Stuck in the mud?

Have you ever just felt like you were stuck in the mud...



...not making any progress at all?
That's where I stand.
I need to write on here more often!

Datil Daze and Homework Craze

AS BUSY AS ALL GET-OUT AND YOU WILL SOON FIND OUT WHY...

In the meantime, here's the bit of humor for this week:

http://www.bostonherald.com/news/regional/general/view.bg?articleid=1047241

Apparently, Massachusetts lawmakers are debating a ban on "spanking" in their increasingly-crazy jurisdiction. Wow.

I was on the receiving end of some good licks as a child, and I can't remember a time when I didn't deserve it. My children will receive the same...As long as too many crazed Massachusetts residents don't relocate here and outlaw it 8-0

*Disclaimer*: This is not to suggest that ALL Massachusetts residents are crazed, but apparently there are enough of them to cause this kind of stir. We don't want to hurt any feelings here on The Minorcan Factor.

Anomalous Ape Antics

A little town that I pass through every now and then on my way to various festivals (including the recent Florida Folk Festival) is getting its 15 minutes of fame this week. It seems that a strange ape-like animal has appeared around Glen St. Mary, and has everybody wondering where it came from. The story has been featured on Drudge Report, and is getting a lot of press. Here's the link to the article...

http://www.firstcoastnews.com/news/topstories/news-article.aspx?storyid=95548

This reminds me that I told you all that I would post my research paper about the Florida Skunk Ape on here a while back. It's not my best work, but I suppose I will post it anyway. Keep an eye out for that, and I will keep an eye out for smelly, hairy bipeds other than those who are related to me.

HAH!

IN YOUR FACE, GREEDY DEVELOPERS!

If you scroll down a little on this page, you will see a picture of a sign that advertises a "41 Unit Approved Subdivision" for sale. I see this sign every day on my way to school, and I have wondered when and how this subdivision could have been approved. You see, I read the agenda and the minutes of every county commission meeting in my home county, and I never remembered having a development approved on this piece of land.
Just this past month, a meeting was held and that development was on the agenda.
They were....SHUT...DOWN!
The newly-elected county commission here is not lining their pockets with developer's cash (unlike the prior one,) so they have put a stop to development in much of the county. God bless them.
The real kicker is that one of the commissioners wondered aloud about why the sign out front said a "41 Unit APPROVED Subdivision" was for sale. He also wondered whether it needed to be referred to the state government as a matter of false advertising. HA HA!
Good for them. I love this county commission!

Sweet Serendipticiousness

As yall know, I was in White Springs, FL this weekend regaining my sanity. I am becoming increasingly fed up with the suburban lifestyle, and going to the Florida Folk Festival is a great way to quench my thirst for culture. Yeah, that's right, all these new hoity-toity bistros, cafes, and art galleries popping up around me are NOT culture. You often have to look closely for true culture in modern Florida, and this is one of the few places where you can be completely surrounded by it.
As my dad said about me at the Festival, "He's in Heaven."

I spent most of the weekend with "Uncle" Stuart Pacetti knitting and throwing castnets. I have now passed over 4 feet, 6 inches on my net, aiming for 7 feet. Lots of work to be done still.







I had a great time with the man I consider my 3rd grandfather, but that was not the highlight of my weekend. No, Mrs. Sarah N. Dipity had very nice plans in store for me.

Saturday afternoon, I sat under the sprawling oak tree where our castnet demonstration was situated. I had spoken with hundreds of people that day about the long, laborious, sometimesfrustratingsometimesrelaxing craft of castnet knitting. I had people of every race, nationality, and profession descend upon me, eager to learn about my craft and my culture. As you can imagine, I was more than willing to share. When somebody approached me, I generally gave them a nod and a quick hello, leaving them to watch me feebly attempt to work monofilament line into mesh, waiting to answer any questions they may ask. Like I had so many times that day, I noticed a couple of people approaching out of my peripheral vision. I looked up...

Whoa, that girl definitely looks familar. And do I know that goofy-looking guy with her?
"Hi," I said, continuing my knitting.
Can it be FC and his daughter, Emma? It sure looks like her, but I can't be sure the guy with the sunglasses covering his face is really FC.
I kept knitting, looking off to the side, trying to get a better look at them without staring. You know how daddys are about boys staring at their daughters. The guy knelt down and started snapping pictures with one nice-looking camera.
Yup, gotta be them.
"Gonna put me on your blog?" I asked.
"Yup, is that okay?"
I stood, we shook hands, introduced ourselves using names other than FloridaCracker and HurricaneTeen, and we had a good conversation. I've been a loyal reader of PureFlorida for over a year and a half now, and I feel like I have gotten to know FC and his family. It was thrilling to see them as living human beings and not just images and writing on a computer screen, though :-D



That's my story, and I'm sticking to it! More on the Festival in later posts.

Folkin' It Up

HurricaneTeen will be in White Springs, Florida all weekend for the Florida Folk Festival. I will be set up with Mr. Stuart Pacetti pretty much the whole time working on castnets, so if you're planning on coming out, be sure to pay us a visit; I'd like to meet some blogging friends. A cousin of mine, Sam Pacetti (Stuart's son,) is a headlining musician with his amazing fingerstyle folk guitar picking, and you definitely don't want to miss him, either.
If you can't make it, you're missing out :-D

I've got some interesting posts coming soon that you won't want to miss, including:
A newly-written poem
A article I wrote that was published in The St. Augustine Record
A trip to Durbin Swamp after a couple weeks of rain
Recap of the Florida Folk Festival...etc.

I feel like I'm advertising. I do not have a creative bone in my body right now. Sorry. Hope to see some of you this weekend!

DOH! And other news...

I had a new reader on my blog today, Eyemkmootoo, who left a comment about my prior post along with a link to some of his writing. I went to his blog and enjoyed it very much, so I decided to add him to my blogroll. When I went to edit my blogroll, *DOH!* I noticed some serious omissions that needed to be corrected. Therefore, along with the addition of Eyemkmootoo, the following very worthy bloggers have been added to my blogroll:

Rural Wat - Fascinating entries written by a biologist specifically focusing on Carolina Bays (a kind of swamp) along with other interesting natural things.

Florida Native Musings - Interesting blogging from a fellow native Floridian. Haven't seen much of him lately, unfortunately.

Buckin' Junction - How I did not have my most loyal reader on my blogroll, I will never know. Interesting reading about life on a dairy farm from my most northern fan :-D Also involves more information about the PBR circuit than I could ever imagine.

In other news, my grandma had her annual halloween taco party yesterday. This tradition involves cramming over 20 Floridians into a tiny house eating large amounts of Mexican food...Just the way I like it :-D I rarely have the chance to see much of my cracker side of the family, but the Halloween party is one of the times I get to reunite with them. Let's just say it is very loud, it involves huge amounts of food and large amounts of football (Florida-Georgia game!), and everybody is in everybody else's way...If that is not the perfect definition of my family, I do not know what is. I love that side of my family...I feel really at home there. The point of telling about this is to try to find out if there is anybody else out there who has an annual Halloween taco party. I submit that we are the only family in the world who does such a thing. One of our many idiosyncracies.

Ghost Light Road

Back before "development" began "improving" our quality of life in this part of the county in which I live [extreme sarcasm in use here], there was an old legend floating among the endless pine farms that used to exist here. I'm sure you've heard of haunted houses, haunted libraries, and maybe even a haunted lighthouse, but we like to do things a little bit differently here. We had our own haunted road.

The road's original name was Bombing Range Road, as it provided access to an airfield and bombing range operated by the U.S. Navy in the years before and during World War II. A few years back (before I came into the world) the road was officially renamed Greenbriar Road for "real estate reasons". Regardless of what the road was officially named, we locals had only one name for it: Ghost Light Road.

Ghost Light Road was a perfectly straight, limestone and sand road that cut through the pine plantations and cypress swamps of my beloved home. If you visited this area back in those wonderful years, and happened to venture onto Greenbriar Road at night, you were met with a very interesting phenomenon.

