Life In the Slow Lane

W hen I was in school, in New England, we were told Slavery was Bad, although the "War between the States" was about "States Rights", not slavery. The Plantations were beautiful. Some slaves were happy and learned trades and loved their masters. Yeah, right. My first visit to a US forced labor camp (aka a Plantation) was about 15 years ago, upstream of New Orleans. The emphasis was recreating the Gone with the Wind fantasy/lie: the docents had Scarlet-like costumes, and everything was beautiful. Yes, they admitted, there were slaves, but basically nothing was left of their ugly hovels and we don't talk about them. White people still got married there since it was so romantic.  When I think of forced labor camps, I think of Nazi Germany. It is unimaginable today to think that Auschwitz would celebrate weddings in the grandeur of the Kommandant's house, or that people would celebrate the work ethic of the enslaved Jews, Roma, gays and other minorities. (Histor...

E verybody has heard of the National Parks and National Monuments. Gorgeous, but often overcrowded. The National Seashore? I wasn't really aware of them until last year. Beaches. I’ve never been a huge fan of beaches, even though my privileged life has gotten me on beaches from Zanzibar to New Jersey. I get to a beach, ok, fifteen minutes later, what do I do now? Too hot, too glaring to read a book or screen, already went swimming and now caked with salt.   I know I'm an insignificant, non-legally protected minority.   My first brush with the National Seashore was last year, tooling down the outer Banks of North Carolina: Kitty Hawk, miles of ticky-tack, condos and shopping, ferries, and then Cape Hatteras National Seashore. Wow. Sand dunes drifting across the road, miles of clean sand without a single umbrella, and only a countable number of folks within eyesight. We didn't have much time then, so a few brief walks and we had to mosey on to catch our next scheduled ferry. ...

W e're in the "Big Bend" of Florida now, driving towards the Panhandle. If you picture Florida as a handgun, we are at the trigger.  Not in Texas yet Temperatures are a lot more moderate than Key West. The 90/90 weather there was too much for me: 90˚F and 90% relative humidity. While walking around a community in the Keys in 90/90 weather, a group of seniors, wearing long pants, enclosed shoes with socks, long sleeves, and bright green safety vests biked by. I was told only the tourists wear shorts and short sleeved shirts. In this part of Florida you tell tourists from locals by the flags. Trump and Confederate flags are embarrassingly common. We get to our campground road by turning right at the Confederate battle flag. How appropriate. We are staying at a campground in Tate's Hell State Forest. That's its real name. A  local legend is that a farmer in 1875 named Cebe Tate, with a shotgun and his hunting dogs, journeyed into the swamp searching for a panther tha...