What strikes me as odd about the posturing over Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran and Israel, is how unnecessary it all is. When US oil consumption dropped last year by ten percent, oil producers were thrown into chaos. Tankers around the world were sitting idle, loaded with crude waiting for someone to buy. There was more oil to be refined than any number of refineries could cope with. Just a ten percent drop in consumption by the US caused massive, unsustainable over production. Imagine what would happen if we got serious about alternative energy.
The argument goes that alternative energy is a socialist tree hugging plot to ruin the economy and pave the way for the End of the US As We Know It. Well, yes, in a sense that's true, but it could actually be for the better. In seeking independence from oil we would at last be seeking independence from foreign energy markets. Not since the 1970s has the US produced all the energy it needed. And ever since then energy independence has been a political catch phrase with no substance to back it up.
There is market in this country for alternative energy, and that market would provide jobs and light industry, which can't actually be bad for the US. It would be different for sure to make our own solar panels, our own windmills and our own gas and bio fuel plants, but in feeding those industrial dreams Americans would be working for their own benefit not for shareholders in the world wide oil bonanza.
The biggest issue I have with opponents of alternative energy is that they impose their own blinkered limitations on any proposals to move away from oil dependence. firstly there is no rule that says it has to be done all at once. Secondly we don't have to replace our oil obsession with any other single replacement. Liquid propane gas is a commonly used substitute in Europe and it produce one third less carbon than equivalent consumption of petroleum. Hydrogen technology can still be studied, and bio-diesel projects can also be implemented. There's no reason we can't increase the number of windmills and solar panels. Pickens has abandoned his plans for wind power in the Texas panhandle saying energy is too cheap to justify it, yet one wonders why subsidies aren't worth considering to make them worth while. If your child was off to fight an endless oil war in Afghanistan or Iraq or Iran a wind power subsidy instead might look cheap, and worthwhile.
And yet, even though these ideas have been kicked around for years, and none of them are particularly radical we live in apolitical atmosphere where sensible debate has become impossible. Politics used to be known as the art of the possible. The recent health care reform proposals which were shot down uniformly by the Party of No, illustrate clearly how far we have moved from the days of partisan bickering and back room deals and public unity. Nowadays a unified proposal for energy independence could never be more than a pipe dream. The Democrats would never have the nuts to propose it and the Republicans, funded by Big Oil even more than the Democrats are, would never even agree to begin to think about it. I'm just glad, selfishly, I have no offspring to donate to the cause of Big Oil and the Great Game. Because if we are to continue to be consumers and not citizens someone has to die to get us the fuel to feed the American Dream in it's current incarnation.
It's a wild and woolly place this trek through the mangroves:
The road bed is quite narrow these days though you can see where the surface used to be wider under the bushes. There is also evidence that vehicles of some sort travel the old road, possibly all terrain vehicles or something that leaves tire marks:
One is never far from water in these islands and the difference between wet and dry can be a tide or a just a few inches in the rainy season:
Even though the islands have the appearance of rolling greenery, it is somewhat deceptive as the trees are much shorter than they may appear, and if they are red mangroves they are actually growing out of the salt water.
And birds, let's not forget herons and stuff flying around looking for dinner: 
The evening Cheyenne and I walked the sky was overcast with a promise of cold or rain or something nasty. The breaks in the cloud cover never seemed to want to amount to much:
The day seemed washed out of all colors:
Cheyenne was new to this place and busy finding whatever there was to smell. She treats these walks as a vacuuming exercise snorting and snuffling her way to the end and back:
It seems there are people who come out here for a good time and very enterprising I think it is too, with signs of a splendid bonfire and no visible trash. I can only imagine how pleasant it must be in company with chairs and roaring fire far from the cares of the world in the dark of night.
I fiddled with my camera and Cheyenne found something disgusting and appetizing and disappeared into the bushes. I only found out after I nailed a couple of still lifes that she was snacking on something smelly.
At first I thought this discarded commercial fishing float had a series of letters printed on the side ESL, but as I ruminated, wondering how this artifact of the sea got here I figured I was looking at it upside down and it was really numbered 753. I really should be a detective.
I heard a rustling in the bushes and before we knew it we were set upon by a graybeard on a bicycle which required deft footwork by yours truly. Cheyenne doesn't do well around wheels so I lunged for her collar and let him by. "Twice a week" he replied over his shoulder, not stopping when I asked him if he had got to the end of the trail. Which by my calculation is 3.5 miles end to end.
We had ambled for an hour and it was my executive decision to head home. The light was failing anyway, not that a dog would care about such trifles.
This pink charmer is for sale at a breath takingly reduced price of $974,000 dollars (about 15 new Yuan) so if you feel the need to escape the snow you know where you can land:
I have long admired this next house, and not just because the garden is so perfectly maintained:
It is vaguely in the bungalow style of homes I lived among in Santa Cruz, California, andt there were a few examples of this faux adobe style surrounded by heavily manicured plant life.Perhaps the cool damp of a perfect winter day in Key West reminded me of the cool damp of a perfect summer day in coastal California. Pehrhaps had it been a hot dry day it might have reminded me of Santa Fe. 
I don't think it has off street parking and it is located on a busy street but I really like the look of that house. A busy street? Everything's relative but Southard (pronounced "suth-'ard") Street is the main artery to Duval from White Street where Fleming Street is the parallel one way street leading away from Duval. And there are hardly any stop signs on Southard so it can be more convenient than taking Truman or Eaton streets:
The Cuban Grocery is popular with locals but it is also on the tourist charts and it is one of the places indicated if you want an "authentic" (I hate that word!) Key West experience:
I like the food very much, as high as it is in calories. One takes one's meal and sits outside on the benches and watches tourists wobbling by on bicycles and roosters pecking desultorily in the gutters. I recommend the papas rellenas, Cuba's answer to a Scotch Egg or the bollos which are Cuba's answer to falafel. I feel the need to go and photograph some (and eat them) purely for research you understand:
The blessing of off street parking:
You could choose to study marine biology in Washington state's frigid waters or you could knuckle under and read law at an ivy league school. Or you could hang with the big dogs on the waterfront in Key West. If you do, this would be your uniform:
J Wills Burke tells us, on page 57 of his superb book The Streets of Key West that Samuel L Southard (1787-1842) was a governor and senator from the State of New Jersey and he also worked in the Federal Government as secretary of War and of the Treasury. Who knew? The question is, why did he get a Key West street, and a big one at that, named after him? He had a falling out with president Jackson over giving him credit for the Battle of New Orleans in the War of 1812 but Wills Burke suggests that his connection to New Jersey, from whence hailed Whitehead, may be the reason he is remembered in Key West. Which makes no sense to me but there we are, I guess friendship can get you a street name if you are influential enough.
And this is where I get to stick my neck out. I am not a fan of Mangia Mangia, and I never have been. I am alone in this as everyone I have ever met loves the place so ignore me and continue to flock here. God knows it's cute enough: 
And packed (I took this shot when I walked past later at night) because like I said it is very very popular with locals and visitors:
Having made an ass of myself perhaps I should move on. More innocuous architecture: 
And a last look at the Bonneville, upon which machine I enjoyed a fine commute to work:
Suffice it to say that Cheyenne didn't talk to me for ten minutes after I arrived home in the morning. She's going to have to get used to it as I enjoyed the motorcycle commute as much as ever, if not more.
There's this place a stone's throw from the Bat Tower and it's easy to pass it by but if you have a dog to walk, nothing much will pass you by that might possibly be of interest. 
There's a canal dug into the north shore of Sugarloaf Key, and it looks pretty much like any other proposed development that didn't quite become a subdivision. There are lots of these cuts that were created when dynamiting mangroves and lime stone was permitted.
I am not alone in my appreciation of undiscovered back waters, judging by this chair: 
There is a structure, slowly melting back into the vegetation:
And there is a sign in fading paint overlooking the canal:
Nowadays swimming with dolphin is advertised as therapy for wounded humans and a way to study wild animals, mammals said to have similar brain capacity to us. The Sugarloaf Dolphin Sanctuary was designed with another purpose in mind. It achieved a certain measure of notoriety when the man who had trained the animal used for that most captive of mammalian circuses- television's Flipper -tried to prepare Navy trained dolphins for release from here in 1994. It seems the end of the Cold War was reason enough for the US Navy to end a rather expense program of training dolphins in the martial arts of submarine nuclear warfare and Ric O'Barry, the trainer turned activist prepared two Navy dolphins for a life back in the wild.
It seems it didn't go well, everyone got fined for the releases and the dolphins returned (or were returned, depending on whose version you believe) to captivity and the sanctuary has been working on dissolving itself back into it's own natural surroundings.
Human crap lies everywhere of course. The concept of packing your trash is not commonly understood around these parts. 
