Random stray thought
I am often amazed at how incredibly smart one has to be just to function in the real world.
Thursday, November 28, 2002
Sunday, November 24, 2002
More from the Edge
One of the most annoying things about knowing a Floridian is having to listen to his or her incessant self-righteous gloating about the weather. Floridians will call you in January and tell you about how they're standing on their back deck grilling a steak, drinking a beer and wearing shorts. They'll tell you about how the TV weather geeks go nuts with panic when the mercury drops below 40. They'll whine about the hurricanes, despite the fact that most of them have chosen to live so close to the scourge of the sea.
That said: It was 73 beautiful degrees today in my part of the Edge of America. Blue skies as far as you can see. A slight breeze to cool the heat of the afternoon sun. Not too damn bad for Nov. 24.
When we left Florida, The Wife whined quite a bit about winters in North Texas. It never snowed, but we had an annual ice storm, and temperatures could get into the low teens at their worst. I blew off her whining by saying, "You know, there's more to life than good weather."
Now that we're back, I'm starting to think I might have been wrong.
One of the most annoying things about knowing a Floridian is having to listen to his or her incessant self-righteous gloating about the weather. Floridians will call you in January and tell you about how they're standing on their back deck grilling a steak, drinking a beer and wearing shorts. They'll tell you about how the TV weather geeks go nuts with panic when the mercury drops below 40. They'll whine about the hurricanes, despite the fact that most of them have chosen to live so close to the scourge of the sea.
That said: It was 73 beautiful degrees today in my part of the Edge of America. Blue skies as far as you can see. A slight breeze to cool the heat of the afternoon sun. Not too damn bad for Nov. 24.
When we left Florida, The Wife whined quite a bit about winters in North Texas. It never snowed, but we had an annual ice storm, and temperatures could get into the low teens at their worst. I blew off her whining by saying, "You know, there's more to life than good weather."
Now that we're back, I'm starting to think I might have been wrong.
Friday, November 22, 2002
A little bit about the Edge of America
It's an interesting place, the peninsula on which I have chosen to live. It's a vacation paradise. It's a retirement haven. It's a place where your vote really counts, sometimes. But there's a lot more to Florida than theme parks and bluehairs.
It really is a beautiful place, but not in the way that the Ozarks or the Hill Country of Texas is beautiful. Florida is, first and foremost, a swamp. Much of the land has been drained and dredged in a decades-long effort to make it inhabitable. It's probably more environmentally fragile than the Alaska oil fields, but little has stood in the way of developers trying to concrete over as much as possible. But go back into what remains of the swamp, and you'll see a unique and amazing ecosystem thriving on the black water and sawgrass.
In my part of the peninsula, it can be 85 degrees any day of the year. Hurricanes menace my city, but rarely do they harm it.
For a state that was largely uninhabited until the 1950s, there's a deep, rich history. St. Augustine is the oldest continously settled European city in the United States, and is incredibly well-preserved. It's one of my favorite places on the planet, and well worth the time of any tourist. It's a good reminder that there was life before Walt Disney.
Then there are the people -- vacationers and tourists, yes, but also rednecks and immigrants. Remember that Key West is only 90 miles from Havana. Remember also that Florida is south of both Georgia and Alabama, and I mean "South" with all that entails. There's a line that roughly follows Interstate 4 from Tampa through Orlando to Daytona Beach. North of that line is the Unreconstructed crowd, and south of that line are the tired, the poor, the huddled masses yearning to be free. To say they don't always get along would be sort of an understatement.
Florida is also one of America's great hiding places. Many from the fringes of society choose the state to hide from bad weather and other unfriendly elements of the world. For many years in the mid-20th century, many carnival and circus workers maintained residences in Florida during the off-season, and the communities they formed remain colorful and, well, um, different from the places you and I are used to living.
It's a great place to visit, but it's a better -- and cheaper -- place to live. A Florida driver's license also acts as a discount card to many of the state's tourist traps. Property taxes are insanely low (and so, unfortunately, is the quality of many of the state's schools.) Sales taxes are low. The state's budget is built around one philosophy: "Soak the tourist." Hotel taxes, airport taxes, rental car taxes and expressway tolls build the roads and provide the services I use. The politically powerful retirees routinely vote down tax increases. It doesn't matter to them; their kids are out of school.
It's a special place, Florida, and it's largely unappreciated by many who visit or live here. It's a shame, because there's much to appreciate.
It's an interesting place, the peninsula on which I have chosen to live. It's a vacation paradise. It's a retirement haven. It's a place where your vote really counts, sometimes. But there's a lot more to Florida than theme parks and bluehairs.
It really is a beautiful place, but not in the way that the Ozarks or the Hill Country of Texas is beautiful. Florida is, first and foremost, a swamp. Much of the land has been drained and dredged in a decades-long effort to make it inhabitable. It's probably more environmentally fragile than the Alaska oil fields, but little has stood in the way of developers trying to concrete over as much as possible. But go back into what remains of the swamp, and you'll see a unique and amazing ecosystem thriving on the black water and sawgrass.
In my part of the peninsula, it can be 85 degrees any day of the year. Hurricanes menace my city, but rarely do they harm it.
For a state that was largely uninhabited until the 1950s, there's a deep, rich history. St. Augustine is the oldest continously settled European city in the United States, and is incredibly well-preserved. It's one of my favorite places on the planet, and well worth the time of any tourist. It's a good reminder that there was life before Walt Disney.
Then there are the people -- vacationers and tourists, yes, but also rednecks and immigrants. Remember that Key West is only 90 miles from Havana. Remember also that Florida is south of both Georgia and Alabama, and I mean "South" with all that entails. There's a line that roughly follows Interstate 4 from Tampa through Orlando to Daytona Beach. North of that line is the Unreconstructed crowd, and south of that line are the tired, the poor, the huddled masses yearning to be free. To say they don't always get along would be sort of an understatement.
Florida is also one of America's great hiding places. Many from the fringes of society choose the state to hide from bad weather and other unfriendly elements of the world. For many years in the mid-20th century, many carnival and circus workers maintained residences in Florida during the off-season, and the communities they formed remain colorful and, well, um, different from the places you and I are used to living.
It's a great place to visit, but it's a better -- and cheaper -- place to live. A Florida driver's license also acts as a discount card to many of the state's tourist traps. Property taxes are insanely low (and so, unfortunately, is the quality of many of the state's schools.) Sales taxes are low. The state's budget is built around one philosophy: "Soak the tourist." Hotel taxes, airport taxes, rental car taxes and expressway tolls build the roads and provide the services I use. The politically powerful retirees routinely vote down tax increases. It doesn't matter to them; their kids are out of school.
It's a special place, Florida, and it's largely unappreciated by many who visit or live here. It's a shame, because there's much to appreciate.
Wednesday, November 20, 2002
I'm back!
Moving up the Edge of America at broadband speed, consider this my official return to this forum. Yeah, we still have a few boxes to unpack, a few pictures to hang, a few details yet to work out, but we have re-planted the flag here, halfway between the Gulf and the Atlantic, halfway between Georgia and Key West.
Are we settled? Yeah. I think.
I hope.
Keep the cards and letters coming, and serve up some food for thought. I'll try to do the same, now that I'm thinking again.
Moving up the Edge of America at broadband speed, consider this my official return to this forum. Yeah, we still have a few boxes to unpack, a few pictures to hang, a few details yet to work out, but we have re-planted the flag here, halfway between the Gulf and the Atlantic, halfway between Georgia and Key West.
Are we settled? Yeah. I think.
I hope.
Keep the cards and letters coming, and serve up some food for thought. I'll try to do the same, now that I'm thinking again.
Sunday, November 10, 2002
More veterans to come
Monday is Veteran's Day. (Or, as the 6-year-old boy at the house where I'm staying put it, "Tomorrow is Veterinarian's Day!") I just finished reading The Greatest Generation, the Tom Brokaw paean to the men and women who served in World War II. It was an eye-opener, certainly; I know intuitively that the people of my grandparents' generation went about life in a completely different fashion from the way you and I go about it, but I don't always think in detail about how incredibly different it was. Children of the Reagan years, such as myself, take a lot of things for granted. I'm OK with that; we're able to do so because of what those who went before us did. It proves that their efforts and losses weren't in vain.
I hope.
As we stand on the brink of yet another war, where yet more mothers will lose sons for reasons that aren't entirely clear and have really very little to do with my daily life in Florida or your daily life wherever you are (and don't you wish your daily life was in Florida? If you don't now, you will in a couple of months) ... as we stand on the brink of yet another war, I hope our leaders are really really thinking about what they're doing before they take us on the plunge. Make no mistake: that GOP sweep on Tuesday was a war mandate. We're whipped into a war frenzy. That election was not about cutting taxes or fixing the economy or ending abortion. It's about war.
In the memory of all those who are laying under grass in France and Germany and Japan and Vietnam and in national cemeteries all over the United States, I hope they know what they're doing.
