Bakersfield

Well, I'm here in Bakersfield, CA - well, at this moment I'm actually in Shafter. It's a bit too rural to be called a "suburb". I'm working at the experiment station for a week extracting cotton DNA as part of my graduate research project. This place is eerily similar to my hometown - all you'd have to do is swap the almond and orange groves for tobacco and soybean fields, and replace Hispanics with Blacks and VOILA! The land is perfectly flat (which I like), and in the mornings you can see the mountains surrounding the San Joaquin valley. I'm here until Tuesday, and I'm missing Shonta and the kids terribly.

I thought our local airport was small. Meadows Air Field makes Greenville-Spartanburg look like O'Hare. Getting from check-in to my plane shouldn't take more than 52 seconds.

I'm heading to La Crascenta tomorrow. I'm excited - why is the story about the country mouse who went to visit the city mouse popping into my head? I hate traffic, but from looking at a map it appears that I'll be off the freeway before I make it to L.A. proper. Plus, how busy can the highways be on a Saturday morning?

I caught the Larry King show last nite in my hotel room. He had a panel on a Protestant minister, Muslim expert, Rabbi, Catholic priest, and an atheist. They were covering topics regarding what happens to us when we die, what their thoughts were re Jesus, etc. I don't watch the show, so I don't know what Larry's normally like, but last night he sure was smug and emitted an air of condescencion. I stopped watching when the atheist said that there wasn't a shred of secular evidence to support the contention that Jesus was a real person. I assume no one on the panel ever read Josephus. Of course there are other secular references, and I was surprised that no one called her on that.

99.3 FM Bakersfield is slammin'!!! It's an old-school R & B station and it's really taking me back... Of course, if they announce that Evelyn "Champagne" King is performing for Cinco de Mayo one more time I'm gonna scream. She didn't have that many hits back in the day.