University of South Florida Scholar Commons
FORUM : the Magazine of the Florida Humanities Florida Humanities
7-1-2007
Forum : Vol. 31, No. 02 (Summer : 2007)
Florida Humanities Council.
Michael Grunwald
Bill Belleville
James O. Born
Carl Hiaasen
See next page for additional authors
Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarcommons.usf.edu/forum_magazine
Recommended Citation Florida Humanities Council.; Grunwald, Michael; Belleville, Bill; Born, James O.; Hiaasen, Carl; White, Randy Wayne; Dyckman, Martin A.; Marshall, J. Stanley; Abrams, M. D.; and Murphree, Daniel, "Forum : Vol. 31, No. 02 (Summer : 2007)" (2007). FORUM : the Magazine of the Florida Humanities. 46. https://scholarcommons.usf.edu/forum_magazine/46
This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Florida Humanities at Scholar Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in FORUM : the Magazine of the Florida Humanities by an authorized administrator of Scholar Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Authors Florida Humanities Council., Michael Grunwald, Bill Belleville, James O. Born, Carl Hiaasen, Randy Wayne White, Martin A. Dyckman, J. Stanley Marshall, M. D. Abrams, and Daniel Murphree
This article is available at Scholar Commons: https://scholarcommons.usf.edu/forum_magazine/46 A Special Offer for FHC Members! THE MAGAZINE OF THE FLORIDA HUMANITIES COUNCIL
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Total payment enclosed ______For more information or to check on your membership status, contact us at [email protected] or (727) 873-2001. Payment Method: Check payable to “Florida Humanities Council” OR NONPROFIT ORG. U.S. POSTAGE PAID Credit Card: VISA MC 599 Second Street South ST. PETERSBURG, FL Card # ______Exp. Date______St. Petersburg, FL 33701-5005 PERMIT #2093 FEATURING EXCERPTS FROM WINNERS Mail order form & payment to: OF THE 2006 FLORIDA BOOK AWARDS Florida Humanities Council Michael Grunwald | The Swamp: The Everglades, Florida, and the Politics of Paradise Attn: CDs 599 Second Street South Carl Hiaasen | Nature Girl St. Petersburg, FL 33701-5005
Martin A. Dyckman | Floridian of His Century: The Courage of Governor LeRoy Collins OR ORDER ONLINE AT: Randy Wayne White | Dark Light WWW.FLAHUM.ORG/CD TUNE IN TO THE FLORIDA DREAM 2007 Board of Directors David Colburn, Chair Gainesville JOURNEYS INTO FLORIDA Frank Billingsley, Vice Chair Orlando letter F r o m t h e D i re c t o r B. Lester Abberger Tallahassee John Belohlavek Tampa Rachel Blechman Miami Elaine Brown Jacksonville ust as individuals have stories, so William Carlson Tampa Jdo states. The story of Florida is shaped and re- Jim Clark Orlando shaped every day by historians, journalists, novelists, Brian Dassler Fort Lauderdale songwriters, poets, and storytellers. Their stories define Juan Carlos Espinosa Miami Nancy Fetterman Pensacola us as a state, provide us with a sense of place, and bind Caren Lobo Sarasota us together as Floridians. Kim Long Naples Because stories have such a powerful ability to define Meredith Morris-Babb Ormond Beach and unite us Floridians, we were thrilled when Wayne Watch for the story Lesley Northup Miami Howard Pardue Tallahassee Wiegand and John Fenstermaker of Florida State of modern Florida Jeffrey Sharkey Tallahassee University asked us to become part of a coalition of Rowena Stewart Jacksonville cultural groups that would launch the first Florida Book on TV and in FORUM Ellen Vinson Pensacola Awards. We see this exciting venture as an opportunity Jon Ward Fort Pierce to inspire, encourage, and honor writers who are creating Florida’s literary landscape and its reputation. The next issue of FORUM will be a companion Staff Executive Director FORUM editor Barbara O’Reilley and I thought to our upcoming TV documentary on modern Janine Farver Barbara Bahr Technology Manager Florida, called The Florida Dream. that FHC’s contribution to this worthy cause would be Laurie Berlin Director of Administration to provide these Florida writers with a forum (literally) Julie Henry Matus Program Coordinator, Road Scholars for their award-winning work—and at the same time Karen Jackson Program & Fiscal Assistant provide some homegrown stories for our readers to The Florida Humanities Council has teamed up with Tampa’s Lisa Lennox Administrative & Technology Assistant enjoy. There is fiction, nonfiction, and poetry from WEDU-TV to produce the dramatic story of modern Susan Lockwood Director of Grants Florida. Tune in to your local public television station this fall Carly Meek Development Assistant bestselling writers like Carl Hiaasen and from authors to see how Florida was transformed from a sleepy, swampy, Brenda O’Hara Fiscal Officer publishing their first works. While not all the novels Join us at the next Gathering in subtropical peninsula into the urban megastate it is today. Communications Director, Editor/FORUM Barbara O’Reilley and poems are set in Florida, they were all written by Patricia Putman Development Officer historic St. Augustine How did Florida’s population grow from a fairly homogenous fulltime Florida residents. While not all the nonfiction population of 2 million to an international mix of 18 million Monica Rowland Program Coordinator, The Gathering & Florida Center for Teachers books were written by Florida residents, all are focused in only a half-century? To find out, see—and read about— Director, Florida Center for Teachers St. Augustine—September 28–30, 2007 The Florida Dream. Ann Schoenacher on Florida. Diane Wakeman Program Assistant We want to congratulate the winners and thank Zanetta Starks Florida Studies Intern Experience St. Augustine as a scholar, not a tourist. Join distinguished Wayne and John for the vision and leadership they have historians and archeologists for a one-of-a-kind exploration of our nation’s oldest, FHC FORUM / Vol. XXXI, No. 2, SUMMER 2007 provided for this project. The second annual Florida permanent European settlement. Join us for the weekend of Sept. 28–30, 2007, at © 2007 FHC the historic Casa Monica hotel while we unearth the “Ancient City’s” past. The magazine of the Florida Humanities Council Book Awards is already underway. Log on to the Florida City Archaeologist Carl Halbirt will show us an active archaeological 599 Second Street South, St. Petersburg, FL 33701-5005 (727) 873-2000 Book Awards website at www.fsu.edu/~ams/bookawards dig; historian Susan Parker will discuss the city’s fascinating colonial history; Website: www.flahum.org for eligibility requirements and entry forms. architectural historian Herschel Shepard will lead a tour of the city’s architectural The Florida Humanities Council is a nonprofit organization funded by the National treasures; Florida historian David Colburn will explore St. Augustine’s little- Endowment for the Humanities, the state of Florida, and private contributors. FHC FORUM is published three times a year and distributed to the friends of known civil rights story with local historian David Nolan; and Michael Gannon, the Florida Humanities Council and interested Floridians. If you wish to be added the “Dean of Florida History,” will describe life in the city during World War II. to the mailing list, please request so in writing or via the FHC website. Views For more information and to register online, go to www.flahum.org and click expressed by contributors to the FORUM are not necessarily those of the Florida Humanities Council. on Cultural Tours. Or you can email Monica Rowland at [email protected] or call her at (727) 873-2005.
WWW.FLAHUM.ORG table of contents SUMMER / 2007
6 10 11 12 16 2 Humanities Alive! News of the Florida Humanities Council 4 Summer Reader Settle back and enjoy the work of some of the best writers in Florida: Excerpts from winners of the first annual Florida Book Awards. 6 The Swamp By Michael Grunwald 10 Losing It All to Sprawl By Bill Belleville 18 20 11 Escape Clause By James O. Born 12 Nature Girl By Carl Hiaason 16 Dark Light By Randy Wayne White 18 Floridian of His Century By Martin A. Dyckman 21 22 20 The Tumultuous Sixties By J. Stanley Marshall 21 Murder at Wakulla Springs By M. D. Abrams 22 Constructing Floridians By Daniel S. Murphree 24 Introducing the Winning Authors By Susan Aschoff 32 My Psychic 32 32 By James Kimbrell Luckily By Kelle Groom h u m a n i t i e s alive! Scholars Ready to Hit the Road Grant-Writing Workshops Available Our Road Scholars will be speaking to audiences around the state this fall about Florida’s dramatic Interested in learning how to apply transformation since World War II—the topic of for grants for humanities programs in FHC’s upcoming public television documentary, your community? It’s easy to arrange for The Florida Dream. Road Scholar speakers will a grant-writing workshop in your area. address changes in the politics, civil rights, FHC workshops are free and open tourism, immigration, music, film, art, and food to members of all nonprofit organizations of Florida in the last half of the 20th century. and public agencies interested in Road Scholar programs engage audiences sponsoring a public humanities program. with multimedia presentations, thought- Susan Lockwood, FHC Grants Director, provoking discussions with top-notch scholars, explains how to apply for various and first-person costumed portrayals of types of grants awarded by FHC. fascinating characters from Florida’s past. Here Each year, FHC funds hundreds are some of this fall’s featured programs: of public programs throughout the state • From Yellow-Dog Democrats to Red State that explore Florida’s history, folklore, Republicans: Florida and Its Politics since 1940 environment, literature, music, and Historian David Colburn, University of Florida art. Libraries, civic groups, universities, professor, highlights the fascinating political, colleges and museums, historical societies, demographic, and social transformation of the and theaters have received grants to Sunshine State over the past 60 years. sponsor humanities programs. • Harold Newton: The Original Highwayman Email Lockwood at slockwood@ Photographer and author Gary Monroe tells the story flahum.org to request a workshop of Harold Newton—leader of the Highwaymen, a in your area or log on to www. group of African-American painters who sold their flahum.org and click on Grants to Florida landscapes along the roadsides. register for a workshop near you. • Sunshine in the Dark: Florida in the Movies Using film clips, stills, and publicity posters, historians Susan Fernandez and Robert Ingalls, FHC Looking professors at the University of South Florida, show how depictions of Florida have changed in more than for Board Members 300 films over the last century. FHC is looking for Floridians who • America’s First Civil Rights Martyr: Harry T. Moore share our organization’s commitment to Actor Bob Devin Jones delivers a poignant portrayal, Florida history and culture to serve on bringing to life this early pioneer of the Civil Rights our board of directors. Board members Movement. come from all walks of life including • Past Visions, Future Solutions: Solving the academia, business, and government. We Singer/songwriter Chris Kahl Conundrum of Suburban Sprawl look for demographic and geographic (at top) will present “Orange Scholar and planner Bruce Stephenson, Rollins Blossom Memories” to Road Scholar diversity in selecting board members audiences around the state. Author/ College professor, traces the origins of Florida’s who will represent the various regions photographer Gary Monroe (above) growth problems and looks at historic remedies to and diverse population of Florida. will discuss the life and work of solve suburban sprawl. The FHC board meets three times a Harold Newton, “The Original Highwayman.” • Orange Blossom Memories: Songs of Florida year. Members are also asked to serve on Singer/songwriter Chris Kahl takes listeners on a a taskforce that meets once a year. Board musical journey as he weaves original folk songs and members make decisions about FHC grants, stories about the history, folklore, and characters of develop our budget priorities, oversee the Sunshine State. policy decisions, help develop resources for our programs, and promote our work. Nonprofit organizations may apply to host a If you are interested in serving on program for a local event that is free and open to the our 26-member board, please submit a public. Visit us online at www.flahum.org and click on résumé and a letter of intent to Janine Speakers Bureau for a full schedule of programs, details Farver, Executive Director, FHC, 599 on how to apply, and costs. Additional information can Second Street South, or email jfarver@ be obtained by contacting Julie Henry Matus via email flahum.org. We must have your at [email protected], or by calling (727) 873-2002. nomination by August 31, 2007.
