It’s been another bleak and exhausting year—that seems to be the only kind we like to produce anymore.
It still helps to find joy in the small gifts of nature, which we, the destructive demons who roam and pillage the earth, have done absolutely nothing to deserve.
The beautiful yellow flowers of fall are one such gift, a welcome reminder of hope and optimism, even as the cold, dark days of winter begin breathing down our necks.
I find the flowers of purple-headed sneezeweed particularly graceful, and their presence at the moment brings me great delight.
Happy autumn!
Summer’s nearly over
—Thank fucking God.
Such a miserable, wretched season.
The sweltering heat,
The vulgar haze,
The malaise that weighs on me like a wetsuit.
Float away, summer,
And never return.
May we stay in autumn forever.
Listen closely, and you can hear ghosts of the not-too-distant past in conversation:
“This place is real authentic. Almost like being in Texas—’cept for no illegals.”
“Naw, they got ’em working in the kitchen.”
“They better not be harborin’ no illegals here. I’m gonna call the sheriff and have ’em deported.”
“Then who they gonna get to work for dirt wages?”
“Get some kids in there or sumpin’. There’s a bunch of lazy Blacks on welfare ’round here that needa be working too.”
“They’d probably have to raise the prasses. You know all them wokes are demandin’ a livin’ wage these days.”
“Shee-et, that ain’t my problem.”
“It sure as hell ain’t mine.”
“That waitress is being too fuckin’ slow. I ain’t leavin’ her a tip. I’m gonna write ‘Jesus saves’ on the receipt instead.”
“That’s a tip that’ll last her for eternity.”
“Amen. Where the hell is my fishbowl margarita?”
All of a sudden, I realize my soul is on a collision course with another, and I think…
How the hell did I get here?
If I strain my brain really hard,
I can trace the events back like breadcrumbs,
But I’ll be damned if I can figure out what propelled me into each decision.
Which choice was the critical one that sealed my fate?
So much is hazy to me now.
How long ago was it when I woke up and heard that voice ask me,
How do you know they’re the one?
“I don’t,” I said in reply.
I don’t even think I believe in The One.
I suspect it’s more like The One of Many.
There are, however, times appointed for each collision,
And this is one of them.
I see the soul in front of me,
So they must be the one for this appointment.
Ready or not,
Here we go…
I grew up in Florida, so I can say with complete authority that it’s a miserable state: ugly, plagued with deadly heat and reptiles, and teeming with the most hostile, willfully ignorant people in the United States—though they’ve got a lot of competition these days.
In recent years, I’ve occasionally dipped back into Florida to photograph buildings, but only in the winter, when snakes and alligators are in hibernation. Unfortunately, the people never disappear.
I visited Sarasota twice, primarily to see its surviving Modernist structures from the Sarasota School of Architecture, but I never got around to photographing the old Sarasota Terrace Hotel, completed in 19261 and designed by Pringle & Smith2 of Atlanta.
In truth, the building just doesn’t interest me that much. It’s a standard Beaux-Arts affair: handsome and solidly executed, but not unlike a thousand others of the same style.
The 10-story hotel cost $750,0003 to build and was developed by Charles Ringling4 of the Ringling Brothers. Yep, the circus people.
When the Sarasota Terrace closed in 1972, the Sarasota Herald-Tribune noted that “it never achieved the prominance [sic] of some of the other area hotels.”5
Sarasota County purchased the property the same year, and the building was renovated to serve as the county’s administration center.6
Pringle & Smith designed another building in Sarasota at the same time as the hotel: the nearby American National Bank,7 8 also 10 stories, and also underwhelming.
Atlanta architects have rarely done their best work in Florida.