Month: June 2022

Friday, 24 June 2022

Lately, around 5:30 or 6 pm, I head to the patio in the back, turn on some music from my iPhone that I channel through some blue tooth speakers, shed clothes and either have a glass of iced tea or a glass of wine. Then I take a skinny dip in the pool, shower with my home-made outdoor shower, and then come in for the night.

Tonight, one song that hit me was Simon and Garfunkel’s “I Am A Rock.” I first heard that song when I was sitting with my cousin Jimmie in the back room of their house she shared with her sister Jean. It had to be summer since the song came out in 1965 and I graduated Morton Attendance Center the year after. Jimmie was a senior. I remember she hushed me when it came on the radio because she wanted to listen to it. That made me want to listen to the lyrics.

A winter’s day
In a deep and dark December
I am alone
Gazing from my window to the streets below
On a freshly fallen silent shroud of snow
I am a rock I am an island

I’ve built walls
A fortress deep and mighty
That none may penetrate
I have no need of friendship friendship causes pains
It’s laughter and it’s loving I disdain
I am a rock I am an island

Don’t talk of love
Well I’ve heard the word before
It’s sleeping in my memory
I won’t disturb the slumber of feelings that have died
If I never loved I never would have cried
I am a rock I am an island

I have my books
And my poetry to protect me
I am shielded in my armor
Hiding in my room safe within my womb
I touch no one and no one touches me
I am a rock I am an island

And a rock feels no pain
And an island never cries”

Lyrics from Musicmatch.

At that point in my life, those lyrics pretty much reflected my life. Maybe it was the wine this afternoon but Simon and Garfunkel singing those lyrics made me think of what my life had been up to the time in 1965 and then how far I’ve come since then. I certainly had no social skills in 1965 and only when I started the semester at Ole Miss in the fall of 1966 did I begin to develop any.

Powers Hall was my introduction to my new life with two roommates in a room designed for two. It was during the Viet Nam conflict and everyone was enrolling in college to get out of being sent to Viet Nam. I didn’t really know much about that at the time, I just knew I needed to go to college. It was at Powers that I made some of my first real friends, learn to socialize, learned about the fraternity system at Ole Miss (I didn’t join) and probably met my first gay person. It was also the first time I wasn’t considered a nerd. I’ve always said I learned more in the bull shit sessions at Powers than I did in any of my classes.

What was really interesting about the guy I assumed was gay was he was the social arbiter of the dorm, and particularly for the fraternities most of the guys in the dorm belonged to. He came from real money, as in plantation in the Delta money. I think he must have brought 60 shirts with him to Powers which only had two small closets that three guys had to share. I think all the men in the dorm assumed he was gay but he had such cachet with his wealth, they all deferred to him for advice with women, clothes, and pretty much everything else.

My next year at Ole Miss saw me in a new dormitory we called the Twin Towers. I’m sure, if it is still standing, it has another name but back in the 60’s it was Twin Towers. I had a room on one of the upper floors with two roommates (again for a two person room). Both the guys were the typical southern males of the time and I remember vividly one story they told. They were best friends from some small town in Mississippi and they related the story of how one of them was in bed with this girl when the girl’s boyfriend (apparently a bruising football player) came banging on the door, screaming for his girlfriend. The roommate quickly stripped, jumped in bed with both his friend and the girl, said “move over babee” and when the football player barged in, he found two guys in bed with his girlfriend. He stormed out.

My first thought was what a dirty trick to play on the girl. My second thought was why was she in bed with another guy? The third thing that crossed my mind was why the the guy in bed with later dumped her.

What all this is leading up to is today, the Supreme Court issued the verdict that struck down legalized abortion. It seems to me that women pay a far higher price in life than males. The day before, they struck down a New York law that prohibited certain people from carrying fire arms. In essence, the Supreme Court gave more rights to gun owners than to women. It also looks like Clarence Thomas wants to revisit contraception and gay marriage. Looks like three newest of the Supremes lied to Congress when they said Roe vs. Wade was established precedence. Maybe, they also want to revisit Brown vs. Board of Education.

In any case, I’m sure the girl’s reputation was ruined in that small town. I remember as a kid how many times young girls disappeared for about 9 months and then reappeared. I also remember how many girls disappeared never to reappear because of failed abortions. Yes, even in small town Morton, Mississippi, there were rumors of abortions. It was pretty common talk about how to avoid pregnancies. One that sticks in my mind was the idea that if you douched with a coke after intercourse, that would prevent pregnancy.

Little old ladies had nothing better to do than attend a wedding, go home and mark the date on the calendar and then check nine months later to see if the kid from the marriage was legitimate. Looks as though we are heading back to those days.

Stay tuned!

Thursday, 16 June 2022

There are nightmares and then there are nightmares. I had the nightmare kind last night. Usually, what I classify as a nightmare is me dreaming I’ll have to go back into the classroom and teach again. I consider myself lucky when I came out alive in 2014.

When I do have one, the “nightmare” is usually one of four things: I’m late and can’t find my classroom, I can’t find my office to get my notes because they changed the layout of the offices, I didn’t prepare for the class and have no idea what to cover, and I’m in lab and cannot get students to do anything.

Last night was more than a little different. I was asleep and waked when something ran across my pillow towards me. It looked like a scorpion doped up on steroids and muscle bound. Fully awake, I jumped out of bed and started searching around and under the pillows for the intruder. I found nothing. I knew I was awake, heart palpitations and all and even rechecked the bed, under the sheets, etc.

It’s not like we don’t have scorpions. We do. They arise in the strangest places. One student brought one in to me they had collected crawling out of the drain of their bath tub – on the 15th floor of a condo.

A lot of people like to put chickee huts in their back yards near their pools for shade. They often get members of the Seminole tribe to erect them and weave the thatch roofs. For some reason, scorpions love the thatch of chickee huts. If you take a black light out at night and shine up into the thatch of the hut, you are more than likely to see scorpions glowing in the dark back at you.

Maybe my dream was brought about by the scheduled visit today of the termite man. I have a contract with Huelett. For a yearly fee, they’ll come out and take action on any termite signs you may have. What I like about Huelett is they don’t require you to “tent” your house to treat. They do spot treatments and once a year come out and do a complete inspection.

Tenting is the pits. You have to bag everything up that might absorb the poison used, stay two nights at a hotel, and then unpack everything, wipe down the cabinets, and put everything back.

South Florida is blessed with termites. The Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences (IFAS) says at least 21 species have been recorded in the state with six of those species as invasive. IFAS breaks them down as subterranean, dry wood, damp wood, and higher.

For the subterranean, two are native and three are invasive. The native subterraneans are Eastern subterranean and Cuban subterranean. Invasive subterraneans are Formosan, Asian, and West Indian. Formosan have been known to eat doors hollow in high rise condos, all the more remarkable since they have to provide tunnels to connect them to the soil.

As far as dry wood termites, we have a native Florida dry wood termite and two invasive: West Indian and Western.

We only have one wet wood termite, the Florida wet wood termite.

In the Higher termite category, there is the Florida dark winged subterranean and the cone headed termite (also know as the tree termite). Higher termites don’t have the typical symbiotic flagellates in their intestines which contain symbiotic bacteria that allow the digestion of cellulose. However, some of them may have amebae which have the bacteria.

Termite companies are a booming business in South Florida. Some are highly ethical and some not so ethical. There was one community in Fort Lauderdale near the beach that was found to have so many chemicals for subterranean termites in the soil it was considered toxic. Companies would repeatedly treat properties every year pumping more chemicals into the ground.

Termite season is pretty much year round in subtropical Florida but I mostly note it when they swarm for their mating flights and they drop back to earth – in my pool and drown. Sometimes the pool has enough termite carcasses to be very noticeable.

Nightmares withstanding, I’ll check the sheets and pillows tonight before I turn in!

Stay tuned!

Monday, 13 June 2022

I have a confession to make. I like Spam. I have no idea when I first tried it. According to Wikipedia, it was introduced by Hormel in 1937 and became very popular during WWII, both on the home front and for soldiers overseas. Since I was born in 1948, only three years after the end of the war, there were some habits that probably were maintained in households even though most rationing in the U.S. ended late 1945.

I remember seeing rationing books in drawers at my grandparents in Morton and I also remember we usually ate margarine instead of butter. There was this yellow packet of food dye that you mixed with the margarine to make it look like butter. I was so reared on margarine it was many years later in college that I actually started liking the taste of butter over margarine. I even helped my Aunt Sue churn butter at her place in Pulaski and still hated the taste.

