words of somewhat necessary warning

So there were varying responses from the last post, which is what I expected. While soliciting comments on the Tampa livejournal community I got one response which I find particularly noteworthy for a number of reasons. The following is a comment from that entry found here. I quote the author Darlahood a regular contributor to the Tampa lj community with her permission:

Ok, I have some critique...

I am a native Floridian. My family has been here since the 1700s. When your people have been here that long, you know the seasons, when to plant, and when to hunt. It really irks me when outlanders come down here and talk about how Florida doesn't have seasons, how the roads suck, how Florida has no history (obviously these people are really ignorant because St. Augustine was going through urban renewal when Jamestown was just getting started, but you already know that...), how Floridians are white trash... all of these comments really put me on the defensive.

Now, I realize that your blog isn't that type of blog, and I know you're trying to dig deeper into Florida than the touristy, strip mall parts. But a word of caution in the wordage you use. "Down here" for example. Whenever someone says that, it immediately puts me in awareness that they see their real home as different from Florida. More to the point, I think some people move "down here" and take advantage of Florida's resources, using our energy and water, bulldozing wetlands for McMansions, and other liberties that would never cross their mind in the ancestral memory of "back home."

This *is* my original home. There is no "down here" or "back up North" for me.

If folks cannot reconcile themselves to be in harmony with the seasons as Florida presents them, I suggest they go back to where they feel most at ease with the natural world. Yes, I'm one of those Floridians. A Confederate descendent, a "if it's tourist season does that mean we get to shoot them?" Floridian. But individual Northerners shouldn't take offense if I generalize the lot of Yankees as a whole. Bear in mind tourists in Florida have been making fun of the natives for at least 300 years. This book has a great many observations on that matter: http://www.upf.com/book.asp?id=CLAIRS05

I expect citrus in winter, orange blossoms in February, the oak trees to shed their leaves in Spring, seasonal rains in Summer, and the slightest hint of Fall on the breeze in Autumn... it's like the musky humidity binds with the rotting cypress meat in the swamp and wafts over the railroad tracks into town.

Also check out Losing it All to Sprawl by Bill Belleville; it's a great book http://www.billbelleville.com/

Anyway, I applaud what you're trying to do, I just don't want it to be about "down here." ;)

I think that Darlahood has some interesting points worth bearing in mind. The first is of course that there is no normative standard for seasons other than those that actually exist in that place. It is of course absurd to expect seasonal rhythms in one climate and topography to be the same as another, as though the seasons in Colorado or New England (both places I've lived) are somehow normative. The way things work in other places doesn't make the way things work here any less authentic or real or whathaveyou.

Darlahood writes "If folks cannot reconcile themselves to be in harmony with the seasons as Florida presents them, I suggest they go back to where they feel most at ease with the natural world." This makes a fair bit of sense too, but what I'm interested in here is the ways in which those who are trying to reconcile themselves do so. I am interested in the perspective of the native and I am interested in the perspective of the transplant.

I think that Darlahood says some things that anyone taking up the kind of project I am should keep in mind: my perspective is one particular one amongst many, while generally I don't think a native Floridian has a better epistemological vantage point to view reality here than a transplant does, either perspective has things to add to the discourse.

More of this to come I'm sure.