Pauper's Field

Key West has a habit if taking care of it's own, alive or dead. In life the wretched and poor and mentally ill get food and shelter (if they want it) and in death the Reverend Steve Braddock holds a funeral service for the forgotten dead in a corner of the cemetery reserved for the impoverished. He did it  51  times in 2012 according to the Key West  Citizen. It is a left over from pre-industrial society when villagers treated the dead with respect in a world seen as God's creation. A world where dogs have no souls and no place in spaces reserved for those religious events of births, marriages and deaths.

Cheyenne and I were fine on Olivia Street outside the fence, looking in and wondering about those small rectangles of memory. It said "look it up" so I did, thanking the 21st century for Google!

From Robert Heinlein's novel Stranger In A Strange Land:

Grok means to understand so thoroughly that the observer becomes a part of the observed—to merge, blend, intermarry, lose identity in group experience. It means almost everything that we mean by religion, philosophy, and science—and it means as little to us (because of our Earthling assumptions) as color means to a blind man.

Surely this is another of those "only in Key West" spaces, a place where the homeless get to write their own epitaphs and whose epitaphs are cleverer and more literate and more thought provoking than those of the middle class dead celebrated widely in the tedious "guide" books.

Posted with Blogsy

The Ministry Of Gray Walks

I was in Key West early in the day and not finding what I was looking for, which was bright sunshine and white clouds. The skies above were overcast and varying shades of gray, giving Poorhouse Lane a dark and slightly ominous air.

Cheyenne was finding something in the bushes as usual, unperturbed by the momentary absence of summer. The sky and the light put me in mind of California's eternal marine inversion layer over the coast all summer long, gray and oppressive and holding a promise, never fulfilled, of rain.

it seemed to have been trash day, a suspicion forced upon by me the presence of the cans abandoned in the street like broken Dahleks. This cat was sleeping until a fat yellow Labrador strutted by, ignoring her completely.

You know how I point out that rents are high in Old Town, especially considering there's so much poor housing stock. Like what sort of housing stock you ask? Like this I say...talk about a jagged roofline...

It was early in the day and this guy stepped out past me on William Street as Cheyenne and I ambled back and forth sniffing as we went. We reached the corner of Windsor Lane and he suddenly stepped out in front of me, again! This time from Charlie's Grocery with a coffee in his hand. He appeared to be off to work, on foot. Speculating wildly I suspect every spare penny goes home to Chiapas or Guatemala or some other holdout where small wiry Indios pack their bags and head north to earn a sort of living wage with back breaking labor. The cost of the car he was walking past would set his family up in self sustaining comfort if that were his story. Funny old world isn't it?

I have developed a Floridian's dread of parking my car in the sunshine but I have also developed a healthy respect for all that falls out of trees around here. Birds in the Keys seem to enjoy eating glue, at least those that choose to roost in trees. So I try not to park directly beneath said trees, though this primered classic car got a different kind covering from this particular tree.

Remembering that I fail as a botanist I cannot say what it is, nor do I care too much to name it in any case, but that it, whatever it is, is blooming in December is the point I suppose.

And if there were any doubt that it is in fact the Roman Tenth month look around. I try not to be startled when I see the Holy Family depicted like some grotesque 20th century Disney cartoon, middle class white people in bath robes pretending to be a middle eastern carpenter's family from the Year Zero, or thereabouts. Nevertheless it gives me pause because I cannot reconcile such cluelessness with the modern Information Age. The more knowledge we have at our fingertips the more deliberately obtuse we seem to have to be to get through the day. I live in the hope that the God in whose image we are reputedly made, has a robust sense of humor.

This celebration of the Holiday Season seems more in keeping with Key West's public image. When I write that living in Old Town can be a trial this bottle decoration may go some way to explaining what I mean. I am not teetotal, far from it, but I can hardly imagine the constancy and determination to tipple that leads to amassing such a collection. Surely so much vodka was not sunk without the accompaniment of friends and loud merriment, night after night. I hope the neighbors enjoyed it.

I admit I no longer make much use of pay phones though when I see them wrecked and unuseable I feel their absence as a lack of ack up in my life. What if my smart telephone, source of these pictures, were to fail me? I have lots of memories of making my living by pay phone. When I was a radio reporter in California I was always to be seen juggling my notebook, my tape recorder and my audio adapter hooked over the mouthpiece sending the spoken word far and wide. I even learned how to unscrew the mouthpiece of a home phone and wire my tape recorder to the innards to send audio tape across the country. Oh happy days! Not really but we did the best we could with the technology we had, magnetic tape and telephone wires. I remember pay phones very well, I lived and worked by their utility.