I also remember seeing a gas rationing sticker pasted to the windshield of my grandfathers old truck. I think it was a black sticker and that meant he would be allotted 3 gallons per week. He never took the sticker from the windshield and I can only assume my brother did when he inherited the truck.

We always had cans of Spam around the house and when Dad would get hungry in the evening, he would often fry up some Spam and make a sandwich with it. As a toddler, I must have eaten my first piece begging for a bite of his Spamwich. I soon developed a taste for it and I preferred mine on white bread with mustard. I would never use mayo on it. Mustard lent a je ne sais quoi to it.

In case you are wondering, it is composed of pork shoulder, ham, salt, water, modified potato starch, sugar and sodium nitrite as a preservative. Better living through chemistry!

Soon I branched out to include a slice of onion or tomato and lettuce. I became a Spam aficionado. When I moved into the house here in Fort Lauderdale, I kept a supply of it on hand for hurricane preparedness. I suspect the shelf life is in the millenia. I kept about 10 tins in the utility room.

One day I noticed a strong odor coming from somewhere in the house. It took me a while to trace it to the utility room but I looked and looked and couldn’t find the source. I assumed some rat had crawled into the room and died behind either the washer or the dryer.

Some days later I went to get something off the shelves of the utility room and noticed that all 10 tins of Spam had exploded. What I had been smelling for several days was putrified Spam. There was a strong oxidant in the utility room and it had started corroding all the cans on the shelf. The Spam was the first to blow.

I still try to keep Spam available for emergencies but every so often – every 5 to 6 years – I get the urge to fry up some Spam and make a Spam and mustard sandwich. It still tastes like the Spam of my childhood and fills a nostalgic place in my stomach. Last night, I had a Spam, mustard and whole wheat bread Spamwich. I’ll probably be good for another five years. However, Dad taught me how to cube it and put it in scrambled eggs along with some cheese. It makes a great omelet. Come to think of it, that might be my next treat.

Stay tuned!

Wednesday, 8 June 2022

I had a weird dream last night. I was sitting in some type of symposium along with some of my BCC colleagues and we all had some presentation to make. After listening to several, a thought hit me and I realized what I had prepared was not what I wanted to speak. The slides I had worked on would not work and I frantically began to rewrite what I wanted to say. That part was a real nightmare. What it led to next was actually a pretty good part of the dream.

I began to think, as people gave their talk, what influenced me as I grew to an adult and how that has affected my life. I then got off on the idea that the simplest statement by someone could have very important consequences to the person listening.

As an extreme example, I remember once (as an adult) mentioning to a student that I preferred Levi’s 501 jeans with the button fly. Many years later I was talking to the same individual and he mentioned that ever since my statement about 501’s he has worn nothing else. I must have made an impression I didn’t realize on that individual and it had nothing to do with jeans.

One instance that sticks in my mind about influence was in the Boy Scouts. Our Troop 28 was camping out at Roosevelt State Park and I had been named a Patrol Leader. For those who don’t know the hierarchy, a troop is led by a scoutmaster and one or more assistant scout master. Under them is a Boy Scout named Senior Patrol leader and under him are Patrol Leaders. If it sounds a little militaristic, it is.

Any way, two Scouts (not in my patrol) were on a project to lash together a table made of wood that we had cut in the woods. They were having trouble. I stopped, showed them what was wrong with their lashing, watched as they corrected and went about my business. As I walked away I heard one say, “I like the way Searcy does things. He actually shows you how to do it instead of yelling at you.” That hit me like a two by four. I didn’t realize I did that nor that it had any effect on anyone. It was just how things were done for me.

Two people in the Boy Scouts had profound influence on me: H.D. Polk and John D. (Sergeant) Stokes. Both had infinite patience we me, would show me how to do something, back off, let me try, and only interfere if I did it wrong. They let me make mistakes and then learn from them. I don’t remember them ever losing patience with me as a kid.

Later, I found the same influence with Dr. Thomas Pullen, my major professor for my masters degree. I was in the Coast Guard in New Orleans and getting ready to muster out after four years. I wrote to Dr. Pullen asking if he would consider working with me as a graduate student in botany at Ole Miss. In my letter, I said that I didn’t know if he remembered me.

