Summer sunrise over Ramrod Key.
Even though temperatures aren't dropping the sun is, and as it heads toward the equator and points south the amount of daylight we get up here is gradually shrinking. It's nothing terribly dramatic at 24 degrees North latitude, but my morning ride home is almost entirely in the dark between 6 and six thirty.
Cheyenne's walks vary in the morning, depending on my level of exhaustion and her apparent friskiness. Some mornings we walk down the street and back, a matter of twenty minutes, other mornings we leap in the car and drive out here to the Ramrod Pool.
The Pool isn't actually a freshwater swimming pool, it's just a failed development, the beginnings of a canal dug into the rock and the hole cut into the rock provides a nice deep rectangle to swim in, open to tidal waters of Niles Channel, which is the body of water that separates little Ramrod Key from it's larger neighbor Summerland Key to the west.
Much of North Ramrod is salt ponds and mangroves which create reflecting pools for the sun which was attempting to break out through the cloud cover. The recent morning I took these pictures, tides were excessively high following a new moon, and salt water was spilling out of the pool:
During the day, especially after work, people bring their dogs and their recliners and their coolers and set up music and drink and talk and watch the water. They leave good smells for my Labrador to check out.
One recent midday visit we came upon a couple of cars with dogs running around. Cheyenne shared a quick sniff, turned around and stumped off to mind her own business. She is a happy loner and prefers to nose the smells left behind rather than meet the owners of the odors. Shown below is the causeway, narrowed by high tides that leads from the end of the asphalt street to the pool. Recently the county threw down some gravel and smoothed it out to make for easier access. Rather decent of them I thought, in these troubled economic times.
Across Niles Channel one can see the early morning lights of downtown Summerland Key blazing away. This distance from Highway One is too far for the sound of early commuters to carry across the water, even with the benefit of the usual southeast wind.
The homes directly across from Ramrod's pool the homes on north Summerland are lit up in their isolation.
At some point daylight forces it's way over the horizon and the newspaper becomes legible, as if by magic. 
More importantly the sky starts to light up in pinks and oranges and yellows. 
There's a yellow Labrador out there somewhere rooting around in the bushes ignoring the rainbow overhead. 
She may not be a swimmer but she is learning to wade. 
Then it's time to go home to breakfast for her and a deep and dreamless sleep for me.
Even though temperatures aren't dropping the sun is, and as it heads toward the equator and points south the amount of daylight we get up here is gradually shrinking. It's nothing terribly dramatic at 24 degrees North latitude, but my morning ride home is almost entirely in the dark between 6 and six thirty.Cheyenne's walks vary in the morning, depending on my level of exhaustion and her apparent friskiness. Some mornings we walk down the street and back, a matter of twenty minutes, other mornings we leap in the car and drive out here to the Ramrod Pool.The Pool isn't actually a freshwater swimming pool, it's just a failed development, the beginnings of a canal dug into the rock and the hole cut into the rock provides a nice deep rectangle to swim in, open to tidal waters of Niles Channel, which is the body of water that separates little Ramrod Key from it's larger neighbor Summerland Key to the west.Much of North Ramrod is salt ponds and mangroves which create reflecting pools for the sun which was attempting to break out through the cloud cover. The recent morning I took these pictures, tides were excessively high following a new moon, and salt water was spilling out of the pool:During the day, especially after work, people bring their dogs and their recliners and their coolers and set up music and drink and talk and watch the water. They leave good smells for my Labrador to check out.One recent midday visit we came upon a couple of cars with dogs running around. Cheyenne shared a quick sniff, turned around and stumped off to mind her own business. She is a happy loner and prefers to nose the smells left behind rather than meet the owners of the odors. Shown below is the causeway, narrowed by high tides that leads from the end of the asphalt street to the pool. Recently the county threw down some gravel and smoothed it out to make for easier access. Rather decent of them I thought, in these troubled economic times.Across Niles Channel one can see the early morning lights of downtown Summerland Key blazing away. This distance from Highway One is too far for the sound of early commuters to carry across the water, even with the benefit of the usual southeast wind.
The homes directly across from Ramrod's pool the homes on north Summerland are lit up in their isolation.
At some point daylight forces it's way over the horizon and the newspaper becomes legible, as if by magic. 
More importantly the sky starts to light up in pinks and oranges and yellows. 
There's a yellow Labrador out there somewhere rooting around in the bushes ignoring the rainbow overhead. 
She may not be a swimmer but she is learning to wade. Then it's time to go home to breakfast for her and a deep and dreamless sleep for me. 
It started out called the Safe Zone, a place where people without shelter could spend the night without charge and without fear. Monroe County's then-Sheriff Rick Roth donated a piece of wasteland at the back of the Sheriff's Headquarters and Jail complex on Stock Island. It was an inspired location back in 2004, so close to the Sheriff's office and so far from most of the rest of the respectable population.
So, Saturday afternoon they had an open house for the public to see how things are going at the Shelter in these tough fiscal times. Recently City Commissioner Rossi had some negative things to say about the Shelter, known these days at KOTS. Gina Pecora, Deputy Director of the Florida Keys Outreach Coalition was very polite as she took me round saying he had been misquoted. I hope so. I think KOTS is a tremendous place and should be an example to communities across the country as the Depression takes hold and more respectable people fall off their middle class perches. Every guest checks in, with ID and gets a bedroll, a chance to shower with a place to sleep for the night.
The fact is, and critics are reluctant to admit this, that with rents as high as they are in the Lower Keys an average working Joe can't raise $3,000 for first last and deposit and utilities and a small stash of money to survive the move to a place to live. They may have a job and many of the residents of this place do work, but they are the definition of working poor. 
The separate shower stalls for men and women feature private toilets and a level of cleanliness and order that would shock those like Commissioner Rossi who apparently feel the need to pick on the least among us. This place start out as a collection of tents but now the guests are housed in fiberglass Quonset hut types of buildings. 
Each male guest gets a mattress inside the huts.
Each place has a space for personal belongings at the head of the bed and a hook on the wall. It is extremely well thought out. 
The facility is staffed by paid workers overnight and the place is covered by security cameras so overnight security guards can keep an eye on the place form their central booth. Gina told me lots of organizations come by and volunteer their time to help the guests with AA meetings and so forth a common feature of life at KOTS in the evening. The facility of operated by the Florida Keys Outreach Coalition which has been doing this type work with the poor since 1992. They are led by the dynamic and personable Reverend Steve Braddock, a man who merits a shot at sainthood in my opinion. 
The place was guarded by this guy who was yelling for help, his leash was caught around the plant. When his owner finally figured that the dog didn't like to be tied up and let him loose he sat quietly by the doorway into the restaurant. Key West has yet to implement a new state law permitting dogs in outdoor restaurants. Weirdly enough I am not a huge fan of taking my dog with me into restaurants because I really don't need the hassle of looking after her on my evening off. Happily for me Cheyenne is quite content in the car, especially in the cooler days of winter. Having her sit in an air conditioned car while I eat dinner seems absurd. 
We took inside seating, paradoxically, preferring not to sit out in the heat of the evening. Ilona's has a long list of micro brew beers, keeping up with the fashion, and we asked for two beers not hoppy and bitter and we got precisely what we asked for. My wife's Terrapin had a honey after taste she really liked and my Sweaty Betty (sic) from Colorado was several steps above a Coors blandness. They sell wine too.
We were amused to see among all the wines on display a bottle of Bull's Blood from the city of Eger. In September 1995 my wife and I rented a car in the Czech Republic and spent three weeks touring Eastern Europe at a time when western ways had barely started to penetrate the former Iron Curtain. We landed in Eger during the annual wine celebration and we carefully brought home a plastic barrel of wine, that they filled for us, one among many souvenirs from the trip.
Eger Bor (bor is Hungarian for wine. Magyar is a very confusing language) was not on the menu for us on a steaming September evening. September is the quiet month in Key West and we had the Friday night inside dining room to ourselves. 
The menu offered standard Key West dishes and sandwiches, but we went for the Hungarian side of the page. Beef Stroganoff:
Chicken Paprikash, which had just a hint of peppery bite. 
Outside a jazz trio was performing to the outdoor bar and garden part of the restaurant. 
Appelrouth Lane is the alley that ends opposite the Strand Pharmacy on Duval.
Down the stairs she comes ready to swipe my face with her tongue and whack my legs with her tail. The moon has been a mere sliver of it's former self and as usual a new moon brings a spring tide in it's wake. So much so the canal has been full almost to overflowing in the morning as the Atlantic tides rise as full as they can. That puts my little Dusky 14 footer and it's 25 horsepower motor at dock level just about.
The presence of a great deal of fresh water has brought out the mosquito vector control people in force. Mosquitoes don't breed in salt water happily or we'd all be dead. Controlling the mosquito habitat ("vector") is an endless task and as one might imagine it is a task that pleases just about no one. I wasn't surprised to see the brown mosquito control district helicopter buzzing Summerland Key across the salt ponds. They drop an innocuous cereal-like pellet that messes up the mosquito lifestyle without poisoning the world below.
Mosquito control has been in the news lately with two members of the board up for election this year. It has been described as a scandal that the smallest public agency in the county has the director with the largest salary, around $185,000 a year I believe. At a time when public employees are under attack by the forces of darkness that want us all, private and public workers, to be reduced to poverty, the district is doing a piss poor job of drawing attention to itself and it's dirty laundry. A manager is being prosecuted for allegedly using work phones for private use- a man who reportedly earns better than a hundred thousand a year and stands accused of being an idiot, unwilling to pay for his own phones like the rest of us. And yet while the bosses tussle about buying television air time to advertise their services and how much to pay themselves, the workers keep working. Which is as well for those of us that don't much like mosquitoes.
It's hot and humid still in the Keys, and we are seeing lots of rain that makes fresh water puddles which encourage mosquitoes to breed. There is some talk of dengue fever, and speaking as one who contracted it in Central America years ago it is no particular threat to healthy well nourished people, though the flu-like fever is no fun at all. Still one can't help wondering if the threat of dengue spells more problems for a beleaguered public health system in a country that likes to think it can function without government, or if it is just a tool for government to expand it's powers, as one more anti government conspiracy. Perhaps it's neither and perhaps mosquitoes and dengue and cell phone bills are just one more way to pass through the doldrums of September without going mad from boredom.