A friend and fellow travel writer wrote to me recently about how incurious many young people are these days. (He's a couple decades younger than I am.) I wrote back to him that incuriousness is nothing new, though today it has a political component - the idea that one group of people has been so prominent for so long that there’s nothing new to discover about them. It’s absurd, of course, on multiple levels, though it gives the incurious a perfect excuse for their incuriousness.
Yesterday evening, after attending the reception at the Coral Gables Museum for the finalists in the annual photography contest (of which I was one), Hania I went next door for a bite at Books & Books. The foyer was crowded with young people who, I learned from our waitress, had been there for a drawing class. They were soon replaced by a large crowd speaking Spanish. Many in this group were also young, but better dressed, a number of the women in dresses and high heels. They filled the west room to hear to a discussion between two Cuban dissidents. At one point I went to the men’s room, where the two men’s voices came through speakers placed above the urinals. It was just like at the ballpark.
I spoke with a friend over the weekend who teaches high school English and is worried about the new guidelines regarding Black History. "Instead of '12 Years a Slave,'" he said, "it’ll be '12 Years an Unpaid Intern.'"
A well-known strip club in the Florida Keys has gone out of business. A friend posted a picture on social media of the sign out in front, which says: “Sorry, we’re clothed.”
On our way back from IKEA last week we stopped at Foodtown, where we strolled the plaza – which now has a Korean doughnut shop, and soon will have a restaurant named Serious Dumplings – and then went into the supermarket. The smell was not as bad as it sometimes is. By the fish department we heard a strange noise and, looking into a covered tub, found it full of live toads. We strolled the aisles, picking up a few items (though no toads), and then took our basket to the cashier.
At home that evening we were all set to dive under our new duvet when the air-conditioner shut down. We turned on the fan and remade the bed with only a sheet. Walking to my bathroom, I noticed a cockroach in the corridor. It was large and lying on its back. I approached it with my raised sandal; the only movement it made was a last-gasp wiggling of its legs. I went and got the dustpan, swept it in, and then took it to the toilet where I flushed it down.
It was the first cockroach we had seen in 30 years. We live on the third floor, and even though Hania refuses to let the exterminator in, for health reasons, we don’t get cockroaches. One of my concerns about moving to Florida was the idea of flying cockroaches, but we never see the kind that run. At first I thought: That honeymoon is over. Then I remembered our afternoon shopping trip. I supposed a roach had been, or climbed, in our basket, and latched onto one of our boxes before snuggling nicely in our bag, which, after emptying at home, I threw on the floor of the corridor. Now I’m hoping for another good roachless run.
In the current Spectator, Martin Vander Weyer relays the public speaking advice given by Philip Mountbatten before he became Duke of Edinburgh. It was a simple alphabetical formula: ABC-XYZ, which stood for: Always be cheerful – examine your zip.