Key West Diary

Pines, Gambusia And Tree Bark

2013-05-22T00:01:00.000-04:00

A perfect sunrise in the woods, thirty miles from Duval Street.

Waterfront

2013-05-21T00:01:00.000-04:00

The old cutter Ingham makes for a great picture especially with the early morning sun illuminating the floating museum.

I was not alone enjoy the cool morning air... I got a cheerful greeting in response from the couple entwined in their hammock. Quite enterprising I thought, sleeping in this corner unseen by all except me and my dog.

I used the flash to give this weed growing out of a crack in a wall, an eerie underwater look. Everything human is on hold here while the future design of the park is decided by the city, so plants tend to creep on buildings not maintained.

I'd love to see the old warehouse restored. Some have suggested using it to house a community market, a plan derided by others.

These picnic tables looked photogenic to me. Tough they were lined up in a rather regimented way.

The channel marker shown below lines up with a shorter mark placed near the beach. It's when the two line up that a ship entering the Key West harbor channel knows it is safe in deep water. These aids to navigation still matter in a world filled with electronics. Piloting by landmarks is a useful skill especially when the electrons fail.

Navigation is what mariners do to find their way when out of sight of land; piloting is directing a boat by marks when in sight of land. Now you know. Cheyenne, like you, couldn't care one way or the other.

Here's another thing, a blocked drain. Flooding is a nice problem in Key West and will probably get worse now that planetary carbon dioxide limits have been measured above 400 parts per million for the first time. Blocked drains don't help. Climate change? What's that?

For now we are dry and the waterfront is undeveloped. Cool.

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The Cyclist's Butt And Other Pictures

2013-05-20T00:00:00.000-04:00

Riding your bicycle in your underwear. It's how I know we live in the shadow of the End of Times.

Some people look to the Middle East for Armageddon, others study the entrails of Wall Street. I think it is a matter of bad taste that will bring the world crashing down around our ears. Driving home with a butt crack in your face gives you new appreciation for the burqa. Some days it feels like there is no happy medium when you live in a vacation town, good taste and common sense yield to the crass within us.

I saw the car rotting in a Old Town lot of this most expensive city and wondered at the odd use of space in a town that supposedly wants for nothing but space. On the other hand scooters remain very fashionable in town even these rather odd Chinese 3 wheelers. unlike the Italian version this scooter has a windshield, wipers and no facility at all for leaning round corners. All the disadvantages of both car and scooter it seems to me.

Parking is easier to find this time of year but two wheels, even three, are better than four for that. This picture I took against the setting sun on Front Street.

Old boats find quiet parking on canals too. The trick I have found with oats is to keep them, use and sell them the moment the lust for ownership passes. Nothing rots quite so fast or completely as an unloved boat.

Armchairs left out by the side of the road rot none too fast. I have adiscreet pile of stuff bound for the dump and when I judge it to be time with a full load for my small trailer off it goes. My neighbors are not quite that way inclined preferring to let it all hang out. It's in keeping with the indoor/outdoor nature of life in the sub tropics, but it does look odd, this way station for junk roadside.

Young people complain there isn't much to do in the Keys, and I suppose that's true if they are inclined toward snowboarding or rock climbing. Failing that they do often seem to enjoy finding quiet spots in the backwoods and there burning rubber for amusement. This black streak was in a Big Pine industrial neighborhood, doubtless no one there to complain in the middle of the night.

How this bear got into the Key Deer refuge I couldn't say but I knew I was under observation as Cheyenne and I stumped by.

Rain has been falling out of the sky at random lately. I carry waterproofs in my motorcycle saddle bags because I never know when it might hit. It plays havoc with clothes drying on the line too but rainwater seems to be good for the fabric. Cheyenne likes rain because it cools the place down.

One small note for drivers in the Key Deer Refuge (Big Pine Key mostly) if it is light enough to be able to read the 45mph sign thats how fast you can go (assuming no deer on the verges). There has been an epidemic of slow drivers of America hypermiling on Highway One lately. I had a great moment the other day when a county ambulance caught up to a cretin in a gray Nissan slowly passing a truck in the four lane section of the highway unawares of the brightly illuminated ambulance behind him. Then he panicked, slammed on his brakes and darted into a gap in the median, the place where police cars make u-turns to chase speeders in the opposite lanes. Well, you should have seen the rubber burning on the ambulance's tires as they struggled to deal with the moron's panic. No harm done happily and I got to confirm my belief that driver training should be ongoing through adulthood. Don't hog the left lane is lesson number one. Don't hold up traffic while you sight see is lesson number two. 35 at night 45 by day, thank you.

"Have you fed the dog?" my wife texted. Duh! Don't I always?

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Part Time Big Pine And The Lonely Alligator

2013-05-19T00:01:00.002-04:00

My dog does like to lie around and there are those occasions when she lies around and I say to myself, "She looks just like an alligator."

Check it out. Above we have a Yellow Labrador (not a Golden Retriever) and below we have a genuine North American alligator (not a saltwater crocodile). I can't see any difference.

We had run out of eggs and my wife had settled on breakfast for dinner last night and she needed eggs to mix in with the (soy?!) chorizo. I was going to sneak a ride on her Vespa to the Winn Dixie but as soon as I started to assemble the shopping list - phone, wallet, cloth bag - Cheyenne leapt to her feet and started wagging her tail in a big round circle. It was obviously walk time for her which meant I had to submit and drive the car. Where to go? That was the question buzzing through my head as we drove down Indies Road toward Highway One. Ah yes, of course, the Blue Hole.

We hadn't been to the Blue Hole, a former quarry filled with fresh water, in a while. This is one of those places that lives high on the tourist check-off list and is thus rarely unoccupied. Indeed there was a Jeep in the parking lot when we arrived but by the time I had Cheyenne's collar round her neck and a plastic bag in my pocket they were pulling out and leaving us alone to deal with the setting sun and the lonely alligator.

Cheyenne trotted back and forth smelling every single blade of grass and sticking her nose in leaf piles as usual. For every two paces I took she took a dozen. My wife sent me a message telling me to buy grapes and I was lucky the message got through as there was barely a phone signal in this sylvan place. The modern clever phone is becoming indispensable with all it's functions and I think of my Android as an electronic Swiss Army knife, as I rely on it for pictures and as a flashlight, a navigator and a message machine in the old fashioned way, not to mention as a fax machine.

In between all that I can put it in my pocket and stand around and watch the sun set. As long as my dog didn't try to go down to the water's edge to say hi! to the silent alligator we were okay. She tried that one time before and the alligator did stir slightly before I got my furry friend back to a safe spot. Eventually the sun went down and we had to get to the store for those eggs and grapes and tomatoes. We were expected at home.

Key Deer Boulevard looked unusually lovely under the deep blue skies.

I like finding solitude in these cluttered islands. It's as much about the time of day as much as the location when you can find yourself alone.

Winn Dixie was an island of light in the darkness. It was a good time to shop for food, the aisles were relatively uncluttered and I zipped through the shopping list. On my way out I saw this sign of the times. PT means part time, and this store has a reputation for shitting on its workers, importing cut price foreigners to do work formerly done by unionized full time Americans. Here's the evidence. No benefits for you! What a great way to treat the community you rely on for customers!

I feel helpless in the face of corporate America's indifference to the people who live and want to work here. I wonder what the point is of putting profits over people. It's an age old question, but it's too bad we aren't asking it anymore.

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The Aggravation Of Small Boats

2013-05-18T00:01:00.000-04:00

My wife and I, though not anglers, a subject I do not wish to revisit today, do enjoy swimming in the ocean.

Our 14 foot Dusky has suffered from some engine problems but we believe we found a guy on Stock Island who manged to lick them so we have made a determined effort to send the summer monts swimming.

We define summer as that period when seawater sustains a minimum temperature of eighty degrees. Usually around April or May and ending around October or November depending on the number of cold fronts and rain.

Owning a small boat is a fine thing. My wife wmated a steering wheel so we went as small as we felt we could which worked out to fourteen feet and a 25 horsepower outboard which gives a planing speed around twenty (land) miles per hour.

it's easy to tow and to launch at our neighborhood lanch ramp. Residents pay ten bucks a year to use the ramp while I think the charge for visitors is fifteen bucks a pop.

The motel complex on Ramord was recently sold according to the newspaper. The previous owner was some Canadian dude who was murdered a few years ago in Costa Rica. The future of the motel, Tiki bar and dive shop was in some doubt but new owners stepped forward promising to continue to offer commercial snorkeling trips at Looe Key while allowing locals access to the pool.

It's about a mile from highway one to the end of the canal and my dock behind my house is three quarters of the way down. The drive seems endless at no wake speed.

Launching means I get to see the side of the houses I don't see when I am riding down the road.

Formal sea walls are popular though I like the mangroves next to my house for privacy and lack of maintenance.

There are a bunch of side canals too, blasted out of the rock fifty years ago when such things were permitted.

The main canal is getting a bit narrow in places as the mangroves tend to flourish.

Chugging down the canal is a bit boring actually and I'm glad we live much closer to the mouth. Also that puts us further from the street noise of Highway One. The prevailing south east winds mean we hardly hear any traffic at all at home.

Home at last.

Cheyenne is neither a swimmer nor a boater. She'll come out with us if we take her but she's quite happy to hang out at home and wait. Tough life.

Our first test run produced poor performance. I think the carburettors need to be cleaned. Sigh. Another haul out. Oh well.

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Latitudes Restaurant

2013-05-17T00:01:00.000-04:00

Look at that water and those skies, a perfect day for a ride across Key West harbor. So we did just that.

Our destination was Latitudes on Sunset Key. My wife had the day off for a business meeting that went well so she wanted lunch in town.

"Lupita's," I said. Too far she said, unwilling to drive all the way to Bertha Street ten minutes away. Such is the effect Key West has on you after a short while. Anything beyond walking distance is far.

"Finnegan's Wake," I riposted thinking of their rather nice strawberry tart and custard for pudding. I figured a sweet end to the meal was on the cards as it had been a good morning for the wife.

"Sunset Key," she decided. "Today we have lots of time and we can spend some of it riding the ferry." The concierge at the Westin put our names on the 12:15 boat and we got in line to ride.

Like I said it was a lovely day to ride and we looked around on the five minute crossing. At the island dock we met an old friend of mine I used to captain with. Betsy likes driving boats for the Westin as she gets paid vacation and has regular year round work, which is hard to find for boat captains; I became a police dispatcher after captaining for a few years. Her kid plays baseball at school, in a town mad for youth baseball. Her life is made in the shade. We compared notes, my wife with her fabulous new job in Adult Education, me plugging away on night shift and Betsy successfully raising a kid in Key West, the hardest of cities.

Yards ago Sunset Key was called Tank Island where the Navy built tanks for fuel on a deserted speck of land in the harbor, never used the tanks and ended up giving the island to the city. The city then sold the waterfront for the Westin (the Hilton as was) and the island as well for eleven million dollars... the deal of the century in a town where modest homes sell for millions. So Tank Island became upscale Sunset Key where millionaires and public figures get to enjoy Key West away from us hoi polloi.

They say Oprah Winfrey and Kevin Costner among others, come here to relax as has the Secretary of State of various administrations along with ordinary one percenters who like tennis and golf carts and privacy. Look but don't enter:

Latitudes is open to the public as is a short stretch of beach which is accessible for a fee. The restaurant is pleasant, the bar is plagued by a television and the staff is attentive to the point of being obsequious. Want to know how wretched rich people are? Hang out in their hang outs for a while and watch the staff act like beaten puppies.

The surroundings are lovely of course and coconut palms sway in the breeze, deprived of nuts, emasculated to ensure the comfort of patrons.

Dinner at this place is ruinously expensive but lunch is relatively reasonable. We had one beer, a soup and two sandwiches for $48 plus tip. The ferry ride is free as is the view and the margarita list is extensive...

The lobster bisque was the best my wife ever had, she said. Sweet, creamy and smooth it was quite the indulgence with a crouton floating in the middle topped with pieces of actual lobster. We shared the bowl and it didn't last long.

The lunch menu offers a several starters and some salads plus grilled meat chicken and fish with rice but the sandwiches are in my opinion the tour de force. They come on suave holders swung along by po faced staff.

My Cubano had lots of meat and a slice of melted Swiss wedged into a roll that was sweet enough to make this a Media Noche, traditionally a smaller sweet, middle of the night snack. It was delicious of course as was the famous Laitudes sweet potato salad.

My wife had trouble eating all of her huge grouper sandwich and limited herself to just the fish on the second half of this monster.

I had a Stella served in the traditional long glass. They have four draft beers and a variety of bottles available.

We skipped dessert but I know from experience their crême brûlée is remarkable, as it comes in a dish with three troughs each filled with a flavored burnt custard.

The day was perfect with intermittent sunshine poking through puffy clouds and the remains of an unseasonably late cold front long awa humidity. Just right for sitting out.

The restaurant wasn't crowded, a reminder if one were needed that winter is over.

The loo is as remarkable as the rest of the place, all cool stone and sanitary woodwork with piped music to ease your bowels as you sit and think. Even the paper towels are embroidered which seems a monumental waste to me for a one use object. One day our one percenters will learn to join with the rest of us in the mantra that less is more.

Hemingway has his place on the wall of the gentleman's convenience of course. Everyone wants a piece of Papa:

What a lovely day.

Lupita's or Finnegan's would have been fine of course, but the views make this place special and they know it.

I find it intrusive when perfect strangers, after I have spoken but two sentences home in on me and ask coyly where I'm from with my Mid Atlantic speech patterns. In Key West every one asks where you are from as a way of making a connection, however I don't frequent bars and no one can relate to where I'm from anyway, so I find the question tedious and intrusive. I cut this nice couple from Louisiana a bit short when she poked her snout into my Anglo-Italian background, "You're not from here," she simpered. I wanted to tell her she was so sharp she might cut herself but I was rather sharp myself. I repented immediately and had to spend te rest of the ride not admiring the view but finding out instead about life in rural Louisiana. I said I liked New Orleans which was the wrong thing to tell these devout small town people so I generally made a dog's dinner of the whole bloody encounter. I wish I could be more like Doug Bennett and just be cheerful with strangers, like this: This Week on the Island . The problem is people just make me nervous and then I bugger everything up trying too hard to relax.

Then the ride was over and we immediately went our mercifully separate ways.

Back to the real world where ordinary people, shop for trinkets and ice cream. Thank you Lord for ordinariness. Latitudes is lovely as a once In a while thing, but renting a cottage there and hanging out in that rarified atmosphere would be too... rich for me.

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Mario Sanchez

2013-05-16T00:00:00.000-04:00

In New York they titled the exhibit A Fisherman's Dream but here in Key West it's titled Grits and Grunts which has become the folkloric dish of the (first) Great Depression in Key West. Mario Sanchez has become the folk artist of the Southernmost City and his crude, vibrant wooden tablets are in demand world wide.

Sanchez did indeed paint memories of his home town, his pictures show street scenes and residents going about their daily lives. In part it is a record of how life was lived but it is also a record of the quirks and characters of those who lived in Key West particularly in the Depression Years.

The portraits of the past are fascinating and I watched with some interest as the cleaner dude studied the pictures. He was so intent I wondered if he remembered some of these scenes...

The entrance picture was of Ernest Hemingway, in the striped blouse handing out fish to passerby after an excessively successful fishing trip. The wrought iron balcony of his home is in evidence behind the men in the picture.

The stand out features of the exhibit are not only the quantity of the works on show but also the really extraordinary paper cartoons that he drew before he embarked on the wooden bas-Reliefs themselves. And they took up,to four months to complete - each!

Below we have a cigar maker's cottage, with industrious cigar rolling underway...

...and here is how the artist envisioned the scene:

Below we see in the upper part of the frame the unfinished work while below we see a completed picture with all details present and accounted for.

There is a video to accompany the exhibit and it brings to life the artist who died in 2005 at age 96. We see him working in his "Studio Under The Trees," which is how much of daily life is lived in this benign climate: outdoors.

He talks about how colorful Key West was when he was younger, aft his father a reader in the cigar factories, brought his family home from Tampa. The cigar factories owned by Cuban migrants mostly relocated Up North thanks to the cheaper land, a common theme of life in Key West even then.

A reader was a man who stood at a lectern in front of the cigar rollers and read newspapers and novels to keep the troops entertained. I suppose nowadays they would use television. While Sanchez worked in his studio his mother would frequently sit behind him and monitor his progress.

The art is these for all to see, full of color lively and detailed. Its the Key West we all want to remember, the intimate small village described in Hemingway's To Have and To Have Not, but it's the Key West we never saw and that has disappeared forever.

One of the things that bugs me about historic art is that if things appear which do not seem consonant with prevceived reality modern viewers tend to ascribe things seen in old,pictures as "artistic license." my wife noticed no wild chickens in any of these pictures. So, how old and established are these irritating modern wild chickens of Key West?

Dogs? Sure. Cats? Lots of them. But chickens? Not one. Is that artistic license or reality as it really was?

This young dude shown below was selling Spanish Limes, which are small round fruit with a tough skin and soft juicy pulp around a very large pit. In the Caribbean they call them christophenes.

The kite flyers are flying kits on the ends f real pieces of string embedded in the picture. Do you like the depth of detail?

Key West has a long tradition of being home to a strong Jewish community. Indeed the state's oldest synagogue still operates in Key West.

Mario Sanchez knew all about it and recorded it for posterity, this community in Key West.

Check out the detail on tis snapper:

The back of the fish shows the wood was recycled according to the note in front of the piece and here it is:

All this managed with these modest tools and a chisel:

Here is Killi Gray being pursued by the Old Bill:

And here is the crawfish man:

Sanchez liked to use clouds to carry messages over his paintings. Here is the Hemingway house and here are the clouds: for whom the bell tolls, the sun also rises and in the distance the old man and the sea. Neat huh?

And here is the original Hemingway giving away his surplus catch:

http://www.kwahs.org/exhibitions/online-exhibitions/painter-of-key-west-memories/

In the end death came for Sanchez and he got the jazz funeral he had depicted in his art and desired for himself:

The rest of the Art and History Museum is functioning as normal but those exhibits will be there long aft the room dedicated to Amrio Sanchez is gone.

And the he is on film, painting forever in his Studio Under The Trees.

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Midnight Ride To Sandy's

2013-05-15T00:00:00.000-04:00

There were three of us sitting up in dispatch as usual. Anna, a former dispatcher who went over to "the dark side" to become a police officer but was helping Nick and I on our regular night shift in the communications center at the top of the police department and we had the city well in hand. An evening that had started out wildly busy had become what is developing into the norm: after midnight the older revelers who now call Key West their vacation destination, had gone home to bed and the calls for service had dropped off. In these tough economic times younger folk have less money and restrict their all night revels to weekends and holidays. Regular weeknights are the province of the more staid drinkers, those with less stamina and less testosterone to start fights and defend turf.

Not that I'm complaining mind. It was my shift's weekend to work, we alternate with Keith's shift week after week, and it was busy all night Saturday and Sunday with people drinking and getting mad at each other. It get's stressful even in dispatch when the 911 lines don't stop ringing and there aren't enough officers to go round and you have to sit there and figure which calls to hold and who can be pulled off one battery call to deal with another more urgent case. I went home totally exhausted both nights. Last night it was dreary by comparison, the only challenge was how to stay awake as the city seemed to have exhausted itself over the weekend. A few people fell off bicycles - on one night? Why then? Who knows... - and officers were catching up with their report writing.

"I want Sandy's," I announced to the room when Anna got back from her break at 2am. I wrote down the order so as not to be confused 1 sm choc, 2 large, one with 3 and one with 1 and 3 cheesebreads and off I went. First stop White Street to stand in line behind the insomniacs.

I put the order in and took off rapido down Virginia Street to get some cash...Luckily the little man in the machine is also an insomniac and he spewed out three twenty dollar bills on demand while I took the time to admire the deeply black sky overhead.

It was entirely warm enough to be out in shirt sleeves even though it had rained earlier in the day and it felt like a mild cold front had blown through town. So my laundry got wet on the line but Cheyenne, who had been suffering from the heat and humidity got a little perky. I needed my cafe con leche with one (sugar) to get that same perkiness after eight hours at work.

Riding my five hundred pound motorcycle through the streets of Key West one could argue 60 horsepower is more than one needs and I suppose if I lived in town that would be true. After work my 40 minute commute on the open highway justifies the bike. In a couple of weeks I'm taking my antique Vespa to Pennsylvania for a restoration and then I'll see if 15 horsepower is enough...I am quite looking forward to getting the P200's wiring replaced and getting it ready for daily duty.

However the Bonneville is special. I'm getting up to 73,000 miles on it and it runs like new. I enjoy riding it as much as I did when I went for a test ride in Fort Lauderdale in October 2007, and riding the night time streets of Key West is it's own quiet pleasure. Quiet not least because I have the factory mufflers on it. Back to Sandy's where my order was ready and waiting as were Nick and Anna four blocks away.

Back to the glow of computer screens, "Did I miss anything?" asked sarcastically as my colleagues looked up wearily from their efforts to keep themselves amused at 2:30 on a silent weekeday morning. Three and a half hours till we go home is the uppermost thought in our minds. For now coffee and cheese bread.

"I was just thinking about how much I wanted a grilled cheese sandwich," Anna remarked as she took the lid off her hot chocolate. "And now here it is." Cuban style, which is always best. Pity we couldn't stretch it out to last three hours.

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Corporate Medicine

2013-05-14T18:00:00.000-04:00

She is a refugee from corporate America and as such her blog, naked capitalism is always worth a read. However I was disappointed to see Yves Smith's very negative take on the potential shortcomings of the Affordable Health Care plan. She sees it as a tool to allow corporate America to take even greater advantage of us, and clearly because I have always supported single payer I have not viewed the changes as optimal. But I have been holding out hope that things might get better. Instead Smith thinks things will likely get much worse. Great!

Coming Corporate Control of Medicine Will Throw Patients Under the Bus

One of the most effective scare techniques employed to preserve our grotesquely inefficient, overpriced health care system has been to invoke the red peril of “socialized medicine”. Never mind that foreigners in advanced economies fail to recognize the caricatures scaremongers supply, or that Americans who need emergency care while overseas are almost without exception impressed with the caliber of care and astonished by the low (sometimes no) cost to them. After all, Americans live in the best of all possible worlds,and consumer and business freedom are always better.

In fact, business freedom here increasingly means the God-given right to exploit the vulnerability of the public. The example slouching into view is more corporate control over the practice of medicine. And based on the previews, it will make the horrors falsely attributed to socialized medicine look pale.

Two accounts last week bring the issue home. The first came in the Health Care Renewal blog (hat tip Lysa). It’s a reminder of how the current institutional efforts to regiment doctors undermine the caliber of medical care. It has become distressingly common for HMOs and other medical enterprises to have business-school trained managers putting factory-style production parameters on doctor visits. Outside of foreclosure mills, it’s hard to find similar approaches in other professions.

The post describes how a pediatrician, Pauline, who has developed a reputation for treating chronic conditions is at loggerheads with her for-profit practice. The suits don’t like her patient mix. She gets too many tough cases, when they’d rather have basically healthy kids who are there for a cold or ear infection. Mind you, this is only partly a money issue. These visits can be “up coded” so as to get larger insurance/patient payments, but she get a higher level of patients in less-generous state insurance programs. But some of the pushback is that her practice is perceived as disruptive, since she uses what is perceived as too much of her and staff time, separate and apart from the economics. She’s constantly breaking management’s precious guidelines. One of her turf struggles:

She had set up a visit to see a new medically complex patient and had blocked off 40 minutes, the amount of time she felt she needed to do a good job. The child had a complex genetic disorder, cerebral palsy, and heart, lung, and kidney problems. Both the cardiologist and the nephrologist had called asking her to take this patient. She agreed. After she had scheduled the visit, a manager called her and told her that she was being allowed only 15 minutes to see that patient. After some fruitless discussion with him, Pauline finally said, “Okay, I guess that means that you’ll be seeing the patient instead of me, right?” The shocked voice at the other end of the phone line replied, “What do you mean? I don’t know how to take care of patients.” “That’s exactly my point,” Pauline put in.

Pauline explained that this manager assigned to her office is not even a college graduate. Physicians cannot access the schedule electronically and have no control over scheduling. These functions are controlled by the office manager and (amazingly) by some of the medical assistants who have received some “leadership” training. These medical assistants are even allowed to evaluate the clinical competency and skills of the physicians.

And to add insult to injury, how long did this discussion take? All those minutes the doctor spent fighting with a petty bureaucrat come at the expense of patient care.

As an aside, it’s hard to stress enough that this sort of demoralizing micromanagement an unwillingness to listen to and learn from workers, is a widespread shortcoming of management American-style. And it has weirdly been airbrushed out of the media. When I was a kid in business school, US manufacturers were having their clocks cleaned by Germans and the Japanese. There was a good deal of critical self examination back then. One source of foreign ascendancy was that they had newer factories, so you couldn’t really blame American management for that one. But the second was that it was widely acknowledged that US managers were generally poor at dealing with labor. And this wasn’t “labor” in the union sense, but at having productive relationships with factory workers (note that there has been massive revisionist history since then. When I was in Bschool, none of my classmates, nearly half of whom had worked in major manufacturing companies, had bad things to say about unions. Now you’ll often see the decline of American manufacturing attributed to unions in an “everybody knows that” tone.

Now before you come running to the defense of management against the doctor, think twice:

So let me add a further nugget about Pauline’s background. In one of her previous jobs, she was made the manager of a pediatric outpatient center within a county hospital caring for a largely indigent population. This center had been running in the red for a good while. Pauline took over and within 28 months she’d streamlined the place and had them running well in the black, while still administering a quality of care that Pauline and her colleagues could be proud of. In short, Pauline could probably tell the managers of her current practice a thing or two about how to optimize patient scheduling without compromising care or cost —if they’d listen.

As bad as that is, most patients are unware of how much their care has been fitted to a Procrustean bed. The deliberate degradation in the name of profits is going to become more obvious, at least if the health care industry has its way.

I strongly encourage you to read this post from Whole Health Chicago (hat tip Lambert) in full. http://www.wholehealthchicago.com/5673/you-the-patient-fired/ It shows how the future of American medicine is to fire the ones who are unhealthy. No, I am not making that up. The writer, Dr. David Edelberg, describes a recent presentation by a large insurance company. They’ve apparently been hosting similar sessions with physicians in the Chicago area in large medical practices. Here are the key bits (emphasis original):

The speaker at these evenings is always a physician employed by the insurance company. His/her title is medical director (I begin to think there must be dozens and dozens on their payroll) and he always begins by reassuring the audience that he was in clinical practice himself so he understands something of what physicians–especially primary care physicians–are facing. I view this physician more as a “Judas steer,” the animal that leads an innocent but doomed herd of cattle through the slaughterhouse corridors to the killing floor.

• The health industry hopes that individual medical practices and small medical groups will ultimately disappear from the landscape by being financially absorbed into larger groups owned by hospital systems.

And why do the powers that be regard this as desirable? Although the article does not stress this point, doctors have an established revenue stream. So the acquirers buy them out and impose discipline on those artistic, freewheeling doctors. The “practice style,” which used to mean the independence that doctors once enjoyed, is now an Orwellianism and includes hewing to corporate guidelines as to how to operate.

And here’s what to expect:

Physicians are expected to spend a limited amount of time with each patient, and are encouraged to see as many patients as possible during a workday. The insurance companies, sometimes with the token cooperation of a few physician-employees, create vast books of patient-care guidelines to which they believe their physicians must be “accountable” (remember this word, it will crop up again). These guidelines might mean documented Pap smear and mammogram frequency, weight management and exercise, colonoscopies for patients over 50, and getting that evil LDL (bad cholesterol) below 99 by any means possible…

If the chart audit system discovers that a physician, for whatever reason, is an “outlier”–that she’s either not following the guidelines exactly or not getting the results anticipated for her patient population—she’ll be financially penalized. A quick example of what might occur: if your LDL is 115, you may be on the receiving end of a statin sales pitch from your doctor, not because bringing it down to 99 will improve your longevity, but because your refusal to do so will impact her financial bottom line.

Now of course, you might say, “Well, in fairness, medicine is too much of a cottage industry. Look at how many doctors give unnecessary annual EKGs to patients in low risk groups. How else are we going to get to evidence-based medicine?” The problem is that what we as patients will get isn’t driven by best outcomes, it’s driven by profits. Edelberg explains:

…the subtext of “standardized” always includes the unspoken “spend less money on the patient.” Thus, a doctor might be financially penalized for recommending nutritional counseling to lower cholesterol (“counseling is expensive”) instead of writing a generic statin drug (cheap). Or recommending psychotherapy (“therapy is very expensive”) instead of generic Prozac (cheaper than M&M’s). Or referring patients for massage, acupuncture, or even chiropractic (“expensive, expensive, expensive!”) instead of pushing an over-the-counter antiinflammatory (free to the insurance company, as it’s OTC).

And I shudder to think what becomes of patients who don’t hew to standard templates: the person who had a high body mass but not due to dangerous abdominal fat (which is what creates the health risk) who is pushed to take the latest, greatest diet drug. What about people who don’t buy into the religion of getting your LDL down to below 100 (one reader argued that while it may lower your risk of heart disease, it increases your all-factor death risk by reducing your ability to fight MRSA)? Will they face penalties if they fail to comply?

No, you just will find it nearly impossible to get a doctor to take you:

• Let me close with a best-as-I-recall quote from an insurance company medical director. “We can no longer afford to pay for health care under the PPO model. Our plan is to phase out all fee-for-service care during the next few years. We’ll pay you doctors a finite amount of money to take care of a defined population. We tell doctors, ‘Don’t spend much money and you can keep the difference. Period. Don’t follow guidelines, and you’ll be leaving behind some serious money on the table and we’ll just take it back.’”

In case you think I overstated the implications, Edelberg recapped the discussion that ensued:

One physician piped up…. “But what about the non-compliant patients who won’t take the meds, don’t eat well, don’t have mammograms, continue to smoke? And what about super-health-conscious patients who want their vitamin levels measured and want referrals to acupuncturists?”

Another physician answered wearily for the medical director (who didn’t disagree): “You’ve got to fire patients like that. Get the non-compliant and the super-demanding out of your system. They’ll drag your numbers down. Hit your personal bottom line.”

Hey you, patient. Yes, I mean YOU. Pink slip time! Canned! Take your medical records and don’t let the frosted glass door hit you in the…on the way out.

In other words, if you are high maintenance because you don’t do what your doctor says (and remember, “non-compliant” includes people who don’t follow orders because they think the cookie-cutter approach isn’t right for them) or want higher service or per the example of the pediatrician Patricia’s 40 minute case, have a complicated set of ailments, you’ll be shunted. The brave new world of corporate medicine will eject you.

The rich are unlikely even to know that this change is occurring. There will be a tier of doctors on the high end to cater to patients who want more personalized, cutting edge treatment and might need some prodding. And they can always go abroad if they can’t find what they need here. But for ordinary schlubs, expect to find the doctor’s office become more hostile as the brave new world of corporatized medicine becomes entrenched.

Read more at http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/

All Change At The Pier House

2013-05-14T00:00:00.000-04:00

The newspaper reported last week that the venerable Pier House resort, the first of the vast spacious waterfront hotels in downtown Key West, has been sold. The developer who built the place in the 1960s, David Wolkowsky sold it to a corporation a while back and they have now sold the place for a cool ninety million dollars. Change is inevitable with that sort of money changing hands, and almost everyone was fired yesterday according to a friend of mine who has connections with the place.

It seems they will be having a "job fair" at the resort later this week and I suppose the poor unfortunates will be invited to re-apply for their jobs. I doubt wages and benefits will be improved and one can only hope the bosses will be kind. Ninety million dollars-worth kind? Probably not. As I read about "hospitality workers" begging for charity to pay medical bills and I watch the gyrations in the local business scene as Key West cranks up the gentrification revolution I am glad of my staid city job. Paid sick leave, vacation time and raises. I am a rare animal in this town and I am grateful.

I found this picture of the Chart Room online at what appears to be a defunct blog. I never did have the wit to get my own picture, the nature of the place being what it was, alcohol and all, though the picture doesn't really illustrate the place that well. It was a space occupied by memories and history and people. Notably Jimmy Buffett getting his start and writers from the early 70s hanging out there. These good folks look more representative, sunburned happy tourists in this case off a passing boat.

http://mvgypsiesinthepalace.blogspot.com/2010_03_01_archive.html

The changes at the Pier House have created a wildfire of rum ors and some say the famed Chart Room bar is going to be turned into a t shirt shop which would be a cruel irony in a town filled with such awful stores yet not quite bountiful with weird bars. I am not a bar person (I don't like fishing either by the way, and I'm not gay so I suppose I disqualify for residence here) but I did like the Chart Room's eye wateringly strong Dark and Stormys. Though I'm not terribly squeamish when it comes to kitchen cleanliness I did have to be fairly inebriated before I would consume any of the free hot dogs steaming in the foetid atmosphere of the Chart Room. For some people the likely demise of this bizarre holdover from another era is a bitter pill to swallow. I have no doubt people will talk about the old Chart Room for decades. I shall endeavor not to be a bore about it. I wrote about the Pier House here:

http://conchscooter.blogspot.com/2011/05/pier-house-piano.html

Wolkowsky known for owning the unusual appartment stuck on top of the Kress building is also known for woning the only inhabited private island west of Key West. I read Ballast Key is for sale for soemthing like $15,800,000, an eccentrically uneven asking amount worthy of the eccentricities of the elderly Wolkowsky, who it turns out has his own trifling Wikipedia page, inclduing this exerpt:

The Pier House became a magnet for celebrities and media types, mostly because of Wolkowsky's unique personality and laissez-faire attitude. When writer Truman Capote arrived at the hotel to spend the winter he asked Wolkowsky to show him the best rooms. After viewing several choice units, Wolkowsky invited Capote over for a drink, to his residence of the moment, a 45-foot (14 m), two-bedroom, double-wide trailer, covered in bamboo and parked 10 feet (3.0 m) from the hotel's waterfront. Capote begged Wolkowsky to rent him the trailer. Wolkowsky finally agreed and moved into a suite of rooms, in his own hotel, for the winter, to accommodate the writer. Capote's "Answered Prayers" were written in Wolkowsky's waterfront trailer. Discarded handwritten pages were often given to Wolkowsky by Capote in gratitude for allowing him to write in the trailer. Years later, the papers were stolen from Wolkowsky's penthouse apartment, high atop Key West's former Kresge five and dime. Wolkowsky had restored the building, renting out the ground floor to department store "Fast Buck Freddies" and the upper floors to the Key West Parole Department. He is quoted as saying, "I never felt safer than when I lived above the Parole Board. The Capote papers were stolen by someone I know, not by a parolee".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Wolkowsky

In other news The Wharf restaurant on Summerland Key was rumored to be in foreclosure. As far as I can tell it is no such thing, it is simply for sale for several million dollars. My neighbor thought there was a buyer for it but who knows. They grow vegetables, cook fish and promote sustainability so it would be nice to see it transition survivie and prosper at Mile Marker 25.

The strangely named Sugarloaf Sandwich Company is also for sale, and it is an odd name for a shop on Summerland Key, not Sugarloaf, close by the Wharf. I asked the owner about the name and I forget the reason but I think it had to do with original plans to locate the shop on Sugarloaf Key, plans that went awry. It's done well at this location and I would be surprised were it not to do well under a new owner.

Key West is undergoing changes about which I shall write and take pictures as I watch the town develop. Yet every time something changes there is usually a collective intake of breath across town as people anticipate the worst. I try to convince myself these are the good old days as I keep on keeping on.

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Village Stroll

2013-05-13T00:01:00.000-04:00

Shavers Lane, early morning and Cheyenne is ready to get her nose down.

This garish red building was once called Better Than Sex, a pudding shop that sold desserts labelled with nudge-and-wink sexual innuendos. It was successful here so they decided to move to the former Deli Restaurant at Truman and Simonton leaving this place to become a cheap breakfast joint. That didn't last and there are other plans now in the works I believe. We shall see.

Key West boasts Florida's oldest synagogue and the town's only Jewish restaurant seems to be doing quite nicely wedged in a quiet corner of Petronia. unlike Goldman's Deli this place makes no concessions to unclean goy food like bacon...fortunately my wife describes herself as a cultural Jew so I can raid the fridge at home if I get a bacon craving!

Floyd's Barber Shop has closed. Change is good, and that's what I keep telling myself.

The crêpe place moved to Petronia from Duval Street after a fire took down the building next to the San Carlos ad they do land sale business here. You wouldn't know it from the picture but we were early, my Labrador and I, which explains the empty tables.

I am constantly surprised by the variations of colors and color combinations people use around Key West.

Check this out: another eatery hanging in there. Croissants De France is still operating on Duval and delivering pastries around town.

I am a big fan of air conditioning. I know it's much more suave to rely on nature's cooling but I do like my air. I've lived on a boat without air and I've dated women who thought air conditioning is the work of the devil but in my old age I like having a thermostat in my life. However using an elaborately shaded lamp to keep nature's air flowing is pretty suave.

It was cheap air developed after World War Two that opened mainland Florida to massive development which arguably was not a great thing. People lived just fine before air conditioning was developed but they knew no better! Hemingway pulled it off then went to Cuba when the road brought the outside world to Key West in 1938. His house is now a huge tourist attraction, ironically enough for a man who valued his privacy.

Old Key West is still there.

You just have to look.

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Death Trap

2013-05-12T00:01:00.001-04:00

After 1800 performances on Broadway and stage settings all around the world plus movie versions, you'd think no one would line up anymore t see an old chestnut like Death Trap. You'd be wrong. My wife and I had a great evening out at the Waterfront Playhouse and we only had preview tickets. The show runs through May 18th and I was proud of my wife for organizing our outing ahead of closing night.

There are two theaters in Key West and we check them both out each winter. This year I have been surprised to see more dramas and fewer corny musical men in drag numbers which works for me. However I did manage to miss "The 39 Steps" which started out the Waterfront's season, and that has been a continuing source of regret for me. I'm told it was every bit as good and perhaps better than Death Trap.

Death Trap has an extremely convoluted yet simple plot, witty dialogue which tends to include self mockery, irony and a fabulous ability to not take oneself too seriously. Yet the production took itself very seriously. The scary bits were genuinely scary and the shocks shocked as much as the gags made all of us in the audience break out in laughter. I had fun despite the gruesomely uncomfortable seats which do however give a nice view of the stage. The intimacy of the theater was enhanced by the wild storm that lashed the production with lightning and rolling thunder every it as realistic as a summer storm in the Keys.

The production has got tons of press all positive of course and I'm glad. We won't get anymore live theater until summer runs its course and we have another season of snowbirds winter crowds and live theater next fall.

We got to see a few productions this year and I hope they keep up the emphasis on drama because these re plays worth lining up to see.

Who says Key West doesn't have seasons? Live theater season is worth waiting for.

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Sugarloaf Stroll

2013-05-11T00:01:00.000-04:00

Hansen Trail off Crane Boulevard used to be a gravel road but it's been paved. I guess it's been a while since I made my way out to the back country of this part of Sugarloaf Key with Cheyenne.

It's a fair distance from my house, eight miles perhaps but it's on the way to Key West so even though I pass by here on the main road I rarely turn off at the traffic light to explore Crane Boulevard and it's offshoots.

In the early hours of the morning it's surprisingly quiet back here, before school is in session, before parents have lined up to drop their middle school offspring off at the collection of big gray buildings that mark this part of Sugarloaf Key. The school and traffic light are landmarks on the Overseas Highway, Mile Marker 19.

This is a serene lane, one of several that's far from the hustle of modest little Key West. Some Labradors like this place.

I have got used to the idea that even in the Keys a hobby as expansive as riding a horse can have it's place. There are sales here and on neighboring Cudjoe. It seems challenging to keep horses in happiness on these narrow strips of rock but objectively I don't see why not. I loved the sign "Horses Will Bite." They will if you are a carrot...Some people will do anything to instill fear in their neighbors. What a wonderful world!

I grew up around horses as my elder twin sisters were mad keen on them as youths and my father had the money to indulge them (my motorcycle mad mother got me my first Vespa...) so they were a part of my life as far back as I can remember. I also recall getting trodden on by one with a foot the size of a dinner plate with the strength of a steel press in it's hoof. As soon as Shannon realized what she had done she released my bruised foot from under her hoof. The pain however unintended by Shannon the horse, is imprinted in my memory. I never did get bitten, though I was careful when I gave them treats to hold my hand flat and to only let their lips rub my palm. Horses hate to be left alone so one will find smaller farm animals keeping them company, often goats, in this case a friendly pig. Cheyenne was not impressed.

Horses always seemed like a tremendous amount of work to me. I rode my motorcycle, parked it, turned off the gas tap and walked away. My sisters spent large parts of their lives worrying about their animals, pushing food in one end and scraping up shit at the other, day after endless day. And when they went fr a ride they covered as much ground in an afternoon as I could ride in thirty minutes. I had not yet been introduced to those bizarre psychoanalytical theories about horses, young girls and sex substitutes that cropped up later in life. My motorcycle, a fire engine red MV Agusta 350 with torn mufflers was an unabashed attempt at seeking sex I guess. It was much more successful as a reliable means of transport and in those days I rode across Europe on the rock hard seat with the tiny racing handlebars stretched over the long red fuel tank. Boy racer indeed.

Sugarloaf is a low lying island around here and in Hurricane Wilma in 2005 it flooded quite badly. We had friends living here who lost their ground floor areas to the ocean. People who parked their cars around the school on the higher ground saved their vehicles from inundation, while everyone else did not. It was a mess.

On a serene spring morning the mangroves look lovely and the lonely house like a castle.

It's rural Lower Keys living the way some people like it, not at all what visitors expect.

Surplus coconuts, perhaps?

Surplus household goods I suppose...

Formerly surplus dog.

Now mine and no longer surplus. She likes Sugarloaf Key.

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Friday Night In Key West

2013-05-10T00:01:00.000-04:00

WARNING: This essay got away from me and devolved into a curmudgeon rant. Those of delicate sensibilities who have trouble with a dry sense of humor are advised to skip this page and check out one of the 3100 essays devoted to the Lower Keys available on this website. Normal photographic commentary will resume at midnight Eastern Time.

Cheers

Michael.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Living as we do in a culture obsessed with youth a curmudgeon like myself might be forgiven for taking the contrarian line that experience- free fresh young things like these are of less than passing interest. But if you are debonair and charming and find the quality of your day is improved by the sight of children posing as adults, the boardwalk at Key West Bight is a good place to choose for dinner. Well it was in my case.

For a lot of people last week sitting inside was the preferred choice. My wife always asks where I'd like to sit, but in deference to her preference for sharing her food with any passing insect I loyally suggest outdoor seating is my preference too, as it happens. In this instance sitting outdoors at Alonzo's seemed like decidedly the better choice as indoors was crowded and very noisy.

And sitting outdoors means you can people watch, and watch people watching the tarpon swimming in circles waiting for breadcrumbs, while you wait for your own breadcrumbs to arrive.

Sean was dressed in the Alonzo's uniform of dark blue shirt and tan shorts similar in many respects to what I wear at my job though I wouldn't mind being allowed to sit In shorts all night. My wife likes Alonzo's and she is happy to send people who seek decent fish to eat here; that appetizers are half price during happy hour increases the appeal for my frugal wife.

We were celebrating her assignment for the next school year where she transferring to teach adults in the jail and is also setting up a new vocational type program (I think, her job descriptions are all a bit vague to me) for adult education across the Keys. It was her dream job and she was so excited to get the news from her boss. Only half priced shellfish would do, to celebrate her dream assignment.

Mussels, calamari (not pork bungs I trust!) oysters and fish fingers, oh my. That and a Yuengling set me steady for the second half of the program.

The idea was to catch the new Robert Redford vehicle The Company You Keep at the Tropic Cinema. It wasn't our first choice but the timing was right. I took this picture of the theater after the movie when darkness gives Key West's arts house a particular glow.

Every time I take a leak I regret not being swift enough to buy a plaque here. Mind you the mysterious Roger Westerlund gets around as you will find his name above your weenie in the theater as well. It took a bit of furtive lurking to get this picture as you might imagine.

The theater was quite empty when we sat down near the back. Then Eraserhead sat in front of my wife so we moved for a clear view of the screen, which worked until the credits came up and two last minus arrivals plunked themselves down right in front of us. Hmm, I started to wonder to myself, how soon will this movie be available on Netflix streaming?

The film is the story of a group of former Weathermen living modern lives out of sight of law enforcement, so when Susan Sarandon's character decides to give herself up the FBI, frustrated by thirty years on the run, moves in and arrests her using her surrender to nail the other killer members of the radical group. Parallel to this manufactured drama a cub reporter at the Albany, NY, newspaper is also hot on the trail of his first big story and in one of many yawning plot holes beats the FBI at their own game(!). The writing was awful the characters' motivations were mysterious and the outcome predictable. It was a group play period on screen for a bunch of elderly actor-friends to work together one more time. Definitely Netflix material, unless you are celebrating a promotion.

Had I been watching at home I would not have been obliged to listen to the couple nearby explaining the plot twists to each other in loud undertones. Sigh. At least no one answered a phone call which might have interrupted Eraserhead's loud guffaws as the predictable punch lines hovering view on screen.

The Tropic is a worthy institution but the downside is you have to share it with people who haven't been brought up properly. My advice is avoid big name movies, preferably choose flicks with subtitles which should keep most of the talkers and fidgetters at bay. And don't go in winter because the blue hairs love to explain the movie to each other like they are at home on the couch. I don't say anything, I know its too late to teach my neighbors any manners by the time they are old enough to buy their own movie tickets, and I'm just grateful I get to walk away and try to keep the movie in mind and not the distractions. God give me patience, but I love movies, sitting in the dark and getting absorbed into the story. I came to realize years ago the emotion and drama and fear and excitement I felt sitting in the dark was supposed to be what I felt at Mass on Sundays. That I never did, just increased my appreciation for the power of the movies. Which is why talkers annoy me. Imagine them doing that in your church services...

On the subject of daily annoyances check out this parking job designed to preserve paintwork. Newcomers love to attach the Conch flag to their cars, but it takes more than a sticker to learn to fit in on a small overcrowded, tight parking island where every space counts and bad parking drives neighbors crazy. Another reason to ride a motorcycle.

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Truman Sunrise

2013-05-09T00:01:00.001-04:00

A late cold front brought much rain to the Lower Keys and the north wind that followed has kept summer at bay quite successfully. Early morning temperatures have been close to seventy degrees and walking Truman Waterfront before the sun came up almost have me goosebumps, in my inadequate t-shirt. Sounds silly? Blood thins in constant heat, and May usually marks the start not only of rainy season but also high humidity season. Yet here we are, hot by day, cool by night and dawn brings crisp perfect sunrises against a cloudless sky.

Plans to develop Truman Waterfront are moving forward and this pleasantly disheveled 34 acre open space yielded to the city by a shrinking Navy will soon become something pleasantly bourgeois and landscaped and filled with useful activities. It is our communal fate in a world filling with evermore people recreation must be regimented.

Enjoying unspoiled landscapes in an urban setting is no mean feat in a town as small as Key West, so I come here as often as I can to make pictures and memories of this useless open space that will itself soon only be a memory.

I have no doubt tennis courts and shade trees, parking and bike paths are all worthy things and an amphitheater could provide a spectacular setting for outdoor performances, yet I still wouldn't at all mind something less organized. I like the idea bruited by some less orthodox souls that the city create a park with fruit trees and perhaps space for a local market and so forth but I suppose needs must and paving is coming.

The Navy fond the land to be surplus to needs but decided at the last minute to close the basin to civilian boats thus scuppering plans to build a marina, a development the developers proposed would pay for the park in a rather dubious lease back program that had the city paying the developers to manage the marina. That's all gone now thanks to the Navy so perhaps development plans could be moved forward perhaps a skosh less grandiose. I have enjoyed lovely open air concerts inside Fort Zachary, and I shouldn't mind so doing agin.

The cool morning air gave crispness and clarity to the air and I thoroughly enjoyed trailing Cheyenne in her endless pursuit of who-knows-what across the waterfront.

And we were alone, the bliss of summer in Key West. A good time to walk and think and say nothing.

Mornings have been good for a while. After the warm dry winter I expected by way of compensation an early hot wet summer. It has rained but the heat and humidity usually slow Cheyenne down quite a bit. Thus we have been walking quite a lot among the homes and trees of the Lower Keys.

Looking east from Big Pine Key dawn looks similar to anyplace else I guess.

Cheyenne tends to walk with her nose down, mine is up usually.

And then after the sun comes up the colors come to life in the city:

Camping in the mountains of California I'd wake up and watch the sun scale a line of granite, the shadows retreating as the sun progressed over the valleys. Here in the flatlands the movement of the sun is measured by the retreat of shade across a street.

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Mickens To Duval

2013-05-08T07:30:00.000-04:00

A night off work often leads to an early morning in town walk for Cheyenne if I wake up before the sun. I got lots of pictures as I trailed around behind my eager dog, and they will show up here in the fullness of time. Starting with a rising sun on Mickens Lane, a right angled alley between Angela and Whitehead Streets.

The modern obsession with hydration leaves me puzzled, for instance when did thirst become a need to 'hydrate?' Indeed I can frequently be found hundreds of yards from potable water with not even one plastic bottle of commercial water about my person, and I may even drive home feeling thirsty. I carry water for herself in the trunk but on our walks we end up relying on the kindness of strangers, like this bowl outside the Green Parrot under some street art. david wegman's art and painting.

Some people hydrate by sitting at a bar all afternoon despite the warning that alcohol kills cells and dehydrates the body. It also can lead to some really stupid behavior like walking onto a strangers porch, hammering on the door and then proceeding to take a leak under the gaze of the astonished visitor to Key West renting a cottage for a peaceful vacation. Sometimes a well hydrated driver will go off the rails, like the ick up truck driver who missed the intersection the other night and hit a palm tree and a house instead. I kid you not, there was a hole in the house on Eaton Street to prove it. The driver slept it off at the jail and will end up paying thousands for drinking and driving after conviction. The good news is that alcohol brings money to town and employs people to clean up after the booze has been poured.

I've been riding motorcycles since 1970 and I have come to loathe drunk drivers for their unpredictability and weird aggressive behavior. I met another one last night riding home at two in the morning. The car came up behind me at speed on the highway, high beams blazing, and I pulled off to let them by. That they had no tail lights at all was a bonus act of stupidity but after passing me they slowed down, typical for drunks behind the wheel struggling to find their way in the dark. For a while the car slowly straddled the yellow lines then at Baby's Coffee they sped up madly and even though I was doing sixty in the fifty five they disappeared far into the distance even as the speed limit dropped to forty five and I dropped back while they disappeared up ahead. I fully expected to come across them doing field sobriety checks up the road but they were nowhere to be seen when I turned off up my street. That far they had got away with it, as had any unsuspecting unfortunates whose path they crossed and who they did not kill in a weaving head on.

The former motorcycle dealership shown above on Southard Street has moved to White Street. Motorcycles crowded the parking on this block of Southard much to the irritation of some vocal neighbors, and now the building s shuttered up and cars have returned to the on street parking. Neighbors at the White Street location have been telling he newspaper the motorcycle shop has cleaned up a formerly blighted spot! Change can be good.

There are so many odd little corners of Key West that go unseen and unnoticed in the rush to serve the tourists. Above - carpets for sale? Below, an empty early morning street reflected in the windows of one more store that will likely be busy later in the day.

The Strand, now a pharmacy once a theater is also abandoned by people. You have to be on Duval fairly early to see the five hundred block this deserted.

It's the five hundredth anniversary of the arrival of white people in Florida, the flowery state, the Spaniards called it, and much of he state is celebrating. Key West has a hard time celebrating history, last year's centennial of the arrival of the railroad passed almost unnoticed and this year five hundred years of Florida settlement merits little flags draped off street lamps. This town, chartered in 1828, is very focused on the present, not the past.

By the time I steered Cheyenne back to the car on Olivia people were starting to appear on the street. This guy strode past me in shoes of a shade of electric blue that they eclipsed my pink Crocs.

I am no longer alone as Cheyenne takes her next pause on Angela at the corner of Duval.

The weird shaped shed is actually a ticket booth for tour boats and the day's occupant was setting up shop. Peop,e think I have a high stress job answering police phones but I can't imagine sending all day answering questions and selling tickets like that. It remains a source of amazement to me that I landed the job I did when I did. Cheyenne's job in retirement is to check out absolutely every single thing everywhere.

She spent her first eight years producing puppies and being kept in her rather uncomfortable place in the home of some freaks that dumped her for the crime of being too old. Nowadays she gets her daily walk where she sets the pace and the direction. It is hard work and she had to stop off for a drink at the 801. That is to say she stopped to hydrate.

And then she stopped for a final rest on this lengthy walk on the sidewalk between the car and the Hemingway House wall. She likes to end her walks with a pause to people watch. I get the feeling she never got to spend much time just watching the world in her former life. These days when not sleeping she likes to sit on the porch and watch the boats on the canal at home.

I don't think she noticed the rather anxious Hemingway cat perched on the wall. The cat sure noticed her.

Back home she passed out snoring on her grass bed. It must have been a good walk.

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Dale Owen, Bob Brozman, RIP

2013-05-07T20:50:00.001-04:00

It is I have long been told, a sign of aging that one turns first to the obituaries when opening the newspaper, to see who's dead and to reassure oneself about one's own status among the living. In the digital age one ends up opening Google and never quite knowing who will come across the page, by accident or by remotest coincidence. The other day I found a 94 year old Italian politician, Giulio Andreotti had fallen off his perch. That was cause for reflection for a moment considering he dominated the news cycles when I was a youngster in Italy.

And then there was Dale, a colleague who used to sell underwriting on KUSP, what was the public radio station in Santa Cruz in the 70s and 80s. Terry Green Blogs About KUSP » Blog Archive » Dale Owen passes away He was gifted with the rich deep basso profundo tones that were perfect for his classical music shows, the sort preferred by program directors. He had the thankless task at KUSP, that of selling the counter culture organization whose rambunctious members were always ready to spot and denounce a sell out as soon as they sniffed one. Dale worked the community like crazy and never lost his cheerful smile when sales came under fire for violating those protocols. He lived his life on crutches working paradoxically in a building that was as inaccessible as any second floor office could be and he never complained or turned away from the daily struggle to climb the shiny wooden stairs as steep and shiny as a granite mountain face. I was twenty-something and ran up and down easily, mindless if I forgot a microphone in the studio or needed to "run back up" for some other thing.

Sitting here, 3200 miles away, pondering the quiet, sudden illness and death of the unassuming Dale, I came across a connected death from a few weeks ago. KUSP, in it's role as a community voice was naturally a voice for resident and visiting musicians and Bob Brozman was a close friend of the founders of the station. It turns out he died in April, apparently by his own hand in an untold story, and was I surprised to see worldwide obituaries including the august New York Times, Bob Brozman, Guitarist, Is Dead at 59 - NYTimes.com and a Wikipedia page devoted to his tireless pursuit of what we used to call World Music.

I cannot say my life will be directly impacted by these disparate deaths, but they do provoke thought I guess is the best way to put it. I look back and feel an incredible sense of waste. I was a young man impetuous and let loose in the cultural playground that was California in the 80s and I had everything to learn and to do. I was so busy I missed so much of what the people around me every day had to offer. I read their obituaries and as brief as they are they reveal a large slice of details I never had the wit to enquire after at the time.

In many respects I feel fortunate with the way my life has unspooled, especially considering some of the turns it could have taken but those small insistent niggling regrets pop up in my life at the least expected moments.

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Parrotdise Unraveled

2013-05-07T00:01:00.000-04:00

It is unusual for me but I find myself missing the oddly named Parrotodise bar and restaurant on Little Torch Key. I see so much change, people come and go as do businesses, but this one I miss.

It's been closed for almost a year and already the signs of entropy are closing in on the formerly bustling eatery. Rather than pay the modest fee to dump a bed at the ...dump, some kind soul chose to drop it off in the parking lot. Much better.

It's as though when the place closed no one came back for any reason, to clean up or remove any decorative touches left by the ancien regime. The decorations are in place...

...the signage hasn't changed. I used to park here from time to time and I appreciated the convenient space for the Vespa or the Bonneville.

It's difficult to discern what made this place attractive. The food was okay, simple but not terribly brash or exciting, the service was cheerful and the owner was always to be found wandering the bar and restaurant keeping an eye on things and apparently enjoying the life of a restaurateur.

Key West Diary: Parrotdise

Looking back Parrtodise had its own place in the pantheon of Lower Keys restaurants, not as fancy as Square Grouper and not as organically hip as the Wharf, but they had a nice bar, good beers and fresh fish and locals flocked to it.

I also liked the view, unique to this place with its panoramic windows overlooking the channel. I enjoyed bringing visitors here and eating coconut lobster bites, or lobster mac and cheese and the ridiculous breakfast burger with bacon and a fried egg (!) drinking a draught Smithwicks while looking out over the water. I felt rather melancholy as I wandered around kicking abandoned dead palm fronds and remembering good times.

This was one place I didn't mind coming to have a beer and a meal by myself at the bar. The staff were friendly but not intrusive and the prices were good value. All gone.

The end came abruptly in June 2012 ironically while my wife and I were eating at Square Grouper we heard that this place was closing. It was not a happy moment, checks were left unpaid as te rumor had it and the operation closed on a sour note.

So there it is, abandoned but not forgotten, though a neighbor mentioned to me there is a rumor of a potential new tenant in sight which may reverse the gradual decay which is making it unlikely I will stop off again until something actually changes. Soon, I hope.

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Lobster Pots

2013-05-06T00:00:00.000-04:00

Lobster season starts in August but apparently its never too soon to start to get ready.

I am very ambiguous about lobster ever since I found out that they will live 120 years if not interfered with. It seems rather cruel to induce them to plop into cages and then take them out and boil them for food in a world overflowing already with calories.

There again I am not particularly fond of lobster meat, I have compared it previously to fish flavored string cheese, but lobster is a delicacy and much desired so it seems churlish to spurn the stuff.

Yet the business of catching lobster is endlessly fascinating, watching Cuban fishermen build these cages, label them and paint their floats their own particular colors. Stealing from another's trap is a heinous crime, similar in all respects to rustling or horse thievery. Jail time is inevitable if caught.

Everything is labeled and licensed and marked.

There is a beauty in the hunt and that is what I look for as I walk my dog past these crates of death.

The lobster mini season, a hellish two days will be in late July when amateurs descend on the Keys and kill themselves in the unbridled hunt for lobster. More of that later as we get closer. Mini season produces no lyrical pictures of an ancient trade like these taken on Summerland Key.

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The Made In Key West Band

2013-05-05T00:00:00.000-04:00

Walk past the hard Rock Cafe and you'll see there is a narrow alleyway that disappears apparently behind the mansion that is the Key West Women's Club, an edifice as fossilized as the club itself, yet in the darkness there is a little cobbled square and behind the square is a little wooden building and that is a hive of wondrous activity every winter.

Sometimes it can feel onerous to lift oneself out of the comfort of one's own home and plod off down to the three hundred block of Duval Street, only to disappear up the little alleyway consulting the time in the manner of the White Rabbit of Alice in Wonderland fame, tut-tutting about the time.

In order to avoid such a feeling of aggravation one buys season's worth of tickets in advance. We in fact check the schedule and decide which plays we like the look of, and there being enough to justify it we do a season's worth. Then we cozy up to the bar, have a drink and sit on the porch to wait for the opening of the doors.

In years past the Red Barn had put on a lot of musicals and frothy silliness which are not my cup of tea, but the crop of dramas and thought provoking productions has increased each year and this year I am aggravated I managed to miss the opening production which was The 39 Steps, a story I have enjoyed in print and on screen but never live in a theater. Oh well.

Our latest outing came last month when we saw the final night of Conchs, Cowboys and Tales of Old Key West, put on by the five members of the Made in Key West Band. Between them they claim 153 years of residence in the Southernmost City and because of that no doubt some cross dressing, even of the mildest sort was soon on display.

The band did a nice job, and they were having a rollicking good time on stage, a bunch of friends who for the most part go way back and are extremely comfortable together doing what is not at all their day jobs, except perhaps Paul Cotton who's musical career goes a long way back, enough that he is on a Wikipedia page devoted to the band Poco...luckily for me as I had no idea who he was.

Above we have George Halloran a local figure in the field of law. he has taken on a few sacred cows in the name of the people and he also knows how to sing. I thought he rather resembled Clint Eastwood in his shades. Below we have teacher Tom Murtha:

Paul Cotton sang with a richness and presence that betrayed his professional career. It was also noted he was the only member of the band who did not know Mel Fisher personally. Murtha was proud to wave around a silver real hanging from his neck given to him directly by the august treasure hunter.

Gary MacDonald played the drums with fervor in the back of the stage. He and Mimi MacDonald have been leading lights in the theater operations in Key West for decades.

John Wells took on the role of de facto band leader, grinning with delight at his own jokes, his plastic features expressing delight and surprise, desire and astonishment vividly enough to pull the audience into his performance. Some few visitors not completely familiar with Key West lore fell in love with him and his performance cheering him on, rowdy and happy, entertaining the staid theater audience with their seat dancing in the front row. They went home with happy memories of Key West those three women of a certain age in the front row.

Then Island Alex cam on stage and danced sang and blew his brass, the consummate performer having a ball on stage.

Finally the sole woman in the performance Camille Russo Toler stepped up the microphone to sign variations on Oh Susanna. And in effect it was less a night about old Key West and more a night of cowboy and folk songs, familiar repertoire with just a few references to Bum Farto ( the tourists loved that one) That Fucking Conch Train in the spirit of cowboys singing of the Iron Horse, Mel Fisher and of course abundant if unsurprising references to coconuts, palms, warm weather and driving to the end of the road. Familiar stuff but not really engaging if you already live here.

It was a fun night out but with the winter snowbird season over I would have enjoyed a little more topical references, inside jokes perhaps and just a little mockery of the foibles of daily life on the island.

Pipe Laying On Cudjoe

2013-05-04T00:01:00.000-04:00

The unwelcome news from Tallahassee is that the Florida State Legislature is not going to be sending any money to the Keys this year to help pay for sewers. They had promised fifty million for the latest installment but apparently Monroe County fell behind in the lobbying stakes and got zippo allocated. Our new state representative, she of the vacant smile and shiny forehead isn't doing too well at all since election day. She dropped the ball on getting our local private multi national corporation to drop it's false property tax exempt status on formerly military property. Balfour Beatty is trying to get out of paying eleven million in back property taxes to the county after privatizing former military housing at Peary Court in Key West. They have stronger lobbyists and deeper pockets so they get away with it. The compromise is that from now they will have to report which houses are occupied by the military to get the exemption. No doubt they will be unregulated and honest about it despite the absence of oversight.

In another fine piece of legislative sleight of hand the Republican statehouse is planning on cutting funding to programs that include the local MARC House which provides assisted living support to developmentally disabled adults. They do amazing work not that the state gives a toss. The have no lobbyists so funding gets cut. This in a state with no state income tax and low property taxes. There are dozens of exemptions to the state sales tax that could be plugged but once again it means goring the sacred cows of those with money and influence. So the MARC House gets slammed.

It's a weird thing but the Republican Party in Florida gerrymandered districts to take control of everything and now they have everything their plan is to build nothing and tear down everything. Even providing health insurance to the desperately poor in Florida is off the table. Even Governor Scott, the least popular governor in history has come out in favor of Obama Care arguing that half a million kids would get coverage. And he's the former head of a health insurance organization that got fined $1.7 billion for ripping off Medicare, so he's no friend of the sick and the needy, he's just a politico in search of votes. His Republican cohorts in the state legislature refuse to budge, coming up with lame expensive private sector plans that cover no one but put fees in the pockets of party donors, as usual. The governor has seen the writing on the wall and Democrats are already lining up former Republican Governor Charlie Crist to run again this time under the auspices of his newly announced Democrat status.

The odd thing is that Florida's budget is in reasonably shape after years of draconian cuts, and the state pension plan is well funded in a state that has 31 billionaires living in it and hundreds of thousands of wealthy five percenters who like the low tax status and warm weather winters of this state. And alongside them live people in dire poverty. This tax exemption stuff has been around for ages and I found an old article in the St Petersburg Times (now the Tampa Bay Times) on the subject when the tax itself was just five percent.

St. Petersburg Times - Google News Archive Search

It always ends up as a matter of priorities, money for certain things is always found while money for others is "too expensive" and then they layer on party politics so tax-and-spend liberals are spendthrifts while in fact half the nation's debt was racked up by the Republicans and their overseas wars fought to benefit oil corporations even while cutting their taxes. Meanwhile kids in Florida remain healthcare free. Jolly good. And if we aren't careful we may manage to wipe out the coral completely.

For twenty years Monroe County has fought state plans to install a central sewer system. Key West wrapped up the city's a decade ago. But those of us that live in the county still use septic tanks which don't work at all well in limestone rocks. It's astonishing but the evidence is finally in and scientists agree raw sewage kills coral. Who'd have thunk? Finally we are getting the sewer lines installed and a new set of pipes are about to be laid between Cudjoe and Big Pine Keys. The public utility is overseeing the work happily, after a private company won the bid to do Stock Island and made a horrible hash of the job. The newspaper was full of stories of incorrect pipe diameters and sewage backing up into people's homes.

Had the county undertaken this monumental task twenty years ago finding would have been plentiful compared to the piteous state of public budgets after decades of slashing. The utility estimates that each property tax will get a $4500 surcharge to cover their share of costs, added to property taxes and spread over twenty years. Then there will be other fees I'm sure to close down old septic tanks and so forth, but in the end we will have a modern sewage treatment system after decades of shitting on the reef.

It is a measure of how far advanced the rot in our leadership has penetrated when an obvious public good like sewers are the object of political maneuvering. In a county where we can't manage to recycle, where stewardship means waiting on tables rather than taking care of the environment you'd think something as basic as sewers would be a priority. It is one more way in which we live in a very odd place down here, so close to Nature yet so far. The modern term I think is disconnect, the old fashioned term is stupidity. Pass the bottle.

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Seen Around Town

2013-05-03T00:01:00.001-04:00

A disembodied head. And yes I know its off a mannequin but it was a little disturbing nonetheless, all dressed up and everything.

"It gets harder at the Red Garter," Har har hearty har har. The Red Garter is a strip club populated by anaemic wan eastern European blondes showing off their chests to eager drunken hopeless men. I know because I went there once with a friend and the place made me sad, not hard.

"Sale Pending" magic words in a very peculiar and uncertain economy. Better that than "Spain" where official numbers indicate more than a quarter of the workforce isn't working. What the real numbers are I dread to think.

A trim Conch house with louvered shutters and neat green trim.

I liked the superimposed letters on the well worn city sign. Generally I've found the city public works department responsive to requests for signage. Perhaps the author always lives by the adage that God helps those as help themselves. It works.

A piece of history in my life. My wife and I checked this place out on Margaret Street many years ago. It was for sale for $250,000 but my wife didn't like the open plan layout. I often wonder when I walk by if I'd have gone quickly mad had we tried to live this close to the heart of it all in Key West. Perhaps not.

Another sign in the window of the Silver plams on Tryuman Avenue: Rooms Available. Barely visible in the window reflections, but there nonetheless. It is almost miraculous how much more easily traffic flows on Highway One and around town now that the winter residents have buggered off home.

I met an aquaintance on Virginia Street. Peg was walking a friend's dog. We stopped and talked about our good fortune working for the city. And our matching footwear. She was a good sport about it.

I found these chaise longues cluttering the sidewalk. Perhaps they were unwanted and free. Or stored temporarily in public.

I left them where I found them. After much thought I have come to the conclusion that one major aspect of life in the Keys that I like is the principle of living and letting live. It is eroding but I treasure it what's left of it. That and "the weather and laid back island life (whatever that is)"... and all the other tiresome cliches quoted by each Citizen of the Day in the newspaper.

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Jet Skis On Duval

2013-05-02T15:07:00.001-04:00

My colleague Keith said he got tired of rain dripping through the ceiling fan of his Key West priced rental apartment in Old Town and he went out to get lunch on his day off. Too bad he didn't have a boat to get down Duval Street like his better equipped neighbors. He said he saw jet skiers further up Duval Street, there was that much water.

Actually these kinds of pictures are pretty normal for summer in the Lower Keys, when heavy thunderstorms blow through town and flooding is unfortunately a way of life. It doesn't take a hurricane to flood these streets and rain puddling is part of the reason why North Roosevelt Boulevard is all torn up. But today the rain has been ferocious, and insistent. My wife works next to the Petting Zoo on Stock Island and she found one local who was having a good time in the downpour. Mind you, when you've been neglected and mistreated as these animals have been, every day is a great day in the care of the Sheriff's Department Farmer Jeanne. Odd but true, the Sheriff gives these animals a home.

Too bad the jeep is out of action. This picture from just outside Key West is from a colleague of mine who was planning on coming in to work tonight, if her little Toyota doesn't flood. The flood advisory indicates up to four inches of rain may fall today. It feels like the heavens have pretty much disgorged every tear God has to shed today, already.

I road into town this morning for a training class at work, after I walked Cheyenne. It was overcast and there was rain in the forecast.during the ninety minute class we heard thunder and when I came out the skies had opened. No problem I got into my waterproofs and took off. Streets that have a tendency to flood were filled with water but the Inneville took them like a champ. I rode through intersections that car drivers were afraid to ford but there wasn't really a problem on my motorcycle. Waterfalls on canals aren't normal where Kristi lives. She sent me a picture to prove it. There really has been a lot of rain.

I'm working tonight so it will be another ride in under black skies, gusting winds and some highway adventure. Dress well leave early and enjoy the fun because every day is a good day to ride. The good news is that the drought is over and we haven't lost electricity in these wind gusts to 40 mph. Life is good, really.

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Loose In The Lower Keys

2013-05-02T00:01:00.000-04:00

It was a windy day but the tenting went ahead. I was impressed, up it went in Bristol fashion and came down again as swiftly and efficiently. No Keys Disease there

Cheyenne has been reluctant in the summer heat to walk much in the woods so I end up taking rather dreary strolls in urban environments with more smells the better. On the other hand trailing around behind Cheyenne gives me a chance to get to know better those stores I would otherwise never notice. I am an appallingly incompetent shopper, but alliteration does appeal to me.

Considering how ad-free my blog is I have to confess I am sick and tired of ads pervading the rest of my life. They are everywhere trying to put the fear of smelling bad, looking stupid or missing out on some great "opportunity" upon us all. Check out this poor afflicted car:

A solar powered home for less than $400,000! Quick before it sells...

Then there are silly slogans. I used to drive a tractor trailer rig around San Francisco where the slogan was something about caring or quality or some clap trap I can't recall. "The Real Deal" seems equally silly and impenetrable. I mean when you think about it what does that actually mean?

I am probably over thinking it. Looking at the heritage Trail Bike Path under construction across the Lower Keys one wonders how they finally managed to pull it together. It is going to be quite the achievement, not least because they seem to be installing the new sewage pipes underneath the trial as they go. The bad news is the Legislature rejected a request for fifty million dollars to help pay for the $200 million project. Promises not fulfilled, of course.

Florida's State Legislature is but a part time affair, meeting for only a few months in the winter in Tallahassee. It sounds crazy to me considering this is a state of twenty or more million people...But for most of the year the Governor and half a dozen Cabinet members rule the state by themselves. This year the lawmakers are rejecting Obama's Affordable Health care initiative and thus putting at risk of no improvement some half million Florida children who lack health coverage and more than a million adults. Way to go!

Uninsured Americans raise costs and don't get preventative care. Oh well, who cares? Most of them are brown or black or poor, nowadays rapidly becoming the permanent underclass. I got mine and Ayn Rand would approve of such indifference to suffering.

Meanwhile back in my middle class limousine with the air blasting I took a quick look down Key Deer Boulevard on Big Pine. My dog was reluctant to get out and go for a walk on the Jack Watson Trail in the Key Deer Refuge so after pausing a while to check the status of the trees burned an uncontrolled fire last year we got back on the long straight road across the back of Big Pine Key.

The back of the stores at Key Deer Plaza is Cheyenne's preferred milieu in the heat of summer.

It is also preferred by wild chickens too. I guess my dog has good taste. Its just me that prefers a little bit of wilderness.

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Veterans Park

2013-05-01T00:01:00.000-04:00

How wild chickens found their way this far north I cannot for the life of me begin to imagine. Someone with a perverse sense of humor perhaps, loaded a few of these birds in Key West and dumped them here, at the southern end of the Seven Mile Bridge, where against all odds they seem to be thriving.

Which may not be quite so surprising when you consider how much crap day trippers throw away after their picnics in this park.

I had a job on my hands righting all the trash barrels overturned by a strong wind the night before my visit to the park. Cheyenne checked them out with some intensity as I scraped up the contents and kicked them back into the barrels.

Veterans is a popular spot on sunny days and you will frequently see the parking lot jammed with cars. The waters are shallow and visitors love to wade out up to their waists miles out to sea... I like it here when I can hold out hope that I shall be alone with an incoming storm, a spectacular sunrise or a seascape suitable for pictures. It's almost always the case that I can get something to look at.

I came by here a couple of days later, a sunny afternoon and the place was packed, not just with chickens, but with people.

We spent an hour hanging out, Cheyenne and I, a couple of cars came and one parked right behind me as I sat at a picnic table reading and he just sat there engine running windows closed and the mechanical clatter broke the stillness so I moved to another table - there were plenty available! It was inconsiderate considering the empty lot but thoughtlessness is pretty much par for the course for humanity I find, hence my preference for solitude.

Another bonus is the toilet situation here which can be quite useful...

...and can buy you some time to stand around and take a few more pictures of the sunrise, and the clouds and the palms and all the usual South Florida stuff one expects to see.

And in the end one needs a nap, a respite from so much excitement.

That my Labrador doesn't swim is a shame but she makes up for it on land.

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