With summer starting to make itself felt there are fewer cars and no people if you get to the beach at dawn.
The warning about nudity is still there, but Rusty and I both went clothed.
He rooted around in the bushes and i enjoyed a few minutes of messing with my camera.
Another Rock Another Tree...
There were tons of waders that ignored Rusty and I.
I saw a face in this pile of rocks like the so-called Green Man, craggy eyebrows, a big white nose and a black triangular mouth...
Like this:
But when I reverted to color the face disappeared...Make of that what you will!
On a more mundane note some poor deluded soul left behind an empty can of "Limited Edition" Budweiser, a bit of an oxymoron I thought as this isn't exactly craft beer.
Someone is putting in a fair bit of work building rock piles in the water and walls on land:
I am developing a tic: every time the word development comes up I start getting totally pissed off. So the converse occurs when I read there is a hiccough in the process and some new planned development has to be postponed. As is the case with road re-structuring now being planned for Higgs Park, the area behind Higgs Beach in Key West. The photo below I took from the parking lot at the Bocce Courts looking north up Atlantic Drive where the new road currently planned will cut inland. Except the county cannot start work for reasons I shall explain further down...
This next photo is 180 degrees now looking west towards Higgs Park across White Street. Under the county's new plan the road would flow along this line of sight, well away from the waterfront.
The entrance as currently designed to Higgs Park, the grassy area inland from Higgs beach itself which is approximately where the new road would meander through a whole new set of landscaping.
The plan as published in the Key West Citizen looks as shown below. The idea is that by moving the road inland they open up the beach area no longer broken up by the road or the parking lots that currently face the beach.
I found this picture from 2015 with Cheyenne looking toward the Casa Marina Resort from Salute:
There is a tennis practice wall that presumably would have to go, but there will be a nature center built in the middle of the newly configured park.
I'm sure the homeless hanging out would not be part of the plan either:
And where there is open space there will be organization and parking and all that stuff.
Astro City, the very popular kids playground will be moved to the beach side of the road in the new improved plan.
The old aircraft radio beacon will also be removed I suppose which seems overdue if we're being honest. No great loss though the ibis like hunting for food in the pond that forms around it in rainy season...
Then there is what happens to the dog parks as they seem sure to shrink under the terms of the new plan. Building the park took a lot of effort when it was proposed and they raised $16,000 from citizens in a fund drive to pay for it. I hope it won't get shrunk when it is moved inland.
Looking around at the county park I know it''s a bit chaotic but I rather like it that way. I like the grass and the random groves of palms and the feeling of not being in a "proper" city park. Actually the city of Key West has rejected all efforts by Monroe County to hand them the park and this little plot of land on the south shore of the island is firmly county property and their headache.
Apparently in 1983 the county took $80,000 in Federal grant money for the park and thereto came attached conditions including the requirement for a Federal Environmental Assessment if any changes were made to the land. It seems the county only just noticed that requirement and now the assessment must be made. They hope it will be done in "one to three " years then let the construction proceed and at an estimated cost of six and a half million dollars.
Change is good. And I know this is probably a sensible change long overdue. But everywhere you turn everything is getting modified and cleaned up and stream lined. I wish it weren't. Maybe it will be quite a few more years before the Feds are satisfied...one can only hope.
Robert M. Pirsig, who inspired generations to road trip across America with his "novelistic autobigraphy," Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, died Monday April 24th 2017 at the age of 88.
His publisher William Morrow & Company said in a statement that Pirsig died at his home in South Berwick, Maine, "after a period of failing health."
Pirsig wrote just two books: Zen (subtitled "An Inquiry Into Values") and Lila: An Inquiry into Morals.
Author Robert Pirsig works on a motorcycle in 1975.
William Morrow/HarperCollins
Zen was published in 1974, after being rejected by 121 publishing houses. "The book is brilliant beyond belief," wrote Morrow editor James Landis before publication. "It is probably a work of genius and will, I'll wager, attain classic status."
Indeed, the book quickly became a best-seller, and has proved enduring as a work of popular philosophy. A 1968 motorcycle trip across the West with his son Christopher was his inspiration.
An excerpt from the first chapter of the novel:
"What I would like to do is use the time that is coming now to talk about
some things that have come to mind. We're in such a hurry most of the time
we never get much chance to talk. The result is a kind of endless day-to-day
shallowness, a monotony that leaves a person wondering years later where
all the time went and sorry that it's all gone.
Now that we do have some
time, and know it, I would like to use the time to talk in some depth about
things that seem important.
What is in mind is a sort of Chautauqua...that's the only name I can think of
for it...like the traveling tent-show Chautauquas that used to move across
America, this America, the one that we are now in, an old-time series of
popular talks intended to edify and entertain, improve the mind and bring
culture and enlightenment to the ears and thoughts of the hearer.
The
Chautauquas were pushed aside by faster-paced radio, movies and TV, and
it seems to me the change was not entirely an improvement. Perhaps
because of these changes the stream of national consciousness moves faster
now, and is broader, but it seems to run less deep. The old channels cannot
contain it and in its search for new ones there seems to be growing havoc
and destruction along its banks.
In this Chautauqua I would like not to cut
any new channels of consciousness but simply dig deeper into old ones that
have become silted in with the debris of thoughts grown stale and platitudes
too often repeated. ``What's new?'' is an interesting and broadening eternal
question, but one which, if pursued exclusively, results only in an endless
parade of trivia and fashion, the silt of tomorrow.
I would like, instead, to be
concerned with the question ``What is best?,'' a question which cuts deeply
rather than broadly, a question whose answers tend to move the silt
downstream. There are eras of human history in which the channels of
8
thought have been too deeply cut and no change was possible, and nothing
new ever happened, and ``best'' was a matter of dogma, but that is not the
situation now.
Now the stream of our common consciousness seems to be
obliterating its own banks, losing its central direction and purpose, flooding
the lowlands, disconnecting and isolating the highlands and to no particular
purpose other than the wasteful fulfillment of its own internal momentum.
Some channel deepening seems called for."
My buddy Jack Riepe, a scribe himself of no mean repute grumbles that after ten pages of this classic hippy tripe he got bored, put he book down and gave up on his first plan when he was given a copy of the book. He wanted to imitate the novel's bestseller style in order to make himself a fortune just like Pirsig. Unlike Riepe I liked Zen and found it to be a revelation for my young self. In those days there was no internet so what I gleaned from the book about the author was all I knew and the story was the story with no access offered to explain further details about Pirsig and his tortured psyche.
I pretty much ignored the stuff about how to lose your mind and gain it back but the discussion about Quality and coping with mechanical failure I took to heart and found great relief in discovering that I was not the only amateur motorcycle traveler who had ever got hung up on and stripped on recalcitrant fastener while trying to accomplish a roadside repair. Pirsig gave me a new appreciation for how to overcome roadblocks be they ever so small, and to take the time to study the problem before trying to tackle the solution.
The effect of this philosophical tome might be described as being rather lightweight in my life but it didn't feel that way and in many respects I still feel comforted by Pirsig's vision of life metaphors expressed in terms of motorcycle repairs. For the past 40 years motorcyclists everywhere have discussed and quoted and critiqued Pirsig's discussion of Quality as though the background of a motorcycle trip to Montana makes the points raised purely a motorcycling issue. It really isn't as Quality or lack of it is what flustered Pirsig into writing the book. His descent into madness, in the third person, is part of his pursuit of Quality, much derided by his haters.
"The mechanic's feel comes from a deep inner kinesthetic feeling for the
elasticity of materials. Some materials, like ceramics, have very little, so that
when you thread a porcelain fitting you're very careful not to apply great
pressures. Other materials, like steel, have tremendous elasticity, more than
rubber, but in a range in which, unless you're working with large mechanical
forces, the elasticity isn't apparent.
With nuts and bolts you're in the range of large mechanical forces and you
should understand that within these ranges metals are elastic. When you take
up a nut there's a point called ``finger-tight'' where there's contact but no
takeup of elasticity. Then there's ``snug,'' in which the easy surface elasticity
is taken up. Then there's a range called ``tight,'' in which all the elasticity is
taken up. The force required to reach these three points is different for each
size of nut and bolt, and different for lubricated bolts and for locknuts. The
forces are different for steel and cast iron and brass and aluminum and
plastics and ceramics.
But a person with mechanic's feel knows when
something's tight and stops. A person without it goes right on past and
strips the threads or breaks the assembly.
A ``mechanic's feel'' implies not only an understanding for the elasticity of
metal but for its softness. The insides of a motorcycle contain surfaces that
are precise in some cases to as little as one ten-thousandth of an inch. If you
drop them or get dirt on them or scratch them or bang them with a hammer
they'll lose that precision. It's important to understand that the metal behind
the surfaces can normally take great shock and stress but that the surfaces
themselves cannot.
When handling precision parts that are stuck or difficult
to manipulate, a person with mechanic's feel will avoid damaging the
surfaces and work with his tools on the nonprecision surfaces of the same
part whenever possible. If he must work on the surfaces themselves, he'll always use softer surfaces to work them with. Brass hammers, plastic
hammers, wood hammers, rubber hammers and lead hammers are all
available for this work. Use them. Vise jaws can be fitted with plastic and
copper and lead faces. Use these too. Handle precision parts gently. You'll
never be sorry.
If you have a tendency to bang things around, take more
time and try to develop a little more respect for the accomplishment that a
precision part represents."
I suspect some of my fondness for this book and its mixture of motorcycle travel and philosophy stems from the fact that I read it and had my mind expanded when I was young and to re-read Zen is to travel back in time in a more perfect way than it was at that time... And I also believe that the issues he raised back the n about Quality in our society are more relevant than ever in the Internet Age. I wonder if the youngsters I work with could ever be persuaded to read and ponder this weighty subject. I expect they are too busy with their phones.
I rode in to work two nights ago for a late shift starting at one in the morning, and I was cold. Granted it was 71 degrees American (26 Canadian) and for many people that might be considered comfortably warm, but around here if it's not 80 degrees it's noticeably cool. And all this nearly in the month of May. Very nice, as summer will inevitably be long and hot; no need to rush into it.
Above we see a hand written notice my colleague Chelsea photographed when she went to get coffee for our night shift. New management made the decision to close the 24-hour coffee shop after midnight but apparently they have been told we need them in the early hours. I took the picture below on Tuesday in the early evening at Higgs Beach. There were a few people on the beach just outside the frame, but the image actually shows the spacious empty feeling of the waterfront after the winter people have gone home.
Yet traffic on Highway One remains heavy and unrelentingly slow. The city's vague promises to consider affordable housing have predictably led nowhere except into a world where working people can't afford to live in the city. I'm finding the scooter a great way to commute as it keeps up easily with the cars but doesn't tempt me to pass (too often). Sometimes it encourages the socially insecure to speed ahead of "the moped" and prove they can't be passed. That leaves me on a stretch of open road to enjoy unencumbered by car drivers and their telephones.
I brought Vespa S150 home in time for the Ides of March and in the six weeks since I've put 1800 miles on the scooter. It maybe a 2009 but (so far) it runs like new and i am enjoying it very much.
A young gay couple were strolling past the gym hand in hand Tuesday evening as I pulled up on Truman Avenue. "Cute ride!" one of them said to the old graybeard (me). Er thanks I mumbled long after they had lost interest in my orange Vespa. I'm looking forward to a long hot summer. I just wish traffic could pick up the pace a bit.
