My local culture hero here in western NC is an elderly man named Walter who runs Walter's Garden -- the 7 or so acres surrounding his modest home are densely planted with flowers and vegetables. The flowers are sold on a you-pick basis, the vegetables he picks and leaves in baskets under his carport. Prices are posted, there's a scale for the vegetables, and money goes in a bucket -- make your own change. I don't imagine he makes anything like a living from selling zinnias for 35 cents (3.50 per dozen) and tomatoes for $1 a pound, but he probably makes spending money, and he must just really and truly love working in his garden, right? I think he's got it made. I usually round up to the nearest dollar when I'm paying -- something about being trusted makes me eager to pay extra.

Ancestry.com is a great resource -- I'm a genealogy librarian and we use it constantly. Readers might be interested to know that a lot of public libraries subscribe to Ancestry Library Edition, a version of the database that includes most of the records on Ancestry.com. The Generations Network, which owns Ancestry.com, doesn't allow us to make it available to patrons outside our bricks & mortar libraries (because they want you to subscribe from home), but coming into the library is a small price to pay, considering private subscriptions run to $300 a year.