Florida News Roundup

Fronds and flamingos

I’m a Florida Man.

I don’t mean I’m one of those idiot caricature Floridians who are always making “Florida Man” headlines for bizarre behavior such as throwing a live alligator through a drive-thru window, or pooping on a dead possum during rush hour, or having sex with a tree and punching a police officer while claiming to be Thor, or totally wrecking the vibe of the World Cup by leaning on FIFA to change a penalty, or having sex with a stuffed Olaf doll in a Target store.

All of these incidents actually happened. So, yes, some Floridians do ridiculous things. But that doesn’t mean the entire state population is crazy. As I often ask: Is it really fair to judge all 23 million Floridians harshly, just because of the behavior of 21 million Floridians?

That is of course a joke employing the humor technique of exaggeration. In point of statistical fact, only about 19 million Floridians are clinically insane. The rest of us are normal Americans who lead normal American lives just like yours, except that, because of the humidity down here, we’re dealing with a much larger variety of nature. We have cockroaches that beep when they back up and grasshoppers that file flight plans before hopping. We have iguanas capable of laying waste to Tokyo. We have palm trees that grow several feet a day and suddenly, without warning, send massive predatory palm fronds three or four times the length of Shaquille O’Neal crashing to the ground. If you live in some small-frond state such as Massachusetts, where the trees produce dainty little leaves that flutter politely onto your lawn so you can rake them into tidy piles, you have no idea what it’s like to go out into your yard and find yourself face-to-face with a Frondasaurus Rex like the one I’m holding here.

Trying raking THAT with your little Home Depot leaf rake, Massachusetts person. These Florida megafronds laugh at your rake. “Ha ha,” are their exact words. The only way to deal with them is to wrangle them with your bare hands, as I am doing in the photo. You can call me a brave and courageous and manly specimen of potent male masculinity if you want, but those are your words, not mine. The only description I need is: Florida Man.

My point is that I’m a proud resident of this state, which has been my home for 40 years. But that doesn’t mean I won’t criticize it when it does something I disagree with. And that brings me, finally, to my topic today, which is — you probably guessed this already — cursive writing.

The Florida legislature recently passed, and the governor signed, a bill requiring that all Florida public-school students in grades three through five have to learn to read and write cursive. This legislative effort was spearheaded by state Rep. Toby Overdorf, who looks exactly like a person who would be named “Toby Overdorf.”

I am not opposed to the cursive law because Rep. Overdorf looks like he might have human body parts in his freezer a little intense. I’m opposed to it because I think it’s stupid. Hear me out:

Most of us, when we first learn to write, learn to print the letters. This takes a while. Some of the letters are tricky, especially the ones that could go in either direction, such as “K” and “Y.” My grandson, Kyle Barry, has both of those letters in his name, and he’s still getting the hang of them. Here’s how he wrote his name on a school report he did this spring, when he was 6:

This report was actually about me; Kyle’s class was doing biographies, and he picked his grandpa as his subject. Among other things, he had to list five “Fun Facts” about me, and one of them was this:

That’s right: “Same harecut for 50 years.” It’s actually 70 years, but let’s not quibble. The point is that most of us, like Kyle, started out printing, and eventually we learned to make our letters legible.

And then we all learned cursive. At least we all used to. It was never clear why, at least not to me; it was just something everybody had to do, learn this whole new way of writing. It was a struggle, especially for those of us who are left-handed, because we had to position the paper at a weird angle and curl our hand into an awkward position, and we still ended up smearing ourselves with ink. At least I always did. I hated cursive class.

But we kept at it, because it was imperative that we learn cursive. And eventually we did. We reached the point where we could all, even us left-handers, write legibly in cursive. And some people still can. Some people still write in beautiful cursive, cursive that could be used for wedding invitations, and yay for them.

But many of us had a different outcome once we left school. Our cursive got sloppier and sloppier, less and less understandable, like a radio broadcast with a lot of static. We can still read our own cursive writing, but to other people it looks like this:

This is not good. Illegible handwriting can cause serious problems, as poignantly dramatized by Woody Allen in Take the Money and Run:

So because we need to communicate, which is after all the whole point of writing, many of us — I suspect most of us — eventually gave up on cursive and went back to printing, or using keyboards. In other words, for many people, over the long term, learning cursive is useless. And in recent years, many states have stopped requiring cursive instruction. But now it’s being brought back, in Florida and elsewhere, for a variety of reasons that, in the interest of evenhandedness, fairness and objectivity, I will summarize here: They’re stupid. For example, a big one — seriously — is that the Declaration of Independence is written in cursive. To which I would respond: YES BUT NOBODY CAN READ IT.

I apologize for shouting, but as you can tell this is an issue that gets me riled up like no other issue except the issue of whether it’s necessary to refrigerate ketchup and mustard. (No.) I’m afraid, however, that the pro-cursive forces have won in Florida, which saddens me, although I’m sure it makes some people happy.

But there’s another Florida issue I’d like to bring to your attention, and this one isn’t settled yet. That issue is: The Official State Bird.

Right now the Official State Bird of Florida, since 1927, is the Northern Mockingbird. Please understand that I have nothing against the Northern Mockingbird. Some of my best friends are Northern Mockingbirds. But this should not be Florida’s Official State Bird.

For one thing, the Northern Mockingbird is also the official bird of Mississippi, Arkansas, Tennessee and Texas, which means that it’s kind of a slut we’re in a nonconsensual polyamorous avian relationship involving four other states. For another thing, there’s a much better candidate to be our Official State Bird — a bird that naturally occurs only in Florida; a bird that is represented on literally millions of cheeseball Florida souvenirs, T-shirts, towels and lawn decorations; a bird that literally stands head and shoulders above other birds, on one leg.

I refer, of course, to the flamingo. And I’m excited to report that there’s a grassroots movement in Florida to make the flamingo our Official State Bird. This effort is being led by an old friend of mine, Ron Magill, who worked for Zoo Miami for 46 years and is now an ambassador for the Zoo Miami Foundation. He is also the world’s tallest Cuban. Ron loves animals. Ron loves all animals. Here he embracing a Komodo dragon:

Courtesy of Ron Magill

And here he is holding a flamingo:

The Associated Press

You’d think the flamingo campaign would be a slam dunk no-brainer, but as this Wall Street Journal story explains, it’s meeting with stiff resistance from pro-mockingbird forces in the state legislature, which I remind you is also pro-cursive, so draw your own conclusions regarding brains. But Ron has vowed to keep fighting, and I’ve pledged my support. As I said, we’re old friends, dating back to a charity roast in the 90s when Ron presented me with one of my most treasured possessions: an oosik, which is the baculum, or penis bone, of a walrus. Here’s a photo of me treasuring it:

I don’t know about your culture, but in my culture, when a man gives another man a penis bone nearly two feet in length, that means something. So I intend to be an active member (Har!) of Team Flamingo. I will keep you updated on this effort as developments develop.

Speaking of bird-related updates, here’s one on:

THE BABY WOODPECKERS

As you may recall, last week I delivered a log named Louie containing three baby woodpeckers to an animal rescuer in the Florida Keys named Karen Dettmann, who delivered the birds to Kelly Grinter, who runs the Marathon Wild Bird Center. Kelly reports that, sadly, the littlest woodpecker didn’t make it. But the good news is, the other two are thriving. She sent this video:

They’re looking a WHOLE lot better. So that’s nice.

I’ll conclude this report with a:

WORLD CUP UPDATE

Tomorrow England plays Norway here in Miami, which is teeming with fans from both nations. Here I am welcoming a group of Norwegian visitors wearing traditional Viking costumes.

Embracing other cultures: That’s what the World Cup is all about.

OK, that’s the news roundup from Florida. Now let’s hear from you lovely paying subscribers, who are the Official Paying Subscribers of this Substack. Today we have three scientific polls: