The most comprehensive exhibition of the Nobel laureate’s visual art to be held in the U.S. goes on display on Tuesday in Miami at the Patricia & Phillip Frost Art Museum. Forty new pieces by the 80-year-old songwriter will be showcased for the first time.

The exhibition with more than 180 acrylics, watercolors, drawings, and ironwork sculptures will kick off the same week as Art Basel Miami Beach and will run through April 17 with no future stops announced yet. Tickets are $16 and are booked by hourly slots.

“Retrospectrum” includes some of Dylan’s works from the 1960s, starting with pencil sketches he made of his songs such as “Highway 61 Revisited” and “Like a Rolling Stone.” His pieces, loaned from private collections around the world, also include abstract sketches from the 1970s, and covers six large rooms. But the vast majority was created in the past 15 years.

“He was recognized in every possible way as a writer, as a composer, as a singer, as a performer, and so on. It is now that the audience sees also the last element,” said Shai Baitel, who conceived the show as the artistic director of the Modern Art Museum Shanghai, where it debuted. “Dylan is able to express himself in so many ways.”

A breathtaking giant canvas of a sunset in Monument Valley on the Utah-Arizona line serves as an introduction to Dylan’s newest works. He has mentioned his admiration of Western movie director John Ford, who used that same iconic landscape in many of his films.

Past the wall with the painting of the reddish buttes is a room with the new series called “Deep Focus,” named after a technique in cinematography where nothing is blurred out.

“All these images come from films. They try to highlight the different predicaments that people find themselves in,” Dylan is quoted as saying in one of the walls. “The dreams and schemes are the same — life as it’s coming at you in all its forms and shapes.

Dylan offers a lot of city life the way Ashcan School artists advocated when they depicted realistic images of people’s hardships at the turn of the 20th century.

A jazz band plays in a colorful club in one of the paintings; a gray-haired man counts wads of cash in another. He depicts two men fighting in a boxing match and portrays a woman sitting alone at a bar drinking and smoking with an intriguing look on her face.

Linking the images of Dylan’s latest works to specific movies will take some internet sleuthing.

Richard F. Thomas is a Harvard University classicist who has studied and written about Dylan. He said in an essay for the exhibit that he found online references tying one of the paintings showing a man in a black leather jacket pouring sugar on his coffee to a scene at a diner in the 1981 film “The Loveless,” where actor Willem Dafoe embodies a biker.

Thomas found a scene from the 1971 movie ”Shaft” with actor Richard Roundtree ordering street food in Times Square. Other new works show cowboys, men in undershirts, and barber’s poles, another recurring object used by Dylan.

“Just like the scenes he has been creating in songs for all these years, the scenes of ‘Deep Focus’ will keep Dylan scholars busy in the years to come,” Thomas wrote.

Besides the works in his new series, other works that will be shown in Miami have been previously exhibited in places such as the Halcyon Gallery and the National Portrait Gallery in London.

Previous paintings reflect images of America from the point of view of a road traveler. Realistic depictions of diners, motels, marquees, gas stations, and railway tracks appear frequently throughout his artwork.

“It’s almost like looking at a pamphlet of his memories,” Baitel, the artistic director, said.

Dylan has also experimented with perspective, seemingly imitating the work of Vincent Van Gogh in “The Bedroom” to paint corners of a New York City apartment. And he has done variations by drawing the same characters changing the color of the backdrops and their clothing, or just depicting them at a different time of the day, like Claude Monet’s Rouen Cathedral series.

The exhibit has some interactive displays for music fans. The 64 cards with words from the lyrics of “Subterranean Homesick Blues” that he flipped through in one of the earliest music videos ever made were framed and lined up in eight columns by eight rows, while the clip is played on loop.

It’s not yet clear whether Dylan, who is currently on tour for his 39th album “Rough and Rowdy Ways” will pay a visit.

Jordana Pomeroy, director of the Patricia & Phillip Frost Art Museum, said it will be its first ticketed event since the museum first opened in 2008. The Florida International University will be holding a symposium on Dylan inviting scholars to discuss the songwriter’s entire body of work.

“That’s the treatment we are going to give Bob Dylan,” Pomeroy said.

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Bob Dylan artwork show opens in Miami, new cinema paintings

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The four crew members are not the first space tourists this year. In the past few months, the world witnessed billionaires Richard Branson and Jeff Bezos launching themselves and a lucky few others into space on brief suborbital trips.

While there are similarities between those launches and Inspiration4 – the mission is being paid for by one billionaire and is using a rocket built by another, Elon Musk – the differences are noteworthy. From my perspective as a space policy expert, the mission’s emphasis on public involvement and the fact that Inspiration4 put regular people into orbit where they will stay for three days makes it a milestone in space tourism.

Why Inspiration4 is different

The biggest difference between Inspiration4 and the flights performed earlier this year is the destination.

Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic took – and in the future, will take – their passengers on suborbital launches. Their vehicles go only high enough to reach the beginning of space before returning to the ground a few minutes later. SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket and Crew Dragon vehicle, however, are much more powerful and have taken the Inspiration4 crew all the way into orbit, where they will circle the Earth for three days.

The four-person crew is also quite different from those on the other launches. Led by Isaacman, the mission features a somewhat diverse group of people. One crew member, Sian Proctor, won a contest among people who use Isaacman’s online payment company. Another unique aspect of the mission is that one of its goals is to raise awareness of and funds for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. As such, Isaacman selected Hayley Arceneaux, a physician assistant at St. Jude and childhood cancer survivor, to participate in the launch. The final member, Christopher Sembroski, won his seat when his friend was chosen in a charity raffle for St. Jude and offered his seat to Sembroski.

Because none of the four participants had any prior formal astronaut training, the flight has been called the first all-civilian space mission. While the rocket and crew capsule are both fully automated – no one onboard needed to control any part of the launch or landing – the four members still needed to go through much more training than the people on the suborbital flights. In less than six months, crew members have undergone hours of simulator training and lessons in flying a jet aircraft and spent time in a centrifuge to prepare them for the G-forces of launch.

Social outreach has also been an important aspect of the mission. While Bezos’ and Branson’s flights brought on criticism of billionaire playboys in space, Inspiration4 has tried – with mixed results – to make space tourism more relatable. The crew recently appeared on the cover of Time magazine and is the subject of an ongoing Netflix documentary.

There have also been other fundraising events for St. Jude, including a 4-mile virtual run and the planned auction of beer hops that will be flown on the mission.

The future of space tourism?

Sending a crew of amateur astronauts into orbit is a significant step in the development of space tourism. However, despite the more inclusive feel of the mission, there are still serious barriers to overcome before average people can go to space.

For one, the cost remains quite high. Though three of the four are not rich, Isaacman is a billionaire and paid an estimated $200 million to fund the trip. The need to train for a mission like this also means that prospective passengers must be able to devote significant amounts of time to prepare – time that many ordinary people don’t have.

Finally, space remains a dangerous place, and there will never be a way to fully remove the danger of launching people – whether untrained civilians or seasoned professional astronauts – into space.

Despite these limitations, orbital space tourism is coming. For SpaceX, Inspiration4 is an important proof of concept that demonstrated the safety and reliability of their autonomous rocket and capsule systems. Indeed, SpaceX has several tourist missions planned in the next few months, even though the company isn’t focused on space tourism. Some will even include stops at the International Space Station.

Even as space remains out of reach for most on Earth, Inspiration4 is an example of how billionaire space barons’ efforts to include more people on their journeys can give an otherwise exclusive activity a wider public appeal.

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Wendy Whitman Cobb is Professor of Strategy and Security Studies, US Air Force School of Advanced Air and Space Studies.

This story was  first published in the Conversation

SpaceX Inspiration4 mission: Space tourism closer to reality

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What Florencia does have is a pilot’s license, and worked for British Airways for years before leaving the field after the terror of 9/11. After a few more years of working in the design industry, she walked away from all of it to be an artist.

Living and working in Fort Lauderdale since 2004, she was inspired to paint the big faces after seeing a wall of large portraits at a hotel in Nairobi.

“They made such an impression,” she recalls. “Just this big wall of faces, it stayed with me for years. Now I’m a self-taught mixed media artist, whose mission is to empower and inspire through positive and meaningful artwork. My artistic adventure began in late 2014 when I quit my full-time job in interior design to pursue my real passion: painting. Because I didn’t receive any formal art training, I have developed a style without rules, which gives me great freedom. I combine my love of the classic masters with contemporary design flair to produce mixed media paintings.”

Her style and media have evolved over the years as she continuously explores surfaces and materials. The rug paintings came about after first adding fabric to paintings, then painting on the fabric, then finally painting on rugs  – a brilliant move that uses the elaborate design of the rug pattern to frame the face.

