Good Morning Florida Keys

The weight and frequency of the “downloading” that’s been getting pushed through me into my posts for the last month leaves me wondering/thinking/feeling/even guessing that I’m being lifted out of not only Key West but also the Keys. If I was to remain in the area, it simply would not be “rational” for me to burning so many bridges and covering so much territory that I have been restrained from covering before recently.
 
I wrote yesterday of the flames and the Grail journey. I could write reams about that, but a little more needs to be said, to leave it complete enough, although only a skeleton admittedly.
 
The flames are absolutely necessary to burn out impurities in a person’s body, mind, emotions, soul and spirit. There is no other way for a person to change from what he/she is to what he/she could be. Jesus spoke of this fiery passage as the baptism in fire. It is also mentioned, although obliquely, in Genesis, after the fall. God placed two Cherubim with fire swords around the Tree of Live to protect its ways.
 
This is the most misunderstood of all misunderstood passages in the Bible. Misunderstood, because it is viewed as God banning Adam and Eve (humanity) from Eden, where the Tree of Life lives. There was no ban. God never said Eden was off-limits. But to go there, people have to pass through the fire swords and be purified — if they survive the purification, which can take a long time and make you wish you never were born.
 
Eden and the Tree of Life are no more a garden or a tree that grow in the ground, than the ground is a garden and tree that grow on the moon. Eden and the Tree of Life are a state of being, which Jesus called the Kingdom of God, Paradise. There were people, once upon a time, who actually did live there. It was idyllic. They were innocents, had no way to truly appreciate what they had to enjoy.
 
When that epoch ended, they experienced the opposite. This was necessary, for them to appreciate what they had had and to cherish it above life itself, if they ever got to experience it again. To return to that exhalted state, they had to be purified and wizened, so when they returned they would know how to stay there and what would cause them to lose it again, but on their own volition. The first fall was contrived, in other words, but the second fall is error by those who fall. Horrible error.
 
Those selected today to attempt the return to Paradise are put on probation for a while. Up to a point, they can turn away with no penalty, or not much of one. But there comes a point of no return, so to speak, where turning away results in the original fall from Eden. For these there is no going back to what they had before they were selected. They live out their days in the orignal fall. This is the peril warned against by the anonymous-authored Letter to the Hebrews in the New Testament. The letter is addressed to Jews, who had known and were trained by Jesus and were falling away because the flames were so intense. The author, Mary Magdalene, encouraged them to return to the return to Eden and the Tree of Life, or perish.

This journey is possible for anyone. It doesn’t matter what religion someone belongs to. It is not necessary to belong to a religion. The jouney is not limited to heterosexuals. It is available to all people, and gays do not have to become heterosexual during the journey. Saul of Tarus is the Bible’s proof of that last sentence. Every woman near him knew he was gay, before and after he became Paul, whom many Christians today have put on the same level as Jesus.
 
Omitted from the Gospels, although it can be seen by reading between the lines, is the love affair between Mary Magdalene and Jesus, which was the prototype for a heterosexual man and a woman, joined by heaven, to make the return to Eden and the Tree of Life together. A return that was interrupted by Magdalene not wishing to leave her culture when Jesus left Palestine and headed east. Perhaps if they had finished out their lives together, until death parted them, it would have created a shift in the collective soul of the species, which would have allowed other paired heterosexual couples to follow in their wake, instead of attempting to blaze an entirely new trail on their own.
 
I have had quite a few gay friends. I have known gay couples. I even dated a gay woman for a while, who is like a sister to me today. She is a deacon in her Presbyterian church in Birmingham, sings in the choir. I once knew several men couples, who attended Sunday school together in a Birmingham Baptist church. I was instrumental in their attending that Sunday school class, which received them warmly, without any judgment whatsoever. What I did that induced those men to give that Sunday school class a try, other than tell them they would be welcome, was tell them St. Paul was gay, and why I felt that way.
 
From my experiences with gays in Birmingham and later in Key West, which is a haven for gays, I am certain they are treated the same by God as straight people are treated. I am certain gays can make the same return to Paradise straights can make, within the context of being gay. They can do it individually, that is, without being in a relationship; and they can do it with a partner selected for them by angels assigned to them. I imagine much the same “rules” apply to paired gay couples, as apply to selected straight couples.
 
I have been put with six different women, to attempt the Adam-Eve return to Eden and the Tree of Life. Two of the women and I tasted Paradise often, but there was still too much poison in us, for us to stay inn Paradise together, or perhaps even separately. Poison that had to be burned by what Jesus called the Holy Spirit.

This was not a quick process; it was not done in the form of a miracle. It was done over time, as life threw one test after another at us; tests designed to provoke the poison in us to come up in small doses, so it could be worked with and transmuted, if we didn’t do something contrary to the treatment, such as go war with each other, or with somone one else who had provoked us. Or with God. Or by trying to eliminate the upheaveling with chemicals, legal or illegal, over the county or prescribed. Or by killing ourselves.

The upheaveling, internally and externally, was absolutely necessary, because it loosened us up internally, made us more fluid/viscous, so the angels assigned to us could do some rearranging during and just following each upheaval. When we were comfortable, we were more solid, rigid, and more difficult to rearrange internally. The angels prefer stirring a thick soup, to using a sledgehammer to break down brick walls. Stirring a thick soup is not only easier, it’s a lot safer. Breaking down brick walls can create psychosis and the original fall.

The volatility in a couple-attempt at Paradise is far greater than the volatility experienced by those who do it solo, such as many have done in history, usually in celibacy. People like Saul, who became Paul. That is a great achievement, filled with angel-induced upheaveling, internally and externally. Only the most durable and faithful survive it. However, that journey is not nearly the challenge as the couple journey. That is why eyes and desire for other people are removed from a bonded mating pair; otherwise, it would be impossible for a selected couple to make the return as a unit.
 
I was changed, so I only had eyes and desire for the woman I was put with. When I’m not with an assigned women, other women can and do turn my head, and sometimes I imagine having sex with them.  However, even iif one of them was willing to do it, I would not be able to comply, without the angels’ concurrence, which might be pretty embarrassing for both her and me.
 
Many people, should they read what I wrote so far above, would say it’s blasphemy, the work of the devil. There’s nothing I can do about that, nor do I care to do anything about it. I have learned such people are on their own journey with God, as are we all. What I have observed, though, is someone can read the Bible ongoing and still not change appreciably. I have observed someone can accept Jesus as Lord, as still not change appreciably.

As a black man of note living in Texas said during a media interview, “Going to church has about as much chance of turning you into a Christian, as standing in a garage has of turning you into an automobile.” Christendom hardly has a hold on God, and hardly stands in any greater favor with God than does any other religion, or even no religion. What counts is how a person lives. There is no other way, and Jesus said this many times in the Gospels.
 
Since being abducted by two angels in early 1987, whom I much later realized were Jesus and Michael, I have not met one person who had a clue of how to get back to Paradise. Many were trying, in myriad and sometimes conflicting ways, but none of us knew how to do it. I still don’t know how to do it. What I know is how it’s done by the angels assigned to me and quite a few other people.
 
Where I stand in the return to Paradise, I cannot say, for I have not been told. However, in April 2006, I was told by a female voice, in my sleep, that I was trying very hard and doing very well, and to keep at it. This was the same night I was told the species had failed to reach escape velocity, which had happened before, but I could still do it, about which I wrote two posts back in time. This also was the same night I was told, “Remember Daniel” — the Old Testament’s noted dreamer. And when I was told, ”Like but not greater than Jesus.” Yet the pummeling continued. The angels were never satisfied with me, and still aren’t.
 
The Paradise return, I wrote in yesterday’s post, might reduce the species’ population to 50,000 individuals, or maybe down to 5,000, or perhaps down to 500, if it is applied to the species across the board, all at once. This may seem incredibly insane to some, perhaps many people. However, the doubting Thomases do not live in my skin; they have not had my experiences. They do not know the people I have seen drawn into the Paradise return, who were burned alive, until they could take no more. I am not allowed to bail; I cannot quit the course.
 
I write about it, not to be believed, but because someone may be very glad some day to run across what I wrote. If it doesn’t save a life, it at least might help someone comprehend what is happening. I gained that sort of help by stumbling across the comentaries of St. John of the Cross in the summer of 1990. About six months later, the voice I sometimes write about told me in a dream, “With respect to St. John of the Cross, you haven’t seen anything yet.” Then, I was covered with Evil. It was horrible, terrifying. I awoke trying to get out of it. I awoke in shock, terror. And, my ego was inflated, to have been told such a thing.
 
Juan de la Cruz was a clositered monk. He avoided women like they were the plague. He advised people to avoid all phenomenon, and come they would. There were was no way to know if a phenomenon was Lucifer in disguise. Ignore it all, keep turning back into the darkkness, he advised. He used accepted rituals to trigger the Paradise return, nearly all of which took place internally, in the darkness, and then in the blackness.
 
Juan said very few people survivied the entire course, and those fortunantes did so because they were in a protected environnent while they rode it out. Woe be unto anyone, he said, in whom this inside journey started, who was not protected, surrounded by people who knew something of what was happening.
 
Like Juan, I experienced the two dark nights of the soul he described in his commentaries. He wrote that the end of the second dark night, which almost no one survived, was the end of the journey. Not for me. I had several dark nights, after the first two. None were as horrible as the second, but all were terrible.
 
Also unlike Juan, I was put not only to experience the return internally, but also to engage the world fully. I was put with a series of different, accelerated women, who were used to trigger and accelerate my own process/Paradise return. I was put in very uncomfortable situations: world travel into unfamilair places, being homeless, running for public office, all of which triggered and accelerated my process. I was used to intruduce others to the same way of living, which triggered upheavals in them, and often in me, to further my own process. I learned God tests me where I am weak, not where I am strong. Endless tests, endless upheavals. Endless Holy Fire.
 
I was innnundated with phenomenon, which I was shown to receive and, in most caes, to view as parts of me I had lost, forgotten, thrown away, or never knew even existed — the good, the bad, the beautiful and the ugly. I met the Evil in the St. John of the Cross dream many times. Often it was part of me. Often it was part of someone else. Often it was inchoate, in spirit. I learened all people, including me, have a demonic twin, which has to be included in this journey, for it to be successful. Nothing can be left behind, tossed away. It will snatch you back, if you try to leave it behind.
. 
Juan’s journey was one of shrinking, discarding, reducing to nothing. Then, in that untimate nada state, in the blackness, alone, a singularity was reached; merger with God occurred. As indicated above, I was taken the opposite direction: to absorb it all, and, perhaps, I can’t say it happened yet, reach the mirror opposite of the singularity Juan reached — the totality. All of which seemed forcasted in the St. John of the Cross dream, and later in a revelatory/clarifying poem that fell out of me in April 1994:
 
Earth,
The sacred prism
through which souls are refracted
into their elemental parts,
Purified in Holy Fire,
Then one-forged
and sent on their way
to not even God knows where,
Simply because they are all
unique emanations of God,
Evolving . . .
 
Precious little help, and most likely a great deal of harm, is caused by Paradise candidates trusting the counsel of people who have not had the experience – relatives, friends, ministers, mental health workers, addiction counselors, shamans, gurus, spiritual healers, and so forth. The ancient Persian saying, “Let God kill him who himself does not know and yet presumes to show others the way to the door of His Kingdom,” should be kept ever in mind by the hapless soul who goes into the Paradise return. People in that person’s life cannot help, other than leave well enough alone, and, if needed, provide the victim with room and board and clothing.
 
Were I able to go back in time, to the day before I was abducted by Jesus and Michael in early 1987; were I able to find my then self and try to explain what lay ahead, that me would not be able to take it in. That me might think I was insane or the devil. Maybe the only way to get that me’s attention would be for angels to put that me inside of this me for about ten seconds. Any longer probably would be fatal, or drive that me permanently insane, simply because that me had no preparation (gotten into shape) to experience being me today.
 
Maybe comparing that me to a horse and buggy, and this me to a lunar space rocket, would serve to make the point. And maybe not. People today have some sense of a horse-drawn buggy and a moon rocket, but they have no sense of the trip back to Eden and the Tree of Life. It truly is not of this world, and there is no way to figure it out. The only way to know it is to experience it. If you do experience it, you will change in ways you cannot possibly imagine. You will leave just about everything behind, including most people you know. They will see to it, if you and the angels do not.
 
Did I dream about this post last night? Yep. Did I get instruction in my dreams about stuff I had not handled correctly when I wrote the first draft yesterday? Yep. Did I use the dreams to, hopefully, improve this post so that it is, hopefully, good enough? Yep. Is it good enough? I don’t have a clue. But if it’s not, I will be shown and pressed to get it good enough. 
 
Sloan Bashinsky

  
 
Five times I ran for local office (2003, 2006, 2007, 2008 and 2009). In 2004, I declared I was running, and then got all messed up in my thinking and pulled out. Disaster. It took the angels two years to straighten me out inside.

I want to be excused running for office again. I see no point to it, other than to grind me up some more. Before I was put into politics, I learned people don’t really want to change or grow; they prefer to stick with what is familiar, even if they don’t like it. Running for office showed me people collectively don’t want anything new, either. They say they want change, but they really don‘t.

State Attorney Dennis Ward certainly proved that, didn’t he? What he suggested to the county commissioners should have been a drop-dead no-brainer. Now some of them want to weaken a county personnel ethics ordinance they only passed last year. And they want themselves and the county manager and attorney to be exempt from any local ethical oversight. Is not top management supposed to set the standard for the rest of the employees? Otherwise, what’s the point in even having a personnel code of ethics? Why not abolish it altogether, so everyone is treated the same?

I was asked in my sleep, in March 2004, “What do you think of the species?” I’d heard this same voice quite a few times. I had come to trust it’s truthfulness, although I didn’t always like what it said. Especially I didn’t always like what it said about me.

In thinking through my answer, I learned how I really felt about God trying to help humanity. I told the angels, although a few individuals had been helped down through the ages, everything heaven had attempted to help this species, in general, had failed. If Jesus was unable to turn the species around, how could anybody else?
 
I said, look a me. Look at all the special attention I had received from heaven, and I was still a mess. If I was the best heaven could do, then what was the point of any more effort. If heaven did to everyone what it was doing to me, maybe 50,000 people would survive. Why not just take the species off this world and put it somewhere it at least a chance to move forward, instead of backward, as was underway?

I heard no criticism back. However, about a month later, the voice told me in my sleep, “You were the keynote speaker at a homeless conference and you didn’t even show up.” Alyson Matley, the Keynoter’s Key West Bureau Chief, had written a lovely piece about my candidacy, after I declared in early January that year. There was no worming out of the meaning of the voice’s accusation. Like I said, it took the angels two years to get me straightened out.
 
In March 2006, I moved to Little Torch Key. In early April, just before I knew I would run against County Commissioner George Neugent, the voice told me in my sleep, “The species did not reach escape velocity. This has happened before, but you can still do it.” I was given a general outline: I would undergo a series of experiences designed to increase my spiritual pace. The experiences would be like heavenly bodies space vehicles approach, to enter their gravitational field and gain the slingshot effect that slings them on their way at a greater velocity.
 
Running for office in 2006, and later for mayor of Key West in 2007, and against County Commissioner Sonny McCoy in Key West in 2008, and for mayor of Key West in 2009, were slingshot-effect experiences. As were all of the other experiences I had, which put me on the edge of and even all the way into the flames.
 
All along, I found myself returning to the question: “What do you think of the species?” Each time my answer was the same, except I started reducing the number of people I thought would survive if what was being done to me was done to the species. Finally, I reduced the number to 500. Never once was I criticized by the angels for holding to my answer, or reducing the estimated number of survivors of the regimen I’m on.
 
It occurred to me yesterday that an “Indictment” is being prepared, and my experiences are part of the evidence. Also included in the witness list are the three county commissioners, who ignored Dennis Ward. The Key West City Commission, who declined to have a nude breach, which would have turned the city‘s economy around and challenged its religious citizens to get naked in the spiritual sense. Barack Obama, who accepted the Nobel Peace Prize, while continuing the wars of his predecessor in office.

The witness list goes on and on. The Keys are just a microcosm of the far greater macrocosm. World-wide, statistical samplings are being taken in the species, to help the angels determine what to do next. What that might be, I haven’t a clue.
 
What I might have a clue of, I’m not positive but I’ve had the recurring thought since the early 1990s: heaven doesn’t have its act together entirely, and what is going on down here on earth reflects what is going on elsewhere. As above, so below; as below, so above. Not a very comforting thought, but perhaps all the more reason for people to strive to change and maybe those changes work their way back up the line into the spirit realms. Changes in the spirit realms, in turn, work down the line into humanity. And so on. A reciprocal back-scratching, so to speak.
 
I told a young man last night, who has been accepted provisionally into shaman training conducted by angels, most shamans go into the spirit world to attempt to rearrange and/or fix things there, but I was trained to do the work in myself, with angelic help, and was taught to try to teach others to do the same. As I change, as others change, our changes effect the other realms. I said this also was the method Jesus used, although I don’t recall him saying anywhere in the Gospels that heaven would be helped by people changing on this world.
 
Meanwhile, about two months ago, my father came to me in a dream and said he would see me at the ship on March 20. Not long after that came signs I might move back up to Little Torch Key, to run against George Neugent again. I had signed the lease on my Key West apartment, on March 21, 2007, the Spring Equinox. When I paid my rent last month, I gave two months’ notice. I have to be out by March 20.
 
Nothing in me wants to move back to Little Torch Key and live in that ratty trailer in the woods all by lonesome. I went bonkers living there alone from March 2006 until March 2007. After moving down to Key West, I wondered over and over what was the point of my even buying the place on Little Torch? I was told to buy it, but what was the point? Four times I tried to give it away to an organization or person doing what appeared to be much needed work. Each attempt aborted after the prospective donee did something to queer the energy. But for that, I would have given the place away, with my having the right to live there until I passed over, if I wanted to live there.
 
From a metaphysical perspective, I can see a reason for my owning dirt in the Keys. It grounds me here; gives me earth as well as spirit roots, an anchor from which to operate on earth and in heaven. Until I had ground roots, my work in the Keys was more transient. I spent most summers somewhere else. Since buying the Little Torch place, I have lived in the Keys continuously. I was no longer a pelican who flew north for the summer, then came back to the Keys for the rest of the year. Thus the email address, keysmyhome@hotmail.com, and the two websites, goodmorningkeywest.com and goodmorningfloridakeys.com.
 
Yet, I’m not sure I even want to live in the Keys any longer. Nor am I sure I will be allowed to live here any longer. Maybe I will be relocated. Maybe I won’t even stay on this planet. I’ve been joking with people lately that I bought a one-way ticket to Jupiter and the routing is via Venus, where I’m to pick up a harem before being sling-shot-ed to my new hideout. Of course, that might all be metaphor for a spirit journey on this world, through the female/love essence into the male/jovial essence.
 
Amidst such uncertainly the human mind and psyche, as they exist today, have a really hard time coping. Alas, living in uncertainty, suspense, surprise, wonder and curiosity is the way human beings are supposed to live. When everything is predictable, comfortable, static, people solidify, freeze, stagnate, deteriorate. There is something really wrong. Just as there is something really wrong if people aren’t remembering and learning from and being guided by their dreams.
 
If I was asked by the voice to choose one book for human beings to read and keep, I would choose Mutant Message Down Under, by Marlo Morgan. I would choose it because it is about human beings who live correctly, as the species was designed to live. I don’t mean living in the wild. I mean the way they live where they are. I am pressed to live the same way where I am. Read the book. Read it again, if you already read it. The county library system has it, and it’s easy to buy online.
 
On June 7, 2004, my honky tonk angel wife Patricia came to me in a dream and stood in front of a large mountain over the top of which I was going to have to climb to get to whatever lay on the other side. She said, “Sloan, you need to go back to Helen” Helen, Georgia, where I had met her in 2001, during my first pelican trip north for the summer.
 
A few hours after the dream, I did a soul drawing of the mountain with Patricia standing behind it. Then, a poem fell out of me about a ship, which I have published a few times before. So I went back to Helen, to begin, unknown to me, the 2-year rehabilitation from having dropped out of the race during which I was supposed to have been the keynote speaker.  
 
The poem explained my “ocean” voyage with God. A voyage I wouldn’t wish on anyone, but a voyage I’m pretty sure everyone has to take, sooner or later. I’m pretty sure the ship in the poem is the same ship my father meant when he told me last January that he would see me at on March 20.
 
Patricia dreamt of the ship in 2001. In her dream, she was told ours would be an exotic voyage. Quite a sense of humor, the angels had, putting that spin on what Patricia and I would experience as a couple. Quite a sense of humor.
 
How many times did I tell the angels I could not wait to leave this world and get my hands around their pretty throats. I cannot possibly remember all the times, but I’d wager it was more than 1,000. I wager Patricia might like to wring their necks, too.
 
These angels are descended from a long line of flame throwers. They are kindred to the two fire-sword-wielding Cherubim God placed at the Tree of Life to guard its ways. They are kindred to the fellow who said in the Gospels that he came to set the world on fire and he was anxious to get on with it.
 
I lost several close friendships lately. Burnt up. There is a reason my load is lightening. But what’s the reason? Time will show it. 
 
I became convinced in early 2002 that Patricia was a emanation out of that same fiery soul in the Gospels. Here’s the poem she mused on June 7, 2004. 
 
“Shanghaied”
A calling to serve carries its own wisdom,
which legitimates both the calling and the serving
so that the two are one:
Only the one called to serve
can know this wisdom,
and for some who are called
the knowing comes easily,
while for others the knowing is a fiery baptism.
Each calling is different,
and while some callings can be declined,
others cannot,
and those whose calling is without repentance
know they are in it for the duration of the calling,
and while others may try to persuade them out of it,
the calling for ones such as these always prevails;
thus is it advised to all called for keeps
that they view their calling as a blessing
even when it seems at times to be a curse,
and that they try to reconcile the loss of their captain status
and allow the Spirit of God to man the helm of their ship,
and be glad and willing crew members thereon,
knowing that all sailing ships of souls
need a crew as well as a captain
to maintain and navigate the ship through
seas of many tones, depths and flavors;
so consider each league sailed
as part of the overall journey
going to where the captain deigns to go
by using whatever winds and sea currents available
to navigate the ship to the experiences
this ship and crew need to have
in order to fulfill their calling and its wisdom
revealed by the journey of many leagues,
many known only to the ship and its crew,
all of whom come to know,
some sooner than others,
that once conscripted
there is no safe jumping ship.
 
Patricia and I might have been really happy in that trailer on Little Torch Key. It might have made my interest in running for office a lot brighter. She has a keen eye and ear, she would have been a good terrific ally. Imagine two of me, sort of. No, maybe that would be too much to imagine.
 
Patricia loves nature. She loves to fish. She has a sharp wit. She loves to cook. She loves to tease, dance, be naughty. She has a green thumb that’s to die for. Wild animals come to her like they came to Francis of Assisi. She never doubted any of my experiences. How could she? She was having her own.
 
I only had eyes for Patricia, when we were together; cleaving was easy. Alas, we didn’t have enough money, and the angels put us in the flames every time we were together. It’s hard to cleave when nuclear bombs keep falling on you at the most unexpected, inconvenient times.??
 
Sloan Bashinsky

In a nap after lunch yesterday, I heard “breaking news this afternoon.” Waking, I wondered if that meant I would finally see what to post yesterday, as I had not posted anything in the morning. About an hour later, I received a phone call from a Keynoter reporter in Marathon. He said they were doing a story on candidates and potential candidates: Did I have anything to say? I remembered the dream; this phone call from a news reporter was it’s meaning.

I often have dreams that herald something coming my way. It may come the same day as the dream, or farther in the future.
 
For example, in mid-2001, a fellow who lives part-time in Key West, and lives most of the time in his van, came to me in a dream and said, “I nominated you for mayor of Key West.” At that time, I was summering in north Georgia. On my return to Key West in September, I started moving deeply into Key West politics. Eventually, I did run for mayor, in 2003, and twice more after that. All three runs were heralded by this fellow showing up in a dream and in my waking life, to make sure I understood what was coming down.
 
I dreamt of this fellow last night. On waking, I understood I was supposed tell about him today, add his story into what I had already written a draft of last night. Because of other dreams last night, I wondered if my friend also had a message for me about the phone call from the Keynoter reporter. A message I need another dream or two to clarify.
 
My friend’s dream announcement in 2001 was a follow up to a dream I’d had passing through Tallahassee on a Greyhound bus in late 2000, en route to the Keys. The federal judge, for whom I had clerked, came and told me that he was thinking about getting into politics. I said back to him, I didn’t think that was a very good idea, but knowing him, he was probably going to do it.
 
When he was on this world, behind the scenes Judge Allgood ran the state and national Democratic party in Alabama. No Democrat ran for office without first getting his blessing. So I knew I was going to get involved in politics in the Keys. Little did I know to what extent. Little did I know.
 
There is no way my rational/conscious mind, which might be likened to a pipsqueak, could have conjured up any of the dereams reported above. They came from far beyond the pipsqueak, from something HUGE. Nearly all of my dreams come from that same something HUGE. I could write a lot of pages describing such dreams, and often have written of them.
 
I was moved to lead of with dream stuff today, because Jim Hendrick, among many others, scoffs at my dreams. Jim badgers me to use only my rational mind in my dealings with him, and, it seems, in general. He tells me what I get in dreams is a psychotic process, voices in my head, products of my mind.
 
I have had thouands and thousands of dream and waking experiences that totally disagree with Jim, including being told in my sleep, in June 2004, “You need to dream, Sloan, so that you will know what is really going on.” To rely only on my rational mind, the pipsqueak, would be irrational. More than that, it would be madness.
 
That said, here are the texts of email correspondence yesterday and today with Jim; my part is in italics.
 
Sloan,
 
Yesterday’s blog plumbed new depths. I have no interest in responding on my own behalf to your wrathful rants, but feel obligated to debunk your false statements about others.
 
Your latest revelation, that I told “George Neugent, and perhaps Commissioners Sylvia Murhpy [sic] and Mario Di Gennaro, and County Manager Roman Gastesi and County Attorneys Suzanne Hutton and Bob Shillinger, how to deal with” the issue of attendance at the annual Ocean Reef dinner, is completely false. None of them has talked with me about that matter, much less sought my advice. And why would you assume that they’d want or need my advice concerning a subject on which they’d already received the benefit of your divinely-inspired counsel?
 
I would be surprised and flattered if the Ocean Reef Club were to provide an airplane to fly me to Key Largo, but that’s never happened. Your revelation that “They send an airplane down to Key West to fetch him up there on their dime when they want to see him” is just another of your imaginations. I flew there once, thanks to a pilot friend who flew us up at his expense in his 2-seat aircraft. If any of Ocean Reef Club’s executives were to read your blog, they would also be surprised by the assertion that I am their lawyer and that Ocean Reef Club “puts so much stock in” my advice. Since my Florida Bar suspension, Ocean Reef Club hasn’t retained me to represent them, sought legal advice from me, or paid me a dime. They rely on an in-house attorney and hire outside counsel (not me) when needed. You know next to nothing about Ocean Reef; you haven’t been there in decades and probably wouldn’t recognize the place. You know none of Ocean Reef Club’s officers or directors, and it’s obvious that you didn’t bother to speak to anyone at Ocean Reef to verify the “facts” about their supposed relationship with me that you falsely proclaimed in your blog. You own them an apology, but I’ve never known you to apologize for anything; perhaps, being divinely inspired means never having to say you’re sorry.
 
If a rational person were confronted with facts refuting the assertions that he believed God and angels directed him to proclaim, he would conclude that his belief was wrong. But then, a rational person wouldn’t be so firmly possessed of such beliefs, would he?

Jim,

I wrote that I have been hearing that you are advising county commissioners, and it bothers me to hear it.

You don’t remember telling me about being flown up to Ocean Reef in a private plane and how nice it was up there, and how nice it was not have had to drive?

Regretfully, Jim, I have seen far too much prevarication when your personal interests are on the line. I could enumerate some of it, but right now I feel better about not doing that. Simply stated, I don’t know when to believe you, and when not to believe you. I have to rely on the angels you say I invent to show me where I am wrong in my dealings with you. So far, they haven’t shown me anything. If, when, they do, I will let you know, and publish it.

This sad state of affairs goes with the terrain you entered with your eyes wide open in the Prince of Darkness opening argument, which you knew was bogus. God was not to be denied. A surprise witness neither you nor the Prosecution were expecting walked into the courtroom and nailed you to the cross, for trying to talk her husband into leaving the country to avoid prosecution. She confirmed what you had said on the wire: that some people might view what you were doing as witness tampering. Prophetic.

As for Ocean Reef today, it indeed has changed hugely since my family stayed there in March 1956. Anyone could go in there back then. It was rustic, old Keysy, and reasonably priced. Also true, I know no one there now. I’ll be happy to drive up there and palaver with the same ORCAs who fed George, Sylvia and Mario — and Roman. I’d love to look them in the eye, get a feel for them. I pay my own way, including any food I eat. Then, I write about it. I await their invitation, but am not holding my breath.

Ciao.

Sloan

Of course I remember telling you about being flown up to Ocean Reef, how nice it was not to have to drive, etc. D P flew me up there, as a favor and to see Ocean Reef, where he’d never been. D is a friend of mine from the Palm Beach area who has no connection with Ocean Reef.

You took that one flight and transmogrified it into an ongoing flight service provided to me by Ocean Reef. THAT is the prevarication.
 
The way you described the the trip, it was on business. Even so, I agree, I stretched it out of proportion and I’ll publish that. I’ll correct anything else I stretched or misstated when/if it is shown to me in a way I can go with. So far, this is it.
 
Yes, MY travel was on business, but the pilot & aircraft had nothing to do with that business or with Ocean Reef.

Follow up from Jim:

     “I wrote that I have been hearing that you are advising county commissioners”

     “Sloan finds value in presenting himself as a Cassandra.”  

Cassandra spoke the truth but no one believed her.  She was a prophet, not a gossip. The difference between their respective communications is obvious:  A gossip conveys rumor, often false.

************************
 
I received nothing in dreams last night about amending anything in what I wrote to Jim yesterday. So I will leave it lay, unless/until I receive something in dream time telling me to amend it.
 
As for the call from the Keynoter, I told the reporter I can’t run against George Neugent, if I don’t live in his voting district (2). I said, if I move back into my trailer on Little Torch Key, I will be told by God whether or not I’m to run. Maybe I will be told even before then. Either way, I told the reporter, I would let him know first, since he was the first newsperson to ask me if I’m going to run.
 
I don’t want to run for office this year, or ever again. Alas, I do whatever the hell the angels assigned to me tell me to do. The post Jim Hendrick slammed me about, the angels told me to post it, as it was. They had their reasons.
 
Maybe it was to put a few obvious warts on me, onto which Jim could fasten, so he could discount the fact that I am convinced he is possessed by Lucifer and everyone close to him is in danger of being similarly taken over. If I was mistaken about Jim, I would have been told so in a dream last night. I was not told.
 
To the contrary, I dreamt of the Texas Longhorns, the University of Texas’ football team. Whenever I dream of that team, it is the angels’ way of telling me I’m dealing with Evil in my waking life. On waking, what the Evil is comes to me, if it is not already obvious.
 
I have found, and others who do this kind of work also have found the same thing, that it doesn’t matter how I make a pitch to someone. I will be attacked by Lucifer through that person. Something will be found to make it my problem, so I can be ignored.

That being the case, why even try to make a perfect pitch? Why not just make it easy for the possessed and Lucifer, so they won’t have to work their rational minds so hard to make me out to be the one with the problem?
 
But then, why not put warts on me, to spare me having to take a deliverance attempt all the way to the end. Such a thing takes a long time. It takes a lot of hard work by me and the person assigned to me. It takes a lot of hard work by the angels assigned to the case. And, it is very dangerous for me, physically and spiritually.
 
I have done it many times; no one has gone the distance. A few people went pretty far, but none completed it. I would have gone the same way they went, if it had been left up to me; but I was conscripted and rendered unable to run away.
 
Maybe the angels did me big a favor, by pressing me to post something containing the kind of error my rational mind, the pipsqueak, has been prone to make my entire life.
 
Maybe the angels only wanted me to make the offer to Jim, and then write about it, to offer a perspective alien to the rational mind, and to warn of the danger Jim poses to other people.
 
Maybe the angels sacrificed Jim “for the greater good.” Maybe they gave up on one, hoping to reach many.
 
Do I expect even one person to believe any of this? No. I’d be crazy; it would be irrational to expect anyone to believe it.

Sloan Bashinsky

Jim Hendrick, just after his conviction in Federal Court.
 
The most important thing I learned in law school was a lawyer’s first duty is to do all possible to keep a client out of trouble . This duty carries with it being fully prepared to argue, even vigorously, with a client. This duty carries to even firing a client, resigning from a case, if a client cannot be brought into line. The very last thing a lawyer wants is to let a client run a case, for then the client truly has a fool for a lawyer, and is a fool as well.
 
I don’t like hearing that behind the scenes Jim Hendrick is telling County Commissioner George Neugent, and perhaps Commissioners Sylvia Murhpy and Mario Di Gennaro, and County Manager Roman Gastesi and County Attorneys Suzanne Hutton and Bob Shillinger, how to deal with the conflagration George, Sylvia and Mario unleashed when they attended a private dinner at Ocean Reef Club hosted by high officials in Ocean Reef’s PAC, Ocean Reef Community Association (ORCA). The general ORCA membership was not allowed to attend. The Florida Sunshine Law was the issue, Dennis Ward told all five commissioners well before the meeting. Two of them, Kim Wigington and Heather Caruthers, did not attend.
 
I told the commissioners, by email, that they should not attend the ORCA dinner. I don’t know if they consulted their in-house lawyers. If they did, I hate to think Suzanne and Bob didn’t tell their bosses to skip the ORCA dinner. Just look at the grief George, Sylvia, Mario and County Administrator Roman Gastesi would have avoided, if they simply had listened to their own public servant, Dennis Ward. Just think of the grief they could have avoided if they had later listened to me. There was nothing in it for either Dennis or me; we stood nothing to gain. In ignoring us, George, Mario and Sylvia turned Ocean Reef and their loyalty to it into major campaign issues. There was no downside for them to decline Ocean Reef’s invitation. No downside at all. Make no mistake, they created the conflagration, and then they, especially George, kept dowsing it with more and more gasoline. 
 
I can’t help but wonder how much of this mess – I would say regrettable mess, except for the fact Ocean Reef’s pet commissioners’ true colors needed to be hoisted and waved for all the Keys to see – was egged on by Jim Hendrick from behind the scenes. If Jim was smart, he would have told Ocean Reef to back down, not hold the dinner. He would have told George, Mario and Sylvia to give Dennis Ward what he had requested. But then, maybe Jim sees Dennis as a substitute for the US Attorney that convicted him in federal court. Maybe Jim is still fighting his conviction by substituting himself for George, Mario and Sylvia.
 
Jim is the darling at Ocean Reef. They send an airplane down to Key West to fetch him up there on their dime when they want to see him. I realized Jim was lobbying the County from behind the scenes when, about a year ago, he tried to get me to come over to his office one morning to play chess, instead of attending a county commission meeting, where developers were scheduled to try to persuade the commissioners to allow them to build large condominium projects disguised as hotels.
 
I once clerked for a United States District Judge who presided over every criminal case brought by the US Attorney in the Northern District of Alabama. The same kind of judge who presided over Jim Hendrick’s trial. I saw lots of cases tried. I saw lots of wrangling between the US Attorneys and defense lawyers. I met and got to see in action some truly great defense lawyers. I saw a lot of US Probation Officers at work. I am pretty sure the U.S. District Judge, US Attorney and US Probation Officer assigned to Jim’s case would have been very upset to have seen and heard what I saw and heard.
 
I also imagine the Florida Bar Association, which had disbarred Jim, would have been pretty upset to have seen and heard what I saw and heard. I saw and heard enough signs during Jim’s and my chess games at his old law office and elsewhere, to cause me to think was still practicing law. I saw and heard the signs long before a lawyer dropped in on one of our chess games about six weeks ago and asked Jim if he thought he might ever try to get his law license reinstated? Jim said he might not; he was doing everything he did as a lawyer but go to court.
 
In opening argument at Jim’s trial, his defense lawyer made a great commotion of the government’s main witness going by the handle of the Prince of Darkness. “The Father of Lies,” who could believe anything he said?, the lawyer asked the jury. The jury was not fooled. It believed the US Attorney’s portrait of Jim being quite comfortable with the Prince of Darkness nickname; it was a game he and his co-defendant played, they were close friends, until Jim learned that he had incriminated himself out of his own mouth on the wire worn by the Prince. The jury believed Jim on the wire, when he said what he was doing could be viewed as witness tampering.
 
As soon as Jim’s lawyer learned of the wire and that statement, he should have told Jim to try to make a deal. Instead, the lawyer took the case to trial and made the Prince of Darkness opening argument, which turned into a serious boomerang. The lawyer took the case to trial and made the Prince of Darkness argument because Jim told the lawyer to do it. Not only that, Jim acted as his own co-defense counsel. He questioned witnesses. He testified for himself. Perhaps he even participated in closing argument.
 
During the early part of the trial, Jim sent out a bulk email, “From the Defense Table,” I think it was titled; I was one of the recipients. I was astounded Jim had sent the email out. Astounded his lawyer did not ream him out for it. In the email Jim opined how well he and his lawyer felt the case was going. He and his  lawyer were clueless how the case was going. Jim had a fool for a lawyer (himself), and his lawyer had a fool for a client (Jim). I figured right then and there Jim had a major God-complex.
 
Jim is the lawyer Ocean Reef and its three hip-pocket county commissioners put so much stock in. Jim is the lawyer Ocean Reef and its commissioners listen to, instead of their own State Attorney. I don’t think there is a snowball’s chance of changing that, but I’m supposed to try. So here goes.  
 
The Prince of Darkness opening argument told me what was really in play — Lucifer. I knew sooner or later it would all come to a head, and I was pretty sure how it would turn out. Deliverance work was about all I did before I was put into Keys politics in the early 2000s — not to my great joy, as I detested politics. But then, I didn’t care for deliverance work either. The training was horrible beyond any words, and included my own deliverance. The work itself was horrible and generally unfruitful. I was the one wearing the wire, for God. A requirement of my own Probation.
 
I was told by the angels Jim told me are products of my own psychotic mind, to publish the chain of emails that constituted the deliverance attempt. The emails are lined up below in the reverse order sent, because I have learned trying to put email chains into the actual time order sent tends to mess up the formatting. If you care to read the emails, and perhaps you should not, it’s easy enough to scroll down to the bottom and read them up the line to the last email from me to Jim. He sent another email, which I did deleted unread. Then, I blocked him out of my email account.
 
My opinion, anyone who has close dealings with Jim, business, friendship or whatever, is in grave danger of being taken over by the Lucifer, mostly likely unawares.
  
For anyone who feels I beached a confidence by publishing this material, in the chain of emails is shown where Jim himself authorized publication “for the greater good.” He did not realize what he really meant when he gave me the authorization, but it was his soul’s permission nonetheless. Often do I hear people say something thinking they mean one thing, and I hear two things in complete opposition. I was trained to hear in this way and to respond to the soul’s plea and not to the ego’s demand. I also was trained to be obedient and do what I am told by the angels to do, even though nobody else may agree with it. The angels Jesus, Michael and Melchizdek. And the Holy Spirit, whenever She deigns to chime in.
If you think this is easy for me, if you think I enjoy this, you are gravely mistaken. I have dreaded this day. I have dreaded it. Just writing that brings me to tears.
 
Sloan Bashinsky
 

So Sad

From:	sloan bashinsky (keysmyhome@hotmail.com)
Sent:	Sun 2/07/10 12:58 PM
To:	Jim Hendrick (jtylaw@mac.com)

I don’t know of anything Jesus said about dreams, or of any dream he is reported to have had. I suppose you already know that, though. And that there is no record, as far as has been produced, of Jesus having written anything down about himself, his internal life.
 
There is the report of the three temptations, which Jesus had to have shared with others for it to be in the Gospels. There is the prayer he made in Gethsemane, which he made apparently while the disciples with him slept, which he must have told someone for it to be in the Gospels. There is the payer he made after the Crucifixion, for God to protect his disciples, which someone had to hear or Jesus told about it later, for it to be in the Gospels. He clearly had a direct line to Heaven, and at the Transfiguration the disciples with him experienced it, and also at the baptism by John the Baptist it was observed/heard.
 
In Acts, I think, is described a dream Peter had, when either God or Jesus spoke to him, which changed the course of Peter’s life and led to him being what appears to be the Vatican’s favorite Saint. Also in Acts, as I recall, are a few reports of Paul receiving directives from Above, one of which caused him to go to Rome through many obstacles.
 
I do not feel you are sincere in your inquiry, Jim. You know Tony will tell you about Peter’s dream and plenty of stories from the Old Testament about dreams in which God/angels of the Lord Spoke to people. Trained by Jesuits as you were, you probably know those stories by heart.
 
This with us has been very rough on me. I wept plenty over it yesterday morning. What possessed yout to drag Joelle into it? Where was the compassion in that?
 
I was wondering if this somehow was going to work out. Not any more. You are too clever for your own good, Jim. So sad.
 
Worse, you have been snared by that which you called to yourself in your disastrous opening argument at your trial. An opening argument I suspect was more your doing than your lawyer’s.

I’m the Prince of Darkness’ target, Jim. You are merely the bait. You were God’s target. I am merely the bait.
 
When an attempted intervention like this fails, I have to pull out. It’s too dangerous to keep trying. Any Catholic priest, who was trained in the rites of exorcism before the Church quit teaching those rites to its priests, knows this. That’s one of the reasons I once suggested that you read Father Malachi Martin’s book, Hostage to the Devil. That, and Father Martin reported case that reminded me of you. You slammed him.
 
Anyone close to you is now at grave risk, and now I have to wrestle with whether I’m to so advise the two you brought into this. They won’t believe me in any event, so maybe I will be spared taking it any farther.
 
Sloan

From: jtylaw@mac.com
To: keysmyhome@hotmail.com
Subject: Re: Checkout
Date: Sun, 7 Feb 2010 09:11:03 -0500

I’d like to read what Jesus said about dreams; would you direct me to those parts of the Gospels?  

On Feb 6, 2010, at 11:45 AM, sloan bashinsky wrote:

Maybe  you should talk with Father Tony about his recollection of dreams in the Old and New Testaments, where God/angels of the Lord spoke to people.

---

From: jtylaw@mac.com
To: keysmyhome@hotmail.com
Subject: Checkout
Date: Sat, 6 Feb 2010 09:32:34 -0500

Again, you have attributed a position to me that I don’t hold;  this time, it’s the significance of dreams.   Although I haven’t “decreed” anything about dreams, my opinion concerning dream analysis was instructed by Jung’s writings and personal experiences.  I don’t recall anything in Jung’s writings supporting your assertion that God or angels use dreams to instruct human beings.  Can dreams tell us something about ourselves? Of course.  I just don’t believe that they’re the product of someone other than the dreamer.  I can’t deny the possibility that ESP communication between people may occur in the dream state, but I have no basis for holding that belief.

   

If and when you change your mind about “further dealings”, my door’s open.  Hope it’s sooner than later.

On Feb 5, 2010, at 8:57 PM, sloan bashinsky wrote:

I agree with you, Jim, about the importance of the Gospels, and the new way they offered. But I seriously doubt any person in the New Testament can by scientifically proven to have existed or not to have existed. Same for Jeremiah, Isaiah, Ezekiel, Elihah, Moses, Joshua, Abraham, etc. in the Old Testament.
 
I don’t imagine there were an actual Adam and Eve, but I’m pretty sure there were people like them, who lived for a while in a state other people did not enjoy. I’m also pretty sure human beings did not evolve from monkeys/apes, but were seeded here. 
 
I am what God’s angels made me. My only real contribution was not killing myself during the changes, although I certainly wanted to plenty of times.
 
Driving down to KW from Big Pine Key after lunch today, I saw my old friend, the man o’ war bird, and wondered what attack he heralded and suspected it would be your reply.
 
Both sides of my brain are engaged when I’m awake. I besides the usual human problem solving, I use the objective (right/male) side to observe/witness what is going on around me and how I am engaging it. The subjective (left/female) side operates independent of my rational side, and I’m sort of along for the ride with it.
 
When I’m asleep, the left side of my brain is disengaged just like everybody else’s during sleep. The right side of my brain enables me to have communion with the rest of the creation.
 
People are supposed to dream and remember their dreams. And learn from them. If they don’t, there’s something very wrong. All shamans know this. The eastern buddhists know it. The Druids knew it. The Swiss Psychiatrist C.J. Jung knew it. The people in olden times knew it. Aborigines know it. But you have decreed differently.
 
I shook my head when I learned how you and your lawyer went about your trial. Two lawyers hearing voices in their heads about their own invincibility. The “Prince of Darkness” opening argument told me the ultimate stakes.
 
Over dinner at your home, I told only the second half of what I was told in my sleep in May 2001: ”You cannot do this work correctly if you are looking to get anything back for yourself from the people you are trying to help.” The first half I did not tell was: “You are an ordained Melchizedek exorcist priest going back into a prison where you once lived to try to help people still living there.”
 
Ongoing since then, I have been trying to help people who are, as I once was, unknowingly under the dominion of Lucifer. A mission impossible, the failure of which was forecasted about two weeks before the twin advisory above, when I was told in my sleep, “You will fail but you might enter the Kingdom of God.”
 
As things now stand, I do not care to have further dealings with you. However, it’s not my final call and I’ll let you know if I get a different directive in my sleep. Ironic, indeed, that will be.
 
Sloan
 

---

Date: Fri, 5 Feb 2010 08:02:07 -0800
From: jtylaw@mac.com
To: keysmyhome@hotmail.com
Subject: Re: check mate

 Why do you continue to equate the Old Testament, full of scientifically-disproven myths and utter nonsense, with the Gospels?  The Catholic and Protestant churches frequently publish them together, but they have little else in common.  One speaks of a vengeful god who wreaks horrible punishment on  his children; the other contains the Sermon on the Mount.    Your substitution of Jeremiah for Jesus is preposterous;  like substituting a pawn for a queen......some chess game that is!  If you insist on playing on a crazy-quilt board where the pieces  move illogically, you'll have to find another opponent.      "Like, but not greater than" Jesus, eh?     So you are his equal?     If he comes to you in a dream and tells you to publish our dialogue, send him my way, too, so I can hear it from the source instead of from the braying of "the donkey bearing the messenger".    When you're ready to re-engage the rational side of your brain, I'm ready to resume our chess games.   On Friday, February 05, 2010, at 02:35AM, "sloan bashinsky" <keysmyhome@hotmail.com> wrote:

Never said I was Jesus, Jim. I did say I was told this in a dream around April 2006, when I lived on Little Torch Key: “Like but not greater than Jesus.” And, “Remember Daniel.” The Bible’s dreamer, whose dreams you, by collateral damage, assigned to what psychiatry designates as psychotic brain process.
 
Here’s what you wrote, Jim, verbatim.
 
“The story of Jeremiah is just that, a story; it is no more verifiable or credible than the story of Lot’s wife being turned into a pillar of salt, or God appearing to Moses in a burning bush.  And there’s no need to go back to the Old Testament prophets to find parallels to what you’re experiencing.   Modern psychiatry provides a standard clinical diagnosis for the particular mental process that you describe, which is not all that uncommon.  Many people suffer the delusion that God or spirits are personally instructing them, and they’re as unshakeable in that conviction as you are.  And many of them–yourself included–are possessed of  brilliant minds.”
 
From what you wrote, Jim, I migrated in yesterday’s morning’s email to insert “Jesus” for Jeremiah. I could have inserted many other Old and New Testament personages psychiatry would label psychotic today. I also could add to what you wrote and say the entire Bible is just a story, very little of it verifiable. Same for Buddha: no way to prove he actually existed. Your arguments are circling around and biting you in the ass-u-me. This is becoming hilarious. As is your posturing to paint me into psychiatry’s corner, and you into the corner of reason and sound mind, just in case I actually am told by Jesus, for example, to publish this crap.
 
Authorization from Buddha to publish would be even more hilarious, seeing as how you and Pritam hold forth to be his loyal followers, having assigned Jesus and the rest of the Bible into the story realm. I bet Keys folk who have affection for the Bible would find very interesting your imperious comments on same. The Bible has the truth in it that will set anyone free, who actually applies it to themselves, but most people apply it to justify their departure from the will of God, in God’s name, or just because.
 
The most humorous part of this chess game, so far, is my once having wrote that Pritam was possessed by Lucifer — I wrote that about Ed Swift and Dennis Reeves Cooper in the same breath, as I recall, maybe two or three years ago. What I said about Pritam is what prompted your lighting into me over dinner the other night, even as you extolled his charitable activities locally and globally. Even as you praised him as if he was Jesus for making all of his tens of millions by being able to sell people (city and county commissioners and staff ) anything he wanted to sell them, by enthralling them with the one part of his product most most dear to their hearts, to cleverly divert them away from the various parts of his product that he didn’t want them to ever even think about. The parts that were arsenic for them.
 
In that breath, Jim, out of your own mouth, you told me, and I pointed it out in the moment, that Pritam uses the very same sales tactics as the Father of Lies, which leaves me comfortable with my much earlier diagnosis. As if to say right on, something moved me the next morning to go online and find Pritam’s website. My goodness does he boast about his charitable giving and Pritam. My goodness.
 
This takes us back to the debate issue raised over dinner: “One can betray a confidence for the greater good.” Yes, indeed. The citizens and our city and county commissioners and staff indeed need to know what you and Pritam are up to. He has not changed any of his spots, and except for going to court, you are doing the same things for him that you were doing before you were convicted and disbarred. And now I know, from what you said over dinner, that you also are doing the same thing for the Spottswoods.
 
As for your flattery of my brilliance, I say get thee behind me, Satan. Any brilliance you perceive comes through me from Jesus, angels allegiant to God, and the Holy Spirit. One of those angels is my younger daughter, Alice, a nationally-recognized eye doctor and  eye surgeon, who also teaches in medical school.
 
She came to me in a dream early this year and said she would never leave me. A dream you would assign to a psychiatric disorder. A dream I understood meant she was going to make sure I see what I need to see, instead of what people like you and Pritam want me to see.
 
You say you don’t want to be buned alive. Stay away from me, then. And away from Jesus. Burn the other way.
 
Check and mate, Jim. I’m just a donkey bearing the messenger.
 
Sloan

---

Date: Thu, 4 Feb 2010 10:23:10 -0800
From: jtylaw@mac.com
To: keysmyhome@hotmail.com
Subject: Re: separate realities

 Not psychotic;  OK, so you're just crazy.  I've learned to accept that, but I'll pass on the being "burned alive" part.      Your effort to analogize yourself to Jesus brings to mind the classic Bob  Dylan stanza,            you know, they refused Jesus, too.           he said, "You're not Him"   Not to say that you're not Christ-like in certain respects, which I believe you are.   But I certainly didn't say or write anything suggesting that he was psychotic.   Jesus was no Jeremiah; he came here to free people from all that Talmudic b.s.     As to the suggestion that you're possessed of a below-average IQ, bullshit.  We both know otherwise.        On Thursday, February 04, 2010, at 06:17AM, "sloan bashinsky" <keysmyhome@hotmail.com> wrote:  >

My friends, Jim, quoting from the Gospels what Jesus said of his mother and brother, not favorable to them, are people who do the will of God.
 
I could read your email as your saying Jesus was psychotic. Which, as far as I’m concerned, would make you psychotic, or worse – demonically-possessed.
 
The last six women I was with were having their own spirit experiences when we met, and thereafter. They knew I was having spirit experiences from beyond myself. But when they were put by what had a hold of me to step up their own pace, they didn’t like it and eventually bailed.
 
I was a lousy father when my daughters were young. I told them this. What else I did that caused them to cast me out I don’t know, because they didn’t tell me. They know I don’t know, because I told them in letters.
 
For a woman to be with me, she has to be prepared to be burned alive by something over which she has no control. Same applies to people who really want to be my friend. All the rest are but ships passing in the night — on this world. In spirit, it is very different.

There is nothing more unkind or unmerciful than letting someone live in illusion, yet billions of people do it and call it love because they are afraid of what will happen if they speak their mind.
 
I’m pretty sure my IQ is in the low normal range. I remember my mother’s distress when she received the results of an IQ test I took early in high school. I never saw the results. But for what you attribute to a psychotic process, I would screw up nearly everything.
 
What possible reason could I have for spending much time with someone who tells me I’m psychotic? Easier for him than the alternative – I’m not psyhotic. 
 
Sloan

---

From: jtylaw@mac.com
To: keysmyhome@hotmail.com
Subject: Re: Alas
Date: Thu, 4 Feb 2010 06:39:27 -0500Good morning, night owl/curmudgeonYour sorrow over having been cast out by family and friends is understandable.  But you’re not predestined to be cast out by others.  That wouldn’t occur unless you repeat whatever conduct caused you to be shunned.  Hopefully you will gain the insight needed to understand why your loved ones turned their backs on you, and make amends.   I suspect that their decisions were at least in part attributable to your refusal to take personal responsibility for what you do and say, ascribing your conduct to unseen beings who tell you what you must do. Sloan, I realize that you don’t want to accept this, but you’re not being “told to speak” about anything;  it’s YOU who decide what comes out of your mouth.  Your “eyes, ears and senses” are no more acute or paranormal than those of your friends;  what’s different about you is how your brain processes and interprets those sensory inputs.  
The story of Jeremiah is just that, a story; it is no more verifiable or credible than the story of Lot’s wife being turned into a pillar of salt, or God appearing to Moses in a burning bush.  And there’s no need to go back to the Old Testament prophets to find parallels to what you’re experiencing.   Modern psychiatry provides a standard clinical diagnosis for the particular mental process that you describe, which is not all that uncommon.  Many people suffer the delusion that God or spirits are personally instructing them, and they’re as unshakeable in that conviction as you are.  And many of them –yourself included–are possessed of  brilliant minds.  
You yearn for a friend who shares your predicament.  Perhaps friends who DON’T share that predicament, who offer a different perspective, are of greater value.  
And I earnestly hope that you are blessed, soon, with the companionship of a woman who has the characteristics that will ease your life, particularly kindness and compassion.
On Feb 4, 2010, at 5:30 AM, sloan bashinsky wrote:

Morning, Todd.
 
Vera was a perfect hostess and I hope she is not brought into this.
 
I regret, after noting her objection to chess after dinner, I reversed my decision not to play. Had I stuck by her, it would have honored her wishes and perhaps simplified what was to follow.
 
I have no problem getting beat at chess, but get upset with myself when I play badly. Jim won the first game and last through superior play. I should have won the second but played poorly after gaining the advantage, and then had to scramble just to get a draw.
 
As I lay in bed before getting up to write this second reply to your email (I wrote a different draft yesterday afternoon), I found myself thinking maybe it’s best I not get socially engaged with people in their homes, or perhaps anywhere. It’s a curse to have the eyes and ears and senses I was given. It’s another curse altogether to be told to speak to what I see, hear and sense, especially when friends or family are involved.
 
Alas, in the Gospels Jesus told his followers they would be divided from their loved ones. His words have helped me cope with the truly great pain of being cast out by my own daughters, by women I loved, and by friends who knew me much better than you and Jim know me.
 
As has the poem I re-published yesterday helped me cope. It was driven into my soul and bones by God. I am the poem, it is me.

Alas, nothing assuages the indescribable loneliness of not having anyone, preferably a woman companion, but even just a friend would help, who shares my predicament.  
 
Sloan
 

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Subject: RE: If the shoe fits
Date: Wed, 3 Feb 2010 15:19:30 -0600
From: TGerman@
To: keysmyhome@hotmail.com; jtylaw@mac.com 

Sloan,

To say I am disappointed in yesterday?s post and your reply to Jim would be an understatement.

Your post yesterday mischaracterized the dinner conversation we had and changed the whole spirit of the discussion.  While I am sure you will disagree, I feel many of the points you brought up in the post while factual, were taken out of context, and as such read very differently than the light hearted conversation in which they were talked about.

I do not understand why you take everything so personally.  In my opinion the three of us had a wonderful evening, laughing, joking, philosophizing, etc.  When you and I walked out the door everyone was happy.  So what happened?  What clicked in inside you to make you write the things you have?

You and I were both guests in Jim?s house and as such I feel it is our duty to honor our host, not attack him.  Even more important is how our hostess is to be treated.  While you did not make any reference to her directly, she is hurt just the same by your comments about the night.  She made us a wonderful dinner and put up with all of our macho BS, her only response being to serve us a wonderful dessert.

You will notice I have not made reference to any of the details of our conversation during the night.  How on earth could I?  We had hours of wildly ranging conversation, to pick out certain items does the whole night an injustice.  To truly recap the evening would take a small book.

I also don?t understand how you take offense at the chess games which were played.  They were not real games!  The two of you were teaching me some of the finer points.  The fact that Jim won is irrelevant.  Throughout the games I was pointing at pieces, asking questions about moves and strategies and  just generally being a huge distraction.  If you remember we even redid a number of moves to show how the different outcomes of seemingly minor strategic changes.

How can you expect people to welcome you not their home if they have to be afraid of what will be written about them the next day?

Sloan I say all of this not to get into a debate.  I say this as your friend and someone who cares about and hates it when you do things that push your friends away.  Jim and I have stuck by you all along, as you have stuck by us, that is what friends are do.  I do everything I can to not be afraid of what I say around you but you make it very difficult at times.

  

Todd German

AVP/Business Development Officer
Centennial Bank - Key West Old Town
Off:   305-676-3144
Fax: 305-676-3159
Cell: 305-942-1611

  

This email may contain confidential and privileged material for the sole use of the intended recipient. Any review or distribution by others is strictly prohibited. If you are not the intended recipient, please contact the sender and delete all copies. Thank you for your cooperation and have a good day

---

From: sloan bashinsky [mailto:keysmyhome@hotmail.com]  
Sent: Wednesday, February 03, 2010 8:36 AM
To: Jim Hendrick
Cc: Todd German
Subject: If the shoe fits

I see, Jim, that I punched a lot of your buttons. Excellent, I hoped it would. I also hoped, as I once before suggested, not all that long ago, that you not respond to me in the heat of anger, but that you would wait, marinate in what had punched your buttons. This is mindfulness, what Buddha and Jesus both taught. 
 
I told a story over dinner of being married into a family that could have two drinks and be okay, but three turned them into werewolves. You drank more that night than I have ever seen you drink. Then you got on your high horse and took out after me, your guest. It was a good thing, because, thanks to the wine in you, I got to see what I had sensed but didn’t want to ASS-U-ME. Before my very eyes, and the eyes of Vera and Todd, if their eyes were open, the Emperor had no clothes, was bare-ass naked in all of his imperious, conceited majesty.
 
I regret you dragged Todd into your reply. He had nothing whatsoever to do with what I wrote to you, but since you brought him in, and for the greater good, I have to include him in this debate. Also for the greater good, since it appears from your reply that you may have no intention of passing my first email along to Pritam, as I requested, I will see that he gets it and what followed. If you intend to pass all of this along to him, then what I send to him is merely redundant. Whether or not he reads it, is up to him.
 
Jim, you really do need to start thinking with your heart instead of your brain. It will be your salvation. The pro bono work you now are doing and did before your resentencing hearing, as part of your probation, is a very different kind of pro bono work than what I suggested. What the court imposed is required of you, for you to stay out of prison. What I suggested was something you could do with no benefit to yourself, for your city — selfless giving, another practice of Buddha and Jesus.
 
Sloan
 

---

From: jtylaw@mac.com 
To: keysmyhome@hotmail.com 
Subject: Re: For the Greater Good
Date: Wed, 3 Feb 2010 01:24:37 -0500If this shoe fits…..There’s an old saying, not meant as a compliment, “He can dish it out but he can’t take it.”  

You don’t hesitate to lambaste people whom you hardly know, characterizing them as satanic.   But —as seems evident from your comments, e.g.,  ”attack on all fronts”— you’re all too easily wounded by jests from friends, taking them far more seriously than intended.    I didn’t belittle your debate or sales skills, and haven’t seen enough of either to rate them.  Neither Tod nor I demeaned your speaking ability; in fact, he made a point of complimenting your presentation at Heather’s forum.   I  did opine that you aren’t as effective in your presentations to the City Commission as Pritam has been.  Frankly, I haven’t observed anyone be as effective as he.  And get your f****ing facts right:   I won the high school national debate championship, not College; I mentioned the extent of my trial experience, not  the results (”getting my way with judges and juries” as you mischaracterize it), and I credited another member of our team (whom I purposely avoided naming), not myself,  for  prevailing over the Spottswoods’ competing proposal for Sunset Key.  I mentioned  those events in response  to your unjustified equation of effective advocacy/salesmanship with satanic (”Father of Lies”) attributes.  My point, which seems to have escaped you, was that in my experience, effective advocacy isn’t a sign of Satan. 

As for your musing about more frequent breaches of confidence, that could become a moot point because no one would trust you with a confidence if you were to publish whatever you deemed  warranted by “the greater good”.  For millennia, codes of conduct governing lawyers, priests, physicians, etc. have demanded respect for confidences.  Only a solopsist would consider himself above such basic societal codes.

   

 As for the list of 7 assigned chores:  I’ll choose my own pro-bono priorities,thanks.  Who are you to tell me or Pritam what we should be working on (which by no coincidence appears to be YOUR list of uncompleted tasks).   If you want help with ## 2-6, the merits of which you HAVE persuaded me, I will help as and where I can.  But for now, I consider helping to alleviate the misery in Haiti to be a higher priority.

   

Finally, I apologize for my bacchanalian glee in our final 3 chess games of the evening.  Sometimes I forget that you’re relatively new to the game. Perhaps that’s because we’re closely matched most of the time.  

On Feb 2, 2010, at 8:09 PM, sloan bashinsky wrote:

Jim,
 
I’ve been mulling some of your remarks over dinner last night.
 
Your proposal of betraying confidences for the greater good as an excellent debate issue leaves me wondering if breaching confidences for the greater good might become even more frequent in my posts.
 
As for my debate and sales skills, which you enjoyed belittling last night, while boasting about your having been a national college debate champion, a trial lawyer who got his way with judges and juries, and an adept at outfoxing the Spottswoods; and Pritam Singh’s ability to sell anyone anything he wants them to buy, by getting them to focus on what they want, instead of focusing on what they really should be looking at, which I likened to the style of the Father of Lies . . .
 
Many times have I been told not to worry about selling anyone on anything. Over and over I am told to concentrate only on going about it as I’ve been trained and am shown to do, and I am not graded by my success in this world. This helped me grow out of trying to measure up to and admire/covet my father’s and his father’s business accomplishments in this world.
 
I received some additional nudging in that direction when I was told in March 2001, as I slept in a doorway on Flemming Street: “You will fail, but you might enter the Kingdom of God.” After that, I didn’t expect to succeed, ever. I expected to lose, always. I can’t think of any time I have been able to persuade you about anything.
 
Even so, I’m going to make another stab: a proposition for you and Pritam, which I ask you to pass along to him, along with this entire email.
 
7 pro bono requests which, in the likeness of Buddha (and Jesus), will enable you both give back to the community that has made you both wealthy men by this world’s standard. Proposals I seem to have utterly failed to bring off.
 
1) Persuade St. Mary’s Star of the Sea to embody Jesus and keep the soup kitchen on Flagler, instead of caving into community demands to move it way up to Stock Island and sell the land for big bucks, a fat commission off which will go into the pocket of the church’s lay minister and behind-the-scenes developer, Peter Batty. Pritam once was homeless in Key West, he knows the need for a soup kitchen in town.
 
2) Persuade St. Mary’s to install enough lockers at the soup kitchen, there’s plenty of room, for all of Key West’s homeless people to safely store their meager possessions. Pritam understands the need for homeless to have lockers to protect their belongings. 
 
3) Persuade the Key West City Commission to put the public showers back at the police station again, or somewhere in town that is convenient to homeless people, say at the soup kitchen on Flagler. Pritam understands the need for homeless to take hot showers regularly.
 
4) Persuade the Key West City Commission to pass a mandatory recycling ordinance with real teeth, and enforce it against all businesses and private citizens and various agencies.
 
5) Persuade the Commission to designate a clothing-optional section on Smathers Beach, on a 1-year trial basis. Such a beach will provide a shot in the arm to the Key West economy.
 
6) Persuade the City Commission to designate from 12 noon until 4 a.m. the next day the lower end of Duval Street as a walking mall. This will stop the traffic congestion and cause more local people to come into Old Town, than now do. It will turn lower Duval Street into something like the hugely successful Pearl Street Mall in Boulder, Colorado, where I once lived.
 
7) Persuade the City Commission to vacate the contract with the Spottswoods and the limbo situation with the elder facility at Truman Waterfront. Then persuade the Commission to hire Pritam to get all of the toxic waste out of the Truman Waterfront property, and then for him to build affordable rental housing on it, all at his cost reimbursed by the city, financed by a revenue bond secured by the rents, all of which Pritam then turns over to the Housing Authority to manage.
 
As for your saying last night that I am like Jeremiah, then saying I was St. Augustine reincarnated . . .  
 
I confess to fondness for Jeremiah. And for Isaiah and Ezekiel. And for Jesus and Peter. And Mary Magdalene. And Judas Iscariot, whom I once was. I recall once or twice telling you that in my sleep, in April 2006, as I was moving toward running against George Neugent, I was told, “Like but not greater than Jesus.” Then I was told, “Remember Daniel.” Then I was told my experiences were going to increase in intensity, to accelerate my spiritual pace so that I might reach “escape velocity.” Boy, did the pace then increase. Boy, did it.
 
I confess little knowledge of St. Augustine, but I have been likened in dreams and other spirit ways to John of the Cross, Francis of Assisi and Anthony of the Desert. And to Abraham Lincoln. All of which certainly could have gone to my head, and early on, it did. As time passed, however, it brought on a sense of great dread and I came to wish, as I said last night, that God didn’t exist.
 
As for my chess play, which you also gleefully belittled last night, then challenged me to play so you could prove your superiority even under the influence of Bacchus, even as you told me what your line of play would be . . .
 
I was told in my sleep in early January 2005 to start learning how to play chess. So that’s how it started. Right away, there were plenty of players beating the shit out of me. It was a real challenge because I had always been terrified of chess. It made me feel like an idiot, going all the way back to when I first played a few game at a summer camp when I was nine. Before January 2005, I maybe had played 30 games. Maybe even less. So I basically was a neophyte when it began.
 
Chess situations are used in my dreams to help me understand situations in my waking life, my next move in a spirit chess game. I probably have half a dozen chess dreams a week. Very helpful. A nap dream yesterday, in which you were attacking me on all fronts in a chess game, prompted this email. That, and your attack on all fronts over dinner night before last night, and your disclosure of some of Pritam’s charitable activity, of which I’d never before heard. Kudos to Pritam for doing his good deeds in secret, unlike my father and his second wife, who did it publicly.
 
Sloan

King George, Queen Sylvia and Don Mario

I learned yesterday, see Tim O’Hara’s article on the front page of today’s Key West Citizen for verification, that County Commissioner George Neugent will sponsor a resolution at the next County Commission meeting exempting the County Administrator from the County’s Personnel Code.
 
According to Tim’s article, King George also argues the County Administrator and the County Attorney, being contract employees who serve at the leisure of the County Commission, are not covered under the County Personnel Code. According to Tim’s article, King George got this legal opinion from the County Clerk and the County Attorney. 

What Tim’s article does not cover is the County’s Personnel Code was passed just last year, after our fairly new County Administrator Roman Gastesi brought in an ethics expert from the mainland to teach our county personnel and county commissioners about ethics in government. Back then, all five county commissioners claimed they thought ethics in government would be a good thing for the County to have.

Then last week, Queen Sylvia, with the clear consent of King George and Don Mario, dragged Roman, apparently against his wishes, to Ocean Reef Homeowners Association (ORCA)’s annual pimp-and-whore dinner, to serve as your and my faithful citizen watchdog and ensure the Ocean Reef Gang of Three, to whom Roman indeed is beholden for his job and livelihood, did not discuss anything that might come before the County Commission and violate the Florida Sunshine Law.

In attending the pimp and whore fest put on by the richest, most influential PAC in the Keys, Roman violated the very Code of Ethics he had tried so hard to get enacted. Specifically, the part of the Code that says in plain English, “Employees shall not accept any gift, favor or service from any member of the public, including but not limited to Christmas and/or birthday gifts.”
 
What in the hell do we have a county personnel Code of Ethics for, if the seven top county employees are not to be bound by it – if they all can hobnob with a powerful PAC like ORCA out of public view? Aren’t top management supposed to set the ethical standard for the rest of the county employees? Aren’t they supposed to avoid even the mere appearance of impropriety? Not in King George’s, Queen Sylvia’s and Don Mario’s court.
 
What the Ocean Reef Gang of Three should do at the next county commission meeting is resign, because they conclusively proved by their own actions that they are not law-abiding citizens; they clearly think they can make up county law as they go along, without holding public meetings after proper notice of a proposed law change. Then, after being caught red-handed, one of them tries to get an ordinance passed, making what they had already made illegal, legal.
 
As for community events, such as the Underwater Music Festival, which King George says (in Tim’s article) Roman attended in the past as a guest but cannot attend again if the County Personnel Code now on the books applies to the County Administrator, let Roman attend community events if his attendance fits his job requirements/description, and let the County pay for the cost of his attendance.
 
