Spiderman And The Famous Film Maker

To see a man lounging on a park bench, taking his ease in a public park on some of the most expensive real estate in waterfront Florida, is no great surprise. A chicken scuttling away in a public space is no big thing either in this city of contrasts. I wasn't even sure why I took the picture, a reflex perhaps. I photograph therefore I am.

Cheyenne crossed paths with a couple of dogs as we crossed the park under a 92 degree sun but she ignored them as she does and meandered her own way, nose down into the dog park. Cheyenne is not a social animal but she loves to smell the trails left by other dogs so while I took my place in the shade she wandered back and forth checking the invisible trails.

The county owns this land and wants to reorganize it, move the street inland, expand the beach, shrink the area devoted to dogs and thus improve the place. The waters off the beach were foaming white in the strong southeast wind, it was hot, a perfect summer afternoon under a burning white sun. I saw a gaggle of rental scooters and wondered at the parking style.

That's the part I like about my life, working at night on long shifts...some days you get to stand in the same spot for a while. Your dog lays next to you in the shade being companionable and together you watch the world go by. In Key West it cycles and jogs and strolls along the beach as it goes by. This is island time for me.

Then I saw the crazy results of the removal of all the trees at Higgs Beach, and what a bloody shambles it is now. There used to be a stand of casuarina trees, much disliked in some quarters as non native trees and therefore fit for removal. Which is all well and good but, Good Lord the place looks devastated!

As you can see in this picture below the trees on the left were quite bushy and shady and to replace them with cement poles and tarps seems not  quite right to me. The problem was that a branch snapped and that act of nature created a liability panic as the place has been transformed into a children's playground and the trees naturally had to go. Tree cutting is quite the sport around here for some reason.

Here's another file image from my blog which may explain why the area was fenced off and the pavilions reserved for adults accompanied by children. They had previously been rather taken over as a hang out by homeless populations and the paper was filled with complaints about their drunken brawling. I thought the children's play area was a nice solution to the whole problem; then they hacked down the trees.

Well, aside from all that history of tree cutting it was a lovely day and Cheyenne led me through the park sniffing here and there and I found myself quite taken by the view. Here we have the three basic colors of life in the Keys, blue white and green.

Which is when my deeply guarded secret came out. The dude on the ground hailed me and asked most politely if I was famous. I naturally burst out laughing, "God forbid," I said, enjoying the joke a great deal. But he insisted I looked like a famous film maker, not me I said and he winked conspiratorially so I suppose my secret is safe. "Can I make you famous, " I said back and they posed for my picture, him and Spiderman up above. "It's a hammock chair," he said and I told him I was familiar with them but not eight feet in the air. He insisted it was perfectly comfortable, of which I had no doubt. "How do you get in?" I asked the lanky youth. "Easy" he said reaching up for the bar overhead, which he no doubt meant well but I couldn't see myself doing acrobatics to get in a chair. I left him dangling in his own web, unable to convince them I wasn't a famous film maker. "Keep making those movies!" they called after me cheerfully.

I was once accused of being a snitch, not far from here. It was more than a decade ago before I actually did start working at the police department when I used to bring Emma here and walked her through the park, long before the dog park was installed. The homeless guys in an encampment got quite aggressive and yelled at me accusing me of being a spy for the cops. I was actually a boat captain at the time and even today when I'm not dispatching I'm an anonymous civilian which is the way I like it. I was quite taken aback when the thugs started yelling at me and my Labrador, threatening us for spying on them for some unknown reason.. So I walked into their encampment and confronted them. That freaked them out a  fair bit as I refused to back down and demanded to know what they meant.Middle class suburbanites aren't supposed to stand up to their bullying but I disliked the idea that only hobos and bums could use these lovely facilities so I made a point of enjoying the park no matter what. They looked sheepish and after that they left me alone to walk my dog. I'd much rather be accused of being a film maker so I guess I have come along a bit at Higgs Beach since those days, and the bum population has been culled too, and good riddance to those aggressive bullies.  

