There sure are a lot of blogs focused on Miami these days. In addition to various personal sites I've recently discovered, there are a lot of community event and commentary sites cropping up, some of them parts of growing blog empires.

The Metroblogging empire has set up shop with Metroblogging Miami, and the -ist organization (of Gothamist, Chicagoist, Paducah-ist, et al) has opened Miamist. It will be interesting to see how these develop in the months ahead.

I've mentioned Critical Miami before, and Alesh has noticed this influx of city-centered sites, too. I wonder if it has anything to do with the start of Art Basel, or possibly the impending opening of MPAC? Could it be that between these two the intelligentsia of the blogging world have deemed Miami worthy of notice?

There have been other, less city-focused sites coming to my attention lately. One such is Stuck on the Palmetto, new but off to a strong start. Another is Miamity, a site which recently ended up with national coverage due to the unwelcome attention of UM Hurricanes fans. (Really, is there any other kind?) In spite of being evicted from campus housing for a blog post, He's come through it just fine, though, and is contributing to the aforementioned Metroblogging Miami. I'm certain there are many others out there I just haven't noticed yet. It's getting crowded in Developer City.

But to help keep track of it all, Dave of Space Coast Web has put together a promising compendium of Florida weblogs. He has something more formal than an updated blog entry planned, so if you are interested in personal publishing in Florida, keep an eye on his site.

I briefly entertained the notion of doing something resembling journalism and getting in line at 4:00am Friday, just so I could report back to you all on the madness. Fortunately I came to my senses long enough to know that 20% of the people in line at Best Buy were likely to be journalists doing the same thing, so I stayed safely in bed.

I did venture out, though, primarily to buy myself some DVDs. While in the extraordinarily long and serpentine queue, I was less than delighted to turn a corner and discover that someone had thrown up all over the floor next to the display refrigerators. This did not deter the intrepid shoppers at all, mind you, who simply held their noses and navigated around it, loss leader portable DVD players hugged to their chests like digital newborns. When the line finally approached the actual registers, the fellow in front of me told the line manager about the biohazard around the corner.

"Hey, dude, someone up-chucked back there."

"What?"

"You know, up-chucked. Threw up. Vomited."

"Oh, you'll need to go to the customer service desk about that."

I glanced that direction, and flashed back to 1980s-era Moscow bread lines. Oh well, I got my stuff, let someone else deal with it. It's the American way.

This is perhaps the fourth year I've done this, so just like Uncle George getting drunk before dinner and falling asleep at the table, you just need to get used to it and be thankful it only happens once a year. And if you are new to Hidden City, I hope you enjoy William S. Burroughs reading his routine, A Thanksgiving Prayer

For those of a less cynical inclination, here's a recipe. I am not much of a cook, but there are two things I make well, butter cookies, and cranberry sauce. Here is the current incarnation of the latter, which I will be bringing to my father's home later today. When I brought it to work for a party, even friends who don't like the taste of cranberries unless there's vodka involved wanted the recipe.

Spiced Cranberry Sauce, 2005 Edition

1 bag whole cranberries, rinsed
1 cup white sugar
1 cup dark rum
1 tablespoon orange zest
2 tablespoons grated crystallized ginger
1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
1 cinnamon stick

Put everything but the cranberries into a fairly large pot and bring it to a boil, stirring frequently. Keep stirring for a minute or two, until you are sure all the sugar is dissolved, then add the rinsed cranberries a handful at a time until they are all in the pot.

Stir occasionally until the liquid returns to a boil. You will see the skins of the berries start to split, and may even get some popping, so watch out for burning sugary napalm. Turn the heat down to medium low, cover the pot, and let it simmer for ten minutes or so, stirring occasionally.

Turn off the burner and allow the sauce to cool to room temperature in the pot on the stove, covered. This will take a couple of hours. Once it has cooled completely it will have the consistency of preserves.

Transfer it to another container, removing the cinnamon stick when you find it. Refrigerate it overnight, and you've now got a little over two cups of cranberry sauce.

Tips from personal experience

• Use a pot with high side, because as this starts to turn into something resembling syrup it will bubble up like mad.
• Don't get in a hurry and transfer it directly from the heat to the fridge. It will never set properly.
• I used dried orange zest and it works fine, but you'll get better results with fresh. If you are using the dried variety, throw in a couple of tablespoons of orange juice.
• If you have leftovers, it freezes very nicely. It also makes a surprisingly good peanut butter and jelly sandwich.
• Resist the urge to take a deep whiff of the pre-cranberry mixture as it is boiling. While it will smell wonderful, you will also get a snoot full of alcohol vapor.

Happy thanksgiving to my American friends, and happy Thursday to the Canadians and Bavarians in the crowd.

The book fair is over, but I'm still determined to pass along those anecdotes and bits of wisdom I gleaned from the sixteen writers whose presentations I attended. I found them interesting, but your mileage may, of course, vary.

I wonder if shy writers simply refuse to tour? All of the authors I saw ranged from competent to extremely entertaining in terms of their speaking style. Some were dryly witty, such as Margaret Atwood, while others could easily move to doing stand-up, as was the case with Jennifer Weiner [weblog]. Some were clearly more comfortable fielding audience questions than reading from their work, such as Maureen Dowd. Terry McMillan was tremendously funny, both in her reading and in her Q&A session, but she was constantly fidgeting at the podium, so perhaps she was more uncomfortable than it might appear. And predictably, the TV star authors were perfectly at home in front of an audience.

Authors are stereotypically described as introverted, to the point where "shy and bookish" is a cliche. In my own experience I find that while writing is a solitary activity, the more I write the more I crave social interaction. I know several writers visit Hidden City; what do you think? If you are too shy to comment publicly, send a message to mkhall at gmail dot-com.

Still no time to write, between the book fair, a birthday celebration, a visiting friend, and personal fatigue. However...

• Just to piss off Pat Robertson, Gamma decided not to visit South Florida.
• The book fair has been great. So far this year I've heard Margaret Atwood, Mike Wallace, Terry MacMillan, Maureen Dowd, Eric Bogosian, Gregory Maguire, James, Shapiro, Daisy Martinez, Brini Maxwell, Ted Allen, Steven Shaw, and the legendary Rock Bottom Remainders. None have disapointed me.

With any luck I'll be back with more this evening.

C'mon, seriously, enough already!

Here are a few scattered notes regarding Sunday afternoon's kickoff of the 22nd annual Miami Book Fair International.

The first event was An Afternoon With Margaret Atwood, author of dozens of books but best known for The Handmaid's Tale. She is touring to promote her new book The Penelopiad, a retelling of the Odyssey from the perspective of Penelope, wife of Odysseus. Atwood has a very droll humor, and a good reader, if a bit too soft-spoken for the room and restless crowd.

When asked the traditional author question — "Where do you get your ideas?" — Atwood responded with instructions for the questioner.

"How do you get ideas? Put your left hand on the desk, put your right hand in the air, close your eyes, and wait. You have now turned yourself into a conductor for ideas, like a lightning rod. Ideas will course through you, and if one happens to go through your brain, you have a good chance of catching it."

In the signing line I asked her how work was progressing on her Unotchit machine. To my surprise she looked up from the page with her eyes glowing, and proceeded to launch into an explanation of the current state of the project. The technology is sound, they've done a real-world demo now, and early next year will see the first public use at an English bookseller. We were starting to discuss the technical hurdles she has faced in development when her handler gave me a very evil look and started sliding more books under Atwood's pen. A raised eyebrow and a shrug later I was on my way.

Life has not returned to normal in South Florida, although most people are pretending that it has. All day Saturday and Sunday there was earth moving machinery in my neighborhood, scooping up piles of branches, waterlogged furniture, and other debris from the street.

I guess these crews have been at it for a while, since the boxcar-like trash haulers were equipped with underslung hammocks. Smoke 'em if you got 'em, I suppose.

I have returned from the biosphere weirdness of Orlando, and have power at home. Actually, I returned Wednesday night, but betweeen catching up on work and taking care of some other business there's not been a lot of free time.

One odd and entirely unwelcome side effect of Wilma is that my internal timer is completely out of whack. I have always been a night owl by nature — I don't function well in the mornings, even with a liberal aapplication of caffeine, and start to hit my stride around 4-5:00pm, not usually tiring out until well after midnight. However, being without power for two weeks has modified this. These days I wake up at 5:00am, become quasi-functional around noon, and am ready for sleep by 8-9:00 at the latest. While I know some of you work this way all the time, I hate it. This puts me in the awkward position of having nearly all of my useful and creative hours take place during the work day, so now more than ever my life revolves around my job. I am already enough of a workaholic; I feel no need to move further in that direction.

