Living On The Rock

I have been holding my breath since January 20th wondering what direction the President will take in this brave new world that the Midwest has plunged us into and  I can't say things look good from my perspective. I had hoped for a Teddy Roosevelt figure hiring capable non partisan technocrats to straighten up all those things that we all know need to be changed. Instead we seem to have landed in the Fourth Circle of Hell where greed still runs rampant and bromides are all we get from a cabinet of unqualified millionaires. These are not people brought to government to fix it but to wreck it.

I view the increasing chaos in Washington from the perspective of one who lives on the margins and observes from behind a parapet of daily work, ever advancing middle age and no progeny to worry about. I live in a good place, a small town with a decent community and a sense of commitment to humane values. True enough Key West lacks the resources to overcome extreme demands on the city placed on it by  state and federal legislators but there is a bit of a buffer in Key West from the excesses of the Trump Administration. When health care insurance is taken away as it soon will be the Republicans tell us, we will revert to charity and fundraisers and so forth to help defray medical costs as we did prior to Obamacare. I am more glad than ever for my work related health insurance.

I wondered why His slogan about making America Great Again caught fire. I thought America was pretty great even though the President was black (and Muslim) and despite more people were getting health insurance this country seemed pretty good to me even against a tide of Republican opposition. Apparently America sucks and needs to be fixed. I don't see how it sucks so much. I wonder if Trump can bring back jobs lost to globalization (which I have always opposed) but even if he does if there aren't unions to negotiate pay levels  wages will be feeble. No one likes to talk about the role unions played in the prosperity of the 1950s but these days history seems to matter less than ever.  

I blame Ronald Reagan for starting us down this path of collectively not trusting the government. Newt Gingrich reinforced the rot and now we are led by people who want to tear down the institutions not to repair them. I am not a fan of revolution, nor would anyone be who knows their history like I said already. Too many people today live in a reality presented to them by biased sources which offer alternative reality as an option. Then I consider how many people are on drugs -legal and otherwise- and how many people believe in the Book of Revelations as a viable program for the near future, and I wonder how long before something goes seriously wrong and shots are fired at us or among us.

I hope the institutions built up around the constitution hold up and the economy improves and people feel better and Trump can take an honorable retirement and we can get back to normal. If not I live in a good place to weather whatever madness our totally unqualified leaders push us into. One more reason I'm glad to live in the Keys. Bring on the fundraisers!

One would like to think:

Full Moon Dawn

A few pictures from the recent full moon. No words needed really.

Youth Hostel And Change

I panicked a moment when I saw this in the Casa Marina district of key West. Hell, I thought, they are going to tear down that bizarre Polynesian roof and replace it with some house in the "Key West style" like every other one cuirrently being built or remodeled.

You don't see this everywhere in Key West:

It turns out I was wrong and they are just remodeling the building but not taking away it's unique silhouette. Which was relief as things are once again changing a lot around here. 

The hospital seems to have been involved in a rather nasty financial scam with the newspaper reporting payoffs:

(01/26/2017

New details revealed about hospital lease)  by the operators who contracted to run the hospital and the Depoo Mental facility on Kennedy.

The Blue Paper is reporting some rather use of building permits for a new hotel on Stock Island. There is limited growth allowed in the Florida Keys so as not to overwhelm the infrastructure or quality of life but the paper reports LINK the developer may have been building capacity without the proper permits and the county didn't bother to notice. That hotel forcibly replaced a working recreational fishing marina along with small businesses catering to boaters. All gone. It's the beginning of the end for affordable working class Stock Island.

 So one tends to get a bit paranoid when spotting a potentially endangered land mark. These days classic bad Florida tatse like a plastic flamingo is hard enough to find in this town:

Yet for some reason there seem to be fewer visitors to Key West this winter. The highway is clogged by commuters forced to live further from their Key West jobs, forced to drive by insane real estate prices in the city. Around town parking seems more available than usual and main streets aren't as clogged as in a normally busy winter season. A friend told me hotel occupancy in the relatively cheaper hotels on North Roosevelt is down in some cases to less than half full.

I'm not sure what all that means though my friend also wondered in the same breath if the general uncertainty surrounding President Trump's diabolically chaotic reign may have people wanting to be cautious with their money. Sounds like a stretch to me but who knows.

This place has been listed ready to be demolished for a couple of years I thin. Yet it's still here offering teh cheapest rate for a fleabag hotel in Key West. I've never stayed but friends who have say it attracts "characters." I will be sorry to see it go.

Places like this are hard to find in Key West.

And this place is a mere fixer upper, ready to be turned into an ideal winter retreat except it doesn't appear to be for sale. Somebody's ace in the hole.

Enjoying Rusty

An early morning walk; a few pictures to share.

My best companion.

Yahman

My wife was quite miffed: she didn't know about the new place with interesting food on Stock Island. So when friends casually suggested a Sunday afternoon rendez vous  at "the Jamaican place," the appointment had an a air of mystery attached.

Except of course for Facebook which will reveal all:

So we went off down Stock Island way on a lovely Sunday afternoon and found a large sign. I rather liked the "Commit No Nuisance" sign which has a flavor of Britain in the 1950s and quite likely Jamaica too. A "nuisance" when I was a youngster could be the act of peeing in public and apparently Wikipedia agrees: In essence, this is a discreet warning against performing improper acts in public, most commonly urination. Incidentally, the use of the term “public nuisance” comes from 12th century legal parlance in England. Back in those days, the Crown had the right to punish these criminal acts. But these signs have little meaning these days.

 A friend I spoke to about the place took umbrage at the sign not understanding the tongue-in-cheek cultural motif...

Yahman opens his food emporium Thursday through Sunday and as he was winding down for the week his menu choices were limited to shrimp and chicken so we got a jerked chicken and a curried chicken and I wouldn't have minded a slice of coconut bread pudding had I been on my own...but my wife was there so restraint was in order. He works miracles in a small kitchen and you can see what I mean by checking his Facebook page. The room in there is not huge.

The kitchen is located inside the art and craft space known as Coast and what they do and what they offer is best left to them to explain on their site. Boat repairs, sail making computer graphics and on and on, not to mention kid camps and so forth.  

I liked looking around with my camera while we waited for the food to pop out of the cupboard Yahman works in.

Be warned this is more or less a to go operation. Yahman offers ginger beer to drink and two stools to perch on (if you qualify!) but other than that it is strictly food to go.

This looked tempting to hang out in but we weren't "crew."

A Thai tuk-tuk taxi lurking in the background half out of sight:

Jerk chicken for ten bucks and would easily feed two. We had lots of left overs.

We took our food to Marina Village by way of the Tom Thumb where we bought drinks and then sat on the grass at the marina and picnic-ed with our Jamaican food.

It was a good way to spend a Sunday afternoon before I had to go back to work for the night. I needed a nap after all that jerk and curry and peas and rice and plantains...