Spanish Heritage Month & the Quiet Tropics...

Lying in bed, netbook on my lap and sipping a cafecito while watching the Miami Dolphins play on Monday Night Football!



That's right!! This is the high light of my day, my week... and if they win it may be my highlight of the month!! I just saw Gloria Estevan singing for Monday Night Football and heard a referee give his call in Spanish as a part of this tribute by Monday Night Football to Spanish Heritage Month! I am so happy I feel almost home and almost forget I am not Spanish. I just think I am sometimes... must be all those genetic memories of distant relatives living in Key West and Ybor City back at the turn of the century. All those trips to Cuba to buy tobacco for their plantations in Northern Florida. My early childhood at South Side Elementary in old Miami was punctuated by Hurricane Donna arriving for school the first week I began my academic education. A few years later the Cuban Missile Crises and Cuban airlift brought more Marys into my life but instead of being old time Miami redneck Irish girls they were now speaking Spanish and nothing was ever the same.

http://miamidade.expertrealty.com/miami-schools/southside-elementary-school

The school sits neatly tucked away in the Brickell business district just a few blocks from The Miami River and beautiful Biscayne Bay. And, it is currently highlighted as a Museum Magnet school offering a bilingual education.

http://southside.dadeschools.net/

It was at Southside I learned about hurricanes and football while watching the cute boys play in the big open yard on a warm September afternoon while we cheered the guys on during recess...while hoping another hurricane would come to Miami and give us a few days vacation from school!!

Well Virginia, there are no hurricanes in the tropics this fall. No tropical storms swirling about on satellite imagery. As a matter of fact, there are not even any clouds in the Caribbean worth talking about and yet I will. Because late October often brings a brief break and creates just the right formula for a quasi sort of storm to develop down near Cuba and to find a front moving down south across Florida and that front is that storms ticket out of the tropics. Or..sometimes a storm forms at the end of the first few dead fronts that make it down across Florida and linger around the Florida Straits where low pressure often forms.



Of course, this is 2009 and not most years and my hurricane friends have taken to going to therapy four times a week and knitting. That's right knitting :( Cute little table toppers with cyclonic patterns and bursts of coordinated colors. No, I am not making this up...

So... if you are here for the tropics.. here are some loops to watch and there is a secret voodoo weather curse that you can try if you want one last flirtation with tropical weather before it's all over (and most would say it's all over already) but if you really believe. Take out your Hurricane City Tee Shirt or a University of Miami Hurricanes Football Jersey if you have one and go to the nearest beach, find a palm tree by the Ocean and stare out into the beautiful turquoise water and scream out into the wind "EW EVOL SENAC!!!!" Trust me..this really works. You either get a hurricane or a drop dead gorgeous FPL lineman... either would be just fine and dandy with me!!

http://www.ssd.noaa.gov/goes/east/tatl/ft-l.jpg

http://cimss.ssec.wisc.edu/tropic/real-time/tpw2/natl/anim/latest72hrs.gif

Okay...enough of the private jokes for my friends and hoping my brother Jay is not choking on his Greek Beer while listening to the Dolphin Game on NFL Field Pass!! :)

As for the Fins... I am seriously hoping that the interview today on CNN with Mercury Morris will sprinkle enough Dolphin magic to beat the Jets in what is already their typical shoot out complete with great passing, running and high scoring drama.

There I was today, editing a manuscript for someone in Israel only half watching CNN when I look up and see a palm frond and a city by the Bay and I'm like "Wow! It's Miami!" and it then it hits me that the guy who who is being interviewed is Mercury Morris!! I was so excited I took a picture... with my cell phone and sent it to my brother. Understand I LOVE Mercury Morris, he is one of my all time favorite Miami Dolphins.

Controversial interview but that aside... there they are Rick Sanchez (from Miami TV) interviewing Mercury Morris on CNN!! Love it. He is indeed the Pride of South Florida. Great player, educated speaker even on controversial topics but Mercury Morris never shied away from doing a long sweep of the field and outrunning everyone chasing him.



So there you go... a storm of words in the tropics about a controversial subject by a Hispanic Reporter during Spanish Heritage Month!!

I was kinda hoping for Hurricane Grace...but we don't always get what we wish for.. and sometimes we do..

Tonight I am wishing for a Dolphin Win!!

Tomorrow I am packing to go back to Miami, where I will sit and sip cafecito and watch palm fronds flutter in tropical breeze and listen to the sounds of the city with it's heart beating, traffic beeping, people moving and lord it's one big Conga line of life, emotion and passion that you can't find anywhere except in Miami. Myami as the locals call it... MYami ;)

And, tonight as much as I think the Jets new quarterback is drop dead gorgeous and talented I am loving Ricky Williams and Ronnie Brown and the Wildcat Offense and my cafecito which was made with my espresso maker from my crazy friend. (Thank you! And, okay we are both crazy ;) lol)

Go Fins!

Come on Grace this can't be THAT hard!!

Come on My-amee... show me some tropical weather.. please...

Besos Bobbi..

Ps... controversial interview between two of Miami's very own...Raleigh is nice and pretty with fall colors but it does not pulsate or groove the way Miami does... Wow! Joe Namath is at Landshark Stadium watching the game.. only in Miami!!