Good Morning Florida Keys

Yesterday’s snail mail brought a survey sent to me by the director of a political science department in a mid-west college. The letter said my name had been randomly chosen out of a pool of names of politically active people who were expressing their religious views.The survey was several pages thick, and I doubt I could have fitted it into the standard letter-size return envelop, if I had completed it. After the first two pages, I gave up. Most of the multiple choice answers I simply could not answer. Although I might be mistaken, it seemed the questions were designed by the religious right. In all events, it did not seem the questions were designed by someone or someones who had moved past religion (Christianity, it seemed pretty obvious) into direct experience with God.

I wrote back by hand on the back of the cover letter my sentiments about the difference between religion and God, which formed as the result of my having experiences with the hand of God day and night for over two decades. I said I feel Christianity is the anti-Christ because it claims Jesus as its head but, in the main, does not live as he lived and told other people to live. I said the people who started our country meant to separate religion from state, but not God from state, evidenced by the Declaration of Independence, which begins with a reference to God, and makes several other references, none of which are in Christian terms. I concluded by saying I see no help for America in surveys and religion, and I feel it will take a massive intervention, perhaps much more massive than the intervention Jesus represented, to help America. I included my phone number and a goodmorningkeywest.com “business card,” on the back of which I said the home page gives some indication of what my runs for office and experiences with God have been like.

I spoke with Sandy Downs a while yesterday. She has been trying to work with Major Tommy Taylor about helping inmates. Among other things, she wants to donate money to start a library of books detainees will not likely otherwise have a chance to read. She said she spoke with Tommy about my coming into the jail and doing groups with inmates. He expressed interest in inmates getting spiritual help, but said there were a lot of hoops to jump through. What hoops?, I asked Sandy. I will not charge money. All I need is a room with chairs and inmates. No, I cannot provide a course outline, because the inmates will lead. Those who wish to speak will set the course. Those who wish to remain silent, don’t have to speak. They can leave whenever they wish. They can stay as long as they like. I will respond to what they provide. They will be pushed to their limits. It will be very hard. Very hard. And there will beauty. I’ve done this before with inmates, and in other groups. The Spirit leads, the group and I follow. I told Sandy I will need about an hour with Tommy, to explain what it will be like in the group.

For those who might be wondering, I bought a Sony laptop yesterday at Radio Shack, which cost a little less than what I’d been told in a dream the night before to spend replacing the stolen laptop. I then spent much of the rest of the day downloading updates and a virus scan from the Internet. Fortunately, McAfee allowed me to transfer my virus protection from the stolen laptop to the Sony, which seems to be a better machine than the one I lost. I told Onett Johnson, who, with his wife, Penny, owns Sippin’ Internet Café, that I almost would have paid what the new laptop cost, to keep the old one. But for Onett, a bona fide computer wizard, I’d still be trying to figure out the downloads and updates.

My dog memorabilia street vendor friend and political instigator just came in Sippin’ and asked if I was writing on a new laptop, or did I get the other one back? When I said the new laptop, he asked if I had named it yet? I said I didn’t even name the other one, then I thought, said, maybe I should name this one. How ‘bout “Sippin?” Yeah, how ‘bout Sippin.

Sloan Bashinsky, New Year’s Eve, 2008

 Yesterday afternoon at Sippin’ Internet Café in Key West, as I played chess outside with friends, somebody stole my backpack containing my laptop and backup CD. Onett and Penny Johnson, who own Sippin’, said they would give me unlimited time on their desktop computers, until I was able to replace the laptop.When I came in to Sippin’ just after it opened at 7 a.m. today, Onett asked if I’d found it and I said no, it was gone. He said somebody took a piece of Sloan with them. Yeah, I replied, and maybe somebody might end up wishing he or she didn’t do that. I’ll write about losing it today, I said. You ought to, Onett agreed.

When my Trek bicycle was swiped from in front of Sippin’ during spring break last year, I was so pissed off that I went on strike and refused to replace it until couple of weeks ago. Not with new bike, though. A fellow I know finds old bikes and bike parts and puts them together and sells used bikes. I got a good one-speed conch cruiser from him for $55, plus $10 for a lock and key, and another $20 at a bike store for front and rear lights. The fellow at the bike store has a bike business in Philadelphia, but business is slow there now and he is in Key West for the winter. He said this type of bike new goes for $400. I had about $600 in the Trek.Well, losing my backpack, laptop and backup CD didn’t piss me off. To the contrary, I seemed to be in a state of grace when I realized what had happened. Maybe because I hoped it meant my tearful prayer before the wild chickens were up yesterday morning, that I be relieved of duty, had finally been answered. I wouldn’t need a laptop any more. I was out to pasture.

Another thought that came to me was, well, maybe I was careless. Maybe I should not have left the backpack in the same corner I’d left it in countless times, while I was playing chess at Sippin’. But then, if I was guilty of carelessness, why would I feel the state of grace?

Another thought that came was that it was a demonic attack, triggered by what I’ve been writing lately, especially by yesterday’s Porkaics post, in which I lamented my being told to run for mayor of Key West again. I’m often demonically attacked for doing something I’m told to do by the angels assigned to amuse them, for they sure as hell don’t amuse me very much.

The last thought that came to me yesterday was that whoever took my “office” would be disappointed to discover that the battery is dead and might end up with some serious karma and I was glad I was not in his or her skin. The same thing, basically, I told Onett this morning, even though yet another possibility (remember “Alice’s Restaurant?”) had only just occurred to me during my walk to Sippin’.

I so much did not want to run for office again, that my own spirit, or, you are into psychiatry (remember Lorri Szostak, M.D.?), my subconscious went out and fetched somebody to make off with my office so I wouldn’t have to work anymore. Since there is no such thing as “pleading the Fifth” in the Kingdom of God, this possibility, too, needs to be reported today.

Perhaps also I should report a few other things that came in after the heist. The first from Lorri Szostak, the second from Jim Hendrick, the third from Sandy Downs.

______________________________

“A dead thing can go with the stream, but only a living thing can go against it.” – GK Chesterton, Everlasting Man, 1925“It’s not that we don’t have enough scoundrels to curse; it’s that we don’t have enough good men to curse them.” - GK Chesterton, ILN, 3/14/08Sloan,

I love this man’s writings and share them with you simply to encourage you ……you are -IMHO – very much alive, and a good man…..I calls ‘em as I sees ‘em….

Lorri

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Don’t know whether you have a TV (much less one with premium channels), but if you haven’t yet seen & heard this documentary on Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers (2007, narrated by Peter Bogdanovich), it’s being broadcast on Sundance channel at various times over the next few days. Informative, entertaining, inspirational…..just great! Petty has been one of my favorite artists for decades, and “I Won’t Back Down” (lyrics below; should resonate with you, too) held special meaning for me during the months following my arrest. This very well-made film reminded me how much Petty has contributed to music over the last 30 years.
 
Well I won’t back down, no I won’t back down.
You can stand me up at the gates of hell,
But I won’t back down.
Gonna stand my ground, won’t be turned around.
And I’ll keep this world from draggin me down;
Gonna stand my ground….. and I won’t back down.
Hey, baby, there ain’t no easy way out;
Hey, I will stand my ground
And I won’t back down.
Well I know what’s right; I got just one life.
In a world that keeps on pushing me around,
I’ll stand my ground….. and I won’t back down.
[Being the cave man that I am, I have no TV, I’ll stand my ground, I won’t back down.]

__________________________

As the year ends peacefully, let me not forget to do a few things:
Thank the Lord for the moments of non conflict, the moments of truth
Let me thank Him for the stars I saw tonight, and last night
And for the stars I may see tomorrow
Let me thank Him for the noise, the chaos, the wind
Let me thank him for my friends
Once I was standing on a barren cold mountain
And you came riding in on a bold horse with it’s head thrashing
Your beard flowing in the violence of the moment
And your eyes like beads of mercury
You said to me no words
You showed me the way over the mountain
And you made me believe in my strength to climb
You accepted no weakness in me
You finally spoke
And your words comforted me only that you made look within myself
For the wisdom to know and understand
What lay before me, what lay behind me, and what should be put to rest
I call you friend
Even though you scold me, you warm me with truth
You warn me of impending disaster
And you steer me always over the mountain in safety
I call you friend because you did not betray me
You never betrayed me
You never betrayed me
You never betrayed me
You cared that I cared and about what
Whatever it was, how little, how grand, it mattered
And you gave me cause to celebrate that I could stand
And that I could sit, you gave me permission to do just that when I was tired
You took the load that was not yours,
And I didn’t even ask you to take it…didn’t have to
You knew when it was too much, too much to bear
You were my angel when there was darkness too much to bear
And when no one existed but me and pain
You showed me there was another, another one with mercury eyes
And I will always say, I had a friend
And I can say now, I have a friend
And I can say tomorrow, I still have a friend
And that is worth a celebration,……or two, or three……
And Happy New Year to your every day as you see fit to call it so.
To you Sloan, From Sandy

All but a few words of today’s post were written yesterday morning, mostly before dawn. When I went to Sippin’ Internet Café to post it, I didn’t feel ready and decided to sleep on it another night. I still don’t feel ready, for purely personal reasons, but my dream maker says she is ready, which I take as a not too subtle nudge for me to publish it, if I know what’s good for me.

_________________________________________

I first got wind of it after I was sent up to Birmingham about six weeks ago. After Todd German was used as the dream messenger during the third night of my time there, I packed and drove back down to Key West cussin’ much of the way.

I first met Todd at a candidate forum in 2003, when I lived in a homeless shelter and was running for mayor of Key West the first time. I had been put up to it by Father Stephen Braddock, who headed up Florida Keys Outreach Coalition, and Bill Verge, who then was on the Key West Planning Commission and now is a Key West City Commissioner. For all I know, I was the first and may still be the only homeless person to run for mayor of an American city. Or of any city.

An odd thing about being homeless, which I had to live on the street to learn, not in a homeless shelter but on the street, is that if you really want to find out what a place is like, living on the street is the best way to do it. I suppose it’s like the old days, when servants lived in the lower levels of the manor house, and everything that happened above them filtered down. They knew everything that was going on in the manor house, even as the lairds and ladies knew only a little of it, or none of it, depending on how much they really wanted to know.

I was put up to run for mayor of Key West again in 2007, by angels who really didn’t give a shit how I felt about much of anything. I was not homeless that time, and I ran a very different campaign. A good campaign, I thought, but I only received 64 votes in the six-candidate primary, which put incumbent mayor Morgan McPeherson into a runoff with former mayor Jimmy Weekley.

I think I received 34 votes the first time I ran, so I could have viewed the second run as a major success. Actually, I saw the second attempt as a catastrophe, because I felt the first time that Jimmy Weekley should be our mayor, and I was more than happy to heed what I was told in my sleep the day after I qualified to run: “If you know what’s good for you, you will do everything thing you can to try to get Jimmy Weekley reelected.” But the second time I ran, I truly felt I was the only candidate suited for the office.

I will never forget reading in the Citizen’s Voice section of Key West Citizen last summer, an angry lament and accusation toward Key West for not offering a viable candidate in the 2007 mayoral race. I shook my head, said to the writer in my thoughts, “You had a viable candidate and he was ignored.”

I was the only candidate with a vision for Key West to move forward, attract more visitors, and generate more revenues. I was the only candidate concerned about the environment and making peace with Mother Nature. I had no personal financial stake in Key West to protect. I owed no money or favors and had no political alliances. I refused campaign contributions, had no campaign workers, used no signs, posters or car decals or magnets, or media advertising. All I used were goodmorningkeywest.com and goodmorningfloridakeys.com, for which I paid, and I attended and spoke at candidate forums and media interviews, and I paid the qualifying fee to run.

You learn a lot about candidates at candidate forums, if you pay attention. If you pay attention. And you learn a lot about a place when you run for public office, if you pay attention. Besides running for mayor of Key West twice, I ran for the county commission in 2006 and again earlier this year. Before all of that occurred, I knew I didn’t like porkatics, but I didn’t really know why. After four races, I know why.

I probably would rather eat pig shit, if you want to know how I feel about running for mayor again. In fact, right now I actually feel like maybe I have eaten pig shit, which tells me just how polluted Key West porkatics is in the spirit. No way do I want to once again try to sell people what I am given to sell in the pig parlor. People want everything to stay pretty much in the familiar, even if it’s not working. They want special treatment. They want to be lied to and made promises nobody can keep. They want to blame their elected officials for being just what they showed they were when they ran for office.

Some of what I would try to get accomplished if I were Key West’s next mayor can be perused in the Sexy.Santa (Key West), Anomaly.Zoo (Key West) and Economic Recovery Plan files listed in the home page menu of goodmorningkeywest.com, which website I would use to keep the people of Key West fully apprised of the comings and goings in their bizarre city. Fully apprised, daily. For free. Maybe, if we were lucky, goodmorningkeywest.com would turn into a national and international vehicle for attracting more attention, and thus more visitors, and thus more money to Key West.

Hmmm, maybe people would come to Key West to meet the extraterrestrial, who, instead of being fetched up and rescued by the mother ship, as he has long hoped would happen, somehow ended up an elected official in the weirdest of all human cities. Maybe even the people who go to Roswell, New Mexico, and attend MUFON meetings would come to the real UFO headquarters on this planet: Key West.

You can see I’m in a really good mood today. When I awoke at 2:30 a.m., trying to come to terms with this pig crap, several drunks were in the parking lot of the Key West City Hall, talking loud, arguing, laughing at their own jokes, making asses of themselves. If they were homeless people, the Key West police would be all over them. But they are not homeless people. They are either tourists or Key West residents. They are Key West, whether I like them carrying on outside my apartment at 2:30 a.m., or not. The more of them we draw to Key West, the more revenues the city’s businesses, thus the city, will have.

I’m not joking. Early this year, or maybe it was the year before, our own part-time resident pollster Lou Harris did a survey of Key West visitors. The number-one reason they gave for coming here is the night life. That’s right. Not the architecture, not the art galleries, not the museums, not the fishing or diving, not the water sports and tours, not the artificial beaches, but the night life.

The night life isn’t why I’m in Key West. I can’t drink or use any human drugs, except ibuprofen when I hurt real bad because I feel poisoned, like I felt at 2:30 a.m. I don’t go bar hopping, because I don’t like being around humans who are drinking and smoking cigarettes and making a lot of noise. I don’t go dancing, because I don’t have anybody to go dancing with. Our city’s night life means very little to me, but it’s the most important reason humans come here, and we need to use it to our advantage. Meaning, we need to promote the night life in our advertising.

A great way to begin any Friday night crawl, unless you are homeless and have no money, is to show up at 6 p.m. at Aqua in the 800 block of Duval Street, and hear the nightingale belt out her beautiful notes. Likely as not, you will see her daddy there, Marathon district’s colorful county commissioner, puffing away on a big Cuban cigar. Vanessa Di Gennaro’s singing is well worth being in a smoke-filled bar with humans cutting three sheets into the wind.

Mario told me this past Friday night at Aqua just how much he loves Key West, what a great city it is. He said he has been wondering when he might appear in my blog again. Now he doesn’t have to wonder.

From the city of “One Human Family,” unless, perhaps, you live on the street.

Sloan Bashinsky, perennial pig farmer and stranded extraterrestrial. Key West. 28 December 2008

On Christmas Day, a friend, who had just been released from the Stock Island jail for the second time this year, told me the jail food is indeed awful. I said I needed to hear that from someone I personally knew, who knew first-hand, to back up what I was hearing from Lorri Szostak, M.D., who has a friend in the jail.

Two or maybe three times, when interviewed by the Editorial Board of Key West Citizen about my running for office, I told them the free press and plaintiff lawyers are all that stand in the way of America becoming a totalitarian state.

When I learned early this year that Tom Tuell, Editor of the Citizen, and Larry Kahn, Editor of the Keynoter, were in bed with Sheriff Rick Roth and Sheriff-Elect Bob Peryam, and when I saw they wrote nothing but praise reports for Roth and Peryam and the sheriff office, I started to think Tuell and Kahn were like the German journalists who promoted Adolph Hitler’s ascent in Germany.

After Lorri Szostak and I attempted in vain to get the mainstream press interested in this deplorable situation in the jail kitchen, I became convinced that Tuell and Kahn, and their newspapers, are Nazi puppets.

Sheriff Roth and his jail Commandant, Major Tommy Taylor, and the Stock Island jail manager, Penny Phelps, are fully aware of the Consent Decree of the McIntyre United States District Court case, which came out of Roth being sued for running the worst jail in Florida, according to the plaintiff lawyer, Randy Berg, who specializes in representing jail inmates.

The food service section of the McIntyre Consent Decree is reproduced last down below; it sets out in fine detail how the jail food is to be selected, prepared, served and tested.

Roth, Taylor and Phelps knew all along that the jail kitchen and food were not in compliance with the food services section of the McIntyre Consent Decree. They never intended to comply.

Roth, Taylor and Phelps are in contempt of the United States District Court and should locked up in the very jail they are supposed to run properly, and made to eat the same awful food they have been feeding to the inmates, for as long as the McIntyre Consent Decree has been in effect.

Roth, Taylor and Phelps’ employment, and employment and retirement benefits, should be terminated by the United States District Court and used for the inmates’ benefit.

Roth, Taylor and Phelps should prosecuted under the criminal provisions of the United States Civil Rights laws, for willingly and knowingly torturing inmates in violation of the Eight Amendment ban against cruel and unusual punishment.

Inasmuch as Roth, Taylor and Phelps never had any intention of complying with the food service section of the McIntyre Consent Decree, the United States District Court needs to take over the jail kitchen and appoint a Custodian to run it at Monroe County’s expense, indefinitely. There is no other way to insure the jail kitchen will be run properly.

This is the kind of case I would bring in the United States District Court, if I were Randy Berg, who is still the inmates’ lawyer of record in the McIntyre case. I would ask for nothing for myself, because God work cannot be done correctly, if I am looking to get anything back; and because I did not stay on top of the jail kitchen and food situation after the Consent Decree was entered.

I concluded yesterday’s Spiritual.Suicide post with saying something very rough was coming in. Very rough. For comic relief, take in “Valkyrie” at Tropic Cinema.

Sloan Bashinsky, 27 December 2008

M.  Food Service

1.                    The defendants will request monthly sanitation inspections of all kitchens by the Florida Department of Health and Rehabilitative Services.  Deficiencies shall be corrected forthwith.

2.                    Kitchen staff, and inmate workers, shall be trained in proper sanitation techniques.

3.                    At all times, dry goods shall be properly stored in containers and on shelves, pallets, or other modalities which will keep them off the floor.

4.                    Water shall not be allowed to accumulate on the kitchen floor.

5.                    Garbage and dry trash shall be properly placed in covered containers.  Trash pickup shall be scheduled at frequent enough intervals to avoid an accumulation of garbage.

6.                    The kitchen staff’s bathroom, located adjacent to the kitchen in the existing Main Jail, shall be completely cleaned and repaired by the County and made functionable and sanitary.  It shall thereafter be maintained in a clean and sanitary condition with all plumbing fixtures in working condition.  Signs shall be posted requiring kitchen workers to wash their hands after bathroom use.  The bathroom repairs shall be completed within sixty (60) days of the entry of the order approving this Agreement.

7.                    A dietician/nutritionist shall be charged with the duty of supervising menu planning to ensure that the diet is adequate and varied.  Menus shall be planned for not less than twenty-eight (28) days in advance and certified by a dietician/nutritionist.  Defendants shall comply with the menu except in cases of emergency, such as a hurricane, or as modified by the Jail Physician.

8.                    The Sheriff, or his designee, and the Food Service Director shall conduct a thorough inspection of all food service areas at least weekly.  Additionally, at least one (1) meal per week shall be selected at random by the Sheriff or his designee, who shall inspect the appearance, quantity, quality, and serving temperature of each meal item, utilizing scales, measuring cups, thermometers and any other appropriate measuring devices.  A written report of each weekly inspection shall be maintained and available for review.  All deficiencies noted in the inspection report shall be immediately corrected.  The report shall be maintained on file for review.

9.                    Foods intended to be served hot shall be served hot.

10.                The daily calorie count of the meals served in the jail shall not be reduced below twenty-eight hundred (2800) Calories for any inmate without the approval of the Jail Physician or some other person licensed to practice medicine in the State of Florida.

11.                An internal temperature gauge shall be immediately installed in the freezer at the Main Jail.  The temperature shall be closely observed to insure that it remains on the average at least zero (0) degrees Fahrenheit or below.  Should the temperature continue to be above zero (0) degrees fahrenheit, the freezer shall be immediately repaired or replaced.

12.                            Defendants shall request that the Health Program Office of the Florida Department of Health and Rehabilitative Services (HRS) conducts a Food Service inspection every three (3) months, as required by State law.  Food service operations shall conform to the acceptable standards of the Florida Department of Health and Rehabilitative Services (HRS) Rules 10D-13, Florida Administrative Code.  All HRS inspection reports shall be filed and readily available for review.  All deficiencies noted in the inspection report shall be immediately corrected.  In the event that the Health Program Office of the Florida Department of Health and Rehabilitative Services (HRS) does not conduct a Food Service inspection report every three (3) months, the Sheriff shall notify the Special Master, with a copy to Plaintiffs’ Counsel, within one (1) week.

13.                Special diets shall be made available to accommodate inmates with legitimate religious or medical requirements.

14.              The facility shall have adequate written procedures for the control of sensitive food items which could be used for the production or manufacture of contraband beverages.  Once written, those procedures shall be followed.

Here’s the text of four emails. The first came before yesterday’s Christmas.Sermon post, the rest in response thereto.

Wishes for a Blessed Christmas.  We enjoy reading about your dreams.  Keep safe and we wish you a great and productive New Year. 

A daily reader. [I, Sloan, do not know their identity]

Hi Sloan,

Again I’m disturbed by your talk of death. I’m afraid you’ll deny us you presence on this earth. It would be a great loss. I don’t believe in any god, but you do and if you really do then you know that the Christian God forbids suicide. No buts about it. My problem with Christians and all religions is that they encourage their followers not to take responsibility for their lives and fanatical believers such as yourself can interpret anything to suit their needs. That’s why I worry that you’ll kill yourself and justify it in some convoluted way, probably by a dream.

You have an awful lot to offer the rest of us and it’s your responsibility to keep toughing it out, no matter how difficult it is, in order to continue your mission. You have to. You’re required to. It’s your responsibility. Don’t chicken out, be a man. It always passes. You’re not alone. It will pass.

~Life is but fifteen minutes of excruciating pain filled with exquisit moments.

Your worried friend,

[owner/host of bigpinekey.com, who set up my websites, goodmorningkeywest.com, goodmorningfloridakeys.com, and posts “teasers” from my near-daily posts to the Coconut Telegraph Gossip Column of bigpinekey.com, with a web link to one of my websites for the whole post.]

Who said anything about suicide? [Sloan asked]

Your continued references to wishing you were off this earth got me worried. I hope I mis-read it. I lay awake last night with concern for you. I hope I’m way off base.

RE: “I can’t help but wonder why the jail chaplain and the local ministers who have parishioners in the jail and the Christians who work in the jail are not raising bloody hell over the food being fed to the inmates. ” [from end of yesterday’s Christmas.Sermon post]

Ditto; I wonder about that too Sloan!….

Lorri [Szostak, M.D.]

Sloan, people will think that I’m crazy for saying this (well, there are many here in town who think I am anyway) but I just had to tell you that I think sometimes you’re the only one who really makes sense around here.  Thank you for being part of MY Key West.

Patrick Shank
Gen. Mgr.
The Keys
A Key West Piano Bar

Yesterday morning, I ran into a fellow I know, who had just gotten out of his second stint this year in the Stock Island jail. He confirmed the awful food and said the word among inmates at the jail is that Sloan Bashinsky has gone to bat for them. Yeah, and so has God, who put me up to it, with no small amount of help from Lorri Szostak, a board certified forensic psychiatrist.

What can I say? Yesterday was rough as hell. I was laid low most of the day.

I called Lorri and we talked some about how it is when God takes a special interest in someone. From that moment on, you move toward God, or away. There is no staying where you were before God came calling.

When Lorri asked if I was hopeful about the jail food situation correcting itself, I said I wasn’t holding my breath. I’d been involved in too many rough situations to expect people to change, and I had seldom seen miracles or direct divine interventions that scared people into changing. I said I felt Randy Berg, Esq., who represented the inmates in the McIntyre case against Sheriff Roth, was the best hope I saw.

When I told Lorri about the bigpinekey.com host’s concerns that I was suicidal, Lorri laughed. We talked about the conversation God has with people who check themselves out early: So sorry, you came here too soon; there was more for you to do, experience, learn, and now you have to do it over again, and maybe this time it will be even harder. I did not mention that the holiest man I have known in this life, United States District Judge Clarence W. Allgood, who cussed, used to drink moonshine and did not attend church, took his own life after his body finally wore out, several years after his beloved wive, Marie, had passed over.

I explained to Lorri that my wanting not to be on this world any longer was due to not having anyone to share my life with, feeling like shit most of the time due to the enormous spirit load I continually carry, and due to the small percentage of what I view as success arising out of what I am given to do.

When I told Lorri it was truly ironic that God had used a Jew to intervene in the jail situation, to attempt to teach Christians about Jesus, we had a big laugh.

I had Christmas dinner yesterday evening with Todd German and his daughter, Valerie, at the Yacht Harbor, where Todd lives on his boat, 99 to Life. Just after arriving, I saw three man o’ war birds circling and soaring over the harbor, and shook my weary head.

Over dinner, I spent a while getting to know Craig Cates, who told me he is going to run for Mayor of Key West next year. He owns the NAPA distributorship in Key West and is a third-generation conch. When I said I’d heard Andy Griffith was going to run, Craig said Andy decided not to run after he, Craig, decided to run. When I asked Craig what he would do as Mayor, if he could call all the shots and not have to deal with the six city commissioners, he said he would try to get everyone in Key West to start all getting along. He said there is way too much division and disagreement.

When I later shared this with Todd, I said that isn’t my style. Todd agreed, said everybody is different. I found myself thinking God hasn’t been able to get everybody to all get along since Cain killed Abel. Key West hasn’t been able to get everyone in Key West to all get along after adopting the One Human Family creed of the gay community. I silently wished Craig luck, as I thought of ways to revive the Key West economy.

Last night in dreamtime was awful. I felt awful physically, too. Something very rough in the spirit in play. Very rough.

Sloan Bashinsky, 26 December 2008

Yesterday morning, I saw an old friend. A man o’ war bird. I was not happy to see him, because whenever he shows up, it heralds my becoming embroiled in spiritual warfare. It being Christmas Eve and all, I had more in mind sugar plums and fairies, and something warm and fuzzy for Christmas. Or, as I said to God last night as I headed to my crib just off Duval Street, what I really wanted for Christmas was not to be on this planet any more.

When I spoke by phone with a friend yesterday, I lamented how the angels take holidays, especially Christmas, as a time to really pour it on. When she said she was going to pray for me to have a good night’s rest, I said when people had said that sort of thing to me in the past, the angels seemed to take it as an invitation to pour it on even more. So please don’t do that, in other words. As I lay in bed last night, I tried to think back to when I’d had a pleasant Christmas, and I couldn’t think of one since I was in college.

Maybe, it now occurs to me, Jesus didn’t find his arrival on this world too terribly pleasant, and from what I read in the Gospels, I can’t see anywhere in there that he got up in the morning singing praises to God and looking forward to the day, or looking forward to anything except to his not being on this world any longer. Not the Jesus I was told about in Sunday school and church growing up, or later, but the Jesus I see whenever I spend time pondering the Gospels.

My dreams last night and this morning before I finally woke up before the Key West wild chickens were of a titanic struggle involving many people, only two of whom are known to me: Jim Hendrick and me. We not seem to be on the same side. He was representing someone in a legal matter, and was arguing that what the fellow had done in the past was legal, and therefore he should be allowed to continue to do what he had been doing.

I had no sense of who the person Jim represented was, or is. Perhaps he was not a person but was a concept or way of going about things. Whatever, it really didn’t surprise me, as Jim and I, close as we often are, do not see eye to eye about quite a bit of stuff on and off this world. Oddly, in my dreams he sometimes is an ally, prodding me in directions I need to go, even if those directions don’t always agree with where he stands on this world.

So this was my Christmas present, I suppose. A night of what appears to be an epic battle shaping up, maybe over the direction in which Key West and Monroe County are headed, since that is where Jim and I both have put most of our time and effort. I wish I had his sanguine, level personality, and the ease with which he copes with the ups and downs of this life. Alas, for me much of life is a war, internally and externally. There is no calm sea onto which I can consciously retreat. Sometimes I am put there, but it is not me who puts me there and I am not there for long, before the next tempest is upon me.

As I told my friend on the phone yesterday, I started feeling poisoned yesterday. Like an arthritic, who can feel incoming weather in his bones and joints, I feel incoming spirit weather in my G.I. track, liver and gall bladder, and in my blood and cerebral spinal fluid, and in my spirit. The more poisoned I feel, the worse it is in the spirit. As it comes in, I start to see what it is, and as I do what I’m supposed to do, it starts to ease.

That description of my work, and my saying not being on this world any longer would be like throwing me in the briar patch, is what caused her to say she would pray for me to have an easier time last night, and what caused me say what happened when people did that.

I suppose this rambling might strike some people as the mutterings of a lunatic, but it didn’t seem to affect my friend that way. Perhaps that is my Christmas present, a psychiatrist who doesn’t tell me I’m crazy when I explain the bizarre life God has dumped on me, but to the contrary, seems to take in stride what I tell her.

This post today represents only a small sampling of what I have told Lorri Szostak, M.D., and what I have told her is only a small piece of what I could tell. Much of it is found in the archives of goodmorningkeywest.com, but even that is only a sampling of the whole of it, some of which was published in earlier books, some of which was written down and then destroyed, and some of which may never be written.

I would say “merry Christmas,” but it would be dishonest, because there’s nothing merry about how I feel right now. What I feel is how I suspect Jesus felt most of his life: he looked forward to it being all over. I hope I now can get back to sleep.

Later, after a pre-dawn snooze and more dreams . . .

This is about the Stock Island jail and the food it feeds the inmates. The jail that recently got a big praise report in Key West Citizen, about all the money it makes for the County Commission off federal detainees, all women, without any mention of what the Citizen’s Editor, Tom Tuell, knows from Dr. Szostak is the deplorable food fed to those women.

Jim Hendrick once was the County Attorney. In his youth, he was an altar boy in the Catholic church. He knows the Gospels cold; he has told me this. So he knows Jesus said something like, I was hungry and you fed me not; I was in prison and you visited me not. As you do it to the least of these, you do it also to me.

Jim has never showed to me any interest in the jail situation, even though he himself once resided there and ate the food, which he told me was not good. Food often not fit to eat, and even when edible, is sorely lacking in nutrition. Food the Citizen has yet to report, even though it made plenty of praise-reporting yesterday of the upcoming Christmas feeding of Key West’s homeless people by local churches and homeless assistance organizations.

Me, personally, I don’t see anything legal about the food situation at the jail. Not legal under the laws of this world, or under the laws of God. This is the Jesus I know, the Jesus maybe Jim was defending in my dream. The Jesus starved and poisoned in the Stock Island jail, even as Waste Management’s and Key West City’s trucks run around Key West right now, and earlier this morning, picking up trash, so tourists will see a clean Key West on Christmas Day.

I can’t help but wonder why the jail chaplain and the local ministers who have parishioners in the jail and the Christians who work in the jail are not raising bloody hell over the food being fed to the inmates. It all makes me feel bad about going to a Christmas dinner to which I have been invited today. I will think about the inmates the entire day, as will Lorri Szostak, a Jew, whose brave and persistent efforts have brought all of this to light.

Sloan Bashinsky, 25 December 2008

What to me was a most interesting division developed at Mayor Morgan McPherson’s economic summit a couple of weeks ago. I saw this division in the speakers’ presentations. I saw it in the discussion at the table where I sat with Mayor McPerhson, the market research director of the TDC, the Commander of the Navy Base, an Assistant Key West City manager, and two Key West business women. And I saw it in the reports from the individual tables. The division, quite simply, is that many people understand that Key West’s economy is tourist driven, and many people do not understand this, or want it to be that way.

One speaker explained a survey that had been sent to businesses which had applied for business licenses in Key West. He said thirty-five percent of the businesses that responded said their revenues came from tourism. Many people in the room assumed this meant sixty-five percent of the businesses’ revenues came from non-tourism. So I raised my hand and when I got the nod I said the thirty-five percent of the businesses which rely on tourism probably make up seventy percent of all business revenues. The speaker said that probably was true, and even the businesses that did not report reliance on tourism depended on it, because many of those businesses’ customers depended on tourist dollars.

When I made the same point at our table discussion, the Assistant City Manager said Key West’s economy definitely is tourist driven. The Navy Commander seemed to agree. The Assistant City Manager and the Navy Commander did not argue with me when I mentioned the survey that had been done (by Lou Harris) last year, in which the number one reason given by people surveyed for coming to Key West was the night life. The Assistant City Manager and the Navy Commander did not take issue with my saying Key West is known as a place that is very different, where people can come and let their hair down and be who they really are, which they cannot do where they live. Key West is a zoo, I said. We need to keep hammering that home. The Assistant City Manager and the Navy Commander did not disagree. Mayor McPerhson and three women did disagree.

When the table discussions concluded, each table had a person speak for that table’s “conclusions.” One table recommended that Key West come up with a unified message that got people’s attention, and get that message out, and keep getting it out. I later would learn that this was Onett Johnson’s suggestion. Onnet and his wife, Penny, own Sippin’ Internet Café on Eaton Street, just off Duval Street. I know them well, because Sippin’ is my office. I’ve seen three different owners there, since my arrival in Key West in late 2000. Onett and Penny have done wonders with Sippin’. They are personable. They hire personable people to help them run the café’. One is from Slovakia. The others are Americans.

Onett is a pro with computers and he teaches business management at Florida Keys Community College. He knows, as do I, from when I was marketing and advertising director of my father’s company, that you come up with a unified message that gets people’s attention, and you hammer away with it. Onett and I know that you come up with something that fits the product you are selling. You do not come up with something that you want to use to make the product into something it isn’t, something you want it to be instead of what it is. That is precisely what the three women at my table and Mayor McPerhson seemed to want to do, though, with Key West.

Except for Onett Johnson’s unified message suggestion, the only other table suggestion that hit home with me was Capt. Andy Griffith’s suggestion that we need to come up with a Walt Disneyesuqe vision for Key West, for the city to become. For me, the city is already there, but many Key Westers don’t see or want to see it. Key West really is a zoo, a human zoo. Not only that, it is an international human zoo. As I told the Key West Business Guild at a candidate forum earlier this year, it’s a wonderful zoo. I was the first candidate who got to answer the question put to all county commission candidates: Do you think we need a nude beach? You betcha. The Europeans will love it, as will many Americans, and plenty of Key Westers, too. The other candidates chimed in favor, too. The Guild members and candidates were rolling in the aisles.

Key West is a place where I can play chess for several hours, like yesterday afternoon, with a man from Romania now living in Miami. A place where Mayor McPherson, a church minister and Realtor, can drink all afternoon and into the evening with Louie La Torre and other buddies, and then testify in court that, no, Louie didn’t seem drunk when he left the watering hole and drove his car cross the median on US 1 and rammed a Slovakian woman head-on and caused her permanent body and brain damage. A place where the main street is as well known as any street in the world, including New Orleans. A place where Capt. Tony, a notorious bar owner, boozer, lover of women and producer of mucho bambinos out of wedlock, became our most beloved mayor.

I learned yesterday from the doggie memorabilia vendor, Roger Schaal, who sets up on the corner of Duval and Eaton most days, across from St. Paul’s Church, that Capt. Tony got the national morning television shows to come to Key West and do their shows live, here. Roger said it jacked up the Key West tourist trade for five years. He said we need to get those shows back down here again. I said, yeah, that would really help. I said  I had been on some of those shows myself in another life. The Today Show, with Jane Pauley, the most memorable, over my first book, HOME BUYERS: Lambs to the slaughter? Realtors loved it.

Roger said we need to get Jimmy Buffet back down here, to do it up for Key West, where Jimmy got his start, in Capt Tony’s bar, as I recalled in the back roads of the recesses of the memories of my mind. Yeah, I said, and bring in other name singers. Maybe one a month. Maybe one a week. Roger mentioned Jerry Jeff Walker, whom I had heard in Birmingham several lifetimes ago. He was terrific, brought the house down with “up against the wall redneck mother!” When I asked if Jerry Jeff is still doing his thing, Roger said yep, every year he goes down to Costa Rica and draws people from all over for a week. Can you imagine Duval Street closed for the likes of Jimmy Buffet and Jerry Jeff Walker? Can you imagine the people who will come for that?

I have lived in other funky cities: Santa Fe, New Mexico and Boulder, Colorado. I have lived on Maui. I have traveled a good bit abroad: Nepal, Australia, New Zeland, Jamaica, the British Virgin Islands, Antigua, Dominica and the lower Windward Islands of the Caribbean, Costa Rica, Mexico, Europe, South Africa, Mauritus, India, Kuai and the Big Island in Hawaii. I have spent serious time in New York City and southern and northern California. I have done Sedona and Las Vegas. I tell you, my friends and not so friends: there is no place on this planet like Key West. It is an anomaly. As such, it is precious.

But holy wild chicken, it’s still in its infancy! Capt. Tony’s vision is only just starting to bloom. I betcha Jimmy Buffet would tell anyone who cares to listen that Capt. Toney’s s spirit and Key West’s spirit are one. We need to keep that ever in mind when we tell people about Key West. We need to remember Tony Terrancino is our ship’s captain. Read about him in “The Last Mango in Paris,” by Crickett Desmarais, with illustrations by Letty Novak, starting on page 48 of The Secret of Salt: AN INDIGENOUS JOURNAL (thesecretofsalt.com). Read about Capt. Tony, and many, many other anomalies; a small number of the anomalies who are the city that is anomaly.

Our city. Key West. Where people accused of being weirdos some place else can mingle with real weirdos.

Sloan Bashinsky, 23 December 2008

The editorial in yesterday’s Key West Citizen lamented Mayor Morgan McPherson’s failure at yet another of his economic summits to come up with concrete ideas for turning the Key West economy around, and at the same time blew off increasing tourism as a way to do it. For some time now I have felt that the Citizen needs to require its editorial staff to put their names on what they write in the “we,” when only one of them writes it with the help of the Citizen’s Editor, Tom Tuell. I feel the people of Key West and the Keys are entitled to know precisely whose views they really are reading in a Citizen editorial. The Citizen requires letters to the editor to show who wrote them, and what’s sauce for the hen is sauce for the rooster.

At a recent Key West City Commission meeting, Mayor McPherson remarked that he did not know what was the best way for the City to develope the Truman Waterfront land given to it by the Navy, and he did not think the retirement/convalescent home the City’s voters had said last year should be built on maybe seven acres of that land was going to pan out, because the people who came up with that idea, which the Citizen fully backed, have not been able to find a developer to build the retirement/convalescent center, even through the City was going to give the land to whoever built it.The Citizen, in its economic brilliance, overlooked the provision in the conveyance to the City from the Navy, which required that the City use the land to make money for the City. The Citizen, in its legal brilliance, encouraged the City to breach the terms of the conveyance. The Citizen, in its entrepreneurial brilliance, offered no way for the City to make money of that maybe seven acres, nor off any of the fifty-plus acres the Navy gave to the City, so it could make money off it.

I take no satisfaction in saying that the Citizen sometimes strikes me as a gadfly publication. And I take no satisfaction in saying, while I applaud Mayor McPherson for saying he doesn’t know what is the best way to develop the Truman Waterfront land and he is now open to suggestions, I wonder what is he doing being our mayor, if he is unable to come up with any suggestions himself that will make the City money? I can say the same thing for the entire Key West City Commission, which still seems willing to give over the maybe seven acres of that land to a developer, for free, to build a retirement/convalescent home, which will make the City nothing. It gives me no great pleasure to say this makes me want to pull my hair out by the roots and scream! As did I want to pull out my hair and scream at the Mayor’s economic conference, when sitting at his table with a representative from the Tourist Development Council, who spoke at the meeting, they denied that last year a public was done (by Lou Harris), which revealed from the people surveyed that the number reason given for coming to Key West was its night life.

Okay, I s’pose I need to step up to the plate and put my money where my mouth is. So here’s what I would do, if I had the say so with the fifty-plus acres of Truman Waterfront the Navy gave to the City, less the maybe six acres of it the City already dedicated to Bahama Villiage, which, the way it has been going so far, does not seem to be likely to be particularly remunerative for the city, although it may end up helping that part of the city be restored, which is a far better outcome than giving the land to a private developer to build a retirement/convalescent home, on which the developer will make money and the City will get zip.

First, I will hire out a bulldozer to erase in broad daylight, so folks can get good pictures of it, the Southard Street guardhouse into Truman Annex on Southard Street. Under the conveyance of the Truman Annex property from the Navy to Pritham Singh many years ago, Southard Street was to remain an open road to the land the Navy had retained on the Truman Waterfront and the way into the navy housing to the south of that land. After whacking the guardhouse on Southard, I will lumber the bulldozer through Truman Annex and bulldoze the gates already erected that block the public access into Truman Annex on Caroline and Front Streets. I will do this one hour after holding a press conference and saying all three of those streets were supposed to remain open, and the rich folks who live in Truman Annex and want the city to provide it fire and police protection, sewerage collection and treatment, street cleaning and garbage pick up, but then don’t want the rest of us in there after dark. Well, they are just going to have to become part of our city, whether they want to become part of it or not. If they can walk, bike, Moped and drive their cars around Key West anytime they want to, then the rest of us can do the same in Truman Annex.

No doubt, all of this will cause a great commotion in the local, national and international news media, for a city known around the world for being one-of-a-kind different-squared. Gosh, maybe the Citizen will make some mention of the Mayor of Key West, in pirate attire, hopping up on a bulldozer with the operator and tearing the rich folks a new one, all the while loudly daring through a bullhorn any state court judge to throw him in jail for enforcing an agreement the state courts have yet to enforce. Daring the judge to do it, under threat of the judge being harpooned to death do he or she part in the Today’s Cock-a-doodle-doo page of goodmorningkeywest.com, the free flagship promotion vehicle and local coconut telegraph gossip column (sorry, Jimmy Buffet, you stole the coconut telegraphy idea from people who’d been around these parts a lot longer than you) for the city whose mayor and only daily newspaper, by their own public admission, have no clue how to turn the city’s economy around.

The city where folks come from somewhere else to learn, to their astonishment, that real chickens can fly and do, in fact, roost in trees. And to their further astonishment, they learn that from time to time the City Commission has become paranoid schizophrenic about its glorious and colorful national birds and has tried to round them all up and deport them to a Chick-Filet farm on the mainland. No doubt the visitors left the Conch Republic thinking for sure that the folks behind that madness needed to be sent to the Chick Filet farm themselves.

Ah, but some sharp pencil at the Citizen will say, “What does all of this possibly have to do with the economic development of the Truman Waterfront property the Navy gave to the City?” Why, it has everything to do with it, because while all of this be happening, the fellow in pirate garb hitching a ride on the bulldozer will be bellowing out through his bullhorn, “Avast Mateys! Heave to! Strike the colors, man your battle stations! We are taking back our pirate cove and turning it into a fitting museum for our bold and dashing gentlemen and their lady ancestors!

We will show the world what pirates really were and how they lived! We will have our own pirate navy again, and we will put it right there where charter fleet owner Capt. Andy Griffith says he wants to put the Key West charter boat fleet. No damn way in bloody hell, mateys, are we going to let wannabe pirates have what always belonged to us! Arrrrrr! But they are welcome to use it with us, if that suits them and the Navy sez it’s okay. Maybe between us, we can help the Navy protect their ships from those thieving Truman Annex folks.

Tell you what. You put a pirate village and fleet on the Truman Waterfront, and people will come from all to see it. And when they go into and walk around Old Town Key West and see homeless people willing to work, dressed up as pirates, going around giving folks walk-the-plank tickets for dropping their cigarette butts, plastic cups, paper napkins and so forth on our streets and sidewalks, they won’t likely ferget that either when they go back to where they came frum and tell any and everybuddy about it, and about dem pretty pirate lassies with their boobs all hooched and pooched up serving them in the bars, restaurants, shops and hotel and motel lobbies, and how much fun they had pretending for a little while that they wuz real pirates, too, and about all other the fun things they did that they shore’ as hell can’t do where they came frum, which nobuddy is ever gonna find out ‘bout because we don’t kiss and tell here.

