My mom sent me a link to <a href="http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5020606" target="_blank">a fun NPR piece</a> by <a href="http://www.as.ua.edu/english/04_faculty_staff/faculty/roberts_d.htm" target="_blank">Diane Roberts</a>* who was one of my professors at <a href="http:///www.ua.edu" target="_blank">UA</a>. It's about buying Krispy Kreme donuts in London, and it's well worth a listen. As much as I enjoyed the piece, it carried an unsettling subtext**, a terrible idea that seems basic to the 21st century American worldview.

It's come to be expected, by Americans at least, that your environment can and should be exactly the same no matter where in the world you are so that you can feel at home wherever you go; environmental foreignness can be, if not erased, at least tamed by the availability of familiar goods. A scant two decades ago, Anne Tyler lampooned this attitude in the person of Macon Leary, <em>The Accidental Tourist</em>'s author of guidebooks for people who hate to travel. The built environment of the US has suffered tremendously under this notion (strip-mall-ification), and American business&mdash;driven by the goal of penetrating every possible market and the methodology of exhaustive branding&mdash;is doing all it can to insure that the rest of the world suffers along with us. I'll never forget how I felt when, on my first trip out of the US, I arrived in Belfast city centre to find a McDonalds and a Gap&mdash;wronged! 

Some people would find this comforting, as Roberts does when she sees the "Hot Now" sign lit up in Harrods: <p class="quote">Hot fat. Hot sugar. Hot now! The sign announcing fresh-from-the-oven donuts is lit up just like it is on Highway 231 in Dothan, Alabama, or Monroe Street in Tallahassee, Florida.</p> Or on Highway 82 in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, she might have added. All well and good, unless it bothers you that Alabama and Utah, to pull an example from thin air, look pretty much the same. Not exactly a fair example, I'll admit, given the radical difference in the landscape, but you can get Krispy Kreme donuts at my neighborhood grocery store here in Salt Lake City (although they are not HOT NOW). I remember, not more than seven or eight years ago, someone from St. Louis complaining that she couldn't get Krispy Kremes there. And once upon a time, <a href="http://tinyurl.com/cn83n" target="_blank">an entire movie plot</a> (I didn't say a good one) was constructed around the regional exclusivity of a particular brand of beer. Can't anything be just local any more? Not if there's a buck to be made! Obviously. 

Even Tuscaloosa's claim-to-fame barbecue joint, <a href="http://www.dreamlandbbq.com/main/default.asp" target="_blank">Dreamland</a>, is franchising now and has locations in Georgia. Dreamland in Georgia!! Ain't nothin' like 'em nowhere&mdash;except at one of these eight locations and coming soon to a strip mall near you! I can assure you that, though the ribs are delicious, the real Dreamland experience can't be had without a trip to the original location, a little dive off Jug Factory Road in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. Dreamland anywhere else is not really Dreamland, it's just another restaurant. I only hope a similar fate doesn't befall my own hometown barbecue dive, the Twix-n-Tween, which is special because of its singularity (in addition to its kick-ass pulled pork barbecue). If you're traveling through Centreville, Alabama, I recommend stopping there. It's not on the main highway (82 E) any more, but its truck-stop charm, tasty barbecue, and especially the onion rings, are well worth the slight detour.
<p class="note">*In addition to being a wonderful teacher and a fascinating person, Diane Roberts embodies my ideal of the "professor." Read her <a href="http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4486972" target="_blank">NPR bio</a> to see why. Rather than confining her intellectual inquiry to the hallowed halls of the University and the brittle pages of peer-reviewed journals, she "professes" everywhere, writing for general audience publications and broadcasting on NPR and the BBC. She is the kind of English professor I would have wanted to be had I summoned the will to finish my PhD.</p><p class="note">**I don't accuse Diane Roberts of consciously holding either of these views, in fact I'm certain that she doesn't.</p>