Standing in the shade on Frances Street, waiting for Cheyenne to catch her breath in summer heat I was contemplating the trees dominating the cemetery skyline. It's been hard lately for me living in a state that seems hell bent on devouring itself. Our Governor, one of the most successful corporate crooks in history, is determined to sell out what is left of the Sunshine State to his former cronies in a breathtaking sweep under the carpet of social mores and middle class rectitude. He hasn't created one single job, indeed has driven out the proposed rail jobs offered by the Feds. He has announced a privatization campaign that will funnel public funds to private stockholders across the board and the modestly unbalanced budget is to be set right on the backs of the poor not the rich. God forbid. 
So I take solace in the shiny fronds of the palms towering over the dead. The sun still shines in the sunshine state and I am snug in the Southernmost City so i suppose it is esoteric in this selfish age to worry for my less fortunate citizens. If they can't afford the lifestyle let them find another! I've got mine and my wife has hers and that's all that matters.
Eventually things will change and from change comes improvement, eventually. One could argue that without World War Two industrial drive such as that seen in post war Germany would never have been possible, but consider the cataclysm that the people went through to get to their modern unionized manufacturing prosperity...And I ask myself how it is that Germany manufactures, pays high wages and provides an ample social safety net - and work even for Turkish migrants!- and we in the US languish with our best paid jobs sent overseas.
The latest proposals to wreck Medicare and Social Security while cutting taxes on the very wealthy all the way down to 25% top rate seems like such a blatant attack on the middle class one wonders how it's authors can survive a public lynching. Instead, in the process of breaking every promise made to the middle class we see our people rolling over and leaving it to the protesters in Syria and Spain and Sendai to do the heavy lifting for us. I am told I should bargain with Medical providers when the Federal government gives me medical vouchers to tend to my old age medical needs. I wonder how exactly those negotiations will go. They certainly don't go well now when we face absurd medical bills and the promise of an ever worsening situation.
And like I say we are the lucky ones, to some modest degree. Child free, employed and with medical benefits we sit in the sun and watch the glare on the palm fronds and the ripples on the ocean and read how it seems Michigan's Upper Peninsula is too remote and under populated to be worth spending any money on. The rich don't need da U.P. so the Peninsula can go hang. As long as there are palms and sunshine and fish in the ocean ready to be caught and killed they won't let us go the way of the U.P. They will need us to tend to their safe back yard tropical playground. Therefore we thank the palms for looking so good.
So I take solace in the shiny fronds of the palms towering over the dead. The sun still shines in the sunshine state and I am snug in the Southernmost City so i suppose it is esoteric in this selfish age to worry for my less fortunate citizens. If they can't afford the lifestyle let them find another! I've got mine and my wife has hers and that's all that matters.Eventually things will change and from change comes improvement, eventually. One could argue that without World War Two industrial drive such as that seen in post war Germany would never have been possible, but consider the cataclysm that the people went through to get to their modern unionized manufacturing prosperity...And I ask myself how it is that Germany manufactures, pays high wages and provides an ample social safety net - and work even for Turkish migrants!- and we in the US languish with our best paid jobs sent overseas.
The latest proposals to wreck Medicare and Social Security while cutting taxes on the very wealthy all the way down to 25% top rate seems like such a blatant attack on the middle class one wonders how it's authors can survive a public lynching. Instead, in the process of breaking every promise made to the middle class we see our people rolling over and leaving it to the protesters in Syria and Spain and Sendai to do the heavy lifting for us. I am told I should bargain with Medical providers when the Federal government gives me medical vouchers to tend to my old age medical needs. I wonder how exactly those negotiations will go. They certainly don't go well now when we face absurd medical bills and the promise of an ever worsening situation.And like I say we are the lucky ones, to some modest degree. Child free, employed and with medical benefits we sit in the sun and watch the glare on the palm fronds and the ripples on the ocean and read how it seems Michigan's Upper Peninsula is too remote and under populated to be worth spending any money on. The rich don't need da U.P. so the Peninsula can go hang. As long as there are palms and sunshine and fish in the ocean ready to be caught and killed they won't let us go the way of the U.P. They will need us to tend to their safe back yard tropical playground. Therefore we thank the palms for looking so good.
Park the Bonneville under a street lamp shaded by a spreading palm and the resulting picture takes on the qualities of some place far from Key West, where trees grow tall and banana palms thatch palaces. Its just the parking lot at Banana Bay Resort. And the 
Across the street the boring old 
I took a lunch break to check out Key Cove, a funky little street off North Roosevelt which allows some few people access to a canal, like those of us lucky enough to live in suburban out islands in the Lower Keys. But the moon was obscured and I couldn't see anything and could photograph even less. So I took some pictures out of boredom and I saw the Banana Bay become someplace else in my camera:
This is the landscape occupied by Graham Greene's Quiet American, a place of heat and intrigue, of broken promises and heart breaking diseases, a place where life is lived like an onion, layer after layer of secrets need to be unpeeled to get to the nub of whatever the issue appears to be. The banality of a Key West hotel becomes the stuff of movie scripts. How cool is that? And all thanks to the humble palm tree.
I have my own grove of coconut palms, and what a tremendous amount of work they are too! Each tree produces a vast number of coconuts in continuation all year long and alongside them we get tons of fronds which I hack with a machete to fit them in the bins for the garden waste mulching program at the landfill. Coconuts are not native to the Keys, which may come as a surprise, but they prized because they set the right tone for the islands. The fiction is that the Keys are tropical ( they are sub-tropical as they lie North of the Tropic of Cancer), that they are in the mythical Caribbean Sea (The Keys are in the South Atlantic- the Caribbean laps the south shores of Cuba, Hispaniola and 
I have wondered for a long time why palms are called palms and the answer I got for my troubles was that the trees appear to look like human palms with fingers extended, especially when the breezes blow and the trees sway back and forth. It sounds pretty stupid to me, but I've met no better explanation for how they got their name. And so they grow, like the clappers come rain or drought, sunshine or shade. Amazing plants and vastly underrated in those sickly advertisements for vacations and liquor and... all that other stuff. Respect your palm trees, oh vacationer and doff your hat to these remarkable survivors of all that nature can throw at them.