2 SUMMER 2007 / F O R U M FLORIDA HUMANITIES COUNCIL F l o r i d a promised a paradise
Photo: VISIT FLORIDA
illions of people came, seeking the Florida dream. In the stations in Miami, Pensacola, Jacksonville, Fort Myers, Cocoa, and half-century after World War II, they transformed an exotic, Tampa. These programs are expected to be locally broadcast immediately M sparsely populated, subtropical peninsula into the dynamic, after The Florida Dream and later released to public television stations increasingly urbanized megastate that Florida is today. around the state: How did this happen? Tune in to your local public television • Miami: Reflection in the Water (WPBT-TV): How the history of the station this fall to find out. Watch forThe Florida Dream, a one-hour Miami River reflects the growing and ever-changing city. documentary sponsored by the Florida Humanities Council and produced by Tampa’s WEDU-TV. • Florida’s Panhandle: In the Fire of World War II (WSRE-TV): This colorful, compelling program, scheduled to premiere Sunday, The impact of the war on the social, economic, and cultural life of Oct. 14 at 8 p.m. on many public television stations around the state, Northwest Florida. will chronicle the story of modern Florida. It is based on the book, Land • The Sanibel Causeway: Witness to Change (WGCU-TV): The of Sunshine, State of Dreams: A Social History of Modern Florida, by Gary evolution of Sanibel Island and efforts to balance the roles of tourist Mormino, who holds the Frank E. Duckwall Professorship in Florida destination, retirement location, and place of residence. Studies at the University of South Florida St. Petersburg. • A State of Tourism (WBCC-TV): A social history of tourism and Narrated by Mormino and other distinguished Florida historians, how it changed Central Florida. the program will use archival film, photographs, and interviews to trace • City of Bridges (WJCT-TV): The role that Jacksonville’s bridges had the state’s metamorphosis from sleepy southern backwater to heavily in creating and connecting its communities and neighborhoods. populated international mecca. • The State of Florida(WEDU-TV): A discussion by scholars and “The history of Florida’s dramatic change and explosive growth is political leaders about how Florida’s rapid growth played out in the St. one of the most fascinating stories of the past half-century,” said Janine Petersburg-Tampa area. Farver, FHC executive director. “At a time when many people talk of Florida as a bellwether state, FHC sees the possibility of bringing this FHC is also designing a special website that will operate as a story to life as an irresistible opportunity.” companion to The Florida Dream documentary—providing additional The program will show how migration, immigration, civil rights, information and audio and visual materials on modern Florida’s tourism, retirement, technology, and politics changed the face of the metamorphosis. Stay tuned to FHC’s main website (www.flahum.org) for state. Viewers will see how a mostly white, Protestant, rural population of updates on this. less than 3 million rapidly grew into today’s diverse, international mix of Funding for The Florida Dream came from the We the People grant more than 18 million people. initiative of the National Endowment for the Humanities, from the Frank In addition to this hour-long program, FHC has also provided E. Duckwall Foundation, and from The Saunders Foundation. funds for the production of half-hour documentaries by public television
FLORIDA HUMANITIES COUNCIL FORUM / SUMMER 2007 3 FLORIDA HUMANITIES COUNCIL 2007
Settle back in your hammock with a cold glass of lemonade and prepare to enjoy the work of some of the best writers in Florida. This issue of FORUM features the winners of the first annual Florida Book Awards. Whether your taste runs to mysteries or histories, poetry or politics, you will find something to feed your intellect in the following pages. We’ve excerpted books from a wide range of subjects and styles. But they all have one thing in common: A focus on Florida.
he Florida Book Awards program was created to recognize, honor, and celebrate the best work of Florida writers and scholars each year. It is the brainchild of Wayne A. Wiegand, professor of library, information, and American studiesT at Florida State University. Wiegand and Professor John Fenstermaker, director of FSU’s Program in American and Florida Studies, invited a dozen humanities organizations from around the state to co-sponsor the book competition and help design it. “I’m thrilled,” said Eileen McNally, director of the Florida Center for the Book, one of the co-sponsors. “I think it’s something that’s overdue for Florida…I think many people say, ‘Oh, Florida—the cultural wasteland.’ Well, we have spawned quite a few writers. We just want to give them the recognition they deserve, and I think a competition is a good way to do it.” The other co-sponsoring organizations include: the Florida Library Association; the Florida Center for the Literary Arts; the Florida Chapter of the Mystery Writers of America; the Florida Historical Society; the State Library and Archives of Florida; the Florida Literary Arts Coalition; the Florida Association for Media in Education; the Florida State University Friends of Libraries; Just Read, Florida!; the Governor’s Family Literacy Initiative—and the Florida Humanities Council. The competition, which was launched in 2006 and will be held annually, is open to any book written in the previous year by a full-time Florida resident. In the category Wayne A. Wiegand (at of nonfiction, the author can live out of state, but the book must be focused on Florida. top), professor of library, There are seven categories: Florida Nonfiction, General Fiction, Popular Fiction, Poetry, information, and American studies at Florida State Children’s Literature, Young Adult Literature, and Spanish Language Book. University; and Professor John Twenty-one judges—three for each book category—evaluate the contest Fenstermaker, director of FSU’s Program in American entries. The judges for the 2006 competition included Florida university and Florida Studies professors, media specialists, and other experts. The winners were announced in March at the Historic and Cultural Awards Ceremony in Tallahassee. Wiegand is pleased with the success of the program’s first year, noting that in the three months after it was launched, 71 books were submitted as entries, and medals were awarded in all seven categories. “Next year should be even better, because now word has circulated,” he added. Fenstermaker agrees: “It was a very pleasant surprise how many people were poised to do this when they heard about it,” he said. “So we expect things will grow and prosper.”
4 SUMMER 2007 / F O R U M FLORIDA HUMANITIES COUNCIL Florida is one of only six states that have statewide book competitions. The others are Oregon, Oklahoma, LIST OF WINNERS: 2006 FLORIDA BOOK AWARDS Massachusetts, Minnesota, GENERAL FICTION and California. Wiegand, who traveled to other states to learn Gold: Tony D’Souza, Whiteman (Harcourt) how they ran their competitions, Silver: Carl Hiaasen, Nature Girl (Knopf) describes his visit to the offices of Bronze: Elizabeth Dewberry, His Lovely Wife (Harcourt) the California program, which is now celebrating its 75th year: FLORIDA NONFICTION “They conducted me into a lobby Gold: Michael Grunwald, The Swamp: The Everglades, Florida, and the Politics of that was three stories tall. And two of Paradise (Simon & Schuster) those stories were books. As the person Silver: I talked to guided me around, she took Daniel S. Murphree, Constructing Floridians: Natives and Europeans in the me over to one of the shelves, and Colonial Floridas, 1513–1783 (University Press of Florida) she pulled a book off the shelf. And I Bronze (three-way tie): Bill Belleville, Losing It All to Sprawl: How Progress Ate My opened up the cover and there it was, Cracker Landscape (University Press of Florida); Martin A. Dyckman, Floridian of signed by John Steinbeck.” His Century: The Courage of Governor LeRoy Collins (University Press of Florida); Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath had J. Stanley Marshall, The Tumultuous Sixties: Campus Unrest and Student Life at a won one of the early California book Southern University (Sentry) awards, he said. “The idea occurred to me that, wow, we’re at the beginning SPANISH LANGUAGE BOOK of something significant, and 75 years Gold: Daina Chaviano, La Isla De Los Amores Infinitos (Random House) from now maybe somebody else is going to be walking into a lobby and POETRY maybe, just maybe, somebody’s going Gold: James Kimbrell, My Psychic (Sarabande) to be pulling a book off the shelf Silver: Jay Hopler, Green Squall (Yale University Press) authored by a Pulitzer Prize winner or Bronze Luckily a Nobel Prize winner who also won a (two-way tie): Kelle Groom, (Anhinga Press); Peter Meinke, The Contracted World Florida book award.” (University of Pittsburgh Press) Wiegand hopes the Florida YOUNG ADULT competition will become the major way books by Florida authors and on Gold: Adrian Fogelin, The Real Question (Peachtree) Florida topics get recognized, he says. Silver: Joyce Sweeney, Headlock (Henry Holt) This issue of FORUM features Bronze (two-way tie): Caridad Ferrer, Adios to My Old Life (Simon & Schuster); excerpts from about half of the 2006 Tracy A. Akers, The Fire and the Light (Ruadora) winning books—and includes brief biographies and photos of all 24 CHILDREN’S LITERATURE winning authors. Unfortunately, Gold: N.E. Bode, The Somebodies (Harper Collins) because of space limitations, excerpts Silver: Laurie Friedman, In Business with Mallory; Illus., Barbara Pollak (Lerner) from all of the books couldn’t be included. Those selected focus on POPULAR FICTION Florida, are in the English language, and are not marketed to children or Gold: James O. Born, Escape Clause (Putnam) young adults. Silver: Ward Larsen, The Perfect Assassin (Oceanview) FHC thanks all of the publishers Bronze (three-way tie): M.D. Abrams, Murder at Wakulla Springs: A North Florida and authors who granted FORUM Mystery (Booklocker); Randy Wayne White, Dark Light (Putnam); Brad Meltzer, permission to reproduce excerpts in this The Book of Fate (Warner) issue. These excerpts remain under their authors’ copyrights and may not be reproduced further without permission. Sit back and enjoy this Summer Reader. It might introduce you to a Florida author you don’t already know.
FLORIDA HUMANITIES COUNCIL FORUM / SUMMER 2007 5 E x cerpt fro m : The Swamp: The Everglades, Florida, and the Politics of Paradise
By Michael Grunwald
n December 11, 2000, the Supreme frugal senator by various right-wing interest groups. Court heard oral arguments in George He had voted against food stamps and Head Start, W. Bush, et al. v. Albert Gore Jr., et al., the clamored for President Bill Clinton’s impeachment, and Opartisan battle royale that would end the stalemate even mounted his own quixotic campaign for president over the Florida recount and send one of the litigants on a traditional-values platform. to the White House. The deadlocked election had But this was no protest. Smith was rushing to the exposed a divided nation, and pundits were describing White House, to celebrate a big-government deal with Governor Bush’s “Red America” and Vice President the Democrats. Gore’s “Blue America” as if they were separate countries At the height of the partisan war over the Florida at war. After five weeks of ferocious wrangling over recount, President Clinton was signing a bipartisan bill “pregnant chads” and “hanging chads,” hard-liners to revive the Florida Everglades, a $7.8 billion rescue in both camps were warning of an illegitimate mission for 69 endangered species and 20 national parks presidency, a constitutional crisis, a bloodless coup. and refuges. It was the largest environmental restoration Inside the Court’s marble-and-mahogany project in the history of the planet, and Smith had chambers, Sen. Robert Smith of New Hampshire pushed it through Congress with classic liberal rhetoric, watched the legal jousting with genuine awe. Smith dismissing its price tag as “just a can of Coke per citizen was one of the hardest of Red America’s hardliners, a per day,” beseeching his colleagues to “save this treasure passionate antiabortion, antigay, antitax Republican, as our legacy to our children and grandchildren.” and he believed he was watching a struggle for So after his dash from the Court, he headed the soul of his country. Smith was also a former straight to the Cabinet Room, where he exchanged small-town civics teacher, less jaded than most of congratulations with some of the Democratic Party’s top his colleagues in Congress, and Bush v. Gore was environmentalists, like Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt, a civics lesson for the ages, a courtroom drama the former head of the League of Conservation Voters, that would decide the leader of the free world. “It and White House aide George Frampton, the former doesn’t get any bigger than this,” he thought. head of the Wilderness Society. And Smith was not even But less than an hour into the proceedings, the most surprising guest in the West Wing that day. Smith suddenly walked out on history, squeezing his That was Florida’s Republican governor, another six-foot-five, 280-pound frame past his perplexed key supporter of the Everglades plan, a former Miami seatmates. “Excuse me,” he whispered. “Excuse developer named Jeb Bush. As the world waited to hear me.” A bear of a man with fleshy jowls, a bulbous whether his brother would win his state and succeed nose, and a sloppy comb-over, Smith could feel their father’s successor in the White House, Jeb was the stares as he lumbered down the center aisle, already there, staring out at the Rose Garden with then jostled through the hushed standing-room the air of a quarterback who had stumbled into the crowd to the exit. “Excuse me. Excuse me.” opposing locker room near the end of the Super Bowl. Smith’s abrupt departure looked like one of his “The last time I was here, your father was president!” unorthodox protests, like the time he brandished one lobbyist told him. Jeb tried to smile, but it came a plastic fetus on the Senate floor, or the time he out more like a grimace. One Clinton appointee began announced he was resigning from the Republican babbling about the Cuban Missile Crisis—possibly the Party because it was cutting too many big-government last time that room had felt that tense. Jeb even said hi deals with the Democrats. Smith was an unabashed to a Miami congresswoman who had publicly accused ideologue, rated the most conservative and the most him of suppressing black votes. “This,” thought Jeb’s top
6 SUMMER 2007 / F O R U M FLORIDA HUMANITIES COUNCIL environmental aide, “is as surreal as politics can get.” faced alligators and spindly-legged wading birds. Unless, that is—but no, Vice President Gore, a key It’s the ecological equivalent of motherhood architect of the Everglades plan, stayed home to listen and apple pie; when an aide on NBC’s “The to the Supreme Court audiotape. “I was really proud West Wing” was asked the most popular thing of what we accomplished in the Everglades,” Gore later the president could do for the environment, he recalled. “But I was in a pretty pitched battle that day.” immediately replied: “Save the Everglades.” At 1:12 p.m., an ebullient President Clinton But there was once just as broad a national invited everyone into the Oval Office, the room that consensus that the Everglades was a worthless morass, George W. Bush liked to say needed a good scrubbing. an enemy of civilization, an obstacle to progress. The If the president was upset about Gore’s plight, or first government report on the Everglades deemed Jeb’s presence, or the legacy of impeachment, or it “suitable only for the haunt of noxious vermin, or his imminent move to the New York suburbs, the the resort of pestilential reptiles.” Its explorers almost legendary compartmentalizer hid it well. “This is a great uniformly described it as a muddy, mushy, inhospitable day!” he said. “We should all be very proud.” He used expanse of razor-edged sawgrass in shallow water—too 18 ceremonial pens to sign the bill, graciously handing wet to farm, too dry to sail, too unpredictable to settle. the first souvenir to Jeb. Sen. Smith quipped that it was Americans believed it was their destiny to drain this lucky Clinton’s name wasn’t Cornelius Snicklefritzer, “God-forsaken” swamp, to “reclaim” it from mosquitoes or else the ceremony might never end. The president and rattlesnakes, to “improve” it into a subtropical threw his head back and laughed. “Wow,” thought his paradise of bountiful crops and booming communities. chief of staff, John Podesta, “this is like a Fellini movie.” Wetlands were considered wastelands, and “draining the If Florida’s political swamp was tearing Americans swamp” was a metaphor for solving festering problems. apart, Florida’s actual swamp had a knack for The heart of the Everglades was technically a bringing people together. The same Congress that marsh, not a swamp, because its primary vegetation had been torn in half by Clinton’s impeachment had was grassy, not woody; the first journalist to slog overwhelmingly approved his plan for the Everglades, through the Everglades called it a “vast and useless after lobbyists for the sugar industry and the Audubon marsh.” But it was usually described as a dismal, Society walked the corridors of Capitol Hill arm- impenetrable swamp, and even conservationists in-arm. The same Florida legislature that was in dreamed of draining it; converting wet land into turmoil over Bush v. Gore had approved Everglades productive land was considered the essence of restoration without a single dissenting vote. conservation. Hadn’t God specifically instructed At a press conference after the ceremony, Jeb man to subdue the earth, and take dominion over sidestepped the inevitable Bush v. Gore questions all the living creatures that moveth upon it? Wasn’t to highlight this unity: “In a time when people are America destined to overpower its wilderness? focused on politics, and there’s a little acrimony—I This is the story of the Everglades, from useless don’t know if y’all have noticed—this is a good bog to national treasure, from its creation to its example of how, in spite of all that, bipartisanship is destruction to its potential resurrection. It is the story still alive.” Reporters shouted follow-ups about the of a remarkable swath of real estate and the remarkable Court, but the governor cut them off with a smile. people it has attracted, from the aboriginals who “No, no, no, no, you’re going the wrong way on that created the continent’s first permanent settlement one. We’re here to talk about something that’s going in the Everglades, to the U.S. soldiers who fought a to be long-lasting, way past counting votes. This futile war of ethnic cleansing in the Everglades, to the is the restoration of a treasure for our country.” dreamers and schemers who have tried to settle, drain, Today, everyone agrees that the Everglades is tame, develop, sell, preserve, and restore the Everglades. a national treasure. It’s a World Heritage Site, an It’s a story about the pursuit of paradise and the ideal International Biosphere Reserve, the most famous of progress, which once inspired the degradation of wetland on earth. It’s a cultural icon, featured in nature, and now inspires its restoration. It’s a story Carl Hiaasen novels, Spiderman comics, country about hubris and unintended consequences, about songs, and the opening credits of “CSI: Miami,” the mistakes man has made in his relationship with as well as the popular postcards of its shovel- nature and his unprecedented efforts to fix them.
