And the award goes to...

Just got back from Tallahassee three hours ago. Last night’s Florida Heritage Awards ceremony - which includes the Florida Book Awards - was quite special. A number of fascinating Floridians were there to pick up awards: country songwriter Mel Tillis, the niece of Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings (she called her ‘my Aunt Margie’), and the Western Hemisphere’s last living builder of authentic Greek sponge fishing boats. I met some very cool people including John Dufresne, whose novel Requiem, Mass. won the gold medal for General Fiction. When it was my turn to pick up the award, I bolted onstage, did the shake-and-smile with Charlie Crist, then mysteriously disappeared into the darkness of the auditorium (actually I went straight to the bathroom - I had a few Guinness before the event). Afterwards, we hit Urbane for dinner (the duck breast over soba noodles and spinach was killer).

On the way home we stopped at the Florida Citrus Center near Lake City, where I was disturbed yet fascinated by the display of preserved baby sharks. They were a hundred of these tiny, schlocky Damien Hirsts, going for $20 a pop. I was waiting for Robert Shaw and his tattered porkpie to pop up from behind the ceramic flamingo Elvises. “And the thing about a shark… he’s got lifeless eyes. Black eyes. Like a doll’s eyes.”  

When I got home, I gave the medal to Jackson. He promptly placed it next to his own medal, which he received at this year’s trike-a-thon. 

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