Fort Zachary Taylor

I admit I went to Fort Zachary specifically to check out the Civil War Heritage camp out and it was great fun. But there again I am very fond of history as it helps me understand where we are as a civilization. Luckily I had no clue where the reenactors hung out so I made a beeline for the beach and parked in the handicapped parking (I have a temporary placard through April though I'm hoping I will ditch it before then) and stumped off with camera around my neck and walking stick in hand.

It was a glorious day, edging up t 80 degrees, but not humid and slightly breezy. I got a hankering to go for a swim but I am quite well aware the water would be freezing by my elevated standards. 

This is a state park one of almost two hundred in Florida and they are all worth a visit. This flat state has more stuff to see than most critics have any idea of but if you check out the state parks you'll be off to a great start.

I was hardly alone in taking joy in the day. 

Danger Will Robinson!

This beach has  rock break waters that give a photography something to focus on and provide foreground for a picture looking south toward the Straits of Florida.

I'm not sure he cared about the break waters but I think they serve a couple of purposes and mainly to help break up wave action and keep the sandy beach intact but they also provide a safe boat-free swimming area.

This photograph made me want to throw aside my cane like Lazarus abandoning his funeral garb and walk unhindered into the water. 

I think you can argue this is hands down the nicest  beach in Key West. There's lots of sand, there are no bums thanks to the entrance fee, there are fresh water showers, a concession stand, park workers cleaning and rangers patrolling. It's about the most peaceful beach experience you can have and it cost me $4:50 to come in alone in my car.

Then there are a multitude of picnic tables, and I mean lots of them scattered under the pine trees. Bring a  picnic and no alcohol of course as it is forbidden, but you can have a nice day here drinking whatever from a thermos flask and snoozing in the shade in between swims.

I couldn't move around like in days past before my accident and sometime sit does wear on me my inability to crouch or lean or swivel or dodge to get a better angle. Every limited change in posture takes me ages and even then I am not at all sure I can get a good angle. So I found a spot and swiveled around as best I could shooting in a  rather peculiar static sort of way and glad to have a big telephoto lense on my Lumix.  

There is the question, and a vexed question it is about the fate of the pine forest at Fort Zachary.

I took a bunch of pictures in black and white and also in color so you can decide which you prefer, if either of this wooded portion of the fort. The black and white looked interesting to me but honestly I wanted to record the place in its natural color because some days I wonder how long it will be here after all the shouting that went on a few years ago.

The state has a policy, reasonable enough on its  face of requiring non native vegetation to be removed from state lands. These so called pine trees are actually casuarina tees or Australian pines an they are very acidic so when they drop their needles nothing grows under them. They spread by projecting their roots and they are rampant. Also they don't dig deep and strong winds tend to topple them. All of which is very bad, right?

The thing is the pines of Fort Zachary have been here since long before the anti-invasive policy put about by the state parks and in a town like Key West with limited land for picnics and family beach gatherings no one wanted to see this shade stand cut down and replaced by scrubby little bushes as planted elsewhere in the park.

Boy did people get riled up! Half the city turned out and threatened mayhem and I tell you honestly I didn't give them a chance when you lined them up against state law. I was wrong. They sent the state packing and the pines have been allowed to stay. It was an uneasy truce and I dare say the subject won't come back up for a while but I don' think the state has given up on he idea of getting rid of the shade trees. 

I think they need to build up the native plants growing, slowly on the edge of the meadow across the parking lot and perhaps we might see a slow transfer of shade to another part of the park. But it will all take time.

The new plantings are behind the parked cars and vans in the picture below:

You can see why no one outside of the park system wanted these trees uprooted:

My buddy Robert, an eco-warrior of impeccable credentials opposes the presence of the pines but it's not a subject we bring up between us. I like the way the pines look and I like the clear ground underneath and I have happy memories of fun picnics here like everyone else. Call me sentimental. I'd like tow watch my wife eat a few more helpings of bright green Fausto's seaweed at a  picnic table before the place changes too much. There again why anyone likes seaweed baffles me.

This picture seemed like the perfect foil for all those people Up North under snow. They always get annoyed when I seem to enjoy perpetual summer in the Keys. Sorry about that but I do. I live here because I like summer year round. I don't ski, I don't like seeing my breath, I like turquoise water, impossibly high rents and ridiculously small amounts of land to live on.  What can I say?

This is the meadow. Dogs are allowed anywhere in the park outside buildings which means no walks in the fort and not on the beach as no one wants a surprise in the sand and not enough people pick up after their animals unfortunately. Even I who walks like a drunken sailor can pick up after Rusty, with difficulty but I can do it. 

The fort when it was built was an island with a long causeway back to land. Then they dredged the harbor and threw up the dirt from the bottom and built up the land around the fort which was supposed to guard the entrance to Key West. Nowadays it's a low brick shadow on the horizon. 

It's odd too because the view from the top of the walls is lovely and I'll walk the steps as soon as I am able. I took these pictures in 2013 when I could climb stairs three at a  time and not lose my breath!

