The biopsy van stops here

Crash

Grief clouded my sight and

I rear-ended the van bearing biopsies

Bound for the cancer lab, one of them snipped

From my wife. The rear door flew open

I expected an avalanche of plastic bags, little slips

Of skin, viscous liquids, knobby tumors. But

nothing. And then a blooming flower, pink and white, on

a long green stem grows through the open door.

Out of the open door amidships

More blooms, others bright with purples and white

And oranges, many colors, fanciful shapes.

I knew then everything would be all right, there

Were no ugly lab-bound surprises, just a field of

Flowers at their peak, gloriously and forever alive.

A podcast asks: What Should I Read Next? "Florida" by Gainesville writer Lauren Groff

I almost literally ran into fiction writer Lauren Groff outside the Tallahassee Marriott. I was chatting with my sister Molly, the pusher (of my wheelchair) and there was Groff, big as life and very noticeable in her pantsuit of many colors. My sister Molly stopped the wheelchair and chatted with Groff as if they were old friends but just met at the authors' table buying books for me, the Groff fan who attended her session at Word of South, the city's spring celebration of literature and music. "Is this him?" Groff pointed at me. Molly replied, "That's him." Me (a.k.a. him) was pleased that she knew my name and that I was a grad of UF where Lauren teaches writing. "I love your stories."

I was referring to her National-Book-Award-nominated "Florida" with a native Florida panther on the cover. Most stories in the collection are set in Florida (no surprise there) and they are knock-your-socks-off wonderful. I keep the trade paperback on my bookshelf within reach of my Wyoming writing desk where I write this now.

A few weeks ago I reread the opening story "Ghosts and Empties" about a working woman and mother who slips on her running shoes and prowls her Gainesville neighborhood at night. Why? "I have somehow become a woman who yells..." She hooked me right there. That is the joy of any fiction, the opener, one that delivers.

The next story, "At the Earth's Imagined Corners," is even better in an entirely different way. We leave contemporary Florida for the 1930s and '40s in rural Florida "at the edge of a swamp with unnamed species of reptiles." It's a tough one, filled with rage and unnamed reptiles. "Dogs Go Wolf" features two young girls abandoned by their parents on a Florida island. Uh oh, I thought, fearing the worst. The girls turn their dilemma into an adventure and the ending may surprise.

During our afternoon at the Marriott ballroom, we saw a rendition of "Peter and the Wolf" performed by the South Georgia Ballet Company. Following that, we heard from three experts on what we should read next. After that, Groff was interviewed by Anne Bogel for her podcast, "What Should I Read Next?" We discovered that Groff was set to open an indie bookstore in Gainesville, a "general interest bookstore” that emphasizes banned books, BIPOC authors, LGBTQ+ authors, and Florida authors."

My kind of bookstore. It's located at 601 Main Street, part of the new South Main Station. Groff's husband, Clay Kallman, grew up working at his parents' Florida Bookstore where I bought "gently-used" paperbacks for my English classes. As Groff told the Independent Florida Alligator: “We were hoping to respond to the recent authoritarian slide in the state of Florida right now,” Groff said, “and to respond with celebration of a lot of the books that are currently being banned.”

Amen and hallelujah.

Progress like it or not

The old homestead ain't what it used to be.The road named for great-grandfather Richard Ball is now Tymber Creek Road and yes, that's Tymber with a Y and Grandma Rose the schoolteacher would not stand for this kind of spelling no matter how high-and-mighty the home builders want to be. The road is four-lane instead of two-lane beat-down blacktop. The sign at the entrance reads Tymber Creek Riverside with no attempt to change any other innocent i. A few car-lengths in is a guard shack flanked by lighted gates and a sign "Residents only!!!" and another one "Protected by Simpson Security." Mary leans forward, "What kind of nonsense is this?" I say probably rich man's nonsense. The driver behind me honks. I look through the rearview at a long-haired teenager in a big SUV. In the old times, drivers didn't honk to move you along because it could be Uncle Wilt, R.I.P., who drove a rusty red GMC equipped with a fully-loaded rifle rack. We forget our visit to the old house site where three generations of Balls grew up. Our youngest, Tim, says from the backseat that his pal Ron's dad has a fancy drone he uses to scout for Civil War artifacts and we might be able to see the contours of the house's foundation or the barn or maybe the dock on the Little Tomoka you used to fish from. Tim always has good ideas and sure we might see the house's ghostly outline but what's the point really? Things will change like it or not.

A visitor looks for signs of Florida Man.

I have been here two weeks and still haven't seem Florida Man. I was looking for him Saturday at the beach and saw a very big man in a tiny bathing suit barbecuing under a shelter half. He gripped a forbidden beer in one hand and a bbq implement in the other. The sun was feasting on his bald head and body. Next to the shelter was a huge pickup (you can drive on some parts of the beach) festooned with U of Alabama and Roll Tide stickers. Alabama tourists are welcomed here, I'm told, but Roll Tide stickers are verboten. I daw a young guy in a T-shirt and shorts riding a zoomy street bike weaving in and out of I-95 traffic. No helmet, of course. Freedom! Thing is, you. can see the same thing in Wyoming on I-80. In the summer. Thst's about it so far. At a Chinese restaurant in Melbourne, a robot served us lunch. The robot showed no signs of Florida Man Syndrome.

