It is clear I have not managed to keep up with this blog.  No one is viewing it and there must be a way to attract attention to it but despite taking an actual workshop in blog writing I didn't learn much.  The workshop was taught by a gay man who blogged about Christian chorus singing.  It apparently is very popular.  

Perhaps I have come to a point in time when the writing I have done needs to go somewhere.  Perhaps I can make a living from what I write, photograph, video and enjoy from life and the many gifts given to me. Next to family, my daughter and her family, health is wealth, my vision and hearing, digestion, imagination, friendships and above all laughter are what mean the most to me.  

 This is a beeyard I saw near Lake O.

I wondered why each hive had a sugar bucket on top.

Then I passed through orange groves which were not in bloom.

andredubus.com 

I participated in the 2012 Sanibel Island Writer's Conference.  My favorite author present who taught workshops was Andre Dubus III.  He rocked.

Andre wrote his first best-selling novel in his car parked which he parked near a graveyard. It took him three years to complete  and  two  years to sell it after 28 rejections.  He delivers meaningful lectures,  you need to take notes so you can remember ideas about writing which he has remembered and shares.  He calls cellphones "crack pipes".  He is very kind to people and is often surrounded by gushing female autograph hounds.

averyfineline.com
I took two blogging workshops with Doug Harrison.  He began his blog years ago while working on his PhD and said it was not a good idea to begin then. Thousands of people read his blog and he no longer needs to post frequently.  He places focus on content and avoids "The Museum of ME" which kills blogs.  He illustrated good blogs by showing us more than his own blog but the blogs of others he follows and who produce worthwhile reading.  He gave us  "nuts and bolts" for blogging.  The biggest difficulty with blogging is you must be both  author AND editor.  It is a new unique form of writing worth pursuing.

Last night I attended the November monthly meeting of the Beekeepers Association of South Florida and was fascinated by the guest speaker, Buddy Walker of Walker Farms, North Ft. Myers.  At one time Buddy and his wife Joyce kept 1,500 beehives.  He is now down to a mere 400.  I find this number mind-boggling but mostly I am fascinated by the wealth of knowledge Buddy and other longtime beekeepers have in their brains.  They are usually more than willing to share what they know and Buddy took many questions from the group.  He answered every one and would have answered more.  Beekeepers who have kept bees for as long as Mr. Walker has kept bees have seen just about everything so it is a good idea to pay attention to their words.  I think beekeeping should be taught in public schools starting in the fourth grade.  Beekeepers appreciate our natural world and respect it.  Some of Buddy's hives were attacked by a bear recently but he was philosophical about it and said "If you have bears in your woods then you have healthy woods."  

I have discovered a feral colony of bees near my tent.  It is a weak colony and similar to a colony which is nearby in a birdhouse on the river on a post which has been bagged in a black plastic and zip-tied by a landscraper.  At one point he sprayed the shebang with insecticide. It was a lame effort to exterminate them.  The bees left temporarily but came back. I can do nothing to remove these bees and want to see them de-bagged and un-zip-tied.  Florida laws about bee removal are not good. Regulations which went into being at the end of July succeed to prevent beekeepers from removing bees and condone extermination of them.  Beekeepers in Florida are not allowed to remove bees from the property of others.  Beekeepers in Florida are not allowed to remove bees without certification, credentials and a license.  Beekeepers in Florida are not allowed to remove bees if they occupy any type of structure.  Beekeepers in Florida who are certified etc. must remove bees alone, do the work solo without a helper unless the helper is also certified etc.  In removals bees are not to be sprayed with insecticides.  The last regulation is the only one which makes sense.  The rest do not.
  

Writers Read

SUNSET ZOMBIES....Dedicated to Dave Robertson, wherever he may be

(Note: This is a story from a larger story I wrote a few years ago.  Dave Robertson  hailed from Massachusetts and I met him in Periwinkle Park.  He was camping out of a small sedan at that time.  He had never spent time in Florida and fell in love with the state.  I saw him several times the following summer when I returned to Maine because Dave would come up to visit me.  Eventually he bought an old green van, stuck his old motorcycle into it and moved down to Florida.  I saw him the next winter.  He rented an apartment in Fort Myers.  The last time I saw him he had rented part of a house along a beautiful stretch of the Caloosahatchee River.  The photo at the end of this story that I now use on some business cards was taken at Blind Pass on the evening Dave invented the Sunset Zombies.  ENJOY!)