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Goodbye Hairy Potter

I am fond of pointing out I don't have an artistic bone in my body, and I fear to say it out loud but my wife doesn't either, so when she found herself taking pottery classes to encourage her students I wondered what was happening. She was discovering one of the nicest people, a great artist widely recognized yet completely unassuming and kind. She struggled to make a -bowl? -plate? - ashtray, perhaps, alongside her bad luck students and though she never did become an artist (unlike some of her students) she did learn to revere the man who gave freely and willingly of his time.

She burst into tears upon reading of Jay Gogin's untimely death.

Such was the effect of a thoroughly decent man who loved pottery and his wife and his job at Florida Keys Community College. The president of that institution made the requisite nice noises about the full time professor's passing but I am ready to bet the iconoclast who preferred potting to college politics will not be replaced. Gogin had a full time job in the part time world of academia subscribed to by the President of the college and he took full advantage of his fortunate full time position to teach and share his untidy passion that constantly burst its banks. He was not a faculty member, he was a teacher and I can say this, if he made my wife believe she could pott, ever so briefly, he was endowed with that rare spark that made him unique. The world would be a better place if there were more Hairy Potters and fewer conventional mannequins going through the motions.

I never did pott with the hairy potter, and quite likely he could have given me the confidence and joy my laughing wife got from rubbing mud with the great man. But I do get to enjoy his work every evening when I go to work, and his public art is celebrated, not on my minor blog, but on the city's Art in Public Places page:

From the Key West Citizen this glowing acknowledgement. Key West seems poorly set to encourage roots here for future artists in paradise like the great Jay Gogin who touched so many hearts.

Artist Jay Gogin, Key West's 'Original Hairy Potter,' dies

BY TERRY SCHMIDA Citizen Staff
tschmida@keysnews.com

Jay Gogin, who put the Florida Keys Community College Ceramics Department on the map with his "Mud Pi" fundraising dinners, has fired his final kiln.

The self-proclaimed "Original Hairy Potter" died Thursday at the Lower Keys Medical Center after suffering from liver and kidney failure for about a week.

He was 57.

Gogin coined his own nickname as a self-deprecating homage to his trademark lengthy beard and hair.

The amiable instructor harbored a lifelong passion for Raku ware pottery -- a yen he enthusiastically shared with generations of FKCC students during his near quarter-century professorship there. Gogin's slightly eccentric, yet genial disposition over time transformed him into one of the town's larger-than-life characters.

Visiting district school students of all ages also benefitted from Gogin's knowledge and fervor for teaching. This was particularly true during the trying, post-Hurricane Wilma period in 2005 when the college opened its doors, and instructional budget, to students of low-lying area schools dealt a devastating blow by the storm.

Gogin's easy smile and friendly demeanor were a comforting and familiar presence at gallery openings and other artistic happenings around Key West, where he was regarded as a prolific, generous and influential figure by his colleagues and fellow travelers in the town's creative community.

During a pinch pot-making session with Poinciana Elementary School students in 2005, the ceramics maestro happily noted the number of familiar faces in the room.

"Several have parents or even grandparents who have worked with me here," Gogin said at the time. "They're having a blast with it and so am I."

In 1997, Gogin and his wife, Robin, founded "Mud-Pi," a casual college ceramics club/faux fraternity. The next year, the inaugural "Mud-Pi" dinner was held at the Gogins' Key West home. These legendary gatherings became an annual tradition with patrons carrying off the attractive, hand-made bowls in which their meals were served. The proceeds were used to help fund educational trips to the ancient Japanese pottery village of Tokaname, another of Gogin's exciting initiatives.

In time the Japanese visits became a kind of ceramics cultural exchange program, bringing many students from the Land of the Rising Sun to the United States -- often for the first time.

In 2000, the Gogins renewed their marital vows in Japan.

"When the [Japanese] students come [to Key West] they love it, although it's a real shock for most of them who haven't traveled outside of Asia," Gogin said in a 2001 interview. "Women especially find that they have more freedoms here."

Before long, the Gogins were bringing "The Wind From Key West," actually an elaborate "Mud-Paella" dinner, to Tokaname, where Gogin also made many friends. There, too, diners were left with ceramic souvenirs from the visiting Key Westers.

Gogin was born Jan. 14, 1957, in Pewaukee, Wis. For a time he attended a seminary, considering a career in the priesthood, before happening upon ceramic art.

His career in pottery took off at the age of nine when he defiantly created his first piece to prove to his skeptical parents that his lengthy hair wouldn't prevent him from becoming a potter.

As a young man, Gogin began showing his work at small Midwestern art festivals, where his unique, Zen-inspired technique quickly gained him a following. Soon this translated into international gallery exhibits and sales. His ceramic masterpieces can be found in numerous public and private collections throughout the U.S. and in more than a dozen other countries.

Gogin met his wife at the yacht club in Stevens Point, Wis., in 1982. Together they moved to Key West in 1990, where Gogin began teaching a ceramics course at FKCC. The class and its teacher were an instant hit, and the program soon expanded to include ceramics for beginners, Raku, wheel throwing, ceramic mural design, and Japanese wood-firing.

At the center of it all was Gogin's immense talent and natural ability as an instructor. He hosted visiting artists from around the globe, began leading cultural and educational trips to Europe, and organized numerous workshops, exhibits and fundraisers

Along with the overseas excursions, the Gogins and "Mud-Pi" set out to enhance the awareness and appreciation of ceramic art in the community. Dozens of intricately crafted ceramic sculptures, pots, wall murals and water fountain urns were created, which helped shape the zeitgeist of the FKCC campus.

Similar works can be found around the Keys at locations as varied as the Key West Public Safety Building and the Kathy's Hope Serenity Garden at the nonprofit Samuel's House. Gogin even crafted custom beer tankards for the members of a social club he helped create at Finnigan's Wake pub.

Two years ago, longtime FKCC supporter -- and Gogin student -- Michael Dively showed his appreciation of Gogin's inspiration by ponying up a $25,000 endowment to establish the "Jay Gogin Excellence in Visual Arts Award" at the college.

Each spring, in perpetuity, a promising FKCC student artist will receive $1,000.

"I still remember with fondness my ceramic classes at FKCC," said Dively, a former Michigan legislator and college professor. "This award recognizes Jay's creativity, energy and commitment to his students -- and the impact Jay's artistic creations have made at the college and around Key West."

Another of Gogin's students, Thivo Foster, who now lives and works in Miami Beach, was heartbroken at the news of his passing.

"Twenty years ago my husband and I were always in the Keys as snowbirds," said Foster, who specializes in Nerikomi pottery, another Japanese ceramic discipline. "One year, I signed up in ceramics classes at FKCC, where I met Jay Gogin. I joined his 'Mud-Pi' and continued to support it while we were back home in Cleveland. We moved to Key West, instead of California as planned, thanks to Jay and the ceramics department in FKCC. From then until now, Jay is always in my admiration as a wonderful artist and a best friend who was always there when needed. Jay Gogin's passing is a big loss to [the] community and the FKCC students."

FKCC President Jonathan Gueverra on Saturday released the following statement:

"The word legend is often overused or misused when we describe certain individuals. To say that Jay is a legend is no exaggeration. His finest qualities extend beyond his artistic and creative abilities. Jay's kindness, his generosity and his willingness to share and to serve simply because these were the right things to do will never be forgotten. Through his artistic expression we will all continue to benefit.

"On behalf of the entire FKCC community I say thank you to Jay Gogin for his almost 25 years of service. I especially want to thank his wife, Robin, who is equally generous and allowed the rest of us to be a part of their lives."

Gogin is survived by his wife Robin, two brothers, Glenn and Greg, and his mother, Glorida.

A celebration of Gogin's life will be announced at a later date.

tschmida@keysnews.com

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Key West In Summer Gray

I love summer in the Keys, but there again I love summer pretty much anywhere in the Northern hemisphere. I lack the normal human capacity to enjoy seasons, snow, short days, and all the cozy romantic nonsense of being housebound in winter. As Cheyenne and I squelched down Elgin Lane we passed a young woman sitting on her porch putting on running paraphernalia. She asked the formulaic question, and even though I know I'm supposed to reply "Good. How about you?" In the monotone preferred by recorded answering services I cannot, and I blame Aspergers for this, not the devil that resides on my shoulder; no I cannot use the stupid rote formula that generates the automated response, no matter what daft thing I say, "Fine thanks." People are so used to the automatic exchange they give that answer no matter what devilish thing I say.

This one didn't, to her credit. When I said, in response to how was I doing, that I was getting soaked her eyes lit up and she said, yes isn't it great, such a refreshing break in summer, her dog prancing after Cheyenne like a teenager around a plodding babushka. That's one of the things I like about summer here, rainy season is when it's hot. I have lived in places where the weather conspires against you and freezing winter rains reduce the lovely fresh green summer to an icy muddy mush all winter long. To be rained on to no visible effect is glorious. Crocs to wade puddles is all you need to cope with sudden summer downpours in the Keys. Plus the cool fresh rain slakes a dog's thirst. Perverse headless animal.

The struggle continues to turn the gray drab military housing in Peary Court into an exciting community fully integrated into the surrounding neighborhoods. From what I have heard some of the surrounding neighborhoods have grave concerns about being integrated with a community that will be manufactured and that will be struggling to prevent Peary Court from becoming a shortcut for drivers seeking to avoid the jams that form on Truman and Palm Avenues. Meanwhile the developers keep cutting their cloth to create the maximum possible density the city will allow...renting here increasingly seems like a short and shorter term proposition. I like the sign "old town living." It's not at all any of that but truth is no longer a requirement anywhere in public life.

In talking with Gary last week I stumbled across an idea made concrete inasmuch as contemplating the workplace of the future I lamented the gradual disappearance of those things that give people like me the ability to keep chugging along, job security, benefits, planning and the future of young people seeking work seems very different. He, the father of two daughters in college, made the point that perhaps that is the world they seek. Just as we upended our parents views on what was just and proper so they too are doing the same. It would be nice if he were correct, because I feel the doors of job security, pension planning, benefits and all the rest of it slamming shut behind the departing ranks of us baby boomer workers. Brave new world, I wish them well.

Which thought allows me to turn away from a future filled with different work ethics and employment insecurities to indulge in that nostalgia which looks back at what makes a good and memorable summer, contemplation especially promoted by drizzle, outright rain, absence of sunshine and color. My memories of summer involve light and heat mostly, with smells and noises in walk on rôles.

Summers at boarding school at about the latitude of northern Maine meant daylight was strong enough to read by at eleven o'clock at night, and I remember getting out of bed in a dormitory filled with three dozen young scholars to sit on a third floor windowsill to read a novel by natural light. England in summer is an extraordinary place, as green and lush as a jungle, filled with the sounds of insects, and a twilight that takes hours to fall and rob the countryside of daylight. Talk about shades of gray...it's the best thing about northern latitudes, that endless twilight, like a very slow deliberate and totally self aware descent into unconsciousness. I miss that as day shifts to night in the Keys faster than you can pour a cup of tea.

In Italian summer holidays by contrast twilight was short and sharp and signaled a retreat to bed for the workers harvesting food all day. It was the long hot silent afternoons that I remember as the best part of summer. My mother was a great believer in afternoon naps and she would take me to bed and wrap a maternal arm around me as she drifted off. I would wait till her breathing got deep and regular as it always did, allowing me to slip out of her anaconda grasp to an afternoon of limitless freedom. My friends would be sleeping so the village was mine, all mine, a silent life sized Lego village, a blank canvas for three hours wherein I could win wars, take epic journeys and slay all manner of fearsome dragons under a baking Mediterranean sun. The sounds of summer in Umbria are crickets, more properly known as cicadas, rubbing their legs together in an endless mating ritual that is the sound track of summer in my mind.

And now I'm all grown up to all appearances yet I still have summer afternoons to myself, long hot tropical days with my only companion Hobbes the Labrador to conquer new worlds and play endless games of Calvinball.

And we don't have to stay indoors when it rains as my mother is long dead, with all her neurotic Italian health concerns about rain and arthritis and bronchitis and I don't remember what, none of which enabled her to live as long as I have. Nowadays I don't care if the twilight lingers or not (it still doesn't at these tropical latitudes) because Calvin grew up and Hobbes gets to sleep the evenings away in a coma of old age as I spend my nights playing telephone hide and seek with intoxicated adults who ought to know better.

It turns out I am reliving the enchanted summers of my childhood quite by accident. How odd.