Why, they might even let slip on the sly that they went out to that world-class nuddie beach in front of the old fort at Higgs Beach and let it all hang out. Maybe that wuz before or after they spent a week camping at that secluded clothes optional Wisteria Island nature park across the channel from downtown Key West. Yep, word will spread, people will come — if we build it.

What about it, Capt. Andy? You said at Mayor McPerhson’s economic conference that we need to develop a vision for Key West, and you compared that to the vision Walt Disney developed, much of which came to pass after he had left this world. I didn’t get the sense that you felt we should create another Disney World, at least not one for people who want to shake hands with Mickey Mouse.

Sloan Bashinsky, 22 December 2008

In yesterday’s Light.Lively post, I shared a dream about Seven Mile Bridge (third photo from left), which, it turned out, was connected to an email reply I received earlier yesterday from Rose Stump summarizing her own dreams and visions about the disappearance of her son, Tom Stump (second photo from left). I wrote yesterday that he disappeared in 2000 and was legally declared dead 2005, which dates Rose corrected in a second email: he went missing in 1995 and was declared dead in 2000.

Sloan, You are such a learned man……and very good with words.

Years ago a man I knew passed through my dreams.  I found out the next day he had died that night. My sister who died with cancer stood by my bedside and watched over me while I slept. And now since Tom’s death I seem to be more attuned with the spirit world.

In the first few weeks after Tom died, he appeared to me…yes in white and some blue.

The first time he said, “………bridge”.  The second time he told me to tell my son, Chad, to go to church and light a candle. (Chad was not a church goer).  The third time Tom said, “check the stocks and bonds”….I said “what?”,  he repeated it, and again I said, “what” and he repeated it the third time.  I hate anything to do with business and here he was telling me to check the stocks and bonds. (Scott Haskell, his business partner and Tom did have some stocks together).  I’ve had a palm branch “float” to the ground, a back door of my car open as if someone was there, although I was alone, sweepers turning on by themselves…the organ too, etc.  I was in an Office Max and a man standing beside me told me he was sent here to pray for me.  One day in meditation I told God “if you want me to continue with Tom’s case, YOU will have to send me a sign.”  I walked over to my computer room and I had a message from some lady in MI whose mother disappeared in the Keys back in 81 and Bernie and husband #2 , all lived together in Mitch Denker’s party house.  Each day I think nothing’s going to happen it does.  I’ve been put in contact with Sandy, Sal, and you when I thought the case was coming to an end…..not solved.

A man came to do some remodeling and I asked him if he learned his trade locally.

He told me he was from southern Ohio,  Out of my mouth came the town…”oh, yes, Waverly.”  He was as shocked as I was.

Yes, the spirits do walk among us….whether in dreams or awake. 

Have a sunshiny day.  Rose

p.s. Yes, I do miss the granddaughters….and I’m sure they wonder just what happened to Tom and was their mother involved. No, I never accused Bernie of anything….she just acted guilty.

Two days before, Rose had written to me about the importance of dreams in other cultures, and I wrote something long and personal back, at the end of which I said, now that I have been shown Tom did not kill himself but had been murdered, perhaps that was enough. Perhaps she should leave justice to God, which might not look like justice form a human perspective. I added that I still hoped the rift between her and Tom’s daughter and stepdaughter could be healed.

Rose’s reply above left me thinking that God indeed wanted her to keep looking into Tom’s disappearance. Therefore, here again is my dream of the night before last, just as I told it yesterday.

I am out Seven Mile Bridge somewhere with my childhood best friend, David Strickland, who, when he shows up in my dreams, represents Jesus (House of David). His daughter is my goddaughter.

Well, me and David be sitting on the inside edge of the top of the bridge and I start sliding myself over the edge of the concrete, and as I start sliding slowly down into the water, I say to him, “You know, some but not all people on this world are ETs and people, and it makes their lives real interesting.” Next thing, I am in the water paddling toward the outside as I see very big shark fins up out of the water headed the other way. Then I’m in shallow water, walking up toward some kind of beach on rocky bottom, wondering how I’m going to get back to the lower end of the bridge where I left my car and wallet. Then standing above me on the roadway smiling, all dressed up in their Sunday best, as a few folks I know and have had very serious conversations with, including Sandy Downs, who puts Key West Attorney Robert Cintron sound asleep, he sez, every time I write about Sandy and he reads about it.

Today is Sunday.

Rose came to Sandy about Tom’s disappearance shortly after Sandy (first photo from left) started running for sheriff early this year (2008). Soon after that, Rose and I were corresponding and I published something about Tom’s disappearance, which really upset Bill Becker and his wife, Bernie, who was married to Tom when he went missing. I then had two realizations: (1) I knew Tom did not kill himself but had been murdered, and (2) I knew my role in it wasn’t over. From time to time thereafter I wrote about Tom’s disappearance, and even then I knew it wasn’t finished. My Seven Mile Bridge dream says it’s not finished now:

The number 7 is the mark of God on an event. The big sharks are Navy Seal angels tracking to where Tom Stump/his body was dumped with weights attached somewhere on the inside (bay side) of Seven Mile Bridge. Navy Seals operate under water and on the surface, on land, and in the air. They are on this case, as I knew they were from the beginning of my involvement, but I didn’t know where they were headed with it. Looks from Rose’s dreams and visions that maybe they are going the distance.

Bernie and Bill Becker live in the home Tom Stump built, where he and Bernie and their daughter and Bernie’s daughter by a previous marriage lived. Tom’s business partner brought the court action to have Tom declared legally dead. The transcript of that hearing is really weird, and it looks to me like Judge Sandra Taylor tried to everyone locally a favor by declaring Tom dead by suicide, so the survivors could get on with their lives. An insurance policy on Tom’s life was then paid, the business partner got the business, and, as I said, Bernie ended up with the house.

Bernie and Bill’s volatile reactions to my posts about Tom trouble me. I would think they both would be glad for Tom, and for his mother, daughter and stepdaughter, for it to be revealed that he did not kill himself and abandon his family. Not that I feel Tom was squeaky clean. He may have been mixed up in something really dirty. If and when it all comes out, Rose may not be happy with it. Nobody may be happy with it.

The Santa I know sure does bring light and lively presents. He sure does.

Thank you, Jesus.

Interesting timing, December 21, the Winter Solstice, the Coming of the Light.

Sloan Bashinsky

My horoscope in today’s Key West Citizen sez: