New Lang Syne (2017)
After spending the holidays with family, I return to Florida. It is good to be truck-home. I learn that ants have also made my truck their home while I was gone. Vinegar and essential oils eventually take care of it.
Miami, FL
Shortly after returning to Miami, I reach out to a friend from college. We do not know each other very well, but he wrote a song I loved back in school, so I decide to see what he is up to. This turns out be excellent.
He teaches health class at a high school in Miami, and takes a systemic approach to understanding what makes a healthy person (includes emotional and community health). He invites me to speak to each of his four classes for the day. This goes super well, though there is an awkward moment after discussing #TruckLife when the students, whom I ask to follow me on social media, ask me what I mean by this tweet:
In the meantime, I hang with my cousin, join Planet Fitness, who throw away my earphones (still sore about it), and work on my thesis. I get “shades” for the truck windows (sunshades with velcro on them), cook many meals out of a pressure cooker plugged into Whole Foods and libraries, and contemplate a trip to Cuba before Trump takes office. Concerns over debit cards and wifi access while finishing graduate work overcome this.
On MLK Day, I listen to Democracy Now!’s release of a recently discovered speech. I have heard some other speeches, but this one moves me differently. I have been reflecting on nonviolent communication my whole life, but in some new ways since that day. Relevant piece forthcoming.
I am in Miami during Trump’s inauguration. I have plans to meet friends at the Women’s March. We were already meeting there late, and traffic gets in the way. I basically missed the largest national protest in US history. Bummer. But I had a pleasant time with friends and enjoyed the social media regardless.
Leisure-wise, I am reading what few physical books I have left before I transfer to being fully digital (which includes remembering how much I love science),watching a lecture series on black holes that my grandpa got for a long-ago birthday, and getting almost sick on eating as many tropical fruits as I can before heading North…
Fort Pierce, Vero Beach, & Orlando
Back in college, the Hopkins Feminists had organized a screening of 12th and Delaware, a documentary about an intersection in Fort Pierce, Florida. On the intersection is an abortion-providing women’s health clinic across the street from a crisis pregnancy center, one of many anti-abortion nonprofits that commonly give false medical information. I love the documentary, and of course, I have always remembered where it took place. I see that it happens to be on my way up the coast.
I go into both buildings. I talk to them. The film came out in 2010, seven years beforehand. Staff from both tell me that nothing has changed. One of the primary threads in the documentary is how patients will often go to one facility thinking it is the other. This still happens.
In the course of my travels, I have become an advanced Google Local Guide. This means my reviews and Google Maps edits have more weight than… noobs, I guess. I consider it some of my simpler but still fun and effective activist work to do things like review vegan restaurants and add photos/hours for thrift stores, produce markets, and other local businesses.
I see that both establishments’ Google Maps pages are not informative at all. I take appropriate photos, with their consent, from each location with helpful distinguishing information and upload them. While I have no way of knowing how many women I have helped correctly guide to one location or the other, Google tells me those photos, added about a year ago, have collectively accumulated about 15,000 views.
Further north, I see a vegan restaurant in an otherwise unknown area. I figure I will stop by for lunch, but while there, I connect with the staff. I go to an open mic with one of them, meeting more of the hippie veg community in (what they tell me) the otherwise conservative town of Vero Beach. I end up staying a few days. I watch the lunar eclipse with them. I go to a local music festival. And I eat a bunch of soft-serve sundaes. This is exactly what I wanted to travel for.
Eventually, I leave for Orlando, returning to surprisingly abundant vegan restaurants, and my friend Colin. Orlando also has an open mic every night of the week, including Valentine’s Day, featuring a sultry love poem for Malcolm X. And, the city parks play music in the evenings. The city is on my shortlist for when (if) I ever settle.
Tampa & Dunnellon
My graduate school, the Institute for Humane Education, is an online (accredited) program, but because it is rooted in core values, we have a strong sense of community. One of my favorite parts of traveling has been meeting the people I feel like I know so well.
I head back to Tampa to meet, in person for the first time, fellow humane educator Samantha Gentrup, who is in town for a mainstream education conference. That weekend, Sam & friends and I endeavor to liberate a bird from Target, only to discover that the bird has been there a year, and could easily leave if they wanted to. We probably looked pretty silly to the security cameras, and to the bird.
One Karaoke session of Johnny B Goode later (one way to creative expression while on the road), I drive to Dunnellon to meet more humane educators, Lynne Westmoreland, Linda Starkweather, and their wonderful dog Buddy, rescued from life as a bait dog. I am visiting just as they are moving into a new home, so I get to stay in a house by myself in exchange for helping them move. I use this time to buckle down on my thesis, which is nice to work on in the company of IHE folk. I am also visiting the state parks, and supporting some local organizing. It turns out they are building #SabalTrailPipeline through Florida that cuts right through Dunnellon:
One local even climbed inside the pipeline and refused to leave. This was the police response: (video — no content warnings needed)
Living in Dunnellon, I also see a clear need for better Google Maps work. While their new Wendy’s has over 30 reviews, the local produce markets do not have photos or hours, and even one’s location is incorrect. I feel pretty good about helping those businesses along. In terms of my own lifestyle upgrades, I also get a bigger Goal Zero solar generator, which means I can finally plug in the heated mattress pad without having to search for an outdoor outlet in a strip mall. #Upgrade.
I have also signed up for The Hello Project, which pairs folk with opposing politics to get to know each other, and I somehow get paired with comedian Dan Nainan. This is still pretty wild to me, and I hope the Hello Project continues somehow.
Sam ends up going to Tampa again, partly to visit still more humane educators, her friends Jana & Dave Wiggins, so I head back too. We spend the weekend at the beach, talking humane education, changes we can make, and lamenting the world. (This is also shortly after the DNC elected Perez as their chair instead of Keith Ellison.)
Also this week, Lindsy of YEA Camp fame has off from work and visits. We hit the beaches and parks, the restaurants, spend time with Lynne, Linda, and Buddy, and even go on a tour that allows us to swim with “wild” (free) manatees. They are awesome.
And yeah, #TruckLife works pretty well in Florida:
