Another American Adventure: a Florida afternoon

Thursday, October 4, 2012

a Florida afternoon

I'm not sure if this is typical Florida October weather or not - but it is still quite warm, rainy sometime in the day, and muggy! This afternoon after my daily "radiation" (I call it my afternoon zap), John and I ventured over to the Square Grouper for some local color (or something). I'm not thrilled with the photos I get from my iPhone, but here they are ...

I don't know why, but the "island music" that they play at these sorts of places annoys me.

2 comments:

BarbaraOctober 5, 2012 at 8:35 PM
Such a different world down in Florida. Here we are surrounded by leaves turning -- gorgeous this year, by the way. Hope your afternoon zap is not so hard to take.
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beth cioffolettiOctober 5, 2012 at 9:18 PM
Very different. Florida is tropical all year round. There are different aspects of Florida, though. THis is the more "tourist-y" version. And there is a boating/fishing culture made up of mostly local natives. There are also wild life areas that are quite mysterious and enchanting.

The afternoon zap is really nothing - no more than 10 minutes that I lie still on a table and radiation is beamed into my pelvic bone. I feel nothing. The hardest part is remembering at 2:30 to get ready and drive up to the place for the 3PM appointment every day. I have to keep watching the clock. But I only have one more week to go. It seems to be helping.
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"In those first days, people said, a squirrel could run the long length of Pennsylvania without ever touching the ground. In those first days, the woods were white oak and chestnut, hickory, maple, sycamore, walnut, wild ash, wild plum, and white pine. The pine grew on the ridgetops where the mountains' lumpy spines stuck up and their skin was thinnest.

"The wilderness was uncanny, unknown. Benjamin Franklin had already invented his stove in Philadelphia by 1753, and Thomas Jefferson was a schoolboy in Virginia; French soldiers had been living in forts along Lake Erie for two generations. But west of the Alleghenies in western Pennsylvania, there was not even a settlement, not even a cabin. No Indians lived there, or even near there.

"Wild grapevines tangled the treetops and shut out the sun. Few songbirds lived in the deep woods. Bright Carolina parakeets - red, green, and yellow - nested in the dark forest. There were ravens then, too. Woodpeckers rattled the big trees' trunks, ruffed grouse whirred their tail feathers in the fall, and every long once in a while a nervous gang of empty-headed turkeys came hustling and kicking through the leaves - but no one heard any of this, no one at all."

Annie Dillard, An American Childhood.