Novelist Carl Hiaasen has written a piece for the Miami Herald on the effects of the recent government shutdown. The piece looks particularly at how the shutdown of Everglades National Park is affecting Florida fishing guides and their families. The piece also broadens out to other parks across the country and the repercussions of their being shutdown:
“But here’s who else is getting screwed while the parks are shut down and the tourists stay away: Owners of all the nearby hotels, restaurants, campgrounds, bars, marinas, grocery stores, tackle shops and gas stations, and everybody employed by them.
Mechanics, maids, bartenders, waiters, cooks, checkout clerks — ordinary folks who’ve done absolutely nothing to deserve this. They don’t work for the government but they’ve effectively been downgraded to ‘non-essential.’”
Hiaasen is a native son of the wonderful state of Florida and has been a reporter and journalist with the Miami Herald since 1976. He is probably best know nationally for his many novels including Tourist Season, Lucky You, Skinny Dip, and Double Whammy.
