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Tuesday, September 30, 2008
The Tragic Hurricane of 1928
As Florida counts down the days until hurricane season ends
we remember that this year marks the 80th anniversary of the tragic 1928 hurricane that was perhaps best memorialized in Zora
Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God. Hurston's characters, black migrant workers, travel from
northern Florida to Lake Okeechobee to supplement their meager incomes, only to meet their deaths when the hurricane strikes.
Nonfiction accounts of the storm include Disasters and Heroic Rescues: True Stories of Tragedy and Survival Florida
by E. Lynne Wright which summarizes the events of the storm. "...Radio reports about a storm doing extensive damage in
Puerto Rico" reached the Southeast coast Florida. "Some took half-hearted precautions, but mostly people simply
remained alert...in the midst of a [radio] announcement that there was no longer a danger to Florida [a radio announcer] broke
off in mid-sentence, saying the storm had hit Palm Beach and it was devastating." Wright explains that an already saturated
Lake Okeechobee poured into surrounding communities when "dikes being banks of muck from five feet to nine feet high"
were no match for the storm. Entire families were lost as they struggled to survive the winds and rains on their rooftops.
Wright estimates the death toll between 1800 and 3000.
Two books chronicle the storm in detail. Black Cloud by Eliot Kleinberg includes a first hand account from Carmen
Salvatore, a former soldier and survivor of the storm whose house was ripped up from the foundation during the storm. Robert
Mykle's Killer Cane: The Deadly Hurricane of 1928 reveals photos of downtown Palm Beach, which was reduced to
rubble. All of the books explain that the storm showed the disparity between blacks and whites at the time. While bodies
of the whites were buried in a local graveyard, the blacks were thrown into a mass grave. Black workers were instrumental
in the clean up. Wright explains that a temporary lift of Prohibition was permitted in the area because "no one, including
officers of the law, would deny workers a drink of whiskey if would help them" cope with "the hard physical labor,
the heat, the fatigue, the sleeplessness, the stench and sight of decomposed bodies and body parts, the occasional heartbreak
of identifying those bodies or body parts of those as belonging to someone they loved..."
--Susan Parsons
Saturday, September 27, 2008
Hello, Tampa!
FBR’s Esther Martinez is in Ybor City today attending Deep Carnivale: A Festival of Words. The summer doldrums are over, and we’re happy to be entering Florida’s season of writer’s conferences,
book festivals, and book fairs. We have many listed on our Literary Links page, but I'm sure there are others we don't yet know about. We ask organizers to send us their notices and materials.
(See the About Us page for contact info.) —Lynne Barrett
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Weblinks to follow the weather:
www.nhc.noaa.gov - This is the official site of the National Hurricane Center. It's probably the most "official" site on the web,
so if you have trust issues, go here. They've improved over time, most notably with better maps and a new small news feed
at the top. In the past, their maps have been less definitive, with a huge cone, especially for slow-moving storms. Their
text descriptions are also very technical and dense. Plus, the site's not as colorful, and we all like colors, don't we?
www.wunderground.com/tropical/ - This is Weather Underground's tropical weather site. They are good if you want easy access to a wide range of information,
including things like the "historical" diagram which shows how similar past storms have moved. They have a good
variety of computer models (which are lacking on the NHC), and they're very easy to navigate. They're also the best source
I know of for hurricane blogging - Dr. Jeff Masters blogs about tropical activity pretty consistently, although if you're
a complete beginner he may seem a bit jargonish. Plus, they're the best location for hurricane news if you're trying to "one-stop
shop" for weather info at your mansion on Fisher Island, your home in the Hamptons, the Manhattan apartment, the London
flat and the Chateau on the Loire. On the con side, they are a commercial entity, so there are ads around the site.
www.skeetobiteweather.com - These guys have very clear diagrams that show not just where the storm will go, but how strong it will be in different
locations. They're also good for more minor systems, as they show details "investigation areas" that may develop
into depressions, which neither the NHC nor Weather Underground does. Their historical records, however, have not been updated
since 2005. They have a slightly wider variety of computer models than Weather Underground, though you need to visit both
sites to see all of them. They can be a bit slow in updating (they normally have a 45-minute to an hour lag in updating after
the NHC, as compared to Weather Underground's 5-minute lag), but that's because they end up presenting much more information
with their diagrams. They come across as no-frills, with their relatively plain layout and lack of things like "wind
history" that the other two throw in. --James Barrett-Morison
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Winners of the 2008 Florida Book Awards Book Design Gold
Medal: Emmett H.L. Snellings, Jr., Seminole Views Children's Literature Gold Medal: Susan Womble, Newt's World: Beginnings
Silver Medal: Donna Gephart, As
If Being 12 3/4 Isn't Bad Enough, My Mother Is Running For President
Bronze Medal: Loreen
Leedy, Missing Math: A Number Mystery Florida Nonfiction Gold Medal: Shawn Bean, The First Hollywood Silver
Medal: John Stuart & John Stack, Eds., The New Deal in South Florida
Read our review.Bronze Medal: Rodney Hurst, It was Never about a Hot Dog
and a Coke
Jeff Klinkenberg, Pilgrim in a Land of Alligators
Greg
Turner, A Journey into Florida Railroad History
General Fiction Gold Medal: John Dufresne, Requiem,
Mass.
Silver Medal: Tony D'Souza, The Konkans
Bronze Medal: Kristy
Kiernan, Matters of Faith
Debra Dean, Confessions
of a Falling Woman Genre Fiction Gold Medal:
Deborah & Joel Shlian, Rabbit in the Moon
Silver Medal: Lisa Unger,
Black Out
Bronze Medal: James Swain, The
Night Stalker
Patrick Kendrick, Papa's Problem
Martha Powers,
Conspiracy of Silence Poetry Gold
Medal: David Kirby, Temple Gate Called Beautiful
Silver Medal Winner:
Campbell McGrath, Seven Notebooks
Bronze Medal: Terri Witek, The Shipwreck Dress
Frank Giampietro, Begin Anywhere
Helen Wallace, Shimming the Glass House Spanish Language Book Gold Medal: Antonio Orlando Rodriguez, Chiquita
Silver Medal: José Álvarez, Principio y fin del mito fidelista Young Adult Literature
Gold Medal: John Tkac, Whispers from the Bay
Silver Medal: Anne Ake, Everglades
Bronze Medal: Julie Gonzalez, Imaginary Enemy
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