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That article made me angry. It sounds like the writer is apologizing for being Southern. He's trying to "fit in" with the liberal elites who probably make up the bulk of the professors who are his colleagues. He way too defensive. I guess he never figured out that having people think you are dumb is an advantage. Just like Dubya keeps people thinking he's a moron so he can outsmart them at every turn. It's stratagery that works every time because people misunderestimate you.

I've traveled and known people from every state and the Southern people are the nicest, friendliest, and "wisest" of all. I have no time for anyone who thinks that they have to change to be like all the other uppity elite liberals.

"I figured the roach was a regional specialty."

He must have crawled over from Jersey through the tunnel. :)

Delis, delis, so many out there.

Years ago I lived very close to the kosher 2nd Avenue Deli right in the heart of the Lower East Side. Further down on the Lower East Side & the Bowery, Katz's Deli is a must.

For the Upper East Side, Lenny's, Siegels Kosher Delicatessen, Pastrami Queen & Hunter Deli among others.

There's the very famous theater district's Carnegie Delicatessen.

Midtown's Wolf & Lamb Delicatessen, also Sarge's Deli & Restaurant & Eisenberg Sandwich Shop, all in various sections of the East Side.

On W.79th, Artie's Delicatessen which is like going back in time.

For baked goods down on the Bowery, Yonah Schimmel Knish Bakery . You might see Louie & the Bowery Boys walking around.

In Brooklyn Adelman's Kosher Deli & Landau's Glatt Kosher Deli.

The there are many great Chinatown restaurants and Little Italy's pizza & sub shops. Now I am frigging starving!

I figured the roach was a regional specialty.

It was actually a Spanish import -- from Africa. Or so I was told a couple of months ago, at a lecture about the failed Spanish colony at Pensacola.

The Spanish trying to set up shop in Escambia Bay got creamed by a hurricane -- a big one. Archaeologists found one of the wrecks and later identified it as the flagship, and even found a personal effect of the Spanish admiral, who was killed in the hurricane. Among the "micro" remains found in the ship were carapace sections identifiable as coming from the big brown roaches some people call "palmetto bugs" and the rest of us usually just refer to as "roaches the size of Volkswagens". These bugs, our audience was told to my surprise, are part of the Columbian Exchange. (Oh, gee, thanks, Chris. ) The speaker then speculated idly that the remains from the Urca's bilges might have belonged to the ancestors of all the millions and billions of bugs we see flitting around driveways and garden walls at night.

They're already beginning to differentiate a little bit.....while visiting Cancun in 1980, I discovered one of the big brown roaches had made it into my apartment and was hanging out on my bathroom wall, no doubt waiting for a turn in the shower. He was big enough that I gave him a name, Pablo. Any bigger and I'd have had to take him down to the motor vehicle office to get him a set of tags and register him at the front desk. But I noticed that his carapace, instead of being solid dark brown, had a distinct edging of tan all around it -- the beginnings, I suppose, of a new variety or subspecies.