I took General Botany with him but was one of about 60 students in the class and managed a “B.” It was in my second semester of my sophomore year at Ole Miss I decided to get a BA in biology (I was a late bloomer then as well as now).

That sophomore year, Dr. Pullen had done an exhibit for the department on poisonous plants in Mississippi and I was fascinated. Mr. Polk had done something similar while in the Scouts on edible plants that were in Riker mounts. Dr. Pullen used herbarium specimen paper. That’s when I decided to take his Spring and Summer Flora of Mississippi, a junior level course. I was hooked on botany.

Four years later and I was ready to leave the Coast Guard and wanted to go to graduate school at Ole Miss. I had no idea that Dr. Pullen would remember me from that Spring and Summer course. He immediately wrote me back and said “Of course, I remember you!” I was so excited by those five words. He said he would accept me as a graduate student as long as I met the criteria. I had sent him a transcript so he could see what background I had and he had me take inorganic and organic chemistry and physics, all with labs to bring me up to speed. He became a confidant and mentor for three years at Ole Miss.

When he passed away, his son Thomas offered me his library. I was really moved.

What I’m getting at here is sometimes the least thing we say can have the most profound effect on people. While teaching botany at BCC, I had two sisters who were probably the best students I ever taught. I think most people know Alexander Fleming discovered the antibacterial effects of the fungus Penicillium. What is less known is who was able to purify the active ingredient for use in medicine. Fleming did not accomplish that. It was Norman Heatley. He devised a method of cold filtration to purify the active ingredient so it could be used. Heat purification destroyed the active ingredient and until Heatley came up with the cold purification method, the antibacterial discovery had no functionality.

That apparently caught the attention of the two sisters. I had, at that time, required four take-home essay exams along with four in-class multiple choice exams. The essay exams were five discussion questions. Students had to research each question with a minimum of five sources and write their response complete with citations according to the Council of Biological Editors (CBE) style manual. CBE style is distinctly different from styles used in English papers. Whereas English papers concentrate on page numbers in their citations, CBE concentrates on the year of publication since the later the publication in science, the more up-to-date the citation.

In any case, I don’t think those two sisters ever earned a grade lower than a 94 on the multiple choice tests and always made 95 or higher on their discussion exams. I, of course, had lectured on Fleming, explained Heatley’s contribution and railed that he was overlooked for the Nobel Prize in Medicine. On the discussion question on the next take-home exam I asked “Who was Norman Heatley and what were his contributions?” The sisters went a little overboard. They contacted Norman Heatley who, at the time was still living, and began a lively correspondence via email. He sent them some of his original papers on his research on Penicillium and then invited them to come see him if ever in London. You can guess they blew me away with their answers to the question, particularly when I saw copies of Heatley’s own papers on Penicillium. Much later, they managed to go to London and have tea with the great Norman Heatley.

One of my favorite stories about teaching was a botany student who was a fireman. He was looking to leave firefighting and go into veterinary science. He passed my course with flying colors and asked for a letter of recommendation to University of Florida. I happily wrote him one. We kept in touch for a while and he always asked me to stop in Gainesville anytime I was passing through and see him. On one of my trips, I did. He started to tell me about his courses and how one professor seemed to be the gateway to get into veterinary school. He said everyone avoided the professor at all costs. I asked why and he said because he only gave essay exams. I said “you shouldn’t have any trouble” and he said he didn’t. He also said the professor, after his first essay submission, called him up and asked him how he did so well on his essay unlike the rest of the class. He replied “I had this ass-hole teacher at BCC who made us write like crazy.” He passed the course and got into vet school and is now practicing as a large animal vet.

The reason I’m writing this is there are so many times that something someone says casually that has deleterious effects on the person to whom they are said. Casual remarks can have a lifetime effect on individuals and we should be much more careful with our language. The old saying “Sticks and stones may break my bones but names will never hurt me” is a lie. I’m just thrilled that I have been able to have some positive effects on people during my lifetime. Sadly, I’m sure I have also affected some people negatively with my comments.

I had one rule to myself in teaching and that was to try my hardest not to degrade anyone publicly in class. I would always try to call them up after class and discuss my issue with them in private. I can’t say I always succeeded but I did my best.

