Southwestern Florida, baseball, and gratitude

We've been in Ft Myers for a week. While this isn't Key West, and more's the pity, I can see that this is a more "regular" place where people live and work,  and just happen to have a way better winter than much of the rest of the country. Maybe because it reminds me of the things I didn't like about where I grew up, I'm not that enthusiastic about the big highways, the strip malls and the traffic. And I'm still not totally sold on the Florida culture, with its gated communities, chain restaurants, apparent Fear of Bad People, and "Stand Your Ground" laws. However, and it's a very big however, it has been a pleasure to have a life in which you can go outside in February, drink a tropical drink under a palm tree, and ride your bike or walk on the beach in the middle of winter. I'm not complaining! And I can definitely picture spending most of the winter here somewhere, especially some charming place like Sanibel Island, where you wouldn't have to go far away to get what you need for the day, and could walk or ride your bike to get things done. So, I guess, too early to make a Florida Pronouncement of any sort. I'm thinking about it. Is "ambivalent" a decision?

But the main thing, besides (obviously), the weather, is...baseball. Specifically, Red Sox baseball. How thrilling is it to escape the New England winter and then find yourself on a warm day watching your own fellas out on a green field?

Pitchers all in a row

Amazing. And did I mention that Abbie was there, too? An embarrassment of riches! Abbie's wonderful roommate Kate has equally wonderful parents, who invited them both to spend their February school vacation with them in Naples, which is quite near where we were going to be anyway...so we were lucky enough to overlap with them all a bit. We are looking forward to attending the first two games,when Spring Training actually begins, although they are day games, and it can be pretty brutal out there. When we were at the ballpark on the first day, it was so thrilling to be there, and so festive an atmosphere, it was almost rock and roll.  Suddenly we are saying "There's Koji!!" Like he was a rock star. Which, now that I mention it, I guess he is. Anyway, big thrill to be here, especially when we are escaping what we know is going on at home.

Jet Blue Park, or Fenway South

Abbie and Kate being warm in February

On to Thomas Edison. I learned a lot of things about him yesterday. Yes, he was a Jersey guy,
although he was born in Ohio. What I didn't know was he spent much of his career trying to figure out a less expensive way to make rubber. This, and a desire for more privacy, led him to southwestern Florida at a time when it was pretty much covered with jungle and mosquitoes. He bought up a lot of land in the Ft Myers area at a time when there were no roads here, no railroad could bring you here, and the journey from St. Augustine took almost a week. There were two great things for him here: a place to get away from the difficulties of fame and winter weather, and a lot of bamboo growing on the property that he bought. He spent much of his time trying to find an easier source of rubber, and also a way to make his light bulbs last longer. He was working on a bamboo filament for the light
bulb that would allow the bulb to burn long enough that people would be willing to buy into this
electricity thing. (By the way, he offered to provide electricity for the town of Ft Myers and all the
people who lived there--probable a few hundred at that point--and the town said NO. People were just too scared to want it near them.)  Anyway, he built a big laboratory here:

Inside the laboratory

and spent winters here for many years.

The thing that was most moving for me about all of this,  never mind what electricity means in general, this is the guy who brought us the PHONOGRAPH.

Early phonograph, but recognizable

When I think about what my life would be like without recorded music, I just want to fall on my knees in gratitude for this man. And MOVIES!!! Walking through his house and his laboratory and thinking about all the things that he did to change the world makes you feel humble as a human. That this kind of  grace and genius is possible among our species is pretty stunning, and amazement and
gratitude is a big part of seeing this place.

One of the more astonishing stories here is that he had a very close friend and business partner named Ezra Gilliland. This was one of his closest friends, and the man who introduced Edison to his second
wife Mina, after his first wife died at 29 and left him with three small children. Edison was so fond of Gilliland that he asked him to be his next door neighbor in Ft Myers. He built him a beautiful house next door, exactly the same as his own, with a beautiful breezy walkway between the two houses.

Everything was quite wonderful until the two of them had a falling out about some kind of business
situation, and they stopped talking. Apparently Gilliland didn't want to sell his house and move away, and Edison "encouraged" him to do so by cutting off his electricity and water! So eventually, big
surprise, he agreed to sell his house to Edison and it became the guest house, where Presidents and celebrities of all sort came to stay.

Breezeway between the houses

Edison's next neighbor was Henry Ford, who lived later on just next to the now-guest house on the same property. Ford was beholden to Edison because when everyone else told him his quadri-cycle motorized vehicle idea was crazy, Edison was his big champion. They became very good friends, and went in a Model T to the Everglades camping together, where they got drenched by a big thunderstorm. Sounded familiar to me...but way worse than mine, and not in small part because of the inventions of both men.  Ford tried to interest Edison is going into business with him, but mindful perhaps of what happened with Gilliland, he said no, and they remained friends to the end of their lives (in spite of the fact that Ford was quite an anti-Semite, which Edison apparently was not). By the way, synthetic rubber was invented while Edison was still working on other natural rubbers, so, oh well. He had invented so many things--at least one patent every year for sixty five years--that he was just on to something else.

One more thing about Edison: there is on display there a list he had made of all the ways in which a motor car was better than a horse-driven vehicle, and all the ways an electric car would be better than a gasoline-powered car. Also a quotation on the wall about how if he were going forward, he would put his money on solar power for electricity, saying that he hoped we wouldn't wait until all petroleum and other fossil fuels were gone before we learned how to make it work. Too bad.

Besides the delight of seeing Abbie and Kate, and Kate's parents, we also had the pleasure of coincidence when Bob's sister Anna and her husband Farrell were here, and we were able to spend time with them, including at the Edison and Ford estates. So great to see familiar faces! Doesn't somebody else want to overlap with us? We are going to Mobile  next, for Mardi Gras, and then on to New Orleans for a week in the Big Easy. Anybody?