“Initially, I set out to paint on canvas and incorporated up-cycled and repurposed materials that would otherwise be disposed of, such as discontinued fabric and paper samples, to create backgrounds and “dress” my subjects,” she says. “Three years into my adventure, I discovered I could paint directly on upholstery fabric and area rugs and have fallen in love with the effect I’m able to achieve in this new medium. The patterns become intertwined with the image and add yet another dimension to it. I find these layers are a metaphor for us to look deeper than what meets the eye.

My latest series is entitled “Guardians of Sacred Space” and is composed of my largest pieces yet, ranging between 6’x4’ and 10’x8’, painted on area rugs. They are powerful portraits that command attention and infuse a sense of protection and calm to the space they are in.”

She gets the rugs online, from friends, or in resale stores. The trick is that there can be no overpainting if she makes a mistake, so she starts with light outlines and builds up layers. The rug pattern becomes a tattoo or third eye or inspiration for the color scheme. They are tribal, ethnic, nomads.

“We are all on the same plane,” she says. “I believe portraying a variety of ethnicities is the best way to promote inclusion. It is important to me that everyone feels represented in my artwork as a mirror of society. My artwork is very much a reflection of my life and, therefore, I am in some way, in every one of my paintings.  Painting is my therapy, and, so, as I heal myself, I also hope that others can recognize themselves in my work and that it may ease their pain as well.”

At the heart of her artwork is the desire to “portray strong and confident, soul-aligned men and women. I want to celebrate who we are and everything that makes us unique, perfectly imperfect beings, by bringing out our strengths and our beauty; as a reminder of who we really are and to say “I see you and honor you.”

She has a home studio but has joined the co-op group at the New River Museum in downtown Ft. Lauderdale. On the third floor are six artist studios open to the public, the bottom two floors house the museum with photos, artifacts, dioramas, and recreated period rooms.

Her studio is set up as a gallery, with works both large and small, prints, and vintage Spanish dolls that remind her of her heritage. She has exhibited in the mansions of Art Ft. Lauderdale and has upcoming shows at various art festivals.

She says she is constantly striving to give form to her own feelings and visions, as well as others’. She takes commissions and feels that at the end of the day, there is nothing more satisfying than a happy collector whose expectations are not only met, but surpassed.

Connect with the artists on Facebook and Instagram page @ArtbyFlorencia. Online at www.artbyflorencia.com

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Florencia Clement de Grandprey makes haunting art on intricate rugs

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Miami was one of numerous Black cities across the country where interstate highways were built, disrupting communities. Adams is hopeful the new Signature Bridge now being built over the area, along with a planned park underneath called the Underdeck, will help to transform and reconnect the neighborhood.

The $818 million Florida Department of Transportation project with higher, thinner columns will replace the original bridge crossing Overtown, opening up dark, underutilized space to both a park and a Heritage Trail, and connecting the neighborhood to Biscayne Bay.

Referring to the original bridge as a disaster that destroyed a thriving community, Adams, chairman emeritus of the St. John Community Development Corporation, said: “Righting a wrong is something that is aspirational, but we can try to do right today. “

The Signature Bridge project coincides with a revitalization of the neighborhood that is underway. Community leaders are working to ensure that Overtown’s Black history and culture are preserved in the process. The Southeast Overtown/Park West Community Redevelopment Association is active in spearheading development, and at the same time working to preserve affordable housing and increase Black homeownership.

Derek Fleming, managing partner of the new Red Rooster Overtown restaurant with celebrity chef Marcus Samuelsson, sees the history of Overtown as “one of the most forgotten and one of the most important histories of Miami.”

The Red Rooster was once the Clyde Killens Pool Hall, frequented by musicians such as Count Basie, Sam Cooke and Aretha Franklin. Fleming’s hope is to unify the neighborhood, adding: “There needs to be a replenishment of the existing culture, not a replacement.”

Historical photographs of the Overtown neighborhood are displayed on the outside of the historic Lyric Theatre in Miami. Wednesday, June 2, 2021. (AP Photo/Lynne Sladky)
The husband-and-wife team of Akino and Jamila West renovated the once boarded-up 1940s-era Demetree Hotel in Overtown to create the Copper Door Bed & Breakfast, along with Rosie’s restaurant. The couple is proud to be part of the neighborhood’s revitalization, Jamila West said, adding that it’s important to pay homage to the history, but to “also insure that the current residents, or past residents even, have the same opportunity.”

Situated just west of downtown Miami, Overtown was settled in the late 1890s when Henry Flagler was recruiting workers for his Florida East Coast Railroad. Because of segregation, mostly Black workers from the South and Caribbean settled on the other side of the tracks from downtown Miami, in an area then known as “Colored Town.”

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Miami’s historic Black Overtown gets makeover

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Neville, the director of the Fred Rogers portrait “Won’t You Be My Neighbor?” and the Oscar-winning “20 Feet From Stardom,” was determined to approach Bourdain through a prism other than his death. Music was only a small part of it. But it was a start in making “Roadrunner: A Film About Anthony Bourdain” a celebration of Bourdain’s life. Not a forensic inquiry. Not a eulogy.

This was the fall of 2019 when Neville began. Bourdain’s death, in June 2018 by suicide, was still fresh. For many, it still is. “Roadrunner” premiered over the weekend at the Tribeca Festival, days after the three-year anniversary of Bourdain’s death. Just the debut of the film’s trailer prompted an outpouring of emotion — and millions of views within days, a rarity for a documentary — showing how many are still grieving Bourdain’s loss.

“I’ve come to think of the film as an act of therapy for the public,” Neville said in an interview. “I think for people who only know Tony as someone they were a fan of, like me, there was just this giant question mark hanging over his life because of his death. How the (expletive) could Tony Bourdain kill himself? That is still something people are grappling with.”

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“Roadrunner,” which Focus Features will release in theaters July 16, goes about answering that question by filling in a fuller portrait of Bourdain. It gives new insight and context to Bourdain’s end by following the arc of his life — or, more especially, his second life. After years of working as a chef in New York, Bourdain’s book “Kitchen Confidential” catapulted him to fame in middle age. In “Parts Unknown” and other far-flung travel shows that feasted on not just indigenous foods but a wide spectrum of culture, history, and shared passions, Bourdain became an unlikely, and unusually authentic, television icon.

When Bourdain was found dead at 61 in his hotel room in Strasbourg, France, it was shocking because few seemed so full of hunger for life, or a greater appreciator of all that’s worth savoring. Neville spent the first months on the film not even dealing with Bourdain’s final chapter. When he did finally turn to it, he found no easy answers.

“The way I came to think of it is: Tony was an ultimate searcher and a seeker,” says Neville. “But if you are really always seeking and always curious, then you can get lost. He had this tattoo that he got late in life that said in Greek ‘I am certain of nothing.’ That sounds very Zen, but it’s also a little sad. If you’re truly certain of nothing and always looking for something, it means you’re leaving everything behind at every moment. I think for Tony, that rootless ultimately disconnected him from the things he should be certain about, like the love of people around him.”

The interviews for the film Neville considers the most difficult he’s ever done. Many of those close to Bourdain were talking about his death for the first time.

“There was just this sense of group trauma that people are still dealing with,” said Neville. “I don’t think anyone was looking forward to talking to me, frankly. It’s not like: ‘Oh, great!’ They knew it was going to be hard. Several people said it would be the last time they talk about it. I think there was this sense of: Let me say it once, for the record.”

That includes interviews with Bourdain’s ex-wife, Ottavia Busia, chef friends Éric Ripert and David Chang, TV producers Lydia Tenaglia and Christopher Collins, and musicians John Lurie and Josh Homme. Homme, of Queens of the Stone Age, recorded a song for the film. There’s footage pulled from “Parts Unknown,” revealing outtakes and Bourdain’s own Instagram stories, which gave a small window into his turbulent final year. Neville didn’t speak with a few key figures from that time, including longtime cinematographer Zach Zamboni, whom Bourdain fired in that dark period, and the Italian filmmaker Asia Argento, whose tumultuous two-year relationship with Bourdain has for many loomed over his death.

Neville was more intent on focusing on the choices that Bourdain, himself, made, and the journey that led to his tragic end. To him, a full understanding can only be elusive. But he suspects Bourdain felt increasingly rootless after his split from Busia, that when any semblance of domestic life receded he grew increasingly disconnected from who he was, and what he meant to people — including his daughter. That he was maybe too long on the road.

“When I first sat down with the people close to him — his manager and his production partners — I kind of went on my rant about why he was someone who was a champion for culture and what connects us,” the director says. “And they said, ‘Yeah, that’s true. But he was also an immature 15-year-old boy.’ I thought, OK, that’s interesting. That became the kind of crux of the making of the film — reconciling someone who was both so insightful, but also so blind to some things.”