When I think of the current political discourse (or lack thereof) I cringe. There’s something to be said for courtesy and politeness and thinking before you speak.

Sunday, 5 June 2022

The sun is out, the pool is full, and Potential Cyclone One will probably become Tropical Storm Alex sometime out over the Atlantic either late today or tomorrow. According to NBC Channel 6, Fort Lauderdale International Airport recorded 7.43 inches of rain as of 9 am this morning.

I was feeling good about my roof until I saw a trail of water down the door from the kitchen to the utility room and was worried I had a leak. I still may have one but other than that evidence, I don’t think it’s significant. It may simply mean I need to get the leaves away from the roof where the awning meets the roof. Back on the ladder again.

It’s funny what you remember as a kid. One of a series of memories for me was the hardware store my grandfather, Hollie William Agnew, ran in Morton, Mississippi. I loved hanging around the hardware and hardwares of that ilk always have a nostalgic smell about them. Agnew Hardware had everything you needed whether your home was out in the country or in town.

Hollie even had leather mule collars for farmers. Back then, I was around 4-5 years old and most farmers plowed their fields with mules. The leather of the collar along with leather tack and horse saddles filled the hardware.

When I was in the fourth grade (nine years old) my neighbor plowed his field with a mule and I used to walk behind him in the furrows as he guided the mule down the row. Once he reached the end of the row, it was either “Gee” or “Haw” to get the mule to turn either right or left. I’m sure I was a pest to him but he never complained about me following along and constantly yapping at him. My Uncle Jack in Pulaski still plowed his garden with a mule when I was a kid.

Another aroma from Agnew Hardware was floor sweep. The hardware had beaten up old wooden floors (there wasn’t a level place in the entire store). At the end of the day, it often became part of my “job” to lay down floor sweep (also called sweeping compound) and sweep the aisles of the store.

It’s an oiling particulate often with a pine scent added. The oily particles would attract dust and dirt as you swept. I suspect there were some 40 years of floor sweep oil absorbed by those floors. Ours had a red tint to the particles like the one on the left in the photo.

Add in the miscellaneous smells of paints, roofing compound, and other sundry items and you had a cornucopia of aromas. I loved it!

For some strange reason, the conversations lately with my cousins Jimmie and Jo got around to tokens. Both remembered them but all of our memories were a little fuzzy on the issue.

I remember the old cash register at the hardware had “tokens” and for some reason remembered they had a square hole in them. There was a specific drawer for them.

According to the web site for the Mississippi Department of Archives and History, Mississippi instituted a sales tax in 1932 and issued tokens in 1936. The tokens were in 1 mill and 5 mill denominations and were originally of aluminum and brass but during the war when metals were needed for the military, the tokens were made of fiber and plastic.

A mill is one thousandth of a cent. Why would you ever need that? Back in the 30’s and 40’s a lot of items in stores sold for 5 or 10 cents. If the state tax was 1.5%, then 1.5% of 5 cents is $0.00075 cents. You would hand over a nickel, and a 5 mill token and two 1 mill tokens to pay the sales tax.

The archives said tokens were used from 1936 to 1952 in Mississippi but Wikipedia says that most tokens were eliminated in the early 1940’s except in Missouri.

I was born in 1948 and in 1952 I was only 4 years old. I remember tokens taken in by the hardware when I was 10 or 11 years old so I can only assume the hardware took them out of courtesy to the public. I remember both the metal and the plastic ones. I swear some of them were actually wooden.

The hardware was to eventually become a big bone of contention in my family. When Hollie died in 1956, he left the hardware to my mother, or so she said. She supposedly threatened my grandmother with a law suit. In any case, mother ended up with the hardware and mother and dad moved from Cleveland, Mississippi back to Morton to take ownership and run it. Not very successfully, I might add. It was later sold to another family in town and eventually the entire building was moved to another location in town.

I miss old hardwares, their smells, the salespeople that really know what they are talking about, and just the general feeling of the store. In my travels, whenever I see one of the old country hardwares, I go in, take a deep breath, and go down memory lane (or aisles).

Saturday, 4 June 2022

Potential Tropical Storm One is moving closer to Florida and by my reckoning, we’ve had 24 hours of continuous rain. I do mean continuous. It has not stopped since yesterday morning. I’m fortunate that my street never really floods but I’m sure there are some streets around Fort Lauderdale that are pretty impassible at this point. The high point of the system should be over Fort Lauderdale sometime this afternoon so dog walkers are not going to get a break.

