Mas Vale Tarde Que Nunca!

Having been waylaid, so to speak, and absent from the tropics with the exception of a brief foray in the month of June, we've been neglectful of putting up our annual, strictly non-scientific (but highly accurate) hurricane predictions.
No doubt there are going to be some who'll say, "That's fine and well, but you've made it easy for youself this year. The hurricane season's almost half over--we're into the month of August already!" That's true, and as the old ditty goes, "June too soon, July stand by...August------?" I could never remember what rhymed with August.
Then I found this late 19th century manuscript on the web which solves that mystery.
August rhymes with "look out you must." At least it does, if you put the accent on the second syllable of August. But I digress.
The first tropical storm, at long last (8/10) is already out there.
So with no time to waste, we've called our old time prognosticator "Typhoon" O'Connor (who otherwise refused to be named or depicted) to give us this year's belated reading on the thickness of caterpillar's fur, the direction in which land tortoises are crossing the road, near and offshore water temperatures and other inchoate observations leading to an accurate prediction of what might come.
"Activity's light this year (obviously)," he says. "But that don't mean nothing's gonna happen. If it comes this year, it'll come late. And if it comes, it'll come hard. I wouldn't want to be on the gulf coast when she hits."
Interpretation: the arrival of El Nino presupposes a less active season, yet the surface temperatures of the Gulf are such that if a system gets into that area, chances are good that it will intensify before landfall. The Keys and Key West: shootin' dice, as usual, a couple of late scares maybe. Keep the shutters handy, just in case.

Technophobia on the High Seas

Dave was a fine fellow and in some ways a legend in his time. He’d served a few years in the Marine Corps, some say during the Vietnam era, but he never talked much about that. He married, had a pretty wife and nice young daughter, and was living an idyllic existence in the Florida Keys, busying himself primarily, it seemed, by mucking about in boats.

His family owned a lot of real estate, although he never talked much about that either. Dave himself drew a comfortable paycheck by managing a shopping center up around Ft. Lauderdale--collecting rents and cleaning up behind the stores once a month, a situation that gave him plenty of time to engage in his hobbies. His family didn’t own these properties outright, the rumor went, but held them through a murky fundamentalist organization in one of the Appalachian states, some say for tax purposes. Whatever the reason, Dave and his immediate family were not fundamentalists. At some point they’d converted to the Bah’ai Faith, and faithfully followed the fast days, feast days, and other disciplines of the Bah’ais.

In some cases it may be said , “His religion takes care of all his peculiarities.” But not so in Dave’s case. While his contemporaries dealt with mundane problems like how to pay their rent and their kids’ dental bills, Dave fretted over decisions like “Catamaran or trimaran? Ketch rig or sloop rig? What to do, what to do?” This is not to say that he wasn’t a good boatman nor fun to be around. He’d spent a lot of time sailing in the Bahamas, and had a wealth of knowledge about out-island Bahamian lore, seamanship and navigation. (This was well before GPS.)

Dave was also a purist, and in today’s terms, you’d call him a technophobe. Discounting one’s need for dentistry and perhaps an occasional antibiotic, he would have been perfectly happy back in the 1800's. He held a romanticized notion of sailing ships and a decided distaste for things mechanical and motors in particular. “Iron jibs,” he called them, making a spitting sound. “One time, just one time,” he would say, “I would like to see what it is like to be totally, totally away from the sound of motors!”
Time passed, as Dave went through a series of boats, never completely satisfied. For a while he had a 27 ft. Wharram catamaran. Then he had one of Jim Brown’s designs, a Searunner 25. In the meantime unfortunately Dave and his wife had been having some problems. They were waiting out the Bah’ai-prescribed “year of patience” before finalizing their split. They’d decided a few months before that their daughter would live with Mom for the school year. She would spend the summer sailing with Dad. She had just turned fourteen.

So many things in life depend on one’s point of view. What red-blooded American boy wouldn’t jump at the chance for an ocean-going voyage with his dad aboard their own speedy multihull, however cramped for space it might be? But what American junior high-age girl wouldn’t be happier staying close to home, hanging with her peer group? It’s said the daughter took one look at the single narrow hull which was to be her home for the next two months, “But it’s even smaller than the Wharram!” and burst into tears. Carried into the cockpit of the small craft, she bade farewell to her equally tearful mother, as Dave determinedly cranked his brand new 25 hp. Johnson outboard (a begrudging concession to technology purchased just for this trip) into action, and the Searunner sped away from the dock toward their first stop in Miami.
(To her credit the girl’s tears dried before they made their first anchorage at Key Biscayne, and she acquitted herself well on the voyage.)

There’s a small harbor on the southwest side of Key Biscayne where cruising yachtsmen traditionally gathered before making the crossing to the Bimini in the Bahamas. There they exchanged information on tides, weather, and possible hazards to navigation. There being safety in numbers, our travelers planned to travel in a flotilla with the other cruising yachts, weighing anchor at 5 in the morning, to take advantage of the outgoing tide.

