I was called to serve as a juror in Monroe County one recent Monday, and a most enlightening experience it was too. I had never served previously owing to a lack of this or that in my life, citizenship, stability ("out sailing" leaves the mails far behind), but my civic duty caught up to me finally. I was last called just as Hurricane Ike was barrelling down on the Keys and the Justice system shut down for a week excusing all potential jurors. I felt deprived as I have always wanted to observe up close the lynch pin of Anglo Saxon justice, the jury of one's peers.
I missed the public tour of the Freeman Justice Center when it opened last year so this was also my opportunity to see the inside of the building that replaces the venerable and rather tatty building that currently sits between the Freeman Center and Whitehead Street. There was of course some controversy about the structure, an arcane debate over what sort of exrterior decoration was suitable for a building that represents stability and dignity in town and the end result, the more expensive result looks quite good, even from the rear on Thomas Street: 
However, like Gilbert and Sullivan's Lord High Executioner I have a little list, and in the event we get a revolution and a people's tribunal I would put, in descending order, architects, bankers and lawyers on my little list. The Freeman Center reinforces my prejudice not least because the architect forget to create a security area so the 250 jurors lined up around the block, and stood in the sun while the head of the line did the usual ridiculous removal of all dignity along with belts, buckles and water bottles. I don't think they took down one potential juror as a threat as we stood and waited and waited and waited. Then when we got past security we had to squish in the lobby like sardines waiting for the elevator and we couldn't take the stairs because there aren't any! To walk to the upper levels the stairway is outside the building which is beyond the security apparatus...Then one of the two elevators wasn't working in the brand new building which just made the whole approach to jury duty one more painful sardine experience.
We went through the process of whittling people in front of Judge Taylor and as I sat in the room I heard a bunch of great excuses about why people should be excused their civic duty. The loudest laugh was reserved for the man who stood up and said he cooked lunch for the homeless and they wouldn't get lunch if he was in court. He didn't get excused. I sat and waited and read my novel and was wondering if I would ever get selected. In the event I was in the middle of the second group of twenty selected for a battery trial to be heard before Judge Miller. The second round of the selection process was heard downstairs before my main man Tegan Slaton who was seated after winning the recent election by two votes (mine and my wife's). His opponent is suing for a new go round and votes are being scrutinized in court so he may or may not stay in his $150,000 judicial seat. 
I did not get selected of course. My wife (the former public defender) thinks the prosecution eliminated me as being too smart, I think the Judge eliminated me for being a wiseass (I was a bit wordy on my answers, not a surprise I suppose). It couldn't possibly have been the defense worried about my place of employment. And suddenly I was free to go and sit in the sun.
I find it tedious that everyone wants to get out of jury duty. I understand that losing money is a drag and God knows getting up at 7:30am to the sound of an alarm is tough for someone on my schedule, but without jurors there would a very unpleasant legal system to deal with. A friend of mine in Italy is sitting on the murder trial of the century in the city of Perugia. A young American from Seattle, stuying in Umbria, stands accused of murdering a fellow student from Great Britain in a blooody sex triangle which has titillated the press to distraction. Irene is described a "popular judge" which in Civil Law (known to some as Napoleonic Law) is the equivalent of a juror in the Anglo Saxon system. However she is one of six civilians working with one judge to figure out the truth in her tangled web of sex and lies and death. The system we live under is a much better separated system of justice in my opinion, with lawyers to prosecute and defend, juries to decide, judges to sentence. In Civil Law all parties work together to figure out what really happened so the adversarial pursuit of legal loopholes as happens in the US doesn't taint the truth. In fact I would rather be defended by an advocate than sold down the river by a bunch of legal geniuses working together to figure out what they think really happened. So I feel an obligation not to whine when called for jury duty. I stand ready to do my bit, for fifteen dollars a day. Erk. And no one is exempt.
No one is exempt: unless they are hard of hearing, self employed charter boat captains suffering through the worst season in living memory, don't speak much English, have a condition that doesn't allow them to concentrate, are pregnant, or it turns out happen to work in the Police Department. I was hoping I might get selected on this round because none of the trials was scheduled to last more than a day and the next round I was told, included a potentially month long trial, an event that would try the patience of the most civic minded jury applicant. This is the original Monroe County Courthouse, typical of Southern solidity:
I have since discovered that the big hitting trial is supposed to be Key West's most recent murder, an event that occurred two years ago, I feel safe in assuming that's one long assed jury event I could not possibly be called to serve on as I was working when the murder was discovered.
I think from here on out I shall enjoy the Freeman Justice Center in passing like the tourist above, but not I hope like this: 
Perhaps I should expand the Lord High Executioner's list of people who should be removed as societal annoyances:As some day it may happen that a victim must be found,
I've got a little list- I've got a little list...
Of society offenders who might well be underground,
And who never would be missed — who never would be missed!
There's the pestilential nuisances who write for autographs —
All people who have flabby hands and irritating laughs —
All children who are up in dates, and floor you with 'em flat —
All persons who in shaking hands, shake hands with you like that —
And all third persons who on spoiling tête-á-têtes insist —
They'd none of 'em be missed — they'd none of 'em be missed!
Add jurors to the list and let's get back to cutting off heads on a potentate's whim.
We decided a while back to install some insulation underneath our home, and this was a very good idea. It probably would have stayed an embryonic idea had it not been for some firm pushing by our friends Lisa and Josh who want to do the same thing on their larger house. So our's was the guinea pig, as it were, the 700 square foot (65 square meter) home which because it was built in 1987 is lower to the ground than Josh and Lisa's newer 1,000 square foot stilt home. Ours may be only eight feet above flood plain but installing strips of fiber glass matting still requires holding one's head back and stretching out one's arms.
Eight hours of this crap yesterday with bits of prickly insulation spilling all over oneself can put quite a dent in the notion of how uplifting home improvement really is. We spent about a thousand dollars on strips of fiberglass in 6 and 3 inch depths, we spent some of that money on staple guns and staples, masks gloves and goggles and we hope this attempt to make our home "greener" will reduce our already modest electricity bills. We generally pay about two hundred dollars a month in summer with the air conditioning and less than fifty a month in winter so it will take a while to enjoy the benefits of reduced costs. The benefits of reduced heat and noise are immediate.
Plus there is the satisfaction in knowing we've done what we can to make our home more energy efficient and that offsets to some degree the absolute agony of my joints and my burning, aching feet.
We took wads of the cotton candy and stuffed them between the wooden joists overhead:
Then we took the thinner strips of insulation and tacked them up underneath the six inch deep insulation strips:
The last step will be completed by a pro who is supposed to show up at some point and tack weather -proof sheeting over the cotton candy to finish the job. It will be brilliant I am sure, and even I think we were all aching by the end of it...
...it was a worthwhile job well done. On another note the greening of our windows was much easier to deal with. Captain Jeffrey, the most talkative window tinter in the Keys, came by and with a splash of soapy water and a few quick slices of his box cutters stuck some really remarkable silver tint on the south and west facing windows and doors. From the outside the effect was astonishing, a pure mirror reflecting almost all of the sun's heat:
From the inside the effect of the silver coating is to give the view a polarized look which is actually quite pleasant:
Additionally Jeffrey added some very dark tint to the sliding doors and the window in the bedroom so now I have a very cool, dark, refreshing place to sleep during daylight hours. It was a nice job, swiftly and efficiently done for $600 by the smiling Captain:
I suggested to Lisa and Josh they might want to do the same to their windows because we all know energy costs are going to go back up and we all want to be ready for the summer heat this year. I can hardly wait to prance around sticking insulation under their house. The purity of self sufficiency has to be enjoyed to be understood.
I was wandering an area between Duval Street and Bahama Village one sunny morning recently taking pictures as I went, not thinking too much about the whys and wherefores and before I knew it I had a couple of other essays sewn up and some pictures left over, which as I laid out the other stories were stating to look like they end up as pictures without a story. But there's always a story or two to liven up a few pictures...I don't think I could do a "wordless Wednesday" as some others do:
The Miami Herald last Thursday reported that Key West Mayor Morgan Macpherson appears to have stretched too far in his determination to become mayor of the southernmost city, and is now facing foreclosure. Macpherson owes around 1.1 million dollars on his former residence on Rockland Key (Mile Marker 9) which is outside city limits. He chose to refinance that one a few years ago when made his first run for the office, rented it out and bought a New Town home for himself, his wife (a school administrator) and four kids. The Mayor's job pays just $10,000 a year and Macpherson's "real job" as a realtor has dried up. Hence the foreclosure.
I remember that after Hurricane Wilma flooded some seventy percent of Key West the year Macpherson first became mayor in 2005, City Commissioner Clayton Lopez, representing Bahama Village, was washed out of his home. The paper ran a story on how he struggled to help his constituents while he himself lived with the disastrous storm effects. In that same spirit Mayor Macpherson has been a noisy advocate for affordable worker housing in the city, even as he himself was losing his own home. There is a temptation sometimes to forget that our leaders have their own demons to deal with...
I found the Whitehead Street sign slightly amusing in an ironic sort of way. In the rest of the country bankers love their planes and their absurd office remodels, while in Old Town a space to park your car is worth all the prestige and gold...
I can't imagine myself dressed all in white, I am too absent minded to be able to function and stay that clean...and as I thought about my distant relationship to starch I spotted an old timer across the street, paused, stuck in stationary mode, lapping up the early morning sunshine:
And then, without warning he started up again and strode off down the street. I wondered what his story was. The next picture is as close as I can get to saying nothing:
It just sits there with it's old fashioned air, and I wonder who the original Curry was, descended no doubt from Florida's first millionaire, the businessman responsible for the mansion on Caroline Street. And when i looked up and saw this I had to ask myself if it could possibly have been fate that lost the "L" or was it a drunken tourist with a sense of humor as puerile as my own?
A decade in an English boarding school leaves it's mark. And because this is my diary of life in the Lower Keys when I passed this next instrument of torture (we get so many 9-1-1 hang ups form these diabolical things!), I figured I'd better remember the day we used to have fifty cent coin phones:
This next picture is of the Honda motorcycle dealership on Southard Street, where the owner parks his machines awaiting repair on the street and every winter, regular as habit, the Citizen's Voice column records anonymous complaints against the practice of storing machines on the street:
On the subject of the newspaper there was a report on the meeting called to discuss the fate of the palms at the cemetery. I think its a storm in a teacup from what I could glean from the paper. Apparently the city arborist has determined that the extra tall Washingtonia palms (remember I'm no botanist) have reached the end of their lives and could fall at any time. Someone offered to donate some palmetto palms to replace them and even though everyone is a little on edge after the struggle to save the casuarinas at Fort Zachary Taylor . It's rather tiresome really, a nice controversy stymied.
The funny thing for me, about Valentine's day is that I grew up in the Italian province that gave rise to the St Valentine's legend that is being "celebrated" and I had absolutely no knowledge of the connection. Poor self promotion you might say, and you'd be right but there is something refreshing about an entire city that has no clue how to sell itself as the birthplace of one of the more international and popular holidays. 
San Valentino da Interamna was a bishop who was martyred sometime between 250 and 300 A.D. for marrying a pagan Roman soldier and a Christian girl. As he was led off to his execution he reportedly kissed his jailer's blind daughter and pressed her hand whispering "from your Valentine" and as he was the Bishop of Interamna, the Roman name for Terni, and he was about to die, it was assumed his was the gesture of spiritual love. But the Church needed a new holiday ("holy day") to supersede a pagan fertility celebration and St Valentine was dredged up to fill the gap. In the next century Constantine declared Christianity the faith of the Empire and Valentine's gesture was no longer necessary. All this stuff is shrouded in myth and legend enough to make Terni the focus of worldwide attention today. However Terni has failed completely to capitalize on the myth. Besides my original home town is an industrial city famous for steel mills and Beretta handguns, not much of the city is ancient, or pretty like its medieval neighbors in the surrounding Umbrian hillsides. And actually living there surrounded by relatives is an intimidating prospect for a young man who harbors ambitions to see the world. Madame Bovary could easily have been set in the provincial chatterbox drawing rooms of this small city! 
The place got bombed flat during World War Two and now boasts a mostly American style grid pattern of streets in a natural bowl in the mountains that gets blisteringly hot in the summer and bitingly cold in winter.
And to think my mother could have raised me in Rome, The Eternal City, but there it is. I have come, in middle age, to really like Terni, a city overlooked by tourists, because of its unpretentious provincial style, its care of the few Roman monuments it has and the lovingly redeveloped old quarter that has enjoyed modest renewal in the boom years of the 1990s. And the fact I no longer live there, I enjoy being a tourist in my home town.
This was the street my grandmother grew up in, Via Barberini, before she left to become a teacher and a singer in the early 20th century.
Valentine's Day appears to be a day for the western world to celebrate chocolates cards and flowers. We are encouraged by radio stations to observe the proprieties for our "sweeties" ( I am not fond of that word; it makes my wife sound like a box of Goobers) and all that stuff. For me its a day that encourages thoughts of tolerance and kindness, the foundations upon which love is built. I'm a nominal Catholic (I'm Italian what else could I be?) my wife is a Jew and neither of "our" religions can countenance either of us getting married to each other. Little wonder I have not much time for them.
And that brings me to tolerance, and why I like Key West. Key West does a good deal better job than Terni of self promotion, but Key West, unlike Terni, tops the list of places to be an outcast. In California I found a great deal of judgement despite the stereotype, it could hardly be any other way in a state composed of 30 million type A personalities. The things that drive me crazy about Key West, the lackadasical approach principally, the lack of order and orgnization, are the things that give me hope for my old age. It's a small town, and one in which you can cherish chickens or put them (illegally) in a ring to fight, you can drink yourself into a stupor each night or appear toasted at the breakfast table and no one really minds. You can even be openly gay in 21st century America and no requires you to keep your fundamental self behind closed doors. Really, the absence of judgemental attitudes is striking, and it is refreshing, even though frequently irritating. Not passing judgement does not mean that one cannot hold an opinion, that would not be human, and as best as I can articulate it my definition of tolerance is not acting on one's (worst) impulses towards one's neighbors. Which in itself is a pretty loose definition! The gates to my heaven stretch wide when they are open...
But that has always been the thing about St Valentine's day for me, its such an important day, the day of tolerance, I tend to overlook it, and I have all my life.
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration weather synopsis for Key West:
I looked west as I rode into town and below the setting sun, bright in my eyes, I saw a bank of fog. Hmm I thought as I slipped onto Stock Island wedged in between rows of cars jockeying for position at the triangle. Hmm, this looks like a genuine California marine inversion layer, and I felt a cool blast of air hit my chest as I rode under the gray bank of cloud. It felt just like a summer day in Northern California. Behind me was the sun:
In front it looked like the Sunset district of San Francisco:
For me it was deja vu, for others it was an opportunity to get home without too much sweat:
Or to get some exercise in an unaccustomed cool breeze taming the afternoon heat:
When I got to work I talked to Noel who is certainly not used to these conditions, and he was marveling at how cool the air was on his skin. "Refreshing" he marveled. Out on the water it looked weird in a town used to unending vistas of blue skies and blue water:
I was meeting my wife for cafe con leche in Searstown, at the end of her work day and the beginning of mine, and we marveled at how much the low ceiling sea fog reminded us of Santa Cruz, California.
We neither of us liked it much, as we are both fans of crisp unadulterated sunshine, but like all less-than-perfect-weather in Key West, we know it will pass soon enough. It is a trial working police dispatch into the night though as the officers are grumbling at the lack of visibility and unaccustomed burden of "bad" weather:
It's not a blizzard or anything, I know that, but it is a bit weird when you're in the police station and can't actually see the fire station next door. I'm glad this is a temporary phenomenon. 