Your Morning Sift

Good morning.

Welcome to Saturday morning. I'm getting an earlier-than-usual start on the day which means you get a morning Sift. Enjoy!

A- A Grand Illusion has the news that Cuban blogger Yoani Sanchez was arrested and beaten in Havana yesterday.

Fear, plain and simple. Desperate fear of what a few brave people have done with blogs and twitter accounts and the example of their courage in the face of repression and threats. And they are right to be afraid because this is the generation that will change Cuba.

Eye on Miami also has some commentary.

B- 305 went to Fantasy Fest last weekend and has the photos and video to prove it.

This was a first time for both of us, but of course, living in South Florida you always hear about the debauchery, the people wearing next to nothing, or actually nothing. Well, I had assumed, as I always do, that these were highly exaggerated stories. I mean, how many people really will walk around wearing nothing but body paint? Well, the stories were in fact true. Alcohol flows freely all day, and in the 'Fantasy Fest Zone' it's no holds barred. There's open containers, nudity and people taking pictures of it all.

C- Restaurant Gal compares her new Keys location to her old Keys location.

Old Key: Spring break madness, holiday weekend frenzy
New Key: A different festival or major event every week, it seems

Old Key: Easy parking anywhere
New Key: Park?

Old Key: Gated, hidden driveways
New Key: Gated, white picket fences

D- Mango&Lime offers up their first impressions of the new Mexican restaurant in Coral Gables called Talavera. Lots of pictures.

I should mention that service, while spotty on the first visit, was great today and management made it a point to ask for feedback. They seem to be doing things right in their first two weeks and judging from today’s crowd during lunch I’m pretty sure they’ll do well. I also know I’ll be back. I’m ordering crab enchiladas.

E- Jackie Gleason and his connection to South Florida get a nice write up from Miami Beach 411.

However, not everyone knows that Gleason had a love affair with Miami, and while rat packers Jerry Lewis and Sammy Davis, Jr. get much of the credit, it was Gleason who more than anyone established the Magic City as a television hub with his “American Scene Magazine” variety show.

Although the program had begun its run in New York in 1962, Gleason relocated it to Miami by 1964, so he could live closer to his favorite golf course, located at the Inverrary Country Club in Lauderhill, Florida.

F- The South Florida Watershed Journal explains how the Dade-Collier Jetport did its part in saving the Everglades.

But stopping the Jetport was always about saving the swamp (in the form of Big Cypress Nat’l Preserve and Fakahatchee Strand State Preserve, both established in 1974).

Or rather, stopping “progress” before it got started!

G- Rakontur posts an old video of 2LiveCrew performing some serious old school at Bobby Maduro Stadium.

H- Bark Bark Woof Woof rejoins the blogosphere after replacing their computer.

What also is impressive is how fast and big these little laptops are getting to be at the inverse ratio of cost. In 1997 I bought a Gateway PC with a 2 gig hard drive and monitor for $2,500. Twelve years later I am on my third computer since then and the price has gone down by 75% for a machine with 160 times the memory and warp speed. As I said to Bob as we left the store, five years from now I should be able to buy a computer that can run NASA for $200.

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