Time for a fiction? Week ending July 25, 2025
On Friday alone the stories populating my collection of clippings about the detention center in the Everglades (activists are discouraging the official name as it appears to be ... a tourist attraction) grew by at least six stories in the Miami Herald alone. That story is staying in the news, and rightly so.
It will get some time here too.
Yet, despite the horrors at the concentration slopped down between two of Florida's biggest non-Disney tourist districts (Naples and Miami), life does, as they say, go on. Not all of life here in South Florida is bad.
That's not to take the mind's eye off of what's going on just 41 miles from my door, but this newsletter is supposed to be about the good things here as much or more than the challenging (and downright awful) things.
So, let's get to it.
Finite Disappointment
The detention center in the Everglades, not to be confused with the facility down the street known as the Everglades Correctional Institute and Re-Entry Center or the Krome North Service Processing Center (for ICE), all of which are colloquially known as Krome, on Krome Avenue on the edge of the Miami Metropolitan area, remains a major focus on international attention.
Rightly so.
Stories in the paper just on Friday (when I'm writing this), speak to the pressing nature of the problems at the site. The state has refused not only the property's rightful owner, Miami-Dade County, access to the site, but the state hasn't even bothered to respond to repeated requests by the county for access.
Perhaps this is because it is unclear who is in charge of the facility at all, per another story in the paper on Friday.
That may explain why when one detainee told his fiancee what conditions were like at the facility and she told the press, she hasn't heard from him since.
Or maybe he was deported by one of the military planes seen taking off from the facility this week headed to...Texas and Louisiana.
A quarter of the way through hurricane season, a season that has been temporarily calmed by a sandstorm from Africa until this week, the state still has no plan on how to evacuate people from the site in the likely event of a hurricane.
These are just some of the stories from Friday 25-July-2025.
Historic Interlude
July 25, 1925, Miami Beach, Florida
100 years ago this week, during the height of the Great Florida Land Boom, which led directly to the Great Depression, the Miami Herald ran a full page of photos on a hotel that was expected to be an iconic part of the Miami Beach skyline and, unlike most other hotels, actually survived the 1927 hurricane.
There's a great story on it here, full of pictures and even a video.
Emily Teller, MDPL Archivist
The building was demolished in 1968 and was replaced by a more modern and just as iconic hotel, 1 Hotel South Beach.
The razing of Roney Plaza Hotel and replacement by 1 Hotel South Beach was part of the movement to save the historic South Beach area, though the buildings saved in that movement were about the post hurricane landscapes Art Deco architecture.
There's a neat book about that called Saving South Beach, by M. Barron Stofik.
Infinite Hope
Katie Phang and Stacey Abrams Rock
The first Black woman to be nominated by any major party as their candidate for governor, the former Georgia House Minority Leader, author, activist, and all-round inspiration, Stacey Abrams was hosted by the legendary Books and Books store in Coral Gables at the historic Coral Gables Congregational Church on Monday, to talk about her new book, Coded Justice.
Doubleday
While this book is a thriller for adults, Abrams bibliography includes children's books, other fiction and non-fiction titles--anyway she can get people to listen, as she put it in her discussion with moderator Katie Phang.
Yes, that Katie Phang.
The guests, including my teenage kids, were enthralled by the discussion, which ranged from the plot of her Avery Keene books, While Justice Sleeps, Rogue Justice and Coded Justice, to her childrens' books, to her work as an activist, to the importance of the arts broadly.
For me, it was a particularly satisfying event knowing that a person who has been in the rumor mill for a presidential run would show up to an event hosted by a store owned by a local businessman and prominent member of the Jewish community, where it had been decided my church would be the proper venue.
NPR talked to Abrams last week in an interview that covered some of the same ground, including about the book.
Books and Books hosts most of its bigger events at the church, in no small part because the church was built in 1925 to host events like this, but it is also a reflection of the church's mission to be a welcoming place for all. And that's cool.
Superman
The only thing Florida specific about the new Superman is that my kids and I saw it in a theater in Miami. That said, do you like pets? I've never seen a movie more pro-pets. Great fun. Lots of pets, not just the dog in the trailer.
Speaking of furry friends...
Florida volunteer wildlife photographer captured not one Florida panther, but a Florida panther with her kittens in the Corkscrew Swamp area. I'm jealous--though, to be clear, this was a camera trap capture, not a dude out there spotting a kitty and snapping a photo.
Still, I'm jealous.
As is made clear in the absolutely outstanding documentary, Path of the Panther, the panther is an extremely endangered but extremely important part of Florida. You should be able to find Path of the Panther on Disney+.
Cello
Speaking of the arts, as Abrams and Phang did on Monday, on Thursday, renowned cellist Leland Ko, performed in the same historic church and filled it with the magical sounds of his 300 year old cello. Joined by his partner and "better half," Adria Ye, the vastly underrated summer series mesmerized the audience once again.
Listening to an instrument that was constructed while Mozart and Thomas Jefferson were alive and played by a talent worthy of wielding it to bring joy to audiences, is one of the more obvious places to find a hope that stretches indefinitely.
This is why Phang and Abrams made such a big deal of the arts just a few days earlier.
There are only two more concerts in the series this year and, if you're in South Florida, you don't want to miss them!
Bear the History Hound Finds
On Florida's history of incarceration, abuse and private interests
Made by History
A fun history quiz from earlier this month
I missed 13.5. I got half the one about Everest correct.
Sarah Lemire Lifestyle Reporter
Not a fan of the man, but thanks for the memories, I think
Ryan Morik
Maybe not
SAFIYAH RIDDLE
Not so much history but Bear thinks you'll enjoy...
This newsletter by a self proclaimed conservative at the Miami Herald. I think she does great work. It's called Right to the Point. If you click here there's a spot to sign up.
I particularly appreciate her piece, which is in this week's newsletter but also was in the Herald, "I’m a conservative Catholic. Keep politics out of my church, other houses of worship."