Evan Bennett

I know this is no great revelation or anything, but I just wanted to get this bit of archival haunting out of my head a bit.

The fact that the girls were same age as my sisters then deepens the haunting feeling. They may have known those girls. Good chance they did, at least by sight. They easily could have been those girls. And those juries didn’t listen.

This is haunting me a bit because it could have been stopped if those Tampa juries had listened to those girls.

Turned out that he was convicted in Alabama several years later for SA on a number of women. One story said he had been linked to numerous cases across the southeast. Apparently did his assaults while on temp duty assignments.

Since the paper identified his address as near where I grew up, my curiosity got the better of me, and I looked for whatever I could find from other newspapers about him across time. Had an uncommon name.

Feeling weirded out and a bit haunted after digging into newspapers a bit. Looking at May 1975 this morning, I came across as story about an army officer on trial for SA on some teen girls. He was found not guilty despite the testimony of the victims.

I am having the hardest time wrapping my head around the idea that a onetime senator from Florida – Florida! – would say anything to dampen tourism.

Book Tampa Bay: The Story of an Estuary and Its People with silver medal in Florida Nonfiction from Florida Book Awards

Picked up something over the weekend. Thanks to the Florida Book Awards for recognizing my work.

Just saw an excellent show with the Violent Femmes and the Tallahassee Orchestra at the Word of South Festival.

I have to say, though, some of Gen X men suck at concerts. Just talk, talk, talk. Shut up already.

Cover of Grace Elizabeth Hale’s book In the Pines: A Lynching, A Lie, A Reckoning.

Just finished this. Powerful work. Suggest it for all.

Feels like yet another thing we’re losing because a few greedy people won’t be happy until they vacuum up every last dollar.

if you find yourself reluctant to support the guy at Columbia because you find some of the politics he espoused distasteful or even abhorrent, you should know that this is exactly the reaction that they hoped for in choosing him as a target for unlawful detention based on political speech.

Opinion | This Is the Greatest Threat to Free Speech Since the Red Scare (Gift Article) Mahmoud Khalil’s detention is a frightening sign of an authoritarian slide.

In case it needs to be said baldly..don't expect the university to protect you.

YouTube video by Tampa Bay History Center Florida Conversations: The Story of an Estuary and Its People

The Tampa Bay History Center posted my talk from the Florida Conversations series. Had a great time back in September. youtu.be/sjUK1DAPdZw?...

I saw a video on a Windows 98 machine booting the other day and that scan of the A: floppy drive in the boot sequence flooded my mind with memories of my corporate job.

For a little sweetness in your feed: getting ready for the school dance.

Someone save this as a first line for a history of these years.

I dig it.

Where are the FIRE guys? Oh yeah…

Property taxes: because you can’t drive grandma to the hospital and do CPR at the same time.

Some in Florida are floating the idea of getting rid of property taxes, the main source of revenue for localities. I’m no fan of high taxes, but I think we need some slogans explaining why these are needed. I’ll start.

Property Taxes: Because garden hoses aren’t good for fighting fires.

I’ve been reading Christine Dunbar-Hester’s Oil Beach and liking it quite a bit. Lissa Wadewitz’s The Nature of Borders might also make for great discussion, too, since it deals with US-Canadian fishing laws and Native usages of the salmon fishery.

😁

Since the president has signed an EO making English the official language of the United States, here is the first non-English copy of the Declaration of Independence, printed in German just days after July 4, 1776. We have always been multilingual.
cdm16274.contentdm.oclc.org/digital/coll...

I’m traveling, but other than food and gas, I’m buying nothing.

Isn’t his framing of this as an “ethnic rivalry” just another way of repeating Russian talking points?

Got to see the SS United States as it was towed past Boca Raton today on its way to be sunk off the coast near Destin. Like watching a ghost go by.

I would trust all the promises of AI more if the Facebook account for my book didn’t get the same spam message every day. Seriously, you guys can’t even develop a workable spam blocker for the exact same email? I report it every time.

It’s all about golden calves.

Wear it proudly.