Posted on May 4, 2022 by Josette Brose-Eichar
We not too long ago returned from a a lot wanted and lengthy delayed trip. We flew to southwest Florida to spend just a few days visiting my snowbird sister and her husband. Then we drove to Miami and flew to the US Virgin Islands to spend per week climbing and going to the seaside on St. John.
This little journey proved to me as soon as once more, it’s all private and political and that we reside in a bit of a bubble right here in Sonoma, California.
According to my sister, southwest Florida is Trump nation. As old fashioned Minnesota liberals, they’ve only a few pals, and are there for the climate. At a neighborhood dinner spot, I really heard folks chanting “Let’s go, Brandon,” a widely known Trump code for what to do to President Biden. Our Airbnb host requested me what I believed of their governor. I instructed her, “Not much.” She didn’t appear too happy and instructed me her son was in his cupboard. She went on extolling the enjoyment and freedom of not carrying masks and Florida at all times being enterprise as traditional. The home throughout the canal was flying a Confederate flag. I needed to ask somebody to maneuver away from me whereas I used to be consuming outside, as a result of he was puffing on a large cigar. He appeared shocked on the request.
But, the largest Florida eye opener was the huge fee of growth. Houses and condos are going up all over the place. Here in Sonoma we’re instructed if we construct, construct, construct, housing costs will go down. Well let me inform you, Florida proves the alternative. My sister is downsizing to a apartment, in 4 years the house she offered doubled in worth. She additionally says it’s a worth conflict shopping for frenzy for the brand new building, with properties going effectively over the asking worth.
My brother-in-law instructed me that half of the rationale for downsizing their abode was that repairs was simply an excessive amount of. In Florida it is rather scorching and really humid. Everything must be cleaned obsessively, in case you don’t need it to mildew and decay. Over beers every evening of their beautiful screened porch we may hear a frog refrain, whereas we mentioned the professionals and cons of Florida residing. The dialogue turned to how nature would overtake the place if people dropped their vigilance for even a brief interval of time.
At the Trumpian Airbnb, you can see the creeping mildew encroachment, signaling that the method of decay had begun. Everywhere the place people weren’t obsessively cleansing and clearing we may see the vines and creatures taking up. Two ideas entered my thoughts: We people underestimate the facility of nature and proceed to consider that if we construct, construct, construct it is going to resolve all our issues.
Then on to St. John, the place the ruins of outdated slave tradition sugar cane plantations have been reclaimed by the pure world. The Island is usually a nationwide park. By the 1700s the island had been denuded of pure progress for sugar cane. Today, the forest is again, the sugar cane plantations are heaps of stones, lined in vines. It confirmed what I felt in Florida.
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