Betting, Boxing, Batting, and a Spiffy Bookstore

     You can find all of the above by road tripping it to Kentucky-ana.  Park yourself for a day or three in Louisville.  We were there post-Derby week and found it quite possible to lose money easily at Churchill Downs.  The ponies will take your wallet for a weight losing spin any time.

   Muhammad Ali's Museum captures both the athlete and the activist and brings back many memories.  No pictures were allowed on the day we were there.  The factory where the Louisville Slugger bat continues to be made was informative and fun even for those who aren't baseball fans. It's also a museum that allows a bit of time travel.  Here I am giving the Bambino some tips on his swing.

   There was a brief note some months back in the N.Y. Times travel section lauding Carmichael's, Louisville oldest independent bookstore.  I made a note of that endorsement and stopped by.  It's a small good place, wherein I found some fiction titles of which I had not heard,(sniff, sniff) e.g., Hygiene and the Assassin by Amelie Nothomb and Kockroach by Tyler Knox.  The former is the story of a dying Nobel Prize winning novelist whose misogyny and bigotry meets its match in an interview with a female journalist who refuses to be impressed by his stature.  The latter novel is the tale of an insect who awakes one morning in horror to discover that he has been turned into a human.  Sound familar?  The trip produced a birthday present for Daughter the Elder.  She'll be surprised that's it not a book.