Above I see an advertisement for a "better TV experience" by which they mean sports and news on TV to keep the laboring masses opiated, and below we are warned that children may be in the street unsupervised and playing. That does happen in Key West. Children do play in the streets and ride their bicycles around town in perfect safety. It seems an unlikely idyll doesn't it? The newspaper reported this week that the Sheriff's Department has been training and has plans for any possibility of a school shooting in these pacific islands.

There are children of all ages in Key West, including annoying rainbow children making nuisances of themselves, living off the grid by begging from people on the grid, people we used to describe as "square," people we have become... There was something peculiarly inappropriate about seeing the flower child hobbling along with an old Man's walking stick. I hope his Dad has a good health insurance policy for him, else we will be the ones paying for his treatment until the Affordable Health Care Act kicks in.

By the time we got round to Johnson Lane by a circuitous route preferred by my wandering dog it was still gray and overcast and I lost hope we would see sunshine. Cheyenne still didn't care, she was busy following trails known only to her nose.

As we came out on Truman I decided it was time to give up on summer for the morning and it was therefore time to play with my phone camera.

I was left trying to decide if this was a prelude to nuclear holocaust or the zombie apocalypse. Modern intelligent telephones are amazing machines. skies may still have been deeply gray and about drop a few tears of rain on our heads, but from the picture you wouldn't know it. It's a sad day when one can't believe the evidence of one's eyes. Perhaps Jesus really wasn't a Palestinian, perhaps the images are right.

 

Posted with Blogsy

Ho Ho Ho

Outdoor living blizzard free. Who needs seasons..?

Posted with Blogsy

Almost The Solstice

As little as I enjoy seasonal changes my emotions sometimes get the better of my intellect. By the time September rolls around I tend to be tired of summer heat and start looking forward to the second cold front of the Fall. The second front tends to lower temperatures quite a bit and create separation between the oppressive heat of summer and the start of the cool dry season.

Then when temperatures turn really cold, as they tend to briefly during winter I start to bitch about cold fronts and grumble when I have to wear socks to bed. I try to forgive myself for being human as I start to look forward to the heat and mugginess of summer. Well bugger, my Zen is in serious trouble. Better go to the beach and look out at the ocean and center myself or some such shit.

The thing is the water is too cold for swimming this time of year, at least for me, and it gets dark at six in the evening so there is some wintery effect down here. Traffic slows down a lot in winter as visitors pause to admire the views in the travel lanes of the Overseas Highway. Bastards! It's the only road and we all depend on being able to use it to keep the services flowing that they take for granted.

It's silly isn't it to get grumpy when all I have to do is pull over and enjoy the view.

So here it is, the shirt sleeve view. Happy Solstice Northerners. And I'll wish it to you early in case some nut case decides the Mayan thing is real and knocks off the Internet on The Day.

Posted with Blogsy

Walking, The Lost Art

I was walking Cheyenne on the bridge linking Cudjoe to Sugarloaf Keys, a place where my Labrador likes to go to find bait fish and other unconsidered trifles dropped by distracted anglers. A couple of nights ago I saw this old dude drowning worms all by himself on the bridge and I knew he was a snowbird because he was busy ignoring the only other human in sight. We trudged on by and found his Michigan tagged tank parked beyond the vehicle barricade thirty feet behind his now illegal vehicle, as snug up to the bridge as he could possibly drive on the ill defined FOOTpath.

Cheyenne and I kept walking, which I am now forced to admit is becoming a lost art, is the simple act of putting one foot (or paw) in front of the other. Even by motorists not displaying a handicapped tag.

 

Posted with Blogsy

Monroe County's Seat

Visitors to Key West like to take their picture at the Southernmost Point, a rather garish red yellow and black cone placed at the end of South Street, somewhere close to the southernmost piece of land outside the neighboring secretive Navy Base. Good enough for most people's photo albums. Then if they turn north on Whitehead Street they will eventually, after passing Hemingway's home, and the lighthouse and the Green Parrot Bar, they will eventually reach Mile Zero, the very end or beginning of US Highway One. Mile Zero is marked by a green rectangle on a lamp post for some reason placed at the corner of Whitehead and Flemng Streets, next to a collection of imposing brick buildings.

There is a connection between Mile Zero and the classically styled buildings set back from the street named for one of the four Anglo purchasers of Key West, John Whitehead (John Fleeming was another after whom Fleming Street is named). It turns out it is traditional to measure distances from the county courthouse and as Key West is the county seat of Monroe County so this is where Mile Marker Zero has to be placed.

It used to be that south Florida was pretty much uninhabitable that's to humidity, disease and. A general ack of amenity. There were no roads, no fields and no prospects for any, so as the soldiers pushed the Seminole Indians south there was very limited settlement activity in their wake. The city of Key West, founded in 1828 was doing fine as a stopping off place for shipping in and out of the Gulf of Mexico. Indeed Key West was a very cosmopolitan place with the outside world coming here as ships passed through from all over the world. As a result the wealthiest city in the state was made the seat of Monroe County, a stretch of largely uninhabitable land that covered the southern half of the state. A slow walk through the county building shows all sorts of stuff relating to the county and it's past. A map of 19th century south Florida.

As farmers ranchers and assorted white settlers moved into central Florida encouraged by railroads and suppression of the Seminoles they cut off chunks of Monroe County to create their own local governments, known today as Polk, Hendry, Lee and Collier counties among many others. Today Monroe County still encompasses a large chunk of mainland south Florida occupied by half a dozen Anglo families living along Loop Road, Seminoles still live in and around the Everglades and National Parks workers live in mainland Monroe County. Ask a tourism center and Monroe County equals The Keys but anonymity seems to suit those who choose to live in the "other" Monroe County residents. But Key West has always been the most colorful place in the county, and most likely in the state. I cannot say that electing Tony Tarracino as mayor was the most enlightened vote but in light of the state of modern political leadership in the county one can't really find too much fault with a man who figured a strong sex drive was the most important human trait. It's not the top political priority one usually imagines, but like I say Key West tended once to lean toward the particular and I miss that attitude. It's hard to imagine contemporary city voters taking a smuggler and gun runner seriously as candidate for mayor, and you could argue its their loss.

Mario Sanchez is remembered elsewhere on one of the walls of the county building. He was a Conch who amused himself making carvings of his life in Key West from the early 20th century. He was honored as a noted US folk artist outside his home town and original pieces cost tens of thousands of dollars now that he is dead. Below we see a copy of his representation of the county building at 500 Whitehead Street, pinned to the wall next to the ...electrical room?!

I miss the notion that public buildings should not only function as public spaces but they should be built as symbols of permanence. I like the wood and brick interior of the courthouse as much as I enjoy seeing te traditional classical design of the exterior.

And there is of course the crude requirement to provide for basic needs. Generators and radio communications climb apparently at random over each other behind the classical facades. The courthouse has been replaced by a rather more attractive building, supposed to cost $13 million dollars but ending up closer to eighteen. The. Some bright spark figured little Freeman Justice Center has no lobby to enable the public to shelter out of the weather while they wait to parade through the insecurity checks now required in public buildings. So the are spending another $600,000 to build a lobby. That I noticed the shortcoming immediately when I reported for jury duty just goes to show how impractical and short sighted are modern architects.

It's not easy operating a county a hundred and twelve miles long and rarely more than a mile wide, not forgetting the land on the mainland, and budgets are strangled by residents who demand services but are reluctant to pay for them. Thinking is not encouraged which is why peoplehotpgahnthe monument at the Southernmost Point and don't wonder why it is clearly apparent it is not the southernmost piece of land.

Tony Tarracino has been widely quoted as saying that ego and a tremendous sex drive are the tools for success. Brains he was fond of saying "...don't mean a shit." Cute of course, and mildly amusing but not a recipe for success as life gets more and more complicated in the town where Tarracino wanted to limit growth and who signally failed. The city of Key West is struggling to cope with issues of growth and change while Monroe County is so silent as to appear to be on a different planet. Less colorful perhaps, and also it seems less noisy, but whether or not the county represents the citizens as effectively as the city is not at all clear. The city has no permanent home at the moment as plans are argued over endlessly, with the Glynn Archer school leading the race so far for a new City Hall. The county has its brick headquarters sitting solidly on Whitehead Street largely unnoticed by all those people who wander by looking for Mile Marker Zero. Change comes slowly to the county.

Posted with Blogsy