Meridian, MS

If you ever have the chance, spend some time in Meridian, Mississippi. As we drove through on our way back home to Texas, we passed a State Farm billboard advertising Hurricane emergency relief efforts and insurance. This stood next to a downtown bombed out by the interstate highway system, an information economy, and the backhanded blow of suburbanizing American culture. It was a city left behind to another era, faded and charred. Some emptied out office buildings and community centers hinted at hope once held now crushed under accumulating rusted autoparts and an empty railway yard. Acres of emptied out strip malls and parking lots gave testimony to this. In a city where the only discounters and wholesalers can fill lots you can spend a night at 35 dollars, living in the postscript on the American dream The ultimate cruelty is the impotence to respond to slow motion devastation. All we did was turn back and keep on driving.