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From The Archives

Last year's King and Queen of Fantasy Fest enjoying the public fruits of the most successful Aids Help fundraising of the previous year: walking in the Masquerade March, as the local's parade is now known.

It's June but before you know it we will be butting up against the next go round as explained here: Official Fantasy Fest Website - Key West, Florida. Last year the endless road work caught flak:

Already I hear comments relating yo future deadlines saying stuff like "...by the time it's Fantasy Fest." For some people the whole event has clipped away from its roots in good natured fun and it has become a public irritation. One cannot disagree entirely with that assessment but too many people make too much money off it to imagine it will be abolished.

I find Fantasy Fest to be a car wreck, the sort of thing one cannot avoid watching but in which one does not wish to participate.

There are other more wholesome holidays, of a more traditional nature that are celebrated in Key West.

I am glad I have a couple of coconut palms at our new house. Fresh coconuts are a pleasant by product of life in the Keys; they aren't native trees and they produce excessive amounts of foliage, but the nuts taste good. And there are enough to spare it seems:

Richard in frigid Alaska had to moan about a shortage of sunsets. There's only one a day in Key West like anywhere else so I had been rationing them, thus I hope this sunrise will do:

Can't leave Cheyenne out:

The backwoods delights of the Keys:

And the urban:

The white boots of commercial fishing:

The fiddle faddle needed to take care of charters:

Life in Key West, hanging out together and watching:

 

 

I note in passing my nephews have decided to adapt their farming lives to the latest trend in bed and breakfast travel by opening what Italians call an agri-turismo Turing the farm into a bed and breakfast type arrangement. http://www.umbrialifestyle.it/aziende/dettaglio/-/dettaglio/Agriturismo-Cerqueti-baschi/28714 which boggles my mind just a bit. When I was a child we had no paced streets, never mind swimming pools and now these youngsters take pizza delivery for granted. Today they are opening their new enterprise in what has become these days a fashionable corner of Italy, all the rage they say, is Umbria, a region that has existed as long as I can remember, in the shadow if Tuscany.

I was there last September

Watching the work of transforming the place from farm to residence with my sister.

 

I wish I could be there now. But it will be there next year too.

Less farming, more tourism. I suppose that was why I emigrated so many years ago.

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Southern Sausage

On night shift a lunch break found me in the scary food aisle at Winn Dixie. Officer Sealey agreed to take me on a ride along if I agreed to sample his childhood foods. I had previously introduced him to curry, an experience he has yet to forget and he wanted to reciprocate. I carried a jar of pickled sausages tucked away in his patrol car as we ventured forth to check his beat.

Darnell grew up in Key West and joined the department a year after I did. He's settling down, a first time home buyer, considering selling his crotch rocket for a more "sensible" motorcycle, he is a mainstay of night shift. He has worked as a detective, he knows everyone and he is one of those officers whose radio traffic is sketchy but whose response times are uncannily swift when needed. I am always reassured to see him on the night's roster.

He did try to get me to taste pickled pigs feet but when I declined, adamantly, he admitted he didn't actually eat them either! I held the jar with a smile but I tasted the sausage...

I am not cut out to be a police officer, as I greatly enjoy the anonymity of dispatching, out of sight and taking abuse over the phone. Officers think we are crazy, hunkered down in a room all night, never getting to hear the end of the story. I think they are crazy as officers instinctively run to the scene of the problem, not away from it. And simply walking through a supermarket with an armed uniformed officer draws far too many stares for my comfort level. Nevertheless the sausages were excellent, indigestible perhaps but they tasted good and spicy with their vinegar infused outer coating. I recommend them. But only eat one, as the second one will hurt later...I know.

When you discover how complex it is to make drinkable coffee out of an inedible berry you ask yourself who figured this stuff out? What pushed a human to cook the berries and wash them and all that stuff, to produce liquid mud? Weird. On the other hand I wonder who first looked at a perfectly serviceable sausage and then thought to dunk it in a vat of vinegar. Inspired choice, stranger.

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Odd Choices

Seen through a rain spattered windshield Key West's main road, US Highway 1 lightly disguised as "The Boulevard" barely hints at the singular style of architecture downtown. The apparently endless collection of dreary chain motels, fast food outlets and familar nationwide stores seen on the mainland is duplicated on the landward side of what was once a causeway curving out to sea. This unremarkable scene should come as no surprise to the first time driver through the Keys as urban planning is nowhere to be seen along the entire chain of 108 miles of bridges, towns, villages, convenience stores and tacky roadside signage. That De Moya Group was chuntering about in the rain this week desperately trying to meet next month's impossible deadline comes as no surprise either, to the cynical observer of the stop and go style of construction along these two tortured miles of critical highway. The stop style of work got so bad the State was called in to ask the contractor why they had torn up the street and buggered off to more lucrative contracts...in the grand scheme of things Key West's modest forty million dollar road wreckage was small beer to a company with connections yielding work in the hundreds of millions. And now, thanks to months of stalling they are working day and night, rain or shine, trying to catch up and get their incentive bonus. None of which seems to guarantee a flood-free roadway as was the original intent of this prolonged torture.

Word filtered out last week, to avid readers of the daily paper that developer Pritam Singh had offered to buy the long defunct restaurant on Stock Island from the hapless county commissioners who own what used to be called Hickory House and should long since have been renamed White Elephant.

They were nicknamed the Gang of Three, the majority of the five member board who took decisions incomprehensible to rational thinkers who subsequently voted them out of office en masse. This was their nadir, spending more than three million dollars to buy a restaurant, pleasant enough in its day, for three times it's rational value, to someone's private benefit. Best of all the idiots had no idea whatsoever what to do with the thing, so there it sits crumbling into Cow Key Channel.

In a brilliant bid, low enough to cause those who remember to gnash their tax funded teeth, yet high enough to be tempting to end a hopeless saga, Singh has offered $2.1 million to take the disaster off the county's hands. It's enough to help fund the gorgeous new fire station just up the street. Perhaps these commissioners can help put this idiocy behind us all. I am told a similar plan spending five million dollars to buy a waterfront wreck in the Upper Keys may actually have been a Good Idea. Color me sceptical...

It's not just the Board Of County Commissioners, the School Board have done their best to enliven the leaden atmosphere this week, by extending the Superintendent's contract by two more years. Which decision came as a complete surprise (Sunshine Violations anyone? ...anyone?) as the contract has thirteen months to go, and best of all there is the minor matter of an election scheduled for this Fall. Even the newspaper was forced to point out this could have been an end run around the will of the voters

Best of all school scores took a dive in the latest report so once again we see the top dog getting rewarded for poor performance. One has to hope the voters are paying attention again, but this maneuver is hard to miss and impossible to defend. Change is good we remind ourselves.

I saw this surprisingly international sentiment on a scooter reminding us that every now and again a truly decent politician does manage to climb to the top. And for the less dedicated, similar sentiments are available in exchange for filthy lucre. Nelson "Madiba" Mandela Bumper Sticker available singly. Hmm.

Meanwhile the Key West City Commission is inching towards a most excellent decision in the field of ambulance service. American Medical Response lost the last bid as they wanted better than $600,000 compensation off the top to cover medically indigent transport. A ride to the hospital across the hour lies of Key West is about the most expensive cab ride you can imagine, somewhere around twelve hundred dollars I"m told. As an aside a helicopter ride to Miami, 45 minutes in the air is about 500 bucks a minute. Don't get sick if you aren't a one percenter.

The current ambulance service has had enough of Key West and is only continuing month to month service to help the city find time to figure out its new options. A consultant has told the city in no uncertain terms that creating its own service as part of the fire department is the only way to go and the commissioners seem to agree. There are naysayers in the newspaper who fear the city won't be able to collect enough to cover the bills, which seems unlikely to me but even were that case the cost will be far less than paying a private company to haul the sick across town.

As a dispatcher I cannot wait for the change, as having fire and rescue consolidated will make my job easier, not by much but every little bit helps. The citizens of Key West though, should be begging for this change. If they don't believe me they should check the response times of Fire engines compared to the response times of ambulances. The fire department will also pay paramedics more than the eleven bucks an hour by the glorious free enterprise service. I cannot believe how dedicated their employees are on such meager pay, less than half what I earn and you don't want me standing over you with a scalpel as you start circling the drain. I like living in the county but Key West will have the best emergency response team anywhere after these changes are made. The sooner the better.

 

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