Seafood Festival

I had been looking forward to the seafood festival an event to raise money to benefit commercial fishing. In the event we took a quick spin around the stands and bugged out.The weather was dank, overcast and slightly muggy, presaging one more cold front, the light was abysmal for photographs and the crowd at Bayview Park felt suffocating to a misanthrope like me.The fact that I had Cheyenne on the leash to test out her crowd skills didn't help. She was overcome by too many smells in too many directions, she attracted attention and I couldn't sneak pictures. The afternoon was not a success. I saw Robert representing the National Marine Sanctuary, busy educating the public:
The lobsters are plastic samples (I think. I can say they weren't moving):
Dinner plans agreed for next Monday (Japanese seafood perhaps) we moved on. For once I wished I were a kid:

Dogs are generally welcome at these kinds of events in Key West, but a Labrador fresh from the pound still anxious to enjoy every last ounce of stimulation was a bit much. I get her point: she has been deprived for a long time, but she was a handful on a leash.

My colleague Noel had the day off dispatching so he was helping his extended Cuban family staff the pudding stand. My wife and I took one look at the long lines for fish and decided to start our meal with dessert- Key Lime tart with meringue and a giant slab of flan:
Call me grumpy but there is something decidedly daft about standing in a humongous long line to eat fresh seafood. It's not like the stuff is a rarity in Key West:
I was attracted to the hot dog stand at Centennial Bank (the former Marine Bank who are always busy doing charitable events in Key West). We were in town to celebrate my wife's recent birthday so we were doing whatever she wanted and hot dogs are not one her favorite foods. Sigh. So I took a picture of this eager wiener eater instead:

The shrimp looked good (they always do in the Keys!):Mayor Cates was busy glad handing. His big public headache at the moment is trying to figure out what to about rebuilding city hall. He says $18 million is too much. That's the easy calculation; the hard one is how to do it for less. Happily I don't live in the city so it's one political tussle I can watch from the sidelines.If you stood in line to get a plate of cracked conch or conch fritters (pronounced "konk" not "konsch" please) you had the rare delight of eating standing up in the middle of a swirling crowd with your food perched on an upended crate.Or you could use the occasion to meet friends and watch people eat seafood they had stood in line to get. I caught Nan with her lovely blue eyes closed, I blame Cheyenne for that:
Beer on the grass is another longstanding Key West tradition. Beer in the park on any other non festival day is a no-no, so one takes advantage when one can.

Then we made a tour of the dust catcher stands. Coconut shells disguised as fish. I saw a woman carrying one of these to her car later and I couldn't help but wonder if they look better at Bayview Park than they might in her living room Up North. A conversation piece no doubt as she welcomes neighbors in from under a snow drift:

If you still have a line of credit on your card, plastic will get you a tropical aquamarine t-shirt to fight off the winter blues.No Bonnevilles in wood, though these Harleys are really quite divine. Irondad would like the tank:

There was live music intermittently. When he was on he was LOUD. An impromptu bicycle parking lot. Cycling in Key West is more than a hobby, it is sensible transportation. I wish when tourists go home they woul take the lessons of scooters and bikes with them. These aren't toys, they are a great way to get around:

I was wearing my subdued tennis shoes to the park but there was a woman present to fly the flag for the outrageous footwear cult:Full of fish and shopping, these were the intended target of the festival planners:

Or this Kansas accountant throwing caution to the wind by appearing in public in his Woodstock t-shirt:

"Boy, that was a waste of time- all smells and no steak."
And I stopped her ravaging these bags of recyclables, er trash. Oh what's the difference, we don't differentiate much in Key West. Now this is my idea of Key West seafood, and happily it was my wife's too. The sun was out, pale but visible, the Straits of Florida were only slightly agitated and my Anchor Steam beer tasted better than it ever did under the cloudy drizzly skies of San Francisco. And it tasted a lot better than Big Brand Name Light on the grass at Bayview Park.

We shared a salad and a plate of mussels and scallops on pasta at Salute on Higgs Beach. Sitting at a table and everything. And no standing in line either. My idea of how seafood should be celebrated. There were lots of other people donating to a good cause in our place.

Hidden Haiti

Here's a commentary worth reading, on the subject of the Haitian earthquake on the website http://www.commondreams.org/ . I reproduce it here in full, it's not very long and it makes cogent points. Already we have started to see pictures of big, butch, well equipped white people carrying dusty dark skinned people out of piles of rubble. This commentary provides a little balance to the pictures, I think.