FLORIDA HUMANITIES COUNCIL FORUM / SUMMER 2007 7 The story begins with the natural Everglades Fantasyland with 7 million residents, 40 million ecosystem, which covered most of South Florida, annual tourists, and the world’s largest concentration from present-day Orlando all the way down to of golf courses. “There has never been a more grossly the Florida Keys. For most of its history, it was exaggerated region, a more grossly misrepresented virtually uninhabited. As late as 1897, four years region, or one concerning which less has been known after the historian Frederick Jackson Turner declared than this mighty empire of South Florida,” the Palm the western frontier closed, an explorer marveled Beach Post said in 1924. That’s still about right. that the Everglades was still “as much unknown America’s war on nature has left a tattered battlefield to the white man as the heart of Africa.” in South Florida. Half the Everglades is gone. The But once white men got to know it, they began other half is an ecological mess. Wading birds no longer to transform it. A Gilded Age industrialist named darken the skies above it. Algal blooms are exploding in Hamilton Disston was the first visionary to try to its lakes and estuaries, massacring its dolphins, oysters, drain the swamp. A brilliant oilman-turned-developer and manatees. And it is now clear that the degradation named Henry Flagler considered his own assault on extends beyond noxious vermin and pestilential the Everglades while he was laying the foundation for reptiles, affecting the people of South Florida as well. modern South Florida. And an energetic Progressive The aquifers that store their drinking water are under Era governor named Napoleon Bonaparte Broward siege. Their paradise has been sullied by sprawl, and by vowed to create an Empire of the Everglades with overcrowded schools, hospitals, and highways. Most of more canals, declaring war on South Florida’s water. them are at risk from the next killer hurricane—and The Everglades turned out to be a resilient the one after that. It is now almost universally agreed enemy, resisting man’s drainage schemes for decades, that South Florida’s growth is no longer sustainable. taking revenge in the form of brutal droughts and The Everglades restoration plan that President catastrophic floods, converting Florida swampland Clinton signed with Gov. Bush at his side is supposed into an enduring real estate punchline. In 1928, to restore some semblance of the original ecosystem, a hurricane blasted Lake Okeechobee through its and guide South Florida toward sustainability. flimsy muck dike and drowned 2,500 people in the And the Army Corps of Engineers, after decades Everglades, a ghastly foreshadowing of Hurricane of helping to destroy the Everglades, will lead the Katrina’s assault on New Orleans. Mother Nature did effort to undo some of the damage. “The Everglades not take kindly to man’s attempts to subjugate her. is a test,” one environmentalist has written. “If But the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the we pass, we may get to keep the planet.” ground troops in America’s war against nature, On that December day at the millennium’s finally conquered the Everglades with one of the end, Republicans and Democrats described most elaborate water-control projects in history, Everglades restoration as the dawn of a new era in setting the stage for South Florida’s spectacular conservation—not only for South Florida, but for postwar development. Suburbs such as Weston, mankind. Instead of taming rivers, irrigating deserts, Wellington, Plantation, Pembroke Pines, Miami and draining swamps, man would restore ravaged Lakes, and Miami Springs all sprouted in drained ecosystems. Instead of fighting over scarce fresh Everglades wetlands. So did Miami International water—the oil of the 21st century—Floridians would Airport, Sawgrass Mills Mall, Florida International demonstrate how to share. The Everglades, Jeb Bush University, Burger King corporate headquarters, and said, would be “a model for the world,” proof that a vast agricultural empire that produces one out of man and nature could live in harmony. America’s every five teaspoons of American sugar. Disney World politicians would finally pass the Everglades test. was built near the headwaters of the Everglades. And It was a noble sentiment. But man had been some people began to wonder whether the creation flunking that test for a long time. of a man-made paradise across Florida’s southern thumb was worth the destruction of a natural one. MICHAEL GRUNWALD, senior correspondent for TIME magazine, So the story of the Everglades is also the story of lives in Miami. This excerpt is the Introduction from his bookThe the transformation of South Florida, from a virtually Swamp: The Everglades, Florida, and the Politics of Paradise. uninhabited wasteland to a densely populated
8 SUMMER 2007 / F O R U M FLORIDA HUMANITIES COUNCIL Mennnello-DCAd(Forum) 6/1/07 9:53 AM Page 1
Mr. Cunningham Goes To Washington SMITHSONIAN AMERICAN ART MUSEUM August 10 – November 4, 2007
Earl Cunningham (1893-1977), American, The Twenty-One, c. 1976, oil on Masonite, 21.25 × 26 inches. Collection of The Honorable Marilyn Logsdon Mennello and Michael A. Mennello.
Tranquil Forrest, c. 1933, oil on Masonite, 22 × 26 inches Seminole Village, Deep in the Everglades, c. 1965, Sanctuary, c. 1933, oil on Masonite, 21.25 × 26 inches oil on Masonite, 20.75 × 26.75 inches Collection of The Mennello Museum of American Art. Gift of The Honorable Marilyn Logsdon Mennello and Michael A. Mennello. Copyright © 2007.
THE MENNELLO MUSEUM OF AMERICAN ART 900 E. Princeton Street • Orlando, Florida 32803 407.246.4278 • www.mennellomuseum.org The Mennello Museum is owned and operated by The City of Orlando. A D A P T E D fro m : Losing It All to Sprawl: How Progress Ate My Cracker Landscape
By Bill Belleville
hen I step into my backyard at late 1920s, it was designed to be naturally insulated, 8 a.m., I see the mist rising from the ground, cool from cross ventilation and the shade of well-planted everything all silver now from the reflection of trees, bushy magnolia and water oak, back in the days Wthe new sun, small cobwebs left in the shape of tents between when it took resourcefulness and common sense to live the blades of grass from last night’s tiny business. The dew in Florida and not air-conditioning and bug spray. It is is heavy and splashes when my little sheltie runs through a place where I can go and sit quietly on the worn stone it, leaving a wake like a boat keel does in water. I see his bench with the hearts in the side, next to the massive warm breath puff out in front of him as he romps, a little stand of bamboo, and listen to the wind coax music from dragon breathing smoke, looking for the rabbits that forever the hollow reeds, hear the first sounds of the chuck-will’s- taunt him, at least two hops away before he smells them. widow at dusk, wait for Orion and the Pleiades to appear. The saucer-sized white blooms that burst open on the Falling stars arrive as a hat-trick of a surprise, streaking giant cereus cactus by the coolness of late night have gone their way across the night sky with no preamble. black and fallen. A monochrome of green, the cactus reigns Yet this picture I’ve just painted has begun to over a corner of the yard like a thick, stocky tree. Back inside change in the last few months. The bulldozers have been its limbs, mockingbirds flit about, chasing the anoles, little scraping the epidermal layer off the earth not far away, lizard chins all puffed up with red to impress each other. preparing for a brand new mall, a shoppers’ paradise that The vines of the wild blackberry trail back into will bring jobs and money and people and their cars. the subtropical thicket that consumes the rear of the The road my dirt lane connects to is being paved and yard, winding back through the elephant ears and guava widened to accommodate all this busy commerce. bushes. Under the broad banana leaves, the small fruits You can hear the high-pitched buzzers go off and on are fat and green, while the Hamlins and sour root all day as the heavy machinery moves forward and then stock have turned just like the little pumpkin-colored into reverse. Up from the ground go the palmettos, the kumquats that fill the two trees in the front, near the sabal palms, the southern red cedar, and the sweet bay, coral vine that meanders up the side of the porch. shredded and piled and burned like rubbish. The few gopher During seasonal changes here in Florida, the leaves tortoises that weren’t buried alive make a run for it, lighting of the sweetgum go yellow and red, and the fingers of out across the new highway for safe ground, trying not to the golden polypody fern become streaked with burnt become roadkill. I’ve rescued three of them so far, turning umber. Up high, the berries of the sabal palms hang in them loose at the edge of my backyard, where they march clusters under the lowest fronds. In the small coquina off into the 20 acres of dead citrus grove next to the house. rock pond, native gambusia move about more slowly Someday the old grove will go too; there is a proposal just below the water’s surface, amidst the hydrilla and the for it to become a multifamily development of some roots of the river iris I once collected from the St. Johns. sort, probably to hold the swarms of minimum-wage This is the last remains of an old farm spread in workers who will staff the retail stores in the mall. The northern Seminole County, barely an acre left now, hawk has suspiciously disappeared, although I hope not at the end of a dirt road. The two-story house here is for good. I wonder how much longer it will be before mostly of heart cypress, so dense that I have broken the flood of new mall lights dims the blackness of the circular saw blades and countless nails as I’ve gone sky, snuffing out the constellations, the falling stars. about the never-ending chore of keeping it livable. It is a fine old Cracker-style home raised up off the BILL BELLEVILLE is a widely published writer and documentary ground a few feet, molded-steel roof overhangs, gables filmmaker who specializes in environmental issues. This is an everywhere, porches to the front and back, richly aged adaptation from his book, Losing It All to Sprawl: How Progress hardwood floors and brick fireplace. Built solid in the Ate My Cracker Landscape.
10 SUMMER 2007 / F O R U M FLORIDA HUMANITIES COUNCIL A D A P T E D fro m : Escape Clause
By James O. Born
ill Tasker took his daughter’s hand grubby University of Miami ball caps on their heads. as they crossed the parking lot heading into the They looked up at the security cameras and Bank of Florida branch in Kendall, just south of then up and down the row of tellers. They never theB city of Miami. The blond eight-year-old saw a license even looked at the customers. Tasker knew what tag from Quebec on a rust-riddled Nissan pickup truck they were up to. The only question was whether they and turned to her father and asked, “What’s that mean?” had the balls to go through with it right now. “Je me souviens?” Every instinct told him to draw now and preempt “Yeah, what is it?” Her blue eyes wide. what was coming, but Emily’s presence at his side slowed “French.” him, as did the other innocent bystanders. Unless there “But, what’s it mean?” was an immediate threat to someone’s life he shouldn’t “Not sure, sweetheart, but I think it worry about a bank losing money. Besides, maybe means, I brake for no apparent reason!” these guys were just workmen assessing a painting job. She gave him one of her looks. Oh please, he was thinking like an attorney now. “Or it means, ‘I drive slow in the left lane.’” His heart rate picked up as he watched the two men, She kept her look until he laughed and then dressed in jeans with unbuttoned shirts over T-shirts, separate, asked him again, “What’s it really mean?” one staying near the front door, the other heading toward “I think it means, ‘I remember.’” the counter. He noticed the tattoos on the neck of the guy “Remember what?” walking toward the counter. The other had both ears and an Tasker shrugged. “I dunno, baby. Maybe they eyebrow pierced. He wanted to give a good description when should remember not to start a war with the English.” the Metro-Dade detectives asked him what he had seen. She gave him another look, but seemed He turned to Emily. “Hey, let’s play a little game.” satisfied with the answer as they pushed open She immediately lit up. the tall glass front door and walked inside. “You try and hide where I can’t see you, under that table Today was a teacher’s planning day in Palm Beach with the marble-looking top.” He pointed to a table in the County. Tasker had taken a rare day off from work just small loan area 20 feet from the line. “You stay there, out of to spend with his two daughters, directly addressing his sight, until I come over and get you.” ex-wife’s contention that he focused more on work as an Without hesitation, she scurried over to the empty loan agent with the Florida Department of Law Enforcement area and disappeared under the table. than on his family. A belief that was, unfortunately, built Tasker took a step to the side, moving out of the line, entirely on fact. Police work, especially investigations, then started to step forward past the few remaining customers required an alarming amount of time. The Florida toward the counter and the would-be robber. He heard a Department of Law Enforcement tended to get involved loud voice. in the biggest of cases and there often wasn’t time to “Nobody move.” just take off and see your family. As he and the girls It was one of the men he’d been watching. He stood grew older, he realized what a mistake that was. next to the counter and held a large-framed revolver. The Tasker and his daughter exchanged small talk other man blocked the front door, with a much smaller and played games until they were near the front of revolver in his hand. It looked like a Smith five-shot .38. the line. The day off and the attention of his daughter Tasker’s stomach flipped as he glanced back to the table made him more relaxed than he’d been in months. Emily was under. He didn’t see her. Good. He stood still, A blast of warm, humid South Florida air hit him letting this thing unfold. It was the smart move, keeping as the front door swung open. He looked up and— everyone out of the line of fire, but it went against his nature. couldn’t pinpoint the feeling exactly, but his hand almost instinctively came to rest on the small, green belly bag JAMES O. BORN, a special agent with the Florida Department of that concealed his off-duty Sig P-230 automatic. Two Law Enforcement, lives in Lake Worth. This is an adaptation from men in their early 20s stood next to the door, talking. Chapter One of his book, Escape Clause. Tasker scanned them from their ratty Keds to the
FLORIDA HUMANITIES COUNCIL FORUM / SUMMER 2007 11 E x cerpt fro m : Nature Girl
By Carl Hiaason
n the second day of January, Bauer, none of which would be considered traditional windswept and bright, a half-blood Seminole Seminole garb. Wilson asked Sammy Tigertail if he named Sammy Tigertail dumped a dead had one of those brightly beaded jackets and maybe bodyO in the Lostmans River. The water temperature a pair of deerskin moccasins. The Indian said no. was 59 degrees, too nippy for sharks or alligators. Wilson instructed him not to smile and snapped a But maybe not for crabs, thought Sammy Tigertail. couple of pictures. Afterward, Sammy Tigertail cranked Watching the corpse sink, he pondered the up the airboat and set out to finish the swamp tour at foolishness of white men. This one had called the highest-possible speed. Because of the cold weather himself Wilson when he arrived on the Big Cypress there was practically no wildlife to be observed, but reservation, reeking of alcohol and demanding an Wilson didn’t seem to mind. He’d gotten what he airboat ride. He spoke of ringing in the New Year came for. Squinting against the wind, he gnawed a at the Hard Rock Hotel and Casino, which was stick of dried beef and sipped on a warm Heineken. owned by the Seminole Tribe on 86 acres between Sammy Tigertail took a shortcut through a prairie Miami and Fort Lauderdale. Wilson told Sammy of tall saw grass, which flattened under the airboat’s bow Tigertail that he’d been sorely disappointed not to as neatly as wheat fields beneath a combine. Without find a single Indian at the casino, and that after a full warning, Wilson arose from his seat and dropped the beer night of drinking, hot babes, and seven-card stud bottle, spraying the deck. As Sammy Tigertail backed he’d driven all the way out to Big Cypress just to get off the throttle, he saw Wilson begin to wobble and himself photographed with a genuine Seminole. snatch at his own throat. Sammy Tigertail thought the “Some dumbass bet me a hundred bucks I couldn’t man was gagging on a chunk of jerky, but in fact he was find one,” Wilson said, slinging a flabby arm around trying to remove from his doughy neck a small banded Sammy Tigertail, “but here you are, brother. Hey, water snake that had sailed out of the parting reeds. where can I buy one of them cardboard cameras?” The creature was harmless, but evidently Wilson Sammy Tigertail directed Wilson toward was in no condition to be surprised by a flying reptile. a convenience store. The man returned with a He dropped stone dead of a heart attack before his throwaway Kodak, a bag of beef jerky and a six- Seminole guide could get the boat stopped. pack. Mercifully, the airboat engine was so loud that The first thing that Sammy Tigertail did was lift it drowned out most of Wilson’s life story. Sammy the little snake off the lifeless tourist and release it into Tigertail heard enough to learn that the man was the marsh. Then he took Wilson’s left wrist and groped from the greater Milwaukee area, and that for a for a pulse. Sammy Tigertail felt obliged to unbutton living he sold trolling motors to walleye fishermen. the man’s shirt and pound on his marbled chest for Ten minutes into the ride, Wilson’s cheeks several minutes. The Indian elected to forgo mouth- turned pink from the chill and his bloodshot eyes to-mouth contact, as there obviously was no point; started leaking and his shoulders hunched with Wilson was as cold to the touch as a bullfrog’s belly. the shakes. Sammy Tigertail stopped the airboat In his pockets the Seminole found the disposable and offered him hot coffee from a thermos. camera, $645 cash, a wallet, keys to a rented Chrysler, a “How ’b-b-bout that picture you cellular phone, two marijuana joints, three condoms, and promised?” Wilson asked. a business card from the Blue Dolphin Escort Service. Sammy Tigertail patiently stood beside him Sammy Tigertail put back everything, including the as the man extended one arm, aiming the camera cash. Then he took out his own cell phone and called back at them. Sammy Tigertail was wearing a fleece his uncle Tommy, who advised him to remove the dead zip-up from Patagonia, a woolen navy watch cap white man from the reservation as soon as possible. from L.L. Bean, and heavy khakis from Eddie In the absence of more specific instructions, Sammy
12 SUMMER 2007 / F O R U M FLORIDA HUMANITIES COUNCIL Tigertail wrongly assumed that his uncle meant for “Yeah, well, that’s what Mr. Piejack is like,” Honey him to dispose permanently of Wilson, not merely said, “only bigger.” transport him to a neutral location. Sammy Tigertail She took a small bite of the tough gray meat. feared that he would be held responsible for the It was gruesome but she managed a smile. tourist’s death, and that the tribal authorities wouldn’t Fry shrugged. “So, did he make a move or what?” be able to protect him from the zeal of Collier County “You could say that.” prosecutors, not one of whom was a Native American. Mr. Piejack was the owner of the fish market, and So Sammy Tigertail ran the airboat back to the he’d been sniffing after Honey for months. He was dock and carried Wilson’s body to the rental car. No married and had numerous other unsavory qualities. one was there to witness the transfer, but any neutral “You know those little wooden mallets observer—especially one downwind of Wilson’s boozy we sell at the register?” Honey said. stink—would have concluded that he was a large Fry nodded. “For cracking stone-crab claws.” sloppy drunk who’d passed out on the swamp tour. “Right. That’s what I whacked him with.” Having positioned the corpse upright in “Where?” the backseat, Sammy Tigertail drove directly to “Where do you think?” Everglades City, in the heart of the Ten Thousand As Fry pushed away from the table, Honey Islands. There he purchased four anchors and hurried to explain. borrowed a crab boat and headed for a snook “He grabbed my breast. That’s why I did it.” hole he knew on the Lostmans River. Her son looked up. “For real? You’re not making Now a single coppery bubble marked the spot this up?” where the dead man had sunk. Sammy Tigertail “My right breast, I swear to God.” Honey solemnly stared into the turbid brown water feeling gloomy and entwined her hands over the object of Mr. Piejack’s lust. disgusted. It had been his first day working the airboat “What an a-hole,” Fry said. concession, and Wilson had been his first customer. “Totally. After I hit him, he started rolling on His last, too. the floor, moaning and whining, so I grabbed a slab After returning the crab boat, he called his uncle of tuna out of the cooler and shoved it down his Tommy to say he was going away for a while. He said pants. You know, to keep the swelling down.” he wasn’t spiritually equipped to deal with tourists. “What kind of tuna?” “Boy, you can’t hide from the white world,” “Yellowfin,” Honey said. “Sushi-grade.” his uncle told him. “I know because I tried.” Fry grinned. “He’ll throw it back on “Do we own the Blue Dolphin Escort the ice and sell it to some snowbird.” Service?” asked Sammy Tigertail. “That’s gross,” Honey said. “Nothing would surprise me,” said his uncle. “How much you wanna bet?” “Hey, I could fix us some soup.” She got up At about the same time, in a trailer not far and scraped the Salisbury steaks into the garbage from the fishing docks, a boy named Fry looked up can. “Minestrone or cream of tomato?” from his dinner plate and asked, “What is this crap?” “Whatever.” Fry scooted his chair back to the It was not an unreasonable question. table. Sometimes he believed that his mother was “Salisbury steak,” Honey Santana said. “It tastes on the verge of losing her mind, and sometimes he better than it looks.” believed that she was the sanest person he’d ever met. “Did you get fired again?” “Now what, Mom?” “No, I quit,” Honey said. “Now hush up and eat.” “You know my friend Bonnie? She’s doing these As her son well knew, she resorted to frozen ecotours where she takes tourists kayaking out to dinners only when she was out of work. Cormorant Key,” Honey said. “She says it’s a ton “What happened this time?” he asked. of fun and the money’s pretty good, too. Anyway, “You remember Aunt Rachel’s driving home from Marco this afternoon I noticed a Chihuahua? Yum-Yum Boy?” string of bright yellow kayaks crossing the bay, and “The one that got killed, right? Trying to hump I thought: What a heavenly way to spend the day, a raccoon.” paddling in the sunshine through the mangroves!”
FLORIDA HUMANITIES COUNCIL FORUM / SUMMER 2007 13 “Kayaks,” Fry said skeptically. “Is this the same It was a dreary and soulless job, though not the Bonnie with the solar-powered sewing machine?” worst that Shreave had ever held. Still, at age 35 he “You sound like your ex-father.” realized that the feeble arc of his career had more or “He’s not my ex-father, he’s your ex- less flatlined during his six months in telemarketing. husband. Anyway, what’d I say wrong?” He probably would have quit were it not for 6-foot- “Oh, just the look on your face.” Honey tall Eugenie, the ash-blond crest of whose head he took the soup pot off the stove. “What was I could gaze upon at will in the adjoining carrel. supposed to do, Fry? The man squeezed my Boyd Shreave had been in sales since the age of 26: boob. Did he deserve to be clobbered with a corrective footwear, farm equipment, automobiles (new crab hammer in the testicles, or did he not?” and used), fertilizer, herbal baldness remedies, high- “How much does a kayak cost?” definition televisions, and exotic pet supplies. That he had Honey set two bowls on the table. “I’m not sure, failed to succeed, much less prosper, surprised no one who but we’ll need at least two or three, for starters.” knew him. In person, Boyd Shreave was distinctly ill- “And where would you take these goobers suited for the craft of persuasion. Regardless of his mood on your ‘ecotour’?” Fry asked. “I mean, since there was an air of sour arrogance about him—a slant Bonnie’s already locked up Cormorant Key.” to one thin reddish eyebrow that hinted at impatience, Honey laughed. “Have you looked if not outright disdain; a slump of the shoulders that out our window lately? Have you noticed suggested the weight of excruciating boredom; a wormish all those gorgeous green islands?” curl of the upper lip that was often perceived as a The phone began to ring. Honey frowned. sneer of condescension or, worse, a parody of Elvis. “Every night,” she said, “like clockwork.” Almost nobody wanted to buy anything from Boyd “Then don’t answer it,” her son said. Shreave. They just wanted him to go away. “No, I’ve had it with these clowns. Enough He’d all but abandoned his ambitions in sales when, is enough.” upon the occasion of his most recent firing, his future ex- boss had suggested that he consider telephone work. “You More than a thousand miles got the pipes for it,” the man had said. “Unfortunately, away, a man named Boyd Shreave stirred a latte that’s about all you got.” and listened on his wireless headset to a phone It was true that strangers were often unnerved when ringing somewhere distant, in the 239 area code. Shreave opened his mouth, so mismatched was his voice— A photocopied script lay on the desktop in front smooth, reassuring, and affable—with his appearance. of him, but Boyd Shreave no longer needed it. “You’re a natural,” Eugenie Fonda had told him on his first After three days he knew the pitch cold. day at the call center. “You could sell dope to the Pope.” Shreave was employed by Relentless, Inc., a Shreave didn’t set the world afire at Relentless, but for telemarketing company that specialized in outbound the first time in his life he could honestly claim to be semi- sales calls to middle-income residential addresses in the competent at his job. He was also restless and resentful. United States. The firm’s call center was a converted He disliked the late shift, the confined atmosphere, B-52 hangar in Fort Worth, Texas, where Boyd and the mynah-bird repetition of the sales script. Shreave and 53 other solicitors toiled in individual The pay blew, too: minimum wage, plus four bucks cubicles that were padded to dampen ambient noise. for every lead he generated. Whenever Shreave got a In the cubicle to the right of Boyd Shreave was a hot one on the line—somebody who actually agreed to woman named Eugenie Fonda, who claimed a murky a callback or a mailout—he was required by company connection to the famous acting family and in any case policy to punt the sucker’s name to a floor supervisor. had recently become Boyd Shreave’s mistress. To the Shreave would have gladly forgone the shitty four- left of Boyd Shreave sat a man named Sacco, who was dollar commission for a chance to close the deal, but cavern-eyed and unfriendly and rumored to be a dot- no such responsibility was ever dealt to rookie callers. com burnout. During work hours, Boyd Shreave rarely A woman picked up on the fifth ring. spoke to any of his co-workers, including Eugenie, due to the onerous calling quotas imposed by Relentless, CARL HIAASON is a Florida native, longtime columnist for the Miami Inc. They were on the phones from 5 p.m. to midnight, Herald, and author of more than a dozen novels. This is an excerpt from strafing east to west through the time zones. Nature Girl.
14 SUMMER 2007 / F O R U M FLORIDA HUMANITIES COUNCIL The “lost” Florida novel! Exploring Florida’s Emerald Matecumbe Coast James A. Michener A Rich History and a Rare Ecology “In Matecumbe, written at the height of his career, Jean Lufkin Bouler Michener returned to the shorter form of his “Illuminates the history of the once-quiet, now- earlier novels to explore tangled human relation- booming coast between Panama City and ships. Matecumbe is a counterpoint to his epic Pensacola. The narrative takes readers on an novels and should serve to remind readers of enjoyable and thoughtful journey.”—Kathryn L. Michener’s extensive talents.”—Stephen J. May, Ziewitz, co-author of Green Empire author of Michener: A Writer’s Journey COMING IN SEPTEMBER. Paper $24.95 • James A. Michener (1907–1997) wrote nearly forty books in his lifetime, including such classics as Hawaii, Centennial, Space, Texas, and Alaska. He received the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1948 for Tales of the South Pacific, which was the basis for the Broadway musical and Academy Award– winning movie South Pacific. Paper $21.00
Designing the Good Life Norman M. Giller and the Development of Miami Modernism Norman M. Giller and Sarah Giller Nelson “There is a lot more to Mid-Century Modernism than we have yet discovered. This book offers an important look at a neglected aspect of that era’s rich architecture and history.”—Alan Hess, author of Palm Springs Weekend: The Architecture and Design of a Mid-Century Oasis • Designing the Good Life is a personal account of MoonPie the post–World War II movement that shaped a Biography of an Out-of-This-World Snack city and defined an era. This captivating story offers a unique look at the architecture of Norman David Magee M. Giller whose vision helped to define Florida “As whimsical as a banana MoonPie . . . a very architecture. sweet tribute to a sweet treat.”—Southern Food & COMING IN OCTOBER. Cloth $39.95 Beverage Museum Newsletter • Featured on the Food Network and selected as a recommended nonfiction read by the Atlanta From Yellow Dog Democrats Constitution to Red State Republicans Paper $14.95 Florida and Its Politics since 1940 www.upf.com David R. Colburn “In this sweeping overview of modern Florida Visit our website for special politics, Colburn challenges the country’s precon- deals and great new Florida titles ceived notions of the Sunshine State’s political or order toll free 1-800-226-3822. leanings. From Yellow Dog Democrats to Red State Republicans is the result of a lifetime of observing and analyzing a once small and rural state that has transformed itself, in less than fifty years, into a political powerhouse and national weather- vane.”—Reubin O’D. Askew, Governor of Florida, 1971-1979 Cloth $29.95
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Forum Su07 1 5/22/07, 3:04 PM E x cerpt fro m : Dark Light
By Randy Wayne White
oe was telling his boss, Bern Heller, “The “That’s what we’re talking about. I’m trying to make guy said he’d be back with a gun. I think a point here.” he means it. No”—Moe ducked his head Moe gave it a few seconds before he named a figure, intoM the straw cowboy hat he was holding—“I know then added, “It’s a well-known brand, less than a year he means it. It’s one of the fishing guides. The spook.” old. We had it on a rack outside the barn. It didn’t get a “Spook?” scratch.” Moe said, “You know, a colored guy. Surprised by the value, Heller said, “That’s as much You don’t call them that in Wisconsin?” I paid for my BMW. How’d a Cuban get that kind of Heller gave him a look. money?” Moe kept going. “You’ve seen him. Javier Castillo. “The guy’s a worker. He came over on a raft and The black guy with the Spanish accent. He’s around hustled his ass off. He’s not a bullshitter, either. That’s here most mornings, getting ice, waiting for clients.” why we should call the cops now. Javier’s gonna pull a “Okay—the skinny one who goes barefoot. He gun if we don’t let him take his boat. The cops should doesn’t look Mexican.” be here waiting.” “No, he’s Cuban. In Florida, that’s what most Heller had his grandfather’s smile. He was smiling Mexicans are. Javier owns that boat sitting by the fuel now because Moe couldn’t keep his voice from catching. docks. The Pursuit, with twin Yamaha outboards, and The man was scared, even though he acted hard-assed, the radar. A beauty.” with that cowboy hat, the redneck nose and chin, the “The greenish-looking one?” face a triangle of stubble because that’s the way movie “Yeah. The open fisherman. Blue-green.” Moe stars wore their beards. Moe: a hick from French Lick. turned sideways and pointed so his boss could sight “You like that boat?” down his arm. “Sure, of course. But—” Heller ignored him. “Do you want it?’’ Heller was CEO of a company that had built three “Who wouldn’t, but—” marina communities on Florida’s Gulf coast, most of Bern cut him off. “Then we don’t want the it on land acquired by his grandfather. This was the cops here when the Cuban shows. They’d scare him newest, Indian Harbor Marina and Resort. Two weeks away. Let him pull the gun and wave it around. ago, the eye of a hurricane had spun ashore near Sanibel That’s when we want the cops. Let them take Island, 20 miles south. Bern had been making rounds him to jail—or shoot him.” Heller shrugged. since, taking notes, directing cleanup, not saying much. “Either way,” Heller said, “the boat’s ours.” Their properties hadn’t done badly. A couple In fact, all the boats were theirs. They belonged to of condos had lost roofs. Pool screens, ornamental the salvage company contracted to clear the wreckage. trees, that sort of thing. The worst was right here in And the salvage company belonged to Heller. But he front of him, a boat storage barn that had collapsed. wasn’t going to trust this idiot with that little detail. Got hit by a tornado, maybe—which is what he For more than two weeks, Moe had had to was pushing the insurance people to believe. deal with several hundred pissed-off boat owners Heller watched a crane lift a girder who paid storage at the marina but hadn’t been from the wreckage as he asked Moe, allowed on the property since the hurricane. Every “What do you think it’s worth?” morning, they gathered at the gate, getting madder “The Cuban guy’s boat?” and madder—Javier Castillo among them.
16 SUMMER 2007 / F O R U M FLORIDA HUMANITIES COUNCIL As soon as the storm had blown through, Heller had asked forces of nature the state to declare the marina a now updated through katrina & wilma! hazardous area because of storm damage, so the boat owners hadn’t Florida’s Hurricane History jay barnes been allowed to step foot on the Second Edition, with a Foreword by Steve Lyons place. They couldn’t move their Praise for the first edition: boats, inspect them, or recover “Absolutely riveting.”—Naples Daily News personal items, nothing. “The most comprehensive collection of Florida hurricane photographs ever Then, days later, Heller’s assembled.”—Ft. Lauderdale El Heraldo attorney had sent a letter, registered 139 illus., 87 maps mail, to the state attorney. It declared that, because the owners had failed to secure their vessels against future storms; the marina considered the boats to be derelict. Florida Wild Flowers As derelict vessels, they could be and Roadside Plants claimed as salvage by a licensed c. ritchie bell & bryan j. taylor company. Legally, it was edgy—but 500 species, from Pensacola to the Keys no one had challenged it so far. “Elegantly definitive. . . . For reference and For the Hoosier, Heller for sheer reading and looking pleasure.” summarized, instead. “If these boats —Orlando Sentinel 550 color photos., 513 drawings, 503 range maps go floating off in another storm, we’re responsible for damages. A The University of North Carolina Press • www.uncpress.unc.edu tornado grabs one and drops it in a Available in hardcover and paperback at bookstores or 800-848-6224 crowded building? It’s our nuts in the wringer. That’s why the salvage company has to assume ownership.” When Moe asked, “Yeah, but how can we expect owners to secure their boats when we won’t let them on the property?” Heller stared at him until Moe got so nervous he started laughing. “I was joking, Bern.” Yeah, Heller was right not to trust this goof with the details. “It doesn’t matter whether a boat is damaged or not,” Heller told him. “The salvage company deserves a fair profit for cleaning up the mess. Take me around and tell me what all this crap’s worth.”
RANDY WAYNE WHITE was a light- tackle fishing guide for 13 years at Tarpon Bay, Sanibel. This is an excerpt fromDark Light, part of his Doc Ford series.
FLORIDA HUMANITIES COUNCIL FORUM / SUMMER 2006 17 A D A P T E D fro m : Floridian of his Century: The Courage of Governor LeRoy Collins
By Martin A. Dyckman
n January 1957, newly re-elected Gov. Florida’s strength are bottomed upon the basic LeRoy Collins set to work on an inaugural reverse premise that ours is a land of the law.” address that would become a turning point in He was confident, however, that [recently Ithe politics of race. The night before the ceremony, adopted state] laws would forestall public school he invited an old friend, businessman Frank Moore, integration “as long as such is not wise in the to the Grove to hear what would become the historic light of the social, economic, and health facts of passages in his speech. Moore warned Collins that he life as they exist in the various localities of the would be criticized, but Collins changed nothing. state.” He expected school segregation to prevail The inaugural audience, an estimated 4,000 “for the foreseeable future” and promised to do people enjoying a sunny day with temperatures everything possible to enforce the new laws. in the 60s, did not suspect what was coming. What he did not say was the most significant. Nobody had leaked to the press what Collins There was no promise to prolong segregation in would say, and his cheerful demeanor gave no clue. higher education. Then he got to the point that must Even so, Florida State University’s band director, have most alarmed Moore: “I am convinced,” he Manley Whitcomb, told his musicians to pay said, “that the average white citizen does not object attention to a man who was going to lead Florida to non-segregated seating in buses, anymore than he “out of Dixie and into mainstream America.” objects to riding the same elevators with Negroes or The speech seemed at first to be a conventional patronizing the same stores. He does resent some of laundry list of accomplishments and of goals, most the methods being used to achieve certain ends…We of all a new constitution. Then it became a sermon. can find wise solutions, I believe, if the white citizens It was not enough, Collins said, that Florida was will face up to the fact that the Negro does not now growing by 500 people a day; the question was have equal opportunities; that he is morally and whether Floridians were growing “in spirit, in moral legally entitled to progress more rapidly, and that concepts, in selflessness, in knowledge, in strength a full good-faith effort should be made forthwith of character.” It was time to talk about the school to help him move forward in the improvement of desegregation decisions. Like it or not, they had all his standards.” Collins also cautioned the black happened, and it would do “no good whatever to community, in patronizing terms, that they should defy the United States Supreme Court.” The idea “strive to be wanted…to avoid being resented.” He that a state could resist its decisions was “little short still did not think that the majority’s hearts and of rebellion and anarchy.” Violence and disorder minds could be changed through judicial decrees. could never be the answer. “Above all, he said, “hate Collins that day became the first governor is not the answer. One may be hated and still retain south of Tennessee or Maryland to instruct his human dignity, but one who hates suffers a his white constituents to change how they shrinking of soul. We can never find the answer by thought. He was also the first to endorse non- destroying the human spirit. Indeed, through hate, segregated seating on public transportation. we magnify our bewilderment and fortify our fears. Then he quoted from a hymn, “Once to Every “It is not easy to say,” he continued, “but it Man and Nation,” that he had asked his friend the is nevertheless true and I feel I should stand up Rev. Harry Douglas to read at a prayer breakfast and say it. The Supreme Court decisions are the that morning. The stanzas he quoted said in part: law of the land. And this nation’s strength and
18 SUMMER 2007 / F O R U M FLORIDA HUMANITIES COUNCIL Once to every man and nation first governor to appoint African Americans to a Comes the moment to decide, significant number of offices; among them was the In the strife of truth with falsehood, first black justice of the Florida Supreme Court. For the Good or Evil side; “I think I have pursued public service because …Then it is the brave man chooses, of LeRoy Collins;” said Janet Reno, then attorney While the coward stands aside. general of the United States, at the dedication of As Collins knew, the hymn’s author, James Leon County’s LeRoy Collins Library. When the Russell Lowell, was a leading abolitionist. Slavery’s Legislature convened in 1996, Speaker Peter Wallace progeny, segregation, was the issue now. of St. Petersburg sent to the archives for the original “As I see it, Collins concluded, “we must side with interposition resolution and read to the House what truth even though now we may share her wretched Collins had written on it. “Today I have that document crust. History requires that we not stand aside, in my hand,” Wallace said, “and I can tell you that it coward-like, waiting for the multitude to make virtue feels alive with the history of that time and with the of our position…Those who say we are incapable of courage of the man who wrote so boldly across it.” this do not know the Southerners I know nor the Republican Gov. Jeb Bush, despite holding South I love…We have a state to build, a South to strikingly different views on the proper role of save, a nation to convince, and a God to serve.” government, referred to Collins as Florida’s greatest [That inaugural address was unlike anything a governor. In an interview, Bush cited Collins’s Deep South governor had dared to say. Subsequently “integrity and his commitment to principle” Collins vetoed “last resort” legislation to close the and his determination “to move Florida from a schools; he denounced a meaningless “interposition” Southern agriculture state to an industrial one.” resolution by which the legislature purported to declare Said Bush, “It shaped our future significantly.” the Supreme Court’s desegregation decisions null and Arriving for work one day, Bush observed void; and he quietly encouraged the first token—but something out of place in the corridor outside his peaceful—integration of Florida’s public schools Capitol office where portraits of the eight most and universities. Amid lunch-counter desegregation recent former governors are displayed. Upon the demonstrations that threatened to provoke riots, arrival of the newest portrait, the Collins portrait Collins went on statewide television to say that while had been sent to storage. Bush ordered it returned it was legal, it was also “unfair and morally wrong” to an alcove immediately outside his reception room for merchants to discriminate. To wish that blacks where he has his picture taken with schoolchildren would “just stay in their place,” said the governor, and other visitors, and where he intends for the was unchristian, undemocratic, and unrealistic. “We Collins portrait to remain in perpetuity. can never stop Americans from struggling to be Collins relished telling a story about that free,” he said. Collins never won another election.] portrait. Visiting the Capitol long after he had been Collins was succeeded for ten years by three governor, he saw a group of school children looking governors who were at best indifferent to civil rights, at it. “You know,” said their teacher, “I think he but none attempted to roll back what had been passed away.” Collins, grinning, spoke up: “Oh no, achieved. Gov. Claude Kirk’s Manatee County escapade Ma’am, I want to assure you he’s very close alive.” [to prevent busing for school desegregation] was the only attempt to defy a federal court; he called it off MARTIN A. DYCKMAN is a retired associate editor and columnist after three days to avoid fines of $10,000 a day. for the St. Petersburg Times. This is an adaptation from his book With Gov. Reuben Askew’s election, the Floridian of his Century: The Courage of Governor LeRoy Collins. Collins philosophy prevailed again at Tallahassee, personified by a new governor who regarded Collins as the example “that I consciously tried to follow.” Askew called on Floridians to accept busing as a lesser evil than segregation. He was the
FLORIDA HUMANITIES COUNCIL FORUM / SUMMER 2007 19 A dapted fro m The Tumultuous Sixties: Campus Unrest and Student Life at a Southern University
By J. Stanley Marshall
ome say that Florida State were not allowed to visit each other’s campuses, except University was lucky to have avoided with official permission by university authorities, the destruction and violence that befell other and even then only if they could make a valid claim AmericanS colleges and universities during the student that the visit was for an educational purpose. activism of the 1960s and early 1970s. While I concur During this time editorial writers for the student that we were indeed fortunate, a historical review of newspaper, The Flambeau, generally took a moderate those times reveals that it was more than luck that stance on the issue of race and racial integration of enabled our University to avoid the mayhem, the the campus, pointing with pride to the peaceful way internal student and faculty tumult, and the bloodshed in which the university had accepted its first black that marked the protests on other campuses. students. They noted that the civil rights battles in FSU students were caught up in the discontent over Tallahassee in the early ’60s demonstrated that FSU issues that troubled young people, especially college students were eager to support the struggles of black students, throughout the country. The Vietnam War people. They strengthened the sentiments of the New was the plausible culprit for some of the discontent. The Left, whose supporters later became involved in such civil rights movement troubled many, again especially issues as the Vietnam War and Women’s Liberation. the young, who responded to the urgings of Martin Before 1967, liberal inclinations of students and Luther King, Jr. to demand equality for all Americans. other young people often found expression in long Many of America’s youth felt the impact of hair, bare feet, and a certain infatuation with drugs, President Kennedy’s assassination and the growing sex, and rock ’n roll. By 1968, the counterculture distance between the power centers of the country had arrived at FSU in force, and the campus was and the spirit of the people. The decline of the rather quickly transformed. Thein loco parentis policy institutions their parents had taught them to [allowing colleges to exercise parental authority over trust—family, church, government—troubled many students] was fast becoming a relic of the grand young people, and they were moved to seek change old days of Florida State College for Women. as no other generation in this century had done. With this background, the events that FSU had been racially integrated in 1962, but overtook Florida State University in May 1968 there were tensions. Authorities in Tallahassee and might have seemed to be the next step in the Leon County, along with FSU administrators, worked evolution of student radicalism on the South’s together to control demonstrations. FSU’s Dean of most active campus. And so they were. Students Ross Oglesby issued a statement enjoining students from participating in demonstrations and J. STANLEY MARSHALL, FSU president from 1968 to 1977, is a unauthorized parades or other acts of incitement. member of the Florida Board of Governors. This is an adaptation from Students from Florida A&M University and FSU his book, The Tumultuous Sixties: Campus Unrest and Student Life at a Southern University.
20 SUMMER 2007 / F O R U M FLORIDA HUMANITIES COUNCIL E x cerpt fro m : Murder at Wakulla Springs
By M.D. Abrams
orry, Lor, you’re breaking waterfront restaurants were closed, and one dilapidated up. Are you on your cell?” he store had a sign, “We have not moved.” Many of the asked. “You’re not driving now are you? I destroyed properties had “For Sale” signs on them. “Sremember that road. It’s pretty narrow in spots.” Hurricane Dennis’ storm surge had made a wreck “No, I’ve stopped along the beach,” I of the area. said, feeling comforted by his concern. “It’s so I drove past the bridge to St. George Island unpopulated, Jeffrey. There’s some development, and through East Point, which looked pretty much but it still looks like old Florida. I can even see intact. I was surprised to see condos and a marina shrimp boats moving out to the Gulf.” in this town prized as a fishing village. I finally “Maybe I could make time to come up and crossed the bay causeway and the John Gorrie visit you for a couple of days. See the play and—” Bridge. It exited right in the heart of town. I knew what he had in mind, but I still felt It had been years since I visited the Panhandle. Bill too vulnerable to entertain the idea of Jeffrey and I had stayed at the quaint Cape San Blas Inn on the bunking in with me. “You’re welcome to come up, St. Joseph Peninsula. We enjoyed solitary walks across but you’ll have to find your own place to stay.” the wild dunes and the white sandy beaches. I planned He said, “Hey, I just thought of something. I to revisit the areas where I had once been happy. have a friend around there. I’ve kind of lost track The town of Apalachicola looked like I remembered of where he lives, but he’s cool—a geologist and it. The historic Gibson Inn stood at the foot of the bridge. an environmental policy wonk. Graduated from Its spacious porches and Victorian trim lived up to the USF. We worked together once in Tampa.” claim in its brochure, which described Apalachicola as “How can I find him if you don’t know a “Victorian fishing village.” I drove two blocks lined where he lives?” I asked, thinking it would with small stores and restaurants and turned right be nice to get to know someone local. down Avenue E. The old fashioned marquee displayed “Good point. Let’s see, last I heard he was working “Dixie Theatre” in large letters. It was where our play for FPIRG—the Florida Public Interest Research would be produced. I parked and got out of the car. Group. You could ask around. Wait a minute—he’s A petite old woman was reading a poster at the a diver, he used to teach at a dive shop in Carrabelle. theatre entrance. She wore a small red suede hat with You’ll like him, Lor, and if you get lonely—” silk flowers on the brim and carried a matching bag. “What’s his name?” I asked. “What a great old theatre,” I said, walking up “Hadley. Alex Hadley. Just tell him alongside her and taking in the old fashioned ticket booth. I said to take good care of you.” “Oh, yes. It’s a real treasure. The Partingtons have “Thanks, Jeffrey. I’ll do it.” done a remarkable job of restoring it.” She glanced at Before getting back into the car, I picked up a my car, then back at me. She had a bright and curious broken conch shell from the grass. I lifted the shell look. “Are you driving through or vacationing?” to my nose, and touched the hard outer part to my “I’m here for the play. I’m going to be in it,” I said, tongue, before dropping it back on the ground. The gesturing toward the poster. “I hope you’ll come to see it.” taste triggered childhood memories of the beach. “Really?” she said, glancing back at the poster. “I Along the coast, on the way to Eastpoint, I was like Ibsen, but I don’t know this play. Will I like it?” shocked by the amount of storm damage. A boat had I laughed. “I hope so.” settled on top of a building, other buildings were off their foundations, fish-packing houses lay in ruins, M.D. ABRAMS, a retired college professor and administrator, lives in Gainesville. This is an excerptBuffalo from her Tiger, book, firstMurder chairman at Wakullaof the Springs. Miccosukee Tribe, in about 1990.
FLORIDA HUMANITIES COUNCIL FORUM / SUMMER 2006 21 E x cerpt fro m : Constructing Floridians: Natives and Europeans in the Colonial Floridas, 1513–1783
By Daniel S. Murphree
he mission system that developed empire from France and England. The Crown and in Florida between 1566 and 1675 was one Catholic Church’s subsequent reduction in support of the most extensive religious networks for conversion coincided with French colonization TEuropeans established in the New World. Stretching of the Louisiana region and English expansion from St. Augustine to the western outskirts of into what would soon become the Carolinas. present-day Tallahassee and from modern Miami By 1700, Scottish traders from the English to lands bordering Jamestown, Va., this assemblage colonies had begun to undermine missionary efforts of missions and neighboring Indian villages by trade with some Indians and the seizure of others was home to hundreds of Catholic priests and for enslavement. Outnumbered Spanish settlers and perhaps over 20,000 native converts at its peak. soldiers provided little protection for the missions and First started by Jesuits and later dominated gradually withdrew to the recently reestablished town by Franciscans, these missions dealt with a diverse of Pensacola or the fortress at St. Augustine for security. group of native peoples, most of whom were Calusas, Though Franciscans persisted in their efforts to Guales, Timucuans, and Apalachees. More than convert native Floridians, and they later were reinforced just spiritual training schools, the missions became by the Jesuits, the combined effects of long-term Indian key points of settlement for Spanish colonists in resentment in some areas, less human and material the Floridas. Priests lived side by side with soldiers support from the Crown, and English encroachment on on garrison duty and entrepreneurs hoping to native populations and Spanish territory undermined exploit native labor and resources for trade. their staying power. The symbolic end to this steady All became dependent on Indians for farm decline came in 1702 when a combined army of produce for survival and for help with manufacturing, English Carolinians and assorted non-Christian transportation, and development of infrastructure. Indians led by James Moore invaded St. Augustine. Both Europeans and natives acculturated to each Though the assault failed, its defense further depleted other to a certain extent and inhabited the same the exposed Spanish mission network. Two years communities on a regular (if not always peaceful) later, Moore attacked the mission outposts directly, basis. As a result, the mission network became the burning most structures, killing many inhabitants, principle mode of Spanish colonization in the Floridas and seizing several thousand converts as slaves. Spain during this period and was the most prominent continued to nominally control the Floridas until venue for interactions between Indians and settlers. 1763, but the mission system never recovered. Over By the end of the seventeenth century, however, 100 years of mission and related settlement activity this elaborate system was visibly in decline. Spain’s ceased and the region existed as Spanish in name only. control of its New World possessions had steadily grown weaker as a result of inefficient trade systems, DANIEL S. MURPHREE is assistant professor of history at the bureaucratic logjams, and increased competition for University of Texas, Tyler. This excerpt is from his book,Constructing Floridians: Natives and Europeans in the Colonial Floridas, 1513–1783.
22 SUMMER 2007 / F O R U M FLORIDA HUMANITIES COUNCIL FORUM Summer 2007 ad 5/15/07 9:09 AM Page 1
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MARJORIE ABRAMS TRACY A. AKERS BILL BELLEVILLE Bronze Medal, Popular Fiction Bronze Medal, Young Adult Literature Bronze Medal, Nonfiction
Her passion for the theater and After earning an education degree Bill Belleville is a man who reveres for the environment becomes the and spending three years teaching nature, up close and personal. He’s scaffolding in M.D. Abrams’ mystery children with learning disabilities, launched a thousand kayaks. He’s dived novels. The star in their construction Tracy A. Akers decided she had not yet with the Amazon’s pink freshwater is invariably found her path. Today she “thanks the dolphins and communed with scenic Florida. universe” for leading her to writing. Nicaragua’s sea turtles. He loves rivers. “I chose The Fire and the Lightlaunches a One critic described the award- to write an five-book (or more) series called “The winning author, travel writer, and eco-mystery Souls of Aredyrah,” and introduces documentary filmmaker as “always wet because of my two teenage boys, the sweet Dayn or preparing to appreciation and fractious Ruairi. Akers says the be.” He takes for [nature’s] characters found her. Three years readers and fragile beauty. ago she was sketching “a character viewers along I chose that refused to cooperate. In his on the journey the mystery genre because people place another kept appearing on the so they, too, love the entertainment,” she told page,” she recounts on her website. will fall in love Gainesville’s Alligator Online after The image was of a red-haired with nature’s publishing her first,Murder on the boy wearing black gloves and riding beauty and fight Prairie (2005), which is set in and a horse. “The to preserve it. around Paynes Prairie State Park. more I drew, “Florida is for sale, has been In Murder at Wakulla Springs the more the for a while now, and it makes me (2006), the popular North Florida voice became sad as hell,” he writes in Losing It attraction is as much a character as that of the boy, All to Sprawl: How Progress Ate My actress Lorelei Crane or Detective whispering Cracker Landscape, named one of the Homer McBride. While deciphering his story best books in 2006 by the Library clues, Crane is also rehearsing for into my ear.” Journal. “I’ll stay as long as I can.” Henrik Ibsen’s An Enemy of the Thus was born Ruari. The drawing In this book, Belleville describes People, and the play’s plot serves now hangs on Akers’ office wall. how the development of a mega- as mirror to the real-life drama. Akers is founder of the Young mall pushed him out of his historic A retired university professor, Writers of East Pasco and serves on farmhouse in rural Seminole County. Abrams publishes and lectures the steering committee for Saint Belleville’s work has been on mystery and playwriting. Her Leo University’s literary event. anthologized in nine collections, award-winning one-act play, The including Best Travel Writing 2006. Cellphone (2004), was produced by the Hippodrome State Theatre in Gainesville, where she lives.