Driving down the bumpy dirt road, your first thoughts would be "where the heck does this road go?" It would have been the darkest of night, with the light of millions of stars and the moon filtering through the tall pine trees being the only relief from the pitch black. The fresh scent of pine would fill your nose, and the cool air of the swamp would provide relief from the otherwise muggy weather. As you bumped along, you would begin to notice a light - a single light, as if a motorcycle's headlight - approaching you. The light would approach for minutes on end, and as you wonder what such a light could be, it disappears into the blackness. Are my eyes deceiving me? you wonder. You witnessed this a few times that night, in unpredicatable intervals. It was as if the phenomenon was teasing you.

About a decade ago, the road was paved and traffic began to increase as more people moved to the area surrounding. Three schools popped up near the road, and traffic increased greatly. "House Farms" took the place of pine farms toward the eastern end of the road, where thousands of yankees were planted. The ghost died; yet another piece of local history and culture lost to overdevelopement.

If I were to stand in front of all the 2700 students who attend my extremely overcrowded school and ask who knew what Ghost Light Road was, MAYBE 5 or 10 would raise their hand... A relatively small symptom of a deadly disease spreading through the lifeblood of Florida.

Muller Part Four: A Recipe for St. Johns River Mullet

As I have stated in prior posts in this series, the St. Johns River Mullet (freshwater mullet) has always been known as an inedible fish due to its extreme fishiness. A good old Florida cracker and good friend of mine, the famous (or infamous) Stuart Pacetti, has related to me this recipe, however, to prepare freshwater mullet. I have not tried it yet...I will have to sometime.


A Recipe for St. Johns River Mullet
Related by Mr. Stuart Pacetti
2007

INGREDIENTS:
1 St. Johns River Mullet
2 Datil peppers, finely chopped
A bit of bacon grease
A pinch of salt
1 heartwood pine board

Prepare a fire out of hickory or any other wood you prefer for smoking, but do not prepare the fire in a smokehouse; keep it outside. Prepare to the mullet to your liking, filleting is recommended for thorough and even cooking. Lay the fish out on the pine board, lengthwise, so the entire fish fits onto the board. Liberally coat the fish in bacon grease. Spread the Datil pepper and salt evenly onto the fish. Let sit for a couple hours, and allow the fire to die down to small flames or hot coals. Lay the board close enough to the fire to receive enough heat, but far enough away to avoid being lit itself. Cook fish for 1-2 hours over fire. Remove the board carefully from the fire, and bring it into your kitchen, with the fish. Throw the fish away. Eat the board.


This is the only recipe I have ever know of for St. Johns River mullet. Enjoy!

Mullet Part Three: What to do with your mullet

Just a quick note: I'm sorry it has taken so long to write and post part three of this series. I have already written 3 papers for my English class alone this year, so my writing time and skill is usually taken up by those. One I am writing right now is about the Florida Skunk Ape, and I may post it on here when I finish. I'm still aiming for at least one post per week throughout the school year, though. Now, let's get started on part three of our series on the mullet.

So you have your mullet and you're wondering what to do with them. Many people at this point will take this great food source, butcher it in many horrible fashions, and use it for bait to catch other fish. My very resourceful family does not see the logic in this...Why catch fish to bait other fish when you can just catch fish and eat those fish instead of going through the trouble of catching the other fish? Know what I mean?

Many people will argue that mullet tastes bad. These are the same people that will tell you catfish tastes bad. I believe that they are just judging the fish on the people that eat it: The mullet (along with the catfish) is widely considered a "poor man's fish." This is partly true, as I have never seen a rich man order the fried catfish or smoked mullet at Singleton's Seafood Shack. Well I guess I've never seen a rich man at Singleton's Seafood Shack, but that is beside the point...You will be hard pressed to find a rich man anywhere who will lay their soft hands on this fish. This does not mean the fish tastes bad! Mullet is not nearly as powerfully fishy-tasting as tuna, and I know you will be hard-pressed to find an American who has never eaten tuna before. Mullet simply suffers from a bad image, this does not mean it's a bad fish!

Getting away from that rich man/poor man spiel, the point is, DO NOT USE THIS FISH FOR BAIT.

COMING SOON: Mullet Part Four: A Recipe for St. Johns River Mullet

Mullet Part 2: How to Catch Mullet

Naturally, after reading Part One of the series on this great fish, and becoming enlightened about its extensive history in Florida, you will want to go catch one for yourself. There are three things that you must have or know how to do in order to catch this prize fish:

1. Saltwater anywhere along the Atlantic or Gulf coast (in the U.S.) south of Chesapeake Bay in Virginia.
2. A good, durable castnet with 1-inch mesh. At least 6-foot radius recommended. You also must have the knowledge to throw the net.
3. The knowledge of how to "snag" mullet?

1st Requirement: Saltwater
Mullet are considered saltwater fish, but they can also be found in brackish rivers, including the St. Johns River, which flows slowly through my homeland. They can be recognized as the fish that leap out of the water for no apparent reason, and fall back down with a nice splash. It is thought that they may jump to get away from predators or to be able to breathe better when they are living in waters that have a lower oxygen concentration. Although mullet can be found in brackish river water, I have been told to NEVER, UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCE, eat a "St. Johns River Mullet". I've been told that they are disgusting...Horrible...Foul...Rancid...Abominable...Repugnant. On the contrary, my good friend and cousin, Stuart Pacetti, has shared with me a recipe that tells how to prepare St. Johns River Mullet. That recipe will be posted in a future instalment of this series. However, the recipe can only be successfully made be Minorcan Crackers (the recipe calls for Datil Pepper), so others should only attempt to prepare mullet caught on the beach.

2nd Requirement: Castnet
My mom has fond memories of going to the beach when she was a child. She and her family would drive right onto St. Augustine Beach in the middle of the night to go "turtle eggin'" and mullet fishin'. (Turtle eggin' is something for a future post.) To catch mullet, my grandfather would stand at the ready with his net in hand, while my grandmother would shine the headlights of the car into the water. The bright light would spook the mullet, and they would begin jumping, indicating where their schools were located. My grandfather would throw his net so that it fell over where the mullet were jumping, and hopefully would haul in a load of fish for the dinner table. Today, the beaches are, for the most part, closed to vehicular traffic, and this method can no longer be used. However, native Floridians still catch mullet with castnets on the beach. The video below shows how a castnet is thrown. [I'm sorry for the poor video quality, but it's the only video I could find that uses the same technique I use. It was filmed casting for shrimp in the St. Johns River.)

Most nets today are handmade, but I am learning how to knit castnets by hand from Stuart Pacetti. Coastal Living Magazine featured him in this article in June 2006, and I also wrote about this dying art in this archived post. This is my castnet as it stands right now: coming up on 4-feet-long and aiming for a goal of 7 feet. I'll have it finished by next summer.

3rd Requirement (can take the place of 2nd requirement): Snagging Mullet

I had not heard of this technique of catching mullet until today in my English class. My English teacher said he used to tie two large fish hooks together, cast into a school of Mullet, and "snag" one of them with the hooks. It is necessary to do this because a Mullet will never (okay, rarely) bite a baited hook, as they are bottom feeders. He did not eat the mullet, though, he would use them as bait for snook and other large game fish. This leads into the next instalment:

Mullet Part 3: What to do with Your Mullet

Mullet Part One

A couple months ago, I was driving down the road on my way to visit some family in the city of St. Augustine, and I came across this advertisement for our local newspaper:



You Floridaphiles are probably having a nice chuckle. Oh, how that fish has defined our culture here in north Florida! For those of you who are not enlightened on the subject of Mullet Culture, please allow me to tell my story...

When my ancestors came to Florida in 1768, they were treated as slaves for nine years on the plantation of the tyrannical Englishman Dr. Andrew Turnbull. They worked year-round in the hot, humid, mosquito-infested hell that Florida was years ago. The majority of the Minorcan colonists died of dieases and famine, and those that managed to survive barely did so. The mullet, a species of saltwater fish that "runs" in schools along the beach during the summertime, was a very important part of the Minorcan diet during those rough years.



When the mullet "ran" along the beach, it meant that food would be pleantiful, and that life would not be quite as miserable as usual. This led to the common Minorcan expression "Mullet on the beach!" which means "Good times ahead."

This is the beginning of a multiple-part series on the Mullet. I will add that this is likely the only blog in the blogosphere on which you will find a multi-part series on this fish...Only from a Minorcan! You will find out why later.

Have a good Sunday! Go Pittsburgh Steelers!

A Birthday Post

Today I turn 17-years-old.

I feel like I am turning 35-years-old.

I want my childhood back :-0

Now I am off to do homework for the rest of the night }:-(

A Month Passes Quickly

I have had great joy in allowing a month to pass without a single post here on The Minorcan Factor (NOT!) I have been fairly busy during this last month of my freedom (i.e. summer) School starts a week from this coming Friday, and believe it or not, I am actually looking forward to it. Yes, a high schooler that actually enjoys learning! Ha ha, we're not as rare as many people think we are. Here's just an update on the happenings in the life of HurricaneTeen in the past month:

Work at the local Publix Supermarket. Where shopping is a pleasure!!
Datil peppers produce nicely.
Datil peppers catch sick.
Datil peppers stop producing.
Volunteering at a camp for people with disabilities.
Sons of Confederate Veterans...Meetings...Cleaning up the Kirby-Smith House
Home-grown okra fried in corn oil.
Pilau.
Minorcan Clam Chowder.
Datil Pepper sauce.
Datil Pepper vinegar.

Any questions as to what culture I come from? No? I guess there never really were.

Right now, though, I am in Hurricane Mode, as I am tracking a Tropical Storm Dean that could threaten Florida as early as next Tuesday...but that is mostly speculation. This time of the year, much of my free time is devoted to tracking tropical sytems...If I began listing all of the websites I use to derive my "homegrown forecasts," it would take you quite some time to go through them. However, Dr. Jeff Masters' (not Minorcan!) blog is a great source for somebody who wants more in-depth scientific information about storms than The Weather Channel or even the NHC Public Advisories provide.

This past month, my family also gave up all hope of selling our house and moving somewhere quieter. I am fine with this, because I was tiring of all the people kicking me out of my house so they could look at it for a few minutes...This is especially undesirable when you are in the middle of cooking a pot of greens.

My parents have taken to my little Datil Pepper enterprise very well, and have agreed to allow me to place a greenhouse in our back yard. This will be very helpful when it comes time to plant this coming November. It will help to keep my seedlings nice and warm till it comes time to sell them in March...My days of lamps and plastic bags are over! Also, I will be able to load that greenhouse up with full-grown plants when I go off to college, keeping them nice and warm on those cold nights when I am not there to baby them.

A new discussion should be coming out from NHC about TS Dean any minute now. It looks weaker than it did this morning, which can be attributed to 15 to 20-knot wind shear, and probably the diurnal minimum. We should see him strengthen overnight tonight and through tomorrow as he moves out of the wind shear and into even warmer waters. This means it is tome for me to depart. Have a good day!

Finding hidden treasure...right around the corner!

My parents tell me from time to time that I have too many hobbies: Kayaking, hiking, growing vegetables, meteorology, geneology, castnet knitting, storytelling, The War Between the States, reading, writing, blogging...the list goes on and on. I suppose they are correct; I often have so many things I need and want to do that I simply don't know what to do with myself! Well you can go ahead and tack on another thing to that list:
Geocaching.
I was reading through SophieMae's Florida Cracker Crumbs blog a few weeks ago, and I came across her link to geocaching.com. I'd heard of geocaching before, and I had always thought that it would be intersting, but never had the chance to try it out...So I thought I would go check out the website and see what I could do.
This seemed to have opened up a whole new world to me! A search revealed over 3000 "hidden treasures" within 10 miles of where I live, one of which I actually walked by many times every day at work, oblivious. "Geocaching" is the use of a GPS to find caches ("hidden treasure") in some remote and some not-so-remote areas of the world. It combines being outdoors with a sense of discovery: Two of my favorite things! I was immediately hooked.
I excitedly entered the coordinates of a few caches into my GPS, and away I went! Here's some of what I found (more to come later today):





If you like the outdoors, and love adventure, then you will love geocaching. This sport is becoming accessible to most folks now that the price GPS devices are dropping so quickly...The Garmin eTrex Legend that I bought less than 2 years ago for $180 can now be bought for less than $110. So go out and find yourself some hidden treasure!

Global Warming and Al Gore

I found an excellent article about Al Gore and "global warming" today. You can read it here. The following is my personal opinion on the crossing of science and politics, which is exactly what has happened on the issue of global warming.

As a blooming meteorologist, I have great interest in the SCIENCE of meteorology and climatology. Being a true scientist, it sickens me to see the ways of science cross with the ways of politics. Crossing these two fields is like trying to cross a datil pepper with a satsuma...It just doesn't blend! Science is all about trying to solve the mysteries of the universe through unbiased research and experimentation. To be a scientist, one must approach an issue completely unbiased, and answer one's questions ONLY through research. When science intertwines with politics, though, it is corrupted. If a person has a preconceived political belief and tries to "prove" it right using "science", the person is not performing true science. Their preconceived political notion clouds their judgment, effectively preventing them to see all of the evidence that both sides of the issue present. The scientific study of global warming has been infiltrated by politics, and one can see the fruit that this cross-pollination bears: It's bitter, sour, tainted. Politics MUST be separate from science, or scientific "fact" will be based only on belief, and not on the natural ways of the universe.

A Pictoral Summary of my life this summer...

That's me in the penguin suit.


As soon as the shutter clicked on this picture, this little wild hog darted into the woods.


Withlacoochee River


My Sons of Confederate Veterans camp's color guard...No, I'm not in this picture :-D


School never truly ends.


They keep me sane.

TO BE CONTINUED...AND MAYBE I WILL MAKE IT INTERESTING NEXT TIME!!

Busy

I am stopping in very quickly to inform all of you that I am indeed still alive, and that I have been slightly busy lately. I was off volunteering at a camp for people with disabilities this past week, catching sick in the process, and am now packing for a trip to South Carolina for a retreat for teenaged Christians. Hey, I'm not complaining, I had a great time at camp, and I will construct a post about it soon. I didn't expect this summer to be quite this hectic...

On another note, not only did I become ill while I was at camp, a couple of my Datil plants dropped some new growth and a couple really nasty looking pods while I was gone. I suspect Phytophthora Blight, though I hope that is not the case because it could be passed on to future generations through seed...That would not bode well for my future spicy endeavors. A couple of this year's newborns are also infested with aphids that I must take care of before I leave. I don't feel like doing any of it, but I have a long list of things to do before I leave tomorrow morning. Ugh.

Have a good week!

The End Is Near

I can see it!

Yes, I can feel it!

I can taste it!

...The end of the school year...

SOOO CLOSE!!!

Exam week is in full swing, and I am studying my hind quarters off for the dreaded Precalculus exam on Wednesday. Ugh.

Thursday will be the last day of school for me, but I have an event in Ocala from Friday-Sunday that will have me occupied (don't worry, you'll hear about it.) So do not expect any posts from HT until next Monday...I will post again afterward; including the Florida Cracker play.

The good news is that my blogroll has now expanded one line to allow for the indroduction of Rural Wat, a blog that I have been enjoying very much for a couple weeks now. Be sure to check it out; especially if you like swamps.

Also, if would be nice if my fellow Floridaphiles will visit and encourage the new guy on the block, Scott, at Florida Native Musings. I'm sure you will all agree that it's much easier to maintain a blog when you know you have people out there actually reading it!

Well I am off to increase my hygiene points with a hot shower :-D
Have a good night!

Defending Florida's Cracker Culture

This is for my fellow Crackers out there...It would be great if you could just take a minute or two and put your two cents in here, at my former English teacher's blog. A student wrote the original post, which I responded to, and there were some....uh....ignorant people that responded to my response. I think it would be great if we got a couple non-students in there to respond and explain to these people that the Florida Cracker culture is not based on "oppression and enslaving people."

I am off to watch Gods and Generals for the quintillionth time.
Good night!