Climate Has Changed, Guns Haven't

Stories about Climate Change threaten people in a way strikes terror to the core of their being. I wonder why?

I don't have children, what the Victorians called "issue," so Climate Change is somewhat remote for me. I have no children or grandchildren at stake in the future of the planet. I have twenty, perhaps thirty years more to live. In the meantime I stand on the sidelines and struggle to understand the conundrum that are my human neighbors. I love living a sea level but every day I wonder what if...Yet my neighbors who do have offspring seem oblivious.

We live on an astonishing planet that has provided a perfect living environment since the last ice age and the evidence is piling up that the climate is changing once again and likely because of human carelessness. Droughts and floods wreck crops, food prices are rising, cheap oil is harder to find, jobs are exported and our leaders don't lead. Our political systems operate by polling so whatever fantasy grandparents prefer to believe becomes national policy when backed by Big Money. Climate change threatens how we live so we pretend to ignore it. Guns kill people, so we pretend gun control isn't necessary. Honestly I don't give a toss either way. I'm not in favor of gun control because I am not afraid of guns or people with guns, but I fear dictatorship through social ignorance not because our military will turn on us. They say climate change will likely wreck our comfortable climate and leave me and my First World neighbors hungry and impoverished but still eating I hope. For Second and Third world people with fewer reserves things look much more immediate and bleak. What astonishes me is that people who do have a stake in the future don't seem to give a toss either way. I'm ready to roll up my sleeves but many of my neighbors can't even be bothered to do some light recycling never mind consider changing the course of global warming. I doubt it's all apathy, I think feeling overwhelmed is a common cause of Climate Change Overload.

If I saw parents across the US rising up in unison demanding gun controls to protect their offspring I would understand; but they don't, even following weeks of national hand wringing and crazy talk about shooting people who want to take away our guns. If parents don't feel strongly enough to speak up in favor of banning assault rifles and huge magazines why should I bother with the issue? I don't go to school, I don't have children in school I just am happy to pay taxes to support free public education for all. I wish instead of tests educators could teach people to think and reason and debate. Meanwhile on a longer scale scientists estimate sea levels will rise nine inches in a few decades though some days they tell us polar ice is melting so fast sea levels may rise much faster and much higher. Or not if you listen to those that would rather not think about these things.

Climate change is so vast and so all encompassing it seems a subject far out of reach of us ordinary mortals who go to work and live what seem to us to be modest lives. We drive, we fly occasionally for family gatherings or as relief from the daily grind, but the notion that my air conditioner is melting polar ice caps seems too remote. Life goes on and it's hard to picture a future of ecological devastation as predicted by scientists and ecologists. Yet the possibility is there and in some deep uneasy way we have all of us seen changes in the weather where we live. We console ourselves with the hope that it's an off year and next year things will go back to normal. What else can we do? That there has been no evidence of winter at all in the Keys this year seems to astonish only me.

Then there are the nutters. I have read about crackpots who claim the school shooting in New England was a plot or conspiracy or an overblown fire drill that went wrong or some other such nonsense. The 26 people who died didn't and are in the Witness Protection Program or something. In my opinion anyone who spouts such stuff should be denied ownership of guns for the rest of their lives because clearly they are barking mad. And they should be forced to write letters of apology every year on the anniversary of the shooting to the grieving parents.

And there are the climate change nutters too who deny everything and claim conspiracies and on and on. The preponderance of the evidence suggests things are changing and not in a good way. The scientists may be wrong but if they are right your offspring have a very bleak future indeed. Yet it matters not to you apparently who have offspring. If the scientists are wrong we can breathe easy but if they are right biblical famine and suffering is in store, and if you have read the Old Testament you know what I am trying to say. That we could try to make changes for the benefit of future generations seems like too much effort for too remote an outcome. That being the case I say bugger it, I'm going to enjoy the twilight years of the Industrial Revolution as best I can.

These lovely low lying vacation islands are at risk, but further afield millions risk drowning in river deltas that make up most of Bangladesh, and South Pacific Island nations make plans to evacuate to higher ground, even as China ignores the lessons learned in the 19th century and tries to pollute its way to superpower prosperity. Worst of all we cannot even discuss these issues, or potential issues, rationally. Never mind try to forge consensus on the best way to move ahead as we struggle with mighty changes in our collective future.

My solace in these trying times is to look to the past for a guide to the future and the more I do the more I realize there is nothing to be done. The cycle requires us to go through a period of fantastic prosperity, over weening pride and then collapse followed by a struggle to regain control, hard work to rebuild and so forth. Skeptics will always tell you this time it's different but history will confirm for you that it never really is. The hard part is trying to figure out which part of the cycle you and your generation is living though. Hindsight helps and in twenty or thirty years we'll be able to look back at 2008 and figure out if it was a blip on the financial radar or the beginning of the Great Depression of the Twentieth Century.

We look at Easter Island, Rapa Nui, and wonder how silly they were that alone in a vast ocean they managed to destroy the forest that sustained them, apparently in an effort to transport giant statues to honor gods that oversaw their civilization. Instead they destroyed their ecosystem and died off leaving behind a mystery and monuments to human self delusion and stupidity. I hope for the best and ignore the worst and whistle in the dark as I go about my daily habits, burning dead dinosaurs as I go.

It would be an awful shame to submerge these lovely places because it took too much effort not to. Perhaps it's the price we pay to appease the gods of our darkest innermost fears.

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The Real Keys

I was walking Cheyenne last weekend in the backwoods of Big Pine Key. As we get deeper into winter and more people show up around here it gets harder to find some outdoor space to be alone. In some fit of wild optimism I went towards the Blue Hole and found the parking lot was packed. Cheyenne weirdly enough wanted none of it, briefly sniffing in the bushes and backing up rapidly towards the car as more people clutching hydration bottles strode down the fifty foot path to the viewing platform looking as though they were seeking adventure in a place so arid there is no chance of convenience store water for a hundred miles. I looked for somewhere more remote and came up with a side street leading off into the pine woods. This truck reminded me of the character Doc Ford in Randy Wayne White's novels about Sanibel Island.

 

I know of another such operation at Bay Point, perhaps its part of this one I don't know, but when I read the novel featuring a collector of sea life I thought it sounded an impossibly unlikely career choice but there again in a world where people feel the need for indoor fish someone has to find them. I have never understood the attraction of watching fish swim around in one's living room, but there again I suppose watching a Labrador shed on your carpet is also an acquired taste...

 

 

Further up the street I came across a more conventional fishing operation, lobster traps and all.

 

 

 

There's a canal in the back with access to the channel and, like a farming operation this location won't bother residential sub-divisions. Fishing is the way most people made their living in these islands before the advent of mass tourism. Fishing has been pushed out of Key West and where these kinds of operations used to function now you'll see tourist cruises.

I like to eat fish though I heard a story on This American Life, doing the investigative reporting that strikes fear into the heart of dullard All Things Considered and the upshot of the story was that about half the fish you eat is not the fish you ordered. Indeed some restaurants serve "artificial" calamari made from unmentionable parts of a pig. That gave me pause. Even I have heard that some restaurants serve scallops made from sting rays which I find appalling. I see these small businesses and hope this reality is some insulation from the reality of fish sold under false pretences.

 

 

 

I have no desire to romanticize the life, partly because earning a living from the sea is similar to earning a living by farming, which is as hard as it can be lucrative and is always dependent on market forces and the weather, which are both out of the workers' control. As in farming where sudden frosts or floods wreck crops, in fishing cold snaps storms and so forth wreck catches, not to mention the high costs of fuel.

 

 

And yet, despite the fragility of the life and daily tasks people persist. I guess its a living for people who have trouble with school work or sitting still indoors. What appeals about it to me is that these kinds of yards, seen from Stock Island north, in ever fewer numbers, are a direct link to the past. This is the world Hemingway did write about when he wrote of Key West. These aren't mythical pirates or freebooters, these are people who live to fish and fish to live and you won't see them in Key West Bight. More's the pity I suppose, though smelly fishermen won't attract tourists. Or perhaps their authenticity or the authenticity of their catch might?

 

Cheyenne enjoyed the peace and quiet out here.

 

 

 

 

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The Mayor Speaks

Mayor Cates was quoted in the newspaper as saying, more or less, locals don't go downtown so who cares if locals object to widening the entrance to the Key West harbor to bring more cruise ships to town. Well, that set the cat among the pigeons. They say one should speak truth to power, but when power speaks truth everyone gets annoyed.

When the mayor says locals don't go downtown he is technically correct if you look at those who he figures are his constituents they don't go to Duval Street much. I have worked with Conchs who tell me adamantly they never go downtown as there is nothing there for them. There is a barely suppressed current of anger in the remarks as though the speaker is casting around for someone to blame. Old Town is the lost paradise of eternal happiness known to some as Shangri La. It is the Garden of Eden from which the Conchs have been ejected for selling their souls for a mess of pottage. Enough with the aphorisms, here's how it happened.

Key West was a navy town and men came to find men here. They also found a run down fishing village at the end of a very long narrow road with superb weather and no facilities to speak of. Electricity came and went and telephone calls outside the local five digits were communications with another world. Old timers like to prove their credentials even today by quoting their phone numbers as five digits. They'll say something like 32929, which assumes that the first two unspoken digits are always 29. Because in the good old days the telephone exchange in town was only represented by 29 so local calls were all five digits only. In any event it became clear a few decades ago to some bright sparks that opening guesthouses in this remote US outpost and inviting snowbound friends to Key West could be lucrative.

So they bought the run down housing stock and converted it slowly into the glorious mansions and Victorians you see today. A few smart businessmen bought up the shells of businesses on Duval, reduced to penury by Navy draw downs and held fiercely to the dilapidated main drag painfully restoring it and hoping for better times. Which, when they came made the crazy speculators into visionaries. Such is human nature; you're a nutter until circumstances prove you're not.

The Conchs who had been living in a small town dependent on fishing and the Navy thought Christmas had come early when they found buyers for their tired elderly homes. Which sales in turn enabled them to buy lots on the former dairy fields on the other side of Division Street (Truman Avenue today). So they too at last could enjoy the American Dream with weatherproof homes, air conditioning, car ports and nice sized yards. We call it New Town today because before Searstown was built in the sixties the land was scrub while downtown is really Old  and always  has been.

Old Town is where the tourists want to be and winter residents revel in indoor/outdoor living when their less well off friends Up North are shivering and shoveling snow. But the power structure of Key West fr the most part lies east of First Street and goes all the way to Key Haven. So when the mayor says locals don't go downtown he isn't wrong, even though people who do live downtown and don't want more cruise ship passengers get miffed.

Mayor Cates gets stuff done and he doesn't waste a lot of time on empty talk, which at a time when most national politicians are caught in the spotlight of indecision makes a change. For instance he decided he wanted to build a new city hall at the Glynn Archer School on White Street. City Hall on Angela got a death sentence from mold caused by Hurricane Wilma on a structure already well past it's deadline and the debate was loud and at times acrimonious. Every one had an idea what its replacement should look like. Mayor Cates wanted a historic building easily accessible (to New Town as well of  course) with room for parking. He just had to bend the obtuse school board to his will. They bent.

The Truman Waterfront has been handed over to the city long since by the Navy, once again in a military drawn down, and those 34 acres have been sitting. Not anymore and despite the usual clamor for this and that a fancy new park is on the boards, not the ill fated waterpark proposed by Cates' predecessor but the suburban loveliness of gardens, paths and coordinated architecture so beloved of Florida developers across this blighted peninsula. In similar vein plans are afoot to develop and beautify Caroline Street just in time for Pritam Singh's planned hotel. Singh built Truman Annex on the first bunch of superfluous Navy property deeded to the city, a superhuman effort that took him two tries to complete. It got him going on  big developments all those years ago and he still needs to do more apparently. The city will oblige with a spruced up street to front his latest creation.

I live in the county and work for the city so as far as I am concerned anything that brings in money works for me. I appreciate the way the city takes care of my job and I do my best to give back value while I sit up at night taking calls from distressed residents. How the city organizes it's streets doesn't have much to do with me though I am among those who don't spend a lot of time on Duval Street. I have never been inside Sloppy Joe's or Ricks though I did once have a beer at Captain Tony's. Mostly I go downtown to see a movie at the Tropic, have a beer at the Porch or take pictures for this blog.

Nevertheless, like many non residents of the Southernmost City I have an emotional attachment to the outcome of these development plans. For the life of me I can't figure how I feel about these "improvements." I like the City Hall plan, that one's easy. Gentrification though is tougher because in principle I don't much care for it, but in practice I like parks and trees and clean sidewalks free of smelly panhandlers. At some level we have to accept that Key West is going through another period of big change which  seems to mean inevitably that funkiness and eccentricity will be pushed further away. The easy money is gone, and people making money off the current mass tourism plans aren't looking for changes, they want more of the same formula that has worked so well for them thus far. It's never a good time for change, so the Mayor is pushing for more of the stuff that is mass tourism. A wider ship channel brings bigger ships and more day trippers. More money is good and the price is Lower Duval clogged with people. But as we have already established the mayor's supporters don't do Lower Duval so that isn't a problem... 

As I wander these historic streets I have my own vision of a Key West I'd like to see come to pass even though I know my imaginings are as vapid as a child's dreams of becoming an astronaut. I'd like to see Duval Street one way with wide sidewalks as a sort of Third Space where people could gather. I recollect walking downtown St Augustine with its parks and open spaces and bum-free sidewalks. I'd like to imagine that with some effort downtown could be welcoming to Conchs and non-Conch locals as well as tourists. I'd like to see the ruinous t-shirt shops replaced with almost anything that appeals to a higher emotion than crude high school fart humor.

I guess I'm an elitist but I'd rather see some gentrification rather than just letting Old Town's heart go to mass tourism. It's at a tipping point and the tip is leaning the other way, because it's more of the same and thus less scary for those who have businesses based on this mass tourism model. I don't have a stake so I stand on the sidelines and wonder. I wonder how anyone can imagine that if Mayor Cates says the harbor channel should be widened, it won't be. And with that widening will come  vast great  cruise ships that have never before been seen here. The question is, will their passengers negatively affect enough of the city to drive out the wealthy strata of snowbirds and visitors who keep property values high? It doesn't seem likely to me. Cruise ship passengers come and go in a matter of hours, their radius of operations is small, perhaps five blocks from Clinton Square and restaurants do not cater to them. That channel widening will pollute the reef as will larger ships seems indisputable to me, but thus far in the Keys' history the reef has always been sacrificed to immediate economic interests and that won't change here and now, no doubt. 

Meanwhile the county is moving ahead with approving a new strip mall at Rockland Key. It turns out Walmart did look at the site and so far seems to have turned it down. The developers hint at another major retailer with interest in the site, Target is high among local hopes, but I'm guessing it will be some second rate anchor store as the population base around here is pretty small for the big popular retailers. Solares Hill had an interesting article two Sundays ago on projected sea level rise which would swamp the areas surrounding the mall which would occupy space near the current porn store alongside Highway One. I suppose that's one reason not to build the mall but by the time Rockland Key floods regularly there will be  plenty of other flooding to worry about around here. I figure I will likely be dead in a couple of decades and without children to worry about, apres moi le deluge...

It seems odd, doesn't it, that at a time when malls are failing across the country, when suburbs served by cars are under stress as suburban housing loses value, as urban renewal becomes fashionable once again, Key West seems poised to miss the boat. Conchs who have lived in nice homes for two generations have long since missed out on the mainland shopping experience and this is what they want, and it looks as though in some form it's what they will finally get locally. The Rockland Key Strip Mall won't threaten the t-shirt shops on Duval. More's the pity.

This then is the future of Key West, an urban core devoted to mass tourism and suburbs devoted to internal combustion; driving and shopping separated from residential  development. I can't help it, it just seems so old fashioned and out of date. I wonder why this has to be the path to  success in a town with so much going for it.

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Last Night

I spent yesterday morning in Miami, story to follow, and came home with an exhausted dog, a Labrador who was ready to be home and NOT in the car. I unloaded the car trunk which was weighed down with mainland food and toilet paper. I made lunch. I exercised. I did laundry. I was the very model of a modern house husband. I picked up my book, finally arrived at the chapter on the British recognition of United States independence in A Few Bloody Noses and scared a large iguana off my deck.

It was in many respects a good day, close to 80 degrees breezy and sunny. Cheyenne decided after a tiring day in the car that she deserved a walk. The best I could do was a walk down our street and she wasn't too excited about that but she is a good girl and we toddled off together to make the best of a short stroll unusually close to home. Then it turned really good. I don't leave home without my smart phone and I felt obliged to take a couple of pictures.

It really was that good. And I was glad I don't live in Miami. Honestly speaking Miami is mostly miles of suburban ugliness and my home is in an embarrassingly peaceful and pretty place. I really am lucky aren't I?

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Lovely Key West

I was tooling around on Duval Street trailing behind my wife while she was hunting for parts for her earrings when I came across this fantastic display case. No pink crocs but I was astonished young people would wear this stuff. I was wearing my Birkenstocks as I was downtown and was thus not scaring the out of town people. But I was carrying my pink Android phone with camera...

It's been a strange winter so far, a couple of dips to 65 nighttime degrees and that's it. The other night riding my wife's Vespa to work (my new/old P200 Vespa might arrive from Iowa this week! Can't hardly wait) it felt like a summer's night. I got drizzled on by a slight passing shower of rain. I got damp going to work and lightly drizzled on during the morning ride home. It was random rain, not associated with a cold front, and thus resembled summer not winter in the Keys. I love how it rains in the summer around here, when it's warm.

It isn't surprising to see people in shorts in January on Duval Street. What is surprising is that this is the time of year when from time to time black clouds gather in a line and sweep down on the islands, plunging temperatures to sixty degrees or less as north winds howl and heavy rain falls for a an hour or less. Then the sun does back out and locals pull out sweaters and fleeces and jackets and huddle over strong jot cups of Cuban coffee somewhere out of the frigid breeze.

Instead I'm watering my freshly planted little trees to keep them alive, my water cistern at home has run dry in this winter drought I am using the air conditioning a lot more than I would have expected. The breezes are pleasant and summer's clammy humidity is absent so the weather, though very odd, is absolutely perfect. In the photo below I saw this dude, probably a snowbird as he was headed to the Truman Annex gate, walking sturdily towing an old fashioned style shopping cart. I was struck by the image. Elsewhere he would be tossing his groceries in the trunk of a vehicle parked somewhere in a large suburban mall.

Cheyenne drinks less in winter but she took full advantage of the nice lady's bowl of water at the gallery at Margaret Street. She drank like it was summer.

This is busy season, streets busy with walkers and cyclists, and the hope is that the writer months will feed the city for much of the rest of the year. The summer trade is good these years with even family vacationers learning to like a change of pace in the islands. Cycling in Key West is practical business, an easy way to get around town without the hassles of parking a car. I prefer a power two wheeler...

Walking Cheyenne near the cemetery I saw quite a few open parking spaces and I had no trouble finding a spot on the 800 block of Fleming which surprised me. Especially as the newspaper was recently trumpeting a bunch of statistics about how well hotels and guest houses are doing, all full and with higher rates.

the newspaper is also littered with negative anonymous comments in the ever amusing Citizens Voice. The debate over cruise ships, roadworks and gentrification continues with the usual winter fervor as temporary residents fear Key West is losing its character. Year round residents who need jobs argue the reverse, that wealth kills eccentricity by making Bohemia by the Gulf Stream unaffordable. The old Harris School, seen below is said to be getting geared up for development. The real estate signs are gone, possibly through neglect but more likely in preparation for change. Upper floor windows are open as though to air out the building.

It's a good time to be in Key West. I enjoy the absence of winter though I fear in the long term melting ice and rising seas will be a problem for future generations. Right now is the perfect tie to sit on the porch and read the paper without a care in the world on a sunny Sunday afternoon.

I remember a few years ago night shift in police dispatch meant fielding lots of urgent calls, people drinking in bars led to fights and many 911 calls. These days I am astonished how the pace of emergency calls doesn't seem to change much between summer and winter. I don't think there is a direct correlation between the calls for service and the number of people in the city but I do think the kind of people who can afford to take a winter vacation in the sub-tropics. Some people argue, with merit I think, that Hurricane Sandy's devastation has limited the number of visitors from the affected areas

It's unfortunate for those that can't make it this winter, but Key West and it's magnificent winter climate isn't going away. I hope.

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Brazilierissimo!

Sit on the porch of the Ximenez-Fatio museum in St Augustine and enjoy a sunny day, while contemplating 19th century life as explained on the tour you just finished. Then get hungry and figure someone must be selling food on Aviles Street, the first Euro-street mapped in the future United States, and named for the founder of the longest continuously inhabited town in the aforementioned USA. Take that Jamestown.

Restaurant and Cafe Del Sol has no website and online reviews are mixed. We liked it. A lot. And itbwason Aviles Street right around he corner from our tour. We had previously tried some food at Nonna's an Italian joint up he street but they were only serving sandwiches for lunch so we branched out and settled in under the blue and free flag of Portuguese America. Very comfortable it was too.

It was the pope who split the Americas between Catholic Kingdoms with the simplicity and infallibility of Solomon. Portugal got Brazil and Spain snagged everything else. The British singed everyone's beard from time to time and the French did their best to keep up. I know very little of Brazil and my wife who went there years ago could not accurately remember the food, but if modern Brazilians eat like this I need to plan a trip there. We started with asomethingbthat vaguely approximated a Cuban Mojito, Caipirinha made of cane liquor sugar and strong limes. It was delicious yet not intoxicating. We had two each to prove the point.

Our plan was to order several appetizers to get a cross section of Brazilian good and we naturally went a little bit too far. Being creatures of the south we decided to eat indoors and look out at Aviles Street.

In Brazil apparently they call empanadas pastel and quote delicious they were too. We had meat and cheese and like the other dishes we chose the food was lightly and balanced, the flavors were mild yet pronounced. I found it captivating.

This madness which I attempted to photograph below, sold me on Brazil as a food destination. Call me provincial but I have never heard of a mashed potato sandwich and now that I have tried this appetizer version I am sold. The only other type of tuber sandwich I had previously heard of was fried potato sandwiches sold in England to the laboring classes as "chip butties" where a butty is a Northern slang for sandwich, more or less, and chips are of course freedom fries. These Brazilian contraptions layered mashed potatoes studded with vegetables with shrimp or ham or salmon on top and a cheese flaked strawberry to finish off. They were extraordinary, not subtle yet mouthwatering and very filling.

Ground beef in breadcrumbs lightly fried thus moist and crisp and heavenly. Taken with fresh salsa it was utterly superfluous and delightful.

We skipped pudding, paid the fifty dollar check and staggered off to digest lunch as we picked up our patient dog, snoring in the car and took her and ourselves for a stout walk. Soon enough lunch time fluids made themselves felt and we sought out some public loos. My wife is incorrigible and found the fanciest possible in the lobby of the Casa Monica. Very satisfying.

I guess my experience with lunch reinforces my pleasure in seeking out my own experiences while leaving the Internet grumblings of the unhappy at the door.

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