Around 4 am I was waked by a steady, continuous sound and I thought it was the wind picking up but when I got up to see about it, it was simply a very heavy downpour – to the point I couldn’t really see the house across the street.

What is really amazing is that since I had the pool resurfaced a few years after I bought the house, I’ve never needed to drain water out of the pool. This is the closest to the surface of the pool deck I’ve ever seen the water.

As I was photographing the pool deck, the wind began to pick up. We may get gusts as strong as 50 mph. The only real danger for me is for the Bismarck palm (the giant palm in the front yard) falling on the house because of the water soaked soil weakening its anchorage and for the awning, which is quite brittle with age, tearing apart.

On a more dire note, three friends have developed Covid since I was away or since I returned. One became sick enough to stay in bed for a couple of days. This isn’t over by a long shot. That person was double vaccinated and twice boosted.

Today is house cleaning day – I’m lazy and will do the bare minimum – and wash day. There’s nothing quite like clean sheets on a bed, rain coming down, and a good book to curl up with.

Stay dry and stay tuned!

Wednesday, 1 June 2022

It’s that time of year. Today is the first day of hurricane season and we are already looking at a potential tropical storm hitting the west coast of Florida and exiting the east coast. In like a lion, out like a lamb? Not so sure. The system gained strength going across the Yucatan.

Wilma (2005) crossed the west coast over to the east coast and all the forecasters predicted a weakening system. Seems they forgot there are no mountain ranges in the Everglades and the Everglades is mostly water heated by a land mass. Wilma increased in intensity before it hit Fort Lauderdale. (Wikipedia says it weakened, but I don’t thing that is correct.)

I don’t remember the last time that the forecasters predicted a lower than normal hurricane season. So far, I’ve been through three significant hurricanes in Florida: Andrew, Katrina, and Wilma. I was in Mississippi during Camille but I was far enough away that all we had to worry about was tornadoes. I was stationed on the CGC Reliance in Corpus Christi and we put out to sea to weather both. For one of those, one of our Diesel engines broke down and we had to ride that one out in port. At least with hurricanes you can prepare a little for them, unlike tornadoes.

I tried to get by without a Benadryl last night and did OK until about 5:30 this morning when I started itching. I realized it wasn’t worth it to stay in bed, got up and slathered on anti-itch lotion and popped a daytime Claritin. That seemed to calm things down.

I did ask my GP for an allergist recommendation and he came through with three names. The one on the top of the list happens to be the rheumatologist that I am scheduled to see in July (teleconference) so I’ll talk to her not only about rheumatoid arthritis but also my itching. I guess I’ll be popping Benadryl until the middle of July. At least it allows me to sleep.

Since I was up at 5:30, I made it out for my walk around 7:30 and it was actually semi-cool. Of course, by the time I finished my walk, the sun was much higher and so was the humidity. I finally got back to my yoga and swimming. The last two days I was about to get into the pool it started raining. The rain today was at least in the afternoon and I got a full range of exercise in.

My neighbor Chris picked me up at 11:30 and we headed to Hardy Park Bistro for an early lunch. It has some outside seating (it was warm even with fans) and the food is consistently good and fairly reasonably priced for restaurants these days.

I admit to being slightly depressed the last few days (no exercise) and feeling I had lost a significant amount of photos when my hard drive was replaced. A few days ago, I finally had an inspiration and typed “photos” in Finder and voilà! The problem was getting them back into the Photos program. It looked like it was going to take me three lifetimes to get them back by selecting each photo and dragging. Unfortunately, they were not arranged in groups.

Then I decided to look at the location on the images and the ones that I needed were listed on the Cloud under “Media.” I clicked on it and downloaded 13,000+ photos. There were my missing photos! Now all I have to do is go through the 13,000+ and put them back into albums for ease of reference. Then I have to relabel them. I figure I’m down to one and one half lifetimes to complete the job. The loss of the photos wouldn’t have destroyed me but getting them back was a little bit of happiness for me.

South Florida is in for a week of rainy days with the most intense period scheduled for Saturday morning. Let’s hope the street drains are all clear!

Stay tuned!