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March 27, 2010
Goodland, Florida: 'You got a problem with that?'
Half the adult population in this tiny town is said to be "non-voting". Lots of old--but extremely fast--boats.
No pretense, not much Internet (a good thing), but no real problems, either. No money (bad thing)--but so what, Mister? People here could very well have it all. Home of the buzzard lope, Goodland is a living caricature of working people with too much personality, powerful appetites, and Flowers on Mama's Grave back in the Ozarks.
I feel like I know these people; in my case, Scots-Irish DNA is hard to beat down with just an education. However, three years ago, Holden Oliver, one of our writers, and then a snooty New England-bred law student at Stanford, refused to finish his dinner at one of the local bars here. It wasn't the food. The Mayflower crowd could never grock Goodland.
Buzzard Lope people
Anyway, about 300 souls. Half the adult population in this tiny town is said to be "non-voting" due to drug transport-related convictions. Lots of old--but extremely fast--boats. Trial lawyers like NYC's Scott Greenfield get the picture. If Scott mails me some of his cards, I will pass them out at Stan's or The Little Bar.
Goodland is also very, well, white--but more fun and certainly less sterile than Naples or Marco. This is a gritty Key West for the Gulf's gold coast.
It's fun. The most button-down clients insist on going to dinner here--just like they insist on a quick trip to Mexico for lobster in Puerto Nuevo or near Calafia when they are in San Diego.
Goodland is a fine place to write sonnets, briefs, novels, letters, settlement contracts, short stories, articles, limericks, Dear Jane letters and marginal haiku.
The people here make even most Australians seem a bit uptight and sober.
"Hey, you guys from Connecticut or something?"
Posted by JD Hull at 12:59 AM | Comments (0)
March 22, 2010
The Atlantic: Health care reform passage as "a tainted victory".
Sunday's vote was "landmark", sure. So is each Hell's Angels' Labor Day Picnic. But it's not over, even procedurally, and so far it hasn't been pretty: the way the bill got passed says more about us as a divided, enraged and mean-spirited people than it does about how far we've come on health care in America. Maybe the best single take right now is Clive Crook's piece this morning for The Atlantic entitled "A Tainted Victory". Excerpts:
It is absurd that getting the Senate bill through the House should have been such a struggle.
[Scott] Brown won in Massachusetts for a reason. The Democrats had failed to make their case for this reform to the American public. They pressed the case for some sort of reform, but that was easy: the country was already there.
What the country dislikes is this particular bill, and the Democrats, intent on arguing among themselves, barely even tried to change its mind.
People struggle to understand how extending health insurance to 32 million Americans, at a cost of a trillion dollars over ten years, can be a deficit-reducing measure.
Posted by JD Hull at 11:59 PM | Comments (0)