A Tale Of Two Choices

It is tourist season they tell us in Key West and the streets are filled with the carefree. This year I find myself wondering where they come from and where they go to when they go home, and what do they think when they get there. Was it worthwhile? Did we do a good job of making their winter break memorable? Did they find within what they looked for in the Keys? And then what if we did...what if we did such a good job that they think this really is paradise, the place they want to live, not just vacation

I got a disturbing call this week and it forced me to look within and I wonder how it us that I live here when others don't. I do not think I am alone in believing we are living life on a knife edge as we launch ourselves into the 21st century, a time of turmoil and uncertainty and in many cases, scarcity. We all know these are not the 1970s, a time of abundance and certainty and revolution too, hippies and protestors who waved clenched fists at the people in charge, certain that when the time to protest was over the time to work, to sow future wealth, would be ready and waiting to embrace the former protestors. Nowadays we live in uncertainty, unemployment, social isolation and obedience. Our leaders tell us that to protest the ordained order is to be a Nazi, to demand more from our bosses is to be a Facist. When a billionaire compares himself to a persecuted minority and we do not ties up and deride him en masse we can safely say we are cowed.

I love history, it explains the present and hints at the future. History is also complete, there are no surprises or uncertainties. We can study Pearl Harbor in the sure and certain knowledge that the sneak attack is not the prelude to disaster but the beginning of a drive to ultimate military victory. Read about the Great Depression and know that no matter how times may have been in 1935, milk and honey would flow in abundance fifteen years later. At least for the survivors of all those explosions that separated the decade if poverty from the decades of abundance after the war that killed fifty million people. History is certain, history is written, immutable, a world where consequence follows action in a straight clearly understandable line.

Today we are of course living tomorrow's history and our actions today will lead to consequences tomorrow that will one day seem linear and obvious. Yet right now the consequences of our choices today are mere speculation, filled with possibilities, yes, but also with rife with failure. They say the process of shiny is one if accumulating regrets, and I am sliding into old age as I wonder at the choices of my younger life. And yet things could have gone worse. I am grateful to KeyWest, a city that stepped into my life, that declared itself ready to accept me after decades of flirting with a relationship and has given me a refuge in a world filled with uncertainty. My wife and I have jobs we like, with pensions promised just at that moment when our working lives are starting to wind down after two working lives in jobs that offered no retirement. How is it possible we found our retirement home in a town whose image promoted far and wide is a place of mindless, foolish hedonism?

The telephone call from a blog reader whose life dedicated to a place filled with winter, high costs, rich people playing, jobs lost, angry relatives all combined to present an uncertain future. Joblessness is at the heart of it all, the sense of not bring wanted or needed, the loss of the true value of one's labor, one's place in the world. We meet, we talk, we learn about each other and the first question, as we size each other up is: "What of you do?" And what if the answer is nothing? It's the fundamental explanation of our lives. It justifies us and gives us our place in the world and when the answer is "nothing" the void is until label. It's enough to make you dream of pulling up your toots, leaving your friends your history and your familar places and sent you spiraling south to escape the ice on the roads and the ice in your heart. And yet in an hour on the phone I fought to put the emigrant off. Why? I am fearful, I know how unshakeable is the rejectionist front in the Florida Keys. Our unemployed skilled Northerner dreams of holding a simple job, bringing useful industrial skills to our small southern community, fishing and watching winter sunsets in shirtsleeves. Why not? Because the rot of unemployment, of off shooting of jobs, of the fear and navel gazing of our self absorbed leaders has penetrated One Human Family. Secure jobs are at a premium and to come from outside is to ask local people to trust that you will stay, even when you discover low pay, long hours, not much time to fish, office politics and no interest in building your career aspirations. Resentment builds, paradise is found not to be and home looks like the dream deferred as the ice melts and the trees bud and the honey bees come back yo the lost hedgerows of the emigrant's youth.

I have been observing this process first hand of another blog reader who came to Key West with her fiancé for years enjoying the bars and the winter sun and the crowded optimism of America's Southernmost Town in the years before 2008 when wealth inequality and the powerlessness of the middle class were made brutally apparent to anyone who cared to look. She and he bought a house, using the wealth of their northern, unionized pension plans to buy an excessively expensive home in a union free town with not many opportunities. Her job did not pan out and on his alone they cannot live. This story is not history, yet, and it's ending cannot be foretold. But it does not look happy to me. I can say this, Key West in some manner rejects people and in some manner she did not tie herself to the fortunes of her adopted town, a place where strong prejudices and loud beliefs are not easy easily digested. Sitting on a barstool being loud and doctrinaire making "friends" is one thing but telling anyone who will listen how their lives would be better if they did things your way at work... That is a hard thing to sell in a town where we all are grateful for the acceptance our quirks have received at the hands of our neighbors. Yeah, our way may not be the most efficient, it may very well not be the way you did it Up North, but that's okay, our bosses like it that way and we know they are the puppeteers of our daily lives. Key West is very feudal town for incomers: know your place, be loyal, don't rock the boat and know your place, take orders, know your place. It's the price of a footstool at foot of the dinner table in paradise. I pay it willingly because I have lived a life and know when I am well off. The foot stool suits me.

