It's the time of year in Key West when the snowbirds come back to roost in our midst and we are supposed to be grateful because they bring filthy lucre in their wake. Plus they prattle on about chickens and noise and parking and how things are done Up North. 
Because I am a graceless clod I resent their intrusions upon my life, the slow moving long lines of cars idling along Highway One, the retirees walking on my street and TALKING REALLY LOUDLY at 8:15 am just as I fall into a profoundly deep sleep. I see chickens and I wonder how people can find the energy to get annoyed at them. The fact remains I prefer ibis and herons and local wildlife that does the same good job of eating insects, but these wild birds do it with dignity and in silence, unlike the feral chickens.
I got to thinking these thoughts when I saw the birds photographed above, while walking Cheyenne on Johnson Street.
It also occurred to me that there were a fair number of still unoccupied homes so perhaps not everyone has arrived yet to escape winter, though it sometimes feel like they have.
Quite a number will show up, throw back their hurricane shutters and air out their winter homes. But the holidays will intervene and they will hurry off back Up North to celebrate Christmas with snow and then they will be back in the New Year for a few months.
These ruminations on winter migration patterns were induced possibly by the rainy weather and dark skies of the past few days, which have given way to a blast of cold air as winter starts to settle in, especially now that we have moved our clocks back an hour and the days are appreciably shorter. Darkness will close in around 6pm and the sun will rise around 6am on the winter regime of Eastern Standard Time.
Key West is less wintry than many places not least because of the influx of money into this resort town.
Palms and grass are a year round phenomenon here.
It's better by Bonneville.
this section of Johnson Street, it occurred to me, is full of 1960's type Florida ranch homes.
I get to use the space underneath my stilt home but these places have those splendid American inventions called car ports.
And lacking a car port there is room enough around here to park your mobile storage unit off city property more or less.
All the charm of Key West home with none of the hassles of living in Old Town.
Another old fashioned but entirely charming home.
As usual I have no idea what possess people to decorate their gardens the way they do. 
Here's another car port.
These tin wraps on the trunk of the tree are supposed to keep rats at bay, I think, though one hardly ever sees them around here.
Strange people, strange dogs, what's the difference.
From splendid mansions...
...to strangely decorated cars. This was labelled a boom box:
Another street, another day wandering Key West.
Because I am a graceless clod I resent their intrusions upon my life, the slow moving long lines of cars idling along Highway One, the retirees walking on my street and TALKING REALLY LOUDLY at 8:15 am just as I fall into a profoundly deep sleep. I see chickens and I wonder how people can find the energy to get annoyed at them. The fact remains I prefer ibis and herons and local wildlife that does the same good job of eating insects, but these wild birds do it with dignity and in silence, unlike the feral chickens.I got to thinking these thoughts when I saw the birds photographed above, while walking Cheyenne on Johnson Street.It also occurred to me that there were a fair number of still unoccupied homes so perhaps not everyone has arrived yet to escape winter, though it sometimes feel like they have.Quite a number will show up, throw back their hurricane shutters and air out their winter homes. But the holidays will intervene and they will hurry off back Up North to celebrate Christmas with snow and then they will be back in the New Year for a few months.These ruminations on winter migration patterns were induced possibly by the rainy weather and dark skies of the past few days, which have given way to a blast of cold air as winter starts to settle in, especially now that we have moved our clocks back an hour and the days are appreciably shorter. Darkness will close in around 6pm and the sun will rise around 6am on the winter regime of Eastern Standard Time.Key West is less wintry than many places not least because of the influx of money into this resort town.Palms and grass are a year round phenomenon here.It's better by Bonneville.
this section of Johnson Street, it occurred to me, is full of 1960's type Florida ranch homes.I get to use the space underneath my stilt home but these places have those splendid American inventions called car ports.
And lacking a car port there is room enough around here to park your mobile storage unit off city property more or less.All the charm of Key West home with none of the hassles of living in Old Town.Another old fashioned but entirely charming home.
As usual I have no idea what possess people to decorate their gardens the way they do. 
Here's another car port.
These tin wraps on the trunk of the tree are supposed to keep rats at bay, I think, though one hardly ever sees them around here.
Strange people, strange dogs, what's the difference.From splendid mansions...
...to strangely decorated cars. This was labelled a boom box:
Another street, another day wandering Key West. 
A cold front is ravaging Florida and temperatures this weekend are scheduled to hover in the mid 70's by day and lower 60's by night, the kinds of temperatures that cool the ocean waters given enough time and make the threat of hurricanes fade into insignificance even though the season doesn't officially end until the end of the month.
The election is behind us at last and what I called National Irrelevance Day saw the wife and I out voting at the Scout's Camp on Summerland Key. I like going out to vote on Election Day, perhaps because I'm a traditionalist, perhaps because I don't like to have my vote decided before the last minute surprises in the campaigns have made themselves known. This year Florida distinguished itself by electing one of the only millionaires to get voter approval around the nation. Governor Elect Rick Scott distinguishes himself by having spent 73 million to win the job (that pays less than the Director of Monroe County's Mosquito Control Board). He is also distinguished by having headed up Columbia/HCA medical insurance ripoff artists who defrauded Medicare of God knows how much, fessed up to fourteen felonies and paid hundreds of millions in fines. Now he's going to running the state next year. I hope he knows how to rip people off to benefit the state. I doubt we are going to get any health insurance reform down here with him in charge.
Cheyenne found something disgusting to eat. Key West city voters (not me!) agreed to buy Glynn Archer School to build a new city hall, if the School Board agrees to sell it. They also voted to sell off a piece of the Pier House Resort that got hung up and is actually rented to the resort by the city owing to some past oversight. Everyone hopes the city will rip the resort a new one and get some money to pay for the new city hall. The favorites won election to the Monroe County Board of Commissioners though I voted in favor of Sloan Bashinsky instead of George Neugent. Generally I like Neugent but he pissed me off at the last minute by saying he opposed Amendment Four which would have required vote approval for land use designation changes to general plans across the State. It was viewed with scepticism by developers and there were all sorts of threats of unintended consequences so the Amendment went down to defeat. Anyway I voted for Bashinsky, a dude who actually makes a lot of sense on his positions but keeps qualifying them by saying angels tell him what to do in his dreams which rather lessens his effectiveness. Still, he got almost 30% of the vote so you can tell there is some dissatisfaction floating around.
I don't think I would much like to be a Republican in Washington these days. They are now hedged in by rabid Tea Partiers behind them demanding fiscal accountability and Democrats in the Senate and White House holding the line on doing anything at all. The weird thing is you'd think it would be obvious that if cutting the federal budget were possible someone would have figured out how to do it by now. God knows the people have been clamoring for such cuts. Until reality takes hold. Cut the military? Social Security? Medicare? Debt Payments? No one actually has a clue how to cut the Federal Budget because whatever anyone does will piss off a large segment of the voting public. Faced with this impossibility our politicians lie to us and keep on printing money and hoping for the best.
It seems to me the US, faced with a debt of 15 trillion or more has only two choices, one is to default and simply not pay it off. That would be interesting and I'll bet the Chinese would have a conniption fit, followed by every single nation in the world right after them. Or we have to knuckle under, pay more taxes and pay the bill for the last few decades of wild spending. That idea isn't going to go over well at all at home. More conniption fits would follow. So, instead of having a grown up debate about what to do we keep on deficit spending, selling bonds to ourselves and hoping something will turn up to remove our fiscal chestnuts from the fire. Perhaps a nice conflagration with Iran? As if blowing up Afghanistan weren't enough...
I feel like we are living through some sort of phony financial war. We all pretend that there is some hope somewhere down the line that things will get better but in reality things are stagnating and our leaders, corporate and political either don't care or are fresh out of ideas about what to do. So we vote, and throw one lot out expecting the new lot to do something positive in the next couple of years or we'll give them the heave ho. I'm guessing the Tea Party wackos will really get to feel their oats in 2012. A bunch of not witches, fascist thugs and know nothing anti-constitutionalists ("No such thing as separation of Church and State!" will be the rallying cry) running for office will be very interesting to watch as they turf out traditional Republicans and scythe down feebly protesting Democrats. Either that or the Republican Representatives really do have a secret weapon to jump start jobs and get it all done in the next year and a half...
Cheyenne is my consolation in a world that can't give me sensible answers to pressing economic problems that don't lend themselves to sound bite political posturing. She smells cooking on the grill and she checks it out. Across the water the sun comes up, the sky lightens and the air is still warm on the skin even though it is November and a cold front threatens.
I have no idea where we are headed as a country and as an economy. The eternal non issue of abortion rights and gay rights are back on the radar as Republicans flex their muscles to interfere in people's lives, but what to do with 15 million unemployed is too hard a question to answer. Government they tell us doesn't create jobs, but no one else seems to want to either.
And these guys cleaning the toilets at Veterans Park have jobs too, presumably contract work for Monroe County, but a job it is. We are the lucky ones, in this employment massacre that is the USA. Unlike Ireland and Greece we normally have a resilient flexible economy so we can hope that things will get better for us. If you have low expectations you are less likely to be disappointed I suppose. 
Watching the President prevaricate and the Congress shout "No!" in unison from behind a snow drift would be too much for me. From the vantage point of the Fabulous Florida Keys anything is bearable, just about. 
Jeeps are popular vehicles in Key West which seems odd to me as of off roading there is not much, not any to speak of. A 14 mile-per-gallon vehicle will bring tears to your eyes on a round trip to Miami if you like to visit Costco or South Beach or the opera or something.
There is more than one of these parking signs in the city. Always appropriate. 
On the other hand the absence of agriculutre doesn't mean Thanksgiving should go by the board...not if it involves food. This mailbox below might, or might not have outgoing mail in it. Depending on whether or not you consider the flag to be up or down. With any luck they will have incoming mail and the mystery will be solved by a firm postal hand.
You'd think that with so many people riding bikes and scooters, and walking around, there would be fewer cars around. Yet they seem to proliferate in the rain like mushrooms.
On a more grand scale:
The note about the well water on the left refers to last years watering restrictions. Watering from wells wasn't allowed either on the grounds that wasted water was wasted and everyone would I suppose claim well water if they were caught watering.
Key West, land of the excessively massive bushes, above, and some large houses below:
In addition to the doric columns this mansionette also boasts a chimney.
Which we hope will see little use this winter. A repeat of last winter's prolonged cold spell, which chilled Key West quite effectively, is something I do not look forward to.