Thoughts Upon Governments

Awaiting the barbarians, by C.P. Cavafy

What has this to do with the real Key West?  I'm not certain -- yet.

On my journey to Ithaka.

Thanks Tommy.

Do The Right Thing

I haven't posted here very much since coming back from Cam's and my trip to Europe in September and October.  This is why.  I've been busy.

I will tell the whole story one day.  For now, it's to figure out what to do about it.  Find out who cares enough to help reach that decision.  Do the right thing.

I'm hopeful.

A Man's Best Friend

Rommel 1999-2009

R.I.P.

Losing a friend is never easy.  Rommel was a good and faithful friend and we grew to love him.  He lived with us for over two years, first on Ann Street and then at South Street.

At first we weren't sure how to handle him.  He had a reputation for aggressiveness, especially toward other dogs.  Taking him for a walk often involved traveling on side streets, being watchful for other dogs and crossing the street to avoid getting close to them.  Later, after taking him to a trainer for several sessions and learning how to behave while handling him (for it's the handler who needs the training more than the dog), we were able to walk him through the heart of Old Town, even on Duval Street among crowds, and control him when another dog was nearby.

Rommel was a great watchdog.  When we lived on Ann Street, a half-block from Duval Street he'd always let us know if someone was getting too near the gate or behaving badly.  He did the same for us on South Street even though he wasn't able to see who was out there he'd still give warning if there was somebody nearby.

We left Rommel at South Street when we moved to Elizabeth Street this past July.  The house at South Street had become his home.  He had almost two thirds of a walled-in acre there to roam, a covered porch to sleep on when it rained, and frequent visitors for human stimulation.

Rommel's owner lives elsewhere and has for several ears.  When he comes to Key West on visits the affection between dog and owner is evident.  Peter, his owner, got Rommel as a one or two year year-old, after he was taken from a prior owner who didn't treat him well and given to Peter.  When Peter left Key West to undertake business ventures elsewhere, Rommel became the charge of Captain Outrageous.  When the Captain died we were asked to care for Rommel and thus began our friendship.

Rommel died from complications from cancers that developed quickly and advanced quickly.  He was kept comfortable until the end. He now rests in the ground of the place that was his last home.

Goodbye, friend.  Perhaps we'll meet again one day for a romp in Elysian Fields.

Back Home Again

I got back to Key West a week ago today after traveling for six weeks with our grandson, Cameron (Chasse). It was a Grand Tour of Europe in a tradition that goes back to the 1600's and was considered to be an education rite of passage for young men in a gap year following completion of a course of education.

It's good to be back home again.  The weather in Europe towards the end of our journey was trending to winter, requiring jackets when outside most of the time. And, frankly, travel can be tiring, especially when carrying heavy luggage and making use of public transportation and airlines to get around.

There are now some weighty matters that I must deal with.  I'll be focusing on those in the weeks to come.  I told Cameron when we parted in New Hampshire last week that we had the same task ahead; to figure out what we'll do with the rest of our lives.  He's 19 now and has his life ahead of him.  I'll be 70 next month, so the things I might do are quite different from the things he might do.  Yet, it's basically the same thing.

He's going to work in Alta, Utah this winter at a ski resort there managed by a friend's uncle.  It's a job that he's well-suited for, operating ski lifts, as he's a pretty accomplished skier and an even better snowboarder.  The job includes room and board and a not-too-shabby hourly rate of pay.

I've been looking at the papers here and I can see that it's shaping up to be another interesting "season" at the theaters, music venues and other places for entertainment, amusement and diversion.  I wrapped up our property management gig before leaving for Europe so I'm optimistic that there'll be time now to take advantage of those things, to read (and hopefully to write) more, and to amuse myself in various other ways.

Meanwhile, if you feel like sitting through slide shows of some of our photos from the trip, go here and here on Facebook.

Staying online while moving about

Despite some difficulty in getting internet access reliably (we're at Isaacs Hostel in Dublin right now using their wireless, I'm managing to keep up with what's going on back "home" in Key West. I've downloaded the Key West Citizen for Thursday through Sunday, keeping up on the news about the Acevedos, Hendrick, etc.

I've already voted in the upcoming municipal elections. They'll probably be over by the time I return unless one or more races require a runoff.

The state of wireless internet in Ireland, as far as we've found, isn't as advanced as I expected it would be. Where we've been able to find it, it's adequate but hot spots are few and far between and it's almost all passworded. I think that the days of open hotspots is pretty much gone, lost to the abuse of those who would take advantage of a good thing.

An internet shop operator here in Dublin told me of people sitting on the sidewalk outside of his shop at all hours sucking up free wi-fi, then complaining loudly when he shut it off.

We'll see if it's any better in Europe soon.

Some time away from Key West

As announced elsewhere, our grandson Cameron and myself are on tour in the British Isles and Europe until October 20. We're blogging our adventure at Cam's blog with me as guest contributor.

We're in Dublin just now, preparing to board a bus to London (via overnight ferry).

Follow along there. As time permits, I'll continue to write about Key West here, maybe draw some comparisons along the way.

Cam and Bob's Excellent Adventure

The days dwindled down and now there are just five days before Cameron and I will be on our way to Ireland to begin our own excellent adventure. Arrangements have been made. Bags are being packed. We'll spend three days in New Hampshire tying loose ends, then we board Aer Lingus in Boston on the 9th for the 'overnight' flight to Dublin.

Europe Tour 2009

My weekdays are for working on things that have to get done; weekends, like the one just past, is for doing things I want to do, like write something at my blog so my "followers", all 14 of you, and other visitors (395 so far this month) will know we're still here in Key West and don't intend to leave any time soon, at least not for good. There is a rumour abroad that we are leaving here to go north. Not so, not so.

I used to get a lot more traffic here, but my posting frequency dropped way off when we began our 2-1/2 year property management gig and opened the gallery on Caroline St. Now that both of those are finished, I've turned my attention to my work with the BCCLT, and making ready for a five-week trip to Europe and the British Isles with our grandson, Cameron.

Cam is 18 and just graduated from Spaulding High School in Dover, NH where he lives and grew up. Like me back in 1957, he isn't sure what he wants to do now. He hasn't applied for any college. He's visited a recruiter to look into opportunities in the military. We planned this European Grand Tour a couple of years ago for the summer after his graduation. He was last in Europe, Belgium, when he was four years old, has studied and done well in French in grammar and high school, and has an interest in the history of Europe, America and the intersection of the two. We'll visit: Ireland, England, France, the Low countries, Monaco, Italy, Hungary, Austria, Czech Republic, Germany and Switzerland. It was planned as a 30-day Eurail tour, but now it looks like we'll rent a car in France and return it there.

For me it's mostly a retro tour. Janet and I did it together in 1997. We spent 4-1/2 months in Ireland and a month traveling in Europe. We traveled mostly by bus and train, did some hiking here and there, hitchhiked a little, and rented a car to drive the Cote d'Azur from Hyeres to Monaco. Cam wants to see what we saw, and he has places on his list that I've never been to: Normandy, Versailles, Prague, Switzerland, and others.

We have our plane tickets and now we're looking for a good car rental deal, hopefully in Calais. We're both going to be packing MacBooks, so we ought to be able to chronicle the trip for our friends back home.

We leave from Boston on September 9; return there on October 20.

A Mayoral Exchange

Russian oil rigs just 45 miles from Florida?


Let's do a swap: Morgan McPherson for Juan Contino Aslán. Give them until October 7 to come up with a plan.

In searching for the Mayor of Havana, I found the website CityMayors.com where Mayors from around the world are identified and profiled. Key West isn't listed, but could be if enough people go there and enter the Key West Mayor in the section called Mayor Monitor. I did.

Medical Information Technology

I went with Janet on Friday morning to see yet another physician, this one an ENT specialist (otolaryngologist) to have her hearing evaluated and to discover whether there's anything in that region of her body contributing to vertigo, a generalized lack of balance, and stuffiness and congestion.

The doctor, female and an osteopathic physician, saw her about 25 minutes after the scheduled 11:00 o'clock appointment time. To be fair, we arrived early knowing that we'd be faced with filling out a bunch of new information forms, something that is repeated each time you make contact with a new medical advisor. We were probably scheduled early to give us to time to fill out the forms. The office wasn't very busy. We only saw two other possible patients in the time we were there.

