The Accidental Tour Guide ► Unpacking The Writer

This will be a short Unpacking The Writer this month. For the uninitiated, Unpacking the Writer is the monthly feature in which I pull back the curtain and share some of what it’s like to be a writer (and a human) at this critical juncture, as some people say. 

This’ll be shorter than usual because: 1). I posted that big, honkin’ A Writer’s Biography just recently, which I prolly shoulda made an official Unpacking the Writer episode, then I wouldna hadda write this; 2). It’s Thursday, the day on which I start writing the Friday Fox Follies, a new weekly feature at PoliticusUSA, due every … err … Friday; 3). I’m still beavering away on the redesign of the Not Now Silly Newsroom and, to that end, have a Skype meeting with my web spinner scheduled for any minute, which will probably interrupt the writing of this post; 4). Yesterday I started a new post on [allegedly] corrupt Miami Commissioner Marc D. Sarnoff, which I want to get back to so I can finish it by Saturday; and 5). I don’t owe you any explanations, so stop badgering me. Nor do I feel I have to justify long sentences, as long as they’re punctuated properly.

One of the touristy things my sister and I did was to
go to the Swap Shop. She had Zoltar read her fortune.

One year ago the Not Now Silly Newsroom covered a Homeowners Association meeting in Coconut Grove in the cheekily titled No Safe Harbour In Coconut Grove. SPOILER ALERT: The meeting exploded in resident rage when [allegedly] corrupt Miami Commissioner Marc D. Sarnoff and Miami Mayor Tomás Regalado skipped out on the meeting.

I’ve not written about Sarnoff or The Grove lately. Part of the problem is I’ve not had the time to get down to Coconut Grove. And, a post about The Grove I started months ago has been languishing while I do some more desultory research and figure out the best way to frame a very complex topic.

A year ago I still had passion for the Coconut Grove stories I was
writing. However, my inability to make my campaign to Save the E.W.F. Stirrup House go viral had diminished a lot of that enthusiasm.

I think I got it back this week. My sister was visiting from Oak Park, Michigan. Since I had to pick her up at the Miami airport, we took a side trip to Coconut Grove where I laid out the entire history of Coconut Grove, Kebo, E.W.F. Stirrup, Coral Gables, and The Colour Line(s). We walked some of it. Some of it was related while cruising past the Mariah Brown House, Marler Avenue, the Charlotte Jane Memorial Park Cemetery, Coral GablesMacFarlane Homestead Subdivision Historic District, Grand Avenue, and beautiful downtown CocoWalk, the mall that ate up all the quaint.

I’ll be back in Coconut Grove before you can say The Barnacle, but it made me think that I should be conducting History Tours of Coconut Grove.

About Headly Westerfield

Calling himself “A liberally progressive, sarcastically cynical, iconoclastic polymath,” Headly Westerfield has been a professional writer all his adult life.