Published on Thursday, January 14, 2010 by CommonDreams.org
What You're Not Hearing about Haiti (But Should Be)
by Carl Lindskoog

In the hours following Haiti's devastating earthquake, CNN, the New York Times and other major news sources adopted a common interpretation for the severe destruction: the 7.0 earthquake was so devastating because it struck an urban area that was extremely over-populated and extremely poor. Houses "built on top of each other" and constructed by the poor people themselves made for a fragile city. And the country's many years of underdevelopment and political turmoil made the Haitian government ill-prepared to respond to such a disaster.

True enough. But that's not the whole story. What's missing is any explanation of why there are so many Haitians living in and around Port-au-Prince and why so many of them are forced to survive on so little. Indeed, even when an explanation is ventured, it is often outrageously false such as a former U.S. diplomat's testimony on CNN that Port-au-Prince's overpopulation was due to the fact that Haitians, like most Third World people, know nothing of birth control.

It may startle news-hungry Americans to learn that these conditions the American media correctly attributes to magnifying the impact of this tremendous disaster were largely the product of American policies and an American-led development model.

From 1957-1971 Haitians lived under the dark shadow of "Papa Doc" Duvalier, a brutal dictator who enjoyed U.S. backing because he was seen by Americans as a reliable anti-Communist. After his death, Duvalier's son, Jean-Claude "Baby Doc" became President-for-life at the age of 19 and he ruled Haiti until he was finally overthrown in 1986. It was in the 1970s and 1980s that Baby Doc and the United States government and business community worked together to put Haiti and Haiti's capitol city on track to become what it was on January 12, 2010.

After the coronation of Baby Doc, American planners inside and outside the U.S. government initiated their plan to transform Haiti into the "Taiwan of the Caribbean." This small, poor country situated conveniently close to the United States was instructed to abandon its agricultural past and develop a robust, export-oriented manufacturing sector. This, Duvalier and his allies were told, was the way toward modernization and economic development.

From the standpoint of the World Bank and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) Haiti was the perfect candidate for this neoliberal facelift. The entrenched poverty of the Haitian masses could be used to force them into low-paying jobs sewing baseballs and assembling other products.

But USAID had plans for the countryside too. Not only were Haiti's cities to become exporting bases but so was the countryside, with Haitian agriculture also reshaped along the lines of export-oriented, market-based production. To accomplish this USAID, along with urban industrialists and large landholders, worked to create agro-processing facilities, even while they increased their practice of dumping surplus agricultural products from the U.S. on the Haitian people.

This "aid" from the Americans, along with the structural changes in the countryside predictably forced Haitian peasants who could no longer survive to migrate to the cities, especially Port-au-Prince where the new manufacturing jobs were supposed to be. However, when they got there they found there weren't nearly enough manufacturing jobs go around. The city became more and more crowded. Slum areas expanded. And to meet the housing needs of the displaced peasants, quickly and cheaply constructed housing was put up, sometimes placing houses right "on top of each other."

Before too long, however, American planners and Haitian elites decided that perhaps their development model didn't work so well in Haiti and they abandoned it. The consequences of these American-led changes remain, however.

When on the afternoon and evening of January 12, 2010 Haiti experienced that horrible earthquake and round after round of aftershock the destruction was, no doubt, greatly worsened by the very real over-crowding and poverty of Port-au-Prince and the surrounding areas. But shocked Americans can do more than shake their heads and, with pity, make a donation. They can confront their own country's responsibility for the conditions in Port-au-Prince that magnified the earthquake's impact, and they can acknowledge America's role in keeping Haiti from achieving meaningful development. To accept the incomplete story of Haiti offered by CNN and the New York Times is to blame Haitians for being the victims of a scheme that was not of their own making. As John Milton wrote, "they who have put out the people's eyes, reproach them of their blindness."
Carl Lindskoog is a New York City-based activist and historian completing a doctoral degree at the City University of New York. You can contact him at cskoog79@yahoo.com

The Impediment Of Dog

Dogs are a total pain in the backside. They shed hair, their mark bamboo floors, they need attention, they generate veterinarian bills. You can't take a vacation without worrying whether they come or stay and if they stay who looks after them? They generally die before you do and when they die they take a piece of your heart, painfully, with them. Why own a dog?You might want to own a dog because they take you places you never went before. Who knew bracken (a particular kind of fern) grows in the Keys? Cheyenne does:

"She's eating something in the grass" the distraught snowbird called out as he cycled by. Hey, she's a dog, she hunts, and I am not going to put my hand in her mouth, thanks. Are you? She's a fine way to make friends if that's what you feel like: Sometimes she trundles back to me with some foul smell on her breath, but she's a dog. You might own a dog because dog faces are cute:

Sometimes owning a dog means you just get to look the other way and hope when she throws up it's not in the house. Cheyenne agrees whole heartedly licking those furtive lips:

And watching your dog drink disgusting puddle water instead of the refreshing, clean, filtered water you offer her, just makes no sense at all. No wonder Muslims wrinkle their noses in disgust at dogs they really can be dirty.A happy dog's life is a thing of wonder and endless entertainment. Dogs are the perfect Christians. They forgive us our trespasses endlessly, they don't hold resentments, they don't commit adultery or covet our things, they have blind faith in the future and in us and they love like there is no tomorrow, even if you beat them and ill use them. Amazing creatures:And you get to share the woods with someone who likes them as much as you do:

The fact that you are there is what makes it fun for her. Dogs are pack animals and locking them out of the house just makes them lonely. Dogs want to share the joy of the walk with you. What fun is exploring on your own?Cheyenne cringes when I apply medicine to her feet and ears but she still wants to be with me when I'm done torturing her:A night at work without a Labrador is nowhere near as fun as answering 9-1-1 calls with a wet snout in your lap. Even if it was just a quick visit to introduce my new family member:
And dispatchers are notorious for ordering more food than they can possibly eat and putting the discards in the trash which is just the place for a dog to stick her head:The Labrador slept happily in the car all night for a week while the wife was away and waited patiently for the early morning walk followed by breakfast and a deep sleep at home in that order. She shows all the signs of being an excellent night shift drone:Then you find yourself out looking for pictures and you see a corny but pretty picture of a boat on the water and it looks like this:

But Cheyenne blunders into the frame and as you shoo her away the picture comes out like this:"Well, shit," you say to yourself trying to squeeze some lemonade out of the lemon the dog handed to you , "I'll put Cheyenne in the picture." No sooner said than done, except the exposure is all wrong. Double shit, start again.She doesn't care, she's got smells to explore and rotten food to find in the mangrove roots. In summer it will be too hot to explore so we need to make the most of winter:
And some local live aboard left his over sized dinghy around just ripe for a Labrador to explore.I see lots of dog owners dismally walking their bored animals up and down their streets or running them so their owners get their exercise and the dog has to speed past the interesting smells. I am firmly of the belief a dog, like a human needs to use it's brain when exercising and I like to let Cheyenne roam as much as she can. She comes home and passes out. "What a well behaved dog you have," they say, marveling at the inert bundle on the bed when they come to dinner.Partly it's her temperament but partly it's the fact that she gets to go out and walk and explore and be a dog. Then, when we get home, she sleeps:There is no doubt that a dog is a responsibility, but if we hadn't taken her from the pound who would have? And why not? Nobody it seems wants a large old dog. A pox on them, I'll give her a home. Bryce may be right; I may have to start a campaign to get a sidecar for the Bonneville.

Slipping Back

2009 retail sales figures are in and show the worst year in decades. I know my wife and I have cut back on spending money and it seems we are just two white mice among millions who have figured out that things really aren't getting better. It's odd to see the mainstream press dredge up the tired old cliché that 70 percent of the US economy is driven by consumers. You and I aren't people, or families, or neighbors, not to the people at the top. We are consumers and when we stop consuming the money making machine grinds to a halt. It matters not that we aren't spending money for two very good reasons. It only matters that we aren't spending money.

One of the hardest things that I have had to learn about living in the United States is the relationship between the haves and the have-nots. My definition of being wealthy is having enough capital to either a) do nothing productive or b) do something productive on strictly your terms. Everybody else is a working stiff one way or the other. And if you think begging isn't work, maybe you should try, experimentally, before you have to take up that trade in earnest. One way the people in charge keep us consumers in our place is by directing our anger at the shiftless layabouts who do nothing all day, or better yet who live in jail with free meals and television. I always say it's easy enough to join their ranks if you really do think that's a desireable lifestyle. It's much harder to join the ranks of the banksters and political lobbyists and their exclusive lifestyles. And no it is going to get much, much harder to stay in place never mind climb economic ladders.

And yet us working stiffs in the US are never supposed to even feel envy for the lifestyles of the rich and famous. The proper attitude is respect that they made it, tinged with a little bit of guilt that we shiftless masses haven't taken sufficient advantage of our opportunities in this limitless land to join them. The fault lies not with them but in us. If we really wanted to, our leaders tell us, we too could become multimillionaires in business, politics and the arts. When people harangue me on this subject, because apparently my views are radical, I point out that Bill Gates would never have achieved his absolute wealth, had he been building Microsoft in say, Latvia. What has given him untold wealth is we, the US consumers. He produced a product, advertised it, and we, worried about our shiftless image, we the hundreds of millions of US consumers buy it and he makes a personal fortune larger than many nation's annual budgets. But without us consumers there would have been none of that. Don't believe me? Wait and see because now we consumers are no longer spending wildly for two reasons. We've either lost everything or are terrified of being the next pawn to drop off the bottom rung of the ladder of insecurity. Even Microsoft can't make money if we don't buy. And if we don't buy the shiftless leaders of our economy not only get to keep their fortunes, they get to add to them even as one quarter of children in the US live in foodstamps.

