BRADENTON BEACH, FL –  When a hurricane approaches Florida, storm-weary locals may envision catastrophic wind, torrential rain, and a hazardous storm surge. Are sand mounds eating their homes? Not very much.

Hurricanes Helene and Milton wreaked havoc on Florida’s Gulf Coast in less than two weeks, making this reality for some. Storm surges up to 10 feet (3 meters) drove mountains of sand into settlements, some of which were 5 feet (1.5 meters) tall or more.

Florida’s beaches are renowned for their pristine, white sand. However, the severe storms have transformed the precious commodity into a costly nuisance, with sand forming real hurdles to recovery as homes and communities dig their way out.

“I’ve never seen sand like this,” said Scott Bennett, a contractor who has been working on storm cleanup since Hurricane Katrina in 2005. “Wind, rain, water, but never sand.”

Florida Digs Out Of Mountains Of Sand Swept In By Back-To-Back Hurricanes

The morning after Hurricane Milton hit land, the roadways near Bradenton Beach, about an hour south of Tampa, were bordered with sandbanks a few feet (less than a meter) high, encircling several bungalows. The vistas from the Old Florida beach town were similar to those after a stormy Midwestern blizzard.

“The best way to describe it, it’s like getting 4 to 6 feet (1.2 to 1.8 meters) of snow up north,” said Jeremi Roberts, a member of the State Emergency Response Team who surveyed the damage that day.

Another hour south, Ron and Jean Dyer said that the storms swept nearly 3 feet (0.9 meters) of sand up against their Venice Island condo.

“The beach just moved over everything,” Ron Dyer explained.

After Hurricane Helene, hundreds of volunteers armed with shovels and wheelbarrows worked for two days to remove all of the sand from the condo’s pool, just to have Milton refill it, he said.

“They continued excavating and spinning… “They spent two days doing that,” he added. “We got to do it all over again.”

Larry West, a storm recovery contractor, estimates that his team will spend roughly $300,000 cleaning up the sand and debris left behind at one of the condo buildings he is rehabilitating on Manasota Key, about 35 miles (56 kilometers) south of Sarasota. He expects that many property owners, particularly those without flood insurance, will have to pay for this type of cleanup themselves.

“The poor homeowner who’s going to have to spend $150,000 cleaning up, that’s going to hurt them hard,” West told me.

West said he’s not sure where to take the sand after learning that a nearby park designated as a drop-off location by Charlotte County officials was filling up. According to the county, two sand drop-off sites remain open.

“Right now I’m building mountains in their parking area,” West said of the condo complex he’s rebuilding. “We’re just kind of waiting to find out if they’re gonna have us transport it to a different location.”

Officials in Pinellas County, home to St. Petersburg, are still calculating how much damage Helene and Milton caused to the county’s coastline, but county Public Works director Kelli Hammer Levy estimates that 1 million cubic yards (765,000 cubic meters) of sand were lost.

“A lot of volume has been lost, and that’s our main concern here right now,” she told the county’s Tourism Development Council. “It’s difficult to be optimistic in the face of some of these circumstances. I understand the photographs are not what we want to see.”

A 2018 beach renourishment project to shore up the county’s shoreline with 1.3 million cubic yards (994,000 cubic meters) of sand cost more than $50 million, according to the US Army Corps of Engineers.

Levy hopes that most of the displaced sand may be recycled. Pinellas County officials are encouraging individuals to cart their sand right back onto the beach, as long as it is clean.

Florida Digs Out Of Mountains Of Sand Swept In By Back-To-Back Hurricanes

“Again, we only need to clear debris. “I’ve seen some piles out there with kitchen cabinets in them,” Levy explained. “We’re going to have a problem if we have a lot of that stuff out there.”

The county has also established a drop-off station where residents can leave sand for staff to screen and clean, or dispose of if it is polluted, in accordance with the state’s Department of Environmental Protection guidelines.

Meanwhile, Florida homeowners continue to dig out of the storm-driven sand, many by hand.

“Every shovelful is heavy,” explained West, the building contractor. “This is horrendous, as far as the cleanup.”

SOURCE | AP

Liam Payne’s voice is first heard in One Direction’s debut single: “What Makes You Beautiful” which begins with a bouncing guitar riff, a cheeky and borderline excessive cowbell, and then Payne.

“You’re insecure, don’t know what for / You’re turning heads when you walk through the door,” he sings, in a few words telling a cross-section of generations that he has your back, lady, and you should like yourself a little more.

Payne, who died Wednesday at the age of 31 after falling from a hotel balcony in Buenos Aires, Argentina, was also the last solo voice on the band’s final hit, “History,” which essentially opened and closed one of the most successful boy bands of all time.

While the exact circumstances of his death are unknown — Buenos Aires police said in a statement that Payne “had jumped from the balcony of his room,” but they did not provide details on how they determined that or whether it was intentional — in life, Payne was a key member of the internet’s first boy band, which cemented an indelible place in the hearts of millennial and Gen Z fans.

One Direction Were The Internet’s First Boy Band, And Liam Payne Its Grounding Force

Before forming One Direction, its members auditioned independently for “The X Factor” in the United Kingdom. The judges decided to divide five prospective but not yet exceptional guys into groups. Harry Styles, Niall Horan, Louis Tomlinson, Zayn Malik, and Payne placed third in the 2010 competition.

“They were kind of assigned to be together.” You don’t expect long-term results from the situation. “Honestly, you don’t expect a single good pop record to come out of that situation,” he says. Nonetheless, not only did it work, but One Direction effectively built “a new template for pop stardom, really.”

The show allowed Day 1 followers to track their career before their official 2011 release of “What Makes You Beautiful.” New fans might use emerging social media sites such as Twitter and Tumblr to build a community, draw notice to the group, and, in the early days, communicate directly with the members.

“I honestly made a Twitter so that I could keep up with One Direction, and that’s how I made so many different friends,” says Gabrielle Kopera, 28, a California-based fan who recalls the band holding livestreams and chats. “Sometimes they would respond, which was great fun. I feel like that fan interaction is no longer happening.

According to Maura Johnston, a freelance music writer and adjunct instructor at Boston College, the group’s personality and relationship with fans were strengthened by this sense of accessibility.

“The fact that they came up on this British TV show and they became this worldwide sensation, I don’t think that would have happened as vividly and as swiftly and as immersive without social media, without Twitter or without people being able to organize around the globe,” she explains.”

One Direction and its fans
Millennial and Generation Z audiences almost grew up with One Direction, but the band was truly everywhere. According to Johnston, this is due in part to the fact that he arrived in a completely different media environment than now.

“It was a lot more focused,” she adds about the early 2010s. “Algorithmic sorting of material hadn’t really taken off. So there was a broader, mass approach. They were one of the last gasps of that enormous phenomenon, and everybody of any age, fan or not, had to pay attention.”

However, cultivating a loyal fanbase requires more than omnipresence. And there were other reasons why fans were drawn to One Direction.

“They were five very different musical personalities, along with five very different personalities,” according to Sheffield.

They also defied standard boy band conventions by co-writing many of their tracks. “They didn’t do corny, choreographed steps on stage,” he explained.

After hearing about Payne’s death, Kopera says she “got so many messages from people I haven’t talked to in years reaching out because I think everyone kind of realized that it does feel like we just lost a family member.”

That emotion was echoed by the large crowds that gathered Wednesday outside Buenos Aires’ Casa Sur Hotel, feeding a growing makeshift monument of flowers, candles, and letters while police stood watch.

“I’ve always loved One Direction since I was little,” said Juana Relh, 18, outside Payne’s hotel. “To see that he died and that there will never be another reunion of the boys is unbelievable, it kills me.”

Liam Payne’s role in the band, and its legacy
Johnston describes Payne as a “brooding” older brother-type in One Direction. He also co-wrote numerous songs, particularly in their later period, including the Fleetwood Mac-inspired “What A Feeling” and “Fireproof.”

“He was this grounding force in the band,” Johnston recalls.

One Direction Were The Internet’s First Boy Band, And Liam Payne Its Grounding Force

“Looking at what happened to Liam, it just makes you feel even more terrible, that it just feels like he needed help,” Kopera explains.” “And it’s so scary to think about how the entertainment industry can just, like, eat up artists.”

After One Direction split in 2016, Payne’s solo career — a single R&B-pop album in 2019, “LP1,” and a few songs here and there — never took off as much as some of his colleagues. He was “the least successful,” according to Sheffield. “It’s safe to say that on the terms that he was going for, he didn’t really find what he wanted to do.”

“It’s hard, transitioning from being a boy bander to be a pop star,” Johnston confides.

At Payne’s solo shows, Sheffield adds, “He would play a small montage of One Direction performing, which is not something you do when you’re starting out as a solo artist. But fans accepted it in the way it was intended, which is a very kind statement in which he says, ‘Yep, you’re here because of this history that we share, and I’m here because of that same history.'”

Despite Payne’s troubles and the sadness of his death, Kopera believes “his legacy will always point back to One Direction.”

For fans, the same is true.

“When I look back at One Direction, I think, ‘That was my girlhood. “One Direction was my soundtrack to growing up, and I’m so grateful for it,” she says. “They really were just a group of normal boys.”