Mr. Ripley is coming for your gold but not your woman

I was not all agog about Nexflix's "Ripley" as I was for "Three Body Problem" or "Shogun." I became a dedicated viewer of "The Bear" only after I discovered it was not a reality series about a Michelin-star chef who yells a lot. Carny does yell but he's charming and disturbed and well-played by Jeremy Allen White. Ripley's Andrew Scott is a charmless murderer who is inventive enough to keep us watching for the next clever twist. The European settings and black-and-white camera work are amazing. I've never been so fascinated by aerial shots of trains chugging through Italy. It was 1961, after all, and 2024 shots of high-speed trains racing through the countryside would not have the same effect. The movie imbues Tom Ripley with six of seven deadly sins. A sexual lust is not part of him. The lust for gold, yes, but no sign of libido even when he lures the beautiful Marge (Dakota Fanning) into the Venice digs of legendary libertine artist/murderer Caravaggio. Envy, greed and the others are integral parts of Mr. Ripley. Tom flees his dreary NYC life through happenstance. He doggedly pursues everything that comes after. Marge and Richard Greenleaf are U.S.-bred Eurotrash. They drink fine wines and live in a lush townhouse that overlooks the azure Med. On the surface bobs Richard's fine sailboat. Ripley wants all of it. Tension builds around how he will get it. I was entranced most of the eight hours and sometimes just patient. It is gorgeous in high-def b&w and owes a lot to post-war European directors and cinematographers Take it slow, as you would a pricey wine.

There will come a time when lizards will again rule the planet

i have seen maybe a dozen alligators since I came to Florida 10 days ago. Most were seen on a boat tour at Wakulla Springs near Tallahassee.They are scary, magnificent beasts with an ancient lineage. Imagine you are an early Spanish explorer, a puny human, coming across one as you navigate the swamps of the new world. "Alligator," you might say. That translates to "lizard." according to our tour boat captain. "The lizard," he added for emphasis. King Lizard, or so says this marsuding conquistidor who most likely will die from malaria and not lizard. Large lizards have starred in famous films. "Journey to the Center of the Earth" featured lizards attacking explorers deep in the earth. One of then was Debby Boone's pops Pat. He crooned his way put of the encounter. A lizard attacked King Kong and regretted it. Is Godzilla part lizard or just mutant lizard? The Creature from the Black Lagoon looked lizard- and amphibian-like. Lore at Wakulla Springs says the first-time actor who donned the rubber Creature costume survived and devoted so much time to Friends of Wakulla that his ashes were scattered at the film site. I've viewed some YouTube videos of King Lizard and the Gizzard Wizard. They are quite convincing in their human-skin outfits. But you can't fool me.

We got trouble, trouble, right here in Beach City

Chris and I are looking forward to our April trip to Florida. Both of us did some of our growing-up on Florida's east coast, Daytona Beach for me and Ormond Beach for her. Daytona was (and is) a beach town with all of the trappings: beachside motels and souvenir shops, lots of bars, and a very nice beach. Daytona also has the speedway for auto races. 

Ormond begins just north and it was looked at as the more genteel neighbor. We went to the Ormond beaches when Daytona's were crowded. The beach sand was deeper and less drivable, but most of it was open to surfers with the main destination the Ormond Pier. If you go further north, there is Ormond-by-the-Sea which is a bit redundant and then Flagler Beach, named for the robber baron railroad magnate of the 19th century. 

Flagler used to be a funky little beach town with a good surfing pier but growth has changed it. Palm Coast development is in Flagler County and it replaced thousands of acres of wildlands. For one of my jobs, I used to drop by city and county offices to get lists of building permits and then rush over to Orlando to type all of it into The Construction Report, printed and distributed each Friday. It wasn't really writing but kind of fun.

In case you didn't know, construction is big business in Florida. Big, big business. Florida's big challenge, besides its dingbat governor and legislative troglodytes, is people trying to find affordable home insurance. They could be cast into the homeless by the next climate-change-caused hurricane which can't possibly exist due the state's GOP-heavy legislature banning teaching anything like it in school. I grew up by the beach and we had sand dunes then, created by the Lord Almighty to blunt the impact of big storms' tendency to wash tons of sand back into the ocean. 

The so-called peninsula I lived on is a barrier island. It is supposed to serve as barrier to tropic thunder. It did for many millennia before promoters decided they could make beaucoup bucks by selling plots of sand to Howard Johnson's and Steak-n-Shake and Americans bent on living the dream. I lived that dream and it does seem dream-like to me now, a retired bureaucrat in Wyoming. 

It was a beautiful place to grow up. We surfed by day and waited on tourists at night. Me and my eight brothers and sisters grew up freckled and barefoot, one of the wandering tribes of Daytona. We had a home to go to but, as time passed and my parents got older and more frazzled, we were turned loose to have fun but not get into trouble. We mostly succeeded.

If I sound sarcastic in my Florida appreciation, I sound like this all of the time. Chris has a whole different set of beachside stories. Most involve teens getting fake IDs at 16 and going into tourist bars. They had fun but didn't get into too much trouble, or so she says.