Baffled, Befuddled And Bewildered

I fear I am falling into a state of  suspended disbelief here in the Florida Keys. They keep telling us the worst is yet to come but so far less than a thousand of 75,000 residents have been tested and the total number of cases as of yesterday was stuck at less than 70. Not 70,000, that was not a misprint. 

Light relief in the form of the Moo Car. At the last supper I had with friends before we all went to Gethsemane to expiate our sins, somehow the subject of the Moo Car came up and lo and behold last week I saw it and I photographed it, unoccupied as it was. Much hilarity I trust and thank you Chuck for the reminder.

In the world in which we are currently living summer heat is covering us like a blanket suddenly. The canal waters behind my house are fast losing their cool winter edge and the daily swim is more pleasure than pain by now. The photo below illustrates our general lack of movement, many bicycles, a few golf carts cross paths but of cars there are not many. Some people still have to drive to work but even the bridge coming into Key West poses no apparent threat of traffic jams as lanes close and repair work continues.

Driving up Margaret Street I caught these two strolling and epitomizing the new state of car free Key West. It's the zombie apocalypse and they are strolling amiably along in the best tradition of insouciance in the face of unspeakable terror. 

I wanted to walk the docks a bit and breathe fresh salt air  unpolluted by human activity but it occurred to me social distancing could be impossible to maintain on a platform less than six feet wide with steep drop offs on either side to the water. I had to limit myself to the telephoto.

Sunset walks are a relief from the rest of day, the places I go where people who live cheek by jowl in the city have no interest. Nature keeps on keeping on, doing very well we are told where human activity has shrunk. In the Keys there are signs of Spring amidst year round summer weather.

I look at the greenery and look for the odd leaf out. Edward Weston did this to astonishing effect and I wonder at his dedication to making things look different than what they are.

The quiet times walking Rusty who prefers a nose down position gives me time to clear my mind while looking for contrasts and shapes. It is freeing also because this isn't my job and I am only answerable to myself. 

There are no expansive views around here and where there are in the Keys they are usually over water. That's where the people gather to look out across salt ponds scattered through the Lower Keys and look for the sun to set. Rusty and I are deep in the bushes, socially distant doing nothing useful.

If Rusty could talk, and there are days I'm surprised he actually can't, I doubt he would be able to say with any confidence how coronavirus scares have affected his life. On my days off we walk further but day to day his food magically appears, his water bowl is clean and he wanders the house and the deck and the yard at will, as always.

As long as I can keep saying that I figure coronavirus is bearable. That the SPCA is asking for food donations for people who are running out of money to feed their dogs is disturbing. They have handy drop off bins and addinga  couple of bulky items to the shopping list is not at all inconvenient.

Rusty is a jealous dog. When a neighbor's dog came by looking for suckers with treats (us) he was not at all happy and he let me know by following me closely and staring hard at me in disapproval. This is a one dog home coronavirus or not and I am not allowed to forget it even for a moment. That won't change for any disease or injury, his or mine.

Hot And Dry

Rumor has it there will never be any rain again in South Florida. That and cell phone towers are responsible for the plague. Actually March 2020 was the hottest on record and the driest in 90 years according to the Key West weather service. The cellphone tower rumor is just some madness dreamed up in England, home of mad cow disease. Their answer to coronavirus is to lock themselves up tight and pull down 5G cellphone towers.

The unusual feature of a rain free landscape in the Keys is that it doesn't have much direct effect on food and water supplies. There is no agriculture except for gardeners doing their joyous hobbies and drinking water comes an aquifer under Miami so if it doesn't rain in the Keys it doesn't affect water supplies like drought used to. 

However one ought to look a bit further afield than just the Keys because no rain is really bad for the aquifer which will absorb salt water in times of drought besides lack of rain does nothing good for the Everglades, Lake Okeechobee or South Florida agriculture. And I have noticed that around here trees are shedding leaves like crazy. Things are drying up and dust is prevalent.

Then add the sugar cane harvest in Cuba into the mix and now we have air pollution to deal with. It happens every year when they burn the cane fields to clear them and the wind blows the smoke into the Keys. The sky gets  a weird hazy effect which is very unusual for around here where sunshine and blue skies are the order of the day. 

Oh and life goes on. You don't have to die from coronavirus if you choose to breathe termite poison instead. 

Coronavirus is still around and the roads into the keys are closed and the newspaper is reporting some discussion about ending the lock down. They say the curve has flattened in the modern pandemic speak we are all supposed to adopt. However yesterday I saw only 63 official cases in the Keys (population about 75,000) and the number of deaths remains at 3 with seven hospitalized. I'm not sure how much flatter they expect the curve to become. However they have tested a mere 635 people so there is that.

I think about my relatives in Italy. strictly locked down for five weeks with no end in sight while here in Key West stay well distanced and all should be well they say. And some people mutter darkly about a government take over of civil rights. I like how Americans always kick back but I'm not worried about losing rights thanks to the virus. The virus will pass and we have no chance of losing our collective ability to remain feisty!

I have a hospital mask in the glove box of my car, a left over from my time at Jackson South when my wife was issued masks to visit me when my wound got infected. There were so many masks and gowns and gloves they hung them on the door of my room for all to help themselves:

I put my mask on before going into a store as required by city and county rules which say face coverings must be worn in stores if ten people are gathered. Frankly I am hardly ever in a store in the first place, as there's nowhere to go these days except grocery shop every other week.I did take a bike ride to Ace Hardware as the drip pan in the stove top decided to die a crumbly rusty death in the middle of the plague. Mask on, stay apart and they don't take cash to avoid touching your germs. Thank god for the electric motor as the head winds were fierce.

And if  you happened to be on Simonton Street with a bottle there is still an al fresco opening post. There again what are the chances there will be someone around with a bottle, open or closed.

I have given up paying attention to numbers as testing is vague and uncertain, and the mixture of politics butting heads with science and science not being certain about anything makes me feel as though the only way to try to cope is to do what seems right in the moment for oneself. The trouble is we don't seem very capable of common sense as a species and that leaves me wondering how long we will blunder forward making mistakes and prolonging the madness of collective lock down. 

Personally I am not a great fan of collectives and consensus decision making nor am I much of  a fan of being led and being dictated to but if we have to suppress our revulsion in the name of the public good I wish the messages we were sent made sense and remained coherent. Coronavirus is exposing a lot of rents in the fabric of public consciousness and for those that don't usually pay attention it may come as a surprise to see how well the planet copes with less human activity. Entropy is quite healthy for the planet it turns out, in case there was any doubt.

I have no doubt the lessons of coronavirus will be forgotten pretty damned quick, especially the uncomfortable lessons that point to our essential uselessness in a  planet wide crisis. Pick up a  pay check, go to the store, walk the dog. Who knew how absurdly unimportant the rest of the daily drama really was?

Rusty knew. Wise dog.

High Wire Act

After Hurricane Irma raked the Keys with 140 mph winds we the survivors wandered around slightly dazed picking up the pieces, and there were a great many pieces.  By the time our absent neighbors got back with supplies and a fresh helping of determination they brought with them the trappings of an advertising campaign: "Keys Strong!" they posted everywhere. It has I find, become a commonplace by now. Pink underwear notwithstanding.

I have met Doug the past couple of times I have been wandering Key West in the early hours and we exchange thoughts, he holding Teeki and I watching Rusty who is smaller than that burly Husky and therefore keeps my  formerly stray dog in a state of fear filled uncertainty. While the dogs eye each other Doug and I commiserate. I think I can safely say we are both glad to be here but both of us wouldn't mind a return to normal. Doug is much more outgoing than am I and misses his  sessions in public spaces, but we both find ourselves slightly unnerved walking around a town completely devoid of humans. 

The exercisers come out with the sun, the dog walkers the joggers the cyclists but there is no difficulty at all in sidestepping each other. Taking a turn past the Old Town Fire Station on Simonton the firefighters continue to do their chores and keep their equipment at the ready. The fire department also runs the ambulances so they have double duty. 

I am technically a First Responder but happily I don't touch people in the dispatch office, though because we take the calls we have to deal at some minor level with every single incident. The call volume is much lower than normal but the calls are much more clearly divided these days between pleas for information and serious calls for help. Parking has pretty much shut down and the sole parking control officer on patrol each day is checking for hazards and blocked driveways as the meters are off and residential parking spaces are not being enforced. Oddly enough one of the administrative calls that we are dispatching several times a day are Vehicle Identification Number checks. An officer is sent to confirm the vehicle is as described in the ownership transfer papers and with the officer's signature the owner of the vehicle can get fresh registration papers. Typically this is done for purchase or a state transfer.

We had a discussion about why so many right now and on the one hand the thought was that people need money and are selling cars to raise cash. The other idea was that procrastinators haven't bothered to change their license plates on their cars when they arrived from out of Florida and that laziness is catching up to them. Another of the less desirable attributes of the coronavirus  is its ability to bring out the worst in people and rumors abound of  cars with out of state tags getting yelled at to go home.

I haven't seen any of that or heard of any such incidents first hand but in Key West it seems more than usually stupid to fuss about tags on cars. There are thousands of military personnel stationed here who drive private vehicles with home state license plates obviously, plus there are people here quite legally who own second homes and drive out of state registered cars. They too are allowed past the checkpoints set up at the county line. I know the city is taking a very hard line with anyone who cares to offer a vacation rental right now and the hotels are all closed tight, so getting worked up about out of state tags is a wild goose chase best left, as usual, to rumor mongering Facebook drama warriors.

The word filtering through the news is that the people in charge are trying to figure out how to reopen the country for business. Oddly enough it doesn't seem to be clear who exactly gets to make that decision, with the President mulling over how fast he can do it and the state governors wondering what their best moves will be individually. The whole proposition seems ridiculous to me but there again it seems to me we the people have done a better job of making the decision to self isolate than our leaders have done in telling us what to do. 

As usual there is no testing and no knowledge which means we are left with wild speculation as to what is really going on with the virus here. Open everything up and the virus comes back they say. Keep everything closed down and no one has any work. What a bizarre dilemma. Glad I get to sit on the sidelines and watch the decision making process from those who thought being in charge was a good idea and so they ran for office.  That was before the coronavirus was on the horizon. Now they have to decide how to cope and we get to watch which seems more creepy than usual. 

And so it goes, nothing changes,  some few work, others don't, some don't need to... My wife is teaching from home which it turns out is incredibly hard work. I work my usual day shift schedule with spray in hand and my temperature taken at the start of each shift. So far so good.  What else is there to say or to hope for? So far so good. Call it Keys Strong if you feel like tempting fate but things feel a good deal too tentative to describe anything as strong at the moment.

Like the phantom "workers overhead" we trip the light fantastic on a very thin high wire for the time being.

The Hole In The Wall Gang

Bandits have taken over Key West. He was a blur in the distance but his fishing gear following along behind reassured me.

I am sure you like me, have seen the pictures of mass graves in New York, anonymous pine coffins half covered in dirt, lined up like 19th century plague victims. You've heard the stories from big cities across the US which now enjoys the distinction of more coronavirus deaths than any other lucky country. And yet in the Florida Keys the numbers remain low, hospitals are coping and most people are paying attention to their social distancing.

There is hardly any testing and our public health system is run, as it were, by a lawyer who is about as visible as any ghostly presence might take in a leadership role. And yet the Keys are coping under the redoubtable leadership of the Sheriff of all people. Law enforcement has taken the lead in this health care crisis and the Sheriff has overridden the State even though they told him to take down the checkpoints on the two entry points to the islands. One person has been arrested and to my astonishment they say thousands have been turned back. Thousands of people still think it's a good time for a Keys vacation? 

I was always a big fan of the fire department taking over the ambulance service when the private company lost the contract. Since then the business of collecting money from a population largely uninsured has been problematic but the service has been pretty damned good. Combined with the Sheriff's expanded public helicopter service if you can't get it in the Keys, Miami is not far away and Miami has  first class healthcare, as I found out rather painfully.  The ambulance service in Key West has doubled up with spare ambulances, lots of cleaning and sterilizing and protective gear. They are ready to cope and that makes my job of dispatching them a lot less stressful. And yet so far the number of Covid-19 cases reported is easily managed.  I feel like we in the Keys should be feeling very very lucky so far. Or I'd like to think we are well managed. 

In my early morning walks I find people stand well back, everyone gets the idea that separation is important. At the same time everywhere you go you see evidence of a stationary city, the old curling signs telling people businesses are closed, a community that stopped still when the plague swept through town.

I was asked on Instagram what it's like to be in the Keys during the epidemic. That's a tough one to answer as I'm not typical, I don't hang out in bars but I do miss the choices of visiting places that made me appreciate life in this small town. Take your pick, Key West is yours. For me the live theaters, the Tropic Cinema and the Studios of Key West top my list but its pretty arbitrary. I miss the public toilets in the morning whose absence means I can't drink tea on my drive into town with Rusty. Is that weird? I have a whole circuit of places I can pee in peace when out with my dog and now they are all locked. Bugger. I like my morning Yorkshire Gold and now I have to wait until I get home. First world problem.

The hopeful sign in the window of the Business Guild on Duval Street...you suppose June will see us "back to normal?' It's inconceivable to me that we could still be here drilling the tourism economy into the ground. I got a call at work from some guy Up North who asked me, a police dispatcher, when the Covid-19 shut down would be over. I just sat there wondering why he needed me to help him to decide to cancel his fishing trip. Dude, I wanted to say, I canceled my Irish vacation at the beginning of March. But there again I'm an adult and I felt no need to call the Irish Gardai to ask their opinion. But we live in an age of learned helplessness I find. 

And then there are the members of the community who won't let their standards down. Leaves are falling and accumulating. They make the town look forgotten, and I know it's a temporary thing but that sound of leaves blowing in the wind feels like a ghost town is wrapped around you and your dog.

We stepped into the street to avoid him, he barely acknowledged us as he kept on sweeping with determination and precision. I admire such dedication especially as I suck at it. Though in my defense I trimmed the bushes lining my drive and encroaching my mailbox. Doing my ineffectual bit to push back entropy. I can't stand gardening.

This endless hurricane evacuation is wearing on everyone, the shortage of work and money, the confused and uncertain future, leaders who can offer no advice as they seem to know as little as we do. What a life. And then there are our neighbors who just don't get it. Seen Sunday morning at the White Street Pier, the real bandits gathering in a large clump in a public place. I looked and wondered why they feel the need to do it while the rest of us are trying to stay apart:

I keep hoping for the best, I keep wanting to believe we are close to peak infection, I trust this virus won't come back before there is an effective vaccine. I know you are doing the same and in the end we can only hope this social distancing stuff works and the imbeciles will get onboard. If they don't this thing could drag on beyond even my capacity to be isolated. Then what? 

Old Bahia Honda Alone

Photos are anecdotal inasmuch as I can take a picture any old time and make it look like the highway is jammed or empty. But believe me when I tell you I stopped on Niles Channel Bridge, forty feet above the water and took this picture absolutely alone on the highway for a mile behind me and half that in front. That's not a moment in time, that's the reality of roadblocks coming into the Keys and most people out of work.

 Arriving at Bahia Honda on a lovely morning and I was all alone. With Rusty. We walked alone.

I live near Venture Out, a residential trailer park on Cudjoe Key filled with dog owners who conscientiously walk their dogs at least twice a day and I applaud them for their diligence. (I played with photography filters to enhance the unnatural colors below).

However aside from the boredom of walking the same streets every single day I don't see the safety in numbers of  dodging a dozen dog walkers on the same street. 

Did I overdo this one? I post it here because this a page between friends not as an example of high photographic art. I see lots like this on Instagram but though I find it fun to push back the envelope of tedium closing in during the pandemic it's not my style to process pictures that hard. If you like it by all means copy and use it, as you can with any of my pictures.

 For some reason I was looking down while walking the beach, watching where I put my feet as I am always more careful than I used to be before my accident, and I found an ancient 20th century relic. I have to say I don't remember film photography with anything but irritation so holding this long lost automatic film canister in my hand did not bring back happy memories. I love digital.

 Rusty and the full moon that had everyone in ecstasy recently.

 I'll tell you what though, with all this full pink moon stuff going around I got some good tips to photograph the moon properly next time I am inclined.  If we are still locked down I'll be forced to give it a  go in a month. I also learned about Earthshine and photography. Honestly though I find photographing celestial bodies to be only marginally interesting in relation to what's underneath.  A horizon underneath the photographed moon might make it more interesting. Here's a yellowish moon:

Bird on a Stick alert. Turkey vulture giving me the stink eye. You know things are not going well when vultures look askance at you. I took the picture and reminded the bird that Rusty and I were both quite alive, just resting.

 I tell you, we were completely alone shortly after seven in the morning last Wednesday. Check out these pictures that need no captions. Oh by the weay the coronavirus stuff is still going on and businesses are still closed and you can't visit the Keys by car without a local ID. All that stays the same but the beauty is still here for us to enjoy.

Rusty found a hole and told me he wanted a rest.  Who was i to argue? We were still all alone. Sad but lovely.