No, I haven't been eaten by an alligator...in case you're wondering. I have been researching the life and music of Ida
Goodson who was a
barrel house blues pianist from Pensacola Florida. Ida was the youngest of seven sisters, six of whom survived into adulthood. All six were musicians who played the Gulf Coast Highway from the 1920's. They were Wilhelmina, Edna, Sadie, Mabel, Molly, Della, and Ida.
Ida played piano in most of the gulf Coast clubs around Pensacola including the 506 Club. Ida also performed at the Florida Folk
Festival later in her life and received a Folk Heritage Award in 1987.
Ida was born in Pensacola, Florida in 1909 and grew up in and played most of her life around the Pensacola area. Her father and mother both played piano and her father was a deacon in the Mt. Olive Baptist Church in Pensacola. He was also a railroad man and had a run on the L & N railroad from Pensacola to River Junction outside of
Chattahoochee. She passed away in 2000.
Ethnography is a challenging process and I must travel away from town to find really good resources such as census records, tombstones, personal accounts and the like. I expect to be taking some trips to Pensacola and Marianna in the near future to research Ida. While, she and her sisters were very well known to the Black Gulf Coast musical community, as a black woman
not much has been written down about her life and times.
Her sister Wilhelmina known as Billie Pierce moved to New Orleans and married the blind musician
DeDe Pierce. They played music in New Orleans for many many years, notably as the Preservation Hall Jazz Band. Sadie
Goodson married a musician as well and moved eventually to Detroit, my home town.
Ida was a
diminutive and very vivacious woman with a wonderful stage presence.
Every turtle shell has a story. This looks like a prop collision accident. 
I've never seen a limpkin hang their wings down like this. Maybe it's a way of stretching.
I had some time between morning and afternoon patients today and I opened my email at the office and saw Peggy was going paddling.... so I slammed the office door and ran out! I called her on the cell phone and we arranged to meet at the Wacissa. I got there about 11:30 am and ran into a friend of mine that I have volunteered at the Florida Folk Festival and SAIL High School with, and we had a chat. We laughed about the Lake Lafayette kayak trail being a hiking trail at the moment and he warned that the winter would be dry. I then eased into the Pelican and went downstream at a faster clip than I normally do to catch Peggy. I never saw her all day. I figured she went to the eagle tree and I was right. I had to get back to the office by 4pm to see patients and I posted these photos while I was rinsing off the river water. The river was low and the hydrilla was extra thick but the otters were out everywhere. I can spot them almost instantly now with all the practice. I noticed they were holding their tails up today, too! Everyone was scratching, too! 