     One evening my friend Dave convinced me to hop on the back of his motorcyle and ride with him to watch the sunset at Blind Pass.  Dave always kept a small pair of binoculars with him in a little case he attached to his belt. Dave enjoyed looking at things through his binoculars.  He often offered them to me but I don't need to look at things up close the way he does.
     At Blind Pass Dave stood on the beach and looked through his little binoculars at the setting sun. I couldn't figure out why Dave needed to see the sun up close.  I have a difficult time looking at the setting sun.  I constantly fret about burning out my retinas.  Not Dave.  He stared directly at the setting sun for the longest time.
     "Yes," he said suddenly without taking his binoculars away from his eyes.  "You see them come out every evening at this time. The Sunset Zombies.  They don't come out all at once.  They are usually about forty feet apart but they always come.  The Sunset Zombies."
     I looked around.  I understood what Dave meant.  He had invented the perfect label for the people assembling on the beach near us to watch the sun melt into the sea. They were staggering.  Some had been drinking too much, others couldn't keep their footing in the sand and sometimes it was a combination of both. They looked like the zombies in old movies.
     Dave is a very tall man.  I feel vertically challenged whenever I am standing next to him.
      "Hey," I asked, peering up at him. He is so very tall.  "Tell me do you  think there are Sunrise Zombies?"
     "Yes," Dave answered immediately.
     "Really?" I asked.
     He lowered his binoculars, then looked down at me, staring seriously and directly into my eyes. For a long time he didn't say anything.  Eventually Dave spoke.
     "Yes," he said.  "Really.  They are over on the East Coast."
     Then Dave raised his  binoculars back up to his eyes and returned to staring at the setting sun.  He tried to keep a straight face but broke out into laughter when I did. 
     A few moments later the sun disappeared.  Now Dave looked at the horizon lit up with afterglow.
     "Watch," he said.  "Go ahead.  Look around.  The Sunset Zombies will disappear from the beach.  They go back to wherever it was that they came from.  They don't stay out very long.  See?  They are all leaving but they'll be back tomorrow night for sure."
     I looked around at the people staggering off the beach.  I asked Dave if he thought the Calusa watched sunsets.  He said they probably did.  We stayed a little longer and watched four young guys fooling around with surfboards braving the small waves in the afterglow.  They reminded me of a poster from an old surfing movie called The Endless Summer.  I pointed this out to Dave and he noticed the similarity immediately.  I wondered if the Calusa ever surfed or if it was strictly a Polynesian invention.
     So much destruction has occurrerd here in Florida during the past one hundred years.  The Calusa were here for 10,000 years.  I wondered how many Calusa lived here.  A census was taken of the Calusa by the first Spanish to discover them.  By using it I have determined there might haver been about 1,500,000 Calusa during their entire 10,000 years of occupation.
     Dave called about a year ago to tell me he had been  diagnosed with leukemia.  He said he was up in Tampa, going to a hospital there.  I tried calling him but never got through to him.  I haven't heard anything from him.  I watched a sunset at Blind Pass the other  night.  I thought about Dave.  It was a chilly evening.  Shivering I pulled on my sweatshirt and plodded along on the sand, my feet sinking into it.  I found a good spot to stand near some Sunset Zombies who held glasses of wine and were laughing.
     My foot kicked something.  I am always on the lookout for good shells.  I leaned over and looked for whatever it was that I had just kicked.  I saw something in the sand.  It was bright red.  I stooped over to pick it up.
     It was a child's tiny toy, a figurine made of red plastic.  I turned it over in my hand,  an Indian brave, posed dramatically, frozen in a positon with his feet spread apart and his knees bent.  In one hand he held a bow with two feathers.  His other arm is flexed and it looks as if he has just released an arrow.  He wears a loin cloth and fringed mocassins that go up to his knees.  His hair is very long and there are two feathers in it.  He has six pack abs.  On his back the word CHINA is stamped.
     I found a tiny spotted feather earlier that day.  It was on the ground near a picnic table where I had eaten some crappy fried fish sandwich.  I collect feathers and this one was unusual so I put it into the pocket of my jeans.  I decided to keep this red plastic Indian.  I stufffed him into my pocket right next to  the feather.  I didn't stay to watch the afterglow but staggered off the beach with the rest of the Sunset Zombies.

sights