Outside My Office Door

Under tall pines and tangled with palms and muscadine vines, an American beautyberry bears fruit. The beautyberry's scientific name is Callicarpa americana. Birds enjoy the berries straight off the bush, but people make jellies and jams.















Pretty, but not welcome in these parts, is the Caesarweed (Urena lobata). It looks fairly quiet, but it's an invasive exotic plant, considered a noxious weed.




















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Additional reading:

Atlas of Florida Vascular Plants
50 Common Native Plants Important in Florida's Ethnobotoanical History

Florida News Stories

"Flight 401: Rescue in the Swamp" St. Petersburg Times 9/16/07

"Vote for State Song May Not Be Online" St. Petersburg Times 9/16/07

"Grand Hotel, Grand Plan" St. Petersburg Times 9/21/07

"Public Gets A Look At Biltmore Plans" Tampa Tribune 9/19/07

"Wine, Cheese and Crackers" Sun-Herald 9/20/07

"FDR Shooting Attempt in Miami To Be Retold" Miami Herald 9/20/07

"Blackout Lifted on Historic Courthouse Tours" DeLand-Deltona Beacon 9/18/07

"Jewish Pioneers Gathered at Family Grove for High Holy Days" Orlando Sentinel 9/16/07

"Orphans in Unmarked Graves Identified" Florida Baptist Witness 9/20/07

"Marker in Miami to Commemorate Deadly 1926 Hurricane" Orlando Sentinel 9/17/07

Avast! It be Talk Like a Pirate Day!

Aye, ye heard me, Talk Like a Pirate Day. Of course, Florida has seen it's share of pirates, and we still like a good pirate festival. The biggest of them all is Tampa's Gasparilla, held every winter for over 100 years.

The pirate ship in the photo above is the Flying Dutchman. Used during the filming of Pirates of the Carribean, the Flying Dutchman is now docked at Castaway Cay.

President Eisenhower over Fort Jefferson

Over New Year's weekend 1956, President Eisenhower spent 10 days in Key West recovering from his heart attack the previous September. Flying back to Washington, D.C. on the Columbine III, Eisenhower asked his pilot to make a detour to the south, to fly over Fort Jefferson in the Dry Tortugas.

If you were a president who had just been reminded of your own mortality, what would be going through your mind as you inspected the former prison of Dr. Samuel A. Mudd, accused of conspiring to assassinate President Lincoln?

I don't know what President Eisenhower pondered, but it didn't keep him from signing a bill nearly three years later, authorizing a marker memorializing Dr. Mudd's work during a 1869 yellow fever epidemic.

Fort Jefferson is now part of the Dry Tortugas National Park. It was originally a massive brick fort built in the 1840s. As the building sank under its own weight, and as new types of weapons made the fort's defenses obsolete, the Army halted construction. However, the fort's isolation was an asset for its role as a prison.

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Sources

"Eyes on Key West" New York Times, January 1, 1956

"President Takes Detour to See Historic Fort" New York Times, January 9, 1956

"President Approves Memorial to Dr. Mudd" New York Times, September 22, 1959

Florida Stories in the News

"Inventor Wants to Sap Storms" St. Petersburg Times 9/9/07

"Post Office Loves Being Stuck in Past" Orlando Sentinel 9/9/07

"Getting a Gauge on the Gators" News Press 9/14/07

"Bill Would Designate the Cracker Horse as the Official State Horse" WPTV.com 9/14/07

"Florida Panther Cub Comes to Lowry Park Zoo" St. Petersburg Times 9/14/07

"Voices of Lake Okeechobee" Florida Trend 9/1/07

"Hearing History's Echoes" Tampa Tribune 9/16/07

"Last Officer Class Leaving Pensacola; 7 Decade Tradition Ends" St. Petersburg Times 9/15/07

Heritage Newsletter and Event Calendar

I just received in my electronic in-box a nifty new thing -- a e-newsletter called "Heritage Happenings." It includes a lengthy list of local heritage events for the coming month, and from looking at this, no one has any excuse to be sitting at home bored. To sign up for your very own copy of "Heritage Happenings" visit Reclaiming Our Heritage's website, and click on "newsletter."

Florida Author Tim Dorsey

Florida author Tim Dorsey spoke at the Upper Tampa Bay Library last night. His most recent book is Hurricane Punch, and he is working on the third draft of his next novel. The books are in that genre of Florida humorous crime novels populated by unusual characters, such as Serge Storms, serial killer and font of Florida lore. Serge often is described as the main character of Dorsey's books, but according to the author this is incorrect: "Florida is actually the main character."

Dorsey's stories are packed with Florida places, people, and stories. How do readers react to such specific settings, detailed right down to street addresses? Dorsey described two types of reactions he has encountered. People who live in Florida and are initimately acquainted with the place say that they feel comfortable in familiar surroundings. On the other hand, some people from out of state use the books as an "insider's travel guide." The places in Dorsey's books are real, places you can actually visit, places that might not make it into Fodor's guide.

For more information about Tim Dorsey, his books, and speaking calendar, visit his website, http://www.timdorsey.com/.

Jane Wyman and Ma Baxter

Actress Jane Wyman died in California yesterday, after a long life and celebrated career. (Her obituary in the New York Times). Back in the 1940s, she was a rising Hollywood star, married (at the time) to another rising star, Ronald Reagan. She was getting better and better roles when in 1946 she played Ma Baxter in MGM's adaptation of The Yearling, Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings' novel of Cracker life on the Florida frontier. Ma Baxter had it hard, scratching out a living isolated in the piney woods, and burying all of her children but one.

Wyman was not the first actress chosen for the role -- that had been Anne Baxter, when the studio first tried to film The Yearling in 1941. The logistical challenges of filming on location in the Ocala National Forest with a cranky Spencer Tracy (as Penny Baxter) led to a long delay in the production. When it resumed, Gregory Peck was cast opposite Wyman. The make-up crew had some work to do making the young Wyman look like a worn-down pioneer woman, but that was only part of the effort. The rest had to come from Wyman herself, and she received an Academy Award nomination for her work.

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Reference:
"Fawn Bites Lion: Or, How MGM Tried to Film The Yearling in Florida," by William Stephenson. In The South and Film, edited by Warren French, pages 229-239. University Press of Mississippi, 1981.

More Books

Some more books about Florida or related in some fashion to Florida:

The Black Stallion Challenged, by Walter Farley. A children's horse racing story, set at Hialeah Park.

Cassadaga: The South's Oldest Spiritualist Community, edited by John J. Guthrie Jr., Phillip Charles Lucas, and Gary Monroe. A look at the history, people, beliefs, and architecture of a east central Florida community.

Walt Disney Imagineering: A Behind the Dreams Look at Making the Magic Real, by The Imagineers. Does knowing how something was created take away from the experience, or increase the appreciation for what was accomplished?

American Green: The Obsessive Quest for the Perfect Lawn, by Ted Steinberg. Read a review of the book from the Christian Science Monitor.

Florida Cracker Houses

Wow, Florida Cracker Houses sure have come a long way ...

Florida Cracker stock house plans from Houseplans.com

Photos of a Florida Cracker Homestead from Exploring Florida (Florida Center for Instructional Technology)

Suggested Reading:

Classic Cracker: Florida's Wood-Frame Vernacular Architecture, by Ronald W. Haase

Cracker Farmhouses: 1840-1929, from Old House Web

Cracker: The Cracker Culture in Florida, by Dana Ste. Claire