Sorry for the silence. I was away for a couple of days in Bimini, celebrating Hemingway's 111th birthday with John Hemingway (and about thirty other media folks and assorted others who had come for the reopening of the Bimini Big Game Club). And Monday I'm off to Trinidad & Tobago for a week.
But between trips I wanted to mention that I just got back from Marando Farms (on a tip from Risa whom I met in Bimini). It is a farmers' market on SW 1st Avenue (a little south of Davie Blvd.) that makes you feel as if you're in Lancaster County - or at least the Redlands. (It's been open nearly a year, 10 blocks from my condo, and I had to go to the Bahamas to hear about it. The benefits of travel.)
There are farm fresh eggs from Homestead and mangoes off of neighborhood trees. There are ruby red grapefruits, organic arugula, not-quite-Beefsteak tomatoes, fat leeks, goat cheese, okra, homemade soups in a fridge. Everybody is friendly - what is it about farmers' markets and a neighborly spirit? - as is the Golden Retriever Gucci who greets every customer.
Inside, there are jams and honeys and baked goods, including organic pizza - I got a delicious slice for lunch - and vegan and gluten-free cookies. There are also two lovely rabbits, one with ears going in different directions who doesn't object to people scratching his nose. Outside are two Vietnamese pot-bellied pigs who have a definite fondness for peaches.
I'm glad I went to Bimini.
Watching TV often makes me grumpy. “Dramas” with actors who look like actors (as opposed to the doctors and detectives they’re supposedly playing). Emcees applauding their own appearance on stage. Charlie Rose awestruck in the presence of Penelope Cruz, lobbing her softballs and then saying “less movies,” as if the interview were being conducted in his second language.
But reading a newspaper I almost always find something to cheer me. Sunday it was the sports section of the New York Times, which ran the headline: “Querrey Rebounds From a Scary Fall to Resume His Steady Climb.” The two opposite and single-syllabled nouns fronted by two-syllabled and nearly rhymed adjectives practically made my day.
I have never desired Carl Kasell's voice on my home answering machine (Hania does a lovely job with hers), but I do like listening to the NPR news quiz show "Wait Wait ... Don't Tell Me!" The questions tend to be fairly easy, but the panelists are usually funny and irreverent.
Usually. This past Saturday, the celebrity guest was Pete Carroll, the new coach of the Seattle Seahawks and the former coach of the University of Southern California Trojans. USC was recently penalized by the NCAA for a number of violations, mostly in its football program. Carroll is believed by many to have taken the job in Seattle so he could avoid the mess at USC. He has claimed that he knew nothing about the violations.
The always affable Peter Sagal refrained from bringing up this matter during his interview with Carroll - perhaps forgetting that he is the host of a "news quiz show." It is also a humor show. And none of the normally astute panelists noted that the coach now under suspicion for turning a blind eye was on the segment of the show called "Not My Job."
When I tell people what I do for a living, the reaction is almost always the same, some variation on: "What a great job! I would love to be a travel writer."
I used to try to explain, after my initial agreement, that it's not like they think, that I'm not on vacation, enjoying the sights; I'm trying (sometimes futilely) to meet interesting people, learn new things, find a compelling story.
But I've stopped doing that. Now I look at the person with interest and ask: "Really? What was the last travel book you read?"
I had lunch the other day with a woman who works for one of the local Convention and Visitor Bureaus. She said she's been especially busy this summer because of the oil spill.
I expressed surprise, noting that the oil hasn't come close to us. But she said that people hear it's in Florida and they stay away. They don't realize that South Florida is 500 miles from Pensacola, and that it faces the ocean instead of the gulf.
Geography: Not just a subject in school, but a tool for vacation.
Leaving the post office yesterday, I stopped into the old newsstand. The new owner had gotten rid of many of the out-of-town and foreign newspapers - the things that you can read online and that give a newsstand class. But he'd added books, including a section devoted to local authors.
Neither of my two books was there. True, I don't write very often about South Florida, and when I do, I do so critically. But not as critically as people who litter the landscape with corpses. I guess portraying South Florida as a playground for killers is acceptable because it's fiction, while my digs at the place as a cultural wasteland are not (fiction or acceptable). Or perhaps, because they're nonfiction, they're simply unread.
I asked the owner how business was. He said there was a problem because many of his customers saw the store as a place to buy their lottery tickets. He had tried to get them interested in books, but without success.
No, what I write is definitely not fiction.