Before and after

 
Yes, an art photographer I learned about in my Art History classes. Edward Steichen is known as a photographer along with husband of Georgia O'Keeffe, Alfred Steiglitz.

This tryptic doesn't look like a photograph, so I probably got the labels confused. Now I want to know if Steichen actually did it. I did look to see if it was done by Zelda Fitzgerald, as a nearby patron had said, and couldn't find that connection. But it does seem more her style actually, just I don't know that she ever painted.

BEFORE: several (maybe 5) months of my hair fuzziness.

After - we have trouble with hats and hair over ears still...but will work it out!

------------------

Serious things must not be ignored (unless it's because we can't sleep at night!)

A friend quoted herself in talking to another friend. She asked, "Do you feel safe?" 

And the friend answered her back, "Do you?"

These are not the tents with cages for prisoners...but FEMA trailers probably for workers. This is not Alcatraz but Auschwitz! 

Japanese-Americans at an internment camp in the Pacific Northwest, the early 1940s.

And the horrors for prisoners don't even mention how our Everglades will be impacted by this horrible place and the many people both incarcerated and working there.  Florida leaders have forgotten how if you change some part of a delicate ecosystem, there are repercussions that you didn't imagine. 

The incredible before and after of this man-made disaster are how Marjorie Stoneman Douglas wrote about the Everglades in the very beginning of environmentalism while the prison smacks in the face of today's environmentalism. Her book, 

The Everglades: River of Grass (1947), redefined the popular conception of the Everglades as a treasured river instead of a worthless swamp. Its impact has been compared to that of Rachel Carson's influential book Silent Spring (1962)

Source: Wikipedia 

Aerial image of the Everglades site before any construction shows a “before” comparison with the newly paved area to the west of the runway. Friends of the Everglades

A July 3 article in the Miami Herald gave these excerpts:

"Environmental groups filed a lawsuit last week to stop the facility on the grounds that it completely bypassed the federal rules for assessing environmental harm, the National Environmental Policy Act or NEPA. Paul Schwiep of Coffey Burlington, lead attorney for the case, said he has found no exception that applies to allow the federal government to skip this step. “In the rush to get this done, the federal government and state have totally thumbed their nose at NEPA,” he said on a Tuesday press call. “Why? Because they say there’s no environmental impact.” That, the environmental groups argue, isn’t true.

Eve Samples, head of Friends of the Everglades, is leading the charge on the lawsuit. The group was initially formed decades ago by Marjory Stoneman Douglas specifically to fight the development of a jetport on this exact plot of land, which she called “one of the most ecologically sensitive regions of Florida, arguably the United States.”

“To put any kind of development in the middle of this haven is really a death knell,” Bennett said. Spill risk One of the biggest environmental concerns that worries advocates: Potential spills of fuel, sewage of other damaging chemicals of material. Year-long court battles have been waged over exactly how clean the water in the Everglades has to be without fouling up the whole system. The answer? Pretty darn clean. Everglades advocates say that the portable bathrooms, diesel fuel for generators and potentially jet fuel for deportation flights all represent toxins that could harm the nearby waters if they spilled.

Organizer Betty Osceola speaks to protesters outside of the Dade-Collier Training and Transition Airport during the “Stop Alligator Alcatraz” protest in opposition to the construction of a massive detention facility for undocumented immigrants on the site, which is in the middle of the Florida Everglades, in Ochopee, Florida, on Saturday June 28, 2025

by Pedro Portal pportal@miamiherald.com

SOURCE: https://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/environment/article309845970.html

------------------

Jay Kuo wrote yesterday about the Alligator Atrocity on the Status Kuo.

A good article, with photos, and encouragement to contact your congressional representatives to have oversight!

-----------------

Here's a YouTube music channel (acoustic guitar) which I frequently listen to, which streams for hours, and makes a nice counter-point to the crows and traffic outside my window. I'm really grateful my closest neighbors are pretty quiet most of the time. Living in a hive-like community means being only partly aware of all the others around me. 

Thinking of the imprisoned inmates in the Everglades, I'm very unhappy. Perhaps some of them can make music to help their existence.

----------------

Today's quote:

Will people ever be wise enough to refuse to follow bad leaders or to take away the freedom of other people? -Eleanor Roosevelt, diplomat, author, and lecturer ( 1884-1962)

Old Photo:

Wonderful highschool photo with my son Marty wearing a headband directly to left of the electric pole in the background.