Night Isolation

The clock on the top of the county building on Whitehead Street reads four, but that was winter time, and now we are on daylight saving time so it was actually five o'clock by the time Rusty and I reached this point.

It was deep dark night, a walk Rusty and I haven't taken for a while and as odd as it may sound I thought it would feel more normal for me to be on the streets with no one else around because even before the virus there was no one on the streets at this awful hour. I like Key West empty and dark, as Rusty wanders close by, I have my camera and my head is empty.

I cannot adequately describe the emptiness of Key West at that hour because there really was no one downtown. No one at all. Usually there are the overnight workers cleaning the closed bars,  there are drunks stumbling home and the sleepless like me going for a walk. Nowadays I can't even find any residentially challenged sleepers in the nooks and crannies of Old Town. Oddly enough I don't find it creepy or weird, but I do find it melancholy, with the medical problems some people face and the huge economic blows this lock down has caused almost everyone who works in these islands. The fact that my wife and I have jobs is inestimable but it doesn't prevent one from seeing  what is happening to those around you.

Winter in Key West is a time of activity and busyness so much so I usually don't spend much time downtown until the flood of people leaves when the snows melt Up North, but nowadays there isn't much reason to show up at all. No restaurants except for take out, no theater no movies and no browsing the stores.

I fear my mood is influenced by photos I have seen of the Chernobyl site where the nuclear melt down occurred in the Soviet Union. Filatova Elena Vladimirovna's  original motorcycle rides through the nuclear zone though perhaps out of date, and some critics say overly poetic, remain memorable and haunting. And while I acknowledge it is a stretch in the time of pandemic to compare Key West I find myself thinking about the comparison as inept as it may be.

I remember Trip Advisor! Do you? Perhaps one day a travel advice page will be real handy once again...These days when I see an old sign like this in the window of a business I think of the lives abandoned in Pripyat. Lessons on the chalkboard, toys abandoned in apartments, dinner plates on the table, all irradiated and unlivable for decades. Then I do start to get creeped out and have to rein in my over active imagination.

I have been reading about the years leading up to World War Two from various points of view. I moved from the Spanish Civil War to the political intrigues leading up to the war itself, the period known as Appeasement. Looking back on what people went through back then I find myself feeling a  little embarrassed by how hard it is to get people nowadays to cooperate. Men went to war and didn't come home for years so families managed on the home front and hoped for a speedy end. Nowadays there seems to be no resilience at all among so many people. I shouldn't like to think everyone is like that but it feels like too many people are going their own way.

So then I ask myself is a little resistance to government authority a good thing? Europeans are terrible at questioning authority, something that Americans specialize in. As I watch the life drain out of my community and people lose income and health insurance and the ability to hang on I wonder what exactly the plan is here. The numbers of dead and ill seem appalling but not crippling. Should we shut down the world economy for this weird virus? No one even seems to know how to try to deal with it yet. Oddly enough I do have some masks left over from my tussle with the gross MRSA bacterium in the hospital in 2018 as I recovered from my motorcycle wreck. However I am not all sure if I should wear it sometimes... always... or....never. And why. Or why not. The conclusion I have drawn is that everything with this virus is a best guess or a worst case. I don't seem to come even close to people on a normal day in my dreary half quarantine Florida life.

Sweden has decided to ignore the whole mess and go about business more or less as usual with some few reservations for those at risk. I guess they will be the control experiment and if they all end up dead or gasping we will know for sure pretending there was no virus was a bad idea. Utah is doing more or less the same I believe. Florida is half way between, sort of reacting but not too intensely. In Florida you can fish hunt and walk the dog but only six feet apart. That's not too onerous at all. Not if you have a job that is.

I am not fond of instructions like that one posted on Duval Street. I understand the sentiment but I do not approve of mawkish public sentimentality like telling people to love one another. private emotions for private spaces please. Yes, I know, we live in the age of Facebook and public self flagellation is a way of life which requires wearing your heart on your sleeve for any emotional thing.  I prefer a rather less sentimental approach: Be polite, stay away and keep on keeping on: that's what works for me. Love, I insist is not a public emotion. Unless of course it's Rusty.

Here's the thing with Rusty: I have taken great pains to train him to stay out of the street, to run for the sidewalk or the verge or the roadside bushes if a vehicle is in sight. Then he sits and doesn't move until he thinks it's safe. He even, and I swear this is true, looks both ways before stepping into the street even with my permission. Still, when people or vehicles are around I tie him to me and we walk as a unit mostly to keep other people calm. Now the little tyke owns the streets. And I slavishly trail around behind him, his servant, leash in one hand plastic bag in the other and camera around my neck. When the plague is over people will be back I keep telling him and then there will be no more slacking. He ignores me as usual.

And then when people started to appear, one here, one there we went home, he to sleep in his new washable bed, me to chores.

Big Sugar

I am fond of saying Florida is a state of subtleties and people think I'm nuts. This state is home to Florida Man the mythical bumbling fool who makes pratfalls look cool. We all know Florida has outstanding beaches, massive condo towers that dominate them, pollution to beat the band and Spring Break better than anyone. And now with travel shut down all I have is photos to look at...

The parts I have learned to like about Florida are the bits that look like mangroves in the keys and cowboy country around Immokalee and Arcadia home of livestock shows and rodeos. I like the surprises that Central Florida can inflict on people who think that watching TV is a substitute for exploring for yourself.

The tall wavy grass is sugarcane, miles and miles of  n agricultural mono-culture as controversial as it is sweet. Sugar is grown in Florida thanks to government subsidy, one of those welfare programs that don't get much notice when life sustaining welfare is cut by government edict. Thanks to the Sugar Act of 1934  tax dollars support this industry to the tune of around 3 billion dollars a  year. 

The industry imports workers form the Caribbean to do back breaking labor harvesting the stuff in conditions you can hardly imagine in the south Florida heat. Sugar is grown in soft soil and machinery can't do the work of men dressed in armor (no kidding) hacking at the cane with machetes all day every day. The harvest is back breaking and it gets done because there is no work in Jamaica and elsewhere to the south of us.

I took this picture below to illustrate the point. Sugar need annual fertilization as  the cane sucks the nutrients out of the soil. Water requirements are massive and the runoff into Florida Bay is (allegedly they tell us) responsible for coral reef die off. 

Driving through the Everglades I like to stop and feel the breeze blowing in this place so unlike the place where I live. Rusty thought it was pretty cool too.

 As you look at these pictures that are not of the Keys you may see the beauty that I see or may not.

It's not mountains and valleys or long scenic vistas but it is a place that needs to be allowed to revert to its original function as  a marsh to clean the fresh water flowing through the state.

Then to clean the fields of sugar they burn the old stalks destroying everything burning wildlife and filling the sky with smoke and ash. It happens every year and looks like this:

 And this is about as exciting as a motorcycle ride gets around here:

And if you want long straight roads you don't have to go to Alaska around here they are flat as well, to the horizon.

Small brown dogs can find the grasses interesting but I have known Rusty to not like what he finds in these mysterious marshy places and turn tail and run to me without explanation.

As pretty and as vast as these marshes are it is not an urban myth that large tropical snakes have been released here by inconsiderate pet owners and they have populated these spaces in the manner of a horror story.

They look beautiful to my eye these open plains, but the horror lurks out of sight...!

April Fool

I feel the need to reminisce a little. It was about 1986 in Santa Cruz California where I lived and worked at the local public radio station. I was a news reader and reporter full of beans and out to change the world. I was no longer a student, I was newly divorced and the holder of a Green Card, alone and lonely and found companionship and a paycheck at the funky radio station a short walk from my home tied up in the marina below the hill.

I had the idea to do a news story on April First and to get it done I asked the Program Director to join in the fun. Johnny Simmons was never averse to stretching the boundaries of eccentricity and he gladly joined me in the recording studio to prepare the interview. Johnny used to put out baseball cards for his hillbilly radio show. In the example below he's playing the cop on a traffic stop.

It turned out I had discovered a university professor in Indiana who had come across an extraordinary prehistoric fact. There was in fact evidence of a mass migration from Siberia to the Central California Coast previously unknown to historians. It must have been a great story as a newspaper reporter called in right after the news ended asking for contact information for the professor. Michael always gets the most interesting interviews she told the station receptionist no doubt in an effort to butter up the little radio station.  When I heard the receptionist and the program director laughing I had no idea what to do with myself. Covered in embarrassment by the success of my joke I had to come clean making me regret playing April fool jokes for the next eleven months at least.

It seems these days that every day is April Fool Day, though the joke is decidedly on us. Every day brings new rumors and silly speculation. Somebody called me at work yesterday asking if the keys were open to tourism. No seriously, not only did he not call the chamber of commerce he called the police department and was surprised when I told him no. How long for he asked? When I told him no one knew he asked the question again. No one knows I said and he rang off with a tone of disbelief in his voice. True story even though it sounds like a joke.

In between a few regular calls for help I got another caller on my shift who called to ask me how to get in touch with the Highway Patrol. Seriously there are functioning adults who don't know how to operate a search engine so they call the police of all people to get commonly attainable information. Key West is a kind place actually and I will do what I can for you, which is another reason I like working here.  This one told me he was done in Key West and driving home to Utah and he wanted to talk to the Florida Highway Patrol about road conditions. That's easy, I didn't even need Google for that one as I've seen the signs all over the state. Dial Star FHP I said.  I tried that he said and I got put on hold endlessly he said. Okay I said hold on for me. I picked up my cell phone and dialed *347 and got a live operator. Key West Police I said, just checking as a caller told me the number doesn't work. It works she said laughing. I turned back to my caller still happily deluded he was capable of driving across country without a valet to assist him to put on his pants, and patiently explained to him the concept of adding star to the numbers he dialed on his cell phone. I think he got it because he didn't call back.

The status of check points into the Keys on US1 and on Card Sound Road are always changing. The Governor recalled the Highway Patrol (they of *FHP fame) to set up checkpoints on the freeways into Florida and our Sheriff complained of a staff shortage so they are getting trained civilians and others to support the deputies at the roadblocks, checking papers on incomers. Then the State Department of Transportation said to take the checkpoints down... that led to a revolt in the Conch Republic led by the same Sheriff who refused and was granted permission to keep them in place. I've heard it said there are half a dozen ventilators at Lower Keys Medical Center, and our public health director who has inspired no confidence so far has promised widespread testing soon, but the fear is these islands would be overwhelmed by outsiders. As if to prove my point the public health director has since retracted his statement and says he'd like to have mass testing but there are no kits to do it.

 It is a bit of an irony I agree that 38 years after the feds closed the road into the Keys in an effort to prevent smuggling and create an immigration check point the Keys are now insisting on a. checkpoint to try to keep the virus out. It most likely is too late and judging by some few of the calls I have taken there is plenty of not quite getting it yet, but else can we do? For myself I prefer education to legislation so let's hope this works. Checkpoints? Must be an April Fool! And yet they aren't as apparently they really are checking incomers. Lesson learned from Hurricane Irma when checkpoints could have saved many islanders from a lot of fear of big city looters. The Sheriff has a long memory and he is now the leader and point man to try to keep us isolated, fortunately for us.

So the joke goes on, no sit down dining, no theater of the eatery, just  take out and delivery  lining up like coronavirus refugees exchanging plastic for food, a break from home cooking, standing in line using my electric bike as a social distancing barricade, avoiding exchanging anything more than distant glances as we wait for our hand outs. I suppose we should be grateful for the wealthy second home owners who have the time to stand in line and the inclination to spend their retirement dollars keeping eateries like Square grouper open against the odds. Ordering out is an act of social responsibility now.

Walking past a theater billboard is a painful reminder of a past life. The biggest joke of all then, is the grumbling we used to participate in about too many tourists, too much crowding, slow traffic, no parking and so forth. We got our wish no doubt about it. Now its time to start grumbling about how long this Eden continues.

Too long probably, but we humans never see the joke until it's too late, if we see the joke at all.

Lobster Pots

I took these photos a while ago in Marathon and set them aside in the midst of other preoccupations. Now I've found them I want to post them because they remind me of happier times.

I'm not a fisherman but next time you hear someone says there is no industry in the Keys think of these beautiful symmetrical pots waiting for lobster season to roll around. These are the industry that doesn't require tourists.

Lobster pots remind me of the agricultural communities I grew up in. The work is hard, by all accounts as I've never done it. It's all weather dependent and market dependent just like farmers' crops are, and the results can offer workers lots of money or none.

I never found farming to my liking and I doubt fishing commercially would do me any better. I don't even find the time to try angling for fun. I got sick and tired of tractors and fields and and monotony and repetition and the inability to ever get away...

Yet how can you imagine a world without farmers or fishermen? 

To have ever thought I would end up not only working for the police but enjoying it would have rendered me speechless twenty years ago. But I have spent more time sitting in an office than I could ever imagine doing this kind of work, no matter the rewards:

The oceans are warming, populations are increasing and the demand for fish keeps going up apparently.

And yet it still comes back to the crews, almost all are men, in boats, almost all are fiberglass or steel, going out day and night and engaging in a hunt as old as humanity for food from the sea. 

I'm glad I get to harvest mine at the supermarket, but I don't forget where it came from.

Coronavirus Blues

Hard Rock Cafe on Duval Street looking...blue. We read of the massive number of casualties in Italy, a country locked down tight with 60 million people.  9,000 dead there is the equivalent of 45,000 dead in the US in proportion to total populations. Is that close enough to the annual toll of regular 'flu (over a period of months) to make coronavirus serious for the non believers? With Highway 1 and Card Sound Road closed to non residents the plague has given me an unsettled feeling of isolation.

Had the road closures taken place three weeks ago I might feel more sanguine about these late measures to tamp down coronavirus in the Keys but with twelve known cases and hardly any testing it seems exponential math will prove soon enough whether or not it is all too little too late. I have been back at work for two twelve hour day shifts, my wife the teacher is working from home so we are lucky to have jobs and income and not be like so many who are reduced to instant penury by this world wide mess.

If you were to look at my official job description as a call taker and 911 operator and police dispatcher what I am supposed to do is, at its simplest, take calls for help and send help, be it fire police or rescue. Sometimes we call the SPCA or wild animal rescue, or parking control or a utility company or some other form of help, a tow truck perhaps.  What I am not equipped to do is provide information., It is a widespread belief wrongly held that 911 is an information clearing center and when people ask about events or special occasions I usually have no more information than Google does.

So it is that we have a city information line and a county emergency information line to disseminate facts. But these are hard scary times and I find myself pondering the ordinary run of the mill calls, of which we receive very few at the moment, in a  new light. Going to jail is always the worst imaginable outcome of course when police intervene but to go to jail in these weird times is doubly bad. Equally going to the hospital for some relatively minor problem may become difficult or impossible. Fall off your bike? Break an arm? In the world of coronavirus these things suddenly pose existential risks. I read blogs by motorcycle riders and I wonder what they are thinking. probably that they are invincible but to get road rash nowadays could give you a case of the worst 'flu you've ever had, and yet no one seems to think out loud about these extensions of daily life risks.

I show up to work with a bleach bottle sprayer and a gym towel and I spray obsessively. Our bosses are taking this seriously enough that you will see disinfection going on around the police station all day. Officers are trying to work by phone to limit contact but some calls you can't avoid touching strangers. Because I am a dispatcher I am locked down in a room with two others and every time we send an officer on a call or an ambulance to help a sick person I fall back on my gratitude for my job. To be working in a  hospital these days must be an unimaginable stress, never mind the hospitals already overwhelmed by the virus. I work behind locked doors and none but dispatchers are allowed in. We drop paperwork off outside our doors and pick up as much as we can online. There is a casual brutality and indifference created by this virus that I find disheartening more than I expected. We have to treat each other like pariahs and I am sick of it already.

I go home and take a shower and wash my hands (which are chapped like parchment) and stuff my uniform in my own laundry hamper. I wash my clothes and my immune impaired wife washes hers. This is a life without purpose if you have to be surrounded by people and pretend you are alone. Being alone I don't mind at all but crossing the boundaries between actual alone time and socially distancing yourself from actual people makes me wonder how long we can stay sane. I follow the imperturbable Rusty and hope  he can keep reminding me not to lose my mind. So far so good but the tighter the lock down the worse it will get. 

Somehow day to day living continues unperturbed when you look at the utilities including the Internet and food deliveries with a few glaring exceptions. Much of the world would be delighted with the food selection we enjoy in the Keys even with a  few empty shelves. Yet over daily life, a decent meal, streaming TV, ordering books to read, calling 911 and getting a live operator, there hangs the cloud of uncertainty. I would still like a shot at my superpower, to be able to skip forward six months and see what is going to happen.

And so a few pictures.

Old Bahia Honda Bridge, morning: