I just arrived back at my desk from 10 days of visiting various family in rural New York and Maine. It's a different culture up there than I'm used to in PDX. The souvenir store also sells guns, pork sausage featured prominently in the majority of dishes at the small town potluck (I've never seen "macaroni and cheese and bacon" in real life before) and events like the slow and sociable after-church coffee hour are the highlight of the day. After I mentioned to one suspender-wearing old-timer that everyone in town seemed to be related, he quipped, "Yeeep. We're really testin' the theory of relativity here."

But the best contrast came in the form of a road sign outside Clayton, NY: