Good Morning Florida Keys

I received this email below from John Hammerstrom, retired Navy pilot, responding to yesterday’s DeepDooDoo.Net.Mostly. I told John I felt his comments should be aired, but I needed to sleep on it. I also told him that I feel people like him, with a military background, who are coming forward should be saluted. I meant it.

Dear Sloan,

I’d prefer if you ask me before re-distributing a personal email quote.

If I’d known that it might find its way into print, I would have been more precise. You may use the following quote:

“There are a lot of current and former military folks that are VERY displeased with this administration. One of the most outspoken is retired Marine Corps General Zinni, who has said that “In the lead up to the Iraq war and its later conduct, I saw at a minimum, true dereliction, negligence and irresponsibility, at worse, lying, incompetence and corruption.” One of the dangerous and unintended consequences of the current war is that with Iraq removed as a credible military power in the region, Iran is now a major power broker, and that’s particularly tragic since in 1953, the CIA was responsible for overthrowing the democratically elected government of Iran to install the Shah, who in turn was overthrown in 1979 in the Islamic Revolution which has produced the current Islamic Republic of Iran.”

John

After making yesterday’s posting, I submitted the somewhat shortened version of the previous posting, “UncleSamDisease.Com.Mostly to the New York Times department for receiving guest editorials/comments, which is different from the letter to the editor department, which requires letters not to exceed 500 words. Guest editorials/comments should not exceed 750 words, but submissions of any length are considered.

I’d been told in dreams and waking spirit ways to make the submission to the New York Times, but I made it to Key West Citizen first, being the dumb ass that I am. Not a dumb ass because of the Citizen. A dumb ass because I didn’t do what I was told to do. Thus, I was wrenched around in dreams for my pig-headedness. Then, I made the submission to the designated place. What now comes of it, I haven’t a clue. If the Times accepts the submission, I’ll tell them I need to replace John Hammerstrom’s private remarks about Iraq and Iran with those above.

Meanwhile, I’ll vote for any presidential candidate who says he, or she, upon being sworn in, will call for the immediate withdrawal of all American troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. If there is no such candidate on the ballot, I won’t have a candidate. Maybe I’ll do what I did in 2004. Not vote. Or, maybe I’ll vote for one of the candidates who didn’t make it onto the ballot, who did make that promise, by writing that candidate’s name on the ballot. Yeah, maybe I’ll do that.

Well, Dearie, er, Miss Liberty, I received three email replies to yesterday’s UncleSamDisease.Com.Mostly. From retired naval pilot, John Hammerstrom, from County Commissioner George Neugent, and from an email buddy in the Northeast, retired from a major American technology firm.
 
Dear Sloan,
 
No apology needed. There are a lot of current and former military folks that are VERY displeased with this administration. One of the most outspoken is retired Marine Corps General Zinni. If one peels back one more layer of this ugly Iraqi onion, one finds that the CIA was responsible for overthrowing the democratically elected government of Iran to install the Shah.
 
John
 
Morning Sloan,
 
I, too, hate all wars but especially this elective war that our guys and girls are involved because of those Neo-Cons and Bush & Cheney. Our Kids are the best and ready as a hair-trigger to defend liberty, freedom and our National Interest and that is why only, only when our life, liberty, or freedom is threatened should we deploy them; and then kick ass until there ain’t none left to kick and then get the hell out of there.
 
And speaking of ass kicking – Jerry Coleman and anyone the allows him to scam this county and taxpayers ought to be held accountable. He was with Dixie, Mario, Ralph and Frank Rego at the A&B Lobster House when they all got thrown out. Imagine that.
 
George
 
Sloan,
 
Some of the stuff in here is good enough to be in the editorial page of a large Newspaper! Spruce it up and send it to The NY Times!
 
Domingo
 
So, I spruced it up, that is, I cut out the Keys part of it and added John Hammerstrom’s comment to the very end, and sent it to Tom Tuell at Key West Citizen, under cover of this email:
 
Hi, Tom. Below is a “guest editorial” submission. The Citizen gave Jerry Coleman the entire letter-to-the-editor space for his article about developers. A majority of the Citizen’s editorials are generated from other newspapers. The Citizen features various syndicated columnists’ opinions. So I believe the Citizen has space for something as long as what follows. It’s certainly relevant in these times, especially in a city still pretty dependent economically on a US military base. FYI, the retired navy pilot quoted at the very end is John Hammerstrom. Cordially. Sloan
 
Tom’s reply:
 
Mr. Bashinsky:
 
Thank you for your comments. I’ll be happy to publish them as a letter to the editor, but must first ask that you condense them to 500 words or less.
 
Sincerely,

Tom Tuell

The Citizen
 
I don’t remember in a long time Tom addressing me in an email as “Mr. Bashinsky” — we’ve been on a first-name basis. I don’t know how many words were in what I submitted and will sleep on condensing what the Holy Spirit gave me to write. I’ll probably submit the original shortened revision to the New York Times, as Domingo suggested. Nothing ventured, nothing gained.
 
Meanwhile, I was slammed all over hell and back in my sleep last night for publishing that piece yesterday. Even before turning in, I was starting to feel poisoned, like maybe I’d swallowed the White House, or something. I learned some years ago that being spiritually attacked is something I could take as a complement, in the left-handed sense. I’d rather get a pat on the back, but I suppose shit strokes are better than no strokes at all.
 
Maybe somehow related, another Key West amigo, who received UncleSamDisease.Com.Mostly, told me yesterday of an experience his sister had living with a shaman in the Northeast, when he was doing what I would call an exorcism. She had the image of thousands and thousand of black birds vortexing over where she and the shaman lived. His tortured facial features and body contortions were indicative of the inner struggle. Horrible would be understatement. I smiled wanly, said, “Imagine a bad child custody fight and multiply that by 100.” Then, remembering some of the bad child custody fights I’d been involved in as a lawyer, I said, “On second thought, maybe there’s some similarity between that shaman’s experience and a bad child custody fight.”
 
Uncle Sam is in so much deep doo doo that his eyes are brown. And any American old enough to think for him or herself who does not see the color has pretty much the same problem.

I received an email yesterday from John Hammerstrom about presenting his own perspective to the County’s Taskforce for Workforce Housing, which John said was answered by Ed Swift personally in a letter. I asked John to describe all of it in a narrative, leaving anyone who wants to see his backup documents to contact him. Here’s the narrative John sent. Behind it is something else altogether. Something else altogether .  .  .
 
Dear Sloan,
 
Regarding my letter to the Workforce Housing Task Force in December, 2006:
 
I tried to gather the best thoughts on the subject of housing from folks with whom I share such information. The result was the letter I sent to you with 30 ideas on the subject, dated December 15, 2006.
 
In January, 2006 I got a rebuttal letter from Ed Swift stating that he was speaking for himself, and not for the Workforce Housing Task Force.
 
