Giving Thanks

Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday. It used to be a close competition with Fourth of July but as I have aged Thanksgiving has pulled ahead by a long way. Maybe having a fall meal with friends under palm trees while camping at Fort Jefferson swung the pendulum...

...but last year at Jekyll Island in Georgia with Robert and Dolly in formal circumstances wasn't tropical by any means but  it was pretty damned good, let's face it. I'd like to do it again in fact. 

And yes, being able to sit on a beach and maybe even go for a swim if it is exceptionally warm suits me just fine this time of year. 

But this year Layne is in California, freezing her ass off in sub zero temperatures which seems vaguely appropriate as I am home alone and working all hours. And speaking of work, as 911 has to be answered all year round, I don't mind it on a holiday so much but for the fact that the source of all 24-hour Cuban coffee is closed. Grr. One can hardly hold it against Sandy's but still...

I avoid almost all the Christmas blather as Netflix doesn't offer gruesome advertising and judicious use of the  channel button can keep Christmas at bay on Sirius satellite radio. Besides which the weather stays pretty much the same and that I adore. I think Thanksgiving is better  than Christmas because it is a much more low key holiday, no frenzy of gift giving, no stress, just a silly over stuffed meal with friends and a moment to pause and think and be grateful. To me that defines a great day.

 I shall get a Cuban thanksgiving meal at work today which because it has roast pork and plantains among other things I like just fine thank you and I won't be home but that's okay. Cheyenne won't miss me as she will be snoring on a very full stomach and my wife will be sitting around a California fire pit enjoying what passes for nice weather on the West Coast.

This is  good winter weather:

Happy memories for my girl, now too old for such shenanigans so I am grateful she is still with me.

Happy Thanksgiving, hoping you have much to be thankful for...

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Citizens Voice

Oh look at that would you - a cruise ship - which is either a curse or a source of income or both depending on your point of view. And if you have a point of view there is only one place to express it, in Key West.

And once expressed anonymously in the paper your comment is subject to anonymous review, by other people with their own opinions...

 

Some comments are funny or ironic or sarcastic on purpose, others may strike your fancy for reasons that apply only to you. I like the notion that the bike racks are useful for people heavily engaged in yoga. But that's the kind of opinion that divides a city where workers work and visitors have different priorities. All grist for the Voice's mill.

Ah yes, the monied crowd taking over the spaces envisioned for the Rest Of Us. That theme keeps recurring in this narrow and pointed page two column in the daily paper.

Ooh, see why this has to be anonymous? The rich in Key West may not be educated. There's a barb!

This year there were a lot of people who came to Fantasy Fest by bus and left by bus with their food and their coolers. So much so not all hotels were full they tell us. This scenario is what irks some people about cruise ships and now the buses are adding weight to that irritation.

Noise comes up in one form or another in the Voice, motorcycles (I have factory mufflers on mine thanks, stealth = speed in my book) outdoor televisions and rental house parties are sources of anonymous complaint.

If you were thinking living in a confined space with people not yet acclimated to tight living quarters might be fun, perhaps checking the Voice daily might be a good lesson for you. I've lived on boats long enough to learn the basic rules of privacy in exposed living quarters and Conchs are pretty good at it too. But incomers who expect offsets and room to spread out can be sorely disappointed.

"A classier town..." I want to ask Anonymous to define her terms because a lot of people who live here crank up the Model T to go Up North to find proper shopping in malls. This comment below made no sense to me (hence it's inclusion here) but that doesn't mean a thing. The Voice is the Voice and the best thing is it irritates some people to death. Calls to shut down the Voice appear from time to time especially when the comfortable have been afflicted by something said.

I can't think of anywhere that looks less like a giant shopping structure filled to capacity with artificial sights, sounds and merchandise.

Politics rears its head from time to time in the Voice, but unfortunately its usually along predictable partisan lines. This comment "at the risk of sounding liberal" struck me as pretty funny. I guess the conservative half is the beer pong half? You know where I fall as I have no idea what beer pong is.

Or, rather than paying to park why not ride two wheels.

Oh wait, how about this comment? A liberal bastion of boredom? Boredom and politics mixed together. Shall we get personal and decide if liberal bastions are more boring than conservative ones? Packs of phonies we can all agree on, I hope, as it's Key West we are talking about.

Check out the comment above...length of service in Key West is always a precursor to a snobby elitist remark about some damned thing or another. EXCEPT in this case I vote the county deny the race a permit. But I doubt that will happen.

 

Well said!

 

However part of getting and having a life is a well honed sense of civic duty...which includes speaking out! Long live the Citizens Voice.

Ah, the intimacies of small town life. Good job Dana and don't forget next week Mr Cranky might be in the post office ready to slander your good name just as cheerfully. Sic transit Gloria Mundi....

I assure you it's like they say about economists, if you put them all end to end they'd still never reach a conclusion. But it's always the best read in the paper. Now if they could put a humorist back on the crime report, à la Tuell, that would make for real competition when you open the page.

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Riding Key West

I've collected a few pictures some taken recently and some older to remind us all of the chaos that is coming with the winter months.

Helmets in Florida are optional for adults over 21 years of age and in Key West most people take advantage of the law. I don't think its unreasonable in light of the fact that we have no tax payer funded single payer system so breaking your head may very well break your bank, not mine.

Sometimes I ride without a helmet but I rarely ride without gloves or shoes. The fact is people depend on their two wheels, not because they love to ride but because scooters are cheap and efficient so the idea of togging up in armor plate to get to work or the shops or home is far from their minds.

This easy going attitude to riding drives people from elsewhere crazy sometimes. I think there can be a little too much stress on the notion that passive safety is more important than active safety.

Which is not to say these flip flopped riders don't sometimes ride drunk, or get into wrecks and from time to time break their heads.

Tourists on rental scooters are another proposition altogether because they, like their pedestrian compadres tend to treat Key West like Disneyworld- a place where nothing bad is allowed to happen - and where we who live here are extras in the drama of their lives.

Key West makes for a lovely back drop for vacation pictures and the heat even in winter can overwhelm people not used to it. What seems like a fresh humidity-free winter afternoon to me seems cloyingly hot to someone who was in a snowdrift 2 hours earlier.

I like how bicycles and scooters are daily transportation in Key West used to get dogs to the park, groceries home from the shops. I see renters enjoying scooters on their visits, and riding bicycles too but these pleasures they don't take home with them and start a new way of traveling at home.

 

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Cold Front

From the National Weather Service:

In the wake of a strong cold front, the coldest temperatures of the season will impact locations from New York and southern New England down to parts of the eastern Gulf Coast. In fact, the freezing line Monday morning is forecast to surge south of Atlanta all the way to the central coast of the Gulf of Mexico. Temperatures will warm a few degrees for Tuesday, but still remain 5 to 10 degrees below average.

It's a sad fact of life but I am used to hardened Inuit making fun of me when I talk about cold weather in Key West. The good news is that I do from time to time enjoy seeing people from Up North brought to their knees by temperatures they pour scorn on from a distance. 60  degrees in Key West is for some reason, possibly the humidity or the uninterrupted wind, a frigid temperature when one is obliged to live through it. 60 degrees American (15 Canadian) is actually quite cold, and though it's not supposed to get that cold tonight, we face the first solid cold front of a winter that meteorologists promise us will be colder than normal, whatever that is. We have lots to look forward to apparently before next summer.

I do not enjoy cold weather and for me anything below 70 degrees (21 Canadian) is cool enough so tonight's possible 68  degrees is starting to look uncomfortable to me.

BEHIND THE FRONT...NORTHERLY BREEZES WILL FRESHEN WHILE DEWPOINTS
SLOWLY FALL. WATER TEMPERATURES ARE WELL ABOVE NORMAL...SO WE DO NOT
THINK OVERNIGHT LOWS WILL REACH THE UPPER 60S. TEMPERATURES HAVE NOT
BEEN BELOW 70 DEGREES IN KEY WEST SINCE APRIL 1ST. WE WILL HAVE TO
WAIT UNTIL TUESDAY MORNING WHEN TEMPS WILL FALL INTO THE UPPER 60S.

This is after all a city where outdoor living is not meant to be boxed in, where opening up windows and doors is part of the pleasure of winter, where skies are blue and the sun shines is an all year phenomenon.

The fact is that the Lower Keys are not in the tropics, the tropic of cancer runs through the Straits of Florida 60 miles south of here and in winter even properly tropical Havana gets cold gray weather from time to time just as we do.

Monday

Mostly cloudy, then gradually becoming sunny, with a high near 76. Breezy, with a northeast wind around 20 mph.

Monday Night

Mostly clear, with a low around 68. Breezy, with a northeast wind around 20 mph.

Tuesday

Isolated showers. Mostly sunny, with a high near 76. Breezy, with a northeast wind around 20 mph. Chance of precipitation is 10%.

Tuesday Night

A slight chance of showers. Mostly cloudy, with a low around 70. Breezy, with a northeast wind around 20 mph. Chance of precipitation is 10%.

 So much as one might prefer to spend all winter in t-short and shorts, there are occasions from time to time when we must adapt. Socks are de rigeur when Jack Frost strikes.

One hears stories of homeless Americans freezing to death Up North, and how they cope in the snow filled states and Canada I can't imagine. Key West has  beds for the homeless but when it gets cold or wet they tend to fill and some street people just prefer to be left to cope on the streets. In a town where frost has never been seen a cold snap is not exactly life threatening. I don't think pets or humans should be outside but they haven't yet  voted to make me dictator so cruelty remains a viable option.

There are people who dislike heat and humidity and mosquitoes, inexplicably, and they revel in snow and ice and the misery of short days and long nights and the rick of death by exposure. A while back someone sent me a picture of a car with a Key West sticker, and I wonder if they were wishing for warmer weather?

My young colleague JW saw  snow in 1997 once in North Carolina when he was nine and he says he loved it. Not sweating and sledding made his young heart sing. When I told him my wife was going to be in freezing temperatures this week in Northern California his eyes lit up with envy. Man, he said, I have to go and stand in the freezer rooms at the grocery store to feel that cold. I miss cold weather.

My buddy Nick also grew in Key West and last saw snow in New York last winter. He is another pervert who likes snow. He wears the badge proudly saying snow gives him a thrill. He likes to be cold. What is wrong with these people?

I don't know how cold it will really get tonight and over the course of the next few days. The run up to the cold weather was magnificent heavy rain and roiling black cloud and strong west winds that lasted for days, a surprisingly powerful precursor to the cold front. Typically it gets hot and humid and winds blow out of the south and swing round rapidly to the northwest which brings clear skies and cold temperatures.  

Perhaps it really will be cold enough to get us looking like these file pictures I took in winters past, socks, jackets, hats, hoods and maybe even gloves. A lot of people don't have heat in their homes and when it gets crisp around here people start to lose their resistance and everyone starts to sniffle and hack with winter ailments. Pathetic I know, but true.

Personally I'm fine with it being 80 degrees (26 Canadian degrees) and sunny all winter long. If I wanted it cold I'd live in St Augustine. I don't need it thanks, not that the gods are listening to me. My ideal, of which I never get bored:

This nonsense makes Richard in Fairbanks' heart sing: