No Change

I am quite fond of the new city manager in Key West whose appointment was announced last week. She used to be the head of Internet Technology when I worked night shift and more than once over the years I have got her out of bed at some ghastly hour to fix a problem. 

She rose through the city ranks over the years and will now end her term as the big kahuna prior to her retirement in two years. I never thought I would beat her to the exit but here we are. Of course she has forty years seniority working for the city where I have barely 18 but still I get to leave with people I know still holding the reins. It makes me feel old.

Her predecessor quit abruptly to take  a position with a  utility company that paid more and the city has decided to keep going with someone in charge who already knows the ropes.

I start to hear people speak nervously about hurricane season as temperatures rise and tropical waves start to form in the Caribbean. I never trust people who know this season will be bad. They usually say it in a hushed voice hinting at disasters yet to come as though they have secret knowledge to interpret the future. When a trainee at work asked me if we should expect a  storm I said someone is going to get hit most likely. I hope it's not us.

Until then life goes on as usual, the wheels of commerce turn and political leaders make their plans. 

Rusty has his hurricane plan though he doesn't know what it is. He's been evacuated previously and will be again if necessary. I am astonished when people leave behind their pets. 

I wander around the city in the middle of the night and I see people carrying out their routines, drunks going home, bakers baking, cyclists bicycling...

La Concha is open to welcome guests but I am alone in the entrance, looking in and seeing no one.

Rusty has Duval to himself for a while...

I came across a man unlocking his bicycle. We said good morning to each other and as he rode off he wished me a blessed day, to which I figured I was off to a good start.

Bahama Street Ghost

I don't spend the life I am living pondering the unlikely possibility of a life after this life. I am in a minority when it comes to expecting death to be the end so I find myself tolerating excited explanations of the supernatural. It turns out a disembodied piece of ectoplasm lives behind the sign.

It's supposed to be some character, a seafarer as I recall, who apparently feels no compunction about appearing to everyone else but not to me. Rusty  sensed no extra sensory apparition, or if he did he ignored it. There is a cemetery dating from the original church built in 1838, and where there is a cemetery there must be ghosts. I fully expect you to feel a cool clammy hand around your heart the next time you tip toe by...

On a more practical note I recall the ghost of the former Carriage Trade at this place. It was run in eccentric style by two elderly men set in their ways and I delighted in eating here. It was a set menu, chalked on a  board for a set price which if satisfactory you took at an outdoor table in the back courtyard. It was old world and delightful. I felt like a small boy eating lunch at school and anxious not annoy the rather revere lunch monitor. All that is gone, vaporized by the mists of time.

I was quite pleased to see a sign explaining The Studios of Key West has taken the building over to use as a place to store artists in residence. A worthy use for the former carriage trade and soon no one will remember the meals they used to serve.

Rain threatened and later the rain pelted down all over the Keys as another tropical swirl is building up in the western Caribbean sending gray skies and rain all over the place. Rusty and I got out for a morning walk before the rain and spent the rest of my day predictably sitting at home with a snoring dog and wintery scene of mist and slashing rain and noisy wind gusts.

I don't suppose I'd have the nerve to go in if it were open but come to think I've never actually seen a sign saying we are open please come in. At five in the morning they are definitely closed.

I saw two chickens on the umbrella. A photograph seemed a requirement. Rusty was miles away by now crunching things he was finding on the sidewalk. I'm not sure why but he seems to be developing an interest in found food. Its for lack of being fed at home that's certain. 

I liked the light on the shutters at the Bull. In general I find this bar to be the most photogenic on Duval Street so I keep going back and taking a picture to remind myself. One day I might buy a drink there. 

Abstract with ferns and blue lights. 

Mangrove Walk

I think I went out with Rusty three times for pre-dinner walks to make up this collection of close up pictures of Florida Keys back country.  I did not get too close to the cluster of bees shown below, as I think they are the more aggressive variety. 

I heard a loud insistent buzzing and I saw the pulsing mass of insects around the rather inadequate hole in the cement  light pole. I was about ten feet away and not inclined to approach. Rusty the wild dog was not the least bit curious. 

I walked a prudent distance away and reviewed whatever information I could find and the type of inadequate hive they have chosen seems to indicate they might be Africanized. Supposedly the aggressive ones are 19 mm long on average. I wasn't sure they would approve of me trying to measure them but they had fuzzy bodies and black stripes which the Internet says is how they look.

It seems a very uncomfortable way to live if you ask me but apparently they are inclined to create undersized hives.  I walked on  unmolested and left them to do their work.

Flowers and clouds. Lovely. 

Then I mucked around a bit messing with manual focus turning mangroves into plaid (by accident). 

Little Hamaca

I had a chance to take Rusty into the woods at Little Hamaca City Park so I did.

I see clumps of  Spanish Moss and wonder who put them there as they seem rather of place at these latitudes and in this heat. I associate Spanish Moss with central and north Florida forests.

Little Hamaca has a reputation as a pick up location for gay men stuck in the closet  by circumstances that once were a way of life. These unfortunates are reputed to roam these woods in the middle of the city but all I can tell you is if they exist they are as unlikely to me as Bigfoot is to any rational thinker.

I see homeless tents and bedding abandoned after a winter's residence, periodically moved along of course but returning insistently. Of gay men furtively looking to pick anyone up I have never seen a  sign.

Still, these rumors are fine by me as any reason to encourage people to stay away means more silence, more shady open space for me. 

When I was recovering from my accident I used to push my walker up and down the paved sections of the park, slightly obsessive possibly and decidedly uncomfortable in wooly slippers, the only footwear that would cover my swollen feet. Those slippers pissed me off every day and made me feel like the stereotype of an old man.  All that work paid off because now I can blunder around at will getting scratched and dusty in the shrubbery. 

And we do. Rusty used to slow down and pace me as I struggled with the walker but these days he goes ahead and waits for me at the bends in the trail. 

I really like having little Hamaca as a small easy to find refuge in the city. 

And really it's not as quiet as it might appear as the airport is next door and unreasonably busy.