ST. AUGUSTINE

Florida Heritage Writing Conference

Last Friday I went down to the "Oldest City" for an all-day conference with all the big shots around Florida. The "Ritz" of the town, the Casa Madrona, hosted about 125 writers. It was a dark and stormy morning... (pictures)

The day was divided into five time slots: four seminar slots plus lunch. During seminar times, we chose a group from one of two subjects. These subjects ranged from character building to research to submitting screenplays. I can't say the catered food was worthwhile, and the conference rooms were less than impressive, but the event was good.

North Florida is suddenly in the rainy season, and clouds are regular observers in our skies. The sweltering summer still lingers, amplified briefly by humidity after the rain.  Mosquitoes regularly feast on me every time I take out the dogs. They don't get it, because of their fur, when I jump around and swat my skin.

It's dark now when I like to ride, so that's not so good. I notice Chattanooga is already in the fifties at night, while we barely get down to eighty. Whew! But when we got here in February, we had five straight days of frost, so I know it CAN get colder... and it'll probably be too cold soon enough.

Not Yet Half a Century

Yeah, I'm getting old. I was born before JFK was taken out. By most definitions, that's getting old.

But other measures are more kind. With the fallout from hurricanes hitting hard up north of here -- not in Florida! -- I looked into some of the past flooding in both Chattanooga and Binghamton, other places I have lived. And the flooding was bad, really bad. In both towns, the water levels took out the downtowns several times. And now floodwalls stand around each city. Recent floodwaters came up to and spilled over each wall, but they did prevent widespread disaster. But because people continue to build along side flood walls and in flood plains, I suppose the timeline of history is blurred, and the age of the lessons returns, making the older floods closer to memory. So maybe I'm not so old after all.

On a more immediate scale of time, the days have grown shorter. I used to take Grover to the beach at 7:45 for his evening walk, and we'd return home sandy, wet, bitten and hungry about 8:45. Now it's dark at 7:45. Still hot, though. So much for the later evening bike rides as well. No more 8pm departures to avoid the dining crowds on the road. The tradeoff seems to be we have different clouds this season. More of the familiar  orange-brown slurry of textures, similar to what we'd see over the Sutter Buttes back in California.

The sea turtles have all hatched by now, a fraction of them making it beyond the first two weeks, and only a fraction of those destined to make it to adolescence. The armadillos are back scurrying, like the squirrels, for the last of summer morsels to gather. And a new crop of frogs -- or a very small species -- is now underfoot and on the door. Cicadas scream in unison, drowning out even the light car traffic. And I finally baked some cookies for Lana, some banana muffins for me and Amy, and homemade beer for myself. (photos.)

SCIENCE, ANYONE?

Let's see what's happening around the nation. 

 American looks more and more like a Christian nation. Huge fires. Earthquakes. Tornadoes.  Hurricanes. Flooding. All at the same time.


Difficult to know what will go on in Congress this session. Probably nothing, since the bills forwarded to committees are all written by lobbyists anyway, lobbyists who have late breakfasts and hire the unemployed to hold a seat in the hallway for them. Funny how the nascent government officials in newly "liberated" countries are accused of bribery, and fined, while the halls of congress are full of unprosecuted bribers.


And talking of conspiracies, I'll be placing a short list of movies, most but not all, documentaries that tackle bits and pieces of our broken system. Hopefully these will be of interest to you visiting this blog. Maybe you've even seen some already. If you like them, pass along the title to someone else who might watch.


This week: 
INSIDE JOB; SO GOES THE NATION; BUSH FAMILY FORTUNES