Fortunately, I have taken today off to clean the house. (I know how to have fun, don't I?) Once I accomplish my errands, I need to set to work evicting the lifeforms which invaded my warm, dark, humid, and thankfully empty refrigerator during its weeks without power. I am hoping that Agent Orange will be enough, but I have procured a flamethrower as backup. (C'mon, this is Miami, you can get military gear from the same guys who sell bottled water and mangoes on thr Gratigny Parkway.) As it may take a while for it to cool down after the detox, I am eternally grateful to the dear friends who sent me boxed, canned, and bagged foodstuffs. Although they arrived right after my power was restored, it's comforting to have a stocked pantry again. Besides, one can never have too many Pop Tarts!

In local news, the 2005 Miami Boook Fair International begins Sunday afternoon with presentations by Margaret Atwood and Mike Wallace. (I'll let you know if Atwood signs her own books, or uses her automated book signing machine.) If you are interested in books at all and live in the South Florida area, you owe it to yourself to visit the fair.

I am currently attending a conference at the Gaylord Palms Resort in Kissimmee, Florida. Once I get back to Miami I'll write more about it, but here's the short version: I feel like I'm staying in one of the domed forests from Silent Running.

It's pleasant enough, in a Splenda kind of way, but still somehow disturbing.

I received a phone call at 11:46 pm Sunday night. Diana had gone to feed HobGoblin, and found that my power has been restored.

Now I just have to wait for this conference to end, so I can get home and start swabbing out the refrigerator with bleach. Do I know how to live or what?

At about 1:00am I woke up to the sound of my neighbors talking on their porch. They are usually pretty quiet, so the shouts of "¡Oye! We need you!" were out of character. I threw on a shirt and headed outside.

An FPL truck was stopped in the street in front of their house. The woman next door was chatting with the driver, who was explaining that we wouldn't be getting our power back until Thursday at the earliest. She pointed out that her father is diabetic and takes insulin, which needs to be kept cool. Each day she needs to go to the FEMA station to pick up another bag of ice, often requiring a significant wait in line.

The FPL driver was sympathetic, but told her that most of the crews were being redirected up to Broward County to increase the company's "percentage restored" statistics for the daily press release. He suggested that her best course of action would be to call the customer service line and explain her situation, and hope for an understanding operator.

Well, I guess she was successful. (I confess, she's a very persuasive young woman.) This morning I noticed another truck on the street, and when I walked out a fellow in a hard hat told me I should have power by late tonight.

This is sadly humorous timing, as I am writing this while in a van on my way to Orlando for a business conference. With luck my friends will report the return of power later today, and I'll be able to look forward to air conditioning on my return home.

Typing and reading in the darkness has apparently affected my eyesight. Even in a friend's well-lit kitchen today I was having trouble reading. Ah, well, I needed new glasses, anyway.

There was a fleet of power and landscaping trucks in my neighborhood today. Two very large Australian pines were chainsawed across the street, and now tonight the area to the south of me has power. Unfortunately, the fleet has left the 'hood and gone several blocks to the west, so there'll be no joy tonight.

I still don't have power, and the word on the street — where the street is defined as a acquaintance's father who works for FPL — is that I might not get electricity back until December. I am so very terribly tired of all this, but I don't feel as though I have a right to complain, compared to others here. This region is still seriously fucked up.

Other than the godawful traffic, for most residents of the area life has returned to normal. When I speak to co-workers and mention that I still don't have power, they are aghast, as if I casually mentioned having some archaic disease long thought eradicated. For the people in the powered enclaves, there is only the lingering annoyance of landscaping bills and trash removal, but everything else is business as usual.

But there are people who had been living in their non-powered homes until the rains came this week, when it became obvious there wasn't enough roof left to protect their families. Entire apartment buildings are being condemned, and there's no temporary housing available for the tenants. The lack of power to run the water system has caused raw sewage to back up into streets, parking lots, and homes in some areas. There are still 166,100 people in Miami-Dade county without electricity. And many, many people have lost their jobs as their employers have gone out of business while waiting for services t return.

Wilma's effects are sneaky. There wasn't the widespread destruction of a Hugo, Katrina, or Andrew, with panoramic vistas of flattened suburbs or flooded landmarks. The devastation in South Florida is more personal, and less telegenic. Our infrastructure failed, largely due to inadequate preparations. The people failed to take their own precautions. And placed beside the scarring images of the downfall of a major American city, it looks as though nothing happened here at all.

But something did, and we'll be feeling its effects for years to come. And just in case you might have forgotten, this was only a Category One storm.

Things are weird here in lovely South Florida, which could support the thesis that nothing's really changed since Wilma's arrival.

You know, I wonder if I'll ever be able to think of candlelight as romantic again after all this? That's right, still no power.

Two of my co-workers found interesting solutions to getting their power back up. One hooked it up herself. She noticed that the only problem seemed to be one wire coming from the pole to the back of her house was pulled out of the socket, so she got up on a ladder and plugged it back in. Please note: the management of Hidden City does not at all endorse this solution to a power outage, and in fact thinks this woman is a fucking lunatic in the best of times (but a charming French lunatic).

The other co-worked solved their problem the American way: bribery. The utility worker told someone at the apartment building that they weren't scheduled for repair for another week, so a hat was passed around the complex, and the proceeds given in a plain envelope to the worker. Their power was restored the same night.

I placed an order with Amazon.com the other day, and it was scheduled for delivery today. Apparently everyone is getting a little touchy about hurricane-related troubles, as is shown by the detailed excuse-slinging UPS indulged in for a sixty-second delay in processing. It is a little creepy that UPS has to have a code for "A natural disaster caused this delay."

That's a map of the North Miami area, as provided by FPL. Each of those red triangles represents a home without power, and that's only the small section I cut for this post. South Florida doesn't look like it has freckles, it looks like it has third degree burns, with no relief in sight. [Edit: The entire Miami-Dade County map is a PDF located here.]

It's really disheartening, rushing home from the office and leaving work half-done, trying to beat the darkness. I always start to get my hopes up when I exit I-95, thinking that maybe today I'll see that my neighbors have put away the orange extension cord they are using to share a generator across my street. And then I get home, and my porch light is still dark. It's difficult to stay focused and optimistic when you know you'll be spending another night sweating in the darkness.

Even among the people who have their major services back an inescapable fatigue has set in. Many of my friends and co-workers are still too out of sorts from the disrupted routine to want to do much of anything. Some of this, I'm sure, is traffic related, as it is damned close to impossible to get anywhere with all the funky traffic signals and stressed-out drivers. And some of it is the lack of reliable information, movie theaters and restaurants still advertised as open while they are powerless. Some is undeniably the result of the constant — and largely necessary — 24/7 post-storm news assault: children electrocuted, another family asphyxiated by carbon monoxide from a generator exhaust, traffic fatalities from malfunctioning lights, even a supply of emergency bottled water that turned out to contain toxic algae. You can't escape Wilma, and after a while she just sucks the life from you.

When I look out my window I see the lights of Barry University, just a few blocks and a world away. And here I am, typing by candlelight in my increasingly disgusting house, cooled only by a USB-powered fan, trying to keep the hope alive that maybe tomorrow will be my day.

The brown windows on the back building in this photo are plywood. This is not atypical of high-rises in downtown Miami. I don't know the construction year for the building in question, but I would guess it dates to the late '70s, back in the golden age of contracting graft, exceeded only by the cocaine cowboy era of the '80s, and possibly the first building boom of the '20s. I'm sure many shady operators wipe a tear when they think of those halcyon days before Hurricane Andrew, when all your needed to build a subdivision or an office park was a winning smile, a sketch on a cocktail napkin, and a briefcase full of unmarked bills. Ah, those were the days!

In other news, it's raining, leaving the air humid and still. The weather is now slowing down the restoration of service to those poor, sad bastards still in the dark. Yes, I am one of those poor, sad bastards.

Okay, I know that this isn't that bad compared to what people in the Gulf are still going through, but I am really tired of this darkness. My cicadian rhythms are getting all out of whack — I am waking up at 6:00 ready to milk the cows, and by 7:00 at night I'm ready for sleep. I may be from Kentucky, but I am not a farmer at heart. This is almost nine days without power, and the neighborhood all around me is starting to light up. It's my turn.

Yeah, I'll stop whining. I'm not out of rum yet.