers.