Sunshine

While I am enjoying the slightly cooler weather after our sideswipe by the modestly proportioned Hurricane Eta I am fair fed up with gray skies and sudden unexpected showers of rain. I had to hunt around a bit but I found some pictures of sunshine and bunny rabbits and candy canes. Actually no but I was on Duval Street in real sunshine once upon a time. I remember it with joy.

The thing about Duval Street is that it's not really a place for people who need to buy normal stuff. By normal I a mean anything other than alcohol, medical cannabis and t-shirts with unusual sexual suggestions on them. If you need a knitting needle or a pair of lederhosen Duval Street is not for you. If you need bread milk and pistachios the nearest you can find a proper supermarket is Fausto's on Fleming at Bahama.

To penetrate this deep downtown requires fortitude, a mask if you can't stay socially distanced and a desire to see how vacationers look in their natural habitat. Upper Duval, so called despite the fact it is the southern end of the street, is a dozen blocks from the bars and beery smells of the sidewalks of Lower Duval (the northern end confusingly).

I like it much better as there is a slightly less frenzied tone to the sidewalks and I can look up and see witches' hats if I am so inclined.

This side street looking west to Bahama Village holds the promise of the key West you really want to see, narrow lanes much greenery and no hawkers bothering you as you stroll by.

You can even stop in the shade and make an impenetrable composition of fencing and blue skies and palm fronds and dazzle friends and neighbors with your artistry:

And if that isn't enough check out the nice colors on the buildings and ask yourself why sky blue looks so blue under the tropical winter sun. Keep coming back until you find the answer.

 

Armistice Day

 For Veterans

Anthem for Doomed Youth

BY WILFRED OWEN

What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?

      — Only the monstrous anger of the guns.

      Only the stuttering rifles' rapid rattle

Can patter out their hasty orisons.

No mockeries now for them; no prayers nor bells; 

      Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs,—

The shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells;

      And bugles calling for them from sad shires.

What candles may be held to speed them all?

      Not in the hands of boys, but in their eyes

Shall shine the holy glimmers of goodbyes.

      The pallor of girls' brows shall be their pall;

Their flowers the tenderness of patient minds,

And each slow dusk a drawing-down of blinds.