When Jax Banned Mickey Spillane

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Ron DeSantis didn’t invent Florida book banning. When Jax banned Mickey Spillane, the tough-talking crime novelist and his “blonde bombshell” wife Sherri came to town. Activist Warren Folks wanted all funding for the Jacksonville Public Library system halted until every book was screened. Spillane said if Folks thought this book was bad, “Wait until he sees the next one!”

The Urban Legend(s) of “Barefoot Bill”

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“Barefoot Bill” seemed to be everywhere in Jacksonville at once, a phantom menace, a “burglar bugaboo,” pilfering bedrooms of prominent citizens as they ate dinner downstairs. Whether or not he ever existed, Bill made headlines from the 19-aughts to the 1930s and as far away as South Carolina. Maybe he’s out there still.

Robert Broward’s Favorite Design: The Unitarian Universalist Church of Jacksonville

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Recuperating from a nearly fatal car crash, architect Robert Broward drew the first sketches of his design for the Unitarian Universalist Church of Jacksonville in his hospital bed. Near the end of his life, he said it was his favorite design.

Banned Book Displays at Chamblin’s!

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As books are banned in schools across Florida, as teachers and students feel increasingly threatened by the State, as Florida politicians seek to make education “ideological,” saying, “Education is our sword,” banned book displays at Jacksonville’s Chamblin Bookmine and Chamblin’s Uptown encourage reading banned books and parents use banned book lists as shopping lists.

Remembering My Father on His Birthday

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Today my father would be 99 years old. It’s been almost four years since he died of Congestive Heart Failure. The Georgia he came from seems both nearby and like another planet. I couldn’t be more different from my father, and I couldn’t be more similar. Here’s a story I wrote on my mother’s birthday, my older daughter’s birthday, two days after my father passed away.

Hunter’s Mill and the Cursed Waterfront

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The East Jacksonville waterfront lies vacant where Shad Kahn talks of building a Four Seasons Hotel. Long ago, before workers built 82 ships here in World War II, Hunter’s Mill and the waterfront sawmills were violent places, full of arson, murder and suicide.

Recalling the Childhood Terrors of Mr. Peanut

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Something wasn’t right about him, the 54-foot-tall man-legume who looked down at children in their parents’ cars. Some kids just remember the joys of popping roasted peanuts into their fizzing Cokes at the Planter’s Peanut Store. The giant Mr. Peanut on Arlington Expressway didn’t last long, but oh how he left his mark!

The Evolution of Broward’s Butterfly House

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When Robert Broward designed his famous Mid-Century Modern “Butterfly House” in 1957, he used rainwater and sunlight as materials. In the early ’60s, Fred Nachman added pecky cypress and clad the house in Gothic iron. When Kathryn Stater purchased it in 2016, it was on the verge of demolition. Now it’s more itself than it’s ever been.

A Poet’s Circle: Francis Poole’s 55 Years & Thousands of Miles

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In 1968, Francis Poole had been chasing Soviet submarines up and down the East Coast when he started college on a campus made of former military barracks and published his first poems in a new student-led magazine named The Experience. When he returns in early February, his circle will have come through Morocco and Portugal and 55 years of writing and publishing poetry.

Florida State College at Jacksonville’s Original Shero: Professor Mildred Barnert

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At first, Professor Barnert’s protest was tame. Florida Junior College had fired her, but wouldn’t say why. Faculty had no tenure, no union. After Barnert’s “sleep-in” made the front page of The Jacksonville Journal, male administrators rated her looks and belittled her. Though she loved her students, she didn’t need the job. She protested “on principle” and won rights for those who followed.