Anthony Bourdain doc ‘an act of therapy’ for an acute loss

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Then the bass drops, and the viewer is whisked ahead to the present day — and the decidedly B-side of town.

“Let me tell you ’bout a different Rio / The one I’m from, but not the one that you know,” Brazil’s biggest pop star, Anitta, sings over a trap beat. The music video has her descending, bikini-clad, from a bus to an artificial pool beside Rio’s international airport.

It’s the latest twist on the placid Bossa Nova song that, more than a half-century after its creation by Antônio Carlos Jobim and Vinicius de Moraes, still isn’t played out — and continues to feed foreigners’ captivation. The girl from Ipanema’s journey – from Rio to the United States and back to Rio again – shows what can change, and also what endures, as culture crosses borders in an age of globalization.

Anitta’s “Girl from Rio” retains only the melody from the original track. Her lyrics convey reality: that the city’s women have fuller figures than the tall and tan one about whom Frank Sinatra crooned. Its video features a beach barbecue and bleached body hair, plus no shortage of booties and deep kissing, and mostly casts Black stand-ins for the original muse.

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The new take is a long way from Rio’s golden age of glamour, an era when Brazil was churning out Volkswagen Beetles and on track to its second straight World Cup title.

Ipanema then

It was the early 1960s. Rio had just lost its status as the nation’s capital, but nobody could steal the picturesque Copacabana and Ipanema beaches that served as a backdrop for the Bossa Nova music movement — and the locale where Jobim and de Moraes, a composer and a poet respectively, often saw their muse walking while they sat by a bar’s window.

Women paddle their stand-up paddleboards off Copacabana beach in Rio de Janeiro
“There really is a secret — an enchantment,” says de Moraes’ daughter Georgiana, who sometimes performs “The Girl from Ipanema.” She’s heard it countless times, she says, yet somehow it never spoils.

Trouble arose when it came time to translate the song to English. Lyricist Norman Gimbel strongly opposed the word “Ipanema,” which he thought called to mind Ipana, the now-forgotten toothpaste brand. In comments published in Jobim’s biography, “Cancioneiro Jobim,″ the Brazilian recalled arguing with Gimbel in a Manhattan taxi. Even the cabbie whirled around to take Gimbel’s side.

“All I wanted was to pass along the spirit of the girl from Ipanema, that poetic Rio thing. I think we managed a little, but it was an ugly fight,” Jobim wrote. “Americans will never understand our ‘beach civilization.’”

Translating from a Romance language, whose words end in soft vowels, saps some of the soothing sways, according to Jobim’s son Paulinho, a musician.

But the English lyrics tweak the scene, too, said Sérgio Augusto, who wrote: “Cancioneiro Jobim” with access to the artist’s writings. In Portuguese, a passing girl lifts the spirits of a lonely man admiring the fleeting beauty she brings to the world. In English, a pining man bemoans unrequited love from a girl who won’t give him so much as a glance.

“There’s a big difference,” says Augusto, “between indifference and disdain.”

And the English lyrics, especially, could be received as unseemly by a modern audience more attuned to unwanted male attention. Brazilian guitarist Toquinho, who played alongside de Moraes for years, in 2019 questioned whether even the original would’ve been rejected today.

Ruy Castro, who wrote the authoritative history of Bossa Nova, said Gimbel’s work was — unfortunately — necessary.

Gimbel was one of many “professional American lyricists who put English lyrics to foreign songs without knowing what they meant, and wound up earning more than the original authors,” Castro said in an email.

“But,” he added, “that’s how the system worked, and it’s clear that, without English lyrics, those songs never would have broken through American provincialism.”

Rio today

“The Girl from Ipanema” didn’t just breakthrough; it became a smash hit, which led Brazil to treasure the original.

That, Anitta says, is why she decided to set “Girl from Rio” to English lyrics. In an interview from Miami, she said that garnering a seal of approval abroad helps Brazilians value their own music.

“My challenge right now is to try to make people outside Brazil get interested in Brazilian music and culture again the way it was back in those Girl-from-Ipanema times,” she says. “I think it’s necessary for people outside Brazil to embrace Brazilian music, funk music and whatever we do, for Brazilian people themselves to think we have a good thing here in our hands.”

By scrubbing “Ipanema” from the lyrics, Anitta already succeeded where Gimbel failed. She secured the blessing of the artists’ families, who reviewed her version before granting approval. Instead, she gives a shout out to her home ’hood, Honorio Gurgel. It hardly rolls off the tongue, but it sure doesn’t sound like toothpaste.

Four members of the Jobim and de Moraes families told The Associated Press that they appreciated Anitta’s spin on the classic. Georgiana de Moraes said her late father was ahead of his time, always experimenting with younger partners. She said he would have liked it, too.

Before the song’s April 30 release, a photo of Anitta posing in front of the bus from the music video went viral, and thousands of Brazilians photoshopped themselves in her place. Lucas Brêda, a music critic at the newspaper Folha de S.Paulo, showed they felt seen and represented.

Her video also resonated, Brêda says. It racked up 24 million views on YouTube. But he says the song is more akin to contemporary American pop than anything Brazilian-born. Anitta also released a remix with rapper DaBaby on May 21. It’s a bit of history that repeats Bossa Nova’s Americanization.

“In the export of Bossa Nova, it became more distant from samba and closer to jazz,” Brêda says. “Anitta is doing that consciously, has no shame in doing that.”

She has performed her song on the Today Show  and Jimmy Kimmel Live, providing Americans a new vision of Rio women by supplanting the original’s inspiration, a 17-year-old named Helô. De Moraes described her in a 1965 magazine:

“A golden girl, a mixture of flower and mermaid, full of light and grace, but the sight of whom is sad, because she carries with her, on her way to the sea, the feeling of youth passing by, of beauty that isn’t just ours. It is a gift from life in its beautiful melancholy of constant ebb and flow.”

Today, that woman, the original muse for “The Girl from Ipanema,” is 75 and among the small percentage of Brazilians fully vaccinated against COVID-19. Her name is Helô Pinheiro. She, too, enjoys the bounce of Anitta’s beat in the new version of the tune that changed her life and recalled how de Moraes viewed her back then.

“That sense of youth that passes — it’s only today I can have that feeling because I’m no longer a girl,” Pinheiro says. “Maybe Anitta precisely understood that ‘ebb and flow,’ and she flowed within what Vinicius already envisioned for the future, which is now.”

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Girl from Ipanema: ‘Re-imagining a classic for today’s Rio

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Fried criticized DeSantis for trying to quash the voice of Floridians by signing bills that make it more difficult to vote, crack down on protests and make it harder for citizens to change the constitution.

“Ron DeSantis has fully embraced the right-wing agenda and authoritarian style of governing that doesn’t fit in the state of Florida,” Fried said in a phone interview. “If you don’t support him or the party, he’s going to stop you from voting. If you disagree with him, he’s going to silence you.”

Fried, 43, is hoping to be the first Democrat to win a governor’s race since Lawton Chiles was reelected in 1994. She’ll face former Republican Gov. Charlie Crist, who is now a Democratic U.S. Representative, in the primary.

“Charlie is a likable guy. He’s certainly been a strong advocate for his constituents in DC. I hoped that he would stay in that seat,” said Fried, who said she is concerned that Republicans can take the St. Petersburg-area seat he’s giving up. “Charlie is putting his seat and our Democratic majority in jeopardy and I do believe that’s a mistake.”

Crist was elected governor in 2006, then ran for U.S. Senate in 2010 as an independent, losing to Republican Marco Rubio. He ran for governor in 2014 as a Democrat, narrowly losing to Republican Rick Scott.

Fried said she’s been a consistent supporter of Democratic issues.

“I’ve been fighting for these issues my entire life. I was doing soup kitchens and Habitat for Humanity and gay pride parades back in high school. I don’t change my positions because of an election,” Fried said. “I stay true to who I am.”

Fried is Florida’s only statewide elected Democrat. She won her seat in 2018 by 6,753 votes. She previously worked as a public defender and as a lobbyist for the medical marijuana industry. She was elected student body president while attending the University of Florida.

Fried criticized DeSantis’ handling of the coronavirus pandemic. DeSantis opened up the state last summer and signed orders preventing local governments from issuing mask mandates and restricting businesses.

While DeSantis says his decisions on COVID 19 helped the state’s economy, Fried said he showed no empathy for victims of the virus.

“I would have absolutely done a mandate on masks,” she said. “It’s a piece of cloth over your face. We ask people every day when they get into the car, put on a seatbelt. You can’t walk into a restaurant without a shirt on. This is common sense in following the science, which he never did.”

She said the state’s unemployment system failed early in the pandemic and DeSantis did little to address people’s fears.

“You had people that were scared and this governor did nothing to make them feel safe. He went at this very angry, wanting to prove that he was right,” Fried said. “Instead of being a governor for the entire state of Florida, he was only following the leadership of President Trump and making the pandemic response partisan and that should have never been the case.”

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Democrat Nikki Fried announces run for Florida governor

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A new World Meteorological Organization forecast for the next several years also predicts a 90% chance that the world will set yet another record for the hottest year by the end of 2025 and that the Atlantic will continue to brew more potentially dangerous hurricanes than it used to.

For this year, the meteorologists say large parts of land in the Northern Hemisphere will be 1.4 degrees (0.8 degrees Celsius) warmer than recent decades and that the U.S. Southwest’s drought will continue.

The 2015 Paris climate accord set a goal of keeping warming to a few tenths of a degree warmer from now. The report said there is a 40% chance that at least one of the next five years will be 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) higher than pre-industrial times — the more stringent of two Paris goals. The world is already 1.2 degrees Celsius (2.2 degrees Fahrenheit) warmer than pre-industrial times.

Last year, the same group forecasted a 20% chance of it happening.

The doubling of the odds is due to improvements in technology that show it has “actually warmed more than we thought already,” especially over the lightly-monitored polar regions, said Leon Hermanson, a climate scientist at the United Kingdom’s Met Center who helped on the forecast.

“It’s a warning that we need to take strong action,” Hermanson said.

Pennsylvania State University climate scientist Michael Mann, who wasn’t part of the report, said he is “almost certain” the world will exceed that Paris warming threshold at least once in the next few years. But he said one or two years above 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) isn’t as worrisome as when the overall trend of temperatures stays above that level.

Mann said that won’t happen probably for decades and could still be prevented.

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Forecast: 40% chance Earth to be hotter than Paris goal soon

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Branded the F-150 Lightning, the pickup will be able to travel up to 300 miles per battery charge, thanks to a frame designed to safely hold a huge lithium-ion battery that can power your house should the electricity go out. Going from zero to 60 mph (97 kilometers per hour) will take just 4.5 seconds.

With a starting price near $40,000 (before options), Ford has calculated that an electric version of America’s top-selling vehicle will appeal to the sorts of buyers who favor rugged pickup trucks prized for strength and durability. If it succeeds, it could speed the nation’s transition away from petroleum burners — a cornerstone of President Joe Biden’s broad effort to fight climate change.

“It’s a watershed moment to me,” Ford CEO Jim Farley said of the electric truck, which was formally unveiled Wednesday night. “It’s a very important transition for our industry.”

For the Biden administration to prevail in its push for green energy-driven manufacturing, it will need to overcome resistance as well as skepticism. Critics fear the loss of auto industry jobs in a shift away from gasoline-fueled vehicles. Because EVs are much simpler, it takes fewer workers to build them. And bottlenecked supply chains could leave automakers short of computer chips and vehicle batteries, along with other parts, for months and perhaps years.

That said, a vehicle like the Lightning is so critical to Biden’s policies that even before its formal unveiling, he visited the Ford plant in Michigan where it will be built beginning next year. The president even drove the truck on a test track.

“This sucker’s quick,” he declared.

For its part, Ford is taking a significant risk by sinking so much capital into an electric version of a pickup that commands a huge and loyal following. In a typical year, Ford sells about 900,000 F-series trucks nationally. It has been America’s top-selling vehicle for nearly four decades.

Gas-powered F-150s are staples on job sites across the nation, where workers haul equipment and materials and often don’t see a need for change. So it could be years before Ford realizes a return on its investment in an electric F-150. This year, through April, the company has sold only 10,000 of its new gas-electric hybrid F-150s — just over 6% of the F-150′s total sales.

Ford said 20,000 people had put down $100 deposits to order the new trucks as of Thursday morning.

Still, introducing a capable electric truck at a fairly reasonable price could potentially produce the breakthrough that draws many more people to battery-powered vehicles of all sizes, said Ivan Drury, a senior manager at Edmunds.com.

“If you’re going to choose one vehicle in the industry that’s going to do it, this is going to be the one,” Drury said. “I expect this to be a home run, and I expect it to really convert a lot of consumers’ minds.”

At the same time, the electric truck, due in showrooms by the middle of next year, comes at a time when American drivers remain reluctant to jettison gas vehicles. Through April, automakers sold about 108,000 fully electric vehicles in the U.S. Though that’s nearly twice the number from the same period last year, EVs still account for only 2% of U.S. vehicle sales, according to Edmunds.

In addition to the Lightning, though, the growing number of fully electric offerings will help raise sales numbers. Automakers now sell 18 electric models in the U.S.; Drury expects 30 by year’s end.

To be sure, Ford won’t stop building gas-powered trucks for years. They remain an enormous cash cow. A study by the Boston Consulting Group found that the F-Series generates $42 billion in annual U.S. revenue for the automaker — more than such entire companies as McDonald’s, Nike or Netflix do.

Initially, Ford expects Lightning customers to be mainly higher-income urban and suburban residents who seldom go off road or use truck beds to haul anything heavy. But the company plans a commercial version designed to make work more efficient. Ultimately, Farley expects sales to be evenly balanced between work and personal buyers.

But Ford may have a hard time selling it to people who build houses, maintain lawns or plow snow.

“It sounds good, but it’s not good for the type of business I’m in,” said Jimmie Williams, owner of a landscaping firm on Chicago’s South Side. He doesn’t think the battery will have enough range to last the 12-14-hour days his crews sometimes work maintaining about 700 properties.

He’ll stick with his three gas-powered pickups, in part because he plows snow in the winter, when cold weather can limit an EV’s range.

Others aren’t ready now but might be convinced to switch in the future.

“Maybe when I’m retired,” quipped Steven Realy, a foreman for a subcontractor at a housing development in Pittsfield Township, Michigan.

Realy, 28, whose company uses diesel trucks to carry equipment and building materials, doesn’t think an electric truck will do the job now but maybe in the future.

“When electric takes off more than what it is right now,” he said, “I could see myself owning one, definitely.”

Yet it may be difficult to persuade some people to give up the big gas engines they’re used to.

“I like my V-8,” Anthony Lane, a 26-year-old plumber in the same development, said from the driver’s seat of his gleaming Chevrolet Silverado.

Aside from a charging port and a Lightning decal, Ford’s new truck resembles a standard F-150. That was intentional. Ford wants the Lightning to be perceived as just as capable as gasoline versions, if not more so.

Even the base version of the electric F-150, with two rows of seats and a 230-mile estimated range per battery charge, can haul up to a ton in its bed. A high-end Lightning equipped with a longer-range battery can tow an estimated 10,000 pounds, matching many gas-powered trucks, though falling about 3,000 pounds shy of Ford’s V-8 engines.

Perhaps the most surprising thing about the truck is its price, which Ford said is about equal to a comparably equipped gasoline F-150. With a federal tax credit of up to $7,500 still available on Ford electric vehicles, the base price falls to around $32,500. That’s below the lowest-priced gas F-150 with a crew cab, which starts at roughly $37,000.

The Lightning has a front trunk with plugs for power tools and lights at job or camp sites. And if the electricity goes, out, it can run your house for up to three days, which Farley expects to be a big selling point.

Competition for the Lightning is looming. General Motors says it’s working on an electric Silverado. Stellantis is developing an electric Ram. Tesla’s angular Cybertruck is due out this year. And startups Bollinger Motors, Nikola, Rivian and Lordstown Motors have trucks in the works.

All will face an inevitable obstacle in seeking buyers: brand loyalty. Pickup drivers often stick with one company for life. Sometimes, they choose a brand because it’s been in the family for years, if not generations.

“I’m not a Ford guy,” said Lane, the plumber. “I drive Chevys my whole life.”

Once General Motors comes out with an electric Silverado, though, Lane might consider a change.

“I’ll probably stick with the gas,” he said. “But if they ever fully switch over to electric, I’ll probably get the Chevy one.”

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Ford’s big bet: Fans of F-150 pickup will embrace electric

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In an unprecedented 48-hour siege that quickly overwhelmed Spanish authorities, more than 8,000 people clambered around border fences and swam from Morocco to the Spanish-governed enclave of Ceuta.

A young man wore red-and-white-soled sneakers for what proved to be his fatal final journey. The shoes were still on his feet when Spanish rescue workers fished his inert body from the waves of the Mediterranean and wrapped it in foil, like a macabre gift.

They piled pebbles on the fringes to stop the shiny golden covering from blowing away. Two burly men in white coveralls then arrived with a plastic coffin. Their boots scrunched on the shingle as they carried the corpse away: yet another body, picked up off yet another European shore.

Death and desperation on Europe’s African frontier

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