Renewing Key West

It is said by some residents of the city of Key West that from time to time they need to get off "the Rock." I live in the county but I enjoy making the trip to the mainland, better by motorcycle,but even by car I like taking advantage of the road that connects, otherwise one might as well live in Hawaii and enjoy a real island lifestyle. 

So after a week driving around in mainstream America one comes home to a fresh appreciation for the architecture of island life. Old Town, for all its lack of polish, retains a certain verve with its gingerbread decorations and relative solidity and permanence of its 19th century wooden structures.

The plainest of facades gets a lift from the old style Florida louvers on the windows.

The contrast is stark between the norm of suburban Florida where cookie cutter homes line the roads and this:

Or this:

Or this:

I was chatting with my boss earlier this week about why we enjoy living here. Jessica, a native Floridian half my age refuses to live elsewhere. That her boyfriend makes his living extracting oil from the frozen tundra is his problem. She, the Florida native, can't leave the Keys.

Odd that; I'm not a native anywhere much and I feel the same way. It just takes a week among the cold leafless trees Up North to remind me of that same sentiment and put it uppermost in my mind.

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Vespa Commute

One thing about being forced to ride slowly is that I leave home earlier than usual, just so I don't have to push my scooter out of it's breaking in comfort zone...That in turn leads me to pull over from time to time when cars catch up to me in the faster sections. So here I am being polite all pulled over on the ample shoulder of Highway One and there springs to view a photograph. This is Saddlebunch Bridge  Number One, at Mile Marker 17:

 Luckily the views tend to justify the pictures, especially with a few alterations to the exposure levels. I am quite surprised how well I keep up with traffic in the 45 mph sections of the highway. Usually I pass the slow pokes even by just a few miles an hour, but now rolling along in line with them the little Vespa with all its limitations imposed by the running in period does a decent job of keeping up. 

Stopping for pictures also gives the engine a breather, here on the section of the highway around Mile Marker 10, Rockland Key where the road becomes four lanes and even the most timid can find it ion their hearts to pass the Hobbitt on his moped.

I am really enjoying the ease of use of the Vespa, which weighs in around 230 pounds and feels as light as a bicycle when rolling off the stand.

Riding through town where the top speed limit is 35 and usually is less than that, the P200 already has enough oomph to keep up with traffic. The biggest liability is the front drum brake which is, to put it politely, rather wooden, ie: it doesn't work worth a damn. The hardest thing for me is to remember that rather sobering fact and keep my distance. The rear brake, operated by a foot pedal will lock up the rear wheel by contrast. 1970s  brakes! A disc brake conversion for the front is available but the parts alone cost $800, though it is something I think about every time I squeeze the front brake lever.

For my first twelve hour shift after my vacation I decided Cuban coffee was in order so I stopped by Sandy's Cafe after my ride through downtown, practicing shifting in traffic. I ordered a colada, described thusly in Wikipedia;

Colada, is 4-6 shots of Cuban style espresso served in a Styrofoam cup along with small, plastic demitasses. It is a takeaway form, meant to be shared. This is customary of workplace breaks in Cuban communities.

My colleagues wanted no coffee when I got to work so I ended up drinking one whole cup of espresso, all to myself. 

I handled it like a man, I hope.

The World's Oddest Public Loo

I have wanted to photograph the loo at Higgs Beach in a  very long time. However every time I have tried I have ended up skulking around like someone loitering with intent to commit acts of gross indecency, and have thus found myself unable to show off the really unusual architecture of this modest structure.

Why anyone sat down and decided the best possible shape for a combined men's loo and a women's loo would be circular I cannot possibly say. However it was an inspired choice as the interior accommodations have required some inspired angular compromises.

Photos rapidly snapped in here end up looking more like cubist abstract  art with lines going off at angles apparently randomly.  Yet each rounded corner, each flat surface is used to maximum effect to best use the awkward spaces.

The sad fact is that Higgs Beach, a county park within the city, is a hang out for bums especially in winter when the snowbird residentially challenged show up to enjoy a frost-free winter, and the rest rooms have been known to end up functioning as showers and changing rooms and even parking places. The beach is patrolled by a Sheriff's Deputy most days so this place's proper function has been restored.

On the whole county staff do a decent job of keeping the place clean and usable, a Sisyphean task if ever there was one. 

I  went to the loo to use them but found they were unusually deserted partly I suspect because the whole area was fenced off for another of those tedious spandex sporting events that block portions of the city and highway periodically in winter as active people from Up North come down to show off their spandex covered bottoms in feats of endurance that in my opinion violate the ethics of a properly enervated tropical lifestyle.

 Anyway finding myself alone I got the camera out and took surreptitious photos right and left like Aldrich Ames on a busy day at work.

As you can see from my spy shots this bathroom is a positive warren of cubby holes and dead ends, the nearest thing you will find to a proper maze in Key West.

 Yes, I know it's just a public bathroom, of which there aren't enough anyway in Key West, but I love the weird rounded walls, the whirring of the giant extractor fan...

 ...the peculiar shade of battleship gray paint, left over it seems like from some military project.

 Skirt the bums, step decisively and check out the world's oddest public loo.

At last, pictures taken, a project on hold for at least six of the last seven years. And no one even noticed me. Thank God.

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7th December 1941

President Franklin D. Roosevelt: Yesterday, December 7, 1941—a date which will live in infamy—the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan.

