A homeless man whose face was mostly chewed off in a bizarre, vicious attack faces a bigger threat from infection than from the injuries themselves, according to experts on facial reconstruction. He will require months of treatment to rebuild his features and be permanently disfigured. Poppo’s lifestyle and health before the attack could determine how doctors proceed and whether they eventually consider a facial transplant, plastic surgeons said. Poppo had been homeless for more than 30 years, previously survived a gunshot wound and faced multiple charges of public intoxication, among other arrests.
Homestead, Florida, was ground zero in 1992 when Hurricane Andrew plowed ashore as a Category 5 storm. Twenty years later, Homestead is no longer a post-Andrew city. Residents who lived through Andrew haven’t forgotten the devastation, though, and they warn their newer neighbors to take storm warnings seriously, or else. Ed Bowe, Homestead’s emergency management coordinator says:
“We’d give you a black marker and ask you to identify on your arm somewhere your Social Security number,” he says. “And they say, `Why, what would you need that for?’ Well, this way, afterwards, we’ll be able to identify who you are, and that sort brings it home for them. `Oh, this is serious, huh?’ Yes, this is serious, we wouldn’t be telling you otherwise.”
Miami police union officials are calling Saturday’s face-mauling attack on the causeway that connects South Beach with downtown Miami one of the goriest crime scenes they’ve ever been to. Obvious note: This story has some graphic content.
I tell my dancers, when you go on stage, if you are beautiful they will just say that you are beautiful. They won’t say, ‘You are the most beautiful dancers of the poorest country in the hemisphere.’ If you’re good, you’re good - that’s the chance we have as artists.
Choreographer Jeanguy Saintus sustained his modern dance company, Ayikodans, in Haiti for more than 20 years before almost losing everything in the 2010 earthquake. Through a fundraising rally last year by the Arsht Center in Miami, Ayikodans has survived and returns for two sold-out performances this weekend.
U.S. forecasters predicted Thursday that this year’s Atlantic hurricane season would produce a normal number of about nine to 15 tropical storms, with as many as four to eight of those becoming hurricanes.
Miami, Florida on Flickr.
Work by Germain Manasse featured in the Haiti Arts & Crafts: The State of Affairs exhibit at the Little Haiti Cultural Center
(Is it wrong that my first thought when I saw this was “MINUSTAH GI Joe”?)
It’s that time of year again - hurricane season! This year’s “be prepared” mantra is amplified by the 20th anniversary of Hurricane Andrew’s catastrophic landfall in South Florida. It doesn’t matter how many storms are expected to form in the Atlantic this year, forecasters like to say, because it just takes one storm like Andrew to really mess things up.
The National Hurricane Center’s outgoing director, Bill Read, says his successor will have to deal with one lingering post-Andrew problem: the lack of progress in forecasters’ ability to see well in advance whether tropical storms will blow up into Category 5 monsters. The science behind tracking the storms has improved significantly, but tracking storm intensity remains a serious challenge.
Miami, Florida on Flickr.
Early April, Little Haiti. #film #trayvonmartin #miami #florida
Miami, Florida on Flickr.
Finally got film developed from early April “Justice for Trayvon” march through Miami’s Little Haiti.
Everglades National Park, Florida on Flickr.
Everglades National Park, Florida on Flickr.
Vice President Joe Biden has taken what he says was his first airboat ride, touring a swath of Everglades National Park while touting the benefits of a federally funded restoration project to restore the flow of water.
Miami, Florida on Flickr.
Trayvon Martin’s parents say they’re relieved that George Zimmerman has been arrested and charged with 2nd-degree murder in the shooting death of their son in Florida.
“But the vast majority of white people and the vast majority of black people in this country want to live together, want to improve the quality of our life, and want justice for all human beings who abide in our land.”
Martin Luther King dedicated his life to love and to justice for his fellow human beings, and he died because of that effort.
Statement by Senator Robert F. Kennedy on the Death of the Reverend Martin Luther King April 4, 1968
(via life)
