14 things Florida can be thankful for

It’s the season of Thanksgiving: You know, the turkey before Christmas, the holiday with the Pilgrim hats, the football, and the frenzied online shopping.

But let us take a break from stuffing our faces and exhausting our credit cards and reflect on what we are grateful for here in Florida.

The Everglades!

Despite attacks on our River of Grass — over-use of fertilizer, runaway development, sea level rise, Burmese Pythons, and pollution from “Alligator Alcatraz” — that glorious ecosystem survives.

For now.

The Resistance!

Last month’s “No Kings” protests drew tens of thousands in more than 70 Florida cities and towns from Pensacola to Key West.

Florida may be as red as martyrs’ blood, but many of us aren’t big fans of authoritarianism or the new oligarchical class.

The (possible) return of the World’s Greatest Oyster!

After five years, the state will re-open Apalachicola Bay for two months, starting in January.

It’s only 500 acres out of 10,000, but a hopeful sign for our iconic bivalve.

Apalachicola once supplied 90% of oysters consumed in Florida, but over-harvesting, storms, and Georgia water-hogging have screwed up the special mix of fresh and saline needed to nurture the beds.

So much sunshine!

OK, it’s actually a drought, but let’s try to look on the bright side.

The Persistence of Great Journalism Against All Odds!

Public radio stations are laying off staff, newspapers are struggling, and local news is an endangered species.

As for social media, it’s a pit of vipers. Take a look at Grok, Elon Musk’s alleged answer to Wikipedia, a Hitler-praising, white supremacy-promoting, festival of misinformation.

Nevertheless, real reporters persist — and, as yet, none has been jailed.

Without the indefatigable reporting of Julie Brown (Miami Herald), the Jeffrey Epstein story may have faded away; in Guilty of Grief, Carol Marbin Miller (also of the Herald) showed how our fractured mental health system (and our cops) fail the vulnerable.

Michael Barfield of the Florida Trident last year exposed the rank hypocrisy of the morally elastic then-head of the Florida Republican Party and his Moms for Liberty co-founder wife in all their kinky glory.

The Tampa Bay Times now has no fewer than four environmental reporters watch-dogging water quality, endangered species, and developers’ determination to pave every inch of Florida.

We need to know about Big Phosphate depredations and why corals are dying.

We need the weekly columns by the Florida Phoenix’s own Craig Pittman, uncovering (among other things) the absurd plan to pay a big-time DeSantis campaign donor $80 million in taxpayer money to “conserve” four acres of environmentally insignificant land.

Universities are still educating!

Most of them, anyway.

Despite the sad destruction of New College and the assaults on the universities of Florida, West Florida, South Florida, and others, students continue to read, question, and ponder.

Gov. Ron DeSantis seems determined to wreck what was once quite a good state university system, clamping down on the study of race, gender, and history, hiring unqualified politicians as college presidents, and trying to inculcate conservatism through outfits like the UF’s Hamilton Center for Classical and Civics Education with its emphasis on American exceptionalism and Western Civilization.

DeSantis also wants to clamp down on those damned foreigners with their fancy degrees from Harvard and Oxford and the Sorbonne and their H1B visas, coming in to teach neuroscience, particle physics, and archaeology.

Yeah, who needs Nobel Prize-winners? But until the administration comes for them, professors will keep pushing students to search for real information (not the AI kind) and think for themselves.

George Clinton!

The Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Famer, Grammy Award-winner and intergalactic groover lives in Tallahassee.

He’s 85, still writing, still bringing the funk, still connecting with the Mothership.

Listen carefully and you’ll hear “Atomic Dog” floating on the wind.

Doctors who still believe in science!

According to KFF, a respected health policy foundation, Florida has one of the lowest rates of childhood immunization in the nation.

Hardly surprising, given that the state surgeon general says eating fruit is as good as getting a COVID booster, and kids don’t really need vaccines for measles, mumps, rubella, Hepatitis B, diptheria, pertussis, polio, chicken pox, and other diseases that are not as fun as they sound.

Joseph Ladapo likens vaccine mandates to slavery (he clearly needs to read up on slavery) and wants them abolished.

But physicians and pharmacists who can distinguish peer-reviewed science from RFK Jr.-style nonsense strenuously resist this dangerous nonsense.

Go to CVS or Publix or your doctor’s office. Get the right jabs.

Dying of preventable disease is not cool.

Spring in North Florida!

Y’all south of the Suwannee might not know this, but up here we have four seasons. Sometimes the one we call “Fall” is only two days long, but the other three are pretty identifiable.

Come early February, the tulip trees are covered in perfumed blossoms, the daffodils and redbuds are out, and soon after the azaleas burst forth in pinks, whites, and magentas.

Hurricane season is over. (Probably). It’s cool, sometimes cold. If the pecan trees haven’t begun to bud, we’re still likely to have a freeze.

Come see it; you’ll like it.

Just don’t move here.

Writers!

Our retrograde politics and epic weirdness may not make for good social policy, but they are creative gold.

Despite — perhaps because of? — the government’s attempts to ban books that make them nervous, combined with a certain level of cultural backwardness, Florida is flush with extraordinary writers.

Judy Blume, author of “Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret,” lives in Key West; Lauren Groff, three-time National Book Award finalist, is in Gainesville; Bob Shacochis, actual National Book Award-winner, spends half the year in Tallahassee; Carl Hiaasen is down in Vero Beach, where he continues to write books so outlandish he has to call them fiction, even though they’re based on genuine Florida surreality.

There are many, many more, including Stephen King, who’s transplanted himself to Sarasota, which is probably way scarier than Maine.

The food!

Key lime pie, grouper, smoked mullet, tupelo honey, pink shrimp, stone crabs, tres leches cake, conch fritters, Cuban sandwiches, Minorcan chowder, Plant City strawberries, mayhaw jelly, spiny lobster, boiled peanuts …

Christmas!

It’s almost here.

Actually, if you’ve been in a store of any kind, it’s already here: lights, trees, Santa, angels, elves, the whole damn circus.

But Christmas as most of us celebrate it, i.e. in December, is a rare few days in which the news might not splatter its psychic mess quite so relentlessly.

Turn off the screens. Go outside. Read a book.

Low taxes?

For people who own their own homes, that is.

Ron DeSantis likes to call us “The Free State of Florida.” While we’re not all that free (ask any teacher or renter or someone trying to afford health insurance or property insurance.) Her regards property taxes not as the contribution you make to fund the community you live in, but some kind of government theft.

To that end, he wants to abolish most of them.

He says we’ll keep the part that funds schools and cops, but as for those local government fripperies — parks, libraries, road maintenance, poverty programs, clinics, clean water — Free Floridians are on their own.

Expect your sales taxes to go up.

Even Republicans think this is nuts. Jeff Brandes, a former state senator, says, “It’s not really a proposal, it’s a bumper sticker, right?” and calls it “policy malpractice.”

2026 is coming!

Speaking of Ron DeSantis, he’s only got another year to smash things up around here.

That’s plenty of time to do more damage, but maybe the Legislature will finally understanding that the governor is increasingly irrelevant, probably politically finished, and ignore his tantrums.

Of course, he may be plotting another run for president.

But we should remember the Nation took a good look at him in 2024 and the Nation said, “Oh, hell no!”

For that, we can truly be truly thankful.

Florida Phoenix is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Florida Phoenix maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Michael Moline for questions: info@floridaphoenix.com.

---

Subscribe to Creative Loafing newsletters.

Follow us: Google News | NewsBreak | Reddit | Instagram | Facebook | BlueSky

---

This article appears in Nov. 20 – 26, 2025.