Blogspot Does It Again

Blogspot has done it again unhappily. They have made sudden unannounced changes to their blogging system and I fear my posts may look a little odd for a while until I can somehow master their changes. Photos are now faster to download supposedly though they are integrated into the text HTML so they have a habit of sliding across the page disconcertingly. I have also not found out how to set my own defaults in typescript and font so...it will be a learning curve for tired old me. (Indeed upon publishing the foregoing paragraph appears in the wrong typescript and I am unable to change it! Good job Blogger people!)

(I saw this motorcycle with a bizarre flashing white light on the back and took a picture for the hell of it. Keeping pictures centered in the text has become next to impossible with this new system. Very frustrating).

I have tried to keep my layout consistent and simple to read, not least because I like it that way. I find it hard on my eyes to read blogs that use white print on a black or dark blue background. Masthead photos that change all the time confuse the eye as well. Ask yourself why the New York Times, the paper of record hasn't changed it's venerable masthead in living memory...so I have found a color combination that is restful to my eyes, and a simple layout which is easy to read with larger pictures centered in the middle of the text.

If this layout changes believe me, it will be an error and not my wish as  I am conservative in all things, except the political as it were, and prefer they stay the same on my small corner of the web. Fonts keep reverting to default,  as does text style and centering is impossible to maintain consistently and pictures slide around the page at will. I am very unhappy.  If all else fails I will continue to keep this page pop-up free, ad free, and commercial free as much as I am able.

Taking pictures and writing my daily diary, a place for me to reflect and store my memories is supposed to be a daily meditation, a relaxation as it were. Blogger always does find new and annoying ways of making it harder. But I shall soldier on, with apologies in advance for screw ups to come.

Lower Duval

This is tourist mecca in Key West, the area known simply as "The One Hundred Block."Stores sell crap to visitors, be they off cruise ships, docked a short walk away, or people who come to Key West under the strange delusion that this is the heart of a community, that in fact some of the community suffers Lower Duval rather than embraces it. When you consider the rent on one of these stores can be as much as thirty thousand dollars a month and they are selling everything for five dollars you have to ask yourself, what precisely is it they are really laundering here? It used to be that t-shirt shops offered to "customize" their wares and then charged the victim, surreptitiously something crazy like $300 on their credit cards for a logo printed on a cheap t-shirt. That scam got stomped but how they justify their ghastly stores these days I don't know. Nor do I care to.But the visitors, they come and they keep coming. I saw a new crop of nuanced t-shirts with messages vaguely pornographic but mostly puerile in their humor. Perhaps it's time for me do another essay highlighting their literary efforts, and Key West's shame.The absurd rental charges go a long way to explaining the diminutive sizes of some of the stores. The world's smallest bar justifies itself as a cute place to squeeze in and get a drink. The rent for the space has to be reasonable, surely?The tourists and the touts aren't the only people on Lower Duval. Apart from yours truly, who is truly uncomfortable in this place there are the usual crop of bums. To call these people "homeless" is a disservice to the working poor and dispossessed on this island. These vagrants are proving that the First Amendment and subsequent Supreme Court rulings are alive and well in Key West, even if they seem to be under attack elsewhere in the Republic.To be a bona fide palm weaver on Duval Street you need an actual Key West city permit. Buskers have them too, as does the guy featured recently in the paper who makes he says an average $150 a night telling "dirty jokes" to passers-by. When I get tired of taking 9-1-1 calls I know what my next job will be. Buy tickets, take an excursion, everything you want is available on Duval Street.And even if you don't want it, touts will lunge out and collar you as you stroll by.Art for commerce's sake.Yup, I thought to myself, four drinks for the price of two, then I'll be ready to ride the scooter home...There are chickens and pigeons on the street and sidewalks are crumbling. I miss First World America.The idea of sitting on the crumbling sidewalk drinking in the sun sounds like a first class way to waste an afternoon, but perhaps that is the point.She gave me the two-for-one tickets on my way down and I slid by on my way back up. It seems a ghastly way to earn a living to me. Of course in winter she will probably make more than I do working for the city in my "proper" job."Oh look! Sloppy Joe's!" Yup, our Norwegian friends here probably think that's exactly how it was when Hemingway drank in Key West. Never mind; they enjoy the delusion, we enjoy their money. Crass isn't it?
This is not a tourist wobbling on a bike for the first time in decades. this is a dedicated professional scurrying between his second and third jobs hauling lunch as he goes, smoothly and efficiently around town.UPS even serves the Conch Republic in 90 degree heat.This guy missed the trash can on his first toss. I was ready to get silently snarky but, good man! he went forward and caught his hoop on the second try.A weird facade.Get a photo with a parrot. If you guessed he needs an official city permit to do this you'd be a gold star student.My wife says she wants her scooter back next week. I got the 150cc ET4 up to 73mph indicated on a downhill slope on US One this week with the wind at my back. That's a hot shit little Vespa, and it makes cool cat motorists mad when I sneak up and pass them on the open road...On the other end of the speed drama conch trains are still plodding around town at 5 miles per hour. Mostly empty.Roll on winter with it's bustle and it's crowds. That will make the One Hundred Block truly unbearable for one of my refinement and delicate sensibilities.

