This rendition of a work song``We Don't Have No Payday Here'' sounds an awfully lot like Robert Johnson's recording of ``Last Fair Deal Gone Down.''
Both even share the line,

``If you cry about a nickel, you'll die about a dime.''

The work song was performed by convicts at the state prison in Raiford, Florida on June 4, 1939. Johnson recorded his tune in San Antonio, Texas in 1937.
Dispersion of folk culture -- passing it on, in other words -- never seizes to fascinate me.
I lifted the work song recording from the Library of Congress' American Memory archive.

SARASOTA, Fla. -- During my stay at my parents' home here I watched the Red Sox lose their chance to repeat in the World Series. After game six, TBS broadcast the faces and body language of crestfallen and tearful Tampa Bay Rays fans. They looked like their team had lost the series, that there was no tomorow, no last chance.

Given their last chance the next night, Tampa Bay beat the Sox, which didn't surprise me at all. I was surprised that the Red Sox had managed to push the series out to seven games -- the Sox had fared so poorly against the Rays in the regular season.

After game seven I was neither crestfallen nor tearful. I had been expecting the Red Sox to lose for a long time.

Teams rarely repeat. History is against them.

As I went to bed I just couldn't feel bad about the defeat. After all, I knew perfectly well that I had not been defeated. For the most part I felt serene, unexpectantly satisfied, only a little empty.

Two days later, The Sarasota Herald-Tribune ran this a Boston Globe editorial:

``[W]e New Englanders can afford to be magnanimous. We have our memories of
October glory, and they are fresh; they are not shrouded in the mists of time that separate living generations from folks who were around in 1918, before Babe Ruth absconded to the Bronx... With only the tiniest tremor of regret, Sox fans may now salute the youth and brio of the Tampa Bay team.''

That was what I felt. A tiny tremor of regret.
But the day before the paper reprinted from the Globe, the Herald-Tribune, as its lead story on the Rays' triumph, ran this from columnist Doug Fernandes. It read in part:`

Ding dong, the witch is dead.
It was destroyed Sunday night, reduced to the harmless title of ex-world champions by a team that didn't choke, didn't gag, didn't clutch.
No Heimlich required. Just a one-way ticket back to Boston for the dethroned Red Sox.''

No magnaminity there. Fernandes make it sound as though the Sox and the Rays had developed a bitter ages-old rivalry. The Herald-Tribune could have used an editorial cooling period, which could only doubtfully be afforded by the tight deadline Fernandes was working under.
Either that, or, before the series, the paper should have instituted an editorial policy mandating temperance.

Stuck

SARASOTA, Fla. -- I was stranded in the airport in Atlanta Oct. 17 when CNN, avoidable on the airport concourse but ignored only with great effort at the gate, reported on the racist invective directed at Sen. Barack Obama at a Sarah Palin rally in Johnstown, Penn. a week earlier.
I was traveling alone to Florida, stuck in an unplanned seven-hour layover, killing time reading and watching TV. Except to trade acerbic comments about the airline's ineptitude for keeping us so long, I didn't converse with anyone.

The noise in the terminal drowned out CNN's audio so I couldn't get a sense of why the network was running the week-old footage of the smug bastard son of a bitch brandishing a stuffed-animal Curious Gerorge with an Obama bumper sticker for a hat. The report then used video having to do with the recent placement of Ku Klux Klan flyers on Sunday papers.


I concluded that CNN's angle must have been the Obama Campaign and Racism in America. That is based on what I saw. As I said, I couldn't hear the report. Therefore I got no answer to my question: Had Palin had repudiated the anti-Obama hecklers? As of today I could not find a news account to that effect through Google.

Facing me across the aisle of chairs was an older African-American couple. I put more value on their response to the TV story than on mine. I'm white and they're black; the video referred more directly than it did mine because they are the descendants of slaves, and I am not.

I glanced furtively at them. I saw enough of their response so that I could turn my eyes away before my eyes and theirs met.

I've lived in Massachusetts for 45 years and never in the South. If, during my brief time in the South -- vacations in New Orleans in 1996 and '97, and overnight stays in Virginia and North Carolina -- I had confronted the topic of racism, even in a brief glancing moment, to acknowledge with black person there, I would never have forgotten that encounter.


Of course I don't know what was in the couple's heads as they watched CNN at that moment. They shook their heads -- perhaps in amazement. I was puzzled that they didn't seem at all angry. I hope they did not feel resignation, but they might have.

Because I did not talk to them I never learned where they are from. I couldn't hear them. I was unable to listen for accents that would have allowed for at least a guess.
I was as able to do anything about the situation as I was able to bring Flight 5716 to Sarasota to the gate.

Frenzy!

Recent letters to The Miami Herald have focused on the sub-prime mortgage scandal and the real estate nose dive, the Democratic presidential primary, sexual predators, taxes, media companies, the possible legalization of hand guns in federal parks, the purpose of democracy, abortion, how to teach evolution in public schools, gas prices and global warming.
None of these issues is unique to Miami. Although each generation works through the same arguments about evolution – whether evolution really happened, and how the subject should be taught – the wrangling of Floridians with the teaching of evolution is fresh, and perhaps festering because the state school board just went through that debate.
Then you’ve got your perennial Church and State: Rep. Ed Bullard, a Democrat from Miami, wants to see Florida issue a vanity license plate bearing the words ``I believe’’ and an image of the Cross.
And although local corruption certainly happens elsewhere than in Miami, it comes up a lot in the letters because it is rampant in Miami Dade.
I’m interested in the local controversies: The melee in late February between police and students at Miami Edison High School, the recent governmental go-ahead for construction of a new Florida Marlins Stadium in Little Havana. Then there’s the question of how Miamians feel about the policies of Cuba, Venezuela and Haiti. There’s the question of how some Miamians feel about having people from those nations amongst them.
But I can’t restrict myself to local matters because I wouldn’t begin to approach a full sense of who the Herald letter writers are.

No reason to be concerned by Barack Obama’s lack of experience, said Glenn Huberman of Miami. Obama ``

will choose prudent and competent people to help restore this country’s stature that existed before the current administration destroyed both,’’

Huberman concluded, but not before noting that President Bush ``surrounded himself with people who spent many years in government.’’ Those advisers – Cheney, Rice, Rumsfeld, etc. -- ``laid waste to this country’s reputation.’’
Douglas Gonzales of Coral Gables blames ``The National Rifle Association and gun-culture Republicans’’ for the proposal to allow visitors to federal parks to carry guns.

``So will I have to arm my children every time they go out to feel secure? And once everyone has a gun, will the bad guys get AK-47s?... It’s not the weapon that kills you, it’s the element of surprise. To save yourself from an attack you must have your gun in your hand, loaded, cocked and ready to shoot. If being armed really protected us from harm, we would not have 4,000 dead soldiers in Iraq.’’

Tim Bricker of Key Largo asked:

``How long before we start to arm the bears to defend themselves against those with the right to bear arms?’’

Roberto Gonzales put to bed the debate over the morality of buying gas at Citgo, which is owned by the government of Venezuela, which has dictator Hugo Chavez for president.

``I will purchase gas everywhere I can save money, even if the station is owned by Fidel Castro, Osama bin Laden, Evo Morales, Vladimir Putin, Kim Jong-Il or Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.’’ That would be no more unpatriotic than being a lobbyist, a corporation or a public official and ``wheeling and dealing’’ with these countries. ``We sell weapons to countries that, down the road, might use them on us… Accountability? None. Profit? Plenty.’’

The Herald heard from officialdom by way of Susan Levin, staff dietitian for Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine in Washington, D.C.
The Herald’s story, ``Broward Students get a taste of veggie burgers’’ caught her eye.

``I was delighted that the free samples of flame-grilled Gardenburgers were so popular with Everglades High School students.’’

A meatless diet, which excludes soda, fried food and sugary snacks, can help kids avoid heart disease, obesity and some diabetes.
``Young people who add more vegetarian fare to their diet are on their way to a healthy future.’’
Thanks to the Internet, Levin was able to jump right on the Everglade High story.
Also from officialdom, Kathy Mizereck, executive director of the Florida Association of Postsecondary Schools in Tallahassee, noted that the economic downturn, and tax cuts, mean less money for state colleges and universities in Florida.
Will this result in fewer college grads? ``The simple answer is no,’’ she wrote. The more than 750 licensed private and taxpaying career colleges and schools in the state

``provide practical education and workforce preparation for the 235,000 students attending our schools… Our students look to us for the skills they need to succeed in Florida’s workforce, and because of our low student-to-faculty ratio, they get those skills.’’

Thanks, Kathy.
John D. Johnson of Pembroke Pines said the current talk about global warming is making a great deal over nothing more than a naturally occurring climactic cycle.

``Apparently I missed the moment when planetary pollution rose to the same level of moral gravity as the Holocaust… We shouldn’t be changing policy or scaring the daylights out of schoolchildren just because alarmists need a cause to believe in.’’

In the meantime, everything was idyllic at the mall.
Sabra Brea of Miami wrote in about going to the grand opening of the TJMaxx HomeGoods store in Kendall.

``What a frenzy of buying – people were lined up for a half mile to get there for the 8 a.m. opening. They shopped until they dropped.
``The merchandise was plentiful and well-priced. Lines of people, with carts overflowing, snaked around the store. No sign of a recession there.’’

'Gators on the Shore

This is as close as I've come to Miami -- Myakka River State Park in Sarasota. I visit my parents once a year in Sarasota, and we've been to the park three or four times. It took these pictures from the tour boat circa 2002. The boat used a 1975 Cadillac engine, and it went no faster than 5 mph.
The lake was built by the Civilian Conservation Corps, a program of the New Deal.
I didn't get any pictures of the vultures. Vultures languish on the picnic tables near the gift shop. They hover above the trees.
In the bottom photo, that's my mom's white hat.