Love They Neighbor

I irritated a friend of mine with a recent comment in this blog when I remarked that the Mayor's Christian neighbors did not step up and support his plan for the homeless center he had proposed and that had sunk under a citywide barrage of opposition to helping "those people." Leaving aside the merits of the mayor's plan which I count numerous, I need to apologize to Gary in the same public place I offended.

In many respects Key West  goes out of its way to help the less well off. I find myself vacillating between irritation and admiration when these issues come to the surface, of how to deal with the house-less. I see a lot of good being done; St Mary's Soup Kitchen also operates a food collection program and a and pantry on Stock Island. Wesley House is just one of several shelters for assorted unfortunates, battered wives and families on the street and so forth. Key West has a constant fundraisers for assorted people in distress, too often for medical bills and people laid off through illness. It's all worthy stuff and it's easy to give money to these organizations as they are transparent and effective.

Yet I  remain dissatisfied when the mayor proposes an active  program to house and rehabilitate people on the streets and it  goes nowhere; indeed the proposal to re-purpose the Easter Seals building on College Road was attacked so violently any such proposal is now a type of third rail for any political ambition. So I ask myself where are the city leaders, not the politicians but civic leaders, business leaders and  why not religious leaders, those people who get stuff done? Thanks to a lawsuit by some condo owners on College Road the homeless overnight shelter called KOTS will have to close. Thanks to a Florida Supreme Court ruling no jurisdiction may arrest people for sleeping in public unless they first provide a safe place for the dispossessed to sleep. Thus after the Keys Overnight Temporary Shelter is closed something else will have to replace it one would think. The mayor wanted to operate a full service facility to reintegrate the working poor into society. that lead balloon collapsed under the weight of its own expectations. Not a peep from a pulpit did we hear. So I got annoyed and I vented in an ill mannered way.

It seems to me that the city needs to set an example with some adult dialogue about what to do in the future. This town is a desirable destination for those with money and those without as well, and it needs to differentiate between the professional bums who spend winter on the streets and people who need a helping hand, people who desire security, a roof, a place at the table in this banquet of life in Key West. To me this is a dialogue that should take place at the upper echelons across the city but I don't see it happening.  Why, I ask myself has  a city with so many church buildings so few outspoken church leaders? Rev Steve Braddock gave up in despair and no one else has stepped up.

Frankly I get tired of hearing people's religious beliefs touted as good public policy as a general rule. We have pointless endless debates about mores sexual but when the Pope himself speaks up remarkably in favor of dealing with wealth inequality, unemployment and poverty he gets branded as a communist. When I used to be a Catholic I wondered why the church never spoke up, in imitation of the man himself in support of the least among us. In fact the  church in those days attacked Central American  priests who did just that under the umbrella of  "revolutionary theology." It was the Cold War and Marxism was the enemy of all things religious, including fighting poverty. 

So  when I find myself listening to how the United States is a Christian country, Judeo-Christian whatever that is, and at the same time we seem to have not much interest in helping the poor, the disabled, the needy I ask myself who is fooling who? Being a Christian is a full time job if you are going to take the theory seriously, yet cherry picking seems to be the modern way, and to me if you want to be a member of the club you have to abide by the rules. I am very fond of the Catholic writer G.K Chesterton's oft-quoted remark that "Christianity has not been tried and found wanting; rather it has been found hard and not tried." I tried it and found I couldn't keep up, I have no faith, I believe we came from primordial darkness and that is to what we shall return. No regrets as far as I'm concerned, I listen to my conscience and let other people worry about the minutiae of baffling rules. 

So I screwed up and Gary put me straight and I apologize. Generalizing is not right and I was guilty of it. I hope this sets the record straight for anyone offended and for Gary certainly, who is a thoroughly decent and humane man.

I remain committed to my belief that separation of church and state is good for religion, politics messes everything up after all, and  public policy in this country needs to be seen to be fair if we are ever to make any progress. The other unfortunate part of religious belief is that it is uncompromising and unarguable which in a political situation is impossible because compromise is how politics  gets  done. 

It disheartens me that in this country of endless wealth and a  solid history of things going well when everyone does better that in this period of appalling wealth inequality there is not an outcry in support of decency. I find it  grotesque that Americans, Christian and non, think its okay for working people to have full time jobs that pay $15,000 a year and no benefits. I am astonished that I live in a state that has refused to expand Medicare for the indigent and it is   a matter of no moment. Obamacare is not my first choice for universal care but it has done some good, aside from helping the insurance companies, but political opponents, the Christian Right, try to make political capital on the backs of the suffering poor. Is that Christian?

 I know there is a lot of fear of Muslims nowadays, these strange foreign fanatics who have replaced godless Communists as the enemies of the state. The unfortunate fact is that we have given them the space they need to grow and expand. We armed the Taliban to fight the Soviets in Afghanistan and they turned those skills and weapons on us.  Personally I though the war on the Taliban should have been prosecuted full steam ahead but instead our leaders chose to trash Iraq instead and failed to eliminate the Muslim fanatics in one country while laying waste the oil fields of Iraq and opening up a political space that the weirdos of ISIS are now occupying. The answer to all these fiascos is for Americans to gird up their religious loins and turn this war over cheap energy into a religious struggle quoting the Crusades. So we have to get down and dirty like the fanatics in Syria and Iraq? Really?

The human condition seems to require ambiguity and lack of consistency in our actions, that said a lot of modern religious life baffles me. I find the insistence on no sex education, no contraceptives, no abortion as religious dogma is fair enough, but as public policy it seems insane especially when those same anti tax right wingers argue that the state has no business helping young mothers to day care, pre-natal care or post natal care. How does that make any sense? Abortion is murder but botched executions are appropriate revenge, never mind the Lord prefers to keep revenge to himself. The sermon on the mount has been through a few revisions since I was a kid. Blessed are the poor is now lengthened to read "...the poor in spirit." One of the great oddities of Christianity in the US is the notion that wealth is a sign of God's blessing. The New Testament is packed with Awful Warnings on the unattainability of heaven to the rich. This particular one, so powerful and direct has now been watered down. Catholics routinely use contraception and the old prohibition of meat on Fridays is now said to have been nothing more than a health precaution. Beats me. 

And I am banned from heaven because I haven't been saved. Well, bugger. Consistency as they say is the hobgoblin of mediocre minds and I guess I qualify. I want public policy free of religious intrusion, but I would like religious leaders to step up when public policy leads us away from decency and humanity. Go figure.

I should like to have been born a Jew, what little I know of that religion I get from my wife who is a Reform Jew and thus rather looked down upon by the hardcore Orthodox. I like that Judaism eschews missionary work, I like that the dogma is rather vague about all the particulars of life after death that seem to fascinate Muslims and Christians. But in the end I'm not a Jew so that's that. But there again the Israel lobby in Congress is a machine that none dare oppose despite the obvious need for some sort of restraint on a nation that cheerfully subjugates its neighbor and speaks of Palestinians as animals who hate Israel. True or not inflammatory language won't lead to peace, and for all my life the Middle East has been the source of conflict with no end in sight.

It is said that yellow fever has caused more human deaths than any other single cause in history with religion a distant second. I want no part of either thanks, nor ebola which seems set to make some inroads. Recognizing that good comes of religion too, I understand, vaguely that some people enjoy the fellowship of gathering in one place on a  Sunday, and that for others fear of the dark requires belief in something, but I wonder why it becomes necessary to force this stuff on bystanders? I'm glad you have found new purpose in life but for someone like me who lives a mediocre life without extremes I don't feel motivated to take a twelve step program to get my life back on track. Thanks but no thanks.

So I shall try not to let my irritation at religion in public debate spill over into my own feelings about consistency but when I read the Bible which I do from time to time I wonder how it is that I hear people express their devotion to Christ and their total lack of devotion to his desire that we be kind to each other. It seems  to be clear enough:

And one of them, a doctor of the Law, putting him to the test, asked him, "Master, which is the great commandment in the Law?" Jesus said to him, "'Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with thy whole heart, and with thy whole soul, and with thy whole mind.' This is the greatest and the first commandment. And the second is like it, 'Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.' On these two commandments depend the whole Law and the Prophets." (Matthew 22:35-40)

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Water And Heat In Key West

I saw pictures of the western drought, a ten year record setter that has lowered water levels to historic lows across the heavily populated desert southwest. The Colorado River is a muddy trickle, Lake Mead is a puddle but the sidewalks of Duval Street are flushed daily with a total loss use of potable water. Instant communications are a curse for those of us that pay attention to trans continental news.

I mentioned the drought at work which elicited a huge yaepwn and a quick return to the more absorbing subject televised zombies or vampires or some other manufactured drama. And why not? The rains this year are abundant, frequent and if not prolonged at least briefly extremely heavy. They leave their mark, these rains with high humidity and deep puddles.

Walking Cheyenne is an exercise in talking a strolling shower, as overnight lows struggle to reach 85 degrees after daytime highs in the low 90s, and the humidity in the air is like being wrapped in a warm wet blanket. Even the snakes are looking for relief:

People frequently tell me they prefer dry heat which doesn't suit me at all, I don't like cracking nails and my hair reduced to straw and itchy dry skin. I have seen temperatures well over a hundred dry degrees and honking dusty winds and I don't like that at all. I like the daily sunshine, life seems too short not to live it in primary colors, shades of green and blue and bright white in these islands.

Of course we live in modern times, attached to the mainland by a road that brings not only supplies but expectations and to some extent values as well. It is not acceptable to show up at work with huge 19th century style sweat rings under your shirt sleeves, and modern homes come equipped with efficient central air or noisy and inefficient window air conditioning units. In the same way television and daily manufactured drama, fashion or food fads are the staple of conversation, modern life in the Keys requires a tad more sophistication than a fishing pole and a mint julep in an adirondack chair. I have lived in the tropics without air conditioning, but I was not working and I thus had lowered social obligations and could take all day to accomplish the simplest tasks. Besides which none of my sailing neighbors had air either, so we sweated in unison.

I filled my Vespa with gas last night and premium cost $4:20 a gallon at the Truman and White Street gas station. Our electrical bill most recently amounted to $150 to de-humidify our stilt home, which seems remarkably reasonable considering the cost of energy and the instability everywhere in the world they drill for oil and gas. But we seem to be doing better than we have for years as far as that most precious commodity called water is concerned.

In recent years Lake Okeechobee has done the drought disappearing act but rain brought it back. The South Florida Aquifer seems to be holding its own at the moment thanks to rain. Perhaps the southwest will get rain enough to supply ten of millions of Americans and those poor brown sods south of the them who also happened to rely on the Colorado River. Yet rain in summer is a natural condition in South Florida, and in the west them call them deserts for a reason.

It must have seemed like a good idea to populate a desert with orange groves and people and roads and more of the same for decades but they seem to be coming unstuck. My brother in law in the mountains of Asheville has a similar attitude toward idiots who live by the rapidly rising waters alongside the lowlands of Florida. By the time our shoreline drowns I'll be dead I figure so the question of what to do will be moot.

Oscar Wilde remarked that talking about the weather is the last resort of boring people and he may have been right but it sure is a phenomenon these days. Now they tell us a cold front is going to chill out the states to the north of us, which news is offered by way of relief from haunting heat. Fair enough I suppose if you think getting out of bed into 55 degrees is a good thing. I experienced that recently in Maine and found I good comes of that sort of thing, unless you are a furry Labrador. In that case sitting in a puddle in 90 degrees is the next best thing as you reminisce about winter in. July in New England.

In the Pacific Northwest home to endless gray skies and ample rain they've been inundated with fire, which to my jaundiced way of thinking is far worse than a hurricane, but take your pick. Wait a bit and we may have a hurricane as yet another tropical wave in the Atlantic dithers about and considers becoming a tropical storm...but still I'd rather face a hurricane than an earthquake ( been there, done that...) forest fires ( ditto) and subsequent mud slides in a cold wet winter ( ...). Climate change deniers always tell us weather and climate are different and no one disagrees with that, but the violence of contemporary weather should give thoughtful people pause about climate. A cat on the other hand might just find relief from the heat on a terra cotta sand dollar...

You take a look at an open air business like Buddy Owen's Fishwagon, photographed here early in the morning, and you wonder how business is during the heat of summer. Just because I like the heat doesn't mean it gives me an appetite for hot fish and steaming fries! In the sun!! But people do.

The smart ones are out before the sun is fully up, walking with Cheyenne and I, checking out the somnolent city, feeling the merest of cooling breezes on their skin. Summer is the season of childhood to me, the hot summer months when anything was possible, when the days were long and the whole wide outdoor works was laying at my feet ready for me to explore. Perhaps that's why I love the endless summer of life in the Keys so much. A boat ride, a bike ride, a walk with my dog, a swim, lounging with a book (kindle), these are the ways to wile away a boyhood summer, and to it as an adult reminds me of the same or similar for decades ago.

But now I'm old so I like my comforts. To live picturesquely is one thing, and I'm glad some like it so, But I like my comforts, dry clothes, mold free books and a sweat-free living room. Never mind cool uninterrupted sleep. I've known people come to live down here and make a big deal of eschewing the benefits of cheap air, but I'm not one of them. Certainly life here would be harder and dare I say less populated if afgordableair hadn't been made available after World War Two. Indeed some historians suggest that was the main reason peninsula Florida was populated.

Wet heat, air conditioning, cheap energy. And a pretty town to walk in. So far, so good.

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From The Archives: Elgin Lane 2008

Elgin Lane

In 1801 the Seventh Earl of Elgin took pieces of marble from the Turk controlled Acropolis in Athens and had them shipped home to England. He did this while he was the British Ambassador to Constantinople because Greece was then part of the Ottoman Empire. Since 1980 Greece has claimed the Elgin Marbles as part of their heritage, but the British Museum is still hanging onto the Parthenon Sculptures, bulldog-like. And that is what I think of when I think of Elgin Lane in Key West, neither of which has anything to do with the other....The easy way to find Elgin Lane is to cruise north on White Street until you find the brightly colored inconvenience store known as Blossoms:From Blossoms its a one way ride straight down Elgin Lane to a point that pops out next to Paradise Cafe a couple of blocks away. And in that stretch of narrow one way asphalt lies all the romance and intimacy of a narrow key West lane. Personally I find Elgin Lane to be unusually attractive- I'm not sure why.I hit it on a bright sunny day, hot but not too hot, sunny but not too sunny I suppose. Shadows were starting to lengthen and I should have been thinking about heading home. I had just been to the Tropic to check out Werner Herzog's latest documentary about life at the South Pole Encounters at the End of the Earth, a snappy title for a movie infused with Herzog's own special brand of lugubrious Teutonic hopelessness at the human condition. Which film I thoroughly enjoyed and whose somber tone was the perfect antidote to the cheerfulness inspired in me by this modest little alley.It sort of looked like rhubarb to me, but that's impossible...I'm pretty sure.

.

Elgin Lane distinguishes itself from other Key West streets by the impossible good manners of it's sign writers:Well, most of them:The houses on Elgin Lane are the usual mixture and included an upper crust guest house with barely glimpsed swimming hole:And the inevitable Conch Cottage with its own form of OSP, off street parking:And even though I frequently see porches set up for outdoor entertainment its rare someone is out there rocking gently or playing backgammon. Perhaps it's the time of day I pass by:Some houses are kept full of junk, the gruesome pack rat syndrome. I could never be a pack rat, being as how I was always traveling and leaving all my stuff, perforce, behind. Not like this character who likes to live behind battlements of stuff:Others fight the good fight, as do I, and struggle to keep the crap factor to a minimum:You don't even have to do much maintenance if your home is made of Dade pine:Some people are dab hands with a paint brush and pastels are the shades of choice. There is a tradition in Key West to paint outdoor ceilings a light blue color. The superstitious among us believe light blue for some unaccountable reason keeps spirits away and also has the beneficial effect they say of keeping insects away. Powerful stuff for a simple shade of blue:I caught one less traditional detail on a house that was all shuttered up- with a zip tie!Elsewhere ingenuity was evident, the sort of lateral thinking I used to employ when I was far from land on my sailboat, not, as in this case, on a construction site:I saw another piece of whimsy in a road sign on a stretch of this narrow street:"No Parking At Any Time" says the faded sign, which seems obvious enough in this kind of area, so it didn't take but two minutes for me to spot someone doing just that!That's what they mean by "island time." Don't lose your mind when people just stop in the middle of the street- it's the response to the general lack of space.Besides if you're in a hurry there is Eaton Street, a main thoroughfare just a block away:As if parked cars weren't enough, Elgin Lane is apparently plagued by junior league moon walkers:And cyclists, ready to run you down. Mind you those are always available in Key West, accidental ecologists on our streets:Oh and don't let's forget my pet peeve:We were at a movie the other day, my wife and I, watching a Spanish movie titled Fred and Elsa, a sweet concoction about late blooming love at the Tropic Cinema and one of the characters announced, annoyed, how irritating people are who don't keep their cell phones on. I got a big jab in the ribs, but I am unrepentant. Cell phones take messages with the greatest of ease. I met another character enjoying public telephony:Actually no, look closely and you'll see he was sucking hard on a brown bottle. He was a pretty cheerful character as he watched me point and shoot and volunteered that his was a long time Key West family that came here from Nassau. I've been to the capital of the Bahamas a few times and it never seems to get more attractive, a run down crowded borough with all the charm of a dilapidated shopping maul tacked onto a rabbit warren of narrow streets. This character turned a tad maudlin remembering Nassau in the 1960's making it out to be paradise lost, as usual; a nice guy gifted with a defective memory. Hell the Duke of Windsor was banished there in World War Two (he had unfortunate Nazi sympathies and they had to ship him somewhere he would do no harm) and he was in despair. I don't think Nassau was much improved by the time our beer toting new found friend saw the light of day.

But I digress, once again. Another piece of Key West whimsy, a light pole growing out of a palm tree:As cold starts to tighten its vise Up North I continue to enjoy Key West's primary colors, green blue and white with occasional splotches of yellow thrown in. I would rather eat worms than have to live in a place with seasons. I think that's my greatest fear if the economic melt down were to displace me, as after a life spent wandering I have finally settled in one place, a place of endless, glorious summer time. And Elgin Lane ain't half bad either:Not that I think too highly of speed bumps, but I did enjoy cruising the lane. And no, I didn't lose my marbles.

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