Endless Rain

The incessant rains of the past few weeks have brought out greenery everywhere. Including these nasty little burrs in long grass. Cheyenne catches them in her pads and stops and looks piteous. They hurt when I remove them for her.The weather has been dramatic with winds, clouds, sunshine and rain in quick alternation. Just about every morning riding home from work I have been rained on, and some days the early morning rain has been heavy enough to convince me to stop and put on my waterproofs.Cheyenne's afternoon walks, after I wake up, have been a hunt for clear skies, away from the current downpour. It's not that she really minds the rain but day after day it gets a bit much. Plus it's hard to read the paper in the rain when we take our ease together and pause in our strolls. Last week the skies were dramatic everywhere so I headed north on Highway One to look for a beach we could walk together and feel the wind in our faces. Seas were lumpy and the weird craft we saw tucked away at anchor were bobbing around wildly. This improbable house boat at Bahia Honda incorporating a Buckminster Fuller geodesic dome:And this work boat anchored off the eastern shore of Big Pine Key.The further we drove towards the seven mile bridge the darker and more ominous everything became.It was fun actually, something I haven't done for a while during an afternoon.Ohio Key's beach hasn't had a visit from us since last Spring. Cheyenne was ready to renew acquaintance......and the easterly breeze made it feel cooler than usual. Cheyenne was frisky, running up and down the edge of the water sniffing.The storm looked like it was heading north, crossing the highway to join the black clouds to the north. We stood on the beach and watched the sturm und drang.At one point it occurred to me the storm was actually not moving north but west. Towards Cheyenne and I cowering under a small black mangrove to keep out of the worst of the rain. The picture below shows the line of gray rain slashing the surface of the sea as it moved rapidly toward us.Then the thunder started and the lightning cracked and I realized we were in exactly the wrong place. The storm was coming right at us and all I could think, as the cold down draft from the clouds hit us, was that pretty soon the lightning would be landing on the beach. I started to power walk back to the car. Luckily I hadn't need to use the plastic bag in my pocket to pick up after Cheyenne...so it made a dry carrying case for the camera.As we left the shelter of the mangrove Cheyenne was ambling along sniffing as usual. the the lightning cracked down on the water close enough that we could feel the electricity and Cheyenne reacted like an electric prod had been shoved up her. Together we started running towards the Fararday cage that was the car. The rain slashed down and the thunder boomed overhead, close enough that it was mixed in with the crack of the lightning bolts. We made it back to the car where I fumbled the front door key and as I opened the driver's door Cheyenne leaped in. The rain was cascading over us, the thunder and lightning crashed around us and there I was trying to drag my soaked yellow lab out from under the steering wheel. She resisted long enough that my seat got soaked and when eventually she was in the back and I was in the front with the door closed we were both totally drenched and the inside of the car was wet enough to squelch.

The drive home took twenty minutes and I laughed the whole way. Cheyenne licked herself rather disconsolately on the back seat. Rain like that makes you feel young.

Vignettes XXXVIII

Summer is the rainy season in the Keys, which is a good thing if you consider how cold and nasty winters get when winter is the rainy season as it is Up North. We get most of our rain when it's hot.We've had a number of dramatic thunderstorms too, loud cracks overhead, loud enough to wake Cheyenne and have her glance around with a worried look in her eye. On the other hand a few cloud bursts and sudden downpours aren't much to write home about when the Atlantic is full of storms and Hurricane Igor, which ravaged Bermuda, is in the middle of the Far North Atlantic and is replaced by another storm, Lisa, still at lower latitudes. This river boat, Lady Ann, has been anchored in Niles Channel for a while. I don't think it would do very well in a hurricane.A river boat seems out of place in a land of no rivers.

I spotted this license plate in Big Pine Key and it took me a moment to realize it probably refers to a Big Pine grandmother. Most likely not a Beyond Petroleum grandmother. Though considering the size of the vehicle involved she could well be a petro-stock holder. Stopping at the post office on Summerland Key I saw this weirdly parked minivan. September is the quietest month of the year in the Keys, a time when the post office isn't overrun by querulous snow birds looking for mail, so the parking lot was actually quite empty. Not empty enough for this driver to avoid walking a few extra steps....The yellow writing on the ground says No Parking Fire Lane (does not apply to lazy drivers).The van hadn't moved by the time I put my helmet on and left... And on the subject of controversy the relatively new Habitat homes are built and occupied alongside Highway One in Big Coppitt Key. I think they look rather good.Frankly it looks like a model neighborhood especially when you look at the trash strewn streets elsewhere on this island, but disdain for the not incredibly affluent is rife across the country, not just in the Lower Keys, so when this project was seeking planning permission the solicitous neighbors started the usual bitching campaign to shoot it down.They argued the project was located too close to the traffic on the Overseas Highway and would be too noisy for the poor dears contributing sweat equity to the creation of their new homes. Indeed the main road into Key West, which lies ten miles to the east, is right there in front of the Habitat homes.I thought it was quite a creative explanation for the snobbish rejection of the Habitat homes. It didn't work though and as you can tell the habitat development has quite ruined splendid Big Coppitt Key with all it's prejudices. Better perhaps to have installed a strip joint and a liquor store, good honest businesses. Like this corner of North Roosevelt Boulevard in Key West.It occurred to me as I sat astride the Bonneville in an ample puddle waiting to get out into traffic, that everything one needs is right here in one small strip mall. Rent a scooter, pick up Kendra's DVD, ride round to the drive through and wobble off home for an afternoon of doing something a lot more worthwhile than perusing the Internet.Or get the stuff and sit outside to enjoy a brief interregnum of sun between thunderstorms. Or go round the corner to the movies and give blood all at the same time.I haven't been to the movies much this summer but my wife and I went to see George Clooney in The American. I wish we had had such an interesting character in the village in Umbria where I lived in as child. We didn't have a whore with a heart of gold in our town, or an assassin either. We had rain though, but as we lived on a hillside flooding like this was rare:The two year renovation of North Roosevelt is supposed to clean this up.When I leave work in the dark after a night rain storm it's worth my while to remember that this part of the right lane will be under water. Traffic generally tends to hug the center lanes on the Boulevard after a storm. It's just what one does. My amphibious Bonneville:My wife's Sebring has not been converted much this summer, a combination of heat and rain my wife says. I can't deny that about now, every year, I am ready for a cold front or two to break the back of summer.

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One last note of interest to me is that yesterday we voted on a new one year contract with the City of Key West. I believe the contract will be ratified by the members of Teamsters Local 769. I voted yes, and was surprised to hear that not many members seemed very happy with it. David our Business Representative on the left and Kenny our Shop Steward on the right said most of the voters were grumbling.

The city has agreed to raises, 3.85% for people earning below $30,000 a year, 2.75% up to $40,000 and 2% up to $50,000 a year. In an era when furloughs and layoffs are the norm it struck me as incredible. They even managed to fend off any participation in paying for our health insurance which offers excellent coverage at no cost to the member, and $800 a month to the city. New city hires starting in October will have to pay $25 a pay period which creates two tiered membership which isn't the best thing in the world. There again this is a right-to-work state and the employees who aren't members get to share the wealth with those of us who are.

I wonder why Union membership is so hard to appreciate in this country. With 15 million unemployed, facing the prospect of more of the same all round we are lucky as hell here in this strange corner of the country where everything seems to be upside down and not properly appreciated.