Interesting Times

Imagine my surprise when I overheard, while only half listening to the radio a few days ago, that tomorrow is the twentieth anniversary of the death of David Koresh. Twenty years already? Koresh held off the FBI in his compound along with 75 followers of his mad religious sect, an offshoot of an offshoot of the staid and uninteresting Seventh Day Adventists. In case you have managed to get this far in life without any knowledge of that small blip in the history of Man's Inhumanity to Man, Google is your friend and confessor as always, David Koresh - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. To me it seems like it happened yesterday but I was in fact 35 years old and for a while I too wondered if Federal Authority was getting out of hand. My murmurs of concern were as nothing compared to the hurricane of conspiracy that incident whipped up.

Those distant days were a time of huge ferment when the practice, taken for granted today, of smearing as much shit on your political opponents as possible was in its infancy. The Koreshians were crackers enough to take children with them in their conflagration, yet the right wing attacked the FBI as though the decision to end the siege was some sorry Federalist conspiracy, thus turning common sense upside down. Defending the religious nutters was as nothing compared to the smears spread over the Democrat President, whom the whisperers said was importing cocaine through Mena Arkansas and had a close friend and aide murdered and as outlandish as it was right wingers wanted to believe this stuff to preserve the Republic.

Ruby Ridge had preceded the Waco mess, an incident in Idaho where federal agents tried to take in a survivalist type family and ended up in a shoot out. A congressional investigation seemed to agree there were mistakes made and called for changes in the agencies. Well, that stuck a stick in the hornet's nest of anti government revolutionaries and then we ordinary unarmed folk started to hear about militia and state's rights and on and on and on.

The anti federalist movement was a godsend to multinational corporate leaders who harnessed the anti government fervor to the carriage of their anti regulation goals and pretty soon working class Americans were voting in droves against their own self interest and were made to feel like the successors to Paul Revere, mangling his already historically inaccurate revolutionary cry into "The Feds are coming!" As a result wages stagnated, jobs went overseas in a rush, unions shrank and wealth inequality sky rocketed, putting this country on a Third World. Course with breath taking speed. Consider how the one percent inevitably try to shoot down minimum wage hikes, a wage rate that had it increased in proportion to the pay hikes of the one percent would stand at $22 an hour...America’s Miserly Minimum Wage Needs an Upgrade » Counterpunch: Tells the Facts, Names the Names

I wonder about the people who decided in all cold deliberation to plant bombs at the Boston marathon. Let me say that from my perspective I cannot conceive a circumstance that might persuade me to even consider the idea of running or attempting to stagger 26 miles in public to make a spectacle of myself. However what purpose wantonly killing and maiming people who find pleasure in such activities is beyond me. As we all stand around and wonder why, I considered the idea that perhaps someone had an appalling grudge against a participant, perhaps a runner not of the first order, a domestic situation gone so sour that someone might want to express their frustration in spectacular fashion. But when we see two bombs, not one, we see a malevolence at work that goes beyond anything remotely personal.

I was astonished when I learned that the Twin Towers in New York were a center of financial wizardry, and that angry men in the Middle East deliberately targeted the towers to attack the financial heart of the country corresponding to the Pentagon and White House, also targeted as governmental centers that terrible day. I had no idea the towers existed, nor what went on in them. I am a creature centered in the self absorbed world of life on the far coast, in California, and as odd as it seems, when you live on Pacific Time, the Eastern Time Zone is another world. Had the terrorists targeted Foster City I'd have known which software maker they were after.

As dreadful as those events were they made sense, you could see why the targets were chosen, and so clever was the execution I was fearful of more such specific attacks to come. I grew up in Italy in the 1970s, a period of appalling endless political violence whe public people and public buildings were under seemingly constant attack, train stations blew up and gunman shot and kidnapped with apparent impunity. It was awful and apparently endless. Only later we discovered that many of the participants were the offspring of political leaders and academics who had a very strange plan to bring down the structure of the state. They failed but they sure made life miserable for ordinary Italians. After September 11th, nothing happened and I was surprised.

As wrong as it may be to speculate I, like everyone else want answers about the Boston Massacre and I am prepared to blame right wing separatists for this outrage. It came close to tax day, always a day of irritation in the world of the anti tax Paul Reveres of our angry divided country. Al Quaeda in Pakistan has denied involvement and I am inclined to believe them. I think of the bomb in Oklahoma, a similar improvised device, far more cruel than a pressure cooker filled with shrapnel and just as indiscriminate and cruel. I don't understand it. And now of course we have the Waco fertilizer plant explosion with hundreds more devastated lives. Perhaps an accident, most likely not, it seems to me in my speculative mode, but it is too soon to know, as I write this.

I don't get this need to hurt ordinary Americans in pursuit of a vendetta against the government. I understand the logic behind the selection of targets for the September 11th murders, a blow against the financial military and political nerve centers of the country. Terrorists don't care that bystanders die, that's all part of the creation of fear among the populace. But what I don't get is how Americans can wantonly attack their neighbors when their targets are so much more specific. I don't understand the symbolism of forcibly amputating runners' legs with bombs. I don't understand the use of violence in pursit of a politica agenda, no matter how frustrated one might be. Violence negates the value of negotiation.

I have been reading a lot of polls lately telling us that the country as a whole is moving back to the center and away from the divisive politics of the extreme right. We are told that seventy percent of Americans view the Republican party as obstructionist and intransigent. Poll: GOP Seen As Out Of Touch, Disapproval Of Sequestration Grows That's not to say the Democrat Party is viewed necessarily favorably, but the indicators point in the direction of a pursuit of less viciously partisan politics. After all there are serious national problems to be tackled after years of political wrangling and a general lack of progress.

Perhaps we have to live through a few leaden years of terrorism now, as the true radicals take up arms to defeat the voices of moderation and debate. I hope it has not come to that and I hope the FBI can shut down these people quickly and completely.

At the same time I hope we can carry on about our business and the business of working together for a better future not cowed by these people who want nothing more than to see us give up our essential freedoms exactly in the way their bombs intend. For my part I do not propose to change the habits of a lifetime, living as I see fit, to cater to the whims of a wacko with an improvised explosive device. I hope you will join me in not letting the bastards win.

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Key West Succulents

I think my dog is pretty succulent but it was because I found myself resting for her sake next to some cactus that I started to think about these strange plants.

I come up short when it comes to naming them. I know what saguaro look like because I am well traveled, but if they aren't saguaro-like then as far as I am concerned they are all prickly pear, and that's that.

Then there are the frangipani, not really succulent, which are slow to make an appearance this year. Mine look stick like and dead so I anxiously check the plants that belong to people who I hope know what they are doing, horticulturally speaking. If mine look like theirs I'm happy, and if they don't I figure the bastard bloody iguana have been ravishing mine and eating them. Frangipani are my kind of plant, indestructible, determined to grow never mind the effort required, and like gumbo limbo they will take root if you stick a piece into half way promising soil and even if you forget to water them in the fullness of time the twig will sprout. What me? Forget to water..? Amazing stuff frangipani and gumbo limbo.

My wife also took refuge behind a curtain of palms. I thought I had snuck this one but she twigged I was sneaking a picture while I fiddled with my Android phone.

This plant below looks like the stylized lotus plants you see in Asian illustrations. Maybe it's an actual lotus? Who knows, but for some people Key West is decidedly the land of the lotus eaters so there should be lotus plants, you'd think.

Ah yes, it's all greenery and sunshine in Key West.

But there again it's getting that way everywhere north of the Equator, this time of year. We are no longer special as the snow fields retreat for the summer.

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Isla del Stock

There are days in my life that I feel like I make idiocy an art form. It doesn't take much either and though I enjoy my role as an ironist in a world that doesn't much appreciate cutting edge irony I do not often like being stupid, especially at someone else's expense. Duh.

My wife wanted to meet on Stock Island and swim in the club's heated pool which was not a radical suggestion but it completely fell apart when I arrived at the club bright eyed and bushy tailed and only then discovered my swimming apparatus was secure and safe at home. I thought my wife had the trunks and towel while she thought I had them. The net result was Cheyenne got a splendid walk and I felt like an idiot.

Partly too the reality these days of driving the Overseas Highway seems to devolve into a sort of funerary procession at speeds considerably below the already not adventurous speed limit in a long, nay endless, line of people driving slowly in the same direction as myself. Furthermore there are equally intense lines of cars coming in the opposite direction which makes passing complex. The result is that travel on the Overseas Highway is dreary which makes you think twice before you go into town, and then imagine how bored everyone else is so they start getting distracted and texting and that makes you think a third time about driving I to the city...

I have read complaints that tourism is down in the city, a statement that surprises me. it seems to me the city has been packed and continues to be packed, not so much with early morning drinkers perhaps, but certainly with people of a certain age. My guess is that the crumbling world economy is having a greater impact on the younger generation and will thus lead to an older demographic in Key West. Perhaps we will catch up to mainland Florida known world wide as God's Waiting Room.

Stock Island has taken a hit from the economy's shortcomings. Stores have closed and grandiose development plans have slowed. We used to read of islad wide land purchases and worries about where the low income workers would live if Stock Island were gentrified. So far no such luck, the trailer parks are still intact.

While the private sector holds fire, Monroe County has gone ahead with a long delayed plan and agreed to build a multi million dollar fire station on the site of the old worn out shed that houses an engine. Like most construction in Key West these days work seemed rather, how can I put it?- lackadaisical I suppose. Nothing was actually happening on the site. In Mexico you don't pay property taxes on any home where construction is not completed which is why you will frequently see rebar sticking out of the tops of houses. Here, rebar means no work is being done.

There is some housing being built near Highway One. Originally they had talked of building a strip mall anchored by a drug store, amid general wonderment. Key West already has several competing national chain outlets and one more seemed over the top. apparently that sentiment took root because nothing happened on the open space next to Burger King for a few years.

Then construction started and it turns out low income housing, of the government subsidized type is in the works. I used to walk Cheyenne's predecessor there, across what was a rubble filled field. Now pilings are going skywards and the stilts will soon be covered in modular homes. Worker housing a step up from trailers is sprouting across Stock Island and I know a few people who are very glad to see it.

Not half as glad as these noisy little critters who saw Cheyenne coming and went berserk. She ignored them and strolled on by. Good dog.

Standard Marine was a chain based I believe in Tampa with half a dozen outlets across south Florida. They closed in the downturn, beaten down by larger chains and the Stock Island store as you can see has generated no interest and so it sits advertising a moment in retail history.

It's been hot and summer feels like it is upon us as humidity levels rise proportionate to the eighty plus degrees of a sunny afternoon. Thirty minutes into the walk Cheyenne had had enough and took refuge in the shade of the overhang at El Mocho my favorite Cuban eatery, which closes at three so temptation was removed. We staggered on, closer to the car, from shade to shade and frequent breaks for the fur coated Labrador.

I find it ironic that the private sector which decries government at every turn lines up for government contracts. I wonder if we will ever be able to have a sensible discussion at the national level about how things work. I have been reading of efforts to roll back the "Too Big To Fail" designation for the banks and the robber barons that run them. The National Rifle Association opposes back ground checks for people who buy guns and our Dear Leader proposes modest cuts for Socail Security right out of the gate with no corresponding cuts for the one percent. Common sense is still on the run and I wonder when and who will tell us to eat cake as we prepare to stand in the breadlines in our old age.

Stock Island as is well known used to house the cattle, the stock, that was killed from time to time to serve beef on the tables of Key West. Now it houses the stock that rides into Key West every day to keep the hotels and bars and offices operating and looking spic and span.

Nowhere has escaped the drive to modernize and change but Stock Island has done a fair job of staying working class.

I wonder which way it will go this island far removed from the million dollar mansions of Old Town, and the haunts of the wealthy elderly visitors who rub shoulders with them.

 

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Seeking Retirement

I am a man of no hobbies. I don't collect things. I tried lots of the standard approaches to being a male hobbyist, stamps, model trains, metal cars and so forth but none of them worked for me. Boredom and a sense of pointlessness set in rapidly.

The idea of owning things for the pure sake of possession strikes me as bizarre. Partly I suppose because my life has rarely been settled in one place. My father threw out my childhood possessions when I turned 18 and he had sent me to live on my mother's side of the family in Italy, and that act of brutality set the pattern. My English childhood vanished as permanently and completely as if it had been renditioned by the CIA. Of whose excesses I was mercifully ignorant in my youth. From there on I understood completely the references in the Bible to the devastating effects of rust and moths on earthly possessions. Had the Good Book mentioned angry vengeful parents more specifically I might have applied that lesson more effectively in mine own case and saved some of the mementoes of my 1950s childhood. Photographs, text books, note books toys and souvenirs all vanished in that summer of 1975 to make room for a new wife.

So I have never collected motorcycles or stamps or fashions or even artwork, though my wife has retrained me there a little. My one weakness has been books and I have a few volumes that have followed me from pillar to post throughout my 55 years across continents and oceans. Now the kindle incorporated in this very iPad supplants the written page and as much as I struggle not to yield to electrons I see the future of books much as I see the collectible value of old bikes and land line telephones. They become art pieces, not useful daily objects.

My defense against the moths and rust of daily life, the unstoppable passage of time, has been to live as many lives as possible within one lifetime. I am fond of saying I have lived my life backwards, a grasshopper youth experiencing as much as I could, only settling into a pensionable one track career in advanced middle age. I hear my contemporaries discuss hopes for retirement, many of them dashed by the banks and their wild scandals of 2008, but many who retire fear the empty spaces formerly filled by Very Important Careers that left no room for frivolity and satisfaction of Self.

In the golden years when jobs were plentiful and change was easy I lived as many jobs as I could in as many places as I could taking time off to ride a motorcycle over the horizon or sail a sailboat out of sight. It was tremendous fun and I regret none of it. I feel sad when I hear people say they wouldn't know what to do with retirement, a statement that to me smacks of defeatism in the face of all life's possibilities.

What's the point of having the privilege of being born into the First World if you don't take advantage of it?

I don't mean by that to imply we should be predatory or bullying, but we have the privilege of standing still from time to time. We live our lives in peace despite he best efforts of Television "News" to convince us that our neighborhoods are war zones. Many of us live a life on the edge or on the margins, especially those with responsibilities for children in a country that views child rearing as a private burden, not a public joy. I am child free and have never wanted children and when people ask how I managed to live a nomadic existence, I point that choice out as the salient decision in my young life.

For many people child rearing takes precedence over all other among life's possibilities. It's a choice I can barely comprehend, but I don't argue with it, I just avoid it. On my death bed, if I get the chance for last minute reflection, I hope that I will be as assured about the choice as I have been this far in my life, but what my feelings will actually be I cannot of course say. So far, so good.

I am lucky enough I be living a moment in my life where I get time away from work to be a collector, an idler, a wanderer on the margins of life. Like Travis McGee I take my retirement in chunks, a day or two or a week at a time, here and there, during the day not often at night which is when I work long shifts listening to other people's tales of misery. In my time away from 911 I might collect ink pens or beer coasters or commemorative plates. Instead I continue to collect memories and pictures and catalogue them here.

So because I am not a collector, nor a club member nor a golfer I use my pieces of retirement to wander the streets of Key West, and the backroads of the Lower Keys to look at the monuments to humanity and the wild imaginings of Nature and sometimes to take pictures of them.

That's all. I have mixed feelings about electronic books but I have no mixed feelings about electronic web pages. Without the Web my images would have no home. Most of the paper images of our trip over two years from Santa Cruz to Key West by sailboat sit, tidily sorted in albums, never to see the light of day. What's the first thing most people rush to save when their house is threatened? Those very photo albums, irreplaceable repositories of memories, never to be thrown away, never to be renditioned.

I have the web, and picasa, and electronic clouds, mysterious and unknowable electronic repositories of memories, never further away than a click of a computer, we hope, reliant on endless flows of energy, just like life itself. When the energy ends, like life, then darkness. Till then we have pictures of our world around us.

Oh and today is tax day. Good luck. And remember: Conchscooter says paying taxes is your way of paying dues to belong to this fantastic club that is this country. Do it cheerfully and demand the same of our one percent fellow travelers who buy tax loopholes that salaried stiffs will never see.

 

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Dog At Rest

It was a short walk in the afternoon, more of an escape from the house. We drove over the forty foot high Niles Channel Bridge, which apparently is in urgent need of maintenance, and crossed onto Summerland Key some three miles from my house. At the north end of Niles Road on Summerland, Cheyenne got out of the car, stumped around briefly and decided it was too hot for the serious walk I was hoping for.

By the time we got home I lost the will to live just like my dog. I was due to set off for work in an hour, so instead of doing a few chores I settled onto the recliner under the house and pulled out the Aerostich catalogue Home :: Aerostich/RiderWearHouse Motorcycle Jackets, Suits, Clothing, & Gear in the manner of a mentally stunted adult male that might look at women in swimsuits or a woman might check handbags online. It was very companionable.

There is some sort of Venturi effect under the stilt house that makes it the breeziest and thus the coolest spot outdoors in summer right there on the unlovely cement floor. Why is it we get accidentally snug with very little effort just as we have to get up and go away and do something useful?

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Black And White And Color

I am really trying not to overdo the black and white thing, not least because I myself like color pictures. Be that as it may I am learning to appreciate the different view one gets of Key West when the city is seen in shades of gray.

I look back at old pictures of Key West Key West Historical Photos: Historical Fine Art Prints Offered for Sale for instance, among many sites, and when I look at my own pictures the past seems easily reproduced with my puny modern pocket camera. I think Key West was a much dustier town in those days, smaller in size before New Town was built after World War Two. Then I came across this 1967 Land Rover which happens to be for sale. The view from the back reminded me of journeys I took in this exact type of vehicle with my father who owned land in Scotland and liked to drive across the foggy rainy heather covered mountains in an unstoppable all terrain vehicle. I recall it was bouncy and adventurous picking our way on rocky goat tracks miles from anywhere. Not exactly a Land Rover's life in the Southernmost City. Not that I have any reason to buy this machine, either, in case you were wondering, all steel plate and Naugahyde...very butch I'm sure.

Back to the streets and the stark crisp look of Key West under the sun yet free of pigment.

 

 

When I got home I was greeted by a stormy sunset and to take that picture in black and white would have been absurd.

She is too full of character to look right in anything less than blazing color...

Have a good weekend, even while I work.

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