If you walked in and looked around, there'd be very little to tell that you were in an ENT practice. Almost all of the advertising materials on display had to do with cosmetic things, Botox, facial treatments, and plastic surgery. There was one rack that held a 4-page fold-out brochure from the American Academy of Otolaryngology. I grabbed a copy and its lying here somewhere, strewn among the things I'm trying to sort through following our move to Elizabeth St.

The point is, it got me thinking again about that whole process of grabbing a clipboard from the receptionist and filling out the forms for insurance, medical history, complaints, prescriptions, and anything else the doc decides is pertinent, and of course the obligatory and all-important insurance information. Oh, I already said that? OK. Over 20 years ago I worked on a research project for Honeywell centered on an optical storage card that was touted as a solution to a variety of needs in medicine, banking, business and you-name-it. It was a time before the internet, 'flash' drives, and PDA's, and even before the ascendency of insurance companies as controllers of medicine.

I'm trying to understand what the barriers might be to a universal patient health information system might be. It isn't technology; today's technology can easily accommodate such a system. It might have to do with a lack of standards; Doctor A and Doctor B could have different things they need to know about a patient's medical history. I suspect that patient privacy could be a significant barrier for some patients. Does my otolaryngologist (say) need to know my gynecological condition? (Not that I'm likely to have one, being male and all.)

I get my medical care from the Veterans Administration, as I've mentioned here before. The VA has a sophisticated on-line Patient Information Record system. My VA doctor can quickly pull up my information and see the results of all of my routine visits, lab results over time, all special diagnostics such as X-ray, MRI, and X-scopies, and all my prescriptions. If I happen to be away from Key West and am close to another VA facility and need to see a doctor, I'm pretty sure that he or she could pull up that same record and consult it.

I'm pretty sure that there are some entrepreneurial companies working on such systems. The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act is providing billions of dollars to foster the development of health information technology. If the controllers of that $800 Bn fund can figure out how to get it out there without the scammers getting hold of it, we ought see some pretty significant advances made over the next 2-3 years. Like this. I hope they do it -- soon.

Bar Stroll in Red, White and Blue

announcing the inaugural, "4th of July KEY WEST Benefit Blast"

A Bar Stroll in Red, White, and Blue! To benefit the Forgotten Soldiers Outreach

July 4th Key West Benefit Blast
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

PRLog (Press Release) – Jun 26, 2009 – 4th of July Key West Benefit Blast. A Bar Stroll in Red, White, and Blue!
Rick Dostal announces the inaugural, "4th of July Benefit Blast" along the Historic Key West Boardwalk, to benefit our military service members serving worldwide.

DETAILS

Key West Kermit's Key Lime Pie

Kermit is a familiar figure at the corner of Greene and Elizabeth streets, dressed in his chef uniform and holding up one his famous key lime pies for the tourists passing by on the Old Town Trolley. The video shows how you can make a key lime pie at home. Or 24 of them.

Cars of Key West

I went on the air at KONK AM with Jim Thomsen, on the program Spirit Talk. When I tuned in it was with the expectation that I'd be listening to Rev. Randy Becker from the UU church. Randy is traveling and Jim -- who I knew from our days at the Seekers Forum that met, and maybe still meets, at the church -- Jim was filling in for him.

Jim has a web site, Smiling Cloud, on which I found this great collection of pictures of Key West vehicles. Several are the works of Captain Outrageous.

See here.

Barefoot Bob

Barefoot Bob is dead. Robert Salamone, originally from Chelmsford, MA, a hop, skip and jump away from Tyngsboro, MA where I spent my high school years, passed on on June 22 in Key West. Robert -- Bob -- operated the bar known as Barefoot Bob's during the 1990s. If I have it right, the club was first at the Duval St. location of today's Willy T's. And I remember going just once to Barefoot Bob's on Telegraph Lane. It was a Deadhead hangout then, a dark place with black and strobe lights, walls painted in psychedelic scenes and colors, and a booming sound system playing stoner tunes.

I didn't know the gentleman, though I knew of him. You can't say that you know anyone from what is written in his or her obituary, but his reflected a caring person to me, someone in the business he was because he liked people, liked being around people having fun.

I kinda wish I had come to know him.

The rain in Spain ......

Heavy weather coming in from the north, but a strange force field seems to be keeping the island here in the dry.

We're in that circle in the center. Can't last much longer.