A Word of Warning

We who live here pretty much know this.  Tourists may not.

The suggestions of alternatives are spot on.

An Outrageous Memory

Yesterday was the sixth anniversary of the passing of Captain Outrageous, a.k.a. Norman Taylor. Some people know that Norman Taylor, born in Ohio on April 13, 1940, changed his name legally to Captain Outrageous in 1999. He did so in order to have that name printed on that year's mayoral election in which he ran against four other candidates - and in which he finished in third place with only 339 votes against the winner, who had 3,125.

It was a Quixotic campaign for the Captain, driven largely by the impending loss of his trailer home lot on Green Street to developers.

Taylor claimed to have come to Key West in the early 1980's as a dropout from a successful business career in Ohio. I know for certain that he was here in the 1990's because he opened and operated a small café, restaurant and bar on White St. called the Last Straw. But I've yet to meet anyone who knew him in Key West prior to the 90's.

At any rate, yesterday was a day of remembrance for me and a few others who were his close friends at the time of his death. He was my age, 4-1/2 months younger. We got along well and spent many days and hours working together at the art gallery he opened on Caroline Street around 2004.

The times we spent working side by side were often punctuated by discussions about many things philosophical in nature. I believe that we were mentors to each other in a variety of ways and that we both gained something from our relatively short (two years) friendship.

So yesterday was a day to remember those times and to honor the memory of a good man.

Traffic

Total Visitors 109,002

30 December 2006 - 28 January 2013

Whoa, I didn't know that I passed the 100,000 visitor mark
some time during the last year.
In roughly six years, that translates to 18,000 a year.

Not insignificant.

Music

When I was in the fourth grade I joined the boys' choir at Our Lady of Pity (Notre Dame de Pitié) church in North Cambridge, MA.  We were called Les Petit Chanteurs de Notre Dame and sang both in church and outside of it.  I was a soprano then and learned to sing well enough, but teaching musical at a theoretical level wasn't part of the program.

Later, in high school, I joined the band, having failed to make the baseball team as catcher, nor anything else.  They at first gave me a baritone horn as my instrument and then a clarinet, but my lack of a musical background and an inability to read music led to me being reassigned to carry the front end of the bass drum in parades and at football games while the others played.

Yet I soldiered on, and after settling down in family life and the world of work, I tried to learn keyboards, drums, violin, guitar, harmonica, and tin whistle and came up with the same result.

So I decided to become a musical audience and to try to understand music from the listener's side, and to learn more about the structure and form and function of music that way.  I remember listening to the radio as a vary young child in my grandmother's kitchen as her aunt worked there doing laundry, cooking and such while Memére worked outside the home.  This was the 1940's so the songs played on the radio were of that era and so were the singers.  To this day I remember the lyrics of many of those tunes and can sing along when I hear them played.

By this time you might be thinking, "What has any of this to do with Key West?"

Here's the bridge.

Key West is a great place to listen to music.  Live music, the kind that really matters (IMHO).  Last night we went to a birthday party for a local musician, Jimmy Olson, at his home.  Jimmy is a pianist of some accomplishment and performs locally, playing and singing the standards of a different era than this one.  He appears to know a very large catalog of music by heart, and can play and sing almost anything, given sheet music.

Fortunately there are venues where performers like Jimmy can perform for appreciative audiences.  He also has a wide circle of friends who are similarly talented and gives them the opportunity to sing along with him, or to take over his seat at the piano and perform on their own.

We enjoyed such a performance last Saturday at the Gardens Hotel and it turned out to be thoroughly enjoyable.  A visitor from Cleveland, Joseph Iacobucci, sat down and regaled the small crowd with songs he wrote about Cleveland, Los Angeles and Washington, DC.  He made me think of, and I told him so, the Capitol Steps.

Gianna Skyy

Jimmy is also mentoring a friend of ours, Gianna Skyy, as she begins to develop a following among the musical cognoscenti.  Gianna had three performances last week, first at a fundraising event on Friday at Cowboy Bill's, on Saturday at the Gardens Hotel, and then with Jimmy last night at his birthday party.  She has a strong voice and can belt out a song, and now she's building up her songbook with covers of Adele and others, and some of her original songs.  She's definitely a budding talent.

We still love places like The Green Parrot, Smokin' Tuna, et al.  Yesterday we even travelled to Boondocks on Ramrod Key (MM 27.5) to hear Bill Blue and the Nervous Guys perform at a benefit for Habitat for Humanity of Key West and the Lower Keys.  Bill Blue is kind of the house band for Marlin docks and the rest of Houseboat Row, one of our own, and a venerable blues man since back the 1960's.

All in all, the incredible music talent here blesses me, fascinates me, teaches me, and sustains my life-long interest in music as an art form.

Maybe I'll join a Kazoo band.  I think I could handle that.

Or I could just whistle a happy tune.

Key West City Website

The City's website has undergone a transformation, and it seems to be an improvement.  One interesting feature I noticed is that it is available now in dozens of languages.  Here's Vietnamese:

Key West the Newspaper

The Blue Paper, as it has been known since the beginning of its 20-year run in Key West, died at the end of last year when its first and only publisher, Dennis Reeves Cooper (PhD) threw in the towel.

Now we hear that it will be revived, at least in name, and will take on a new role as an on-line publication focused on investigative journalism.  Arnaud and Nadja Naja Hansen Girard are the power couple behind the revival.  They purchased rights to use the name from Cooper and are preparing to re-launch the 'paper' sometime in the near future.

The Hansens Girards were behind the investigation that led the Federalistas to declare that ownership of Wisteria Island remained in the hands of the United States, and that the claim of ownership by the Bernstein family is moot.

I look forward to the re-appearance of the Blue Paper.

NAS Key West

UPDATE:

Here's the Navy discussion in particular.

Military Leaders Warn Congress of 'Hollow' Force | Military.com

NAS Key West is a major Naval facility here in Key West.  It's importance to the economic well-being of Key West and the lower Keys is large.  In addition, the U.S. Army maintains its Special Forces underwater training base here, and the U.S. Coast Guard also maintains a significant complement of forces here as well.

A large measure of what goes on here involves training  -- fighter pilot training, Special Forces training, and more.  The expenditure of Federal dollars in the Keys is in the many millions, and much of it flows into  City, County and State coffers in the form of salaries, local expenditures for infrastructure services, and sales taxes paid by the military and civilian workers who make up a significant portion of the local population.


But it's almost a foregone conclusion that the military budget will be reduced to a smaller portion of the American economy, as wars wind down and dollars are shifted to areas of greater needs and more productive uses of our national investment capital.

The overall impact of the Navy and its allied branches on the Key West economy is much larger than that of the cruise ships that ply the harbors here.  It might well be time for City leaders to contemplate the impact of a diminished military presence here.  The last time it happened, the City was left desolate and broke.  If it happens again the results, although perhaps not as dire as those of the 1970's, will be felt throughout the Keys.

And, lest it seem as if I'm arguing on behalf of the military leaders, let me point out that they are describing the effect of budget cuts, and it appears to me that they are really saying that its the failure to fund budget increases that will impact its missions.  I'm all for a strong military defense capability.  Not such much for wars of adventure.  We should NOT be the world's police.

Remember old Ike and what he said about the military-industrial complex?  No doubt that Chuck Hagel does.

You may say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one.

What is so rare as a day in .. February

Written February 9, 2011.  Another previously unposted draft.

I like it when Saturday comes.  Weekends are break in the routine, a chance to do something other than what one must, and to do what one wants.  


On days like the one we have today -- 71º, sunny, dry -- I generally think of the first line of a poem by James Russell Lowell:

And what is so rare as a day in June?

To which I am inclined to answer, a day in February, in Key West. 

In truth, these February days in Key West remind me much of the days of early June in our native New England.

We ventured off-island last night to help with our fellow members to celebrate the 75th birthday of the Key West Tropical Forest & Botanical Garden.  It was a nearly perfect night, cool but not cold, a band playing on the Garden stage and outside near the parking lot, a steel drums performer laying down island music.  We enjoyed libations, hors d'oeuvres, and as it fell dark at 7:00 PM, champagne for toasting and cake from Croissants de France to  enjoy.

We came home early, before 8:00 PM.  Janet went out with friends to dance at the Green Parrot.  I stayed at home and watched The Motorcycle Diaries on Netflix.

This morning I'm at my desk, getting caught up on e-mail, FaceBook, blogging, and a variety of other things that call for my attention.

Here, in no particular order are some of the things I love about my little island home:

• Weather
• Walkability
• Bike-ability
• History
• Music
• Friends
• Newspapers
• Waterfronts (they're all around us)

  

Life Goes On

Written a while back.

This blog has for sure grown stale.  I'm on Facebook daily.  I rarely even check in here at Bloger any more.

It leaves me wondering whether the day of the blog has come and gone.  I began blogging Key West just after we left here in 2002.  It was a learning experience, but it was always about the writing, a way for me to tell a story that was important to me at the time.  Now, twelve years after first arriving in KW, while the passion I feel for Key West remains, my interest in writing about it has waned.

I watch the goings-on of government as well as I can, I grow weary of trying to have any influence on any part of it all.

All modern revolutions have ended in a reinforcement of the power of the State.

Could that possibly be right?

Who lives here?

Written -- a little while ago.

I still haven't got that haircut.  Maybe tomorrow.

Let me tell you about some of my neighbors here on Marlin Pier.

Diagonally across, between Blair and Beanie's houseboat and Tim's floating home, Bill and Bev Blue live.  They are retired, mostly, though Bill plays a gig at the Green Parrot about once a month and does a few other private gigs around town.  Next week, he and Bev will travel up to the mainland and go on up to a festival somewhere in mid-state where he's performed for years.

They manage to get by on Social Security and a small inheritance income, by driving a ten year old car, living quietly with their cat, Roscoe and a new Yorkie puppie named Buster.  They have the unique perspective of having lived right here on this pier before it was rebuilt, and during the time the transition of Houseboat Row from South Roosevelt Boulevard to Garrison Bight was going on.  They moved back to New Smyrna Beach while their daughter went to college and veterinary school, then got back here just about a month after we moved in.

I've become buddies with Bill.  We talk often about things that are going on here and elsewhere, because we're inveterate news junkies, mostly from the internet and the local papers.  Lately, we've been focused on what the City is trying to do with Garrison Bight, and especially with the four docks of the live-aboard section.  Like old men everywhere, we've accumulated wisdom and experience that allows us to see things more clearly than other, younger folks.

The City's plan hasn't been well thought through.  It seems to us to be designed to so enhance the marina so as to make it into something it was never intended to be.  The people who live here are mostly either retired, or working in jobs that pay the rent, utilities, buy some food and, in a good month, have enough left over to amuse themselves.

An interesting fact: the median annual family income for Monroe County in 2012 is calculated to be just over $72,000.  (I know).  That number is severely skewed by the wealthier, whose income is largely based on acquired wealth and not from daily labor.  I doubt that there are more than a few people here whose income is anywhere close to the median.

With our Social Security, and a small annuity that I got in exchange for cashing out a retirement plan from a company that I spent twenty years at, we do alright, manage to be generous to others, eat out a few times a month.  By dipping into reserves that we keep aside at the credit union, the proceeds of another IRA that we cashed in when we moved here, we're even able to splurge on a luxury now and then, and keep up with maintenance on the houseboat.

We've organized the live-aboards by selecting a dock representative from each dock to carry our message to our City Commissioner.  Through him, we expect to get the chance to show staff that their plan is not well thought out , and that there are other ways to fund improvements, and other ways to lower the need for additional capital to be raised on the backs of the good people of Houseboat Row.

Someone said something like, "eternal vigilance is the price of liberty".  Whoever said it, and whatever they may have said, the thought is there.  If we aren't vigilant, and if we don't assert our liberties, those who would rob us, who would manipulate us, who would suppress us, will ultimately defeat us.

We mustn't let that happen.

A Few Things I Learned About Key West

Written on May 26, 2012; delayed posting.

As May 2012 comes to a blessed end, I look back at some of the things I've learned about Key West this month.

1.  The local hospital, Lower Keys Medical Center, is a privately owned and operated hospital, the only such institution within 50 miles.  It provides an acceptable level of care for general medical patients.  Some residents who are able to afford to do so prefer to commit their more serious ailments to one of the major hospital centers in Miami.

     Janet was a patient there for 17 days this month dealing with her diabetes and some other issues.  We had a close-up look at the way the hospital is run and found it, as I said, acceptable.  The care team consists of nurses, nursing assistants, and the people who clean, deliver meals, provide security, and the like.  Janet had a run-in with just one bad provider, a nurse, who managed to get herself transferred off the care unit to another, further away, after Janet complained to the nursing manager.

     Janet is on a good path to a full recovery, albeit with injected insulin added to her medication regimen.

     The building itself grows old, though well-maintained.  Janet's room was a semi-private, but she had it to herself most to he time she was in there.

2.  Visiting the hospital twice a day, I learned something about the evening trek by residents of KOTS, the Keys Overnight Temporary Shelter.  They begin to arrive from their daytime locations in the early evening, and congregate on both sides of College Road awaiting the time when the Shelter opens at 6:00 or 7:00 PM, I'm not sure which.  Some sit in little impromptu camps, bicycles, some with trailers, all around.

     I'm aware that there are plans afoot to build an expanded shelter, one that would operate twenty-four hours a day, furnishing beds at night, and what is being called day care during the daytime.  I view that as an opportunity to separate wheat from chaff, identifying those who are capable of getting out of the homeless system and supporting them with a variety of services designed to give a hand-up to help them do that.  That would leave the irredeemable to continue to return to the streets, where some will beg for hand-outs, gather at the beaches and elsewhere to party on for another day, hoping to perhaps return for another night's rest at KOTS.  The rest, those who shun KOTS entirely, head instead to their night-time hiding places, where drinking and drugging is still possible.

3.  There are people, believe it or not, who fancy themselves as travel writers and put themselves out there as knowledgeable about a place, when it is apparent to anyone who lives there that they really don't know much, and might not even have been here before.  One such is Isabelle Kellogg, who published a review of Key West and Miami Beach on Epoch Times, an on-line and in-print (only in NYC) news aggregator whose true purpose isn't all that clear to me.

     At any rate, this Isabelle Kellogg recommends The Deli restaurant as a top-notch place to eat in Key West, apparently unaware that The Deli went out of business at least three years ago, that it has been two other restaurants since then, first Eat n' Grinn, and most recently the Bengla Deli (now closed).  The building has been leased by Better Than Sex, a dessert restaurant the has been on Petronia Street for a couple of years.  Some locals question the judgement of the owners in moving to Truman and Simonton and enlarging the seating area.  Time will tell.

4.  When we were living on the Thompson Estate, we became interested in the life of Ernest Hemingway, and especially in the years that he lived here with Pauline.  We often sat on the same veranda where the Hemingways (Ernest and Pauline) and the Thompsons (Charles and Lorine) sat many decades earlier, entertaining each other and their respective friends.  I just discovered that there's a new Hemingway biographical film coming on HBO.  It focuses on his relationship with Martha Gellhorn, the woman who lured him away from his second wife, Pauline, and with whom he had a stormy relationship that ended that marriage after five rocky years.  The HBO movie is getting mixed reviews and, since we don't subscribe to HBO, we probably won't see it until it comes to Netflix.

  As I end, the rain has started.  On Weatherbug, the showers look to be widely scattered.  A rainy Saturday in Key West is the perfect kind of day to stay in and get caught up on things deferred for hospital visits.

An Inquiry About Houseboat Living

On May 25th,
Englsih Paul said...
Hi Bob,
My girlfriend and I are making our second visit to KW in Aug and I never thought to check to see what blogs are out there so I can understand more of the community life as opposed to just seeing things as a tourist. It seems perfect living in KW year round, but I guess it's not perect all the time but we have thought about it. Houseboat living sounds like fun so I'd be interested to take a look. Is there a local agent who specializes in houseboats?
I'll check back later so keep up the blogging.
Paul

Hi Paul, If there's anyone doing that, I haven't met him/her.  One finds a houseboat for sale in a variety of ways.  Craig's List is one, and here's an example.  It's easy enough to find a houseboat for sale.  The trick is in being sure that you have a place to put it.  Also, the definition of what a houseboat is can be tricky.  

Charterboat Row

Where we live, in the City Marina at Garrison Bight, there are actually four sub-marinas.  One is Charterboat Row, commercial docks and slips where charter fishing boats for hire are tied up and where one can book a fishing trip for as little as a 1/2 day, or for as long as you wish.

A second is the recreational marina.  Here are the pleasure boats that people use occasionally.  They may be occupied as live-aboards for up to eight days out of each month.  Third comes the transient docks where those who are just 'passing through' can secure dockage space for a day, week or month.  And finally, the live-aboard marina that some still call Houseboat Row, a reference to the time when those living on the original Houseboat Row along the sea wall along South Roosevelt Boulevard were forced to relocate by the state of Florida.  That's where we live.

The City Marina is one of only a very few places on the island of Key West that accommodates live-aboards, and it's the only municipal marina that does.

There are three kinds of 'boats' located here at the Row:  True boats, able to navigate under their own power or by sail (or both).  Houseboats, are those designed to be dwellings but having most of the characteristics of a vessel and built using principles of marine construction.  Some are capable of being navigated under power, but most are not.  And floating dwellings that are true residential homes mounted on a hull of some sort that can only be moved by towing.  That's what we have.

A good site to learn more is SailNet.com in their forums. 

Check back with us when you firm up your plans; maybe we can meet up to explore your interests further.

Bob and Janet

Retreat, Hell!

(Cleaning out some of my un-posted drafts.  This one begun around the end of May.)

It's a nice day -- for staying inside.  Completely overcast, spitting rain, breezy, and quite cool at 64º.  I like Saturdays.  They represent a break from routine, a chance to do what I want, not what I must.


I want to connect to the BCCLT computer across Old Town, but the connection keeps dropping out.  I called our tech to see if he's working on the system; he hasn't responded yet.

So I'll blog instead.

Saturday's around Casa Kelly mean sleep late, eat a big breakfast, then choose a series of  tasks to accomplish, finish one and move on to another.  Tidy up my room; do some filing; pay bills, reconcile banks accounts, do a backup and a virus scan; watch a movie on NetFlix; go for a walk; read; write; nap.  It wears me out just thinking about about it.

My work at the BCCLT is nearly finished.  I'm thinking about what I'll do with my time when I'm done there.  Whatever it is, it'll be what I want, not what I must.


I took a long walk in the afternoon.  It was still overcast and cool when I left, but the sun was peeking through scattering clouds by the time I got to the Southernmost Point, warming the air a little.  I spent some time at the Truman Waterfront, getting pictures of the Navy's U.S.S. Ramage (DDG61), a guided missile destroyer in port for a couple of days of shore leave for the crew.  It's tied up at the mole pier.  The waterfront looks so forlorn, abandoned, especially when there are almost no people around.  The City Commission will be voting on Tuesday whether to accept the recommendations of its Truman Waterfront Advisory Board.

......

A Day to Enjoy

Despite the fact that the wind has started to kick up a bit, from the southeast at 11 (from the northeast at 18 now and expected to increase even more), today is the kind of day that we live for.  It's comfortably cool.  It's fairly quiet in town.  No major events, no cruise ship in port.  It's a good day for a haircut.  And to see the large Navy landing ship tied up at the Truman Waterfront.  And to meet up with the other mentors with A Positive Step Monroe County.

It occurs to me that some who read this blog (o, faithful ones) might like to know something about the marina life style we have chosen, what it's like to live here, and how to go about doing it yourselves.

We moved onto Marlin Pier at Garrison Bight at the end of April 2011, so our one year anniversary will soon be upon us.  We bought the two-story, two-bedroom, two-bath, two-balcony Sundog from a friend, who just happened to casually mention to me that he was thinking about selling it in order to move back to his native New York.  We quickly scraped together the money we needed by draining our retirement fund.  When all was said and done, we paid Roger, the City of Key West, Monroe County Tax Collector, insurance agent, and the state of Florida a healthy chunk of what had been resting away in a safe but low-performing managed IRA account.

By doing that, we were able to effect a 60% reduction in our monthly rent payment on land, in exchange for which we get to rent a 40' X 16' slip on the newest and only floating dock built so far on Houseboat Row.  There are 30 slips here on Marlin (actually 29, since there are two wide boats side-by-side taking up three slips).  There are also three other docks with a total of 72 slip among them.  Those docks are older, and non-floating, which means that gangways there can pitch up or down at what is sometimes a precipitous angle.  The City plans to replace the other three docks over the next five years, with the first one being the longest, Tarpon Pier, and to make it floating and having finger piers between slips.That project was scheduled to begin in the spring of this year, but it's been moved out to the end of the year, after the end f hurricane season

About the only way to get in here (there's a waiting list) is to buy a boat that's already in a slip.  The city charges a transfer fee of $5,000 whenever ownership of a houseboat changes hands.  There are several houseboats for sale now, ranging in price from around $30,000 up to $300,000.

We've learned a lot about houseboat living in the short time we've lived here.  We're fortunate to be neighbors with people who have much more experience than us, and doubly fortunate that they're the kind of people who are always ready to pitch in and lend a hand when one is needed.

Now it's spitting rain, the Navy flag on our upper rear deck is whipping, and the boat is rocking pretty good.  But a bad day here at the bight is still better than a good day in many other places.

We'll have more to say on this topic in coming posts.

And, oh yeah, Moe's Barber Shop and Gun Shop closes at noon on Saturday, so I never did get that haircut.

B.

Genesis and Evolution - Part II

Since posting this last August, we signed up with Sprint for two iPhone 4S phones to add to our growing collection of Apple devices.  It worked out well for me, but Janet became weary of the complexity of her phone, and tired of the iPad, so we're sending both of hers to our grandson in Utah, and getting her a POCP, a plain old cell phone.

I'm going to spring for a NEW iPad, the one with the hi-def screen, faster processor and cameras, front and back.  We'll share that as needed, but I expect to be the main user of it.