Night To Day, Key West Transforms

I'm not sure its a subject one should bring up at the dinner table in polite company but I am a fan of summer time. I like the time change in Spring and I regret the reversion to short evenings in the Fall. There: I've said it. 

Taking Cheyenne into Key West is an opportunity tom me after a night off work to see the city in the dark as dawn is still not creeping into the sky much before 6:30 so if I wake up at five Cheyenne gets to enjoy the cool early morning air for her walk. And enjoy it she does, asonly a dog can, with nose to the ground:

That she was blocking a driveway was attributable either to her inability to read or my inability to influence her but no one was awake to see her cluttering up their access to the street. Key West is worth admiring after dark:

I like the play of shadows and light and to see  it unencumbered by anyone else is a special privilege. Sometimes we forget how unusual it is to have such easy access to the largest such collection of antique wooden homes, the largest such urban agglomeration in the US. Please note I was walking about before the bakers were up. When I was a kid I went on a field trip at school half a century ago and I still remember the smell of rising yeast  at the bakery. The baker told us wide eyed seven year olds that he got to work at 2 in the morning to make sure everyone in town got fresh bread for breakfast. I have no idea why I remember that but I do. So now I am stuck with this notion that bakers should be up half the night as a matter of course. Apparently not:

I took the pictures a few nights ago when the moon was rather more full and that added to the effect of shadows and light.

I have been following the roaring debate about Walmart coming to Rockland Key in 2017 and as you might imagine the comments in the paper are not all positive. If I were to paint the reaction with a broad brush the Conchs are for the most part delighted to have access to mainland convenience, they say, at mainland prices. Opponents argue that if you want access to Walmart better you go and find them rather than having them find us. The fear is of course that local stores will wither, traffic around Rockland and Big Coppitt Keys will get even more tangled and Key West will lose it's off kilter eccentric cachet.

Obviously the Walmart thing is happening and equally obviously the net result will have to be seen. My wife the inveterate shopper likes Amazon, a company noted for having if anything less respect for employees than even Walmart and they deliver just about everything. So if protecting local stores is the goal I'm guessing the online market place has already shredded a  lot of that. I suspect  grocery stores will have a tough time dealing with Walmart, more so than art galleries, T-shirt shops and trinket  stores which is pretty much all Duval Street is good for these days.

As to Walmart sucking the soul out of Key West, if that ends up being the case it won't be for want of effort by a whole slew of characters already in Key West.  The thing is Key West is a town that is torn apart by many interests all of whom appreciate the unique nature of this little jewel. However the goose is being decidedly strangled by those seeking the golden eggs of climate, coral and character. It's inevitable and this town does not come equipped with the defense mechanism inherent in many college towns who raise cadres of social scientists, environmentalists, tree huggers and the like who leap to defend the ephemeral values of which I write. In Key West money talks and everyone else needs a job. 

So bit by bit the town degrades and old timers bitch about how the soul is gone and I suppose to some degree it has evaporated under the onslaught of millions of visitors and an unrelenting advertising campaign stressing mass tourism and cliches. And then when the mayor has a vision, not  ahuge all encompassing vision but a modest goal like creating a worthy city hall all the bean counters leap up and shout about taxes and waste and government and blah blah blah forgetting that they take cruises all over the world to see the wonders created by previous generations. The Parthenon, the Roman Forum, the Eiffel Tower, Windsor Castle, Macchu Picchu - none of these wonders were created by the minds of the public works critics who inhabit the fabric of Key West. 

The grandeur and the delight of things worth seeing have to be built and sustained. These gorgeous wooden homes, these narrow lush streets, this town built almost by accident from ship's timbers needs to be sustained and Walmart won't do that but Walmart alone won't wreck it either. Indifference, lack of vision and failure to lead will do Key West in if this unique community has perforce to be destroyed.