Sculpture Key West Fort Zach

Sculpture Key West is in trouble. And why wouldn't it be when the Arts are just one element of our former prosperous life going down the drain of economic contraction?The parking lot at Fort Zachary Taylor was lined with small campers from Quebec, the annual winter migration of French speakers to our island, now with their loonies worth more than the dollar and thus empowered they can spend all day in the comfortable bum-free zone of the state park. Indigenous Park used to be their hang out but these are prosperous days for citizens of a country with well regulated banks, a housing bubble and energy to sell abroad. Oh and no health insurance worries either. No medical bankruptcies in Canada and you know this lot has their provincial health cards with them so Canada pays our outrageous health care costs should a Canadian fall ill or injured while in the US.Down here in the land of the free with unemployment at Depression era levels, millions on food stamps, millions more off the assistance rolls altogether and tens of millions with no access to health care, it happens that the Key West Symphony has gone bust and has left musicians with unpaid wages. The number of exhibits at the annual Sculpture key West display is down to seventeen from a high a few years ago in the mid 50s according to the Key West Citizen. The open space shown above used to be littered with artworks. The views across key West Harbor are nice though and I've peppered a few through this essay owing to the dearth of Art.Please keep coming to Key West and spending money. Please. The Fort is a splendid viewing spot. However I had no time to visit as I was going to see True Grit at the Tropic after my dog walk in the park. I'm sorry to say the Coen brothers' version of the classic John Wayne version far outshines the original. Jeff Bridges is totally excellent as the marshal and the Coen brothers' script struck me as flawless. I spent a delightful one hour and fifty minutes at a movie I expected not to enjoy as I am not a Coen brothers fan. On to the static art of the afternoon.
This artist is a local apparently. He made it through the rigorous jury selection process and apparently some of the decline of the exhibit is blamed on the strenuous efforts to keep local artists out for fear they might in some manner no explained "lower the tone." We are supposed to see more locals next year, if this fading show even actually returns, which is something I am starting to doubt.
I rather liked the contrast of the tanbark foresail on this traditional cruiser spanking along in a strong north breeze across the turquoise harbor waters.We were not alone as Cheyenne and I strolled the grounds. Tourists I think, with their neat clothes, trim white socks and not a food stain between them.

Aeroplane!This next exhibit was spinning like a propeller. It came all the way from Virginia they say.

It's hard to imagine how awful Key West based entries must have been to have been booted out by a length of metal spinning on a metal pole.I offered Cheyenne an opportunity to go wading at the formerly nude beach tucked away next to the Outer Mole. Instead the furry whore when hunting for their lunch. They said they lived in key West though how they could be nude in the chill north breeze I do not know. They are probably from Minnesota, them and their cute French accents.

Er, okay. What is it? An ostrich in such a vast spacious nesty sort of place? Surely they mean "Birds nesting".

Mirrors on the horizon.This is reportedly Square Wave from Fairfax Virginia, which, as it is on the western or inland side of the nation's capital makes it a noted authority no doubt on wave formation. I thought I looked rather swishy reflected in the wave, my hips rather more gay and flexible than might be the case in real life.

Cheyenne politely refrained from falling over laughing.

A rather lonely wave, square or otherwise in a sea of empty grass.This next one got a thumbs up in the paper.

A local effort. Rather like an out sized souvenir pen from CVS.The irritation felt about this past couple of years' exhibitions has been over the fact that the display has been spread over three locations, the West Martello Tower and the Key West Botanical Garden on Stock island (whence comes tomorrow's essay). The organizer announced in a letter to the paper that the reason for the change was that the park management was unfriendly and the Civil War reenactors want more room and so on and so forth. So they spread the exhibits out at a time when the rest of the planet noticed money and credit were drying up everywhere and Bernie Madoff wiped out most South Florida charitable efforts.This year's Big Effort came from half way round the world.

I rather wondered if the noisy people who hold sway over the Arts in little Key West weren't miffed that the sculptures weren't drawing too much attention to the lowly state park and wanted a piece of the action. In getting it they seem to have sounded the death knell on this stressed out piece of fun that is Sculpture Key West.Sculpture Key West has been good for the state park in light of the recent fracas over proposals to murder the casuarina trees near the beach. That idea got rolled back amid horrid anger citywide, and now the sculptures, a highlight of winter, are fading. They used to have concerts in the park too but the Chorale last year preferred the sterility of an indoor Christmas Concert at Tennessee Williams, and so it goes. Thank God for the Korean Caterpillar else there would have been precious little to fill the void.

The Florida Keys in large measure live a charmed life compared to places Up North. When people fall off the employment rolls here they simply disappear Up North to eke out a life with their families. Until our new robber baron Governor took office Florida's state budget wasn't in the awful shape we read about in other large states like California, Illinois and new Jersey. We can only hope the true conservatives in Tallahassee hold the line as they have indicated they intend to on proposed crazy ass tax cuts, but in any event Key West is doing okay in the midst of the world economic meltdown (known as a recovery to the White House).

We float along on a cloud of tourist income and good weather and even though the demographic is getting markedly older (and testier) we are lucky to be on the edge of the meltdown Up North.

Still, people should guard their treasures with greater concern and awareness, because if they don't what Arts exist here will be washed away. If organizers can't get their shit together this exhibition will fade just like the symphony has, just as art galleries have up and down the city streets.

That would be a shame.

I parked Cheyenne in the shade on Simonton Street, fed the meter and walked to the Tropic. True Grit was showing in the new Peggy Dow theater and very comfortable it was too. As we waited for the lights to go down a couple of the older demographic snowbirds were discussing their impending death. "I can give $600,000 to the kids tax free...?" one querulous voice asked loudly. "Yes,' came the reply. "The other one point four million you get taxed on even if it's in the trust," replied a younger voice. They rattled on for a while discussing inheritance tax rates and trusts. One younger voice (an inheritor perhaps?) grumbled about the reversion to former tax rates and iniquitous death taxes and so forth. All I could think was, we should all have such problems.

But I'm lucky, with no children to worry about, a secure job, I think, health benefits and time enough to take a sunny February walk to enjoy what I hope is not a last lovely art exhibit allowed to fade away and die like an abundant inheritance through lack of care and attention.