24 SUMMER 2007 / F O R U M FLORIDA HUMANITIES COUNCIL JULIANNA BAGGOTT JAMES O. BORN DAINA CHAVIANO Gold Medal, Children’s Literature Gold Medal, Popular Fiction Gold Medal, Spanish Language Book
A short-story writer and poet, As a writer for 14 years—and Daina Chaviano is one of the Julianna Baggott turned to the novel a law-enforcement officer for much few Latin American writers who as a more marketable form of writing longer—James O. Born advises ventures into and discovered another voice. crime devotees not to believe science fiction “I really love getting to choose, everything they see in the media. and fantasy getting to fall in love with something “If a character in a book or literature, taking in the world, movie can shoot or fight without as a touchstone something I ever practicing, it is science fiction,” the trinity of see or hear, and Born says in his amazon.com blog. magic, science, being able to “Believe me, it’s easier to shoot and religion to decide what from cover and wait for help.” illuminate the form it’s best Born has written four thrillers, human psyche. suited for,” including Escape Clause in 2006—and Born in Cuba, she graduated from she said in a this year releasing Field of Fire, the University of Havana and published 2001 Beatrice introducing agent Alex Duarte, who her first book while still a student interview investigates after winning the David Prize in the about her debut novel, the a string of country’s first science-fiction literary bestselling Girl Talk. bombings contest. Today she is the best-selling She is the author of four novels linked to radical author in the genre in Cuba’s history. for adults and three books of poems. labor unions. Chaviano chooses to write She writes for young readers under the His work fiction because it reflects “the best pen name N.E. Bode. The Somebodies as a real-life quality in human beings, that which (2006) is the last in a trilogy for special agent makes us unique, that distinguishes
young readers about brave Fern, SIGVISION Photo: with the Florida us clearly from animals,” she told her skittish friend Howard, and a Department LiteraturaCubana.com. “What is fantasy world beneath New York City. of Law Enforcement (FDLE) has fiction, other than the inventive She is the founder of “Kids included hunting a serial killer, capacity of man?” in Need—Books in Deed,” an tracking down escaped prisoners, She moved to the United States organization to get books to and assisting hurricane victims. He in 1991, working as a reporter and underprivileged children, and teaches has also worked in narcotics and in translator and writing a weekly creative writing at Florida State an undercover explosives cases. column for El Nuevo Herald before University. She lives in Tallahassee with Born lives in Palm Beach County devoting herself to fiction writing. her husband and their three children. with his wife and their two children. She is currently studying for a doctorate in Spanish at Florida International University.
FLORIDA HUMANITIES COUNCIL FORUM / SUMMER 2007 25 ELIZABETH DEWBERRY TONY D’SOUZA MARTIN A. DYCKMAN Bronze Medal, General Fiction Gold Medal, General Fiction Bronze Medal, Florida Nonfiction
Princess Diana’s tragic Tony D’Souza served three years in A Florida journalist for almost 50 storyline prompted Elizabeth the Peace Corps in West Africa, where years before retiring in 2006, Martin Dewberry to examine the price of he was a rural AIDS educator who A. Dyckman often took aim at state beauty and, more personally, her found himself trapped in a civil war government own identity beyond spouse. and fleeing for his life. That experience and pulled his In His Lovely Wife, character Ellen informs his novel Whiteman, a story ammunition Baxter is deeply moved by Diana’s about aid worker Jack Diaz, who from the lessons untimely death refuses to leave the Ivory Coast when of history. and begins his program loses funding, choosing “History to question to remain with the village and is fascinating her own role people who have become his life. for itself,’’ he as attractive D’Souza has since covered the wrote in a 2005 accessory to Nicaragua trial of Eric Volz in the column, “but her husband’s murder of Doris Jimenez for Outside the practical reason to study it is to success. When magazine. His learn from it.’’
Photo By: Robert O. Butler O. Robert By: Photo Dewberry fiction has been Dyckman joined the St. Petersburg married, published in The Times about the time the subject of she had already written two New Yorker, Black his book, Floridian of His Century: The novels. But as a couple, they were Warrior Review, Courage of Governor LeRoy Collins, took invariably introduced as Pulitzer- The Literary office. Collins was elected in 1955 as winning author Robert Olen Review, Playboy, a segregationist but denounced racial Butler and his lovely wife. and Tin House. discrimination while in office, arguably
“On maybe the 200th Diaz Sarah By: Photo The National becoming the most important Florida time, I thought to myself, Endowment governor of the 20th Century. ‘Okay, on behalf of lovely wives for the Arts named him a 2006 During his career as a journalist, everywhere, I have something to literature fellow in prose. Dyckman received the Florida say,’’’ Dewberry told Tallahassee Born and raised in Chicago, Bar Foundation Medal of Honor, Magazine in an interview last year. D’Souza earned master’s degrees awarded for his work on judicial Her three previous novels in writing from Hollins University reform. He was only the second include Sacrament of Lies. Her and the University of Notre Dame. journalist to receive this honor. plays have been produced in several He lives in Sarasota, and his new Dyckman and his wife now venues. She is currently working on novel, The Konkans, is scheduled live in Waynesville, N.C. His next a novel about a stripper and physicist for release early next year. book will be about the 1970s Stephen Hawking. Born in Alabama, Florida Supreme Court scandal. Dewberry lives with her husband in an historic house near Monticello.
26 SUMMER 2007 / F O R U M FLORIDA HUMANITIES COUNCIL CARIDAD FERRER ADRIAN FOGELIN LAURIE FRIEDMAN Bronze Medal, Young Adult Literature Gold Medal, Young Adult Literature Silver Medal, Children’s Literature
Barbara Ferrer (who writes When Adrian Fogelin was 12, Laurie Friedman entertains her books for young adults under the there was fierce competition for young readers with the continuing name Caridad Ferrer) explores the babysitting jobs in her New Jersey adventures of Mallory, an eight-year-old theme of bridging modern life and neighborhood. She needed an angle. who copes with tradition, of finding one’s future “I told really scary stories,” she moving to a new while staying rooted in one’s past. says on her website. “Sometimes I city and making Of Cuban heritage, she recalls a scared the kids so badly I was sure new friends. Her childhood of poufy dresses, command I would never work again—but book, In Business performances on the piano, and then the phone would ring. ‘Can with Mallory narrowly escaping a quinceanera, the you babysit tonight? Daniel wants (illustrated by traditional you because you’re so scary.’” Barbara Pollak), 15th-birthday It took her a while to recognize recounts how blowout. In that she is genetically programmed the young Adios To My to tell stories, she says. Her mother protagonist becomes an entrepreneur; Old Life, her was a writer, and there were penciled she craves a perfect purse and must character, the manuscripts piled on the kitchen figure out how to earn money to buy it. musically gifted counters and the ironing board. Readers of the Mallory series, seven-year-old In The Real Question, Fogelin tells which is scheduled to include 16 titles,
Photo By: Richard M. Allnut M. Richard By: Photo Ali Montero, the story of the can read a Q-and-A on the author’s juggles her overachiever website. “What do you and Mallory family’s desires with her own hunger Fisher Brown, have in common?” asks one question. to be a star. who learns “We both love to paint our toenails,” “One thing I really wanted to there are people responds Friedman. “We also like it show, in some small way, is how many in the world when people do what we want them different flavors of Latin there are,” with problems to do (even though we both feel like Ferrer told lifejournal.com about beyond sometimes that is not the case).” blending cultures in her writing. academic grades. Friedman, a frequent speaker Ferrer, who describes herself as Her other books at elementary schools, was among a a “writer and perpetually exhausted for young readers include Sister Spider select group of children’s authors who person,” was born in Manhattan Knows All and The Big Nothing. participated in the 2006 National Book and raised in Miami. She is a first- Fogelin worked as an illustrator Festival held in major cities across generation Cuban American whose for the Baltimore zoo before she and the nation. She lives in Coral Gables Spanish is more fluent if she lives in a her husband and daughter moved to with her husband and two children. neighborhood where she can use it, she the Florida Keys, then to Tallahassee. says. She currently lives in Jacksonville with her husband and children.
FLORIDA HUMANITIES COUNCIL FORUM / SUMMER 2007 27 KELLE GROOM MICHAEL GRUNWALD CARL HIAASEN Bronze Medal, Poetry Gold Medal, Nonfiction Silver Medal, General Fiction
Kelle Groom often writes about A well-traveled journalist Perhaps more than any other women, men, relationships, and, at accustomed to controversy, popular writer, Carl Hiaasen times gruesomely, their demise. Yet she Michael Grunwald could not understands the schizophrenic appeal also finds beauty. In her 2004 poem, resist the drama unexpectedly of a state that is at once beautiful, Jack Kerouac’s House, she paints a pretty found in three million mosquito- damaged, alluring, and repulsive. Florida: “Jack Kerouac’s House is down infested acres of South Florida. “Florida is a victim of its own the street from my pink apartment, In The Swamp: The Everglades, geography,” he has said. The semitropical past the Koolaid hibiscus and yellow Florida, and the Politics of Paradise, southern peninsula attracts misfits trumpet flowers that fall and melt Grunwald “by some dark primordial calling.” like Barbie dresses in the lake.” artfully tells Nature Girl, like his 10 previous A native of Massachusetts the story of the novels, illustrates this point. In it he who earned a master’s degree from Everglades— pits Texas telemarketer Boyd Shreave the University of Central Florida, from the against a South Florida woman who Groom has been a Norma Millay aboriginals who seriously resents his sales pitch. Ellis fellow and first settled there, In addition to writing fiction, has received to the schemers Hiaason, a longtime Florida journalist,
a number of Whitman David By: Photo who wanted continues to write scholarships to drain a column for the and grants. it, to the environmentalists now Miami Herald. Her poetry attempting to restore it. Born and raised has appeared “The ecosystem is in lousy in South Florida, in the New shape. Lake Okeechobee looks like he says he remains
Photo By: Nancy L. Norman L. Nancy By: Photo Yorker, the espresso,” Grunwald told U.S. News there because he is Texas Observer, & World Report in an interview last comfortable with
Agni, Barrow Street, Crab Orchard year. “People say the Everglades is a Chapman Tim By: Photo his home’s quirks. Review, Witness, and 88: A Journal of test. You have all this [public] money. He attended Emory Contemporary American Poetry. Luckily You’ve got this amazing commitment University, graduated with a journalism is her second collection of poems. from right-wingers and left-wingers. If degree from the University of Florida, Her first wasUnderwater City. you’re not going to save the Everglades, and began his career at Cocoa Today. Groom has been a grant writer what are you going to save?” Hiaason has also written two children’s for a homeless shelter and for the Grunwald, now a senior writer books, penned an essay on corporate Atlantic Center for the Arts. She for TIME magazine, wrote the Disney titled “Team Rodent,” and has lives in New Smyrna Beach. book while he was a reporter for co-written two songs for musician Warren the Washington Post. A graduate of Zevon’s record Mutineer. He and his family Harvard College, the award-winning live in Miami. journalist lives in Miami with his wife.
28 SUMMER 2007 / F O R U M FLORIDA HUMANITIES COUNCIL JAY HOPLER JAMES KIMBRELL WARD LARSEN Silver Medal, Poetry Gold Medal, Poetry Silver Medal, Popular Fiction
The narrator of the poems in Although James Kimbrell is not During a sailing adventure in Green Squall is oddly suited to solitude, a Florida native, he is no stranger the Atlantic, Christine Palmer pulls a wrote one reviewer. “Constantly to the lush, humid ambiance of half-dead man from the frigid waters. compensating his adopted state. He was born in That heroic deed plunges her into a for isolation by Jackson, Miss., and his intimate world of espionage involving Israel, acknowledging knowledge of the South and its Scotland Yard, and nuclear weapons. there’s solace singular rhythms and textures is Her creator, author Ward Larsen, in an imagined interwoven into his poetry scapes. weaves a web of intrigue in The Perfect relationship His ability to demonstrate the Assassin. A former Air Force pilot who with his “power of lyric language to reconfigure had a top-secret security clearance, Larsen surroundings—a memory” has captured the attention has said, “I took Photo By: Vanessa Rogers Vanessa By: Photo garden, a beer, of the literary world; in 1998 he was bits and pieces grass that is awarded a Whiting Writers’ Award, of information ‘lizarding,’” wrote John Deming in given each year to 10 writers of and tried to mesh a review of the book for Coldfront exceptional promise. He has received them together in a Magazine. “By the end, imagination fellowships from the Ford Foundation common-sense way.” is as real as anything else.” and the He served seven Jay Hopler won the prestigious National years in the 95th Yale Series of Younger Poets prize in Endowment and 75th Fighter 2005 for Green Squall. His manuscript for the Arts. Squadrons, flying was selected from 600 submissions He is 22 combat missions in Operation Desert for the prize, which is awarded to the author of Storm. While undergoing military survival poets under age 40 and results in the The Gatehouse training, he learned about such things as publication of their first collections. Heaven and My which snakes can be eaten. He also qualified Hopler’s work has appeared Psychic and is as an expert in small-arms marksmanship. Photo By: Wayne Denmark Wayne By: Photo in the New Yorker, Ploughshares, co-translator Larsen, now a commercial pilot, is Pleiades, the Kenyon Review, and of Three Poets a graduate of the University of Central many other journals. He also edited of Modern Korea: Yi Sang, Ham Florida and lives in Sarasota with his wife a collection of writings about hit Dong-Seon, and Choi Young Mi. and three children. In addition to flying men titled, The Killing Spirit: An Kimbrell lives in Tallahassee and and writing thrillers, he coaches soccer Anthology of Murder for Hire. is the director of the creative writing and is training for a marathon race. Born in San Juan, Puerto program at Florida State University. Rico, Hopler earned his doctorate at Purdue University. He is a creative writing professor at the University of South Florida.