Next we obtained the billing information from the County for Jerry Coleman’s time, and Lo! and Behold! also in January, 2006, there are two items for a total of $2,325 for time to “prepare draft Task Force briefing points for response to J. Hammerstrom” on January 23, 2007 and “continue draft brief points to Task Force re: J. Hammerstrom ‘ideas’” dated January 25, 2007.
 
The only response I got to my letter was from Mr. Swift – also dated January 25, 2007, where he – in bold letters – stated that he was answering “. . . as an individual and not for the Task Force.”
 
Did Mr. Coleman bill the County (i.e. the taxpayers) for time spent writing or helping Ed Swift write a response to me?
 
Is there a Workforce Housing Task Force document that shows the results of Mr. Coleman’s work on this subject for the Task Force that would allay suspicions that the only recipient of this work was Mr. Swift – for his personal use?
 
Sincerely,
John

johnhammer@bellsouth.net
 
I’m wondering the same thing John’s wondering: Did Jerry Coleman write Ed Swift’s letter to John? Or help write it? I’m also wondering why the County got billed for Jerry’s rebuttal in any event.
 
I received an email yesterday from another naval officer, James E. Brooks, NAS Key West Public Affairs, saying he always enjoys reading my Blog on events and happenings in the Keys, and asking if I was open to receiving something from the Navy’s side? I invited Jim to send it, and said John Hammerstrom and I both are concerned that people be allowed to expressed their views at public meetings and not just have to listen to what “officials” have to say. Later yesterday, I found my thoughts turning toward the bigger military picture, and I wondered if I might be writing about that. My dreams last night plainly indicated my picking up and moving from a political situation in which I’d been involved, headed somewhere else.
 
I read in yesterday’s Key West Citizen a report of Iraq and America working toward some sort of mutual appreciation, mutual interest, mutual cooperation, mutual, like, Iraq becoming something of an American protectorate, under US-Iraq business alliance, based on oil production, accompanied by the phasing out of UN sanctions, oversight and involvement within and outside of the borders of Iraq. Beyond the oil deal was the bugger, er, buffer Iraq would provide the US against Iran. Hmmm, that’s the same logic that got Uncle Sam and his man Friday, George Bush, when he was Director of the CIA way back when, into bed with Saddam Hussein in the first place, isn’t it? The question is rhetorical, any US military officer surely knows.
 
So there we have it, ladies and gentlemen. Our own dear Uncle Sam is hoping to move back into a pre-Kuwait invasion arrangement with his old buddy Iraq, sans his old lover boy buddy Saddam. An invasion Geoge Bush, the kinder, gentler President himself said on national television he had to undertake to protect the American way of life. Not to protect the Kuwait way of life, or the way of life of its thousands of rich sheiks and all their Mercedes Benzes and BMWs and gaggles of wives and concubines, who have no rights whatsoever, but to protect a big source of the oil we were burning so much of that we were (and still are) like any other addict, so hooked on our drug of choice that it will take a divine intervention, most likely, to get us high, dry and sober. Just like it will take a divine intervention, most likely, to cure us of having far more military hardware by far than any other country, leaving Uncle Sam, perhaps, with the bizarre notion that his military might and the money that buys it has something to do with him being one nation, under God.
 
Him, as in George Bush’s son, George W. Bush, and his political cronies. Him, as in anyone who just fell of the turnip truck, or doesn’t give a flying torpedo about anything but Uncle Sam getting all the oil he needs for all of his internal combustion engines, and all the Bufferin he needs to protect him from the terrible religious folk who ran our old and cherished buddy, the Shah of Iran, out of their country because he had hopped slap dab into bed with Uncle Sam and they were doing things under the sheets that the Koran and the Bible both say men aren’t supposed to do with each other under or even outside of the sheets.
 
The history lesson needs to go back even farther in time, back to how Uncle Sam got to making love with the Shah in the first place. Uncle Sam was big time jealous of all those wives and concubines the Shah had, which made Uncle Sam, a Christian American and certainly not a traditional Mormon or Native American, highly jealous of the Shah. Uncle Sam also was terrified of the godless Soviet Union, and wanted a pit bull in that region to be the Bufferin against the Stalinites that would enable Uncle Sam to sleep peacefully at night with as many Iranian ladies as Uncle Sam wanted to sleep in bed with at night.
 
Yep, ladies and gentlemen. The Shah of Iran was Uncle Sam’s first lover boy in that region, and when he got run out of town by the religious folk of that country, because they didn’t take to him taking it from and giving it back to Uncle Sam, our dear fearless righteous Uncle Sam had to find another lover boy over there to get it on with. A lover boy who also had plenty of oil. Which, ladies and gentlemen, is how come our fearless leader Uncle Sam is fighting in Iraq today. If you think George W. Bush, or his father, or any of their political cronies, ever had one iota of desire, interest or intent in the US pulling all the way out of Iraq, then you either just fell off the turnip truck, or you don’t have a big enough brain to know about the turnip truck to begin with. ARAMCO, lean over and make room for IRAQUS.
 
Oh my, Dearie, er, Miss Liberty. You say I left you out of this diatribe? Yep, on purpose. I didn’t want to hurt your feelings by associating you with the Soddomites. Yep, you and me are in complete agreement. We’d vote for any presidential candidate who promised his first official act in office would be to call for the immediate withdrawal of all American troops from Iraq and Afghanistan. All troops, sea, land, air. All troops. And we didn’t have to see IN THE VALLEY OF ELAM, starring the two Hollywood insurgents, Tommy Lee Jones and Susan Sarandon, to arrive at this perspective. Nope. We’ve had this perspective ever since seeing George Bush say on national television that he could not let the American way of life be threatened. Now look at the threat to the American way of life he created. Now look at it. Too bad he didn’t go over there with his son, George W., and lead the charge, instead of sending the good sons and daughters of people he didn‘t even know to do it instead. Maybe things would be a lot different now. Maybe.
 
Meanwhile, I have a couple of questions for our dear old Uncle Sam. If God really is on your side, how come Iraq didn’t turn out like you said it would turn out? And how come you didn’t catch Osama bin Laden yet?

Just below is the text of an email to the Monroe County Commissioners, a copy of which I and others received yesterday from John Hammerstrom. Self-explanatory, I believe this email speaks straight to the heart and guts of something truly important. Below it is an anecdotal report of something similar I experienced last year, when I was running against George Neugent for his seat on the County Commission, and some remarks of my own.

An open letter to my Monroe County Commissioners:

Re: The NAS Key West Air Installation Compatibility Use Zone (AICUZ).

As a retired Navy pilot and active citizen of the Keys, I have a personal interest in making it possible for the Navy to continue to train at NAS Key West in perpetuity through implementation of a proper AICUZ report. To that end, I encourage the Navy to comply with the law and – while accomplishing their essential training mission – to minimize their impact on the local community. I also encourage the County to strictly enforce development restrictions of properly defined noise and accident potential zones. I believe this is the only way to save the long-standing and proud U.S. Navy/Florida Keys relationship.

To commemorate the recent naturalization of a friend, I recently read the Declaration of Independence for the first time in perhaps 40 years. One of the most inspiring passages reads “. . . to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the Governed. . .”

It makes me very angry when this principle is turned on its head and our rights are obstructed by government!

Such is the case with the recently announced AICUZ “Workshop” to be held on December 5 at the Harvey Government Center in Key West. The public notice states that government officials “. . . may attend to discuss these issues”.

The government officials invited include the Department of the Navy; the Department of Defense and/or other U.S. Military organizations; the Monroe County BOCC, Planning Commission and Growth Management staff and other County staff; the Tourist Development Council and Advisory Councils; the Key West City Commission; and even the Workforce Housing Task Force!

Just in case, those invited to speak include “appointed representatives” of those government agencies.

. . . but not the public . . . the taxpayers . . . your constituents!!!!!!
The notice states that the meeting format “. . . will not accommodate speakers from the general public.”

For months now, the public has asked for an honest public hearing on this issue. First, we got an orchestrated propaganda “awareness” workshop held at a hotel so there is no record of the proceedings. Now we’re presented with what should properly be called a “government” hearing – where members of the public are excluded from participation.

This is outrageous, insulting and unacceptable.

The reason that the AICUZ issue has become a contentious issue is simple – the Navy has replaced the F-14 Tomcat with the much louder F/A-18E/F Super Hornet without adequately assessing the impacts. According to Navy documents, the Super Hornet can be 18 decibels louder than the Tomcat. A ten decibel increase is twice as loud. Eighteen decibels is nearly four time louder. Amazingly, the Navy claims that there is “No Significant Impact” from that much louder airplane. But folks in the vicinity of the Naval Air Station who – in good faith – purchased homes outside of the published noise zones now find themselves effectively INSIDE those zones because noise from the substantially louder Super Hornet has encroached upon their homes. The totality of the Navy’s evaluation of that impact is a curiously isolated three-page section buried in the 232-page “Environmental Assessment for Fleet Support and Infrastructure Improvements” – the bulk of which details the impacts of dredging and other ship and aircraft facility projects. The Super Hornet is not mentioned in the Table of Contents, nor is it mentioned in the Chapter 1 “Proposed Actions”, nor the Chapter 2 “Alternatives” nor the “Finding of No Significant Impact” that they claim satisfies the legal requirement to assess the impact of the airplane. A pending inquiry will determine if this claim is supported by the Secretary of the Navy.

When the Super Hornet was introduced to the East Coast of the U.S., the Navy produced a 1,078-page Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) that described in detail the impact of that very different airplane on all of the other affected airfields on the East Coast – but not NAS Key West. They argue that the aircraft at NAS Key West are “transient” as if that reduced the noise.

What does it matter to a screaming child where the offending airplane parks? Does an airplane based at NAS Oceana make less noise than one based at NAS Key West? Furthermore, the the number of “transient” flights at NAS Key West exceeds the number of “transient” flights at other airfields that were fully evaluated in the EIS.

The Navy has a vital national defense mission that has been fully supported by the community for decades, but that does not exempt them from compliance with our nation’s laws. A Department of Defense Inspector General and Government Accountability Office inquiry will determine if laws were broken.

I strongly recommend that the you (Monroe County Board of County Commissioners) honor your constituents’ legitimate request by scheduling a true public hearing in the very near future and prior to any decision on the matter. Sadly, it is necessary to state that such a public hearing must be held at a government facility and that an official record be made of the proceedings. Furthermore, the records of that meeting must be made available to the public.

Sincerely,

John Hammerstrom
johnhammer@bellsouth.

In the summer of 2006, I, Sloan, attended a Monroe County Taskforce for Workforce Housing meeting at the Key Colony Beach city meeting hall, adjacent to Marathon. This meeting was attended by County Commissioner Dixie Spehar, as liaison with the county commission. Present in the audience were Sylvia Murphy, Kay Thacker, David Rice, Ron Saunders, Pauline Kline and other people who seemed concerned about doing something about providing truly affordable housing for the common folk of the Keys.

The dye was cast early in the meeting, when a long discussion was initiated by one of the Taskforce members about getting better public relations for the Taskforce, which was coming under sharp pubic fire. Not one stick of affordable housing had been built pursuant to this Taskforce’s recommendations. The County was paying a private Keys lawyer, apparently hand-picked by Ed Swift, enormous sums of money to advise it about affordable housing. The non-government members of the Taskforce were developers and/or real estate brokers, none of whom needed affordable housing. There were no common folk on the Taskforce. After it was decided that someone in the Taskforce would start preparing press releases for the news media, they moved on to something substantive.

During the next line of discussion coming from the developers, I raised my hand just before they put it to a vote. I kept my hand up until the developer fellow leading the meeting looked at me and said public comment would be allowed at the end of the meeting. I asked if the Taskforce didn’t want public comment before it made its decisions? He said I could speak at the end of the meeting. I said it didn’t look like the Taskforce wanted public input prior to making its decisions. I was ignored. They voted. I didn’t raise my hand again during the meeting.

As this very long meeting progressed, it became crystal clear that Ed Swift, one of the Taskforce members, was the heavy weight in that body. It also became clear that he was very upset that he wasn’t getting what he wanted, higher building heights, reduced evacuation time schedule, which would allow him and other developers to build housing for sale that Commissioner Dixie Spehar could not afford on her county commission salary. If she could not afford that future housing, how could a school teacher or police officer or fire fighter, or a secretary or dock worker or wait person, or any common folk afford it?

I came away from that meeting telling anyone who would listen, and anyone else, including the entire County Commission, what I had seen go down and that this Taskforce and affordable housing in general were a sham developers had hijacked to their own purposes. I received no encouraging response from the County Commission. Soon after that, the Taskforce’s first press release was published almost verbatim by Key West Citizen. It was just what the Taskforce wanted the Citizen to publish. I wanted to throw up.

Back to John Hammerstrom’s email to the County Commissioners, to whom I pose some questions of my own. Just how important to the Keys is our having the Navy here? Do we actually need the Navy in the Keys? If the Navy left, wouldn’t that pretty well solve the affordable housing shortage in the Lower Keys and Key West? Wouldn’t there be plenty of land left over to construct whatever government owned and operated elder care and retirement facilities the Lower Keys and Key West need? Wouldn’t the excruciating noise of supersonic war planes be gone? Wouldn’t Key West and the Lower Keys be a far less attractive military target?

And to Ed Swift, I ask, if the Navy base were to leave the Keys, wouldn’t all Stock Island residents, including you and your rich friends at Key Haven, enjoy a lot more peace and quiet?

Sloan Bashinsky
Key West

Get a life, Dearie! This up and writing in the wee hours is getting really, really old. Especially getting up feeling poisoned. Keep it up, Dearie, and I’ll get serious about writing about you. Serious. I ain’t even scratched the surface yet with you. Ain’t even scratched the surface. Maybe it’s high time the world found out about what you’re really like, instead of imagining a pretty little dove flying around with an olive branch in her sweet mouth. Whoever wrote all that Mary Poppins stuff surely needed to have a serious mental health check up. Like, maybe more than a check up. Like, maybe checking into the State Mental. Permanently.

