The Secret Word Is "Cranky"

The Sun-Sentinel has a terrific and well-written article on the electricity Haves and Have-Nots. It's very capricious: one side of the road may have power and the other not. Some of the Have-Nots are getting cranky:

Hurricane Charley has even divided families into Haves and Have-Nots. Jacqueline Silvera, 48, and her mother, who lives next door, never lost their electricity in Pine Hills. Her older sister, who lives in Apopka, did.

Silvera was cool and air conditioned. Her sister was hot and cranky.

"Everything was a problem. Everything ticked her off," Silvera said.

When her mother suggested the older sister come stay with her, the sister refused.

"She chose not to, so I said maybe she was enjoying her pity party," Silvera said.

Sisters! I bet they'll be hashing that one out for the next twenty years.

Here's the latest death toll and the circumstances for each fatality. Lee County had a North Fort Myers man crushed by a banyan tree and a Pine Island man killed by carbon monoxide from his generator.

Reader Erh has sent a link to amazing aerial photos of Charley's visit. Thanks, Erh.

There's going to be a protest in Altamonte Springs about the lack of Red Cross there. I figured something like this was coming. When I see a picture of a family in Fort Ogden with a caption saying something like "Places in Florida you don't see on the Travel Channel" and articles explaining that Florida has a "heartland", etc., I thought that it looked like the relief efforts were going to be concentrated in the larger population centers and that the rural areas might get the short end of the stick, or at least feel that way. That's one reason I was glad to see a kid like Zachary Howlett being led to go to Wauchula, which is off the beaten track. That being said, I don't know if these Altamonte Springs folk have a legitimate gripe or if they're just being cranky.
By the way, where do people think we keep our huge cattle and citrus industries? Up some South Beach tourist's butt? Don't answer- it was purely rhetorical.

And emphasizing that a man's home is his castle, a kind of nervous-looking Charlotte County man:

Posted by floridacracker at August 18, 2004 11:42 PM