FLORIDA HUMANITIES COUNCIL FORUM / SUMMER 2007 29 J. STANLEY MARSHALL PETER MEINKE BRAD MELTZER Bronze Medal, Nonfiction Bronze Medal, Poetry Bronze Medal, Popular Fiction
As president of Florida State Peter Meinke, who directed the A best-selling novelist and comic- University from 1969 through 1976, writing workshops at Eckerd College, book writer, Brad Meltzer is acclaimed J. Stanley Marshall inherited a restless once considered a move to New York for his stories about imperfect heroes. campus during a time of tension and for his craft. But he found that he His unconventional view of the world protest. He could not leave his charming house and was officially recognized when the U.S. responded with inspiring students in St. Petersburg. Department of Homeland Security “principle and Now retired, he has published summoned him in 2006 to join several passion, and 14 collections of poetry, including nontraditional most of all, The Contracted World: New & thinkers in with humanity More Selected Poems, and a single brainstorming and respect for collection of short stories, The how terrorists others,” writes Piano Tuner, which won the might attack the Talbot “Sandy” Flannery O’Connor Award. United States. D’Alemberte, Meinke’s work is able “to shed Meltzer, the FSU President Emeritus, in his enormous light through small first author to comments about Marshall’s windows,” says Meyer M. Jacki By: Photo simultaneously book chronicling those times. Andy Solomon top the New In The Tumultuous Sixties: of the University York Times and the Diamond comic Campus Unrest and Student Life at a of Tampa. book bestseller lists, says that the art Southern University, Marshall recounts “I prefer of creating suspense is to sneak up on the challenges of managing a campus writing poetry it. “You can write [about] a car chase, when students and faculty marched to anything,” or a knife in somebody’s head, or a for free speech, civil rights, women’s Meinke said in long bloody fight scene, but…those rights, and the environment—and an interview are the cheap easy thrills,” he said in an against the Vietnam War. Meinke Jeanne By: Photo published in interview with Beatrice.com. “What Born in Pennsylvania, Marshall Clockwatch. I think scares people far more is the served in the U.S. Army before earning “I think it’s the most intense kind tiny creak coming from your closet his master’s and doctorate degrees of writing…I look on poetry as a when you walk into the bedroom.” at Syracuse University. He joined kind of beacon in the darkness.” He puts this insight to good the FSU faculty in 1958 and later Born in Brooklyn, NY, Meinke use; all six of his novels have been founded the James Madison Institute, a served in the U.S. Army in the mid- bestsellers. Meltzer, a graduate of the conservative think tank in Tallahassee. 1950s, later earning his doctorate University of Michigan and Columbia He has served as a trustee at FSU, from the University of Minnesota. He Law School, lives in South Florida Bethune-Cookman College, and on and his wife live in St. Petersburg. with his wife and two children. the Florida Board of Governors. He and his wife live in Tallahassee.
30 SUMMER 2007 / F O R U M FLORIDA HUMANITIES COUNCIL DANIEL S. MURPHREE JOYCE SWEENEY RANDY WAYNE WHITE Silver Medal, Nonfiction Silver Medal, Young Adult Literature Bronze Medal, Popular Fiction
Daniel S. Murphree traces the She dreamed of being a writer Randy Wayne White, who left early cultural development of Florida since she was eight years old. Now home at age 16, has been a farm hand, in Constructing Floridians: Natives and the author of a dozen novels for telephone linemen, foundry worker, Europeans in the Colonial Floridas, young adults, Joyce Sweeney and, for 13 1513–1783. Writes Florida Atlantic pursues numerous interests that years, a fishing University professor Andrew Frank about fuel the plots of her books. guide at Tarpon Murphree’s book: “Racism simply did “Getting to know me is confusing Bay Marina not arrive to the because I have a lot of contradictions,” on Sanibel shores of Florida. she says on weread.org, a website to Island. He Instead…[it] engage young people in reading. “I reports he’s been emerged out of love sports but I also write poetry. stabbed, “shot the frustrations I’m into nature and wildlife but at with intent,” and failures of I also have a huge girly side.” and almost the Spaniards, In Headlock, she taps her interest blown up while at a hotel targeted Frenchmen, in professional wrestling to tell the by South American terrorists. and Britons story of high This breadth of experience informs to control school senior his writing—especially his popular series the land and people of Florida,” Kyle Bailey. He of Doc Ford books. He introduced the Constructing Floridians received signs up for marine biologist and ex-CIA operative the Florida Historical Society’s Harry training then in 1990 in Sanibel Flats, chosen by T. and Harriette V. Moore Award for must balance the American Independent Mystery best ethnographic history. Murphree his dreams Booksellers Association as one of 100 has also been published in several of success favorite mysteries of the 20th Century. journals, including Itinerario, and with family He has also written several has edited compilations including responsibilities, collections of essays about adventure Race, Nation, and Religion in the including caring for his travel and has been a longtime Americas. In 2003, he received the ailing grandmother. contributor to Outside magazine, historical society’s Arthur M. Thompson Over the years, Sweeney’s covering the America’s Cup in Australia, Award for best article published in books have won top prizes from dog sledding in Alaska, and the search the Florida Historical Quarterly. Delacorte Press, the American for wild orangutans on Borneo. Murphree received his doctorate Library Association, and Booklist White lives with his golden from Florida State University and taught magazine. Sweeney, an Ohio retriever in an old house on a barrier at Miles College and the University native who graduated from Wright island off of Florida’s West Coast. of Alabama at Birmingham. He is State University, lives in Coral currently an assistant professor of history Springs with her husband. at the University of Texas at Tyler.
FLORIDA HUMANITIES COUNCIL FORUM / SUMMER 2007 31 P O E T R Y fro m : My Psychic Luckily
By James Kimbrell By Kelle Groom
Drought Music JACK KEROUAC’S HOUSE
Now that the fly dozes on the swollen armadillo, is down the street from my pink apartment, and the clouds cruise like Winnabagos above past the Kool-Aid hibiscus and yellow trumpet the streams and green highways way north of here, flowers that fall and melt like Barbie dresses now that tempers flare and doors slam and not in the lake. speaking is agreed upon, what cooler, what speedier oblivion than this piped-in thunderhead that I It’s the corner of Clouser and Shady Lane, direct from chinaberry to flowerbed, a ritual drench single-story wood frame house worlds away from our last squabble. Something beneath a Florida Oak, and scarves of Spanish moss the Seminoles used to wrap around their bodies about who took the message, who lost the keys, like bikinis. who left the laundry door unlatched, something that ended with giving up, with walking out Tin-roofed, back porch pad smaller about as far as the hose would stretch. I would go than a school bus aisle, unairconditioned— back in were it not for the smell of fig leaves A dozen cold baths a day sweating and dizzy. doused with hose water, were it not for the twitch A mouse hangs from a trap in the eaves. of the neighbor’s fancy sprinkler pulsing trochees, The tub full of rust chips, tiny room, it seems then reversing into forget... forget... exactly impossible he lived here with his mother, what I want to do, the whole who-said-what Gabrielle—the tree the only spacious place, and what-was-meant forgotten between elephant ear the only shade as I walk outside, and airplane plant. And what I wouldn’t give and the Jack Kerouac Writer-in-Residence to forget what we’re finally fighting about—whether ploughs into my car with hers, or not our love is worn out, finished with you the insurance buying me weeks of groceries, banging the table and pushing back your chair, and it’s Jack Kerouac I thank. finished with me stomping out here to wash the dust from the shallow air, to compose my side KELLE GROOM lives in New Smyrna Beach. This poem is taken from her book,Luckily . of the apology, which I suppose, like the rain, is long past due. I know. I ought to cut this foolishness off at the spigot. I ought to go back inside to you. I will. I promise to. Soon as my shoes are soggy and the brick walk to the mailbox is bordered by a moat. Soon as water swells against the sun-warped bluebells, the blackened ferns, the parched azaleas, the many mini-deserts where the grass lost root.
JAMES KIMBRELL, director of the creative writing program at Florida State University, lives in Tallahassee. This is from his book of poems, My Psychic.
32 SUMMER 2007 / F O R U M FLORIDA HUMANITIES COUNCIL TUNE IN TO THE FLORIDA DREAM 2007 Board of Directors David Colburn, Chair Gainesville JOURNEYS INTO FLORIDA Frank Billingsley, Vice Chair Orlando letter F r o m t h e D i re c t o r B. Lester Abberger Tallahassee John Belohlavek Tampa Rachel Blechman Miami Elaine Brown Jacksonville ust as individuals have stories, so William Carlson Tampa Jdo states. The story of Florida is shaped and re- Jim Clark Orlando shaped every day by historians, journalists, novelists, Brian Dassler Fort Lauderdale songwriters, poets, and storytellers. Their stories define Juan Carlos Espinosa Miami Nancy Fetterman Pensacola us as a state, provide us with a sense of place, and bind Caren Lobo Sarasota us together as Floridians. Kim Long Naples Because stories have such a powerful ability to define Meredith Morris-Babb Ormond Beach and unite us Floridians, we were thrilled when Wayne Watch for the story Lesley Northup Miami Howard Pardue Tallahassee Wiegand and John Fenstermaker of Florida State of modern Florida Jeffrey Sharkey Tallahassee University asked us to become part of a coalition of Rowena Stewart Jacksonville cultural groups that would launch the first Florida Book on TV and in FORUM Ellen Vinson Pensacola Awards. We see this exciting venture as an opportunity Jon Ward Fort Pierce to inspire, encourage, and honor writers who are creating Florida’s literary landscape and its reputation. The next issue of FORUM will be a companion Staff Executive Director FORUM editor Barbara O’Reilley and I thought to our upcoming TV documentary on modern Janine Farver Barbara Bahr Technology Manager Florida, called The Florida Dream. that FHC’s contribution to this worthy cause would be Laurie Berlin Director of Administration to provide these Florida writers with a forum (literally) Julie Henry Matus Program Coordinator, Road Scholars for their award-winning work—and at the same time Karen Jackson Program & Fiscal Assistant provide some homegrown stories for our readers to The Florida Humanities Council has teamed up with Tampa’s Lisa Lennox Administrative & Technology Assistant enjoy. There is fiction, nonfiction, and poetry from WEDU-TV to produce the dramatic story of modern Susan Lockwood Director of Grants Florida. Tune in to your local public television station this fall Carly Meek Development Assistant bestselling writers like Carl Hiaasen and from authors to see how Florida was transformed from a sleepy, swampy, Brenda O’Hara Fiscal Officer publishing their first works. While not all the novels Join us at the next Gathering in subtropical peninsula into the urban megastate it is today. Communications Director, Editor/FORUM Barbara O’Reilley and poems are set in Florida, they were all written by Patricia Putman Development Officer historic St. Augustine How did Florida’s population grow from a fairly homogenous fulltime Florida residents. While not all the nonfiction population of 2 million to an international mix of 18 million Monica Rowland Program Coordinator, The Gathering & Florida Center for Teachers books were written by Florida residents, all are focused in only a half-century? To find out, see—and read about— Director, Florida Center for Teachers St. Augustine—September 28–30, 2007 The Florida Dream. Ann Schoenacher on Florida. Diane Wakeman Program Assistant We want to congratulate the winners and thank Zanetta Starks Florida Studies Intern Experience St. Augustine as a scholar, not a tourist. Join distinguished Wayne and John for the vision and leadership they have historians and archeologists for a one-of-a-kind exploration of our nation’s oldest, FHC FORUM / Vol. XXXI, No. 2, SUMMER 2007 provided for this project. The second annual Florida permanent European settlement. Join us for the weekend of Sept. 28–30, 2007, at © 2007 FHC the historic Casa Monica hotel while we unearth the “Ancient City’s” past. The magazine of the Florida Humanities Council Book Awards is already underway. Log on to the Florida City Archaeologist Carl Halbirt will show us an active archaeological 599 Second Street South, St. Petersburg, FL 33701-5005 (727) 873-2000 Book Awards website at www.fsu.edu/~ams/bookawards dig; historian Susan Parker will discuss the city’s fascinating colonial history; Website: www.flahum.org for eligibility requirements and entry forms. architectural historian Herschel Shepard will lead a tour of the city’s architectural The Florida Humanities Council is a nonprofit organization funded by the National treasures; Florida historian David Colburn will explore St. Augustine’s little- Endowment for the Humanities, the state of Florida, and private contributors. FHC FORUM is published three times a year and distributed to the friends of known civil rights story with local historian David Nolan; and Michael Gannon, the Florida Humanities Council and interested Floridians. If you wish to be added the “Dean of Florida History,” will describe life in the city during World War II. to the mailing list, please request so in writing or via the FHC website. Views For more information and to register online, go to www.flahum.org and click expressed by contributors to the FORUM are not necessarily those of the Florida Humanities Council. on Cultural Tours. Or you can email Monica Rowland at [email protected] or call her at (727) 873-2005.
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