Michael Arnold Art

Alaska's indigenous people, who are jointly called Alaska Natives, can be divided into five major groupings: Aleuts, Northern Eskimos (Inupiat), Southern Eskimos (Yuit), Interior Indians (Athabascans) and Southeast Coastal Indians (Tlingit and Haida). These groupings are based on broad cultural and linguistic similarities of peoples living contiguously in different regions of Alaska. They do not represent political or tribal units nor are they the units Native people have traditionally used to define themselves.  https://www.alaskannature.com/natives.htm

Zora Neale Hurston, born in Eatonville, Florida, was a noted novelist, folklorist and anthropologist who traveled throughout Florida collecting and writing stories of rural people. She was a major figure of the  Harlem Renaissance  in the 1920's and was part of the Federal Writers' Project in Florida in 1938. A recipient of Guggenheim and Rosenwald fellowships, Zora Neale Hurston's most prominent works include Mules and Men, Dust Tracks in the Road, and Their Eyes Were Watching God. Eatonville annually holds the Zora Neale Hurston Festival, a tribute to Hurston’s lasting literary accomplishments.  https://www.myblackhistory.net/Zora_Hurston.htm

  Florida's wild hogs are often referred to as feral hogs or swine and are of three general types. These include free-ranging swine that come from domesticated stock, Eurasian wild boar, and hybrids of the two. Although technically, feral refers to free-ranging animals from domesticated stock, all wild hogs are typically referred to as feral in Florida and all are considered the same species, Sus scrofa. https://www.floridiannature.com/Floridawildhogs.htm

Satchel Paige was the greatest baseball pitcher of the Negro Leagues and quite possibly the greatest pitcher ever. He became the oldest rookie ever in the major-leagues when he joined the Cleveland Indians in 1948 at age 42. They went on to win both the pennant and the World Series. Major League Baseball made Satchel Paige a legend in his own lifetime. Elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1971, Satchel Paige was the first player to be inducted from the Negro leagues.  read more

The red fox has the appearance of a small dog and weighs from 10 to   15 pounds and measures up to 2 feet long with another foot for a bushy tail. The end of the tail is black, tipped with white. The Red Fox is most commonly a rusty red, with white underbelly, black ear tips and legs, and a bushy tail usually with a distinctive white tip. The "red" tone can vary from dark chestnut to golden. Because the gray fox  frequently has quite a lot of red hair, it may be confused with the red fox. The red fox is   essentially a nocturnal animal, but it occasionally feeds during the day, and more at dawn and dusk.  read more

F l ori da is well known for its most famous reptile, the alligator. Alligators were once endangered but they are now listed as threatened, although it is hard to go to any source of freshwater in the state of Florida without spotting an alligator.  Lakes,  rivers , ponds and even retention areas are all filled with varying amounts of gators. They are also found in brackish waters, but not very often and certainly not to the extent of crocodiles, who prefer the brackish waters near the Everglades. When Spanish settlers first saw the Alligator they named it " el lagarto ", meaning "the lizard". The Florida alligator is an ancient reptile that is only found in the Southeastern United States, from Texas to as far north as North Carolina. The only other species of alligator in the world is found in China, but that one is much smaller and very rare. read more