Episode description

Merry Christmas everyone. Craig Pittman and Chadd Scott begin this week's episode of "Welcome to Florida" with unusual ways in which the holiday has been celebrated around the state.

20 years ago, a multi-billion dollar, bipartisan, multi-agency, decades-long plan to restore the Everglades to a more natural water flow and ecology was signed by President Bill Clinton and hailed as a fix for what ailed the 'Glades and a model of future ecosystem-scale conservation and environmental restoration globally. Since then, hardly a fraction of what was envisioned has been completed. Craig wrote about this in the Florida Phoenix online and we discuss.

Today's guest is Michael Ray FitzGerald, author of Jacksonville and the Roots of Southern Rock. Michael had a front row seat as a rock music fan living in Jacksonville when the musicians who would make up the Marshall Tucker Band, Lynyrd Skynyrd and Molly Hatchet came through Jacksonville on their way to superstardom. Why Jacksonville? Why that name? How does an undercurrent of racist imagery haunt their work? We discuss all of this and more.