Good Morning Florida Keys

(holy fire)

Some feedback to yesterday’s “Naked Heart” post, followed by some ruminations of my own in italics . . .

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At our discussion meeting last Monday Reid Barnes said, “Have you ever met anyone who felt their opinion was wrong?”  Said another way-”Opinions are like A-Holes, everyone has one.” Does mean we are all right or all wrong? Many times PART of our position is right, part wrong. We discuss. We try to understand the other viewpoint. Does not always mean we come to agree, or that either side is ever convinced of the other. This is America, where anyone who disagrees with me has the right to be wrong! Paul

This Birmingham writer is a strong supporter of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and a dedicated Christian. The discussion group might be a church meeting, or it might not be. Regardless, what came to me right away after reading this comment was, I wondered if Paul and Reid Barnes would tell Jesus that his opinions are like A-Holes, everyone has one? Jesus, who told people to give up and eye for and eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, to turn the other cheek, to love and do good to their enemies. Jesus, who said he came not to bring peace, but a sword (his words) that would divide. Jesus, who said he brought a baptism in fire and he was anxious to get on with it. Or would Paul and Reid tell me this is just my opinion of what Jesus told people, because I pulled it from the Bible, which was just the opinion of the people who wrote it and therefore is just like any other A-Hole, which everyone has. Better not to claim to follow Jesus, than to claim it and then do what he said not to do. Such a person is like the foolish man who built his house on sand and when the flood came the house fell down. Or so was the opinion of the owner of the A-Hole who, quoting Jesus, scribed that part of the Gospels.

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Debby forwarded this email to me because of my work in evolutionary sciences. Your friend Todd very astutely identified that nearly incomprehensible region between science and religion.

 
I have some very interesting material which exemplifies, in vivid detail, the fuzziness of exactly at that very special junction between the two.  (I am soooooo aware of the contradiction in terms.)
 
Please let Todd know, I would enjoy the opportunity to hear more from him on this subject, maybe over a drink or something.  Let him know I understand evolution on a molecular biology level and have written computer simulations of the Prime Abiogenic Event itself.  And that I believe in a transcendent, vir visio and loving God. 
 
Jerry
 
What I’m insterested in is GOD, which I have found has very little to do with religion, at least as it is practiced. I have told Jerry several times that I experience the presence of God 24-7, 365 . . . I have told him that he is living from the neck up, in his mind . . . So far, it doesn’t seem like we are on the same page, or even in the same book . . . Maybe Jerry ought to have a drink over it with Jesus . . . Maybe Jesus would tell him some stories that give him a view of God that might expand his horizons a wee bit beyond the ant level . . . Maybe Jesus could arrange for the angels to put Jerry into my skin for a couple of minutes, to give him a chance to see what it’s like to live inside of a star . . . Maybe he would go permanently insane, or die . . . Maybe no maybe . . . Maybe he would get over his search to try to merge God with science, or with anything . . . God IS science . . . God is EVERYTHING . . . God is fucking UNIMAGINABLE . . . Not even Archangels KNOW God . . . Better to try simply to FEEL the presence of God . . . Better to HEAR what God has to say to us . . . Better to quit trying to FIGURE God out . . . Simply take to HEART what Jesus said in the Gospels: The KINGDOM OF GOD is not of this world. I will give Jerry’s email address to Todd, if he asks for it.
 
=========================
 
I really enjoyed Todd German’s words how emotion helps him justify faith:
 
As we have talked about, I am constantly trying to reconcile my scientific mind with matters of faith. I have found emotion to a link which helps me connect the two.
 
I have a hard time understanding how emotion figures into a purely evolutionary model. I suppose an argument could be made that emotions help us act communally but ants and bees have pretty successful communities and I would dare to bet they are not emotional beings.
 
With all the damage emotions cause, why weren’t they bred out of us long ago?
 
The fact that we still do have emotions and thus art, love, passion, etc. helps me believe there is something more out there than we know. To paraphrase Einstein, “more than we can know”.
 
Major stretch for me, comparing ants to human beings, although perhaps at some remote level sentient souls have hive consciousness if/when they merge fully back into the Godhead — what Stephen Hawking might call “the Mind of God.”
 
Gave me food for thought.
Thank you, Todd
 
Emil
 
Without emotion, the presence of God cannot be felt. Without feeling the presence of God, it is impossible to experience God internally. To Emil I say  what I said to Jerry: Ask God to put you into my skin for a couple of minutes, so you can get a faint sense of what it is like to feel God’s presence. When you ask, though, also ask to be protected if it happens. Otherwise, you will end up like the Sloan I was twenty-three years ago would end up, if he was brought forward in time and put into my skin for two minutes without protection.
 
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My Keys friend who was raised in Christendom and later converted to Buddhism came to me in a dream last night, egging me on, so to him I say . . .
 
I have known quite a few Americans raised in Christendom, who became Buddhists. My wife I wrote some about yesterday converted to Buddhism after choosing to take most of my money, instead of walking in faith that she would be provided for. She knew there is no place for God in Buddhism’s cosmology. She also knew a lot of Americans-turned-Buddhist, who were dodging dealing with the raging inferno inside of themselves. Instead, they were seeking “consciousness,” “enlightenment;” they were living in their mind instead of in their entire being,. We often spoke of this when we were still together, because we knew the same Americans-turned-Buddhist. She became Buddhist because it was a hell of a lot easier than getting burned up by Jesus, which was what was happening to me. Who in the fuck did she think told me to give her the power to make the property division, if we broke up? It wasn’t me, that’s for damn sure; I was just the messenger. Who in the fuck did she think told her to take ninety percent of my assets, as well as her own separate estate, which was substantial? It sure as hell wasn’t Jesus. Was it Buddha? I rather imagine Buddha would have told me to do the same thing Jesus told me to do, and I rather imagine Buddha would not have told my wife to do what she did. Leaving, of course, Lucifer. Even though Buddhists don’t have a place in their cosmology for God, which Buddha is reported to have said is too incomprehensible to even discuss, Buddhism does acknowledge the workings of dark spirits. Buddha himself is reported to have said a teacher greater than himself would some day come, and that greater teacher did come and his name was Jesus. I have told American-Christians that they sought Jesus in Buddhism because they were unable to find him in their religion of birth. Some of them agreedd with me. Recent watershead events in your life should have made it crystal clear to you that your path is not with Buddha, but is with Jesus. I keep suggesting this to you, and you keep deflecting it. You also keep saying the mind is king, the emotions are some sort of deformity. You have told me that you have never once had an experience with something beyond the human experience. Perhaps you should ask yourself why you met me, if it was not for you to change your way of looking at and experiencing life? Maybe you need a dowsing in your emotions. Maybe you should quit trying to be Buddhist. Or maybe you should live like lamas live. You would have very little of this world. You might even be homeless, like Buddha was for quite a while. Then you would know what it was like for Buddha, when he had nothing. But then, if you were a true follower of Jesus, you might live much the same way, for a while anyway. Otherwise, how could you ever really know Jesus? How could his wealthy, secret disciples, Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea have ever really known him, if they had not gone to Pontius Pilate and asked for permission take Jesus down off the cross, because it was coming onto the Jewish Sabbath? In doing that, in taking Jesus down and putting him into Joseph of Arimathea’s own private tomb, they publicly identified themselves as followers of Jesus. Instantly, they were hunted men. They had been part of the Jewish heirarcy, the Jewish country club set. For the rest of their lives they were on the run; all they had was what they could carry with them or wear.
 
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I wondered yesterday why I felt so bad inside, like I had just swallowed another Cherynobyl. Now know why. I FELT, and still am
 
FEELING, what was inside of people coming onto my plate for me to speak to them. We did not know what was coming, but our souls knew; and our souls knew what I would say.
 
The Kingdom of God is freely given to angels, saints, sinners, devils and fools alike, for all are God’’s children – I was TOLD in late 1993.
 
Many are called but few are chosen; Steep is the way, narrow the gate, and few enter therein – according to Jesus in the Gospels.
 
Sloan Bashinsky

(soul fish)
 
A reply from my KW amigo Todd German to yesterday’s “Water” post:
 
Hey Sloan,
 
You bring up a topic I have given much thought to.
 
I had a pretty strenuous argument with someone the other day, who was raised in Christendom but became Buddhist. He said we will never agree on the emotions. Strong emotions are the product of improper thinking, he maintained. A separate aspect of being human, I countered. The emotions art of the internal female. The heart.
 
Without the emotions, I later thought, we would not have orgasms or passion. We would not be creative. There would be no art, poetry, literature, laughter, joy, sadness, grief, anger, rage. We would, basically, all be dead, if we lived totally from our minds.
 
As we have talked about, I am constantly trying to reconcile my scientific mind with matters of faith. I have found emotion to a link which helps me connect the two.
 
I have a hard time understanding how emotion figures into a purely evolutionary model. I suppose an argument could be made that emotions help us act communally but ants and bees have pretty successful communities and I would dare to bet they are not emotional beings.
 
With all the damage emotions cause, why weren’t they bred out of us long ago?
 
The fact that we still do have emotions and thus art, love, passion, etc. helps me believe there is something more out there than we know. To paraphrase Einstein, “more than we can know”.
 
Major stretch for me, comparing ants to human beings, although perhaps at some remote level sentient souls have hive consciousness if/when they merge fully back into the Godhead — what Stephen Hawking might call “the Mind of God.”
 
Most people live from the neck up, in their minds. A few people live from the waist down, in their genitals. A few live from their guts – instincts. Very few live from their hearts, the Seat of the Soul.
 
The genitals are pure animal instinct. The guts have some intuition and are the seat of the will. The brain is a computer, it is programmable and it is programmed. It then operates just like any other computer, unless tempered by the heart, the guts, the genitals.
 
The brain actually thinks it is God, can figure out whatever needs to be figured out. Maybe the whole brain can do this, but human beings consciously use only five percent of their brain. The tip of an iceberg comes to mind.
 
Imagine a Lexus, with no gas in tank. The fancy computer, the guaranteed-for-life battery, the super deluxe engine, the Michelin tires. A Lexus without a gas tank is like a person without emotions — useless.
 
The mind, the genitals, the guts, the heart, all are brains. If human beings only had only one brain to keep, the only one worth keeping is the heart, for it is the only brain they take with them when they leave this life. All the rest is temporary, assigned to the human vehicle.
 
It is not emotions that damage us; it we who damage emotions — other people’s and our own.
 
For example, sexually molest a child and you rip that child’s soul to shreds. Or force your Puritan religion down a child’s throat, which is another form of sexual molestation, and you get the same result. The child’s heart is ravaged. Emotions become unstable. Mental illness sets in. Destructive and self-destructive behavior follows.
 
Key West is littered with such people who who were slaughtered in their youth, or in a war somewhere. Littered. The more obvious ones live on the street, but many more don’t.
 
The woman living on No Name Key, who is so determined to get public water lines brought out to her home, because she is afraid of drinking cistern water, was slaughtered. Drinking water has nothing to do with her distemper. She is beat up in her soul, and it’s bleeding out of her in many ways; the cistern complaint is just the one the public sees.
 
As for faith, mine was developed by my being saved time and time again from horrible internal upheavals and not all that nice external demolitions, as well.
 
My faith got me through being homeless, which I knew was spirit-induced and there was nothing I could do to get out of it. Even knowing that, my faith was sorely tested, as was my courage and dignity. There is no way to explain what it was like to go from having much to having nothing, sleeping wherever I could find that the police would not bother me, eating in soup kitchens, bathing at beach showers and swimming pools, living in homeless shelters, riding Greyhound buses or hitchhiking everywhere I went, using foodstamp cards.
 
Talk about being naked. Going to a nude beach would be a piece of cake, by comparison. A piece of cake. People who oppose a nude beach are in the same boat with the No Name Key woman who complains about having to drink cistern water. They are shredded in their souls, and instead of dealing with that, they find something outside of them that troubles them to fight. What they need to be fighting is their religious training. Well, maybe I digress.
 
How many times did I explain how I became homeless, and why there was nothing I could do about it, only to come away with the impression nobody believed me, or they thought I was insane? How many times did I wonder how the wife who ended up with nearly all of my money, knowing how God treated me, knowing I was incapable of making money, could even sleep at night? I let her make the property division because I had been TOLD to let her make it. My test, a leap of faith. Her faith test, how she would respond.
 
She was raised Christian, but when we met she was moving toward having a direct relationship with God. She was gifted as a healer, with a traditional degree, Masters in Clinical Social Work. She developed an international reputation in her work, which I fully supported. She also was deeply wounded and nothing in her training had gotten anywhere near close to healing it. She didn’t want to go into her own soul trauma, but I was being pressed by the Spirit to push her into it anyway, so she got rid of me.
  
In closing today, this naked quote from an amiga’s website, which she borrowed from a closet nuddist someone most of us have heard about in a very different context.
 
Sloan
 
www.mikalogue.com

“Almost everything–all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure–these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.”
–Steve Jobs

(Painting of the Old Wooden Bridge)
(photo of today’s bridge)
Received this reply to yesterday’s somewhat “mystical” post, “Big Pine Key.”
 
Eventually I’ll be able to vote for you!!! Happy New year, Sloan!
 
Mickey
 
By that, Mickey meant he someday will live in the Keys. Currently, he lives in south Florida, where he teaches school. During the summer he spends a couple of months in the Keys. We met in the summer of 2006 at Looe Key Tiki Bar on Ramrod Key, the next Key down from Little Torch Key, which is the next Key down from Big Pine Key. That’s how Mickey ended up on my email list. I wrote back that I had thought of him yesterday, when I drove past Looe Key Tiki Bar on my way to No Name Key Bridge to speak with some pelicans who didn’t have the good graces to show up. Even so, it was good to be up there.
 
No Name Key Bridge connects Big Pine and No Name Keys. In the old days, there used to be a wooden bridge connecting the two islands. But that bridge burned, and for some years after that, there was no bridge. I first came to Big Pine Key in March 1966, spring break of my second semester in law school, to fish for tarpon in Bogie Channel with people from my hometown, Birmingham, Alabama. I was staying that trip at my father’s home on Lower Matecumbe Key. The charred remains of the old bridge were still sticking up in the channel. About half-mile toward the backcountry from the old bridge I caught and released a big tarpon, using live mullet on a boat rod. Wore me out. Never wanted to catch another tarpon that way. Never did. The old wooden bridge is where the Old Wooden Bridge Fish Camp at the Big Pine Key edge of the new bridge got its name.
 
I parked yesterday on the No Name Key side of Bogie Channel and walked out to the bridge center. When I got to where the mystical event had occurred in 1995, which I briefly described in yesterday’s post, I remembered what had happened but I felt nothing. Zip. Nada. The only thing that stirred me was a brief conversation with a fellow, who looked close to my age, throwing a cast net for pin fish, to use as live bait. He said he catches big snapper under the center of the bridge, and it was going to be a good tide soon. It was still running in, almost full. When the tide began to turn, he said, which I knew, was when the fish bite the best. I wished him luck, remembered all the times I had thought I would spend a lot of time on that bridge fishing, talking with interesting people from wherever, and had never done it. Maybe some day I would get around to it, I thought. Maybe.
 
Part of what prompted me to drive up there was yesterday’s post. Another part was an article in yesterday’s Key West Citizen giving a lot of coverage to the commotion a No Name Key woman is making over her having to use cistern water in her home for drinking water. She maintains it isn’t safe to drink; she has opinions by experts, one expert was from Texas somewhere, backing her up. She wants the Aqueduct Authority to run Aqueduct water onto No Name Key, so she won’t be at risk. I thought that if I was on the Aqueduct Authority and she came before me, I would say, “File your lawsuit, Bitch. You bought that home knowing it was on a cistern. Caveat fucking emptor!”
 
An irony that occurred to me after waking up before dawn this morning to get to work on this post I had no clue I would write when I turned in last night, was the Christmas Eve dinner I had with a Key West family. The husband has done very well advising developers, one of whom, quite well known, was there with his own family when I arrived, but they left before dinner. I have been in this home a few times and my hosts, from all I can tell, drink only filtered and bottled water. Whenever I ask for straight tap water, they refuse to give it to me. That I tell them I have been drinking tap water in the Keys since 1956 doesn’t sway them; they will not serve me tap water. The bottled water they use is not the kind you buy off the bottom shelves in gallon jugs at Winn-Dixie. It’s the expensive imported stuff.
 
One of their guests tried very hard to persuade me that I was killing myself drinking tap water. She told me about the analysis of Aqueduct Authority water posted at Sugar Apple Health Food Store on Simonton Street; I really needed to take a look at it. I said I used to drink nothing but filtered and bottled water. Not only that, I took wheatgrass juice and grew sprouts and made my own sauerkraut and grew all of my own vegetables, organically. I was a vegetarian and I nearly died.
 
I did not tell her, although the thought occurred to me, of a New Age couple I had once known very well, who drank nothing but filtered and bottled water, and who had used hot water run through their filter into their bath tub for her to lie in and give birth to their first (and only child). They did not realize that the hot water destroyed the filter and they ended up with straight tap water in the bath tub. They ate only raw, organic foods. They both died of cancer in their late-forties. What I did say was that I hoped the Aqueduct Authority water would kill me. She didn’t seem to know if I was joking. I probably wasn’t.
 
The Winn-Dixie on Big Pine always has a healthy stock of cheap, bottled water in one-gallon plastic jugs. The Bitch of No Name Key can stop by there and get safe water every time she gets in her car and comes out to US 1, which I bet is at least once a day. I wonder if before she moved to No Name Key, wherever she came from, was the Bitch of No Name Key threatening to sue somebody for something? I wonder if she has made a career out of prosecuting causes in which she is the principal beneficiary? I wonder if she actually does get Aqueduct water into her home, will she start bitching about what’s in it? I bet she drinks bottled water now, and I might wager that if she gets Aqueduct water she will still drink bottled water.
 
I would love to be the lawyer for the defense who got to depose her. I would especially like to be the lawyer for the defense who got to cross-examine her before a Keys jury in this economic depression, when our local governments are barely able to make ends meet, when most Keys people are struggling to make their mortgage/rent and utility bill payments. I would make her wish she had never been born.
 
People in the Keys have been drinking cistern water for generations. Some still drink cistern water, and not just on No Name Key. They do it with full backing of the County Health Department, which has consistently approved drinking cistern water. There was a time when cistern water was the only water most Keys people had to drink. Some places had potable water in the ground. Big Pine Key has fresh water lenses that I suppose people in the old days used for drinking water, maybe after boiling it, maybe not after boiling it.
 
There is an aquifer under Solares Hill in Key West, where people used to pull drinking water. It’s polluted now, according to what I heard from city government staff. I suppose it would be potable if it was boiled for a long enough period. I also suppose a lot of people in Key West and elsewhere in the Keys buy their drinking water in stores. Given the shelf space allotted in Winn-Dixie, Publix, Albertson’s, Faustos, the convenience and drug stores, there is a brisk business in bottled water.
 
As for me, I’m going to keep drinking that nasty old Keys tap water I’ve been drinking since 1956. Tap water that, after it became available when the Navy built the first pipeline down from the mainland, which was attached to the old bridges, opened the Keys up for development. Eventually development stopped because there wasn’t enough water coming down through the first pipe for any more new construction to tap in to; only cisterns could be used for new construction. This was the situation in 1956 and for a good while afterward.  This was the situation on No Name Key when people built homes there.
 
Only when the new, much larger pipe was brought down and attached to the new, wider bridges, did development really take off in the Keys. Then, anyone could build and tap into the Aqueduct; anyone who built where the Aqueduct had pipes. There never were water pipes on No Name Key. People who built there knew it. People who bought homes already built there knew it. What’s to complain about? Nothing, but their own original desire to go back to Nature and live “off the grid.” There’s no electricity on No Name Key, either. You wanna bet that’s not the next commotion the Bitch of No Name Key will cause?
 
As for Mickey getting a chance to vote for me some day, I appreciate the compliment and trust but nothing in me wants to run for public office in the Keys again. What, I want to have to work hand-in-hand with county commissioners, Aqueduct Authority and Electric Authority board members, who don’t have the sense and guts to tell someone like the Bitch of No Name Key to go fuck herself and file the lawsuit, naming herself at the principal defendant, since she is complaining about something she did to her own self with her fucking eyes wide open?
 
Sloan Bashinsky

Dear Santa,
 
I really do hate to bother you after such a hard night’s work you just had, but . . . It’s about my Christmas present that made me feel like shit yesterday . . . A dream that kept recurring leading up to and through yesterday . . . A veritable nightmare . . . Was I that bad this year? The dream went sort of like this . . . It will take a little while to tell . . . I hope I found all the typos, but I probably didn’t . . .
 
Starting with the punch line, I was TOLD BY God to run again for the county commission, next year (2010). Run against George Neugent, again. Meaning, I, suppose, a move back to my rat-infested trailer on Little Torch Key, which lies in the heart of George’s voting district – District 3. His county commission office is located on the next Key up, Big Pine Key.

I was told in the dream that for years the darn capitalistic tree huggers have viewed Big Pine Key and its little No Name Key next-door neighbor as THE HEART OF THE RESISTANCE, Mother Nature’s last stand in the Keys, to be protected at all costs, not only because of their natural value but also because of their symbolic value. I was told in the dream to play close heed to Mother Nature, because she actually was a true fiscal conservative’s best friend.
 
In the dream, I felt a growing distemper in my soul over news stories I kept reading in the local gazettes and hearing on the coconut telegraph about the commies living in homes on No Name Key pressuring the County Commission and the Aqueduct and Electric Authorities to bring, at taxpayers’ expense, water, sewer and electricity to No Name Key. Commies who had purchased homes there knowing there was no public water, power or electricity. Commies who somehow had gotten in into their liberal heads that they were entitled to special treatment just because they wanted special treatment. Commies who seemed to think they were not themselves responsible for their not having public water, sewer or electricity in their homes.
 
It reminded me of people who bought homes under the flight path of a commercial or military airport and then complained about the noise of landing and departing aircraft. That the County Commission and Aqueduct and Electric Authorities were even listening to these commies boggled my mind. I knew that if I had been on the County Commission, I would have told the commies to take a hike when they came begging for relief from their own decisions, relief that would cost taxpayers, espcially this taxpayer, money.
 
Something else chewing on me in the dream was seeing that George Neugent’s bosom buddy, David Rice, is going to ruin, er, run for the County Commission again. David served on the County Commission until he resigned in 2006 (albeit a bit belatedly, the resignation) to run against the commie Ron Saunders for the State Legislature. During that race, I developed a deep dislike of Ron Saunders because of the truly dirty campaign he waged. That, and he owned a dacha in Tallahassee, where he lived when he wasn’t living in his home in Key West. A dacha the likes of which David Rice also would have purchased, if he had beaten Ron, which Ron kept pointing out in his dirty campaign.
 
Through Ron Saunder’s insane capitalistic buddy, Sandy Downs, who was running for sheriff, I had learned that David Rice, all the while he was sitting on the County Commission, was making a wonderful fortune off mental health deals he, a psychologist, had going with the Monroe County Sheriff Office, where his son Mike was #3 in the chain of command and oversaw the part of the operation that did business with his father’s company and with his father personally. George Neugent told me this arms-length deal was perfectly okay, part of our God-given free enterprise system, a sure sign of David Rice’s business brilliance and acumen. Our sheriff back then, Rick Roth, was a Republican, so of course the commie-posing-as Republican County Commission would rubberstamp any budget Sheriff Roth presented for approval, for David Rice’s benefit. That was the true commie way, learned by American Repubicans from the Politburo.
 
I was reminded in the dream that when I ran against George Neugent in 2006, he kept saying at candidate forums, if Sloan got elected, he would bankrupt the county. What caused George to say that was Sloan kept saying he was against any more new development, period the end. He kept saying the Keys already were way over-developed, and not a person in at the candidate forums or in the Keys could look in the mirror and honestly say any differently. That is what would have bankrupted the county, if Sloan got elected: He would have opposed all forms of new development. Well, guess what? The County went bankrupt, pretty near, without any help from Sloan. And what caused it to go busted was, yep, George Neugent, David Rice and other commies posing ast Republicans betting the entire conch farm on new development.
 
Hell’s bells, the commies posing as Republicans on the County Commission would have done those now deep-sixed developers and other nearly deep-sixed developers a real big favor if they (the commies posing as Republicans) had told them (the developers) to take a hike. Thanks but no thanks. We, as God-fearing, flag-waving, patriotic American elected officials are supposed to put the health and welfare of developers and the free enterprise system first. We are not supposed to succumb to a clever capitalistic tree-hugger plot to approve developments that are going to go under and poison the people’s minds against God-fearing American developers. Furthermore, we sure as hell can’t let our misguided developer comrades tear down any more trailer parks and run off their and our hired help. Who would take care of our dachas, hotels, motels, inns, restaurants, marinas and golf courses, if we didn’t have poor people living in the Keys?
 
Then I was reminded in the dream of my own dacha on Little Torch Key, the single-wide, rat-infested trailer I have been letting a poor person live in for nothing, just to keep the place attended at no cost to myself. I was reminded that when I was moved out of that rat-infested dacha, to Key West, by God, I unclaimed my homestead exemption because it would have been totally unAmerican and totally unpatriotic and a major theft of taxpayer dollars for me to continue to claim the homestead exemption and not live there. Then I was reminded maybe there are more than a few properties in the Keys being claimed as homesteads even though the owners live somewhere else, or live somewhere else most of the time. I got sort of burned up thinking about that, because it sure looked like a commie plot to rip off hard-working American taxpayers who live full time in the Keys. I got to thinking I would try hard do something about that, if I got elected.
   
Then was yelling loud and long in the dream about the fact that we still don’t have countywide sewerage treatment. Countywide sewerage treatment that should have been put in place on David Rice and George Neugent’s watches, and on the watches of their fiscally-irresponsible commie-posing-as-Republican predecessors, when the county had the taxpapers’ funds to get it done. Instead, the taxpapers’ money was spent on commie-posing-as-Republicans boondoggles and ego edifices. I was reminded that I have yelled long and loud about people with perfectly good operating private sewerage treatment plants having to give them up to tie onto the countywide system, without being fully compensated for the taking of their private property by the county commies.
 
Then I started hollering in the dream about the fact that George Neugent lives in Marathon, where David Rice also lives. Now there’s nothing wrong with living in Marathon, but most of George’s District 3 lies below Seven Mile Bridge and is rural. Many of George’s constituents are farmers, actually. They practice the revered horticulture of our nation’s Founding Fathers, hemp growing and rope making. Most of George’s District 3 has about as much relationship to and sympathy for Marathon as the capitalistic tree-huggers beloved Key deer have for the Sombrero Country Club, where George plays golf frequently with his Politburo comrades.
 
Now there’s nothing wrong with playing golf at the Sombrero Country Club, or playing golf anywhere. I used to love the game and I still sometimes go out for old time’s sake. In 2006, when I had a summer membership at Sombrero Country Club and played a few rounds, mostly alone, and hit a lot of balls on the practice range, I learned that very few people living south of Seven Mile Bridge play golf at Sombrero County Club, or at Key West Golf Club. They live in a part of the Keys where downstairs enclosures are a really big deal. Not something George Neugent has to fuss with, as his dacha, like my rat-infested place on Little Torch Key, is one-story. Built right in a flood plain, George’s and my dachas are legal, but for someone with a newer two story home, the downstairs of which, on the same level as George’s and mine, is illegal.
 
What’s wrong with that picture, I was asked in the dream? What’s wrong is older homes in the flood plane were grandfathered, newer homes where not. And, yes, the commie-posing-as-Republicans county government did not enforce the new code and people kept building homes with downstairs enclosures, or adding them on, and nobody ever said anything. And nobody ever told subsequent buyers of those homes that the downstairs enclosures were illegal, and all of this was known to the commies-posing-as-Republicans County Commission, who were in bed with the commie Realtors, who very definitely did not want home sellers, or Realtors, to be required to tell home-buying prospects the truth about downstairs enclosures in the Keys.
 
Then FEMA (the commie side of the federal government) got involved and started telling the county and owners of downstairs enclosures that they had to remove them, even though they had been de facto legal as far as the county was concerned. Bending to the commies in FEMA, the commie County Commission and commie Code Enforcement started putting pressure on owners of homes with downstairs enclosures, even as the commie county commissioners fought the commies at FEMA, even as the commie county commissioners keep saying they would do nothing to jeopardized people in the Keys getting flood and windstorm insurance, which the FEMA commies kept threatening to cut off, if they didn’t get their way with downstairs enclosures. If that wasn’t then taking of Americans’ property without due process of law, then what in the hell was it?
 
The way I a true fiscal-conservative American looked at it in the dream,  if you build in a flood plain, you assume the risk of living there. If you can’t get insurance to protect against hurricanes, big winds, rising water, then that’s part of the price of living in the flood plain, and in America. You have no right, Constitutional or otherwise, to have such insurance. If you think you do, then you are a commie. If your commie mortgage lender who jumped through hoops to loan you the money now wants to foreclose because you don’t have flood and wind insurance, then that also is a risk you assumed by buying a home in a flood plain in America. Like mortgage lenders would foreclose in this upside down real estate market, where so many Keys properties are seriously in arrears mortgage-wise. Think of the money people would save by not having wind and flood insurance. With the savings, they could self-insure. What could be more fiscally conservative and American than that?
 
I then found myself thinking in the dream of how much I hate the thought of running for office again. I saw myself saying at candidate forums that I don’t want the job, don’t vote for me; I’m only running because God made me do it. I’m only running because I say things nobody else will say; because I’m not worried about not being elected; because Rush Limbaugh is even too far left to suit me. If he had a home in the Keys, he would want federal flood and wind insurance. He would want special deals with the sheriff office. He would want to get hauled for free to a Miami hospital by Trauma Star’s helicopter the commie-posing-as-a-Republican former sheriff promised Keys people they wouldn’t be billed for using, then he billed the hell out of them.
 
I found myself saying in the dream, if I by some fluke get elected, I will not serve. I saw myself running as a write-in candidate, an Independent. Running write-in would save me the filing fee, but would get me invited to all of the candidate forums. I wouldn’t get invited to any of the Republican candidate functions, but then, I never got invited to any of the Democratic candidate functions before, either. I thought that if had it my way, all races in the Keys would be non-partisan. If I had it my way, a candidate could only serve one term. And then I suddenly the world turned upside down; I was the the state mental. I heard a VOICE, causing me to shake in terror and puke up all of my Christmas turkey: “YOU WILL RUN AS A REPUBLICAN, IF YOU KNOW WHAT IS GOOD FOR YOU.” The filing fee for running as a member of either a Repubican or Democrat, is a good bit more than running as an Independent, because Independent candidates don’t stand for election in the partisan primaries.
 
Some time passed in the dream before I was able to get a grip on myself. Then, I found myself thinking, okay, if my Great White Father in the Sky is going to MAKE me do this, I will go out of my way to piss people off. I will hunt up things to say and do that cost me votes and earn me the undying criticism on commie Keys blogs such as the Coconut Telegraph Gossip Column of bigpinekey.com and the Topix blogs, where I have been vilified plenty in the past. I found myself thinking that I haven’t given those kindergarten commies anything to complain about yet. Kid gloves is all they had gotten from me up to now. I found msyelf thinking plastic explosives, stinger missiles and neutron bombs. I will teach them the true meaning of democracy, free enterprise, property rights, and God-fearing.
 
I found myself thinking in the dream that I will teach the gadfly commies at Key West Citizen and The Keynoter the true meaning of the term “Republican.” I even found myself thinking I will join the Democrat county commissioner, Kim Wigington, in hollering for lobbyiests to publicly register, so we will all know who is pushing our county commissioners and county staff to be fiscally irresponsible. I found myself thinking I will threaten to bring lawsuits against the county and its elected officials, on behalf of its citizens, for mal- and mis-feasance. Sue them personally, go after all of their assets, to reimburse the taxpayers. I found myself thinking I will lampoon and attack every commie I see, their official political labels will be irrelevant. The Red-hater Joseph McCathary will end up looking like a Junior Leaguer compared to me.
 
I found myself thinking in the dream, yeah, maybe if I take that approach I will be able to drag myself out of bed each morning; maybe knowing what a bad boy I will be each day will give me incentive to keeping moving. For sure, my trying to be reasonable, trying to use persuasion, trying to use logic, trying to use compassion, trying to use fiscal common sense, trying even to use God, didn’t stem the tide of the godless commie insanity that drives our county government. The only thing that had any impact on the big commie locomotive racing uncontroled up and down The Overseas Highway (US 1) was Hurricane Wilma. Quite a derailing that fair lady brought to the Keys way of life. Quite a derailing. Even someone so fiscally-scewed-right as me can see it just don’t pay to piss off Mother Nature.
 
I found myself thinking in the dream that I could model myself in Wilma’s likeness without too much trouble. I saw that I could talk at candidate forums about how frenetic George Neugent got every time I went after his bosom buddies, the Goodmans of Cudjoe Key, who run the local Republican Party. They finagled a limestone mining mangrove-cutting permit from the commie-infested Department of Environmental Protection, which allowed the the Goodmans to chainsaw an entire island of mangroves in front of their home, just so they could have a better view, according to what they wrote on the application for the cutting permit. George Neugent never saw anything wrong with that. In fact, he denied the chainsaw masssacre even happened, even though plenty of photos were taken by DEP and others that it indeed did happen. If George had been true to the faith, he would have howled bloody murder for DEP to fine the Goodmans the million or so they owed in fines, which would have lightened the taxpayers’ load, especially this taxpaper’s load, in funding the commies at DEP.
 
I found myself thinking in the dream that George Neugent, David Rice and the Goodmans are fused at the hip: they claim to be fiscal conservatives, but they behave like the Politburo. I found myself thinking that when I ran against George in 2006, I ran the most friendly campaign anyone had ever seen. But when I run next year against him in the Republican primary, it will rival the dirty campain Ron Saunders ran against David Rice, who was plundering the county treasury through a sweetheard Politburo deal with the sheriff office.
 
I found myself thinking in the dream that I will shine the light of democracy and free enterprise on George Neugent, David Rice, the Goodmans, and lots of other commies in sheep’s clothing, who have been getting away with stuff at the tax payers’ expense, especially this taxpayer’s expense – like that cute little deal the Marathon Politburo had with Cape Air to provide the Marathon country club set county-taxpayers-subsidized air service to Ft. Meyers. A deal that nearly got me kicked out of a county commission meeting, so upset was I over it, even as everyone else in the room seemed behind it, since nobody else in the room spoke out against it. Not even any of the tree huggers spoke out against it. Birds of a feather, one and all.
 
I found myself thinking in the dream, maybe if’ I’m lucky, the commies will all band together and have me killed. Maybe they will get some help with that after I lay bare the marijuana and other drug dealings of going on inside the Monroe County Sheriff Office. Drug dealings that don’t get taxed. Taxes that could lower what the taxpapers, especially this taxpayer, pay to keep the sheriff office running.
 
I found myself thinking in the dream that I just can’t wait to see the twitter on bigpinekey.com’s Coconut Telegraph and the Keys Topix blogs. And I just can’t wait to see the commies come screaming out of the woodwork, er, mangroves. And I just can’t wait to hear from the New Age policitcal-correctors, who don’t even believe the devil exists. So correct that they died and don’t even know it yet.
 
Then I woke up. From the smell, I knew I had shit in my pajamas. Thank God, it was only a dream. Thank God.
 
Sincerely, and please, Santa, is there any chance you can just stay at the North Pole next Christmas? 
 
Sloan Bashinsky

Yesterday I found myself reminiscing my love affair with the Keys, which began in 1956, when my family stayed at the Ocean Reef Club. Back then, it was a very laid back, rustic, affordable resort. Anyone could stay there, well maybe anyone white. That was the first time I fished the flats, something that would become the engine that drove my returning to the Keys time and time again, for forty years. Much of it was spent staying in the home my father purchased in 1963 on the Atlantic side of lower Matecumbe Key. It was romantic. I longed for the Keys when I wasn’t down here. I often wept when I left and again on returning. But no more. The romance is gone. The sentimentality has vanished. I don’t feel that love anymore, and what came to me yesterday was my getting involved in Keys politics is what killed the love affair. Now it’s mostly just a job, living in the Keys.
 
I thrashed around a good bit last night trying to get down to the topic of today’s post. Maybe some of what I got up in the wee hours to write will some day make its way into public view. Right now, what seems to be coming forward from last night was a dream at dawn in which our State Attorney Dennis Ward came to me and lamented that I had not made a post today. I awoke knowing that was a left-handed way for the angels to tell me that I was suppose to write about something that had to do with Dennis. More particularly, about something that had to do with crime. But what?
 
I got to the what when I arrived at Sippin’ Internet Cafe around 9 a.m., very late for  me to get started, but it was a long night and I was late finally crawling out of the sack for the last time this a.m. — unless I get a nap in before noon. Anyway, arriving at Sippin’, right off I note Key West the Newspaper (kwtn.com) is out early this week, because of Christmas being tomorrow — Friday is KWTN’s regular publication day. The front page feature, FIRED WHISTLEBLOWER WILL SUE SCHOOL BOARD, caught my eye immediately.
 
Before reading it, I read the Key West Citizen front page piece, “Fraud’s role at debate,” about the recommendation of what I imagination was of one of the School Board’s bean counters to factor fraud into the school budget, so henceforth the theft of hundreds of thousands of dollars by the likes of the wife of our recently deposed Superintendent of Schools, now a convicted felon out on probation, thanks to a local elected judge, won’t upset the financial applecart in our school system, because the theft already was factored into the school budget. What? We give thieves the green light by telling them we expect them to steal from the school system? Excuse me, but I think I would give serious thought to firing that bean counter, were I the new School Superientendent of Schools.
 
The only part of the KW Citizen article I liked was this quote from School Board member Steve Pibramsky, who, along with School Board member John Dick, had aggressively pursued allegations of the thievery in the face of severe public criticism from segments of the public (bubbas) and from one School Board member, who was in bed with the Superientendent and his wife. The two other School Board members took a more conservative (wait and maybe we will see) approach that might have, if used by Pibramsky and Dick, resulted in much more harm being done to the school system, if not the outright escape of the thief and her husband, who had promoted her in the first place, against the rules, to a position for which she had no legal qualifications, and then he ignored reports from school system employee Cathy Reitezel of what his wife was doing, and then he tried to cover it all up — or so a grand jury convened by Dennis Ward determined, and then a jury agreed, when it convicted the Superientendent. His wife still awaits trial.
 
Anyway, here are Pibramsky’s quoted remarks in KW Citizen today: “I think the school district has a vast majority of honest, forthright people. However, the culture has been too political, too steeped in patronage and cronyism. When someone sees something going wrong, they are afraid to speak up for fear of retribution. Good people have to be protected and bad people have to be ousted immediately.”
 
Amen. However, tell that to Cathy Reitzel, who was the State’s primary witness before the grand jury and later in the Superintendent of School’s trial. Tell that to Cathy Reitzel, who was told to resign or be fired, by the new Superientendent of Schools after he was appointed by Governor Crist. Tell that to Cathy Reitzel, who was fired and now has obtained counsel to sue the School Board, including members Pibramsky and Dick, for going along with the firing of Cathy Reitzel, but for whose whistleblowing and testimony the State might not even have been able to prosecute the old Superintendent and his wife. Read all about that in today’s Key West the Newspaper front-page FIRED WHISTLEBLOWER WILL SUE SCHOOL BOARD piece.
 
Maybe the School Board ought to ask Governor Crist to fire the new Superientendent of Schools. Maybe the voters ought to fire the School Board for letting Cathy Reizel be fired. Maybe the voters ought to fire the judge who put the old Superientendent of Schools on probation. Maybe the voters ought to quit voting into office Superiententends of Schools who have no teaching degree and have never taught a day of school in their lives (our recently convicted Superientendent). Maybe the more things change, the more they stay the same. Bubba Wubba (politics, cronyism, favoritism, nepotism) still seems to rein supreme in the Keys. Kill the messenger still is business as usual.
 
Sloan Bashinsky