The United States was at peace with that nation, and, at the solicitation of Japan, was still in conversation with its government and its emperor looking toward the maintenance of peace in the Pacific. Indeed, one hour after Japanese air squadrons had commenced bombing in the American island of Oahu, the Japanese ambassador to the United States and his colleague delivered to our secretary of state a formal reply to a recent American message. While this reply stated that it seemed useless to continue the existing diplomatic negotiations, it contained no threat or hint of war or armed attack.

It will be recorded that the distance of Hawaii from Japan makes it obvious that the attack was deliberately planned many days or even weeks ago. During the intervening time the Japanese government has deliberately sought to deceive the United States by false statements and expressions of hope for continued peace.

The attack yesterday on the Hawaiian Islands has caused severe damage to American naval and military forces. I regret to tell you that very many American lives have been lost. In addition, American ships have been reported torpedoed on the high seas between San Francisco and Honolulu.

Yesterday the Japanese government also launched as attack against Malaya.

Last night Japanese forces attacked Hong Kong.

Last night Japanese forces attacked Guam.

Last night Japanese forces attacked the Philippine Islands.

Last night Japanese forces attacked Wake Island.

And this morning the Japanese attacked Midway Island.

Japan has, therefore, undertaken a surprise offensive extending throughout the Pacific area. The facts of yesterday and today speak for themselves. The people of the United States have already formed their opinions and well understand the implications to the very life and safety of our nation.

As commander in chief of the Army and Navy I have directed that all measures be taken for our defense. But always will our whole nation remember the character of the onslaught against us. . .

Five Years Of Cheyenne

Last night while I was at work they held my favorite Key West event, the Holiday Parade, without me.

In 2009 that was where I first saw Cheyenne stumping along in the parade with an "adopt me" jacket on. My wife dived into the parade and was told to come by  the SPCA on Stock Island on Monday. Which I did as soon as they opened. "I want to adopt Cheyenne," I announced to their surprise. That was that.

 It's been a long journey including side trips to California,  Canada and all points in between.

I wish there were another five years to go but as healthy and youthful as she is...realistically, she is already 13 years old. 

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Why They Don't Vote

A column by Martin Dyckman in Context Florida Magazine pondering why so few of us bother to vote. Often with good reason he argues persuasively, noted on this the anniversary of Pearl Harbor Day:

It was on Nov. 19, 1863, at the dedication of the Gettysburg battlefield cemetery, that President Abraham Lincoln expressed the purpose of America as we like to think of it today, pledging himself and the nation to honor the fallen heroes by ensuring that “government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”

In the voting a year later — which Lincoln had doubted he would win — the people rallied to his challenge. Not only did they re-elect him; the turnout of those eligible to vote in the North and the four Border States was 73.4 percent. It puts to shame today’s summer soldiers and sunshine patriots.

The government that Lincoln idealized, and for which he gave his life, is in grave danger again. Its survival is in doubt.

In the eyes of many, it has ceased already to be a government of the people, by the people, for the people. It has become a government by only some people for only some other people.

Barely a third of the eligible voting-age population — 36.4 percent — voted in the midterms this month, the lowest since 1942, when millions were at war or working long shifts in defense plants. This estimate accounts for all who should have registered, not simply those who did.

These days, the non-voters include people in states like Texas, Indiana, and Wisconsin, where voter ID laws are diabolically difficult to satisfy. According to the United States Election Project, Florida performed better, at 43.1 percent, than the national average. But even in Florida, some 75,000 people who did show up at the polls cast no vote for governor, a number greater than the winner’s margin.

“Low turnout is more than a set of figures to lament; it is an indicator of deep problems within American democracy,” writes Curtis Gans, director of the Center for the Study of the American Electorate, who forecast the low November turnout based on apathy in the primaries.

“Contributing factors to the decline in motivation are not hard to find,” Gans writes.

Among the reasons: “campaigns that are run on scurrilous attack ads that give the citizen a perceived choice between bad and awful; one major party situated far to the right of the American center and the other without a clear and durable message; a decline in faith that government will address major societal needs exacerbated by those whose politics seek to accomplish just that… increased inequality that has the collateral effect of reducing hope for those at the bottom….”

Some people don’t vote simply because they’re lazy. Others are satisfied with the status quo, or willing to accept whoever wins. But that hardly describes very many people these days.

In my view, the major reason people don’t vote is that they don’t think it will make a difference. That does make a difference by leaving the choice to those who are motivated because they are angry. In this election, that faction consisted largely of white men.

Sad to say, there are sound reasons to think voting won’t make a difference.

In many cases, it really doesn’t. Most congressional districts are drawn to determine the outcome. If you’re a Republican in Corinne Brown’s district, or a Democrat in Ander Crenshaw’s, why bother to vote? Indeed, no Democrat saw any use at all in running against Crenshaw. The same manipulation has rigged the perpetual outcomes of most state legislative districts.

Regardless of specific elections, Congress and the legislatures in the long haul respond primarily to the big lobbies rather than to public sentiment on such issues as tax reform or corporate liability. I wrote not long ago on a scholarly study that documented how the United States is already, for all that matters, an oligarchy in the form of a republic. The public gets what it wants only when it coincides with what the Koch brothers and other plutocrats want.

One of the authors of that study, Princeton Professor Martin Gillens, is the author of a new book Affluence & Influence: Economic Inequality and Political Power in America. In his introduction, he quotes the prescient warning of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis: “We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we cannot have both.”

Martin Dyckman is a retired associate editor of the St. Petersburg Times. He lives near Waynesville, N.C. Column courtesy of Context Florida.