Good Morning Florida Keys

A comment to moi on yesterday’s Coconut Telegraph page of bigpinekey.com, followed by other facets of what might be an entirely new evolving religion.
 
“(Sloan on single stream recycling) Wow. Dude. Engage brain before activating mouth. Or do, at least, a teenie weenie bit of research first.”
 
I was advised by County Commissioner Heather Carruthers that Waste Management single streams by colleting recyclables that have been separated from garbage by county residents. The recyclables are sent to WM’s recovery plant, the garbage is sent to WM’s disposing facility. Heather said she is going to see WM’s facility on the mainland soon.

Another Keys amiga and my good Repubilcan amigo Todd German told me the separation facility is interesting. The recyclables are dumped onto a big conveyor belt, and as the belt moves air blown from below, magnets hanging above, and other methods are used to separate out and collect fabrics, paper, plastic, metal, etc. Todd also said, about the garbage, that WM’s burn facility is more of a come on, to get WM business. Most of the garbage, he said, WM takes to a land fill.
 
Everyone I have spoken with about stream recycling says it hinges on residents separating the recyclables from their garbage: food, used tampons, used diapers, etc. If residents don’t do this separation, there is no recycling; it all goes to WM’s burn facility or landfill.
 
Many (most, I wager) Keys residents don’t separate their waste. WM doesn’t provide separation bins in Key West, and didn’t provide them for Little Torch Key when I lived there in 2006, and, as far as I know, still doesn’t provide them, as the person living in my trailer on Little Torch Key doesn’t have WM separation bins.

We all should be recycling, whether we want to or not. Therefore, I remain of the view that waste separation by Keys residents should be mandatory, and there should be a method of enforcement that has serious teeth. Teeth for residents, teeth for Waste Management.
 
Anyone who disagrees fits nicely into this photo.
 

 
I received an invitation on Facebook, accompanied by the above anatomical experiment, that I felt was highly derserving of being passed along. Check it out even deeper, to see if you agree.
 
http://www.facebook.com/n/?group.php&gid=97252510937&mid=1cc94d8G5eb19c41G10ac9bcG6
 
I also received this beautiful fertility symbol from a Key West amiga. Maybe there’s some sort of cosmic connection between it, fertilizer, and the H.U.A. Syndrome. But then, maybe not.  
 
Here’s the amiga’s webiste:http://mikalogue.com/keywest.html
 

“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.” 
 
I recently had some more than slightly unexpected personal experiences, the details of which, because of another person’s privacy, I’ll not likely ever publish. It caused me once again to feel a heck of a lot more like the H.U.A. photo above, than the pretty hibiscus. And it caused me once again to feel like I really don’t belong on this planet anymore; like maybe I’m speaking English but it comes across to everyone else as Martian, or something even more unintelligible.
 
Saying it as plainly as I can, there are many things I think I would like to experience, have, but as I told a Key West amiga yesterday, God doesn’t give a crap about what I want. All God cares about is my having the experiences I need to have, and arranging for me to have them.I also told the amiga, if I were to write a 250 page book about God, it would begin with that brief preface and all the rest would be blank pages.
 
Maybe this all has something to do with waste management and recycling. Maybe it just to do with recirculating. Maybe it has to do wiith reticulating. Maybe it has to do with rectalheaditis.
 
Waaaaaaaaaaaaa!!!!
 
Sloan Bashinsky
 
Comic relief, compliments another of my Keys Republican friends, some of whose forwards I enjoy, while others I shove back up his rectalheaditis.
 

Three responses following yesterday’s “Transparency” post.

Sloan,

Have enjoyed reading your political uncoverings re: Rice, Neugent, etc.   Curious to know how many people you can reach with…………..what. I think are Truths’.   Obama (and you know I’m a supporter) grass rooted his campaign via the internet.   This word has to…….

MUST get out to all so the truth be known.  

Are you still playing bridge at R’s?………I’ve been busy with my work and art and really have not had time.   Hopefully when things slow down, I’ll be able to join in. My family is arriviing for 14 days very soon and can’t wait.  See you around.

Thanks for your words of wisdom as I will pass them on.

Kind Regards,  F

Re: obfuscation & Lies

Sloan,

I swore I’d never respond to your insanity & Lies but here goes in an attempt to point out your, either dementia, or your fabrication of information for some unknown reason.

As for Sandy Downs and her situation, and with my office dealing with the alleged illegal cutting of mangroves: as I stated to your first inquiry years ago – I forwarded the information provided to me by Mrs. Downs to the the appropriate Agency, DEP, who has jurisdition the matter. As an attorney u do know that without jurisdiction you have no say in the matter – DEP had jurisdiction.

As for the Goodmans, they are very good people who do many good things for their community and we are the better fo it. And I’m proud to state publicly that I consider the Goodman family a friend to me and what I stand for – honesty, transparency & fairplay.

Something I feel,  for whatever reason, you fall short of the mark on.

As for my bike ride, after the last dinner I’ll ever have with you, since you convinced me at that time, that you’re bowels ( can’t say brains) are backed up with SO many ulterior motives that  Freud himself wouldn’t be able to figure you out. It was not a rented bike, it was mine. I have/had been riding for about 4 years for exercise. The accident took place on Truman, not near where we had dinner, after I had gone back to my room and then left to go watch a Marlin’s game because my room, where I always stay, does not have a T V.

The accident was not my fault, as you vaguely pointed out, a car door was opened into the traffic lane – mine. which I found out is not an uncommon occurrence in K W. 

As for David Rice, he does not need me to defend him, he is quiet capable of that. As for any ethical wrong doing, that was cleared through AG opinion by county attorney at the time he was on the commission.

As for David’s race against Saunders, no I didn’t like all the acrimony and negativism and told David same – once. However, it was the R Party’s campaign – the same type used for Sorensen against The Good Guy Ron Heron. I don’t think you’ll see that kind of crap again.

Sloan, as for friends, you pick and choose yours and I’ll do the same for me.

Sent from my iPhone

[George Neugent]

Hi Sloan,Wow, some major coral slinging.   This reads like a NBC movie of the week.   Maybe you should write a script and send it to a director so the message gets out to everyone.  I am not one to tow the line and have no patience when told to keep my mouth shut.   What childish self serving acts.   

A few years back and a couple of weeks before my then wife wanted a divorce, I was on the board of directors for a home owners association.   The board was in the process of planning to build a small park on some deeded County property.   We had the go ahead from the County and were in the planning stages.   One of the home owners, a younger couple with children, wanted the park designed her way only.   I fought this idea and as head of the architectural comity, I said “no”.   Just a few short weeks later I was in the middle of a divorce.   A year later I came to visit friends of mine.   Driving down the street, there was the park this self serving of a woman wanted.  

The Board had no balls to stand up to her.   She kept using the phrase, “my husband is a lawyer and I will sue all of you”, card.  She would have never gotten her park built if I were still on the board.    She and her lawyer husband moved out the neighborhood 6 months after the park was built.  

I don’t understand how people can live with themselves by acting in this way.   I lived in a area just outside of Seattle that had the highest quantity of millionaires per capita in the State of Washington.   I was surrounded by these pretentious people.   Most were Dot.Com made millionaires.    Most have lost their status.   Easy come, easy go and nothing earned.  

The Goodmans will get their day and so will those that support them.

For the time being, you better dig out that body armor again and watch out for open car doors.

Gary

[Gary used to live in the Keys]

F and I are 180 degrees opposite on President Obama. I told an amiga yesterday, too bad Obama didn’t take after Jesus, and after Martin Luther King, who came out against the Vietnam war, which got him killed. I also told her that maybe I’ve been going so hard at the Republicans lately to draw as much attention as possible to the way they behaved when David Rice ran against Ron Saunders in 2006. Maybe they will be reluctant to behave in that way again again. Maybe hearing of Republican George Neugent’s views of how they behaved in 2006 also will influence them. I leave what I wrote yesterday, and what George wrote back, for readers to dissect, or not. Despite George’s description of my insanity and dimentia and lies, which view is shared by many people, I suppose, I still think he did a very good job leading the County Commission and the county government to turn around after the 2008 elections. I still do not want to run against him this year. I doubt I could do anywhere near as good a job as he has done. I  do not want the job. I don’t have the personality (patience) for it. And my health is not up to it.

Sloan Bashinsky

Last night I attended a town hall meeting at Harvey Government Center in Key West, hosted by County Commissioner Heather Carruthers. I ran against Heather, a Democrat, in 2008, as an Independent. Also in the race was Carlos Rojos, who started out the race on the Democrat ticket, then switched over to the Republican ticket and defeated incumbent Charles “Sonny” McCoy in the Republican primary. As usual, I came in dead last; nobody else came in close to second to dead last.
 
I counted just under 30 citizens at the meeting last night, which was disappointing, but the meeting itself was anything but disappointing. I won’t go into any of the details, other than to say when, toward the end, Heather asked if we had any suggestions for how the County Commission might change how it runs meetings, I said I hoped the Commission would continue to grow and improve, building on the good that started with the 2008 election.
 
Outside afterwards, I spoke with activist Diane Bureldsen. I said this county commission is really an improvement over the last one, and I felt the same way about the Key West City Commission after the 2009 election, in which I ran for mayor and again won the booby prize without any competition at all from the other three candidates, one of whom was Morgan McPherson, about whom I wrote some in yesterday’s “Following Orders” post.
 
I told Dianne I am having trouble finding anything to fault County Commissioner George Neugent and it will be very hard for me to run against him again. I ran against George in 2006, when I lived on Little Torch Key. We had an amicable race. In 2000, though, the mood began to shift, when George and I had sharp disagreements over the Goodman family of Cudjoe Key.
 
The Goodmans and George are close friends. The Goodmans run the local Keys Republican Party. The Goodmans had to have been involved in promoting the truly dirty and infantile campaign Republican David Rice, George Neugent’s good friend, ran against Democrat Ron Saunders in 2006, for the Florida Legislator seat Ron had held for many years, before he had to step down because a law was passed imposing term limits.
 
The Goodmans were involved, through their daughter, Carey, a lawyer, in what I heard from insiders at Florida Keys Community College was very troubling infighting on the college’s Board of Trustees. Infighting that, I was told, led to Carey eventually being demoted from Chairperson to just a member of the Board. I heard rumors that Ron Saunders had something to do with all of that, but I never talked with Ron about it. I also heard rumors the Goodmans were going to get even with Ron.
 
In all events, I am convinced the Goodmans will be in the thick of the war Morgan McPherson will wage against Ron in this year’s races. I am convinced the Goodmans will do all they can, although it will not be visible, to paint Ron the devil and Morgan the messiah.
 
For that reason, I feel I should go into something else about the Goodmans. I learned of it when I ran for the County Commission against Heather Carruthers and Carlos Rojos in 2008. I learned of it through Sandy Downs, who lives just down the street from the Goodmans, just down Blue Gill Lane, on Cudjoe Key. 2008 was when Sandy ran for Sheriff of Monroe County.
 
Sandy told me that some years back, her neighbors, the Goodmans, had applied for a permit to cut mangroves on a small island lying in front of their home, “to have a better view,” according what was written on the permit application signed by Debbie Goodman, Carey’s mother. The permit was issued by the local office of the Florida Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) under a law related to limestone mining.
 
The Goodmans were not in the limestone mining business. The local DEP office knew this and no legal permit could be issued to the Goodmans to cut the mangroves themselves. This all came out in later documents Sandy Downs pried out of DEP under Freedom of Information requests. It sure looked to me like the permit was issued because of who the Goodmans were.
 
However, that is not what got the situation revved up. What got it revved up was the Goodmans hired someone to come in and chainsaw the mangroves down to a wasteland of leafless stumps. Sandy and her husband, Nick, owned and operated Tarzan’s Tree Care. Nick was one of the few licensed arborists in the Keys. He knew the cutting was not only illegal, but was not done correctly. He told Sandy to report the Goodmans to DEP. She reported them. A DEP investigation ensued from higher up the line in DEP.
 
When Mr. Goodman finally figured out what had started the investigation, he had-a-face to face with Sandy near their homes and told her that she and her family would be run out of the Keys. Shortly thereafter, Sandy and her family, especially one of her sons, Preston, were put through a living hell by the Monroe County Sheriff Office.
 
Time wore on, DEP ended up finding the Goodmans did not have a proper permit but nothing was done about it. Carey Goodman fought DEP tooth and nail in the documents Sandy got out of DEP. Carey made it out to look like it was DEP’s fault from the onset. DEP issued the cutting permit, the Goodman’s relied on it. The Goodmans were innocent of any wrongdoing. They skated.
 
Why am I telling this again? I’m telling it again because George Neugent blew up with me one May 1999 night in Key West, when I said his friends, the Goodmans, had done all of this. He said Sandy had made it all up, she was crazy. Sandy had told me that, back in 2008, and even further back, when it was all heated in DEP higher up than the local DEP office, that she had tried to show George, her county commissioner, what she had unearthed about the Goodmans, and he had declined to look at it or even to meet with her.
 
Can I prove any of this? No, other than to say anyone can asked for DEP’s file and see what’s in it, including photos of the chain-sawed mangroves in front of the Goodman’s big home at the end of Blue Gill Lane on Cudjoe Key. Some of what is reported here, Sandy told me many times. Some of what is reported here, I discussed personally with George . What it all came down to for me with George was, he was not going to let facts get in the way of how he felt about the Goodmans. He told me several times they were good people and they did not do what Sandy said they did. He refused to look at what Sandy had gotten from DEP, even after I asked him to look it over.
 
This was not the only acrid moment I had with George. Another came up over his equally bosom buddy David Rice’s consulting contract with the Sheriff Office. A psychologist, David did psych work for the Sheriff Office while he was a county commissioner. The Sheriff’s budget was approved and funded by the County Commission. George saw nothing wrong with this. To the contrary, he praised David’s business acumen. He said David’s financial success proved his worth.
 
George may not remember all of this. He may not remember because some of his and my conversation happened that May 2009 night, when he was in his cups. In his cups to the extent that I asked him what he did after a county commission meeting in Key West (there had been one that morning), after he had gone out and had a few drinks. Did he call a cab to take him to his hotel? No, he drove home (to Marathon). When I pushed a little harder, he said with a sort of challenging tone and smile that he had never been stopped for DUI, I felt, to prove to me that he never drank too much to drive his car home.
 
As fate had it, that night George was staying over in Key West and had ridden a rented bicycle to where we ended up having this conversation, which several other men heard, as we all sat at the same table. After I left, they hung out a while longer. Then it broke up and George got on his bicycle and started back to his hotel. He went only a short ways, when the driver’s side door of a parked car suddenly opened and knocked him off the bicycle. He broke his fall with one if his arms, the left one I think, and fractured it. One of the men at our table was nearby, and carried George to the emergency room.
 
In my line of work, when you see something like that chain of events, you very definitely do not mark it off to bad luck. You view it as ARRANGED. You view it as a SCREAMING MESSAGE FROM GOD. As, I suppose, do I have to view this post as a SCREAMING MESSAGE FROM GOD TO ME not to give George more credit than he is due.
 
He very definitely changed his view toward developers and their lawyers and lobbiests, after I ran against him in 2006. He very definitely changed his view about insiders and conflicts of interests and their impact on the County Commission and county generally. He very definitety led the charge to turn the County Commission and county government around after the 2008 elections. However, I see no sign of any change in his ability to accept unpleasant facts about his Republican friends.
 
George campaigned hard for David Rice in 2006. The dirty campaign David, the Goodmans and the Republican Party ran against Ron Saunders did not seem to bother George. I told Diane Burleden after the town hall meeting last night that I very definitely didn’t want to see David Rice back on the County Commission, and I would work hard to see it didn’t happen.
 
Diane already knew from me that, during a break in the most recent County Commission meeting in Key West, David came up to me and said he’d seen some of what I had written about him and he wanted to get together with me and talk about it. I asked what he wanted to talk about? He said he didn’t make any money off the sale of the Guidance Clinic of the Middle Keys. I said I didn’t write that he did. What I wrote was he made money off the Sheriff Office.
 
He said last year he only grossed $18,000 off the Sheriff Office, and netted $12,000 (I think those where the numbers he used). I said I wanted to see his tax returns for the last ten years. He said okay, then he said maybe not. I said what I really wanted to see were his tax returns when he was a county commissioner. When he was a county commissioner? Yes, when he was a county commissioner. He was silent. I said I took that to mean he wouldn’t show me his tax returns and I would write about it. He said okay, but he wasn’t what I was saying and turned to leave. I said I found out what he was capable of in the 2006 races.
 
I find out what everyone is capable of, if I stick with them long enough. I found out Sandy Downs was indeed crazy about some things. But I did not find she was crazy about the Goodmans, or about George Neugent declining to look at the evidence, or about David Rice’s work with the Sheriff Office, which, along with David’s son, Mike, being #3 in command at the Sheriff Office, she also dug up and aired out. The rest of what’s in this post I dug up and aired out.
 
We are supposed to have transparency in our local government, aren’t we? Shouldn’t we also have transparency in our candiadtes and what backs them? Well, shouldn’t we?
 
Sloan Bashinsky

A reply to yesterday’s “Waste Management” post from Jim Brooks, retired navy. My reply follows, along with some other develpments.
 
Sloan-
 
I’m all for recycling. However, we need to make sure we’re not doing more harm by enforcing a recycle program than what it is intended for. There are arguments we dump more CO2 in the atmosphere as more trucks are put on the street, etc. But enough said. Let’s just assume for now people are willing to pay for it.
 
Using the 3 container separation method and then using negative reinforcement to run a program puts all the responsibility on the individual. If this is a COMMUNITY desire, then there may be a simpler method: PAY FOR RECYCLING up front!!! Write it into your waste management contract and pay for it with taxes.  
 
Last year Waste Management went to single stream recycling. They made it EASY on the individual to recycle. At the naval air station, recycling rates went up significantly. As a homeowner, I recycle more because it’s easier. Separation occurs at the waste facility. It creates JOBS. My former hometown of Ann Arbor, MI does this method as well.

I’ve really looked into this whole recycling dilemma. People will do it if it’s easy OR they see a financial benefit (not punishment). 
Sorry, I think it’s unwise to punish individuals who don’t recycle. Are we going to ticket and fine tourists who don’t throw their beer cans or plastic glasses in the correct container on Duval Street?

C’mon, there are better ideas. Maybe the State of Florida should pass a deposit on bottles and cans like Michigan (some 98% of all bottles and cans are “recycled” there because there is a dime deposit on them!) Of course, markets hate this because of infrastructure demands. Perhaps all plastic cups like those used at the sea food festival should be biodegradable. 

I’ll never vote for a political candidate who is ready to punish me because I don’t separate my trash.   My parents forced me to eat vegetables when I was a kid because “it was good for me!”  I don’t want any government who will rule like parents at the dinner table. 
 
Jim
 
I have not seen Waste Management’s stream recycling facility, and I wonder if any Key West city official has? It’s hard for me to imagine WM workers dumping out and going through each plastic garbage bag’s contents on a table of some kind and separating all of the reusable fabric, tampons, condoms, throwaway diapers, paper products, plastics, glass, wood, metal, etc. from the rotting food wastes. If WM says it happens, maybe it happens, but I’d hate to have that separation job. After the separation, what does WM then do with each category of garbage? Is it sent somewhere to be recycled, that is, reused? Is the rotting food composted and turned into fertilizer? Or is it burned and/or sent to a landfill. I believe the City Commission, if it has not done so already, needs to send two of its members up to Waste Management’s stream recycling facility on a pop call, no pre-announced arrival, to see what is really happening there. ,they report their findings bacj to the rest of the commission and to all of us. If, in fact, Waste Management is doing what it says it’s doing, if it truly is recycling instead of burning and landfilling what it carries out of Key West to the mainland, then what do our local recycle enthusiasts have to fret over? Paying extra for the service? They will have to pay extra for it if it is done in Key West using the 3-container method. And for sure, Key West does not have the money for or the land on which to construct and run a reuse facility, and it cannot bury it any of its garbage. It all has to leave the city and the Keys in any event, and the only way to do that is by either container barges or trucks.
 
As for being told what to do, you took orders every day in the Navy. Sometimes you didn’t like your orders, but you carried them out because the alternative wasn’t an option. Your parents were correct in telling you to eat your vegetables. Vegetables contain nutrients essential to good physical health and proper brain function. Minerals, especially, are what dark green leafy vegetables provide. If you balked at eating your vegetables, your parents should have made you eat them. I am told to “eat” all sorts of food I don’t want to eat. I mean my work, not physical food. Lots of it, like right now, makes me feel terrible physically and in my soul. But I eat it anyway, because it is put into me, and then I have to digest and eliminate it. Part of how I digest and eliminate it is by writing for publication; another way is by speaking or writing to a person or people. I usually don’t like it and often I hate it, but I follow orders because the alternative is unthinkable. I don’t ever want to be thrown into God’s brig again. It was far worse than being homeless. Far worse. Never do I want to have that experience again. Meaning, if I’m ordered to run against County Commissioner George Neugent again this year, I will do it, even though I really don’t want to do it. I am not a politican and I detest politics. I don’t feel well enough to run, much less serve. Yet run I will, if I’m ordered to do it. What good is any order, such as separating garbage into three containers, unless the order has teeth to back it up? It’s no order at all. It’s just a request.
 
I heard yesterday from two Keys men who heard it from him directly, that our just-former mayor is going to run on the Republican ticket against our Democrat State Legislator Ron Saunders this year. I wasn’t really surprised, because I had heard rumors since 2007 that Morgan McPherson had his sights set on running for that position. One of the men who told me about this said he spoke of it with Morgan in a bar where he was hanging out with a woman not his wife. I often have heard of Morgan being in bars, sometimes with a woman or women not his wife. I asked him at a candidate forum last year, after he lamented that being mayor took him away from his wife and children, if he was going to stop spending so much time in bars so he could be with his family? He said sometimes after a hard day’s work, he just needs a drink. He once was a minister, started his own church. His mother and father helped him pastor it. Then his brother Michael took it over. While I imagine Morgan running against Ron Saunders would make for an interesting race, I hope for Morgan’s sake, and for his family’s, that he doesn’t do it. I hope he gives up politics and bars, and spends more time with his family. I have been where he is, and I know all too well the price for not following the very advice I’ve been giving to him. He’s supposed to cleave to his wife; it says so right there in the Bible.

Last today, a rumor I just now was told by telephone by another Keys man, who said he got it from someone else. If it wasn’t so familiar, I wouldn’t report it. But it is familiar. It sounds just like what happened four years ago, when the Republican Party, parallel to David Rice’s campaign against Ron Saunders, spent a bundle in media attack ads against Ron Saunders. As far as I could tell, the attacks were groundless and/or frivolous. One was, Ron had a condo in Tallahassee and really didn’t live in the Keys. He had gotten the condo when he was a state legislator previously, serving with distinction in Tallahassee. He did not move to Tallahassee, but kept his Keys home. He is from the Keys, it is his home. He needed a place to live in Tallahassee while he was up there, so he bought the condo. When term limits were made state law, he had to step down. After sitting out a term, he ran again and clobbered David Rice 60-40 in at the polls. I tried to get David to call off the Republican attack ads, but he said it wasn’t his doing; he had no control over what the Republican Party did. Yeah, right. David could have stopped it instantly, if he had told the Republican Party he was going to pull out of the race if they didn’t lay off the attacks. But that’s not the kind of man David is. He liked the ads. He approved of them, even if he didn’t actually authorize them. Well, the rumor is that the Republican Party wants to get rid of Ron Saunders and this time they are going to try even harder, using the same dirty campaign against him, but spending a heck of a lot more money.

Ron attended all of the candidate forums in 2006, and I saw him at lots of public functions during that time and afterward. He is a politician, I concede that. Even so, I came to like him. I came to feel he has what’s best for the Keys at heart. I came to feel he is a good state legislator who tirelessly ministers to his constituents. As things stand now, Ron has my support and vote. As for Morgan, if the rumor just reported is true, I hope he doesn’t fall for it. I hope, if he runs, that he runs based on his abilities and not based on how much money and nastiness the Republican Party can deliver. More than that, I hope he doesn’t run. It might just be his own personal spiritual undoing. I mean, what’s he going to be doing at night, if he ends up in Tallahassee? Will he stay away from bars and women not his wife? He doesn’t even do that here. What’s he going to do in Tallahassee? What are his children going to do when he’s with them even less than he was with them when he was mayor of Key West for four years? When he was spending most of his time being mayor, politicking and hanging out in bars? I hate to say it, but it won’t even surprise me if part of Morgan’s campaign, his and that mounted by the Republicans, is that he is a minister and a family man, and Ron Saunders isn’t either. After what I saw David Rice and the Republicans do in 2006, nothing coming out of that camp would surprise me, except disclosure of the habits of the Morgan we all know, and that his home and former home, turned into a rental property, went into foreclosure in early 2008, as I recall the timing. Word is, those homes still are in foreclosure. There is no way I won’t be wondering if the Republican Party isn’t somehow finagling a way to help Morgan pay the mortgages without anyone finding out about it. 
 
Sloan Bashinsky

I attended last night’s zero waste recycling workshop in Old City Hall. Except for City Commissioner Clayton Lopez, I remarked to Mark Howell, Editor of Solares Hill, the nearly-packed chamber was all white.
 
The presenter owns a zero waste recycling company in Boulder, Colorado, which seemed on the cutting edge of waste reuse vs. waste burning and landfills. However, the zero waste name he uses for his cause is not really accurate. 70 percent waste reuse is outstanding, based on what he said last night. As had others before last night, the presenter recommended three different containers: for food scraps, paper and plastic (as I recall). What he seemed unprepared for, maybe he had not been told it, is Key West is broke and cannot afford to construct the recommended infrastructure for local waste reuse; the city doesn’t have the land for such facilities; the Keys geology does not permit burying the wastes that cannot be recycled; and the city will have to contract it all out.
 
I told friends later at Sippin’ Internet Cafe, if I had my way, I’d pass an ordinance requiring all residences and businesses to use the three-container method, and I’d impose a $100 fine for failure to comply per incident. What we fine people for parking meter and riding bicycles through red lights and stop signs justifies a fine of this size for not non-compliance with three-container recycling. I also said the contract collector would turn non-compying containers upside down on the property and leave it there.
 
My friends agreed widespread compliance would quickly follow. My friends also agreed a lot of people would be upset. I said my observation had been that the City Commission has been too reluctant to institute mandatory recyling and separation, beause they dont want to upset people or use force. They want compliance to be voluntary, people to like it. They want it to be easy. Dream on.
 
We learned last night that Boulder had passed a mandatory recyling ordinance. While I don’t know how that city deals with noncompliance, given Key West’s rowdy history and its weird makeup today, $100 an incident of non-compliance, coupled with non-complying trash containers being turned upside down, would not be entirely out of character. Certainly, it would draw national attention to Key West, and perhaps people would come from far and wide, even from Boulder, to see how pirates do recycling. Do you think that would help the Key West economy?
 
I seriously doubt it is a coincidence that I lived in Boulder from 1987-95. It is one of those unusual cities with lots of new age people, Buddhists (American stock), yuppies, environmentalists, cicylists, hikers, skiers, fishermen, rock climbers and tourists. And plenty of IBM and university types, the University of Colorado is there. Mostly white. The local churches have very little sway. As off the chart as Key West, but in different ways.
 
Boulder passed a no-smoking in public-use buildings ordinance in 1997, years before the State of Colorado passed a state-wide ban. The State’s bans smoking within 15 feet of the entrance of any building. I imagine the 15-foot ban is to head off someone taking a few puffs near the door, then hurrying back inside and exhaling the last puff inside. I had heard Boulder passed a later ordinance banning smoking outside completely within the city limits, but I was unable to seen any evidence of that using Google.
 
Shorty after the Google expedition, I struck up a conversation with two young scruffy-looking men, new in town, who came into Sippin’ Internet Café. Turned out, I had known one of them somewhat in Boulder. He said his name is  “Spirit” and he used to hang out on Pearl Street Mall. Maybe in that moment, I should have heard the sound track from “Jaws” in my ears. I named some people I had met on the mall, and he said he knew them. When I asked about it, Spirit and his friend said they thought Boulder had banned smoking outside, but when later I ran down the Boulder City Code on line, I couldn’t find an ordinance banning smoking outside. 
 
Pearl Street Mall was a regular city street until the city recycled it by closing off vehicle traffic, paving it with bricks, landscaping it, and turning it into a beautiful walking mall and a bustling center for shops all up and down the three-block promenade. In warm weather, street performers, some of whom come to Key West in the winter, regale large crowds in the evening. Families come to the mall with their children, to watch the performances, stroll the mall, eat dinner, get ice cream cones, and so forth. Locally, Pearl Street Mall is the premier inner city attraction. It also attracts people from Denver and smaller nearby cities, especially in the warm months. I have Pearl Street Mall in mind every time I suggest that Key West recycle Duval Street into a walking mall.
 
I asked Spirit if he remembered Penny Lane, which was the local Beatnik hangout just west of where Pearl Street Mall began; the poet Alan Ginsberg had hung out there when he had lived in Boulder. Yep, Spirit remembered it: the old Penny Lane, where smoking was allowed inside, before it closed; and the new, recycled Penny Lane later opened across the street, where smoking was only allowed outside.
 
Spirit is Rainbow. Rainbows loved to hang out at Boulder. I got to know quite a few of them. A number of Rainbows come to Key West every winter and hang out for a while. Rainbows are like this huge tribe of young and somewhat older white people mostly, modern hippies perhaps, who hang out together, travel in vans, don’t seem to bathe much, hold huge festivals in state parks, evangelize Mother Nature and eulogize her impending demise, and prophesize the fall of what they call Babylon — mainstream America.
 
How Rainbows will survive Babylon’s demise, they don’t seem to give much thought, even though they seem totally dependent on it for their survival. Lots of them beg, panhandle. Nealry all of them smoke tobacco. Lots of them seem to have income from somewhere, but they seldom seem to work for pay. They adopted Rainbow from a Native American prophesy (my recollection) of all the different colored people of the world finally living in peace together. There version, I suppose, of the One Human Family creed Key West adopted from the gays, who also have a rainbow theme.
 
Besides tobacco, most of the not just a few Rainbows I have known or met in passing guzzled regular coffee, sugar, marijuana, beer and mushrooms and/or peyote They adamantly defended their unalienable right to partake of all of the above, especially marijuana, citing the Bible passage where God gave Adam and Eve dominion over the animals and herbs. It apparently never occurred to them that they were doing as much pollution internally as Babylon was doing externally. There was no reaching them, even after I said Native Americans did not use natural drugs recreationally, but only ceremonially.
 
I didn’t say any of that to Spirit yesterday morning. Instead I shared a conversation I’d had with a fellow in Penny Lane, who I would gestimate was close to 35 but he looked close to 50. As he guzzled sugar-laced regular coffee and chain-smoked cigarettes, making it hard for me to even breathe, he ranted against factories, 18-wheelers, airplanes, car manufacturers, etc. for polluting the air. I told him that pound for pound he was putting out as much air pollution as any of the villains he had just tried and convicted. He kept ranting and puffing, as if I’d not said anything.
 
Spirit said he had a pack of cigarettes in his pocket and it might be his last; he didn’t feel so good all of a sudden and had to go outside. I said I hoped he felt guilty enough to quit. He did not get mad, he has too much depth for that. But he wasn’t a happy camper. Who knows? Maybe I reached him. Maybe the angels will help him quit.
 
They already helped three young adults I met in Sippin’ last year quit smoking, by simply taking the desire off of them. When I learned this year that one of them went back to the habit, I asked him if he had lost his mind, throwing away a gift from God? So he quit again, and the angels helped him again. I told him I’d hate to be in his shoes if he started smoking again; no telling what the angels might do to express their displeasure.Of late, this young man, who has expressed interest in becoming a shaman, has been worrying about chemtrails in the atmosphere. Last night, I asked him why he worried about it, since he couldn’t do anything about it but worry about it. He said if it was chemicals, he was breathing them. Weird, he didn’t seem worried even last night about all the chemicals he had breathed smoking cigarettes for about half of his life. I later told the friends mentioned somewhere up above that maybe catalytical converters should be built that could be put into smokers’ throats.
 
Just before Spirit and his friend came into Sippin’ yesterday morning, I told a fellow I know pretty well that the biggest thing Key West, Monroe County, the State of Florida and the US can do right now to reduce air pollution is ban tobacco tobacco smoking and make it a penitentiary offense. I was not joking.
 
That was before I met Spirit and decided to write about this, and before it occurred to me that maybe there is another way. Next time I see Spirit, I’m going to ask if he wants to participate in a little experiment. If he does, and if his tobacco habit is lifted off of him, I might expand the experiment and suggest tobacco users in the Keys should ask God to lift it off of them.
 
Wouldn’t that be a sight to behold – a smoke-free Keys. The tobacco-growing father of the great global-warming guru Al Gore would roll over in his grave. Word would get out, start a mass pilgrimage of tobacco users to the Keys, to be rid of their deadly addiction. Maybe they even would come from far away places like Boulder. Do you think that would help Mother Nature and the Keys economy?
 
Sloan Bashinsky
 
Postscript. Did I mention the soundtrack from “Jaws” earlier? Among other Boulders that fell on me yesterday, late last night I received an email from a young man in the American northwest who was my stepson when I lived in Boulder. I wrote of him before, after he tracked me down on the Internet and started a dialogue. In many ways, a taking back up where we had left off after his mother and I busted up. My third wife. The one I was with when the heavens truly opened to me, when my own shaman training began in earnest. Anyone who actually wants to be a shaman is insane.
 
It was while she and her son were overseas for a while one summer that it came to me from out of the blue to give her the power to decide what, if any, of my worldly estate I would lend up keeping if she and I went apart. For two weeks afterward, I asked daily to be told if I had not heard correctly. I heard nothing. When she came back to Boulder with her son, he went over to see his father, who lived a couple of a miles away, and she and I went down to Pearl Street Mall to have dinner at one of my favorite restaurants. I explained what I had been told and that I was going to do it. We wept together. When a couple of years later she said she wanted us to take time apart, I told her to make the property division. I have written of that a few times and will go no further into it this time than to say I didn’t get much of it and I ended up living on the street after it ran out.
 
By then, the shaman training had been replaced by a much more difficult training, about which I have written a few times already, so I will not go into it any more than to say Jesus had a great deal to do with that later training. Far as I’m concerned, anyone who wants to be near God is insane. If it happens, it happens. But for God’s sake, don’t just go looking for it! Write music, smoke marijuana, make a lot of money, drink beer with your friends, get a girl or boy friend, live life. And pray God doesn’t decide to recycle you. Pray God chooses someone else. 

Last below today, an ad for a what appears to be a really serious GLEE-sponsored zero waste recycling workshop, 6 p.m. tonight at Old City Hall on Green Street, Key West. Next to last below is an ad for tomorrow’s Art Waves show, 11 a.m., on KONK 1680 AM, Key West, hosted by Michael Shields. The enviornmental poem struck a deep chord in me.

I received two replies to yesterday’s cheerful “I Was Nominated by GLEE” post.

——————————

Hi Sloan,

Don’t be so hard on yourself or the environmentalists.

At least, you are trying. At least, Glee is trying. We have to live somewhere.

We are not perfect as human beings. Far from it. If we were, we would not be here on earth which we seem to have a propensity for destroying along with ourselves.

So accept the nomination and keep bitching !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Sincerely,

Larry Benvenuti

Marathon

Bravo, Sloan! You hit it all this time. I agree, it is we humans of the species who are the culprits in destroying the beautiful Keys. Can you imagine how beautiful they were when it was the Calusas who inhabited them instead of the rest of us – I would venture to say, breathtaking! Peggy

————————————–

We the people really are the problem I see no way to resolve in in my lifetime, which hopefully will not last much longer because, among other reasons, I do not want to be here when the green slime we the people are manufacturing replaces kudzu as the number one ground cover in my home state — Alabama.
 
More to the point, I see no way for we the people to live in sync with Mother Nature while we rely on fossil fuels. We need to figure out how to draw energy from the sun. Or from the hydrogen in water, which should release plenty of oxygen back into the atmosphere. Or maybe we learn how to draw energy out of helium. Or out of dark matter. Or out of anti-matter. Or out of crystals. As long as we use hydrocarbons for fuel, we are going to keep killing Mother Nature.
 
I leave no place in this conundrum for nuclear fuel. Not even the little green people use nuclear fuel to drive their space ships, or for anything. Nuclear power is something only we the people use, and that has a lot to do with why so many little green people are hanging around this planet. They want to make sure we the people don’t migrate to other worlds and spread our energy slime there.
 
Maybe you would believe, maybe not, that right now I’m reading a sci-fi novel set in the future. Humanity is under attack, not from ETs, but from the souls of dearly departeds led by Al Capone, all of whom, by some as yet unexplained anomaly in the time-space continuum, are coming back from the dead and possessing human beings and taking over planets and star systems.
 
Maybe you also would believe, maybe not, that I had dinner with human friends last night, and while waiting for the exquisite meal to cook, I watched the end of ”K-PAX.” An ET (played wonderfully by Kevin Spacey) beams himself from his planet into an Earthling and then ends up in a psychiatric hosptial where he shakes up a psychiatrist (played by Jeff Bridges, who once had played the ET in “Starman”) pretty darn good. Even as the shrink’s astronomer friends are major league smitten by the K-PAX fruitarian’s astrophysics formulas, which they had tried unsuccessfully to discover on their own.
 
Maybe you also would believe, may not, that people who actually have interaction with little green people have a somewhat different outlook than people who do not. My main beef is with the little green ones who keep abducting me into the mother ship, then change their mind and wring their little green antenna and bring me back to Earth again. I wish they would make up their little green minds, because all the going back and forth is giving me the old whiplash and making me bit motion sick.
 
Maybe Michael Shields ought to do a program on alien art, or just on aliens. I bet I could drum up some interesting off-planet green talent to regale the local green people. I bet I could.

Sloan Bashinsky

WEDNESDAY, Jan 27 ~
It’s  WORD on WEDNESDAY with co-host Jennifer O’Lear, author of ‘pressure drop”.  Returning to our program is poet ARLO HASKELL, who has published his new collection of poetry, JOKER, and to herald its release, with a New York City reception this past week. Arlo is also the Media Director of the recently concluded Key West Literary Seminar, and has established Sand Paper Press. From his new collection:

SEAL OF THE CITY

Here at the new settlement
myth is what we work for.
Blue is the color we wear
and yellow is the water in the well.

Imagination is our hard respite
and the birds in the trees are one of a kind: loneliness.
Our law, like love and lust, is liquid,
penned and implemented by impulse.
Our punishment is invisible– unless
you are one of those who hold up
after reading it a page to the light,
studying its perforations and what resemble
in opacity the mackerel-clouds so foreign
to our climate. In that case
it is merely transparent in relation
to the cinder-block walls that keep
and protect the light and joyous moments
of the inventor of our decline.
 

Zero Waste Workshop “A 10-year Bridge Strategy toward a Zero Waste community” DATE:             Tuesday, January 26, 2010 TIME:               6 p.m. LOCATION:     City Commission Chambers 510 Greene St., Key West

GLEE, Last Stand and The Banyan Resort have sponsored Eric Lombardi, executive director of Eco-Cycle in Colorado, to facilitate this workshop with the city commission, city staff and the public. Read more at keysglee.com PLEASE SHOW UP! We need to pack the house to demonstrate that the community wants to see recycling rates skyrocket, to be more responsible with our resources and to REDUCE, RECOVER and REUSE as much as possible. That’s what the Zero Waste movement is about and the time is NOW to start. If you can’t make the meeting it will be televised on Channel 77, and also live streaming on www.keywestcity.com.

Mother Nature

I was advised in an email from GLEE that I had been nominated for a green living award, and I needed to fill out an application listing my green living achievments. I didn’t respond, and then I received the notification and request again. So I felt like using it in a post.

My first thought, if I was nominated for an award, why should I have to apply for anything? Did Barack Obama apply for the Nobel Peace Prize after he was nominated?

My next thought, I’ve made lots of suggestions about how to help Mother Nature in the Keys, and so far I haven’t seen GLEE or any other local organization or local government use any of them.

For examples:

I harped people who smoke tobacco regularly, pound for pound, put out as much air pollution as any car, truck, boat, airplane, factory.

I harped no new building permits in the Keys for structures that are not solar and cistern self-sufficent.

I harped putting solar collectors on all roofs in Key West.

I harped painting roofs white, to save airconditiong costs.

I harped mandatory recycling and no garbage pickup that is not separated.

I harped treating Keys wastewater to bring it to potable and put it back into the Aqueduct.

I harped community gardens on local government land, irrigated with treated wastewater.

I harped putting a toll at the top of Key Largo, to raise money to install countywide sewerage collection and treatment.

I harped fixing the leaking sewer laterals in Key West, of which there still are many.

I harped against deep injection wells.

I harped stop killing the reef with human effluent.

I harped stop allowing cruise ships into Key West, which dump their raw effluent offshore instead of treating it.

I harped no more new development, period, the end; the Keys already are way overdeveloped, everyone knows this, no one can stand in front of a mirror and honestly deny it.

I harped leave No Name Key off the grid and not allow further development on Big Pine Key.

I harped Mother Nature’s rights supersede human rights.

I harped anyone living in the Keys who calls him/herself an environmentalist is delusional; there is no way to live in sync with Mother Nature in the Keys, unless you live like the Calusa Indians lived here.

I harped human beings are the invasive species in the Keys.

I harped the real environmental solution is a Category 5 hurricane, that comes in at Key West and runs up the Keys to the mainland at Category 5 force the entire transit.

The other night, I told a young man who had earlier approached me about his becoming a shaman, who said he was worried about “chemtrails” and the conspiracy theories around them, that human beings are the invasive species on this planet and any real enviornmentalist would kill him/herself to help Mother Nature. I didn’t say I would kill myself.

I don’t belong to GLEE and don’t want to belong. I don’t think it’s really serious about putting Mother Nature first. Nor, appparently, am I. I am alive. I drive a car. I don’t live like the Calusas.

Sloan Bashinsky, conscripted nominee

(man o’ war bird)
 
First below, in italics, is the tail end of a heated clobber of yours truly on bigpinekey.com’s Coconut Telegraph page yesterday (Saturday). The whole clobber can be read by going to bigpinekey.com and clicking on the Coconut Telegraph page and going back one day.
 
As to you my friend, my experience in life is that those that most loudly blow their own horn either have a reason to do so or a very small horn that they want to seem larger than it is. As they say in Texas, ‘Big Hat, No Cattle’. For all of your self touted experience and expertise you sure sound and write as if you are stupid. You are, of course, entitled to your opinion but it might be nice to get your facts right, at least once in a while, even if your view differs from mine.
 
This was the second Sloan clobber from this writer. His name, Jim, and his email address, keysconcerns@gmail.com, were on the his first Sloan clobber copied to GoodMorningFloridaKeys.com. I’m hardly Jim’s only clobber target online, so he ought to have some personal identification, don’t you think?
 
I picked this clobber up using the wireless internet connection at Good Foods Conspiracy on Big Pine Key yesterday morning. On the drive up there, I passed under two man o’ war birds, which always herald impending demonic attack. I asked the birds, “I wonder what you bring to me today?” I found out about thirty minutes later.
 
Yep, I touted my residential real estate law credentials in another life, earned in the trenches, to show Jim and others who read that post that at one time I was a T-Rex when it came to defending home buyers. This was well known in Birmingham, Alabama, where I practiced law, and well known in the National Association of Realtors nationally. Yet and despite having been a home buyers’ champion, I can not now bring myself to sympathize with Jim and the other No Name Key homeowners who want public electricity and water, because they could could have bought/built homes anywhere else in the Keys. They knew what they were doing, and I hate to think there might be a judge in Florida who will sympathize with them.
 
Jim held forth in yesterday’s clobber that he is bigger than being just concerned about No Name Key. He said he is concerned about the welfare of all of the Keys. Alas, I have yet to see one word he has written since he made my acquaintance that indicated he has any concern for any part of the Keys but his own back yard: No Name Key.
 
Maybe Jim woke up, became a born-again environmentalist. But then, maybe he had in mind all along acquiring on the cheap (compared to other Keys residential real estate opportunities) a home on No Name Key, so he could launch this very war to get power and electricity out to No Name Key, so he could make a tidy profit.
 
From having practiced law too many years for my own good, people law mostly, and from having been in worse trenches since then, I know people shade their words in the light most favorable to them, and it is really dumb not to keep that ever in mind when they speak of something in which they have a personal interest, especially a pecuniary interest. Pecuniary means money.
 
I have plenty of faults, but prevarication is not one of them. I did far too much of that when I was a lawyer, and before that. After God shanghaied me, I was broken of twisting facts to suit my own personal interests. I also was broken of pursuing my own personal interests. I was told, not too subtly, that it is more blessed to give than to receive.
 
Even if you had never seen a turnip truck to fall off of, you would know this is pure business for Jim and has nothing to with the environment. I don’t blame him for trying to get his way, but I am not going to roll over for him. I hope the County Commission, Fish & Wildlife, DCA, and whatever other agency might be involved don’t either.
 
The County Commission, Fish & Wildlife, Department of Community Affairs are not bound by the same laws homeowners are bound by. The County Commission, Fish & Wildlife, DCA could jimmy this around and give Jim and his cohorts what they want. And No Name Key property owners who sold at distressed prices because they could not get public electricity and water could then sue all of the above agencies for changing their tune. Those former No Name Key property owners probably would receive a great deal of sympathy in the courts.
 
Jim and his cohorts on No Name Key don’t care about that or the financial condition of Monroe County, which such a lawsuit would certainly worsen. All Jim and his No Name Key cohorts care about is changing their spots and making a bundle doing it.

As for the now much-hyped pollution being put out by the 43 homes on No Name Key, it is miniscule compared to the pollution being put out by the septic systems alone on neighboring and far more densely populated Big Pine Key, and compared to the pollution being emitted by cars, trucks and buses driving through Big Pine Key on US 1. Miniscule.
 
As for the suggestion that No Name Key is a great location for the biggest solar farm in the Keys and even in Florida, No Name Key is a federal wildlife refuge. To make it into a solar farm would destroy the habitat. Fish & Wildlife would never go along with it. Never.
 
I write about No Name Key mainly for people Jim is attempting to influence, or already has under his influence. Although he keeps calling me his friend, he doesn’t mean it. His soul, however, knew what I would feed back to him and wanted him to hear it.
 
Sloan Bashinsky

On my way up to Big Pine Key yesterday, to mark a few more bushes (territory), I dropped by my landlord’s office to pay my apartment rent. I told the office manager, Frances, that I was giving my two months’ notice. My lease began March 21, 2007, I was moving back to my place on Little Torch Key.
 
Frances and I have had some talks about spirit stuff and this became another one. She said she’d been seeing a lot of spirit in her life, and gave some examples. I said God moved me to Key West, now God was moving me back to Little Torch Key. I wasn’t looking forward to the move, but I felt I’d done all there was to do in Key West. She said she had felt very disturbed on learning of Mick Putney’s death. A leader in Key deer protection and keep No Name and Big Pine Keys they way they are, who would fill that huge void? I said maybe that’s what I’m supposed to do. I told her to go GoodMorningFloridaKeys.com and check out “Big Pine Key: Heart of the Resistance,” the first post in the Big Pine Key: Mother Nature’s Last Stand file. In that post is told what cemented my spirit bond with those two Keys. Frances said she would read it.
 
First stop at Big Pine, after calling ahead to announce my arrival and maybe head off being shot for trespassing before and after warning, was at the home of Capt. Conch, Editor and Publisher of bigpinekey.com. What got me a green pass onto the dispicable old priate’s estate was saying I had my checkbook with me, to pay him for posting teasers from what I write to the Coconut Telegraph and linking it to goodmorningfloridakeys.com. Capt. Conch set up the website for me back in the fall of 2007, and then he came up with the Today’s FlaKey Drivel moniker for my near-daily posts. Maybe he pirated the name from the News-Barometer on Big Pine Key. (newsbarometer.com) It features a Drivel column , written by Steve Estes, the newspaper’s Editor and Publisher.
 
When I said maybe I was going to get him killed, being back on the Coconut Telegraph, Capt. laughed heartily, said, “The more controversial the better!” When I shared what had happened when I was with Frances, he said, “So you’re going to replace Mick Putney?” I laughed, said, “No, Mick was a gentleman.” Capt. said, “Mick didn’t cuss.” I said, “Mick didn’t do a lot of things I do. My role is very different from his.”
 
I lamented how lonely it was when I lived on Little Torch in 2006-07. Capt. said Key West has plenty to do, but the only thing to do around Big Pine and Little Torch is go to bars and since I don’t drink that indeed is lonely. I can’t drink, it makes me physically ill. And I’ve been told in not too subtle ways that if I do drink, there will be hell to pay.
 
Capt. Conch emailed me the photo above, which he had taken way back when. Way back when he sometimes went out to the end of No Name Key, and to the end of the ferry pier that went out a ways to the deep water where the ferry used to dock. Way out to the end of the pier where Capt., no, did not receive smuggled drugs, guns, rum and women slaves, but took trips under the stars with the aid of certain experiementals given to him by Phizer or some big drug company, to see if they were safe for human consumption. Capt. never has told me where he did his smuggling out of when he was a real pirate, instead of the he old-fart he is now

I left Capt. with some booty to help assuage the ire he had raised with some of his consituents who don’t pay him a farthing, by letting me back on the Coconut Telegraph. Then I drove around Big Pine Key marking a few trees and bushes, wondering why some people still think the same kind of limestone lies under Big Pine that lies underneath all the other Keys. If that were so, all the other islands would be habitat to same pine trees, don’t you think?
  
Whatever, I had lunch with Rose Dell at Coco’s Cantina in the Winn-Dixie mall on Big Pine. We talked about this and that scuttlebut. When she asked me about leaving Key West, I said I’d done all I could there, including giving the city a sure cure for its economic ills, which wouldn’t have cost the city a farthing, and they ignored it. I paid Rose the ridiculously low bill for a great lunch I couldn’t get anywhere in Key West.
 
Waiting for my food, I had pulled a current News-Barometer (newsbarometer.com) from the stack on the counter. This issue features a comprehensive article on the No Name Key war between the 30 home owners who want public electricity and water run out there, and the 13 homeowners owners who don’t. I read that prior owners of No Name Key property, who back a ways had sold their property at distress prices to the refuge, because they couldn’t get public electricity and water out there, want their land back, or damages, if the 30 owners get what they seek. Some mention of litigation against Monroe County, litigation I didn’t see much way for them to lose, if the 30 get what they want.
 
So I called Steve Estes off the number in the News-Barometer. I suppose I should not have been surprised that he was at the office. We had a pretty long talk. He reminded me that this whole mess was already in court once, and the judge ruled against the No Name Key owners who wanted public electricity and power run out there.
 
When I asked who the main agitators out there are now, Steve said a man, last name Nichols. A woman, last name Ramsay-Vickery, who is Rick Ramsay’s sister. Rick is #2 in command at the Sheriff’s Office; Ramsay-Vickery’s husband lives part time on No Name Key, part time in California, and is a real estate speculator. And a woman lawyer, last name Bakke (spelling?), who just recently passed the Florida Bar (she had practiced somewhere else before moving to No Name Key maybe three years ago). She is representing the No Name Key Homeowners Association, and will file the lawsuit on their (and her) behalf, if they don’t get public electricity and water.
 
When Steve mentioned a lawyer who has himself for a lawyer having a fool for a client, this ex-lawyer laughed heartily. If, in fact, this case already has been decided by a court and is brought again, it could, without too much imagination, be viewed as a frivolous and/or malicious lawsuit, abuse of the court process. If it heads in that direction, a Defendant County/County Commisson could, and should, ask the judge to award punitive damages against the No Name Key plaintiffs and their lawyer, in addition to litigation costs.
 
I’d love to be a fly on the wall if lawyer Bakke has to explain that not so happy ending to the other two members of the No Grid Key Gang of Three, and to the rest of the fools who let her represent them in the lawsuit. I hope Lawyer Bakke has a heap of malpractice coverage. And I hope she has friends in the Florida Bar Association Disciplinary Section, where she will have to report the outcome of being successfully sued for filing a malicious civil lawsuit.
 
I am in agreement with Steve that the County Commission should do nothing about running utilities out to No Name Key. Order county staff to lay low until the future putative plaintiffs, led by the Fool Key Gang of Three, have gotten the okay from the U.S Fish & Wildlife Service and the Florida Department of Community Affairs.
 
If and when that happens, which might be a BIG IF, the County Commission and county staff should continue to lay low, on the ground that the case has already been decided in court: res ajudicata bars it being brought again.
 
If the putative plaintiffs and their lawyer fool around any further and actually sue Monroe County, that’s when the county’s defense lawyer cross-sues for punitive damages, claiming abuse of process of the court. Cross-sues the No Name Key Homeowners Association, each Association plaintiff individually, and Lawyer Bakke, who has a fool for a client and 29 other fools for clients, too.
 
Sloan Bashinsky, ex-lawyer-turned-fool

(Today’s bridge over to No Name Key)

A whine to the recent ”No Grid Key” Today’s Flakey Drivel post to GoodMorningFloridaKeys.com. It also was posted to yesterday’s Coconut Telegraph page of bigpinekey.com. I don’t think I know this person, whose first name is Jim (all he gave me), because I don’t recognize his email address. My reply follows. 
 
Sloan – What Are You Smoking? Sloan, my friend, I had high hopes for you on the CT till I read your last post about No Name. Now I thinks the only thing high are not my hopes but you. Are you serious? Writing about what you heard from someone who heard something from another? Getting ‘answers’ from Mayor Smurphy? Please! Your dates are wrong and none of your facts are, well, factually correct.

Let’s start with the numbers. So you say Mayor Smurphy has explained that power will cost $ 900,000? BZZZ! Sorry, wrong answer. The current quoted cost is $ 690,000 and is dropping. Just to bring you up to speed since you have been gone a bit bro, those that oppose power on NNK broker in misinformation and lies. They also like to trump up the numbers every chance possible, $ 1,000,000 being the often quoted figure over the last year. Your Mayor’s figure of $ 900k works nicely to continue the deception and lies but the cost is under $ 700 and likely to go down.

Not that the cost cost matters, or should, to you or the ‘lawyer’ you ‘interviewed’. No Name has 43 homes. 30 of those homeowners have agreed to pay the entire cost, all of it my friend. They have not asked or demanded that the County pay for this service. Now if the County further attacks and trys to stop us from bringing something so unremarkable as power to our homes then your lawyer friend and you might want to worry. But first, if I were you, I’d worry about the type of government that would do what this one has dating back four decades to the islands residents.

You say you don’t like that some on No Name want power to increase the value of their home. Well, this morning I woke up in the United States of America and in my America my fellow citizens thankfully have the right to think and feel however they want. Sloan, are you writing from CUBA? Sure, some want power to increase their home’s values, so what? Some want it for life safety reasons. Some (many, most even) for environmental reasons. Some want it because they just want it and don’t want to be told that you can have it and they can’t. Some want it for all of these reasons. Sloan, why do you want and have commercial power, air and such evil luxuries?

My reply: 
 
Hmmm,
 
I don’t smoke.
 
Or drink.
 
Or take pills, mushrooms, LSD, etc.
 
It’s au naturale with me.
 
Hmmm, although you use a “keysconcerns” email handle, it looks to me that your concerns are isolated to No Name Key homeowners, including yourself, who bought off the grid with eyes wide open, and now want on the grid.
 
The $900,000 above ground estimate for electricity to No Name Key homes was reported in KW Citizen. Sylvia Murphy was not the original source for me, but she had heard the same number. Of course, the final cost estimates are what they are. The lower the cost, the better for No Name Key residents who want power. And water. If it happens.
 
I was not aware there were 30 homeowners on No Name Key who wanted power and water run out there. I picked 30 out of the air in my earlier post, for the sake of having a number to work with.
 
I was not aware those 30 want to pay the entire cost. Nor, from what I’ve heard, does the County Commission know that.
 
If there are 30 homeowners who have agreed to pay the entire cost, is there something in writing from them, signed by each of them, agreeing to pay the cost?
 
If so, do they agree in writing to pay the entire cost up front? Are they willing and able to put the cost into escrow, to guarantee past and future work done by the Aqueduct Authority, Keys Energy and County staff on their behalf is fully reimbursed?
 
People who built/ purchased homes on No Name Key have the same legal rights now that they had when the homes were built/purchased. Won’t surprise me if a local court decides what those rights are. Won’t surprise me that whatever the court decides, there is an appeal. Maybe a few years later we will have a final legal ruling. And it won’t surprise me if the loser has to pay the winner’s litigation costs.
 
Please do not take any of the above as my consent to electricity and water being run out to No Name Key. I oppose it totally. You and the other 29 knew there was no electricity or water on No Name Key, when you made it your home. You knew the restrictions in effect. Either you later had a change of heart, or you had an agenda all along to speculate that you could get power and water out there and profit from your speculation. Either way, I don’t feel sympathetic.
 
I purchased a one-acre lot, with a trailer on it, on Little Torch Key in 2006. I paid cash. I bought at the top of the market. It had a ROGO letter from the County, saying the trailer could be torn down and removed and a dwelling built, all with proper county permitting and oversight. It lies next to a dedicated wildlife refuge. The premium I paid was worth it to me, because of the ROGO letter and abutment to the refuge. I probably could have purchased on No Name Key, but I didn’t want to live off the grid.
 
Alas, the real estate market collapsed, I’d take a bath if I tried to sell it. The market collapsed, in large measure, due to the County Commission letting far too many homes be built in the Keys, many on speculation. I suppose I could dream up some sort of screwy allegations to file in court that the County Commission is responsible for the big devaluation in my property. I saw screwier things happen when I practiced law, much of which time was devoted to representing home buyers and sellers, and even real estate companies and developers before I became a home buyer and seller advocate.
 
I developed a national reputation, infamous mostly, in the residential real estate industry, after I was interviewed by Jane Pauley on the TODAY Show in early 1985, over my first book, HOME BUYERS: Lambs to the Slaughter?, in which I laid bare to the bone the way real estate agents and brokers, mortgage lenders and home sellers “conspire” to fleece the buyer. I was interviewed and reviewed all over the country over that book, and its successor, SELLING YOUR HOME $WEET HOME, and the third book, KILL ALL THE LAWYERS? - A Client’s Guide to Hiring, Firing, Using and Suing Lawyers.
 
So when you speak to me of home buyers’ rights, you speak to someone who used to be the lead lawyer in America on the subject. You speak to someone who would have told you back in 1985, if you had been on TODAY with Jane Pauley, the General Counsel of the National Association of Realtors and myself, that you had no moral or legal right to complain about buying a home on No Name Key that had no public electricity or water when you purchased it. You knew what you were getting going in, and now you have to live with it.
 
Were I a judge presiding over this case today, I’d tell you the same thing. Were I an appellate judge hearing your appeal, I’d tell you the same thing. Even if you were willing to pay for the entire cost of running electricity and water out to No Name Key, all by yourself, I’d tell you the same thing. You have no legal right to it. Not even if you pay for it. What you have a legal right to is what you have: a home off the grid.
 
In some dedicated wild life refuges/nature parks, homes like yours are being condemned and purchased by local, state or national governments, and then torn down and removed. Maybe you should try that approach. Maybe it will prevail because No Name Key now is a dedicated wildlife refuge.
 
Sloan Bashinsky
 
P.S. After making my reply yesterday, I read in KW West Citizen that the U.S. Department of Fish & Wildlife, which overseas the National Key Deer Refuge, sent in a letter asking for more information about running utilities out to No Name Key, and suggesting any electrict service be run in under ground, and that the U.S Government (U.S. taxpayers ultimately) will not pay for any of it. I had read in an earlier Citizen article that underground power to No Name Key was preliminarily estimated to be $1,500,000, which comes to $50,000 each for the 30 homes said to be wanting and willing to pay for it. I imagine running public water out there will cost a pretty penny, too, per home wanting it.
 
Even later yesterday, I received a resend from John Hammerstrom, about cistern water on No Name Key. I had sent the original to Ed at bigpinekey.com, to post to the “Coconut Telegraph” gossip page, but I don’t know if Ed posted it. It bears on the safety of cistern water generally, so here it is again. I’d not accept any water sample Beth Ramsay-Vickery produces, because I would not be able to trust it was authentic. Were I the county, and I’ve suggested this before, I’d send someone to her home unexpectedly to take samples from her cistern for evaluation in the county lab. 

================================

Sloan,

You’ve no doubt had a full in-basket and plenty of facts, but in case you may have missed it, here’s a repeat of an earlier, related email regarding the attempt to force the Aqueduct Authority to install utility water on No Name Key.

Ms. Ramsay-Vickrey contacted scientists regarding her assertion that rainwater cisterns are inherently unsafe. The answer of at least one of those scientists was not forwarded to the Health Department and the Florida Keys Aqueduct Authority.

Below is the email sent to Ms. Ramsay-Vickrey by Dennis J. Lye – Research Microbiologist with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

Sincerely,

John Hammerstrom

Hi Beth,
 
The letter that I sent you is probably the best that I can do foryou.   There is no evidence that cistern water (in general) poses considerable health risk.   Your particular situation may warrant such a statement but I cannot supply it for you.   Perhaps someone in the local area could support your stance for your particular system (especially as
far as chemical exposures are concerned).

There are hundreds of non-chemist lay people that are successfully implementing multi-level treatments systems and generating potable quality water from cistern systems.  In fact, most users have the opposite opinion that you express.   Most users of cistern systems contend that they are capable of generating potable quality water.

I quite agree that a public system would relieve users of the effort needed to produce good quality water from their cistern systems.

From your description, it would seem that your best presentation would be concerning possible chemical contamination of the rainwater which requires costly remedial treatments.  You will probably have to
produce evidence that your particular cistern system contains water contaminated with specific chemical compounds.

Sorry that I cannot offer more assistance.

Dennis J. Lye
Research Microbiologist

The opinions expressed in these statements are solely those of Dr. Dennis Lye and are not meant to represent any endorsement, recommendation, or policy proposed by the USEPA.

Dennis J. Lye
Research Microbiologist
(513)  569-7870

P.P.S. In case anybody wonders, yes, the county commissoners all receive email copies of of my posts, and some of them tell me they even read them.

Sloan