Admit it - what do you miss? (Everglades: employment, landscaping)

[ncsurfer]

I am from North Carolina and I understand exactly where you are coming from

[bocamom]

Originally Posted by average dave

Don't miss the development that finally actually hit the Everglades levee. I boycotted the Sawgrass Expressway when it first opened (until I unfortunately found that it really saved me time driving to my job in west Dade). We dropped our jaws when Weston was developed - who would buy out there in the Everglades? They'll be flooded out first hurricane, we thought.

Me too! i was flabbergasted when Weston became posh! I thought they were nuts (I still think so).

I was on the phone with Jerry Baker, the guy in charge of wastewater disposal for Broward County today, and he said that the reason the beach in front of my house has gotten so brown is because of that development. In order to keep that land dry the water has to be drained. Guess where all that rotting leaf water ends up? MY YARD! And I've never lived west of Us-1.

NIMBY? I wish. . .

[crisan]

Bocamom, your post made me think. Sorry, this post should be about things we miss. However, I know a man who went to UM 25 years ago. He is involved in human rights advocacy. Anyway, every time I talk about problems here he tells me a bit of information that always shocks me esp. in regards to WWM. Anyway, my ignorance must always be so obvious that he drops the conversation. I do want to become more informed but don't know anybody who cares. Well, that shouldn't be an excuse for staying ignorant.

I currently live here but I do travel quite a bit and do miss things here:
24 hour stores - you don't get that in this one town in Sweden
green vegetation - when I travel during winter
access to many large stores, e.g. Target, Sawgrass Mills
Riding my bike along the Everglades levy during our cooler season because I am somewhere else during winter
The daily thunderstorms and showers are awesome, especially if you live around 595 in Plantation. I moved north to Tamarac (only a couple of miles away) and do not get that many storms. I always see them pass by in the south


The water is beautiful here but I prefer the beaches, e.g. Mustang Island, near Corpus Christi, Tx. The water is dark but you are surrounded by sand-dunes and not development. The water is shallow for quite some time and you can chase fish, crabs, etc.. Very laid back there.

[bocamom]

Well, I miss the clean water. i grew up running wild on clean beaches and it took significant sacrifice to bring my young son back to one of those beaches only to find it too dirty to swim. Anyone in my situation would care.

[crisan]

Originally Posted by bocamom

Well, I miss the clean water. i grew up running wild on clean beaches and it took significant sacrifice to bring my young son back to one of those beaches only to find it too dirty to swim. Anyone in my situation would care.

A good buddy of mine, he is in his 70s, always laughs when I tell him how beautiful the water is when I go to the beach on Saturdays. He always says, "You know nothing about clear blue water."

[bocamom]

Originally Posted by crisanmos

A good buddy of mine, he is in his 70s, always laughs when I tell him how beautiful the water is when I go to the beach on Saturdays. He always says, "You know nothing about clear blue water."

Well, tell him I said hi

I am always happy to hear of someone else who remembers. With the turnover in population here (most of my childhood friends live in LA, Seattle, South America, Eastern Europe, NYC, and North Carolina now, and most of the people I know who live here now are from Ohio and PA and NY and NJ and Chicago and South America and Eastern Europe) a lot of the change is noticed and discussed in public by just a few of us local busybodies. In most places it is much easier for people to assemble behind a common cause. here it seems property values are the prime directive to behavior, and that can lead to unfortunate behaviors that are not good citizenship because they don't focus on lon term local issues, like communities need to to have long term local strength.

i learned something interesting by teaching a required first semester critical writing course of my own design at a local community college, I had been told it was a difficult job compared to University teaching of the course. I had a first year class where the demographic was not very diverse. almost all of my students were African American and from the same central north Broward neighborhood and Jamaica. This community had a much higher percentage of Florida natives that i had ever had in a class and a great sense of community - they had a hard time not talkign to each other, so as long as I directed the conversation learning was easy to acheive.

Rather than ending up complaining about the students as I had heard people doing, I found that my class was by far the quickest to pick up on the material that I had ever encountered. Concepts like "hegemony" required only a definitin and they could write cogent essays on examples of hegemony.

I had intelligent class discussion like: "Is KanYe West a public intellectual?" just popping up on a daily basis. for the first time, when I asked students to chart their arguments in formal logic, they were competing for the opporunity to make their arguments on the chalkboard first and doing it well, arguing with clean rhetoric and critically evaluating the arguments of others. Just like that. i didn't have to do much. there was no resistance to the idea that people use rhetoric deceptively and that we need to apply crtical thinking to al arguments, especially our own.

the class was fantastic. On the level of theory, 80% of the students would have been in the above average level as they read the readings, engaged critically with them, and retained the concepts long enough to be tested on them.

All that was missing was teh formal schooling on grammar and such, which isn't that hard to teach, actually, if a student has to learn it to pass a required course. The sense of community enabled the class to work together to solve the difficult logic problems I presented to them with no issues. And together (the work was too difficult for me to do alone) we taught each other grammar and composition. The composition part was no problem, as that followed naturally from the logic exercises. Every single course I teach, that is usually the difficulty. They sometimes will tell stoires about themselves, but more often are looking at their watches, waiting to leave the room, the but they fail to read the material or offer genuine critical discussion.

i miss that class. I should go through the trouble of driving out there twice a week for almost no money again soon.


but the point is, i miss community.

Take away the pollution and add community and florida is paradise again.

[crisan]

Originally Posted by bocamom

\

but the point is, i miss community.

Take away the pollution and add community and florida is paradise again.

Ah, of course, community. Really, any place is paradise when you have community. I know of quite a few young people who are always considering a move back home because they are not able to form lasting friendships here. My own dentist admitted to this problem as well.

I do have a different outlook than most of my buddies. I make friends with people from all generations. I feel that older people are not respected enough and that is sad because they have good stories to tell. That is how a community is formed and maintained. The generations need access to each other. If you don't have resources such as older citizens, especially local ones like you mentioned, then it is more difficult to know about the past.

The lack of community is being exploited but can never be proven.

[bocamom]

I have lived on the beach most of my life so many of my friends have been a few generations older.

My favorite generation is almost gone I miss them too! he depression era folks I've known understood recycling, reuse, reduce. they understood the need to look out for civil liberties, they understood real communities. My generation understands online communities. Online activism can be powerful, but sitting in a chair alone typing lacks some of what one gets in a real life community.

[fauve]

Originally Posted by bocamom

I have lived on the beach most of my life so many of my friends have been a few generations older.

My favorite generation is almost gone I miss them too! he depression era folks I've known understood recycling, reuse, reduce. they understood the need to look out for civil liberties, they understood real communities. My generation understands online communities. Online activism can be powerful, but sitting in a chair alone typing lacks some of what one gets in a real life community.

I wholeheartedly agree, and I don't know the answer or where it will come from, but the evolution of online community is an interesting discussion. Perhaps it will be used more often in the future as a tool to bring people together in rl and will be companion to community rather than alternative.

[Chinolala]

Originally Posted by Kalbo

Now in Las Vegas miss all the fruit trees we had in our yard, the afternoon thunder storms, and of course the water.

From ocean to desert? That baffles me. Could never do it.