Not long ago I was at Stone Mountain, GA where black families can savor old-timey Southern cooking served by folks in period costume, under a mountain with the 3 Confederate general's faces carved Rushmore-like in the rock. And as the pro-slavery military men gaze over Hotlanta, in the hotel restaurant the newly moneyed blacks are throwing down $25 a plate for a buffet Roman proportions. It was hit-and-miss quality as most of these American places that try to do everything, and manage to do nearly nothing well- the catfish was like cardboard, which is an insult to the South.

Flash to Disneyworld, an impressive illusion built on 49 sq. miles of swampland- is it Seminole land?- near a highway junction to capitalize on the post-war boom. Disney was a shrewd businessman and a master storyteller- even if the stories were sometimes hokey. Johnny Appleseed is an old favorite- the man who so impressed the hateful Indians that they all converted. What stuns me is not only the scale and detail of the illusion, but the odd feeling of seeing Latino/as in Coronado Springs, where flamenco music is piped through the halls and out over a fake lake and the restaurant serves "latin tinged American food"- that's a quote, and quite accurate, since outside of steak and pasta you can only find fajitas (muy tradicional, si?) and burritos. Oh, and the servers wear shirts printed with a bright tropical fruit motif, the bananas matching their bright yellow pants. Ole!

Epcot includes a world's-fair-type area where 11 nations are 'imagineered' (stereotyped in Disney fashion?). Showcasing superficial aspects of culture and a few natives for tourists is an old European tradition. And at Disney, they do actually import young people from those nations to represent. That part intrigues me. How is their experience, both here at Disney and in the surrounding sprawl of Orlando- which over the past 30 years has mushroomed in a manner visible from space, with the usual importing of humans (half apparently from New Jersey)?