Then and Now

I had occasion to be in Miami Beach last week--in South Beach, at a conference for my husband's job. He worked, and I had plenty of opportunity to enjoy the good weather and soak up the nostalgia.It is a nostalgic place for me. When I was a kid, and especially a teenager, I visited Miami Beach frequently. My grandmother lived there for a while. My father's three siblings lived there. I have pages and pages of photo albums like this:This was the 1970s. There was no such thing as SoBe. What we knew of Lincoln Road was that in olden days it used to be called the "Fifth Avenue of the South." When I was visiting Grandma in the 1970s it wasn't the Fifth Avenue of anywhere and it wasn't really anyplace anyone wanted to go--so, of course, I had to go there. This was when I was going to grow up to be a photographer, and I took my Minolta SRT-101 everywhere:That was then. This is now:One thing that hasn't changed in South Beach: the feral cats. So bold! Then:Now, still walking around like they own the place:Finally, here's something I didn't expect to find on my wanderings along the beach: a hotel pool patio adorned with a quote from Maya Angelou. There's definitely nothing comparable in my photos from the '70s!"Everything in the universe has a rhythm, everything dances."