The End Of Boca Chica

I have written from time to time over the past seven years about one of the more pleasant waterfront stretches in these islands that really don't have beaches worth talking about. Boca Chica Beach it turns out is just one more threat to the flyers of the mightiest military machine on Earth and it must go.

It seems these spindly shade trees threaten the ability of military aircraft to land safely on the vast spacious runway of neighboring Boca Chica Naval Air Base. You'd think that these last few trees left here on public land would be allowed to remain but it seems Regulations require then to be chopped down.

It puts me in mind of those rules that forbid us, perhaps not much longer, from using iPads during the take off period in commercial airliners. It always seemed to me that if that was all it might take to crash a plane and create a stir, we were doomed. It turns out you can't crash a Boeing with an iPad - shocked?- and now we will soon be allowed to make phone calls on flights thus giving me one more reason to hate getting in a plane. Do you even remember why you can't carry shampoo on a plane or why you must remove your shoes? That's because you live in a world terrorized by a bunch of medieval religious nutters who think death is the best way to live. I say screw 'em, no one gets out alive in the end anyway, and let's live our lives with the greatest joy we can. Which of itself is hard enough, never mind allowing madmen to make us craven.

So when mere mortals wonder why their beachside refuge must be torn down, anonymous pipes up in the Voice column of the Citizen:

I welcome those beachgoers to sit in the pilots' seats on a moonlit evening. With a driving rain and 30 knot crosswind and those sacred trees suddenly pop up in your windscreen and your concentration is on trying to land safely for you and your crew, you let me know how valuable those trees feel then. When your butt stops puckering, go down to the end of the runway and give those precious hardwoods a hug. These men and women are in those aircrafts protecting us on a daily basis. Give them all and any tools needed to do their job safely. Go buy an acre of woods up north, put some sand around the trees, and thank those young pilots for your ability to do so.

Freedom buys you this:

I wonder at the old route that Highway One took back before Al Qaeda had this country by the balls. If you turn off the modern Highway One at Rockland Key you will discover the truck entrance to the Boca Chica Navy Base. The direct route was the original path of the public highway that ran through the base. Nowadays such openness is beyond imagining.

So when they say the trees must go, and they will, as ludicrous as it sounds, because they pose a threat to freedom you will know that freedom wrecked this modest remaining stretch of public beach. On the other hand when the Key West City Commission caved to the Truman Annex Master Property Owner's Association and agreed to allow them to close Southard Street, a public thoroughfare, with a gate it was the Navy that stepped in and told TAMPOA that freedom required the street to be open twenty four hours, so TAMPOA meekly yielded, removed the gate and stopped bullying the city. Thus what the Navy giveth, occasionally the Navy taketh away. Blessed be the name of the Navy.

I miss the good old days when self confidence, obliviousness perhaps ruled our collective thinking. I suppose it's gone forever, and fear replaces the openness and cheerful optimism of the post World War Two era when anything seemed possible, and even desirable. One could buy an airline ticket on a whim and climb aboard without being treated like a terrorist. The assumption was positive, not negative about human intentions. Nowadays everyone is guilty until proven otherwise and I don't think it's the attitude that made America great.

So the trees must go, to protect freedom, and the barren wasteland their departure will leave behind will be the perfect symbol of the modern notion of what it is to be free: it is a wasteland devoid of beauty, surplus, debate or consideration. It is the negative freedom of a world without joy or trust or hope. It is just a tree, useless, not magnificent, perhaps not even beautiful, but surely no threat to national security in a rational world?

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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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