Truman Waterfront

They are still working on redesigning the waterfront given to the city by the Navy nearly two decades ago. Much earth moving.

The Coastguard Museum is still tied up and still  easily approached by visitors, even though the route through the construction changes as needed to accommodate the work.

I saw construction people inspecting the old warehouse and one hopes it will survive the wholesale changes coming to these 34 acres of former Navy Base.

I miss the open space, the empty seawall, the grassy field the places where you could come and run a dog or stand and look you across the harbor.  Now it's all traffic circles and asphalt and soulless urban landscaping:

So far the waterfront looks more like a transit area of roadways to get you someplace else.

Progress shown above and delightful lack of progress below in a bunch of archive pictures dating back a decade on this blog page::

Hospice Is Gone

The cheerful photo of vacationing in Key West is mine and is not related to the story of the unhappy news of Life in Key West which is from the Keynoter newspaper. Another sign of social instability in a town that cannot support basic social services. I wonder when someone in a  position of influence will notice.

Hospice of the Keys gets the death knell

BY GWEN FILOSA

gfilosa@keynoter.com

January 23, 2018 03:42 PM

Updated January 24, 2018 09:27 AM

The VNA and Hospice of the Florida Keys, which has provided end-of-life services since 1984 and is based in Key West, will shutter its doors Feb. 28 due to continued financial stress only worsened by Hurricane Irma’s fallout, its operators said.

The closure leaves no hospice care in the Lower Keys and will eliminate 10 full-time and 12 part-time jobs. The only other hospice provider in the Keys is VITAS Hospice in Tavernier, a two-hour, 91-mile drive away.

Twenty patients are currently in care through VNA and Hospice, which served all of the Florida Keys, and 11 patients receive home health care.

Hospice is a form of palliative care where patients with life-limiting illness are treated for their symptoms but they are not under a treatment meant to cure them.

“It’s very sad for the community,” said Kim Wilkerson, administrator of Island Home Care, based in Key West. “It’s going to leave a huge void.”

Wilkerson said her agency could take on the VNA’s home health care patients but hospice care requires a different type of state license.

“I’ve been waiting for them to reach out,” Wilkerson said.

“Our top priorities over these next few weeks are the well-being of our patients and families with whom we are working to transition their care to other qualified programs, and our dedicated associates to whom we are offering job opportunities at Haven located in North Florida,” according to a statement released Monday by the nonprofit Haven, which did all the speaking for VNA and Hospice.

Haven and the hospice center formed an affiliation in 2015 “in order to bring the administrative, functional, compliance and financial resources, expertise and support of Haven to benefit VNA/HFK which was not financially sustainable as a stand-alone organization at that time,” Haven said.

Donations that have not yet been spent to serve VNA and Hospice patients and families will be returned in the future “to the extent funds are available after assets are liquidated and outstanding obligations are settled,” the statement read.

“We are grateful for the opportunity to have served Monroe County residents and visitors with hospice and home health services and thank the members of the community for their support,” Haven said.

The words were of little comfort to those with aging, ill family members and their supporters.

“It’s hard to believe a community of this size can be without a hospice, I can’t imagine it,” said Casey Rafferty, who for five years has led a support group for caregivers of dementia patients, held at the VNA at 1319 William St., and formerly worked at a hospice in Sarasota. “Many people who are in the end of life, their preference is to die at home. They want to be in their own bed.”

Hospice staff is known for providing complete care for a family, including support during what can be a painful time, said Rafferty, who divides her time between Key West and Connecticut.

Hospice of the Florida Keys has always done a great deal of fundraising. It’s known for its annual Fourth of July fundraiser at the Casa Marina Resort.

Last year, the Monroe County Human Services Advisory Board granted $190,000 to the agency (it asked for $280,000) and in 2016 the grant was $141,000.

Gwen Filosa: @KeyWestGwen

Planes, Boats and Pelicans

Seen off the south shore of Key West, a pelican ignoring the hurtling boat:

 Setting up:

 Appearing to be practicing:

 Sailing can mean going slowly:

 With style:

 Different style and much faster, the seaplane to the Dry Tortugas:

 A serene afternoon off the White Street Pier:

Flagler Avenue

This si where you bring your Conch Tour Train when it needs repair:

Locals going for a stroll:

Checking out the parking lot at the Lime Tree, a down-at-heel convenience store:

An invasive type this, messy and noisy by comparison:

Around the corner on Bertha the hockey players, who knew...Conchs like their hockey:

Robert's Fruit Stand 2014

Robert Is Here

From the archives, written in 2014 click the title for a link to their homepage.

I suffer from a certain reluctance to openly enjoy certain pleasures that are, how can I put this? - too well known. Sometimes attractions become so attractive they lose the intrinsic value that made them well known in the first place and this fruit stand in Florida City should be one of those.

But it's not. I like stopping off here any chance I get, and apparently I am not alone. Last weekend the place was packed...

....despite desperate heat and rain showers laying down a nice thick blanket of humidity. There is no air conditioning here, this is Old Florida. I don't mind the heat and humidity but I hear constant complaints about it. Better here than a hundred and twenty in the desert or a hundred and windy in the Great Plains. Or 38 in Fairbanks. If you live in South Florida enjoy it and refresh yourself with air conditioning.

I look at these kinds of family industries and I wonder what it must be like to have a built-in career already mapped out for you. Half a century of selling fruit and vegetables.

And it is an industry. Trip Advisor shows 216 reviews of this place that they put in Homestead but the fruit stand itself claims to be in neighboring (and much smaller) Florida City.

If one wanted to split hairs it's actually kitty corner from Florida City which has it's western boundary across the street in the picture below, but Homestead is further away to the east. Robert's is actually in unincorporated Dade County as far as I can tell.

However Homestead is the catch all city for the agricultural area south of Miami so I guess it will do for those less pedantic than myself.

To get here turn west on Palm Avenue, which is the traffic light at the Shell station just south of the last Turnpike Exit and keep going west. Or follow the brown signs for Everglades National Park and Flamingo. Picnickers welcome.

One of my several pleasures living in South Florida is access to fresh tropical fruit. I enjoy soursop ice cream at Flamingo Crossing in Key West and here my wife went for the same flavor, known to Spanish speakers as guanabana, a thick creamy vanilla with a hint of tropical perfume. I love the stuff but the seven dollar styrofoam (really, still using non recyclable containers?) cup had us both full to bursting.

This place is more than a fruit stand or a vegetable market. It's also a playground because like I said in the opening this is now a proper tourist attraction. And parents won't come for milk shakes if kids can't do whatever it is small people do on a Saturday afternoon.

Let me be blunt: I don't like goat cheese because it smells like goat and these animals were rank.

My dog was perfect, not smelly and not noisy and certainly not undisciplined or rambunctious. I think she spent a lot of time with agitated small children in her previous life because she wants nothing to do with them now.

We walked out of there post haste. This road is part of the network of straight flat paved links connecting the fields and farms in the hinterland of what was once Everglades swamp. There is a winery out there, and it's on my list for this winter.

And we got in just under the wire at the fruit stand, as next week they close for two months. This is a sign of how peaceful the next eight weeks should be, an interlude in South Florida before snow storms start pushing people south.

Oddly enough I came across a dumpster filled with produce boxes from all over the place. Who knew Mississippi exported sweet potatoes?

Well worth a stop. It's less than ten minutes from the end of the turnpike. A soursop smoothie makes the whole weekend go sweeter.

Flora Of Key West

Let us rejoice that not every corner of the continent is gray and bleak and covered in frost.

Red mangroves know no season, they secrete salt into their leaves that when full turn yellow and die and drop off. But they do it year round as the mangrove has adapted to live only in salt water. 

It comes as a surprise to discover that in the Keys, where there is never any frost, tropical fruits will grow more or less wild. It is a grave offence to pick bananas or mangoes or other fruits without the owner's permission. Something about tropical fruit growing in these United States brings out the pilfering instinct in some people.  

The Malabar Almond tree on Frances at Ashe Streets has lost the sign that was hanging on the trunk for as long as I can remember. Howard Sands died at Chateau Thierry in France in July 1918 and his family planted  a sapling in his memory making the tree about a hundred years old. Susan Gardner was the last guardian of the tree and she died in 2015 after a  lifetime of sweeping the sidewalk and maintaining the home she inherited.

So naturally the sign is gone, the history cleaned up and the house is on the market rendered bland and inoffensive for maximum return. That's how they transform Key Wesr, it's  luxury home now.

Flowers growing through fences are a fairly common sight in Key West:

Vegetables painted on light poles isn't:

To see the rest of  Pohalski Lane just click.

Fresh new buds springing forth in January in Key West: