Married...Two Children...Have lived in Tallahassee, Florida for 10 years now...Travel on a frequent basis in the Florida Big Bend/Panhandle region to the West of Tallahassee.
Grew up/lived in South Florida until move the Tallahassee and an avid fisherman for all of those years fishing both from shore and off shore from Fla East coast south of Boca Raton around the FL Keys/Florida Bay and up to Naples on Fl west coast.
As a result of living in Florida and fishing activities, an avid weather/topical system watcher since a teenager, and of course, lived through Hurricane Andrew (several friends who lived south of me lost their homes). I went to a social event around "ground zero" for Andrew the evening before the storm hit, spent the night/day down there the day before it hit (we did not know exactly where the sorm would come ashore), and drove back down the morning after the strom came through (I only lost power and not my home)to check on my friends. I will never forget the devastation that I encountered as I drove down the turnpike (past NHC) that Monday morning...It was as if an atomic bomb had leveled entire neighborhoods....
Enjoy watching Mother Nature do her thing every year, am awed by the power of a hurricance, and do not ever wish that fury upon anyone although it is a fact of life for those living near the tropics.
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"...we need to create more parks and recreational areas along the Gulf Coast (reclaim Mother Nature) so that regular folk can vacation there (not live there in permanent homes); thus, the impact of the occasional storm is not as devastating on local economies/people....Eco Tourism..."
I completely agree that this would be the sane, rational and successful approach to development and economic expansion for our state. But if insurance companies are #1 in"owning" our state legislators, then developers must be a close second.
But what you propose would require actual planning, and our state government is so deluded by "free market" ideology (where "Free Market"=freedom for political contributors and elite buddies to rob us and profit off of our natural resources) that getting them to implement any kind of rational planning for the future is going to require a social and political revolution.
People who were maligned under the Reagan adminstration as "Tree-Huggers" have now been classified as "Eco-terrorists" under Bush II. In reality they are just simple nature lovers with the courage to back their beliefs with action. I am also just a simple nature-lover. I used to loiter in the woods and swamps of the "Mosquito Valley" in NE Ohio, later I enjoyed hiking the mountains of New Hampshire. For the last 15 years in Florida the beach has been my haven. My perfect day is enjoying peaceful sounds of the surf and the gulls, sipping a little red wine, riding a moderate swell from the sandbar back to shore just to struggle my way back out, and watch my children play in the ocean.
I see from your blog you enjoy fishing. My two older sons, "almost" native Floridians, have taken to fishing too. Fisherman, nature-lovers, hunters, we all have common interests, to help conserve what is left of our natural resources. If we could all get together and form a united front we could accomplish a great deal together.
Oh Yeah, you also said,
"One of the primary goals of any Government should be to protect the weak and vulnerable......"
Thank you for saying this. It is an obvious truth that so many people in this country have forgotten. These days it takes courage to even speak this truth.
Unfortunately, as long as our Government is beholden to multi-national corporations through legalized bribery, we will never see this type of "good government" until a tipping point is reached. Ponder these words of corporate apologist and Nobel Prize Laureate Milton Friedman, which are gospel for most deluded neo-liberal free-marketeer globalists:
"So the question is, do corporate executives, provided they stay within the law, have responsibilities in their business activities other than to make as much money for their stockholders as possible? And my answer to that is, no, they do not."
Milton Friedman is dead, and his dismal (non)science will also soon die with him as we near the inevitable tipping point.
Best Regards,
-Guy
I think thats reasonable. Granted it wouldn't be easy relocating residents from their coastal area. But here in Texas the houses that were left after Ike were in or too near the water to rebuild anyway.
And the last three hurricanes have transformed our parks as well. The shrinking tree canopy and eroding coastline have brought in different birds and wildlife. So apparently the animals knew they couldn't live there and moved on. IF we are going to continue to live where we do, we are going to have to adapt to the changing environment. In the grand scheme of things 3 hurricanes isnt much and thats all it took to change the local ecology. I wish I had the answers.
On the fishing note, me and the fam have been mad fishermen and ladies as far back as I can remember. But alas, Ike made some of our fishing spots and all of our piers disappear. So my hubby and I bought our first boat. And El Nino set in and it's been too windy to use it. Lol. We're hoping for a mild springtime. :)
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