Homegrown In Florida

Florida can seem like a child's dream of paradise: endless sunny days, trips to the beach to swim and build sandcastles, bike riding without a jacket in the middle of January, and magical themeparks only a short drive away. But what was life really like for those who grew up here? During a recent reunion, writers Bill McKeen, Tim Dorsey, and Jeff Klinkenberg found themselves lamenting that so many of their childhood memories were fading away. For them, and for many, Florida is not just a place people go to, it’s where they come from. That can mean many things to many people, as the stellar cast of writers, journalists, and musicians eloquently reveal in Homegrown in Florida. This utterly satisfying and powerful anthology aims at the heart of the glories of childhood and the pain of growing up. Both a celebration of the exotic, untamed wilderness of a youth filled with moss-draped oaks and citrus fields, evergreen winters and palmetto fronds, and a reminder that innocence often gave way to experience as bike paths became private developments, and swimming holes were paved over by interstates, Homegrown in Florida is filled with tears and laughter alike. Featuring contributions from Carl Hiaasen, Tom Petty, Zora Neale Hurston, Michael Connelly, and many more, this is a book for every child of old Florida, and every child at heart.

Sit down for a spell with the bevy of famed writers who've found inspiration in the Florida sun. From the Spanish explorer Cabeza de Vaca to James Patterson, writers have found inspiration in the Florida sunshine. Ernest Hemingway met his future wife at Sloppy Joe's in Key West. John Kennedy recovered from back surgery in Palm Beach while working on his Pulitzer Prize winning book. James Weldon Johnson wrote what became The Negro National Anthem at the Stanton School in Jacksonville. And Edna St. Vincent Millay watched in shock as her manuscript went up in flames in Sanibel. Florida historian James Clark tells the stories of scores of writers including Robert Frost, Jack Kerouac, John D. MacDonald, and Stephen King. Hunter Thompson driving through the streets of Key West using a bullhorn to warn the citizens, Tennessee Williams partying with Truman Capote, Ring Lardner planning a get together with Al Capone--it's all here.

Sit down for a spell with the bevy of famed writers who've found inspiration in the Florida sun. From the Spanish explorer Cabeza de Vaca to James Patterson, writers have found inspiration in the Florida sunshine. Ernest Hemingway met his future wife at Sloppy Joe's in Key West. John Kennedy recovered from back surgery in Palm Beach while working on his Pulitzer Prize winning book. James Weldon Johnson wrote what became The Negro National Anthem at the Stanton School in Jacksonville. And Edna St. Vincent Millay watched in shock as her manuscript went up in flames in Sanibel. Florida historian James Clark tells the stories of scores of writers including Robert Frost, Jack Kerouac, John D. MacDonald, and Stephen King. Hunter Thompson driving through the streets of Key West using a bullhorn to warn the citizens, Tennessee Williams partying with Truman Capote, Ring Lardner planning a get together with Al Capone--it's all here.

When Andrew Furman left the rolling hills of Pennsylvania behind for a new job in Florida, he feared the worst. While he’d heard much of the fabled “southern charm,” he wondered what could possibly be charming about fist-sized mosquitoes, oppressive humidity, and ever-lurking alligators. It wasn’t long before he began to notice that the real Florida right outside his office window was very different from the stereotypes portrayed in movies, television, and even state-promoted tourism advertisements. In Bitten, Furman shares his amazement at the beautiful and the bizarre of his adopted state. Over seventeen years, he and his family have shed their Yankee sensibilities and awakened to the terra incognita of their new home. As he learns to fish for snook—a wily fish that inhabits, among other areas, the concrete-lined canals that crisscross the state—and seeks out the state’s oldest live oak, a behemoth that pre-dates Columbus, Furman realizes that falling in love with Florida is a fun and sometimes humbling process of discovery. Each chapter highlights a fascinating aspect of his journey into the natural environment he once avoided, from snail kites to lizards and cassia to coontie. Sharing his attempts at night fishing, growing native plants, birding, and hiking the Everglades, Furman will inspire you to explore the real Florida. And, if you aren’t lucky enough to reside in the Sunshine State, he’ll at least convince you to unplug for an hour or two and enjoy the natural beauty of wherever it is you call home.

Cover -- CONTENTS -- PREFACE -- INTRODUCTION: Why Florida Matters -- CHAPTER ONE: Florida Dreaming -- CHAPTER TWO: The Dream Next Door Going to Florida -- CHAPTER THREE: Roosting in Eden -- CHAPTER FOUR: From Eden to Babel -- CHAPTER FIVE: From Babel to the Clubhouse: Snowbirds in Search of Community -- CHAPTER SIX: A Canadian Snowbird Case Study -- CHAPTER SEVEN: Coming Home: What Florida Means to the North -- CONCLUSION -- NOTES -- BIBLIOGRAPHY -- INDEX -- A -- B -- C -- D -- E -- F -- G -- H -- K -- M -- N -- P -- Q -- R -- S -- T -- V -- W.

True stories of writers and pirates, painters and potheads, guitar pickers and drug merchants in Key West in the 1970s. For Hemingway and Fitzgerald, there was Paris in the twenties. For others, later, there was Greenwich Village, Big Sur, and Woodstock. But for an even later generation—one defined by the likes of Jimmy Buffett, Tom McGuane, and Hunter S. Thompson—there was another moveable feast: Key West, Florida. The small town on the two-by-four-mile island has long been an artistic haven, a wild refuge for people of all persuasions, and the inspirational home for a league of great American writers. Some of the artists went there to be literary he-men. Some went to re-create themselves. Others just went to disappear—and succeeded. No matter what inspired the trip, Key West in the seventies was the right place at the right time, where and when an astonishing collection of artists wove a web of creative inspiration. Mile Marker Zero tells the story of how these writers and artists found their identities in Key West and maintained their friendships over the decades, despite oceans of booze and boatloads of pot, through serial marriages and sexual escapades, in that dangerous paradise. Unlike the “Lost Generation” of Paris in the twenties, we have a generation that invented, reinvented, and found itself at the unending cocktail party at the end—and the beginning—of America’s highway.

This book looks at Florida's ocean as a habitat, a community of elaborate mini-creatures swimming next to bulky saltwater giants. Drifting alongside these living creatures are inanimate objects--bottles, nurdles, rafts, toys and tar blobs--lost or tossed from cargo ships. They float in the Sargasso Sea or flow with the Gulf Stream, sometimes drifting to Florida's east coast to become part of the sea wrack--the flotsam and jetsam that we find when strolling on the shore.

“With the twinned calamities of climate change and mass extinction weighing heavier and heavier on my nature-besotted soul, here were concrete, affordable actions that I could take, that anyone could take, to help our wild neighbors thrive in the built human environment. And it all starts with nothing more than a seed. Bringing Nature Home is a miracle: a book that summons butterflies." —Margaret Renkl, The Washington Post As development and habitat destruction accelerate, there are increasing pressures on wildlife populations. In his groundbreaking book Bringing Nature Home, Douglas W. Tallamy reveals the unbreakable link between native plant species and native wildlife—native insects cannot, or will not, eat alien plants. When native plants disappear, the insects disappear, impoverishing the food source for birds and other animals. Luckily, there is an important and simple step we can all take to help reverse this alarming trend: everyone with access to a patch of earth can make a significant contribution toward sustaining biodiversity by simply choosing native plants. By acting on Douglas Tallamy's practical and achievable recommendations, we can all make a difference.