That is to me the reason why we have an unspoken social contract in modern civilization, very similar to the feudal relationship between serfs and their lords. We help them make money but they help us to live decent, if undemanding, lives. Most of us after all don't really want that much, a decent job, a home, a family a modest sense of purpose, and now, while our leaders savage our economy to death in front of our very eyes, they still expect us to be grateful. And weirdly enough we lower our eyes from the unsavory spectacle and meet their basest expectations. At least we aren't Haitians, who eat mud pies and are to blame for their own misery for "disrespecting" God, according to Evangelical Christians who speak out on the subject of the recent earthquake.

I wonder how long we will have to decline into being "used-to-haves" before we put the brakes on the wholesale looting of the US economy? How can we? I read that we are going to spend, in official numbers, 103 billion dollars killing Afghans in 2010. I cannot help but ask myself if the charitable thing would not be to pledge that amount to oil-free Haiti to rebuild. Of course not, we are engaged in a life or death struggle to own cheap oil and that is what we will do, no matter how many Americans die to achieve that goal in Iraq, in Yemen, in Oman, and God help us all, in Iran. Because without cheap oil we are doomed to a slow unravelling of the consumer economy, and we shall return to our former status as people, instead of consumers, and that won't do at all.

Turn up the volume on the TV.

Anatomy Lesson

Doctor Norris flaunts a picture of himself in the Key West Citizen on his office furniture, alongside all those other bits of paper doctors accumulate during the course of a career- diplomas, certificates and Rotary Club encouragements to do good. In the waiting room where I sat while waiting to get my expiring shingles examined one more time, there lies my favorite book:It's a big floppy tome that has apparently been around for a while, and I expect will be around for a while longer as humans aren't going to change that much in the foreseeable future.While waiting I like to flip through the book and try to come up with some confounding diagnosis before the doctor gets into the room. "Yes, I think I may be suffering from an impacted esophagealic sprung splangefusket in the lower anterior nerve endings." " Very good," says the unflappable doctor, setting the book aside "let's have a look at those shingles."After we had established my blisters were gone and all that was left was a burning sensation round my waist I got to ask about the book. "This picture," Doctor Norris said, "shows how we evolved from fish. Look at the lines of the nerves, see how they coil round."

We started as worms and then as the flippers developed the nerves traced spirals around our body. "The blue on the arms and the purple on the feet look like flippers."

I stared at the pictures and it was at this moment perhaps that I got a glimpse of how little I know. I have never had reason to doubt Darwin's On the Origin of Species, even though I tried to read it once and found it as dry as chalk dust and just as illegible. I am reliably informed millions of people do doubt evolutionary theory and I wondered upon what they base their distrust. The more I learn the more obvious it seems, not that I have ever had reason to doubt evolutionary theory. I don't doubt the reality of Relativity Theory either, though most of it goes way over my head. Dr Norris worked at a teaching hospital Up North and it shows because he has a remarkable capacity to explain the most impenetrable medical knowledge. I really like having to go and see him, I always learn something.The anatomy book laid out the human body just as one would lay out an electronics schematic or a parts diagram for a motorcycle. How little do I know, I thought to myself as I idly flipped the pages of the book. What seems obvious to a human educated in the sciences seems so remote and abstract in a world where newspapers dumb down their language to maintain the interest of a reading public with the attention span of a ten year old. There was a photograph of the author making his painstaking drawings of us as we are underneath our skin:I liked this one the best, it makes us look like sides of beef, the marbled fat on the right hand side, the barbecue ribs on the left.

I suppose once we accept the physical-ness of our being, all those thoughts that flit behind our eyeballs, all those emotions that spark in our heads become part of the machine. No more and no less.

I managed to have my own bit of fun when I signed in to see the Doctor. "Er, sir," the sweet young receptionist hung out of her cubicle holding my sign-in sheet. "What is this date?" she asked, looking at my signature next to the word Date:___ "Thanks," I replied, "I don't need a date. I'm married." She giggled and withdrew. I wondered what she'd make of my notation that my main complaint was lack of health care reform. We may just be sides of beef on our hind legs, but there's no proscription against having a bit of fun before we go to the knacker's yard.