A young colleague of mine was pondering one day about buying a house. She looked me, I demurred. She sees a future married one day to the man she lives with, she sees children in the picture, the whole American catastrophe. They already have a dog, bought not adopted, but her heart is in the right place. I didn't know what to say. Buy a house with a man you think you know? She's done that once already and had the devil's own job leaving the house to her former boyfriend and his ambitious family. Buying a house is the dream, no one can tell you what to do etc...we know the refrain. The problem with house buying here is that prices are high and the commitment is thirty years in a community famous for impermanence. Divorce, separation, a move, all will end up requiring that house to be sold. Does that possibility mean it's not worth trying to settle down now? She'll know the right answer a few years hence...

Another friend married almost thirty years raised three children in the family home but now she is pondering a future without him, they've grown apart and so forth. So was it worth it? Undoubtedly I'm sure she would say as those children raised in these islands go out into the world and make their own successful way. She spent her whole adult life living and working in the Keys, where they built their own home and a life. It's the dream, lived. That the storyline takes a different turn doesn't invalidate what came before. It takes adaptation to keep going.

People who observe me from the outside believe me to be impulsive, but I am a planner. Faced with a choice I ask myself what's the worst thing that could happen? If the worst outcome is too much to bear I know my choice. At the same time if I have a deepseated desire to do something I plan my way towards that goal. If you want to live here and have the opportunity should you not take it? On the other hand burning bridges at home to launch yourself on an experiment in sub-tropical living is not too wise, in my cautious opinion. Key West's image of itself doesn't lend itself to the way life is supposed to be lived, get a career, get married, buy a home and have kids. Yet people do it all the time, in defiance of the image, the bars, the temporary nature of a society in transition. Incomers bring their baggage, their desire for escape from the burden of expectations, and they expect to find freedom from convention.

Freedom comes from within and it's a hard task master. No one loves pioneers, no one trusts travelers who come and go and don't put down roots. Later, after time passes society reveres its founders, the awkward members of society who figured it was better to cross a desert or an ocean and risk dying rather than stay in town and do as expected. Blessed are the settled for they shall prosper in situ, and not suffer the uncertainties of change. I have wondered how it is to live in Alaska, a place of extremes, of cold, of darkness, a place where people live normal lives despite the natural extremes around them. Yet that curiosity has never driven me hard enough to do anything about it. It's an idle curiosity and I dare say at this point it will never be fulfilled. And one could argue I am the worse for my curiosity unfulfilled, but I feel okay. I like living in the heat, taking on the same daily tasks in a world of palms and mangroves, not so different from granite and pine trees, or saguaro and thorn bushes, madrone and eucalyptus.

So what's the choice? Me, I'm cautious and I suspect that my mobility over the decades has been enabled by an economy cruising along, cheap energy fueling mobility with work on tap in any town. I balanced no career with a choice to have no children, so all I needed was a job from here to there. Today it's not so easy to show up new in town and find a job with millions unemployed everywhere. You stay put to keep what you have. So is there a choice? I have no idea. I'll tell you in a few years, or decades, when this history is written.

Key West on Dwellable

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A New Marina

Last weekend they had a grand opening at a new Marina on Stock Island. Cheyenne's sudden illness prevented us going with friends on Saturday but we went Sunday afternoon after we went yo see a matinee of Gravity, an astonishing 3D movie showing at the Tropic Cinema. The movie was well worth it, the Marina less so.

The new Stock Island Village Marina had a grand opening last week with flyers everywhere exuding enthusiasm for a wonderful new nautical community that is coming into being on a Shrimp Road. By the time we got there Sunday afternoon the festivities were packing up and the Marina seemed yo be fully functional already.

Not all slips are filled but quite a few are. Stock Island Marina Village sells itself as cool hip and youthful.

It has floating docks and all manner of amenities, a dog walk, a gym (closed to the public on the grand opening) stores, tons of parking picnic tables and so forth. All that a modern marina resident might want except perhaps a swimming pool?

Stock Island Marina Village | Key West & Florida Keys Deep Water Marina is a place where everyone knows your name which doesn't seem like much of a thing to someone like me who likes his privacy...

I suppose it can only be a good thing to see more recreational slips opening up especially as this Marina is interested in liveaboards and visitors but I am surprised they see a large enough market to support yet another facility on. Stock Island. All to the good I suppose!

 

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Vandals On Big Pine

It was just another glorious winter morning in the Big Pine key wilderness of the Key Deer Refuge.

The new full color signs are a welcome improvement in my opinion as they highlight what to see along the Jack Watson Trail. A controlled burn got out of control and crisped a hundred actress of scrub including some near the trail and as a result the rangers out in new more informative signs. Key West Diary: Burnt Pine

I really like the trail, a circular meander that takes less than an hour on a nicely manicured gravel path. Which was not very well manicured last week.

Instead bushes and trees were toppled and the trail was gouged. I could hardly believe my eyes...

...but the tire tracks were clear as was the presence of empty beer bottles and this peculiar item of clothing:

The hat not the shoes I mean. I doubt any real Rotarians would come out in their ATVs and deface a footpath in an act of deliberate drunken stupidity and disrespect.

I really like this trail, it's an easy walk, it's peaceful, and it's usually empty. Cheyenne only likes to walk it in winter when it's cool but I guess winter is also the season when the idiots come out.

Tearing up the trail just isn't cool.

And leaving tire tracks sucks. I clean up after my dog and take only pictures.

What's wrong with these people?

I hope the rangers won't go ballistic when they see what's been done to their beautifully refurbished trail. I wouldn't blame them for closing it for a while just to give the assholes time to go home where they can plot to wreck their own pine barrens thank you. I hope we can pretend nothing happened and keep on going. At least none of the new signs were damaged. And the Key Deer are still there:

Cheyenne was resting comfortably and as usual didn't notice lunch on the hoof tip toeing by. Vandals or not the Jack Watson Trail is a great place to go for a stroll of a winter's morning.

Key West Diary: Watson Trail

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The Real State Of The Union

By Hugh, who is a long-time commenter at Naked Capitalism. Originally posted at Corrente, and then posted at Naked Capitalism where I found it.

The state of the Union is crap. 20% of the country is doing OK. 1% is doing fantastically. 0.001% is doing so well it’s criminal, literally. They don’t own everything yet but they do own the politicians, judges, regulators, academics, and reporters. So they’re getting there. The other 80%, the rubes, the muppets, the serfs, are mired in an undeclared, ongoing depression.

50 years on I can safely state that the War on Poverty has been won. The poor have been defeated, the middle class conquered. They just don’t know it. Many sense that something is wrong, even drastically wrong, but few realize they have been totally and thoroughly betrayed by those they trusted with the governance of the country and themselves. They cannot admit –they have been admirably taught not to admit — even the possibility of the class war waged against them and which they have definitely and definitively lost.

They continue to look to those who did this to them to fix things and make them better. They may grumble but there is no hint of real opposition or organized rebellion. Theirs is a Union of misery, lost hopes, lesser lives. The Union of the rich and elites is triumphant. So we have two states of the Union because we have two Unions, one of the many and one of the few, the haves and have-nots, the winners and the losers. We have one Union based on reality and hard work and another which feeds off it.

For most Americans, their wages minus inflation have stayed flat every day of their working lives, that is for the last 35 years. College is no longer a passport to a better life but a trap of lifelong debt. Hard work avails nothing as millions of American jobs have been sent abroad in “free” trade agreements. These agreements are not free for those who lost their jobs. And they make all of us among the many poorer because it has all become not about how hard you work but how cheaply.

The meltdown of 5 years ago destroyed much of the wealth of the middle class and virtually all the wealth of the lower classes. But those who drove the economy over the cliff in 2008, the rich, have come roaring back. They have made back the money they lost and more as the government and Fed have thrown trillions at them and encouraged them to blow new and bigger speculative bubbles. Stock markets are at or near historic highs. Statistics have been bent and twisted until they scream. As a consequence, GDP is up. Unemployment is down. Life is good. The numbers prove it. So suck it up, ignore reality, and stop complaining. After 3 years in preparation, Obamacare entered with a pratfall launch which embodied everything about what the program was, corporatism, and what it wasn’t, healthcare.

Class war demands distraction and nothing focuses the mind in the wrong place than war. It has become the central metaphor of our lives. Some of these wars are shams. Some are real. All are terribly destructive. There is the War on Drugs which has put millions of Americans behind bars and turned Mexico into a narco-state, even as the banks which knowingly laundered hundreds of billions in drug cartel profits escape with no one doing jail time and nothing more than some “cost of doing business” fines. Meanwhile the federal government fights a rearguard action as states move to legalize marijuana because, despite its best efforts, no one really cares.

There is the War on Terror with its endless, pointless mini-wars and drone strikes. It is the epitome of self-licking ice cream cones, producing more terrorists and anti-Americanism than it eradicates. On top of this, it has garnered some of the most dubious, “with friends like these who needs enemies” allies imaginable in the form of Israel, Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan. There are the traditional wars. After nearly 8 years in Iraq and every effort made to stay longer, that country remains on the same verge of civil war as when we left.

The war in Afghanistan is lost but, unfortunately, not over. Afghanistan is one of those places where an imperial war, part of the War on Terror, effectively trumped the War on Drugs and snuffed out any mention, or action to change, the fact that Afghanistan has been throughout the American occupation the largest producer of opium and heroin in the world. There is, again, the class war and the war against the middle class. An important theatre in this war is the war against the rule of law and the Constitution.

 

In our two Unions, the two Americas, there are two rules of law. The rule of law for the rich is that the rule of law does not apply to them. Barack Obama and Eric Holder have investigated no one, prosecuted no one, and sent to prison no one for nearly destroying the economy 6 years ago or for any of their economic crimes since. Jamie Dimon not only isn’t in prison, he’s still head of JPMorgan, and just got a multi-million dollar raise. Financial terrorism is infinitely more destructive than al Qaeda, infinitely better paying, and can be practiced with impunity.

As for ordinary Americans, they face a militarized police and a Dickensian legal system. At the same time, we are seeing our Constitutional rights bulldozed in the construction of a surveillance state, a euphemism for a police state. This is a state, totalitarian in its nature and ambitions, which, on the one hand, operates in the greatest secrecy with zero public accountability and makes war on anyone who seeks to expose its workings and, on the other, tells us we have nothing to worry about if we have nothing to hide. It targets us yet tells us we are not its targets.

This state, or rather those who control it, can know everything about us, but we can know nothing about it or them. Its justification is that it is only after the bad guys, but this state with all its vast spying programs and resources has never actually caught any “bad guys”, certainly none to justify its enormous budgets and unchecked powers. The wealth and the health of this country is based on the people. The value of the dollar is not based on gold or the ability to tax but on us. Yet we have been looted for decades by predatory elites and the rich. Our lives are made poorer, shorter, more pain- and anxiety-filled by them. And our country is made weaker. Education through debt and lack of opportunity is discouraged.

Skills are thrown away as jobs are shipped abroad. On-the-job training has become a dirty word. We are being hollowed out both as a country and a people. Our state is this: We have a cancer. It is feeding on us. It is killing us. Our cancer tells us that without it, we cannot survive. The truth is we have no hope of survival, indeed no hope of anything, unless we cut it out. Liberal, conservative, or indifferent, Tea Party, progressive, or independent, this is the choice we are all faced with, not just for ourselves but each other. If we are to act and if we are to be successful, then we must act together.

That is where we are.

The choice is yours.

 

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A Little Nook Above Duval Street

My wife got it into her head to explore a new-to-her spot off Duval Street. We went for a snack after a movie and we had the place to ourselves, it not yet being happy hour or anything.

There is, it turns out, a terrace in the Pegasus Hotel at the corner of Southard and Duval Streets and you can get a beer and a plate of Indian food under the stars, or under the sun in our case. And it was warm so some shade would have been nice.

We ordered garbanzo wraps and tandoori wings from the cheerful though uncommunicative Eastern European bar tender and we took a seat, in the sun.

Refreshments took the sting out of the heat. At three dollars a bottle I was trying to figure out how cheap the Indian beers would be later in the day.

We sat and watched the world go by below us. It's Duval Street from a different perspective.

And then there's the roofline. Now the bar at The Top has gone this place is the next best perch I suppose.

There in the distance you can see the La Concha Hotel and that cube at the top was where a The Top used to be located, replaced they say by a spa. Key West Diary: The Top

Our food arrived. On the left the garbanzo wraps and on the tight the wings wrapped in tin foil.

We also got a cup of cilantro flavored dressing with the food and I added it to the samosa I also ordered.

In a town with no regular Indian food outlet this place hits a spot but I couldn't help but feel the good was prepared, stuffed in the freezer and zapped yo order. The filings were spicy and suitably Indian but the wraps of the garbanzo and samosa were rather too crunchy to be fresh.

Not gourmet then but given the setting a worthwhile stop for a snack, plus I like Kingfisher Lager. It's not the greatest Indian beer I've tasted but I like it. I really want to try the Indian food at Badboy Burrito but that will have to wait apparently. I think Key West can do better than this, when local taste buds get more adventurous.

You have to be able to figure out how to find this place which is half the adventure. Welcome to hotel life in Key West!

Go in through the Southard Street entrance and say hi to the monoglot Slav at the front desk and climb the Hillary Step up a vertical crevice to summit at the terrace.

An interesting find.

And no one notices you are there.

Key West on Dwellable

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