To the sea, son, to the sea. Every bit of water you ever seen on land is going – or trying to go – to the sea. Uncle Cooter to Harry Crews.
…my reluctance to live in Florida was so great…that I failed to do this most basic task when my husband and I bought a house in Gainesville. I came to Florida without having experienced it through the visions of the master storytellers from our state. Lauren Groff.
Not to brag, friends and neighbors, but I’ve been on a roll lately.
First I got myself officially certified an actual human writer. They can’t take that away from me.
And now, after years of wandering in the ink stained wretch wilderness, I suddenly find myself keeping very good company indeed.
Don’t take my word for it. Ask Jacki Levine.
Jacki is my friend of many years and my sometimes editor. She is also editor of the just published “Once Upon A Time In Florida.”
Florida Humanities is celebrating its 50th anniversary. And “Once Upon A Time In Florida” is an anthology of 50 years of writers writing about Florida. You can buy a copy at this link.
And what writers they are. Harry Crews (who I used to see in downtown Gainesville bedecked in his black motorcycle jacket) Novelist Lauren Groff . The great Florida historian Michael Gannon. Author Philip Caputo. The late, great Miami crime reporter Edna Buchanan. Craig Pittman, Cynthia Barnett, Jeff Klinkenberg, Bill Maxwell, David Colburn and, and, and….
…I could go on but suffice it to say that if you open this book you will discover the best writing about the best of Florida.
Oh, and I’m in there as well (he said modestly). Which is a really good thing because if I ever had to write a book all by myself, it would take several lifetimes to finish.
No, the best I can hope for is to be a guest writer in someone else’s book.
My contribution is a piece I wrote for Forum magazine a couple of years ago that stemmed from a conversation I’d had over the years with former Gov. Bob Graham.
About, of all things, what it means to be a Floridian.
There’s a funny story about that.
Back in the late 1970s and early ‘80s” I was the capital bureau chief for the New York Times Florida Newspapers (before the NYT sold its Florida newspapers). Then Gov. Graham was part of my beat, and he frequently managed to work references to the “Cincinnati Factor” into his speeches.
Graham would typically read from a fictional but all-too-familiar newspaper obituary about a long time Florida resident who had just passed away. The obit would mention his family, his career, his contributions to his community and so on….
…but would invariably end with “Mr. Smith’s body is being flown back to Cincinatti for burial.”
This being Graham’s way of making the point that many many people come to Florida from somewhere else – to live, to work, to retire – without ever really self-identifying as Floridians.
“So many people who have lived here a substantial part of their life on earth never made the transition to being a Floridian,” he told me.
Anyway, that recollection stayed with me long enough to, some four decades later, track down now former U.S. Sen. Graham to ask him if anything has changed in regard to Florida transplants identifying as Floridians.
“I think for most people the longer they live here the looser the ties become to their previous residences and there is a commensurate increase in their affection for Florida,” he allowed.
Graham said he had always encouraged residents “to make an effort to see as much of the state as they can if they want to appreciate the diversity, the vitality and strength that is Florida.”
Which is Graham-speak for: Florida: It grows on you.
As a 7-year-old transplant from Pennsylvania, Florida has definitely grown on me.
Oh, one more thing.
Jacki, being Jacki, was never going to settle for publishing The Book On Florida and letting it go at that. She’s also conducting a series of book tours around the peninsula. I’ll be part of a panel discussion in Coconut Creek on Feb. 24. And the last stop of the tour will be right here in GNV at the Matheson on May 1.
You should check it out. Who knows. In all of the chatter somebody might even spill the beans on what it really means to be a Floridian.
But not me, pal. I’ll never tell.
FreeGNV 