Monday is Veteran's Day. (Or, as the 6-year-old boy at the house where I'm staying put it, "Tomorrow is Veterinarian's Day!") I just finished reading The Greatest Generation, the Tom Brokaw paean to the men and women who served in World War II. It was an eye-opener, certainly; I know intuitively that the people of my grandparents' generation went about life in a completely different fashion from the way you and I go about it, but I don't always think in detail about how incredibly different it was. Children of the Reagan years, such as myself, take a lot of things for granted. I'm OK with that; we're able to do so because of what those who went before us did. It proves that their efforts and losses weren't in vain.
I hope.
As we stand on the brink of yet another war, where yet more mothers will lose sons for reasons that aren't entirely clear and have really very little to do with my daily life in Florida or your daily life wherever you are (and don't you wish your daily life was in Florida? If you don't now, you will in a couple of months) ... as we stand on the brink of yet another war, I hope our leaders are really really thinking about what they're doing before they take us on the plunge. Make no mistake: that GOP sweep on Tuesday was a war mandate. We're whipped into a war frenzy. That election was not about cutting taxes or fixing the economy or ending abortion. It's about war.
In the memory of all those who are laying under grass in France and Germany and Japan and Vietnam and in national cemeteries all over the United States, I hope they know what they're doing.
Tuesday, November 05, 2002
I have not abandoned this place
It's just, well, been kind of a challenge since getting to the Edge of America. I haven't seen my children since Oct. 11, and won't see them for another nine days. I underestimated how incredibly difficult that would be for me -- and I knew it was going to be difficult. The Wife did join me this weekend for "househunting," a company-paid trip to find a place to live. They don't need to know that we had already found such a place and basically just spent a day at the beach.
But it's been kind of a challenge since coming here.
The job: As regular readers of this invective know, my job at the Very Large Metropolitan Newspaper in Texas had become, well, somewhat boring. As crazy as it sounds, I wanted a job in which I would actually be busy. I got that, and then some. I used to be completely unfazed by hard work. The Very Large Metropolitan Newspaper apparently made me soft. The last few weeks have been spent doing some serious stamina-building. I'll get the first real test tonight: Election Night in Florida. On the last Election Night in Florida, staffers were at the office until well past sunrise. Tonight will be interesting.
Real estate: The house in Texas is sold. The house in Florida is bought (well, basically.) The Family makes its way east next week. I'll be flying back to Texas, landing, and taking the wheel of the minivan and pointing it to the sea. Said minivan will be occupied by The Wife and Me, three children, two dogs and a cat. Hopefully I'll be done with my stamina-building by then.
Homelessness: In the meantime, I'm staying with friends in a guest room. No matter how comfortable I am with people, I'm never comfortable spending large amounts of time in other people's houses, using their stuff (I'm using their computer, in fact, as I write this) and eating their food -- even if it's generously offered, and it has been.
This is what I signed up for -- a complete shake-up of my daily routine. I'm not entirely sure what led me to do it. And, even though I know it was the right thing to do, I'm pretty sure I don't want to do it again anytime soon.
It's just, well, been kind of a challenge since getting to the Edge of America. I haven't seen my children since Oct. 11, and won't see them for another nine days. I underestimated how incredibly difficult that would be for me -- and I knew it was going to be difficult. The Wife did join me this weekend for "househunting," a company-paid trip to find a place to live. They don't need to know that we had already found such a place and basically just spent a day at the beach.
But it's been kind of a challenge since coming here.
The job: As regular readers of this invective know, my job at the Very Large Metropolitan Newspaper in Texas had become, well, somewhat boring. As crazy as it sounds, I wanted a job in which I would actually be busy. I got that, and then some. I used to be completely unfazed by hard work. The Very Large Metropolitan Newspaper apparently made me soft. The last few weeks have been spent doing some serious stamina-building. I'll get the first real test tonight: Election Night in Florida. On the last Election Night in Florida, staffers were at the office until well past sunrise. Tonight will be interesting.
Real estate: The house in Texas is sold. The house in Florida is bought (well, basically.) The Family makes its way east next week. I'll be flying back to Texas, landing, and taking the wheel of the minivan and pointing it to the sea. Said minivan will be occupied by The Wife and Me, three children, two dogs and a cat. Hopefully I'll be done with my stamina-building by then.
Homelessness: In the meantime, I'm staying with friends in a guest room. No matter how comfortable I am with people, I'm never comfortable spending large amounts of time in other people's houses, using their stuff (I'm using their computer, in fact, as I write this) and eating their food -- even if it's generously offered, and it has been.
This is what I signed up for -- a complete shake-up of my daily routine. I'm not entirely sure what led me to do it. And, even though I know it was the right thing to do, I'm pretty sure I don't want to do it again anytime soon.