Southern comfort

We just got back from a great week in Tennessee, where we enjoyed that proverbial Southern hospitality, great barbecue, an installment of the famed Grand Ole Opry radio show, and a new appreciation of the Civil War. And that was just the beginning!

At the Ryman Auditorium, we posed with a statue of Minnie Pearl, with her famous price tag, and enjoyed a typical country show -- one moment we were laughing at a beer-swiggin' song, and the next we were almost sobbing when violonists played the mournful Ashokan Farewell, better known as the theme from The Civil War TV series.

Tennessee is stepped in history, much of it tragic. We visited Franklin, a tiny community where on November 30, 1864, one of the bloodliest battles of the Civil War was waged. Bullet holes remain embedded in buildings at Carter House. At Carnton Plantation, the McGavock family's fields became a Confederate Cemetery.

But the visit was far from grim. Stay tuned.