The day after my father passed over in late August 2005, yet unknown to me, you moved me to write a tearful commemoration of our “hit and miss” relationship on the public computer in the Helen, Georgia branch of the White County, Georgia library system. This was the same computer I’d used in 2001 to write the novel HEAVY WAIT: A Strange Tale, and other pieces of writing in between, a few of which were published generally, others privately. I suppose it’s fair to say that branch library and computer were my designated author’s office for a few years, as it seemed I did most of my important writing there during that time frame.

Anyway, as I typed the last sentence of the commemoration of the father-son relationship that could have been but really wasn’t, tears streaming down my cheeks, my cell phone went off. I’d forgotten to turn it off. I rushed outside to answer the call, from my father’s lawyer, with whom I’d gone to law school and tax law school. He said he brought bad news. What bad news? He’d been trying to reach me since yesterday, but had been calling me on an old cell phone number and only had just found my working number in one of his files. What bad news? My father had passed away yesterday. That bad news.

I burst into tears. He said it would be okay, my father and I would be together soon. I said I wasn’t weeping that he’d passed over, but because we’d not seen each other before he left. He was old, feeble, in a better place, I said, but I wished we had gotten to see each other one last time. The lawyer well knew the anguish I had endured over the estrangement, and the efforts I’d made to end it. He also well knew that he’d played a very large hand in it coming about, because he was involved in every flare up between my father and me, which he could have tried to smooth out, if he’d wanted to, instead of taking the easy way. The easy way was agreeing with my father, thus with his wife, my stepmother, his largest clients who had made him a fortune.

Joann wasn’t always a religious freak. In fact, she was a lot like my father was for a good while. A drunk. A mean drunk. But one day, she was getting into or out of her car in the garage, and something happened, and she fell, and her car nearly ran over her. In that moment, she had a religious experience of some kind, saw the devil trying to kill her via the car, and from that moment on she was a born-again Christian. A James and Tammy Faye Bakker kind of born-again Christian. She glued herself to their television program, sent them money. She became all-knowing about God. All-knowing about everything. Chosen. No wrong could she do. One of the Elect, I suppose she thought she was. And from that position she assumed authority over my father and his affairs, at his acquiescence.

I let him off in no way. He agreed to it. His eyes were wide open. Her religious fever, er, fervor, he did not share. But he used hers to hide behind, and that worked out really swell with their lawyer, with whom I went to law school twice, who also had become a born-again Christian. To his credit, he several times told me the flesh was weak, he was not able to walk as Jesus said to walk. My stepmother never entertained such sentiments in my presence. In my presence, in the presence of other people who told me about it, she was sitting at the right had of God. Far as I could tell, she behaved and talked like she was smarter than God. Smarter than anyone, actually.

If you think, Dearie, that I’m pleased to be writing about this tormented woman again, you need to get a brain transplant. You’d think much better with a pig brain than the one you’ve been using, if you think that way. Much better. You’d be like Einstein compared to your old self, if you swapped in your brain for a pig brain. Einstein. Pigs don’t think they are smarter than God. For an animal, they are pretty smart. But they know they are an animal, specifically a pig, and they do not deign to be any smarter or different than a pig. They do not deign to be God, nor do they even think about salvation. For them, being a pig is all that they need to be. Doing what pigs do.

As I was writing yesterday’s “KeysBits&Pieces.com,” I heard a short sermon on the radio station I mostly listen to, 88.3 on the Key West dial. They play 57 minutes of contemporary music each hour without interruption, then for 3 minutes there is some sort of commentary. Yesterday’s commentary, perhaps because it was Sunday, was a minister lamenting the fact that Martin Luther, father of the Protestant Reformation, had not been able to understand the Book of James in the New Testament. James was one of Jesus’ brothers, it is said. James is the one who wrote that faith without works is dead, and by his works people would see his faith. He chastised people for claiming to have faith, but in life going on with business as usual, instead of putting themselves out to help others in need.

This minister lamented that Martin Luther lamented that James the brother of Jesus’ book was even in the New Testament, because it was Luther’s revelation that people are not saved by works but by grace alone are they saved. Until that moment, it was generally understood in Christendom, even if wasn’t generally practiced, that Jesus really meant it when he told his followers that it would be very rough for them when he left them, but their perseverance until the end would save them. That Jesus really meant it when he told his followers that a person who heard his words and did not do them was like a foolish man who built his house on sand and when the food came the house was swept away. That Jesus really meant it when he said a man who heard and heeded his words was like a wise man who built his house on rock and when the flood came the house stood fast. That Jesus really meant it when the said his baptism is not in water but is in spirit and fire. That he really meant it when he said steep is the way and narrow is the gate, and few enter therein.

The scuttlebutt on Martin Luther is that he was a Catholic monk in training, and as part of his training he had to undergo, endure, confession. He had something murky in his past that he didn’t care to tell anyone else. So much so, that he finally bolted from the Rome church over it and started the Reformation with the theory that only by grace are people saved. Confession is not necessary. Repentance is not necessary. What we do is irrelevant. What is relevant is that we have faith that Jesus was the only begotten Son of God, he died for our sins, and in believing that we are saved. Or something like that. Presto, magic pill salvation. The salvation of my stepmother. The salvation of my father’s lawyer.

My father had his secrets, not in the least pretty, but he knew he had them, and he knew they were not working in his favor. When he went over to the other side, he came to that reckoning. I know this, because I saw and see some if it in my dreams. He’s still in that reckoning. He might be in it for quite a while. The reckoning we all face for what we leave unattended in this life. The reckoning I told him in letters we all face. The reckoning my mother faced when she crossed over in 1966, despite years of devotion to her church. The reckoning my father’s second wife will face when she crosses over. I would hate to be in her “skin” leaving in the bubble that will surely burst in transit. The bubble that she’s saved, anointed. My father never swallowed that line, as far as I know. He knew he was a rascal. He didn’t like being told it, but he knew it. My mother never swallowed that line, either. She knew she had a steep road ahead after she left this world, which is why she was so upset when she learned she had contracted terminal cancer.

I can only imagine that my writing about these grim matters, and dreams I’m having about these people and Birmingham, are prelude to something coming down. Something is going to happen. I hope it’s my exit from this world, but I doubt I’ll be so lucky. If I had to hazard a guess, and it would be hazarding, I’d say my stepmother is soon to leave this world. I told God the other day, maybe it was yesterday, yes, it was yesterday, that it would be better for her to leave than to stay, because the longer she stays, the deeper in trouble she’s going to get. She is beyond being reached on this world. She’s digging a deeper and deeper hole and shoveling the dirt back in on top of herself. Calling herself a Christian no more made her a follower of Jesus than her being nearly run over by her own car, by her own hand, in her own garage, made her an automobile. It would be an act of mercy and grace for her to leave this world before she makes it even more difficult for herself. An act of mercy and grace.

Amen

Morning, Dearie. You just don’t let up, do you? I bought you a one-way ticket to Siberia yesterday, knowing just how much you love snow and ice! The bus will get you to Fairbanks, and you can trek the rest of the way, as the sea probably will be frozen solid by the time you get there. If not, you can hole up with some Eskimos or polar bears until the ocean freezes. A fitting vacation for a Jewish American Russian Catholic Princes (JARCP), don’t you agree? Just joking, sort of.

Meanwhile, Dearie, I read in yesterday’s Key West Citizen encouraging news that County Commissioner George Neugent is hot under the collar to stop the county publicist posing as the county lawyer on affordable housing from billing the county for non-affordable-housing legal work. George was quoted as saying the county publicist had received $400,000 from the county in the past two years. Wow. $400,000. If asked to replace the county affordable housing lawyer, I’d offer to do it for, hmmm, nothing. I’d tell them they don’t need me, or the developers on the county workforce housing taskforce. What they need is to partner with not-for-profit land trusts and build affordable RENTAL housing on county land, managed by the Housing Authority.

Further meanwhile yesterday, Dearie, one of our local street vendor provocateurs showed me the announcement in CONCH COLOR about Keys real estate developer Pritam Singh offering Samuel’s House refuge for women and children $56,000 and some change at a public fund raiser, if other people there and elsewhere would come up with another $56,000 and some change, to cover Samuel House’s funding shortfall this year. I thought that was right nice of Pritam to open his wallet up like that. Surely a sign of far greater giving to come, the fervent look in Pritam’s eyes in the photo promises. Meanwhile, maybe next time a hurricane comes our way Pritam will offer up his home and offices, and transportation to same, to the down on their luck women and children who reside at Samuel’s House, if they are booted out and the doors locked behind them, like what happened just before Hurricane Wilma came through.

Moving along, Dearie, is something I received by email yesterday, which sort of cut the wind completely out of the sales, er, sails of the street vendor provocateur. Left him breathless, actually. Frankly, I don’t see what he got so winded about. I think it’s a great idea to put the fox in the hen house. Who knows more about chickens than the chickens, but the one creature whose mantra is “Eat more Chikin?” Meanwhile, when someone is bleeding to death, the first thing you do is stop the bleeding. And the second thing you do is stop what started the bleeding in the first place.

“Have some information you may be interested in, and perhaps, investigate. The local tabloids do not do a very good job of objectively reporting the news. Nor do we have anyone who is really an investigative reporter in the Keys.

“This morning at breakfast, I was told that Mario DiGennaro and Morgan McPherson are planning to remove the TDC director, Harold Wheeler, and replacing him with Tom Willi, after Willi is fired next month.

“The County Commission, in the interim, are running around the Keys frantically trying to find a replacement for Willi. They are now afraid that there is no one in the Keys that can do the job.

“The commissioners and their close advisors are on the hunt for a new interim county manager but, so far, have not found one that allegedly will get the required confirmation from the majority of the commission. The “behind the screen” folks are considering Jim Roberts, but are afraid the power brokers will not agree with their decision. It appears that the deputy county manager has three votes, as of today, but you know how things change.

“What is your prediction?”

I told our correspondent, Dearie, that agree that I there isn’t an investigative journalist in the Keys, at least not one who is active. But and on second thought, there’s Steve Estes and his steel magnolias at the News-Barometer on Big Pine Key. I’ve heard that in the old days they stoned prophets, regardless of how their forecasts turned out. So I think I’ll pass on prognosticating.

Ciao

Morning, Dearie. I hope you is up and doing something that really bothers you, since you’ve gotten me up again long before the wild Key West chickens will open their pretty little eyes and start making all their pretty little noises. Maybe I need to change the name of this daily drivel page from Today’s Cock-a-doodle-doo to News From the Night? Anyway, I hope you are wide awake and stay that way until some time into late next week.

I was howling at the fool moon last night at Bubba’s on the corner of Fleming and Margaret with several other wannabe werewolves/ettes, to some pretty darn good down home fried corn and baked beans and cole slaw and barbequed ribs music, when an old street performer buddy I met the first time on Pearl Street Mall in Boulder, Colorado in the early 1990s dropped by. That was back when I realized I was heading slap around the bend. Even the street kids who hung out around the mall in a constant LSD-induced daze were sort of freaked out by some of my tales from the other side. What freaked them out wasn’t the tales themselves, but the fact that I wuz claiming I wuzn’t taking LSD to make them happen. They wuz just happening.

Anyway, this old street bard told me he’d read where Mandy Bolen wrote about me in The Blue Newspaper, which I knew right away wasn’t so, because Mandy doesn’t write for Dennis Reeves Cooper, the publisher of what formally is called Key West The Newspaper, and maybe when Mandy gets her complimentary copy of this howling at the fool moon, she might feel a bit disembodied by the news that someone actually got her hopping into bed with Dr. Cooper, as Dennis also sometimes is called.

Anyway, around 9 p.m., I was getting horse, her, er, hoarse, from all that howling at the moon and jumped on my horse, er, bicycle, clicked on the front and rear flashing lights, and pedaled over to Sippin’ Internet Café on Eaton Street, just down from Tropic Cinema, to catch up on what had been written about me in The Blue Newspaper. I figured it had to be under the pen of Rhonda Linseman, as I knew her when she wrote the funniest, most irreverent weekly Blog I’d ever read for the Gossip Column, aka Kudos & Whiners, of BigPineKey.com, hosted by the nefarious, egregious, outrageous pirate, Captain Conch.

Rhonda sometimes gave me flavorable mention in her column, and once she published an anonymous retort I sent in from my own personal email account, just to make sure she knew who sent it to her, as if she couldn’t figure it out without that. She challenged me to come out and fight like a man. So enticed by the hiking of her skirts, I sent in another retort, which didn’t make it into her column. Not all that long afterwards she announced the early retirement of her anonymous Deer Abby column, admitted who she was, actually gave out her real name, and said she was taking a job with a publication in Key West.

When later I our beloved Deer Abbey’s bi-line started appearing under her real name in The Blue Newspaper, my heart sort of sunk. In the first place, all us rabid, drooling, lusting followers of her weekly mental health column wuz all left writhing in coitus interruptus, and here she was done gone to work for the drole Dr. Cooper, who never did strike any of us deer lovers as having much of a sense of humor or lust. In the second place, I was a bit concerned that Abby writing for Dennis would crimp her beautiful style.

As I read her column from time to time after that, once she even mentioned me flavorably in passing, I felt a rising sense of alarm, because I just wasn’t seeing the Deer Abby we up in the big sticks had all come to love and cherish and want to bend the bulkheads with. It was if she had gone through the change of life or something, and instead of starting a revolution in The Blue Newspaper, she seemed to have given up her testosterone and whining and whose the fairest in the land head and tail shrinking and bashing counseling service for something none of us from the old days could hardly even recognize anymore.

The name of her Page 2 piece, in which I’m flavorably mentioned this week, is “Checking in and out with God, Lucifer and Sloan.” Almost all of it, however, it is about her tryst, mostly unpleasant for her, with an automatic check-out machine at Winn-Dixie, which trauma I fully commiserate with, having come to know the automatic check out machines at the Big Pine Key Winn-Dixie quite well, thank you, when I lived on Little Torch Key last year, when I was falling into love and lust with Deer Abby, not having a clue who she was in real life.

After Rhonda went to work for Dr. Cooper, we, Rhonda and me, had a cordial email exchange. Without my even suggesting it, although I was thinking of suggesting it, being infatuated and lusting and all, Rhonda told me not to ask her out. Aw, shucks! How could I believe she really meant it, after she had asked me to come out and fight like a man and I had done it and she had hightailed? So I told her that sometimes people don’t mean what they say, or say what they mean, and I asked her out. Then came the silence of the ewe, er, doe, er, hen.

By and by, I’m reading in The Blue Newspaper that Rhonda slashed and burned the pope. Then, that she got her eyebrows waxed and got married. Next thing is what I read last night. Rhonda sez since I had said Lucifer was running Key West the Newspaper, that included her, too. Hell, she already knew how it was with Dennis and me, because I told her when she said she’d heard something about it. I knew Dennis wouldn’t tell her, because it didn’t put him on a pedestal he cared much about. I figured she needed to go into it with her eyes wide open, seeing’s how that’s how Deer Abby had told everyone up Big Pine Key way to live. Like I said, I had hoped Abby would start a revolution in The Blue Newspaper, but it was starting to look like she wuz falling into love with Dr. Cooper in some way, not the man-woman way, but in some way.

In her piece this week, Rhonda mentioned the Winn-Dixie check out machine being an agent of Lucifer maybe driving her to self-check into the DePoo local mental hospital, but she’d probably have the luck to end up my roommate. God knows Sloan needs it, she said. See, there she was, asking me out again. Too late, I don’t do married women. Tried that once, instead of telling her to get unmarried first. Deer Abby would have torn me a new one over doing something so loony.

Dr. Cooper inserted at the end of Rhonda’s piece that he didn’t approve it because he didn’t want unnecessary attention drawn to the lunacy of Sloan Bashinsky. If he didn’t want unnecessary attention drawn, how come he let the piece run? Why don’t you ask Dennis, Dearie, just what happened that caused him to tell me once upon a time, “You fuck! Get the hell out of here! I’m calling the police!” Just imagine Dennis calling the police on anyone, Dearie. Just imagine. After you talk to Dennis, come see me, and I’ll tell you what you will never hear from Dennis, nor, apparently, from Rhonda. Neither appear to really believe “journalism is a contact sport.”

Meanwhile, maybe I should appreciate Dennis and Rhonda’s flavorable mentions, because I told our city mayor Morgan McPherson at a candidate forum last summer, it’s a real bad sign if Dennis Reeves Cooper is never on your case. A real bad sign. While I don’t suppose I have to wonder how come Dennis never jumped on Morgan over his love affair with our truly loony county mayor, Mario Di Gennaro, I can’t help but worry about Deer Abby not coming back from the grave and reaming out the lot of them, instead of beating up on a poor dumb defenseless Winn-Dixie check out machine and blaming me for it. Just the sort of side show diversion Lucifer loves, what Abby really needs to do is start checking in and having it out with herself. God knows she needs it.

Morning, Dearie. Here’s an email reply to the StepmotherShlepmother.Net post the other day, of which you seemed so fond. Below that is my reply. Hope you had a good Thanksgiving. Mine was, hmmm, interesting, as usual. Heaven always dreams up special events for me on holidays, birthdays, anniversaries and other special days. But then, you already know that, don’t you? Sloan
 
 
Sloan, families are tough. My grandmother from from my mom’s side was robbed of all of her inheritance by the wife of her 3rd son. Grandma went from being a millionare to dying on welfare. Stealing from a sick old lady is bad enough but from your own defenseless mother is beyond despicable. However, they got away with it. There were 5 criminal charges levied against them. Only one was prosecuted and eventually dropped. I still feel like turning them into the I.R.S. My spirit handlers told me to drop it – they would do the judging when the time came for judging. I also follow orders from headquarters. Boy, the fleshy part of me would really like to see them pay. Not because I had any trickle down interest at stake, but because what they did was so wrong. My grandmother was always very nice to me. It was very difficult to see her in the hospital all broken down and everything. She tried to warn me about them in a very cryptic and schizophrenic way but I couldn’t understand what she meant at the time. I’m very happy that I don’t have to carry around the guilt that they do. I’m very happy that I don’t have to fear the rekoning that they will eventually face. The whole thing just makes me sad. Terry
 
 
Hi, Terry. Thanks for sharing your grandmother’s experience. Yes, there is a reckoning sooner or later. Someone emailed that I could scare the shit out of children by making my experience into a wicked stepmother book. I replied that I’d only told a small part of the whole tale, which might be a lot scarier in kindergartens. It might scare the shit out of plenty of adults, too. Maybe for more reasons than they might even care to admit. Sloan

Below is the text of a series of email exchanges with recent Utility Board candidate Tom Milone, who strikes me as someone truly trying to serve Key West, someone we might all wish to be thankful for on this Thanksgiving Day. The first item below Tom apparently sent to a number of people, including me. The remaining items were between him and me about it. If you feel this is important, get in touch with him, the Mayor and City Commission, and so forth.

Dear Mayor & Commissioners,

I wish to call your attention to a City Commission approved interpretation of Section 122-1339 of the Code of Ordinances which, if allowed to stand, will, I believe, cause a devastating loss of permanent residential housing in Old Town. I also believe the interpretation is unlawful. The interpretation I am challenging is contained in Resolution 06-265, Section 1, Paragraph 3 and reads as follows, “The City Commission hereby interprets section 122-1339 of the Code of Ordinances to allow the transfer of transient rental licenses from a zoning district where transient rental uses are allowed.”

The resolution was unanimously passed on July 18, 2006, with Commissioners Lopez and Rossi absent. The City Commission’s interpretation of Section 122-1339 is the opposite of what the section actually says and the interpretation amounts to an attempt to amend the section without following the proper lawmaking procedure.

Section 122-1339 reads in pertinent part as follows, “A business tax receipt for transient use of a unit may itself be transferred from an area where transient uses are prohibited to a receiver site without the accompanying unit. …”Resolution 06-265 approved the major development plan and conditional use for property in the CG zoning district commonly know as Parrot Key Resort.

The agenda back-up material for the resolution includes an executive summary dated July 18, 2006 from Planning Director Gail Kenson. Ms. Kenson wrote in her report that Parrot Key Resort is located in the CG zoning district where transient use is permitted (pg. 1) and Section 122-1339 of the Code restricts the transfer of transient licenses only from nonconforming locations (pg. 2).

Section 122-1336 of the Code describes the purpose of the transient units division of the Code. It reads in pertinent part as follows, “The purpose of this division is to provide for the transfer of existing transient units and transient licenses in order to reduce noncomplying density, structures and uses; remove legal nonconforming transient uses from zoning districts that now prohibit them; encourage permanent residential housing by relocating transient licenses….”

An application is pending before the Planning Board to transfer 11 transient licenses from the Parrot Key Resort site to 604 Greene Street and 605 Dey Street, also known as 201-213 Simonton Street. The staff report for this application indicates the following: There are 83 transient licenses available to be transferred from the sender site. The receiver site consists of 9 market rate dwellings which will receive the 11 transient licenses. The zoning districts for both the sender site (CG) and the receiver site (HRCC-1) permit transient uses.

This application was heard by the Planning Board on November 15, 2007. I asked the board to deny the application because it would cause the loss of permanent housing stock (Code, Section 122-1336) and because the zoning district for the sender site continues to allow transient uses (Code, Section 122-1339). In response to my second argument, Assistant City Attorney Larry Erskine informed the board that it is bound by the City Commission’s interpretation of Section 122-1339 as written in Resolution 06-625. The Planning Board tabled this matter until December 20.

There are 83 transient licenses available to be transferred from the sender site.The receiver site consists of 9 market rate dwellings which will receive the 11 transient licenses. The zoning districts for both the sender site (CG) and the receiver site (HRCC-1) permit transient uses. This application was heard by the Planning Board on November 15, 2007. I asked the board to deny the application because it would cause the loss of permanent housing stock (Code, Section 122-1336) and because the zoning district for the sender site continues to allow transient uses (Code, Section 122-1339).In response to my second argument, Assistant City Attorney Larry Erskine informed the board that it is bound by the City Commission’s interpretation of Section 122-1339 as written in Resolution 06-625. The Planning Board tabled this matter until December 20.

Parrot Key has applications pending for transfers to 427 Catherine Street and 600 Duval Street. I request that the City Commission take prompt action to set aside and vacate its interpretation of Section 122-1339 as contained in Resolution 06-265. Time is of the essence because of the pending transfer applications. I have attached Resolution 06-265 and the back-up material and Code, Sections 122-1336-1344 for you convenient reference.Sincerely,Tom MiloneThomas C. (Tom) Milone
(305)292-1899
(305)849-1415

Hi,Tom. I was at the recent Planning Board meeting where this City Commission resolution came up, where and when Pritam Singh tried to weave his spell, where and when you and others spoke against it. Just because the City Commission (including the Mayor) interprets a law one way, doesn’t mean it’s interpreted correctly. Nor even if the City Attorney interprets the law to suit the City Commission, is it necessarily interpreted correctly. The Duck Tours case certainly is an example of the City Commission (including the Mayor) and the City Attorney being way off the mark in interpreting laws correctly. Laws are interpreted by courts. All the rest is just opinions, even when lawyers are holding forth. Have you considered filing a simple action for declaratory judgment and preliminary injunction in the county court system, asking a county judge to interpret this resolution by the City Commission in light of existing laws already on the books? Filing it on behalf of the City of Key West, as a concerned registered voter, who believes the City has stepped outside of the law and needs some help getting back in line with the law? Sort of like a shareholder’s derivative suit is filed against a corporation on behalf of the corporation, by a shareholder or shareholders who believe the Board of Directors and management are acting outside of the law or in detrimental ways to the corporation and its shareholders. Such a legal proceeding would be decided by a judge, not by a jury. There would be no issue of damages, as none would be requested. All being requested would be for the court to guide the City about the law and enforce the law if the court disagreed with the City’s view of it and the City didn’t want to go along with the Court’s view. Sloan

Hi Sloan,

I have not thought of filing a lawsuit pro se. I do not have the funds to hire a lawyer, otherwise I would. However, I have been talking with George Halloran about Last Stand filing one. Yesterday, he planned to talk with attorney Eric Dadd. Eric has done legal work for Last Stand before (Watermark, Simonton Street transient license transfer case). George is also talking with his fellow Last Stand board members.

Tom.

Morning, Tom. During that Planning Board meeting, I spoke briefly with George Halloran, introduced myself, said I agreed with what he’d told the Board about the City Commission ignoring the plain wording of the statute. Feel free to share what I wrote to you with him, if you wish. Any anything else I write to you about it, unless I indicate otherwise. One Planning Board member told me privately, after Pritam’s presentation that night, that he wanted nothing to do with Pritam’s project. Earlier in the meeting, as I was about to leave out of boredom, this same board member encouraged me to stay, said he wanted to hear what I had to say. I only was there, I thought, for the Blue Heaven hearing, and only to that did I speak publicly, toward the very end. Backing up to the beginning again, I was very disturbed by what Pritam presented at that meeting. While he was trying to weave his spell over the Planning Board, I started feeling awful, and finally I passed out. This routinely happens in meetings/gatherings I attend, prelude to my having to get involved in something grubby going on there that made me feel bad. There was stuff in the Blue Heaven hearing that also made me feel bad, but that came much later in the evening. A very long evening. Sloan

Come, come, Dearie. What? You’d rather dress me up all nice and pretty, put me in a button-down-collar shirt? You’d rather I get a public relations firm to paint me something nice, a knight in shining armor, a prince among thieves, a pirate Robinhood, a dragon slayer, a Beowulf who comes along and rescues the kingdom from the terrible monster Grendal and his much more terrible mother? That’s what you want me to be, Dearie? Someone to fight your and everyone else’s battles, so you and they can keep on keeping on with whatever it is that you and they are doing, instead of fighting your and their own battles?All I can do, Dearie, is be me. Be open. Be what you see is what you get. No surprises. No promises. No subterfuge. Otherwise, I’m a liar, a pretender, a cheat, a knave, a rake, and worst of all, a whore. Surely I need not explain this is not to be taken literally, in the dictionary sense this world uses. I speak here in terms of the soul, in the epic poem sense, in the sense of the struggle any man and woman in this bizarre world faces, each in his or her own way. Will he or she be a hero or heroine? Will he chain and padlock himself to an Overseas Highway bridge, to protest widening of the 18 Mile Stretch? Will he fight development in court? Will she attend and speak out at county and city commission meetings, even to the point of being ejected, or ridiculed by a county commissioner or in a newspaper by the county publicist or a journalist or editor? Or will he or she sell out, play it safe, as if playing safe is safe?
 
Playing safe is so very dangerous, in the soul sense, that the very word safe should be stricken from the language to hopefully discourage it from becoming anything of value, something people seek after. At the level of soul, playing safe is death, and this world is filled with graveyards stretching as far as the eye can see; graveyards of the living dead, who do not even know they are dead; zombies in the soul sense, so cut off from the spark of life, the spark of truth, the spark of love, the spark of conscience, the spark of courage, the spark of creativity, that they can only continue by being parasites, feeding on any and every soul around them, instead of creating their own light by simply being their true selves, their own heroes and heroines, bloodied in body, feelings, mind and spirit by this insane world’s truly wrenching tests. Better bloodied than not. Better at risk than safe.
 
What do you suppose, Dearie, all of this is leading up to? Am I just flapping my gums theoretically? Am I just philosophizing? Am I just sitting in my ivory tower spouting forth parables, riddles and the words of seers I never personally knew, much less had their experiences? Is that what YOU are doing, Dearie? Are you afraid of all this live ammo flying around your tender parts? Are you wanting to jump on a Conch Train with and just sightsee, when you could be actually walking the streets of Key West and sitting in its establishments and learning from all different kinds of people why they are here and what they are seeing and thinking? When you could be driving up and down US 1 on your way to this or that thing to do, picking up people at public bus stops who are still waiting for the bus to come long past its time to come, and getting to know them and hearing what they have to say about their lives in the Keys and their views of what‘s really going on here? Are you wanting to read watered-down and filtered and spotty newspaper accounts about city and county commission and planning board meetings, instead of actually attending them and seeing and hearing what’s really going on? Are you wanting only to read about upcoming social events and ignore what’s going on in your government altogether?
 
Are you so busy massaging your own navel, filling your own belly, tickling your own fancy, that you have lost contact with reality? Are you believing that going to church on Sundays and Wednesday nights, or to weekend spiritual retreats, or to political rallies or writer’s conferences is what God really wants you to be doing? Do you think God really gives a tinker’s damn about you singing praises and making joyful noises in church? At spiritual gatherings? At political rallies? At writers conferences? Do you not yet get it, Dearie, that every moment of your life is in church, at a spiritual gathering, at a political rally, at a writer’s conference, which God arranged for you to be at and do something different from what your comfort zone wants you to do? Surely I don’t have to explain this to you again. Surely. Alas, it seems that I do. It seems that I do.
 
Right now, Dearie, you have three county commissioners who seem determined to finally do something about getting someone into the County Administrator’s position who actually loves the Keys and wants to put the Keys and the people who live here ahead of his or her personal hubris and political agendas. In this endeavor, these three commissioners are stepping over the line that demarks their comfort zones, and a lot of other people’s comfort zones, starting with the comfort zones of the other two county commissioners, who so very clearly have their own personal hubris and interests, and the interests of their political cronies, at the top of their pecking order that it would be a huge joke to even look at and even belly-laugh over, if it were not so very serious and the condition of the county so very grave, thanks to their ways of going about things, and thanks to the ways of their ancestors in office. Instead of actually doing something about stuff that really needs something done about, they pay a county publicist, disguised as a legal consultant on affordable housing, enormous sums of money to paint them beautiful and effective. When they get rid of the County Manager, they need to get rid of the county publicist, too. We ARE our reputations, and no amount of whitewashing can ever change that.
 
So, Dearie? Am I tossing my hat into the ring again? Am I going to run against County Commissioner Charles “Sonny” McCoy for his Key West seat? Am I again going to let it rip again, damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead? Did you watch me run for Mayor of Key West? Did you see me waver even once? Did you see me once play it safe? Did you watch me run for County Commissioner George Neugent’s Big Pine Key and thereabouts seat last year, Dearie? Did I waffle? Did I weasel? Did I bend one inch to please anyone? Did I ask for one penny in either race? Did I use campaign workers? A publicist? A campaign manager? Radio or television ads? Campaign buttons, posters, mailings? A political party? Did I even want either job? No. Just like you, I wanted to be doing a lot of other things instead.
 
I may not have been born in the Keys, but I love them as much as anyone born here loves them, maybe a lot more. I have seen what commercial developers and their political cronies have done to the Keys since I first came here in 1952. I see what they want to keep doing to the Keys. I hear them railing about property rights, and I wonder every time what about the Keys’ rights, the rights of these sacred islands on which we are permitted by God to live, for now? Can anyone who lives in the Keys look in the mirror and honestly tell that person staring back that the Keys are not already so way over-developed that they cannot safely stand anymore new development? What do I mean by development? I mean development for profit, private development, capitalistic development. What the Keys don’t need is any more motels, lodges, hotels, vacation resorts, transient rental units, gated communities.
 
What the Keys need more than anything is to preserve what rental housing remains that common folk can afford, and to create new rental housing for common folk who cannot afford where they now are living, or who are living some in some place that is totally inadequate for them. The high price of Keys land makes it economically impossible for commercial developers to build and manage affordable common folk rental housing, without receiving all sorts of side inducements to make it worth their while, side inducements that always seem to cause a great deal more trouble than any good they do. The only economically feasible way to provide new affordable common folk rental housing is on city and county lands, partnering with not-for-profit land trusts, with the Housing Authority managing the rental units after they are constructed.
 
What the Keys need more than anything is an end to the pollution of its waters by human feces, which provides a breeding ground for horrible diseases and is killing the only living coral reef in the continental United States. This means implementing state-mandated county-wide sewers, and repairing all existing leaking sewer laterals and condemning all septic systems, including the one on the property I own on Little Torch Key. If local bond issues have to be floated or millage rates raised to pay for what the State and Feds may be chipping in to implement county-wide sewers, then so be it.
 
What the Keys need more than anything are government leaders who are committed to doing everything they can to take care of these two critical problems, truly affordable common folk housing and the end to sea contamination by human feces, which two areas of critical even the termite people (commercial developers) cannot stand before the mirror and honestly deny are more important than all the other troubles facing the Keys put together and added up and multiplied by 2 or 3 or more.
 
Well, Dearie, if I wuz running for Sonny’s seat, you’d have just read my platform. I’d continue to hammer away at it in emails and at goodmorningkeywest.com and goodmorningfloridakeys.com. What you’d see there, what you’d see when I attended candidate forums, newspaper, radio and television interviews, at their invitation on their dime, would be what you get. No surprises, except the surprise of what I just might write or say next, which would be just as much a surprise to me as to anyone else. If you, or any other crazy person, wanted to be my campaign manager, or a campaign worker, you’d be more than welcome to have at it. I’d be less than happy to meet and talk with you about it, given how much I detest politics, and what you then did with it would be on your own, as long as there were no signs, posters, buttons, printed mailings, paid political ads. It would be word of mouth, grass roots. As for the pay, in money terms, nothing, zero, zip, nada. In spirit terms, well that would be another matter altogether.
 
If I wuz running.
 
I hope you have a good Thanksgiving, Dearie. Me, I’m playing bridge with the Conch Duplicate Bridge Club in Key West. We bring a covered dish each Thanksgiving, Christmas, Easter, and other holidays. Even on regular days we have a pretty good spread. We play every Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday at 1:30 p.m. at the Senior Citizen Center next to the Harvey Government Building on North Roosevelt. Best to get there a little early, and bring a playing partner. We’re real friendly card sharks. Real friendly.