SOURCE | AP

Los Angeles — Mitzi Gaynor, the vivacious dancer and actress who played Nellie Forbush in the 1958 film “South Pacific” and acted in other musicals alongside Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra, and Gene Kelly, has died. She was 93.

Gaynor, one of the few survivors of Hollywood’s so-called golden age of musicals, died of natural causes in Los Angeles on Thursday morning, her long-time managers Rene Reyes and Shane Rosamonda announced in a statement to The Associated Press.

“As we celebrate her legacy, we thank her friends and fans, as well as the countless audiences she entertained over the course of her long life,” Reyes and Rosamonda said in a joint statement. “Your love, support and appreciation meant so very much to her and was a sustaining gift in her life.”

Mitzi Gaynor, Star Of ‘South Pacific,’ Dies At 93

Her entertainment career spanned eight decades, spanning film, television, and the stage. She starred in a number of important films, including “We’re Not Married!” and “There’s No Business Like Show Business,” but she is most known for her role in “South Pacific.”

The film adaptation of “South Pacific” got three Academy Award nominations and won for best sound, and Gaynor was nominated for best actress at the Golden Globes.

Hollywood stars have been vying for the part of the love-sick nurse Nellie, which Mary Martin originated on Broadway. Sinatra assisted Gaynor in landing it.

She was playing beside him in “The Joker Is Wild” when she was given a one-day opportunity to audition for songwriter Oscar Hammerstein II. It happened on the same day she was supposed to have her biggest moment with Sinatra. When she described her situation, he responded, “Don’t worry, I’ll change the schedule.”

Hammerstein was impressed by Gaynor, who had previously received clearance from director Josh Logan and composer Richard Rodgers. She starred opposite Rossano Brazzi, about whom she sang “I’m in Love with a Wonderful Guy.”

“South Pacific” was not the career-defining moment Gaynor had hoped for, so she moved her concentration from film to television, making early appearances on Donald O’Connor’s variety show “Here Comes Donald” and CBS’ “The Jack Benny Hour.” In October 1959, she was the sole female guest star on ABC’s “The Frank Sinatra Timex Show” special, which also featured Sinatra, Crosby, Dean Martin, and Jimmy Durante.

Later in her career, Gaynor reinvented herself as a performer. Working with her husband and manager, Jack Bean, she appeared in her own musical revue, which was a hit in theaters across the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, and Australia.

Gaynor established herself as a Las Vegas fixture for numerous years, appearing in week-long residencies at the Flamingo and Riviera hotels.

When touring with a full orchestra, dancers, and backstage people proved too cumbersome and costly, Gaynor pared down the production, eventually reducing it to a one-woman performance. They continued touring annually until 2002, when Bean’s sickness necessitated a break.

“I love touring; I’ve done it for most of my life,” Gaynor stated in a 2003 interview. “We return to the same locations; it’s like visiting friends. After the show, individuals return to the dressing room, where we reestablish friendships. We send out about 3,000 Christmas cards each year.”

“Off stage, she was a bright and exceptional lady, a compassionate and loyal friend, and a warm, gracious, very witty, and all-around wonderful person. And she could cook, too!” the statement from Rosamonda and Reyes said, referring to a song from the musical “On the Town” that Gaynor sang in one of her revue presentations.

Gaynor has appeared in various television variety shows, such as “Mitzi…Zings Into Springs” and “Mitzi…Roarin’ in the 20’s.” Many of the specials got Emmy nominations, including wins for choreography, lighting, visual design, and costume design, the latter of which went to Gaynor’s longtime collaborator, Bob Mackie. The specials were the focus of the 2008 documentary “Mitzi Gaynor: Razzle Dazzle!” “The Special Years.”

Mitzi Gaynor, Star Of ‘South Pacific,’ Dies At 93

Francesca Marlene de Czanyi von Gerber (Mitzi is a diminutive for Marlene) was born on September 4, 1931, in Chicago. She grew up in a musically interested household and began singing and dancing at an early age.

Gaynor told the Associated Press in 2003 that she remembers her theatrical debut vividly. She had been taking ballet and tap lessons, and at the age of seven, she was slated to perform a tap performance at the dancing school recital. She had neglected to use the restroom, and as she faced the audience, a puddle developed on the stage.

“I ran kicking and screaming off the stage,” she explains. “But I received thunderous applause. So I dried off and applied some lipstick. After the next female did a hula with batons and stumbled on the wet floor, I went outside and said, ‘I’m fine now. ‘Can I do it?’ “And I got cheers!”

Gaynor and Bean married in 1954 and purchased a magnificent Beverly Hills home in 1960, which they lived in until his death in 2006. They rarely attended Hollywood gatherings, preferring to entertain a few close friends. The couple had no children.

SOURCE | AP