The Information Super-Frog

Newsweek: "Ron DeSantis' Board Rages Against Disney World After Legal Humiliation"

https://www.newsweek.com/ron-desantis-disney-board-reedy-creek-1791369

Kudos to Disney for the rare 'royal lives clause' troll- which means the agreement remains valid until "21 years after the death of the last survivor of the descendants" of King Charles III.
😂


In 1928, Walt Disney lost rights to his nationally popular character.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oswald_the_Lucky_Rabbit

Walt Disney determined to never again let someone else have final say over his property or be out-slick-lawyered. It's remained part of Disney corporate culture.

I'm generally not a fan of Disney's litigious side, but against Ron DeFascist and his minions, I'll virtually cheer the Disney lawyers wearing a mouse ear hat and waving a Mickey flag.

AP: Pensacola Beach is closed after oil from Gulf spill washes ashore

"Lifeguard Collin Cobia wore a red handkerchief over his nose and mouth to block the oil smell. "It's enough to knock you down," he said."

Pictures on the news or web can show what the oiled water or beach look like, but they don't convey what's in the air.

Note as well, major efforts to clean up all the tar that washes up on to a beach doesn't mean it's good as new.

St. Petersburg FL Times:USF scientists find long line of oil 6 inches under the sand at Pensacola Beach

"PENSACOLA BEACH — The sugar-sand beach here appeared cleaner Thursday, after workers picked up tar balls overnight with shovels and nets. By noon they had collected 44,955 pounds of tar balls and oil material, according to the Escambia County Emergency Operations Center.

"But a University of South Florida geologist made a grim discovery Thursday morning, 24 hours after the worst oil onslaught in Florida so far. [...] A dark, contiguous vein of oil, about 6 inches beneath the surface of the sand. [...] "It's a continuous layer" [up to the wave high tide line] "The problem is they're only cleaning up the top of the beach. [...] The beach is not going to be the same for a long time.""

CS Monitor: In Gulf oil spill 'war,' cleanup foot soldiers threaten mutiny

"The main problem, they say, is the confusing command structure, which to them seems to have too many generals and not enough battlefield commanders, thus gumming up the ability of local leaders to react to approaching oil.

""How can you fight a war when you don't let the people on the ground make decisions," says Escambia County Commission Chairman Grover Robinson. "You're going to lose that war.""

Times-Picayune:Shoddy disposal work mars Gulf oil spill cleanup from Mississippi to Florida

"There's no point in collecting this stuff if they're just going to spread it around."

Elsevier Global Medical Network: BP’s $20 Billion: Not A Single Dollar For Health

Times-Picayune: Monitoring health of residents affected by Gulf oil spill is urged by experts

Times-Picayune: Gulf of Mexico oil spill health concerns take center stage at open house

"Residents worried about the public health effects of the massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico pressed officials from BP, the Coast Guard and even New Orleans City Hall on Wednesday about the use of chemical dispersants, the long-term availability of medical care for spill victims and other answers they said are not readily available."

[...] "Another woman wanted a commitment from BP spokesman Larry Thomas that the company will continue to pay for medical services "20 years from now, when people have cancer" and when children who live near the spill zone may experience post-traumatic stress disorder"."

Background; BP has long history of lousy safety and ecological spoilage:

Huffington Post:BP: Come for the Gulf Disaster, Stay for the Great Lakes Pollution

"British Petroleum didn't just fall out of the sky one day and decide to start polluting the Gulf of Mexico with the worst oil disaster in United States history. Oh no, they've been at this a while and their exploits are not confined to destroying important ocean ecosystems with risky, unsafe technology."

Ms. H. and I had a nice vacation in Florida.

( Illustrated description )

mshollie and I had a nice Florida vacation. We stopped in Tampa on the way down, which Hollie had never been to before. We got together with crystalgee and soundwave106 as well as my niece and her family there. We enjoyed Ybor City and the streetcars, and visited the Dali Museum in St. Petersburg.

Then to Boca Raton, visiting my dad and his new wife Marilyn. They seem very happy together. Made visits to Fort Lauderdale, where the Antique Car Museum has the motherload of pre-War Packards, and Miami Beach.

Due to Tropical Storm Faye, which we were concerned might become a hurricane, we cut our time in South Florida short. After a stop in Lake City, we spent a few days in Pensacola up in the Florida Panhandle before returning to town.

This was about as pleasant a day as could be asked for if such a day had to include a long Interstate highway drive and getting a flat tire at 75 mph.

This morning I woke Ms Hollie up at first light to walk out of our hotel to the beach and watch the sunrise over the ocean. Flocks of pelicans and at least 2 species of gulls abounded, a number flying and frolicking within 2 meters of us.

We drove north up the peninsula. I pulled over safely as the tread seperated on the one tire that's more than 13 months old (my last tire that predated Katrina, with only a few roofing nail patches). After getting the luggage out of the trunk, I found that somehow I had no lug wrench with the jack equipment. Hollie didn't have one either. Fortunately the friendly Florida Highway Patrol did.

We made it to St. Augustine at dusk, and succeeded in finding a conveniently located place in the old town-- a very nice B & B & B (Bed, Breakfast, and Broadband). We're pampering ourselves a little before going back home to Debrisville. We had dinner at "Havana Village Cafe", a good Cuban place with excellent mojitos.

Our bed has that electromechanical firmness control thingie like Garrison Keilor talks about, so we're going to check that out.

I'm looking forward to the return visit to the eye doctor Tueday, and hope my new glasses will result in better vision. Short drives in the nearby area only until then, but fortunately there's a good variety of stuff near our hotel (and my parents' condo is a short distance away). My eyes with new artificial lenses in them are much more sensitive to touch; a moderate touch of eyelid feels like a harsh poke in the eye.

Boca Raton does have good food. I think the selection of good gelato within a limited area is the best I've found outside of a few cities in Italy. I'm just disappointed that the Inca restaurant is closed for vacation. This evening we got some take out from "Canoli Kitchen", a small busy place with an impressive menu including at least 10 different interesting good pizzas availible by the slice. It was interesting hearing a combination of English, Spanish, and Italian as the workers were addressing eachother.

Hollie is tolerating exposure to my parents with admirable fortitude.

Ms Hollie watches "Sábado Gigante" fairly regularly, she says, though her Spanish is worse than mine. I enjoy seeing bits of it on occasion (in part nostalgia as one of the few shows still on from my teens); not having cable at home I seldom have a chance. But I can only take it in limited dosages-- it can feel to me like watching weeks worth of constant television concentrated in a couple hours.

Hollie and I enjoyed visiting the Morikami Museum in the western Boca Raton area. Founded on land that was originally a small Japanese colony 100 years ago, has a nice small museum and beautiful extensive gardens around an artificial lake. The restaurant cafe was said to be rated in the top 5 museum restaurants in the USA-- very good Japanese food with an absolutely lovely view of the lake and landscaping.

My parents hosted us for some meals at their condo. My dad is justly proud of his made-from-scratch French onion soup. However the chips we munched on for an appitizer were served with the blandest salsa we've ever tasted-- like watered down catsup. South Florida is neither New Orleans nor Texas. But it has charms and pleasures in limited dosages. Nice beach!

I had a good visit to Florida with mshollie.

Gator Nation, King Tut, Beached in Miami, Whistler's Red Bunnie, and Confederates seize the Indian Temple Mound

My Trip, By L'il Froggy

In Gainesville we visited the Art Museum and the Natural History Museum, which are at new locations on the University campus and have been much expanded from when I last visited them some dozen years ago. The African Art included an interesting beaded scabbard that reminded me of Mardi Gras Indian beadwork. We stopped at a yarn shop for Ms Hollie (who found some goodies for herself) and a wine shop for me (where I only got a marziapan chocolate-- they had a good selection of wine, but I was mostly hoping unsuccessfully to find a 6 pack of "Czechvar", the real Budweiser from Ceske Budejovice, Bohemia).

Gainesville has nice museums for a small city, a number of decent restaurants, and some natural beauty in the area. The city's psychological idenity, however, seems entirely tied up with fanatical devotion to the Official State Religion of the Florida Gators sports team. Gator Nation! Chomp!!

South of Gainesville stopped at the cute 19th century central Florida town of Micanopy, where I picked up a couple of good old New Orleans post cards (best found out of town if one wants to pay a reasonable price) including one with a nice view of part of Storyville and another of the (recently collapsed) New Canal Lighthouse at West End. Then on to the Florida Turnpike down the Peninsula to the Boca Raton area.

We stayed at a La Quinta near the Interstate in Deerfield beach (Wi fi in the rooms, yay!). We visited my parents who live in a high-rise condo with a view of the beach in Boca. The area was hit by Hurricane Wilma. Broken fascades, downed signs, and blue roof tarps were occasionally evident, but it was very unlike around here. All the traffic lights are working, and I saw no piles of debris nor trash. Shows what can be done when there's plenty of money and government support. Having a Bush family member as governor apparently has an upside. Perhaps we should see about drafting Jena as Louisiana's next governor.

I managed to get tickets for the King Tut exibition in Fort Lauderdale for H & myself. We got reservations for 9:30am, shortly after opening. Wonderful stuff, including a couple rooms on Akhenaten and historical context before the tomb splendors. Oooh, shiny. We seem to remember the exhibit at NOMA (a quarter century ago now) as having had more stuff, but this was well worth seeing none the less. The crowds weren't too bad when we went, but were quite heavy going in when we were heading out 2 & 1/2 hours later.