How King George found a way to liken Roman attending a community event like the Underwater Music Festival, which is open to the public, to Roman attending a super-exclusive dinner at Ocean Reef, to which only a few bigwigs in the ORCA PAC were invited to dine with our county commissioners, reveals something seriously awry in King George. Seriously awry. 

What will King George come up with next time he gets called on the carpet for illegal activity? Will he sponsor a resolution asking the Commission to make it illegal in the county for anyone to publicly criticize him or another commissioner? Will he sponsor a resolution for an ordinance banning whistleblower protection? Will he sponsor a resolution making it illegal for the State Attorney to come to a county commission meeting and tell the commissioners he thinks something they have done or are going to do is illegal?

Word has it King George met with the Key West Citizen Editorial Board, or maybe just with its Editor Tom Tuell, to get the Citizen to write an editorial censoring State Attorney Dennis Ward for going to a county commission meeting and telling the commissioners he thought their attendance at the ORCA dinner might run afoul of the Sunshine Law; and they need a lobbyist registration ordinance; and they need a county ethics commission and a county ordinance limiting what they, as commissioners, can accept from the public to $50 in value, per incident. Current state law allows commissioners’ acceptance of gifts up to $100 in value, per incident.
 
If King George did indeed meet with the Citizen, did he pay his own travel expenses to Key West, or will he submit a voucher to the county for reimbursement? Was he on the County’s business when he drove to Key West to lobby the Citizen, or was he on his own and Ocean Reef’s business? I suppose King George can get a totally unbiased opinion from the County Attorney, who depends on the Ocean Reef Gang of Three for a job and livelihood.
 
If King George did lobby the Citizen Editorial Board and it caves into his commands, instead of calling for another big tea party, the Citizen becomes yet another blue-ribbon prize winner in ORCA’s spread-your-legs-the-widest contest; another ORCA house pet.
 
In that vein, here’s the answer to yesterday’s question: What do you call a whore with a runny nose?
 
FULL.

Meow.

Sloan Bashinsky

(Dennis Ward)
 
Found this in the keysnews.com blog comments to Tim O’ Hara’s article in Saturday’s Key West Citizen, in which State Attorney Dennis Ward accused County Administrator Roman Gastesi of violating the county’s code of ethics by attending a pimp-and-whore dinner thrown for our county commissioners by the PAC we down in these parst know as ORCA (Ocean Reef Homeowners Association). Dennis never said pimp-and-whore; that was my doing.

Poor frustrated Dennis

Submitted on Sat, 02/20/2010 – 7:58am

He can’t enforce the laws we already have on the books but he wants to make new ones that he can’t enforce. Look at the school board scandal (useless). The state attorney’s job is not legislative, he doesn’t make new laws. Personally I am tired of his holier than thou attitude. He and Sloan should run away together. Birds of a feather….. Hard for me to say but George and Mario are the only BOCC members to have any guts. The rest are sheep being led around by their noses to slaughter all while showing contempt fot their constituents. Remember to vote Carruthers, Wigington and Murphy out on election day.

Commissioners Carruthers and Wigington had the guts not to attend the Ocean Reef dinner, which ruffled some serious tail feathers in the ORCA pod, and ruffled George Neugent’s feathers, too. Give serious thought to the possibility that George, or one of his anonymous shills, posted the above comments.

In going along with Roman attending the spread-your-legs-the-widest contest, Commissioners Neugent, Di Gennaro and Murphy, in their imperious omnipotence, overrode the county personnel code, which applies to all county employees but commissioners. Since the Ocean Reef Gang of Three constitute a majority on the County Commission, pray tell who will spank Roman, unless it’s Dennis Ward?

What it looks to me set the ethics-in-county-ethics revolution in motion to begin with was the trial and conviction of Jim Hendrick. Here’s what I googled about Jim’s case, which was posted before his trial in federal. The jury convicted him on the alleged charges.

FORMER MONROE COUNTY MAYOR PLEADS GUILTY TO TAX PERJURY

WASHINGTON, DC – John L. “Jack” London, 67, of Key West, Florida, pleaded guilty to one count of tax perjury, Acting Assistant Attorney General John C. Richter of the Criminal Division and R. Alexander Acosta, Acting United States Attorney for the Southern District of Florida, announced today. London, who entered his plea before the Honorable Shelby Highsmith in Miami, was first indicted in May 2004 on charges of tax fraud and making false statements to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). On May 19, 2005, London’s indictment was superseded to add as a defendant Monroe County Attorney James T. Hendrick, 57, of Key West, Florida, on charges of conspiring to obstruct and tamper with witnesses involved in the grand jury investigation of London.

London’s plea involved the following facts: That in 1997 London received $29,000, while serving as a Monroe County Commissioner, from a consultant who had been hired by a real estate developer to assist with obtaining building permits from the Monroe Board of County Commissioners; and that London used the money to satisfy an outstanding lien against a residential property he owned in Cork, Ireland. In 2002 and 2003, when confronted by agents with the FBI about his receipt of the $29,000, London misled the investigators regarding the origin of the funds. Beginning in July 2003, and continuing into March 2004, Hendrick allegedly acted as a conduit between London and another individual to concoct a false story as to the true nature of the $29,000 payment to London. Hendrick allegedly did so knowing that the false information would be conveyed to a federal grand jury investigating the matter. Although Hendrick was the Monroe County Attorney at the time, he now serves as the Attorney for Growth Management in Monroe County. Hendrick’s trial is scheduled to begin on September 26, 2005 before Judge Highsmith. London will be sentenced on October 21, 2005.

(London died before he had to face the music.)

I started getting to know Jim Hendrick during his trial. As time passed, I got to know him a lot better. I wrote some about his and my chess games, which he usually won. He was my “Campaign Czar” during my run for mayor in last year’s Key West elections. I wrote a letter to the federal judge presiding over Jim’s resentencing hearing last year; I saw no reason for Jim to do time when the main players in the case didn’t. Also, the angels Jim thinks are products of a psychotic process in my head told me to write the letter to the judge. I ate periodically in Jim’s home and came to know his wife and children, and their friends. Raised in money, power, it was nothing new to me; I was not impressed therefore.

I understood in the very beginning that Jim was a spiritual assignment for me, and I felt all along that some things eventually would come to a head between him and me. When it happened a few weeks ago, I ended up telling him goodbye. I have all of the back and forth between us stored in emails. It’s not something I care to publish, but one never knows what might happen to change how one feels about things.

Subtext, I never know when the angels who stay hard on my case, which Jim assigns to the workings of a psychiatric disturbance, might have me air those files out “for the greater good.” Jim’s problem with me, which also is George’s and a lot of people’s problem, is quite simple. Unable to cope with even the mere possibility that I am led and pushed by angels of the Lord, they make me out to be crazy, so they can be sane.

I suppose it was fortuitous that Jim and I parted company, as his name then started appearing more and more in what I was getting involved in. Jim is viewed as God by local developers such as Pritam Singh and the Spottswoods, among others, and by Ocean Reef Club. Jim has his fingers in many Key lime pies, so it’s probably a good idea to always wonder who is really behind real estate deals brought before the County Commission. 

I’m leading up to something, of course. Two things, actually.

First, I heard yesterday that Jim and former County Mayor Jack London were instrumental in persuading George Neugent to run for the county commission his first time. So whenever you hear George, or anyone, accuse Dennis Ward and me of being wacked out, ask yourself what birds George has run with, and still runs with.

Two, maybe a year ago, in a dream, the same angels Jim Hendrick views as my psychotic delusions and voices in my head likened Dennis to Archangel Michael. As I recall, I wrote about that in a post to my websites, goodmorningkeywest.com and goodmorningfloridakeys.com.

I realized yesterday morning, before I’d read any newspapers, that I probably would post something about Dennis today. Not long after that, I saw a mature bald eagle fly across US 1, near Baby’s Coffee in the Saddlebunch Keys. Since 1995, I have associated the eagle with Archangel Michael — birds of a feather. When I see an eagle in the wild, it heralds major change coming in and my seeing something differently.

Dennis is a normal, decent human being. A beat copy for the City of Miami Beach for many years, he moved up to being a detective. He went to law school while still chasing after and catching bad guys and gals. Eventually he took a job in the State Attorney’s office. Then he went to work for the Public Defender, and defended people charged with crimes prosecuted by our State Attorney. Dennis won about 70 percent of the cases he defended. From that platform he ran against the Republicans’ State Attorney and beat him.

I have two law degrees. I clerked for a United States District Judge, who presided over every criminal trial in the Northern District of Alabama. I practiced law, and then wrote a number of law-related consumer-protection/help books. I’m familiar with the legal terrain, and its spiritual subtext.  The federal judge for whom I clerked, Archangel Michael and Jesus guide me from the spirit in all human law matters. I’m darn glad I did all I could to help Dennis get elected. I only wish he had more money to hire more prosecutors and investigators. Unexpected cut-backs in his Tallahassee-funded budget have hampered his ability to do everything he feels needs to be done.

Even if you were born yesterday, you have to ask yourself why George Neugent went rabid over Dennis backing a county-imposed lobbyist registration ordinance. You have to wonder why George went rabid over Dennis backing a county-imposed limit of $50 dollars that county commissioners can allow to be spent on them by way of gifts, lunches, fishing trips, golf outings, escorts, whatever, before it has to be reported. You have to wonder why George went rabid over Dennis coming to a county commission meeting and telling the county commissioners not to attend the Ocean Reef dinner, because it might violate the Florida Sunshine Law.

You have to wonder why George, who complained so very loudly about unethical behavior of the old Gang of Three (Sonny McCoy, Dixie Spehar and Mario Di Gennaro), did not send Dennis roses and offer to do any and every thing he could to help Dennis clean up this county’s government. You have to wonder.

Stop wondering; I’ll tell you why. What George is upset about is Dennis has gone after the Republicans’ favorite play things. George is joined at the hip with the Republican party and views it as politics’ version of Jesus Christ. Anything someone does to challenge the sacred Republican rites and rituals makes George rabid. George is so blinded by his religion that he can only see Dennis as a Democrat. It’s akin to the way radical Moslems view Christians, and vice versa. It’s madness, is what it is. Worse than that, it’s the work of the Devil.

Of course the Devil wants Dennis Ward to be made out like he’s partisan, crazy, evil. Keep that in mind whenever you see or hear George, or one of his anonymous shills online, take out after Dennis. If Dennis does something he ought not to have done, or if it looks like he’s about to do something he ought not do, my Senior Law Partners will step in and have me take out after Dennis just like he’s taking out after trying to fulfill his campaign promise to be tough on government corruption and bring TRANSPARENCY to our county government.

Make no mistake, TRANSPARENCY is the very last thing the Devil wants to happen in our county government, or in any government. Keep that in mind whenever you hear George Neugent, or his shills, take out after Dennis. Keep that in mind.

Also keep in mind, when I told Dennis he would tell me he couldn’t do it, if I came to him asking for special treatment over something I had done that I ought not to have done, he agreed.

Sloan Bashinsky

Attempt at comic relief:

What do you call a whore with a runny nose?

Those who have not heard this prank before will see the answer in tomorrow’s post, if the creek don’t rise meanwhile.

My muse.
 
The argument is being made that three of our county commissioners merely met with a homeowners association last week at Ocean Reef. Actually, that pimp-and-whore get-together was not open to the Ocean Reef Community Association (ORCA) general membership. Only the leaders of the PAC (names unknown to me) smozzled Mayor Sylvia Murphy, Commissioners Mario Di Gennaro and George Neugent, and County Manager Roman Gastesi.

With that lead-in, here’s some email back and froth with a lower Keys snowbird Republican over the sunshine law-Ocean Reef commotion. A former IRS auditor, or something related, this my-party-right-or-wronger, all others die and burn in hell forever, has had the distressing experience of learning that someone like me actually exists. Until he met me, he thought everyone was either Republican, Democrat, Libertarian or Communist. He writes his own right-wing political column, which he sometimes sends to me for copy editing, for a newspaper in the northeastern U.S. I sometimes reply about his neo-facist character and pretend it’s copy-editing. His hold-the-party-line-at-all-cost remarks are in italics . . .
 
That Sunshine Law prosecution idea is goofy. I was under the PA Sunshine Law for 8 years as a School Board member. It is certainly part of a commissioner’s job to meet with constituents. A common venue is a civic association. I don’t think you were say a word about it if the commishes visited the Bahama Village civic association or maybe even the Summerland Key Cove one. The Ocean Reef Club meeting has certain aspects of a civic association meeting. Are you saying that rich folks can’t invite pols in like poor or middle class ones? If they attend an SCCA one, they would have free refreshments offered as well. Just because ours probably would have an average cost of 2 – 3 bucks versus the 100+ at Ocean Reef is not really relevant. You’re almost as bad as those redistribute the wealth Democrats in Washington.
 
In spite of your unenlightened political views, I do enjoy your company.
 
You are seriously mistaken. I would say lots of words about the commissioners meeting together with anyone or any organization where the general public was not allowed in and given notice of the event. The general public was not allowed to be at the Ocean Reef dinner. Furthermore, it wasn’t just one commissioner who attended, but three. If only one had attended, there would be no sunshine law issue, because that law only applies to two or more from the same government body meeting together somewhere the public is not invited or allowed, and discussing matters that might come before the body. I wish I could say this is a Republican disease, but I cannot. It pervades our nation.
 
I still say that no one would be bitching if they were poor or middle class folks. I am familiar with the PA sunshine law and as long as they don’t take, or promise, any action as a body, there is no real issue. Indeed, some bunch of do-gooder liberals might want to make an issue. It may give the appearance if impropriety, but I think it is legal. And yes, it is an exclusive group of folks who want their privacy who want neither Joe Six-pack nor the press there.
 
From the way you describe it, the PA sunshine law is different from Florida’s, which I summarized in my previous email, as I understand it.
 
What I think needs to happen down here in Monroe County, let Florida deal with Florida, is the county commission needs to pass its own sunshine law that bans two or more commissioners meeting about anything, anywhere, if the pubic is not prior-noticed of and invited to the meeting.
 
This morning’s Key West Citizen features a front-page article covering County Mayor Sylvia Murphy’s and State Attorney Dennis Ward’s perspectives of Sylvia “practically commanding” — her words — County Manager Roman Gastesi to attend the Ocean Reef dinner, so he could be a witness that nothing illegal went on.
 
I imagine it was illegal for Sylvia to do that, since the county personnel code forbids county employees (but not commissioners) from accepting what Roman received: the free meal at Ocean Reef.
 
I know and like Roman, but he was hardly a smart choice for a witness. Besides being the head civil servant in the county government, through whom everything filters, he depends entirely on the county commission’s good graces and approval for his job and salary and benefits. He’s hardly impartial.
 
If Sylvia really had wanted an impartial witness, there were plenty of people at the county commission meeting, out of which she could have picked one. Pauline Klein, who lives on Key Largo, was at the commission meeting. She attends most commission meetings as a watchdog and sometimes she speaks. She spoke at this last meeting. Sylvia knows Pauline pretty well, I suppose. She could have invited Pauline to look out for the public at the Ocean Reef dinner, and paid Pauline’s share of the cost.
 
I told someone the other day that sometimes Sylvia acts as if she doesn’t have walking-around sense, and sometimes she’s so right-on that it’s spectacular. This is one time she didn’t have walking-around sense. Two wrongs never have and still don’t make a right. She out-foxed her own self. And she got Roman in dutch with Dennis Ward.
 
After mentioning in one of my posts that, in an email I had told George Neugent that I thought he could be a great county commissioner, but right now he’s a house divided between being a public servant and being loyal to his party [Republican], I was told by a friend that I should have included Ocean Reef with George’s political party.
 
In the same email, I told George most people don’t know the original tar baby story ends with the uppity rabbit still mired up to his eyeballs in the tar baby, and the fox is firing up his cook pot to have the rabbit for dinner. I felt George deserved a courtesy notice that maybe he didn’t have me figured out too good yet. Maybe he had forgotten my mentioning a few times in my posts that County Commissioner Mario Di Gennaro tells me that he tells other people who say Sloan is crazy, ”Sloan is crazy like a fox.”
 
If I were George, I’d have played the Ocean Reef thing a bit differently. Like, I wouldn’t even have shown up to tee off. I’d have let the ORCAs come to county commission meetings instead, and plead their poor, pitiful, impoverished causes in front of the peasants of Monroe County on the county TV station and live-stream over the county website.
 
The people of this county, thanks to the prior gang of three on the county commission, and thanks to the Acevedos in the school system, are utterly fed up with government officials who put their and the interests of their family and friends ahead of the Keys and Keys people. Looks to me like The Ocean Reef Gang (Sylvia, Mario and George) have made ethics, gift limits, sunshine law finagling, and Ocean Reef an all-lumped-together campaign issue in this year’s races.
 
Mario already has two solid opponents. I was told a few days ago that somebody mainstream, in George’s own party, somebody with respect, will run against George this year. And that George will try to run in a shill to divide the votes, so he can win the Republican primary. I don’t have a name, just a heads-up.
 
I’m a different kind of candidate, historically. An Independent, I attend the candidate forums and size up and poke at the other candidates going at each other in their partisan primary. Then, I get to face off against the winner in the general election.
 
Sloan
 
Postscript: If I had my way, all races for local offices would be non-partisan. The candidate getting the most votes wins. No run-off between the top two or three. Winner take all.

If I had my way, there would be no special favors; we’d all play by the same rules. When a warrant is issued for our daughter’s arrest because her blood test finally came back showing she was driving over the limit, we do not call the State Attorney and try to get him to keep our daughter’s name off the arrest page of the sheriff’s website. What’s the difference between that and Ocean Reef trying to get special treatment from our county commissioners? There is no difference. What we should do instead of calling the State Attorney is tell our daughter she needs to curtail her drinking, and to be able to do that, we first need to curtail our own drinking.

Now some “comic relief” – poetry tennis with a Key Wester who always writes to me in verse . . .
 
Hi, Sloan…
How many homes does a happy man have…
an apartment in Key West,
a homestead exemption in Little Torch,
near Susan Riche ???
If you can afford Key West rent to waste,
seems to this reader you enjoy
life in the middle keys
and the lifestyle…
“Get some steer and be a cracker.”
Snapping that internet whip
to move along the too fat beef.
“Yes, sir…a little Boston Whaler,
fishing gear and computer,
a tape recorder too,
all with a view of US One.”
Life is a breeze
in the florida keys,
blue skies and beautiful.
Take care,
Jack.
 
Susan Riche,
I think I know not;
No homestead exemption,
Gave it up to run for office out of Key West —
Seemed the honest (and legal) thing to do.
Reapply for homestead will I
once moved back in to Grand Street villa
perched on top of Mexico City-size colony of wood rats.
Cats from the animal shelther will I
introduce to furrless whiskered long tails —
A big party I hope Cinderella’s coachmen attend not.
Something coursing through my tired old barnacle veins
doesn’t seem to give a shit about how anybody feels about anything,
Least of all me.
Fishing this time north I intend,
No Name Bridge I’ve been staking out —
Lots of salty folk drown shrimp and cut ballyoo;
Plenty of fat chewed,
No telling what morsel falls out of the tree.
Dinner I might even catch,
I ain’t forgot how to tie a fisherman’s knot,
But get confused which way to Bimini twist —
Need a knot refresher,
A sexy twist would make life more bearable
back in the Little Torch boonies —
Pussy cat of a different sort,
None such in sight yet
But maybe I’m blind.
Nice would it be to scarf a beer or two,
Or three or sometimes four
at nearby Looe Key Bar,
Mangrove Mamma’s, Parrotdise and No Name Pub
nice too.
Could be idyllic, if the angels leave me fucking alone
only some of the fucking time,
And get the beer-hating cobra out of my gut,
Or make it fall in love with me —
Wasn’t it once said,
Don’t bite the hand that feeds you?
Stupid snake.
Sloan
 
Wow…such a way with words,
wasted on the dumb…
nights under the stars,
away from Rossi’s bars.
Abandon the sordid life…
Be yourself, again…
MJ
 
Adam without Eve,
Strip joints excite me not,
The Key West apartment’s got to go,
Too many bad memories,
I don’t need two monasteries,
Or even one;
My brains need fucking out,
Might help me quit running for office
out of dury and boredom.
So might fishing and chewing the fat,
And drinking beer.
What kind of God would send a man
to live in the Keys
and not let him drink beer?
What kind of God would do that?
High and dry.

Alas! Weasel out as I might try,
My dream maker allow will not –
A hard time everyone is having,
I’m told –
Out of this prison will I not be sprung
by my own efforts,
Nor by anyone else’s –
Conscripted, the hand dealt
must I play . . .

I need to correct two errors in what I wrote recently.
 
First, the vote on County Commissioner Mario Di Gennaro’s resolution to ask FEMA to end the pilot that applies only to Monroe County was 4-1 in favor. The sole NO vote came from County Mayor Sylvia Murphy. I thought I had heard County Commissioner Heather Carruthers also vote NO, but I was informed by Heather, her aide, Phil Shannon (the founder of Citizens Not Serfs), and John November (CNS’s Law Fellow) that Heather had voted in favor of Mario’s resolution.
 
Second, Heather and her aide emailed me that Heather did not attend the Ocean Reef dinner for the county commissioners following Wednesday’s meeting. I wrote yesterday that I had heard four of the commissioners had attended the dinner, and that Commissioner Kim Wigington had told me before the commission meeting Wednesday that she was not inclined to attend the dinner. I wrote back to Heather and her aide that I was really glad to hear Heather had not attended.
 
I learned yesterday that County Administrator Roman Gastesi attended the Ocean Reef pimp-and-whore fest Wednesday evening, following the commission meeting. Roman was invited/cleared to attend by Mayor Sylvia Murhpy. In attending and accepting the free dinner and whatever went with it, Roman violated the county’s PERSONNEL POLICIES & PROCEDURES MANUAL:

1.05 CODE OF ETHICS

 A. All employees must be aware of, and comply with, Section 112:311 (6) Florida Statutes which currently provides in part: “It is declared to be the policy of the state that public officers and employees, state and local, are agents of the people and hold their positions for the benefit of the public. They are bound to uphold the Constitution of the United States and the State Constitution and to perform efficiently and faithfully their duties under the laws of the federal, state, and local governments. Such officers and employees are bound to observe, in their official acts, the highest standards of ethics consistent with this code and the advisory opinions rendered with respect hereto regardless of personal considerations, recognizing that promoting the public interest and maintaining the respect of the people in their government must be of foremost concern.”

 B. Employees may not, either directly or indirectly, use their official position with the County or information obtained in connection with their employment for private gain, for themselves or others.

 C. Employees shall not accept any gift, favor or service from any member of the public, including but not limited to Christmas and/or birthday gifts.

Maybe Mayor Murphy and County Administrator Gastesi should spend more time consulting with the county attorneys.
 
But then, isn’t this the same code of ethics this same set of county commissioners, including Sylvia, relied on last year to rake our then County Planner Andrew Trivette over the coals for his accepting a free offshore fishing trip with people (as in developers) trying to get the county commission to do them REAL BIG FAVORS?
 
One has to wonder, even if one wasn’t once a cynical lawyer, if Roman’s county manager presence was needed at the pimp-and-whore fest to facilitate some sort of discussion that might not have gotten facilitated if Roman wasn’t there.
 
One has to wonder, even if one wasn’t once a cynical lawyer, why our county commissioners are not bound by the same standard of ethics that our county personnel are supposed to be bound by. I say supposed, because Sylvia apparently thinks she can override the Personnel Policies and Proceedures Manual.

One has to wonder who will discipline Roman, since a majority of the county commissioners (Murphy, Di Gennaro and Nugent) attended the dinner and went along with Roman being there.
 
One has to wonder if there is any point in State Attorney Dennis Ward and County Commissioner Kim Wigington trying to get the county commission to pass a county code of ethics that applies to county commissioners, when we apparently have a gang of three commissioners who feel they are above reproach.
 
One has to wonder if Murphy, Di Gennaro and Neugent should be reported to the Florida Commission on Ethics for permitting Roman Gastesi to attend the Ocean Reef dinner.
 
Todd German wrote in that I should not have asked in yesterday’s post that Dennis Ward prosecute the commissioners who attended the Ocean Reef dinner, and suggested that I could have asked Dennis to simply investigate for a violation. Todd explained what he knew about Sunshine Law violations, which is pretty extensive, and how hard they are to prosecute; and he attached stuff for me to read on it. Here’s what I wrote back about all of that:
 
Hi, Todd.
 
Thanks for your input.
 
I considered asking Dennis simply to investigate. I asked for prosecution instead because Dennis had already told the commissioners at a commission meeting how he felt about them attending the dinner at Ocean Reef. If he didn’t mean to follow through, why even go to the trouble?
 
Not that it would carry any weight in a court of law, or probably anywhere on this world known to me, Dennis came to me last night in a dream and pointed me toward what I asked him to do in today’s post.
 
I am acutely aware of the myriad vagrancies of Sunshine Law investigations in the Keys; we’ve seen plenty of that in the past. I was not happy with any of the outcomes; all were too limp to suit me.
 
How can Dennis know for sure what was said or wasn’t said over, before or after the dinner at Ocean Reef? He can’t know unless he was there, or they videotaped it all and handed him the disc. Maybe they did that. Even then, Dennis would have to wonder if they videoed it all.
 
Maybe the courts won’t buy it, but if it were my call I’d argue the doctrine of Res Ipsa Loquitur: the thing speaks for itself. Especially given who hosted the dinner: the richest, most favorably-treated “PAC” in the Keys. Certainly in the eyes of the general public, the thing should speak for itself. Should.
 
Sloan
  
In the eyes of God the thing certainly speaks for itself.
 
Dennis and I had a good laugh on the phone yesterday afternoon when I described how he had chased after me in a dream night before last, trying to get me into a coat-and-tie. The only time I ever wear a coat-and-tie is to go to court. In the sprit, the commissioners who attended the Ocean Reef dinner and the county manager already have been investigated and already are being prosecuted. If you think I’m joking, think again.
 
Sloan Bashinsky

First today, is my request for State Attorney Dennis Ward to prosecute under the Sunshine Law, the county commissioners who attended the Ocean Reef Club dinner following Wednesday’s county commission meeting. I heard Commissioner Wigington did not attend and the other four commissioners did. The commissioners who attended showed us what they are and now it’s time to learn their price.
 
Next today is the text of an email from a retired US Navy officer commenting on yesterday’s “Public Service – Florida Keys” post. My thoughts follow.
 
I’m glad the commissioners passed the resolution but I question what it really accomplishes. Perhaps it’s just another gesture to show the county commissioners are listening.Now if the commissioners really want to do something to help Monroe County, how about lowering the price is costs to do one of those inspections! It cost me $400! If the county wants FEMA to end the requirement, how about not charging so much. I heard that when the program was instituted, the county raised the cost for the inspection significantly. However, I have no way of verifying it. All I know is that I was out $400 but learned my broker lied to me.
 
I don’t think the county should be charging anyone for inspections of downstairs enclosures built after the county was supposed to stop them from being built (I don‘t know that date.) In fact, I think the county should be required to reimburse any property owner who has to remove a downstairs enclosure the county allowed to be built illegally. It looks like a government taking to me, without due process of law. It also looks like a criminal violation of constitutionally-protected civil rights.
 
As for Commissioner Di Gennaro’s resolution to ask FEMA to end the pilot designation for Monroe County, for which three of the five county commissioners voted Yes, how the county deals with downstairs enclosures will continue as before the resolution was passed; this was repeatedly explained by different commissioners to the audience.
 
Besides something seriously awry about Monroe County being the only ocean/beach county, or any county, in the United States operating as a pilot under FEMA’s oversight, the pilot carries with it a stigma of Monroe County being an outlaw county. The outlaw stigma bleeds into and hinders all of the county’s dealings with Tallahassee and the federal government.
 
Furthermore, it is generally accepted that rising water/flood insurance rates are going to go up in the future for various reasons, one of which is FEMA is in serious financial straights. It is feared the pilot/outlaw stigma will make Monroe County vulnerable to relatively higher increases in rising water/flood insurance rates than all other counties in the United States. This is not an unreasonable fear. So for this reason, also, the pilot needs to be terminated.
 
Beyond all of that, termination of the pilot would be symbolic; a move by the county back towards legitimacy, normalcy; not unlike a convicted felon who is released on parole, but has to wear a tracker and report to a probation officer and toe the line during the parole period. Monroe County is in much the same shape as a convicted felon; the pilot is the tracker, FEMA the parole officer.
 
(We have a parallel outlaw situation going on with Monroe County’s area of critical concern designation by Tallahassee. This came about when the county refused to deal with its sewerage; it continued to allow pollution of the environment. It spent money instead on edifices, such as the Murray Nelson Government and Cultural Center on Key Largo, the Freeman Justice Center in Key West, the Hickory House Restaurant on Stock Island.)
 
What Commissioner Di Gennaro hopes, and he stated it at the commission meeting, is the resolution to end the pilot will give him and the county commission a new base from which to try to negotiate with FEMA; and if that goes nowhere, to try to get someone in Washington, who can get FEMA’s attention, to step in and lend assistance. How any of that might translate into people with illegal downstairs enclosures, under county law, getting any relief, I can’t see. But perhaps it will lead to something more equitable than what we have been seeing happen, which is what gave birth to Citizens Not Serfs.
 
The irony is, many homes in in the Keys, like Commissioner Neugent’s in Marathon, and like mine on Little Torch Key, as I wrote yesterday and said at the county commission meeting, are at ground level. Yet we don’t have the county or FEMA leaning on us, telling us our lives are at risk. The only lives FEMA “seems” worried about are people who have homes with downstairs enclosures.
 
If FEMA really was concerned about saving lives, it would not have allowed people to move back into New Orleans after Katrina. Certainly it would not have allowed property owners in New Orleans to participate in federal flood insurance any longer, to discourage anyone living in a city that sits below sea level.
 
Likewise, if FEMA really was concerned about saving lives, it would not have let people in the Keys move back into their homes that had been flooded by the high tide that came in behind Hurricane Wilma. A high tide that killed thousands of motor vehicles and a lot of home appliances and sheetrock and plaster and writing and plumbing and furniture and trees and shrubs, and killed the Keys real estate market deader than dead; but, as far as I know, not one life was lost due to Wilma flooding anywhere in the Keys.
 
FEMA continues to let people build and rebuild homes in the Keys; and those people continue to get rising water/flood and windstorm insurance with FEMA’s approval. Show me, therefore, FEMA’s concern for human life.
 
FEMA is concerned about further catastrophic financial losses in the Keys, caused by hurricanes. This is what drives FEMA to eliminate downstairs enclosures in the Keys.
 
Maybe if this tirade were to somehow reach a bigger gorilla than FEMA up Washington D.C. way, something might change. It might not be what people want to happen, but it might be more sane that what’s going on now.
 
Personally, I have never felt people who live in flood-prone areas, including hurricane-prone areas, should get federally-subsidized insurance, paid for by all taxpayers in America. Personally, I believe people who live in flood-prone areas, including hurricane prone areas, should either pay the real cost of such insurance, or not have insurance.
 
I have no insurance on my trailer on Little Torch Key. If I ever have enough money to build a Florida house there, on stilts, I will pay cash and not have a mortgage. Why should my tax dollars subsidize flood or windstorm insurance or your or anyone’s Keys home? Why should the tax dollars, say, of a NAPA distributor in Lincoln, Nebraska, subsidize your or anyone else’s flood or windstorm insurance?
 
If you live in the Florida Keys, you assume the risk of getting clobbered by a hurricane. I said that at the first candidate forum in 2006, at Tropic Cinema in Key West. I still say it. This is a hurricane zone; if you aren’t comfortable with hurricanes, perhaps you should live somewhere else.
 
Ditto to mortgage lenders. If you lend money on homes in a flood plain, you assume the same risk as your borrower with respect to rising water/flood, and you also assume the same risk as your borrower with respect to the availability of rising water/flood insurance. If such insurance becomes unavailable, or so costly as to not be available, then you cannot foreclose if the borrower discontinues insurance coverage because it is unavailable or out of reach.
 
Any judge worth his or her salt should take the same position. Imagine the massive cardiac arrhythmia that “loop hurricane” would set off in FEMA. All of a sudden FEMA has no leverage against homeowners or county governments, because courts don’t allow foreclosures after FEMA-backed insurance becomes so expensive it is the same as no insurance available at all. All of a sudden FEMA has met the bigger gorilla in Washington, D.C.: the United States Department of Justice.
 
Sloan Bashinsky

Fools rush in . . .

Most of today’s post was written yesterday evening at Sippin’ Internet Care in Key West, as if I was writing it today. By then, the sins of my fathers, and of my own, which had been roaring through my body since way before dawn, had subsided. Aphrodite and several of her young friends had gathered at Sippin’. We talked, cut up. They asked me some questions, which I answered. They often asked me questions. They have not calcified yet. They are still open, curious, learning.
 
One of then talked about going to yoga class and how calm it made him feel, other people should do it to help them relax, cope. I did not say I had done all of that once upon a time, and tai chi, and meditation, and health food. I told a story of a younger couple, two of my dearest friends, who had done all of that and much more. Only organic food did they eat. Wheat grass juice was their elixir. Only purified water did they drink. But they both died of cancer in their forties. When asked how that was so?, I said it was so because they never dealt with the cancer in their spirits. They used all of the other to avoid doing that. Oh.
 
Amidst the roaring from hell in me, I drove up to MM 102.1 yesterday morning, to attend the county commission meeting. My first time inside the Murray Nelson Government and Cultural Center. En route, I was moved to listen to ”Morning Magazine” on US 1 (104.1 FM) Radio. News Coordinator Bill Becker was interviewing Key West Police Chief Donnie Lee, who had just returned from a law enforcement conference he praised highly. Toward the end of the interview, the conversation turned toward all the homless people and vagrants the bitter winter up north is driving down into the Keys. Donnie held forth a novel legal theory my old, tired, ex- lawyer mind had heard before in different wrappers. He said it’s okay for our tourists to wander around town with open containers but it’s a quality of life issue when the homeless and vagrants do it, and he’s going to do all he can to stop it. While he’s at it, I thought, maybe he should stop his friends and their friends from doing it, too.
 
Maybe that was what got me to thinking through the roaring from hell that I had learned my father’s business from the ground up. Then, I had learned the practice of law from the ground up. Then, I had learned Key West and Keys politics from the ground up – literally - I had slept on the ground a lot. I had learned God’s business from the ground up — a lot of it was getting to know the dirt in me. You learn things on the ground you never learn in the upper stories. You meet people on the ground you never meet in the upper levels. Maybe my living on the ground is what caused me to feel a lot of sympathy for Citizens Not Serfs, people who own homes with downstairs enclosures who are now being forced by the county, which is being forced by FEMA, to get rid of their downstairs enclosures, even though when they built the downstairs enclosures, or bought their homes, they did not know downstaris enclosures had been outlawed (pre-existing downstairs enclosures were grandfathered). They did not know because the county wasn’t enforcing the law and nobody told them. (Most Citizens Not Serfs people fall into that category, while I imagine a small few knew and took the risk.) 
 
I arrived at the meeting just before Commissioner Mario Di Gennaro put forward his resolution to respectfully ask FEMA to dismantle the pilot under which the Florida Keys (all except Key West) has been confined for some time because the county had not done anything about downstairs enclosures. A confinement, I learned at the meeting, came about after a previous county commission had asked FEMA to put the Keys in the pilot (Key West opted out). The only county in Florida, the only county in the United States, including Hawaii, to be put in the pilot, ever. The drift seemed to be that the Monroe County Commission had consistently ignored FEMA’s attempts to get the Keys in compliance with FEMA guidelines, so instead of biting the bullet and getting with FEMA’s program, that county commission, apparently not wanting to take the political heat, turned the county over to FEMA. When my turn to speak came, I said those county commissioners all should have been hanged. General laughter followed, even from the dais. Two of those commissioners were Sonny McCoy, still living, and Murry Nelson, deceased, after whom the building we were in was named. An ego edifice Commissioner George Neugent had strongly opposed being built. 
 
I watched George play devil’s advocate for a good bid of the discussion on the dais, sounding like he was going to vote against Mario’s resolution. But in the end, George asked Commissioner/Mayor Sylvia Murphy to vote in favor, and for all the commissioners to vote in favor, so there would be a unanimous vote for a respectful request for the removal of the piolot. Commissioner Murphy and Commissioner Heather Carruthers voted no, and seemed pretty put out. They had been told by some of the speakers that No votes would be remembered at the polls. Commissioners Di Gennaro, Neugent and Kim Wigington voted yes. It carried. Now began the attempt to persuade the 800 pound gorilla, as I had described FEMA during my time to speak, to stop the “racial discrimination” and start treating the Keys like the rest of America. I had said I thought it would take an even bigger gorilla in Washington D.C. to get the smaller gorilla’s attention, and for that to happen, the bigger gorilla needed to see the Monroe County Commission was in favor of taking the Keys out of FEMA’s pilot. I said I had been to George’ home, it was ground level; his whole house was a downstairs enclosure, as was my trailer on Little Torch Key. You could have heard a pin drop.
 
Whether George’s yes vote was tempered by his office being picketed day before yesterday by Citizen Not Serfs members and threats of what was to happen in the polls to commissioners who voted no, I cannot say. Whether his yes vote was tempered by my speaking at today’s commission meeting and my perceived (by some people) impending candidacy against him this year, I cannot say. What I can say is, after I was done speaking through the roaring from hell inside of me, there was a rousing round of applause from the audience, and people were thanking me all the way back to my seat, in plain view of everyone on the dais. Then, when Heather then asked the audience a question, not very nicely, and they all groused their answer and sentiments, Sylvia sternly cut them off because they had already spoken. I said, “Point of order, they were asked to give an answer and under parliamentary procedure they have a right to do it.” Sylvia yielded, and I got yet another round of thanks in plain view of the dais. Again, whether that had any effect on George’s vote, I cannot say. It seemed pretty clear Kim had already made up her mind to vote in favor of Mario’s resolution before the meeting started.
 
During the ensuing break, former County Commissioner David Rice, now running for his old seat, which Mario holds, told me I was right-on in the meeting. About the gorilla?, I asked. About the point of order, he said. I silently shook my head, left for lunch. After finding the Fish House packed with a waiting list, I headed to the Publix shopping center to eat at the Chinese restaurant. I had eaten there once before, just before a candidate forum in 2006, when I was running against George and David was running against Ron Saunders. David was in the restaurant finishing his meal when I arrived. I asked if I could join him, he said yes. It was during this short visit that I first suggested to Davidi that it would serve the public better if he would stick to the issues in his campaign and not attack his opponent, Democrat Ron Saunders. A suggestion I would repeat some time later at the Senior Citizen Center in Key West, when David and Ron spoke to seniors. A suggestion that went unheeded.
 
But perhaps I digress.
 
Something very interesting came out when the last citizen serf spoke yesterday morning. What very interesting thing came out was that, in 2005, an Ocean Reef Club property owner, last name Gifford, with a downstairs enclosure had gotten a free pass from the county commission, with the help of a last-second add-on sponsored by Sonny McCoy, drafted by then former County Attorney Jim Hendrick. Murray Nelson chimed in for the free pass being given. This happened the day after the annual dinner Ocean Reef threw for the county commissioners. I confirmed this during a break with County Attorney Bob Shillinger. I came away from the morning part of the commission meeting feeling even less charitable toward Ocean Reef. I wondered again what percentage of its members are Republicans? I wondered if it was 100 percent, or 95 percent, or 90?
 
I returned from lunch for the afternoon session, in case Kim did not pull or table the lobbyist registration ordinance she has been pushing. But the roaring from hell was so loud that I gave it up and left. I didn’t figure anything I might say would dissuade any commissioners from attending Ocean Reef’s dinner for them yesterday evening. I’d already had my say in the email of yesterday to all of the commissioners featured in this morning’s “Appearance of Impropriety” post. None of the commissioners mentioned that post to me during the breaks today, when we all mingled about. Kim already had indicated to me she was not attending Ocean Reef’s dinner. I supposed the newspapers would show who attended and what happened with Kim’s lobbyist registration ordinance. What the newspapers might not report is what you read above, or what follows.
 
After I got back to Key West, dead-dog tired, feeling like I’d been run over by a train, convinced there is no way in hell I can do the work a county commissioner’s job requires, or be in a relationship with a woman, I received a phone call from someone who had read yesterday’s post. The caller wanted to make sure I knew Ocean Reef Community Association (ORCA), which sponsored the dinner for the commissioners last night, is a not-for-profit association that has done very well getting federal funding for different projects inside of Ocean Reef’s gated community. Medical facilities, fire station, roads to same were named. The caller said this had been made known on ORCA’s website some time ago. The caller said maybe George Neugent has been so strong against an ordinance requiring lobbyists to register because he doesn’t want to cause Ocean Reef any trouble with its federal not-for-profit status and getting federal funding. The way this caller made it sound, Ocean Reef gotten an awful lot out money of the feds, relative to what the county gets. I wondered what a super rich place like Ocean Reef was doing getting federal funding for anything?
 
The roaring lifted somewhat. I headed for Sippin’, to rendezvous (but I didn’t know it yet) with Aphrodite and her young friends (young, as in 30 or so).
 
I told Commissioner Neugent in an email the other day that I had told someone he could be a great county commissioner, but right now he’s a house divided between being a public servant and being loyal to his political party (Republican). He certainly earned the affection of the Citizens Not Serfs folks yesterday. I hope his vote came from his heart and was not politically motivated. I hope the commissioners who ate with ORCA last evening enjoyed themselves. I wouldn’t be able to sleep afterward, knowing the game I was playing. But then, I don’t sleep to well anyway. I was woken up at 3 a.m. to get out today’s post, before I drove up to Key Largo with the sounds from hell playing in me. Glad you weren’t there; I wouldn’t have been able to be very nice with all the roaring. Only the good die young. No good deed goes unpunished. It really is all about me, just as George said. If I die before I wake, yipee!!!
 
Sloan Bashinsky