Sure, I would rather not see Key West making a space for crass commercialism but I'd also like to see this town take care of its workers. One wants to shop locally but too often local service sucks. I'm sorry to say it but it's true. It's not just underpaid workers, its owners of businesses that offer shoddy service, indifference and bad manners as their selling points. I have no idea if Walmart will be able to educate a workforce to do better but their selling point is cheap everything all the time and the people who will flock there won't expect decent service or good manners because they only see the cost of what Walmart sells, not the value. So, yes I think Walmart will contribute to the degradation of this city but it won't wreck it singlehandedly.

I got this photo from Facebook and I've never been to Denmark so I have no idea if its true but I have read that Denmark enjoys the world highest standard of living with excellent free health care, education and powerful social services. And apparently decent wages:

Too bad the drones at the drive through window on North Roosevelt don't speak Danish I guess. Sucks to be them, right?

Some days I feel like I'm standing on the edge watching the city slide into a worse future than its past, and on other days I suspect that once again the future will elude us and time will pass and things will not be as bad as they could be, not as soul destroying as the negative nellies like to imagine they will be.

Meanwhile the views are excellent, and some timeless monuments stand out, untouched and reassuring. Like the Eden House:

Long Live Key West. In whatever guise.

Lincoln's Dog

I found this story on Huffington Post and today is the 150th anniversary of the President's death so they ran the story for that reason. I have rejected revisionist views of the Lincoln Presidency for as long as they have been around and he has always been, in my estimation one of our greatest leaders. Who's to say not the greatest? That he had an affection for his dog well ahead of his time is just icing on the cake for me. It is well known on this page that Cheyenne is the apple of my eye, that unwanted dogs are my preference in a country where producing puppies for profit sickens me, so I thought this essay by Huffington Post's Arin Greenwood is an entirely suitable tribute to Lincoln on this day.

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When he was elected to the White House in 1860, Abraham Lincoln left his beloved dog Fido with friends.

And it turns out Lincoln was like more than a few of us whose pets have run of the house these days: He also left to those friends the dog's favorite horsehair sofa on which to nap, as well as a long, specific list of rules for how Fido was to be treated during his waking hours. For example, Fido was not to be scolded if he came inside with muddy paws, and he was to be fed from the dinner table.

Lincoln's attitudes and relationships with animals were in some ways ahead of their time. Matthew Algeo, author of the new book Abe & Fido: Lincoln's Love of Animals and the Touching Story of His Favorite Canine Companion, paints a picture of Lincoln as a deeply compassionate and empathetic person, whose respect for life extended from his fellow men all the way down to the smallest creatures.

                                                

The dog in this portrait is thought likely to be Fido. Photo courtesy of the Indiana Historical Society

The book's publication coincides with the 150th anniversary of Lincoln's death on April 15, 1865. The Huffington Post recently caught up with Algeo by email to find out more.

The Huffington Post: Can you tell me about the most important animals in Lincoln's life?

Matthew Algeo: One of his earliest memories was of a piglet he adopted from a neighbor. When the animal grew into a fat pig, his father butchered it for food. Given the family’s meager circumstances at the time, this was perfectly understandable. But it made a deep impression on Lincoln, and probably fostered his progressive views on animal welfare.

I will quote Lincoln himself to fully answer:

“I saw the hog, dressed, hanging from the pole near the barn. I began to blubber. I just couldn’t reconcile myself to my loss. I could not stand it, and went far back into the woods again, where I found some nuts that satisfied my hunger till night, when I returned home. They could not get me to take any of the meat; neither tenderloin, nor sausage, nor souse; and even months after, when the cured ham came on the table, it made me sad and sick to look at it.”

                                      

A statue of Abraham Lincoln with his favorite -- doomed -- piglet in Taylorville, Illinois. Photo by Jerome Pohlen

Then, of course, there was Fido, a mutt Lincoln adopted around 1855 when he was a successful lawyer in Springfield. At the time it was unusual to own a pet with no economic purpose. Fido was a pet, plain and simple. In a way he was a status symbol, proof that Lincoln had risen to the middle class.

You draw a connection in the book between Lincoln's attitudes toward animals, and his attitude toward slavery. Can you lay that out for me here?

This is touchy territory, of course, but I believe the empathy Lincoln felt for animals extended to all living creatures. He recalled vividly his early encounters with slavery when he rode down the Mississippi as a young man.

Lincoln witnessed unspeakable cruelty. He himself was incapable of cruelty. His attitude toward animals and his attitude toward the so-called "peculiar institution" were one [and] the same.

It could be argued that Lincoln’s empathy for animals permeated his politics. From his disdain for slavery to his inclination to pardon Union Army deserters sentenced to death, the mercy that Lincoln tendered even the smallest animals in his youth was magnified in his presidency.

“With malice toward none,” for Lincoln, included animals as well as his enemies. It’s remarkable, really. Even 150 years later, it would be difficult to find another politician -- let alone a president -- whose love of animals and political views were so inextricably linked.

Abraham Lincoln's horse, Old Bob, on the day of Lincoln's funeral. Photo courtesy of the Library of Congress

How were Lincoln's relationships with animals different from his contemporaries? How were they similar?

They were very different, in that Lincoln regarded even an ant’s life as worthy of protection. After shooting a turkey as a young boy, the event left him so traumatized than he never hunted “larger game” ever again. It was almost unheard of for a young man on the frontier to eschew hunting.

On the other hand, Lincoln was not, as some animal rights advocates now claim, a vegetarian. Like his contemporaries, he ate much meat: beef, lamb, venison. It was practically a requirement of frontier life.

Tell me about Fido. All about Fido. Including Lincoln's list of things that Fido's new owners were and weren't to do with the dog, when he was left behind upon Lincoln's move to the White House.

Lincoln owned pets throughout his life. Around 1855, when he was in his mid forties, Lincoln adopted a stray dog found near his home in Springfield, Illinois. Lincoln named the yellow mutt Fido -- Latin for “faithful” -- and the dog lived up to his name. Fido was Lincoln’s constant companion, following his master everywhere, from the post office, to the bakery, to William Florville’s barber shop, where Lincoln’s shaves cost $1.25 a month.

After he was elected president in 1860, Lincoln, fearing the long trip to Washington would be too stressful for Fido, left the dog in the care of friends in Springfield. Lincoln also gave the friends Fido’s favorite horsehair sofa. They had to promise to never leave him tied up in the backyard. He was not to be scolded for wet or muddy paws. He was to be allowed inside whenever he scratched at the door. And he was to be given scraps from the dining room table.

Fido was a pampered pet. After Lincoln left Springfield for the White House, Fido practically became the town mascot. He was given free reign, and unaccustomed to mistreatment of any kind.

It was his pleasant disposition that ultimately did him in. One day about a year after Lincoln’s assassination, Fido saw a man sitting on the curb whittling a stick. In his friendly way, Fido went up to the man and put his paws on him. But the man was a notorious town drunk, and he took his knife and thrust it into poor Fido, who ran away, then curled up and died behind a church. So, ironically, the life of complete security that Lincoln had given Fido led in some way to his demise.

                                   

Fido, Abraham Lincoln's beloved dog, in an undated photo. Photo courtesy of the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum

Did Lincoln have pets at the White House?

Yes! His White House was a veritable menagerie, with a dog, cats, rabbits, goats and ponies.

Lincoln was especially fond of the goats. He enjoyed watching them frolic on the lawn. When one of them disappeared, he was despondent. “‘Nanny Goat’ is lost,” Lincoln wrote to his wife Mary, who was traveling at the time. “Mrs. Cuthbert [the housekeeper] and I are in distress about it.”

Nothing more is known about Nanny.

What's your own history with animals? Did writing this book get you thinking about that any differently?

I’m a cat person! We have a big old orange cat named Copernicus (Mr. C for short). He’s a peach.

But writing this book definitely gave me an appreciation for dogs. It’s interesting: Lincoln was neither strictly a dog person nor a cat person; he was that rare sort of individual who loved both equally.

There are many issues on which Abraham Lincoln took a firm, uncompromising stand; however, concerning the superiority of dogs or cats, the Great Emancipator was uncharacteristically noncommittal.

What got you interested in Abraham Lincoln's life with animals?

While researching an earlier book (plug alert: Harry Truman’s Excellent Adventure: The True Story of a Great American Road Trip), I visited the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum in Springfield, Illinois.

Inside a display case was an old photograph of Lincoln’s dog, Fido. This really struck me, how this yellow mutt had been such an important part of Lincoln’s life that he had him photographed. So I began researching Fido and found that Lincoln regarded all animals with a tenderness that was practically unique at the time.

What were your big surprises or insights, working on this book?

Pet ownership is a relatively recent phenomenon. For example, commercial dog foods weren't mass produced until after the Civil War, when a British company called Spratt’s began selling its dog biscuits in the United States.

The company was actually founded by an American, James Spratt, an electrician from Ohio who went to England to sell lightning rods. The story goes that Spratt noticed stray dogs on a Liverpool dock eating leftover hardtack, the rock-hard biscuits that were the staple food of British sailors at sea.

Spratt developed a hard biscuit especially for dogs, using a recipe that comprised wheatmeal, vegetables, beetroot, and meat—though Spratt was cagey when it came to identifying the source of the meat. His advertisements intimated it was buffalo.

Are there any lessons here, in Lincoln's relationship with animals?

Yes: Never trust a politician who doesn’t love dogs. (For the record, Scott Walker insists he is allergic to dogs.)

           

A life size statue of Abraham Lincoln and a horse stands in front of the entrance to his summer retreat.

This interview has been lightly edited for length. Get in touch at arin.greenwood@huffingtonpost.com if you have an animal story to share!

St Mary's Key West

Walking Truman Avenue as the sun was setting I got this view of the complex and it put me in mind of some distant mission, an outpost of the Holy Mother Church in say, Africa, a place where businessmen, missionaries and drop outs went to seek their fortunes from the closed confines of Europe:

But there under the flagpole the scouts were doing their thing. I was a scout once, in England a few decades ago. We were brought up to honor God and the Queen and Be Prepared and we tied knots like they were going out of fashion. It was a simple after school philosophy of being a good citizen. I find the apparent obsession in this country with sex and gays and scouting to be rather odd. I wonder what Baden-Powell would think of it all. Go and build a campfire, put up a tent and don't shit where anybody could step in it was the focus of scouting when I was an English kid. Buggery was not spoken of, and frankly I think it was better. Mind you, B-P was a slightly peculiar fish as it turns out, a subscriber to Mussolini's Fascist principles they say, so perhaps American scouting with its odd obsession with rooting out homosexuality is closer to his ideals of order and subservience to social rectitude. Me? I'd rather go tie a knot in something which was always a problematic activity as I am left handed and knots confuse me almost as much as the rationale for homophobia.

There's lots of history here particularly relating to the War of 1898 when the US biffed Spain and took an interest in controlling some far flung real estate.

Key West is well known for it's bars and alcohol-fueled parties but in point of fact religion has played a huge role in the island's development as well. Jews have had a synagogue in Key West for longer than anywhere in Florida, and not hating Jews on principle was  a mark of tolerance in the bad old days. Catholicism was the religion of the original European settlers from Spain, not a cheerfully tolerant lot in those days and fights between Protestant Europeans  and Catholics were the order of the day. Key West has not been like that and every type of belief has been accommodated without feeling the need to kill each other.

The fact that the Minor Basilica of St Mary's gets to occupy what is essentially a large city block is a mark of how long this church, has been here. In those 19th century days this part of Key West was waste ground on the outer limits of the city which huddled on the northwest corner of the island around the harbor. There was land to spare out here.

 And in some respects there still is.

The expansive grounds feature a recreation of the grotto of Lourdes but in this case instead of medical cures, some people attribute miraculous anti-hurricane properties to this place. In summer when the scientists at the weather service are seeing storms you will see people coming here lighting candles to keep the storms away. 

Apparently they were not enough in 2005 when Hurricane Wilma overcame the grotto and flooded the city to dire effect. But on the whole the track record isn't bad throughout the 20th century which Key West managed to survive after the wrecker of 1909.

There is also an anti-abortion memorial site to the memory of the unborn which sounds like an oxymoron to me. The rather plodding cast of my mind has always made a feeble Catholic out of me. After they stopped saying Mass in Latin I lost interest in the ritual of a sanitized dumbing down of church ritual and my pursuit of common sense puts me outside the world of demons and miracles and mystical stuff that had a home in people's minds before Galileo figured out what was up. I suppose you could argue praying to a plaster cast statue to keep hurricanes away does no harm , but then those same prayers also extend to a belief system that seems to forget that Jesus is quoted as telling people to love their neighbors, not burn them at the stake for being inappropriate. 

The Catholic church may have set aside mysticism and incense but fund raising remains it's strong suit:

I read with some wry amusement this week that the Vatican has rejected the proposed new French ambassador. As usual the Vatican diplomats cloak this decision in mystery but apparently the dapper Frenchman is not only eminently qualified for the job but he is also discreetly committed to living with another man. The Vatican says its not the homosexuality but the lack of marriage status of Laurent Stefanini that makes him unsuitable to represent France to the Holy See. He should  come and open a Consulate in the Conch Republic where there would be no problems. So much for not judging poofs as the Pope tried to claim a while back. 

I like to think the tide of history will sweep all of us forward to a place where bickering about our differences takes second place to the idea that getting along makes more sense. I am forced to  think, especially because I do I read history and pay attention that I am an idiot. Tolerance becomes apparent only under duress. Except in a few isolated pockets among a few scattered populations.

In the midst of what people expect to see in Key West normal everyday life goes on. How the two worlds coexist is hard to figure but humans have long had the very interesting capacity to hold to two opposing beliefs at the same time. When you are angry you call it hypocrisy, when you are in a  good mood you call it tolerance. When you are me you call people inexplicable and just try to to keep making sense of your own life in a town which they say has more bars and more churches per capita than any other town its  size. Sounds likely to me.

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Key West Staycation

During our  recent Spring Break in the mountains of North Carolina I found myself reflecting on the fact that two and a half million people visit Key West each year on vacation. Far too many I sometimes think, but they must be on to something. Then I'd look out of the window at another dank cold mountainous day and ponder the news from my phone that Key West was 82  degrees and sunny -again! 

So when we found ourselves with a weekend off and no chores to do I said we should have a staycation be it but two days long. On Saturday we stayed home, watched movies, ate and drank and swam in the canal even though at the time it felt more like a chore than a pleasure as the water could not have been much over 75 degrees. It seemed like a contrast to indulgent living and made a blanket on the couch feel much more sensible. Then on the Sunday afternoon we left Cheyenne home to get some extra snoring time and we drove the convertible into town.

We parked the Fiat 500 on Windsor and walked a couple of blocks through what is essentially a no parking zone on Olivia (unless you are lucky and enjoy particular favor with the parking gods) to the little white house that is Seven Fish . They require reservations and they startled me with a phone call in the morning to check our six o'clock reservation stood. Yes I said firmly, dinner for two.

I like Seven Fish, an intimate home setting that some complain is noisy thanks to the wooden roof and lack of insulation. I suppose it is a bit noisy but oddly for one who hates noise I find it comforting. I had no trouble sustaining a conversation and the sound of a room filled with happy diners gave a pleasant background to dinner. And it was intimate enough I felt inhibited from taking pictures so their website photo, rather inadequate above, will have to do. We shared a mushroom quesadilla to start and then shared gnocchi and the snapper special main courses washed down with four assorted glasses of white wine.  It was a properly leisurely meal. Seven Fish is supposed to be moving to the former Kyushu Japanese restaurant on Truman but they say there is no immediate schedule and I'm glad. I am fearful restaurants lose their edge when they grow and expand so I recommend Seven Fish before their distant move eventually becomes a reality.

 

The next part of the program was a play at the Red Barn Theater which I had spotted and was quite looking for to.  Set in Ireland of a few years back (possibly) the story concerned a pair of  rural families whose young offspring seem destined to marry eventually though the outcome is never clear. It's a comedy though with the sort of tragic overtones only the Irish seem capable of bringing sometimes to the merriest of situations. The Red Barn is a delightful hang out, just off the noisy 300 block of Duval, yet locked in a world of its own fronted by the expansive brick courtyard with lots of scooter and bicycle parking and vehicle parking for those with particular needs.

I greatly enjoyed the performance of the two elders and the two younger members of the families. Their accents were convincing, which surprised me slightly, the pace was brisk, all over in 75 uninterrupted minutes, and the stage settings were evocative yet simple. I found the characters in "Outside Mullingar" believable and the plot though convoluted, intriguing. Not surprising really if you have heard of the play (and film) called Doubt which was created by the same playwright.

Naturally the staycation had to be prolonged a bit. This involved a stop at my preferred ice cream place- Flamingo Crossing and I include the Trip Advisor link so you can see what others think. I don't buy ice cream for great service, but for great ice cream and they have it. I've never had crappy service either but I know what I want, I ask for it promptly and leave a tip. In an underpaid over stressed town like Key West its not rocket science. I have no idea why you would ask for familiar flavors here, as they have all sorts of tropical fruits and their own take on Cuban Coffee if, unlike me, you like coffee flavored food. I like to get Soursop, which in defiance of its name is soft and creamy and sweet and perfumed. My wife had the more sour passion fruit and guava flavors.

A small boy  in front of me (just out of the frame above) was whining to his father about some unidentifiable human rights injustice and they were clearly British. I leaned over and looked the small boy in the eye and said: "No whinging!" which English-ism startled the child into silence. "See?" his father said smiling at me, "...there's someone else from England here." Thus the ice cream purchasing proceeded in serenity, the small boy staring at me with big round eyes. My wife and I took seats on the deck out front and watched people walk by, the zombie effect of being on vacation and not knowing what to look at nor where to go.

One is supposed to remind oneself from time to time that one is lucky to live where others come to play and all too often the effect is to create aggravation at their inconvenient occupancy of streets, parking, restaurants and stores and everything. A short visit into their world is a useful reminder of why they do it. Consider the staycation a success.

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A Sunday Ride

I am keeping my fingers crossed but with 1,000 crisp clean miles on my old Vespa I seem to be moving into a place of trust with my 1979 P200E. I have been riding it to work, for errands and for fun over the past couple of months and I am finding the scooter to be living up to my hopes for sensible reliable transportation in the Keys.

The idea was to spare my well ridden Triumph Bonneville motorcycle from racking up another 80,000 commuter miles by using a low maintenance , properly restored classic Vespa to ride to work. These old machines have a reputation for reliability when restored properly and not tuned within an inch of their lives for speed. For me, who grew up with these two stroke wonders there is the satisfaction of an old nostalgic itch as well as I bomb along Highway One keeping up with traffic and enjoying an old school ride. Or, as in this case taking an hour to abandon my dog and ride a few back roads through the Lower Keys. 

On Facebook (Michael Conchscooter) the furniture abandoned at the end of the road prompted quite a few ludicrous comments, though I had to confess it never occurred to me to try to step through it and see if I could find a portal back to Narnia, which CS Lewis based on a village near my hometown of Terni, in Italy. I caught this t-shirt in a shop window in Narni in 2013:

No Lions ruling the Keys or Umbria, worst luck, but my Vespa and its 12 horsepower rule the road.

It's the  time of year when the winds honk out of the southeast, blowing cool breezes up from the Bahamas, a time of year when the sun's heat starts to assert itself, winter cold fronts are a memory (missed by some) yet for those of us that live here the heat is not yet close to unberable. Early mornings are cool and during the afternoon the air is not yet saturated as it will be in July and  August into September. I rate this weather as just about perfect and swimming season is just about here.

Now I get to look forward to summer thunderstorms, lashing rain, spectacular lightning at night  and big black ominous clouds by day. I'll have to dig out my waterproofs and see how my reconditioned Vespa does in wet season...

I hope you have an easy reflective Sunday, and gird your loins for the  week ahead. Me and my Vespa are ready.

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