I should have brought a cd of the New Leviathan's "Old King Tut" to play in the car. They didn't sell that, nor any Steve Martin cds, at the Museum gift store, but they did have a large selection of other Tut Uncommon Merchandise. They had "I love my mummy" shirts, but no "Nice Tuts". I thought the kleenex box covers in the form of the Pharoh's mummy mask might not have been entirely respectful, especially since the kleenexes are pulled out of Tut's nose. Then again, that is how they removed his brain for mummification.

Hollie wanted another look at the Art Deco district of Miami Beach which we visited a couple years ago, so we drove around down there, then had lunch at Wolfie's Rascal House, a local institution for over half a century; it's a Floridaized version of an old Jewish New York Deli; about 5 times as large as anything one would find in Manhattan. I took Ms. H to Little Havana last time we'd visited Miami, so I wanted to expose her to other local culinary traditions. Gigantic Reuben sandwich and potato pancakes, delicious.

We enjoyed some beach time in the area. My parents took us out to "La Ville Maison" excellent upscale French place. On our own we chanced to find "Jamie's Downtown Grill", where we split the "Uptown downton quesadillas" made with brie, chicken, and grannie smith apples.

The Boca Museum of Art has some items of interest in the permanent collection, including a nice photography collection and a self portrait by José Clemente Orozco. The temporary exhibits were the big draw, however. A collection of old Japanese prints entitled "A Floating World" was a good compliment to the exhibit which drew me here: James McNeil Whistler works from the Hunterian Gallery in Glasgow. Some really splendid stuff, especially the items from his later years. Perhaps the highlight is a wonderful full lenght portrait of his sister-in-law with bold red strokes, formally entitled "Red and Black -- The Fan" but which Whistler himself refered to as "The Red Bunnie". Another very enjoyable exhibit was of fin de siecle French posters entitled "Toulouse-Lautrec" [in big letters, then smaller letters adding] "and His Contemporaries". Toulouse-Lautrec was the big name draw; there were perhaps 5 by him, but most of the rest was no less interesting. There were a couple of Alfons Muchas, who I've long been fond of, but my favorite was one I'd not seen reproduced before, a delightful Absinthe Berthelot poster by one Henri Theriet. It looked a good deal better than this reproduction I found on line but which gives you some idea. I doubt modern purveyors of intoxicants would have the honesty to advertise with a portrayal of users of their product clearly wasted off their asses. The museum also had an exhibition of nudes by Milton Avery. Although nekkid ladies is a subject dear to my heart, this wasn't much to my taste. I'd rather have one small Whistler etching than rooms full of Averys.

Back on up the Peninsula, into the Panhandle to Fort Walton Beach, where we stayed again with Ms. Cristina, as we did in September. We visited the Indian Mound Temple & Museum with tal_greywolf. It was "Heritage Day" so entrance was free, with various special events. There was a group of costumed Historic Reenactors, some in soldier garb. At first I thought they were portraying Indian Wars troops, but they turned out to be Confederates. A group of confederates got into a van with with a "Support Our Troops" bumper-sticker and the slogan "Stay the Course" painted on the back. Hm. Tal treated us to lunch of burritos at "Moe's" before we hit the road to go back west. While stopping for gas in Slidell we heard the cashier say "Yeah, you right" and knew we were almost home.

Total miles of the road trip: 1,970.3; Boca to my house: 890.8.

Fort Walton Beach, through Alabama & Mississippi to Monroe, on to Texas

Friends in Florida, Worst Beach Ever, Bug attacks in a Birdless Wilderness, High Civilization in North East Louisiana, and other post hurricane observations

From Jacksonville, Florida, mshollie and I drove from the Atlantic to Florida's Gulf Coast. We availied ourself of a short free winery tour at De Funiac Springs, then took a look at De Funiac's cute old town, before heading out to the coast to Fort Walton Beach, where tal_greywolf showed us the Indian Mound, took us out to dinner, and put us up for the night.

The next morning Tal took us to "The Breakfast Place". After dropping him off at work we took care of some evacuee business; change of addresses to Austin, and stopped by a Salvation Army building that was a busy evacuee processing center. We still havn't gotten registered with FEMA (despite trying various ways), and there was a several day wait there, but we did register with the Red Cross.

While there we both took a can of water from one of the ice chests. It's Anhauser Busch Not For Sale Water in white cans. It tasted stale and metalic. Hollie & I are usually up for a nice cold container of water, but we didn't finish these.

Late morning we got together with fellow New Orleans evacuee Cristina (of National Ahh Spa Day). Cristina and her 15 month old daughter Ayala were staying with her dad in Fort Walton Beach, where she had grown up.

We packed up some soft drinks and Hollie and Cristina put on cute matching bathing suits for a visit to nearby Navarre Beach. Cristina hadn't been there since before Ayala was born. The sign for the turn-off said "Navarre Beach: Florida's Best Kept Secret". We were looking forward to a pleasant beach day. When we got there, we found that the auto turn-off to the clothing optional area was closed, the road still covered in vast dunes not cleared from Ivan last year &/or Dennis earlier this year. Still, the white sand looked nice and we started hoofing it. Cristina noted that the usually very clear water was all cloudy with strange black particles like asphalt in it. In the background was the fishing pier,the middle segment missing since Ivan. After we'd gone a ways Cristina started getting bitten by some bugs. We stopped to spray on bug repelent, but as soon as we stayed in one place for a while the nasty biting flies came on us in droves. (Someone later told us they were "Alabama flies".) Cristina said she'd never encountered anything like this. Even the Backwoods Off only slowed them down a bit. Retreat! We headed back towards the car at a brisk trot, with Cristina setting the pace in front with Ayala on her hip. When we got to the parking lot we realized that Hollie, who's had less exprience walking in sand, was red-faced and out of breath. Worst Day at the Beach Ever! After showers, Chinese food, and naps, Cristina took us to a friend's high-end subdivision, where we had a gorgeous complex with a gigantic swimming pool and a hot tub all to ourselves. Best pool ever!

Cristina left her clarinet in New Orleans, but when she found out I'd brought one of my trombones in the car (the c. 1913 White "King") she contemplated getting another clarinet, and noted her dad played accordian. This was the closest I've come to playing in a band again since leaving New Orleans.

The next morning Cristina made us French Toast and bacon (Nicest hostess ever!) before Hollie and I hit the road West. Lots of Hurricane Ivan damage evident, including one of the spans of the highway connecting Pensacola Beach with Pensacola still had large sections knocked out. Despite much damage still not repaired, it was good seeing Pensacola back in business.

Further west through Alabama, it was hard to tell where the Ivan damage ended and the Katrina damage began. We started heading inland at Mobile. Since Florida the love-bugs were out in vast clouds over the highways. I'd seen love-bug season while driving through northern Florida before, but never anything like this. I stopped every 90 minutes to clear bug corpses from enough of my windshield to see out of. I realized I hadn't seen any birds the whole day's drive-- and for that matter, no sea-gulls at the beach the previous day. I presume the birds were driven off by the storm, but it was strange that they were still gone some 2 weeks later.

Hurricane damage was especially evident in and around Hattiesburg, but the city seemed up & running. No problem finding gas.

The bugs and damage continued up to Jackson, MS. When we crossed the Mississippi River in to Lousiana, suddenly there were birds again, and no bugs.

Along I-20, those entering Louisiana from Mississippi find a liquor store before they get to the state welcome center. Priorities.

North east Louisiana was once one of the continent's great centers of civilization. But that was some 2,500 years ago.
As we were making good time, I made an unschedualed detour off the interstate to visit Poverty Point. This is a vast paleo-Indian site, with huge mound constructions. Excavations show trade goods from as far away as Michigan. Poverty Point is remarkable not just for its size, but also how early it was-- much of its heyday being pre-ceramic.

After our quick look around Poverty Point, on to Monroe, Louisiana. As Poverty Point had extensive trade contacts but no pottery, Monroe has an NPR station but as yet no Starbucks. They do, however, have a Copelands, which we nostalgically ate a mostly not bad meal at.

Lots of fellow refugees in Monroe. We talked to one who has spent the whole time since Katrina in a Motel 6 room. We're glad our situation is somewhat better than that.

Next day, we hit the road again early. We heard a Kermit Ruffins song on the radio while passing through Ruston.

Hollie & I are now at Bonner & Robbie's place in South Austin. They took us out to eat at Threadgil's last night.

And that catches things up.

Yesterday Ms. Hollie and I had lunch with my old friend Ms. A., who also evacuated to Jacksonville. A. has decided to stay here for the time being, already found some part-time work, and Hollie & I helped her move the first load of stuff into her new apartment. (She had left town with only 2 changes of clothes; the stuff was from Target.)

My dad had a pacemaker installed last night (he had heart valve repair last week). He's doing well. He may be out of the hospital in a couple days, and heading back home to south Florida maybe Monday. So our time here in Jacksonville will soon be over.

Tropical Storm Ophelia has been giving alternating bands of gloom and rain to Jacksonville. I promised Ms. Hollie a visit to the beach since we got all the way to Florida, but have not yet been able to fullfill that. If we don't have cooperative weather at a time we can jaunt over to the beach here in Jacksonville, we may visit a fellow refugee on the Florida Gulf coast for a day before heading further west. Or something, by gosh, we demand a bit of sunshine on the beach as a minimal silver lining to this refugee stuff.