Imagine the excitement, amid the smell of diesel oil and the slapping of rigging, as seagoing craft of all descriptions started their engines, weighed anchor, turned on their running lights, and one by one headed out into the predawn stillness of Biscayne Bay.

Dave raised the mainsail on the trimaran and readied the halyard to raise the jib once they were under way. He adjusted the choke and throttle on his new Johnson 25, reached down and gave the starter cord a couple of rapid pulls and....nothing happened. He re-primed the bulb on the fuel line, reached down and yanked the starter cord again. Nothing. He re-primed the bulb again and pulled the cord furiously. He began to smell gasoline. Now it was flooded. He disconnected the fuel line, pushed in the choke lever, hoping to clear the carburetor, and cranked again. Not a sound of life from the motor. He dashed below, retrieving a small tool kit. He took the cover off the engine and, tearing knuckles as he went, reached around and removed the spark plug, replacing it with a spare.

He re-primed the fuel line once again, set the choke and throttle and pulled. By now it was starting to get light, and he could see that the harbor was empty. All the other boats were under way. He pulled and pulled, but nothing happened. The brand new engine that had worked perfectly up until this morning had let him down. By the time he got it fixed , the other boats would be well out into the Gulfstream. He would not have his plans frustrated by the malicious vagaries of an iron jib. “Joshua Slocum didn’t need an engine, and neither do I!”

He unbolted the engine from the transom, and lifting it high overhead, with a superhuman effort, let it fly into a graceful arc into the waters of the little harbor. He hoisted the anchor, raised the jib, and the little trimaran moved out to sea.

Dave later said that everything went all right until they sailed into Nassau harbor to clear Bahamian customs. He eased the tri into a convenient dock in the harbor, but the customs official refused to clear him unless he brought the boat to another dock that was directly upwind. “If you want to clear customs, you must come directly to the customs dock,” he was told.

Necessity is the mother of invention, and somehow he contrived a way to do it. He was an excellent sailor before that trip, but not having a motor, he discovered ways to sail that summer that defied the imagination. A multihull is notoriously difficult to “bring about,” i.e, turn through the oncoming wind, because of the fact that it has two or three hulls which offer resistance to the wind and water, rather than just one.

Since then I’ve seen him tack the boat up a narrow canal against the wind. (Lubbers may have trouble following this.) Although it seems counterintuitive, he would set centerboard most of the way up, with only a foot or so in the water. Presumably this would lessen the drag on forward speed, and make turning easier. Then if he used a jib at all, he would have it set extremely loosely, almost luffing, so there was no chance it would push the bow to leeward. And he would sheet the mainsail in just enough to give the boat forward momentum, not enough to make the boat heel or sideslip.

Reportedly they had a fine trip down through the out-islands and sailed home safely, tanned and happy.

Oh, and the motor. Due to the fact that so many people use that harbor, we can be sure it was rescued by an enterprising snorkeler before too much time had passed. Whether it ever ran again, we can’t say.

Above all, do no harm.

The pastor of our church has a marked antipathy toward “faith healers” who claim they can cure illnesses with prayer in a way similar to the healings described in the New Testament, performed not only by Jesus, but by his disciples.

“I don’t discount the power of prayer. I know that prayer can heal–sometimes. What I don’t like are those who claim they can do this on a regular basis. I’m not naming names, but there are a few in particular whom I have in mind. And, to put it mildly, I take great issue with their claims and practices.”


He might have been talking about another place of worship just outside of town, which holds weekly healing sessions. They appear to have a “charismatic” style of worship, with exhortative preaching, drums, hands in the air, and so on. I found out about it from our local Cable Guy, who claimed, “My wife was cured of diabetes there. I was cured of bipolar disorder.” And his daughter was cured of impetigo, I think he said. He was pretty much sold on the whole thing.


Then there was the Lakeland Revival phenomenon. In April of 2008 Canadian biker-turned-evangelist Todd Bentley started a controversial series of “healing” services in Lakeland, Florida, which steadily increased in size over the next few months, attracting 140,000 people from 40 countries. Eventually Bentley was found to have proverbial "feet of clay," and although there were many first-person accounts of miracles, there were no medically documented cures.

Our pastor also stated that according to the best current estimates, 70-90% of the ailments presented to primary care physicians today can be termed “stress-related,” hence psychological, rather than systemic ailments, the very type of ailment that can be "cured" by psychological and/or spiritual means. Clearly, though, there are some conditions that will only yield to the surgeon’s knife, or to modern, sophisticated pharmaceutical treatments.

With all this in mind I was extremely alarmed when a younger friend of ours, a botanist with a somewhat troubling inclination toward a magical world-view, announced that he had “performed some cures” with concoctions made from Petiveria alliacea, a tropical plant also called Anamu, among a dozen other names. He became aware the herb while doing a research paper on the botanicas (Latin-American herb shops) of South Florida, and later saw it in use among Native American tribes in South America.

“How can you know this stuff is safe?” I asked. “Don’t you know that the first rule of medicine since ancient times is primum non nocere, ‘first do no harm’? Have these people checked with their doctors about this? And aren’t you likely to stir up false hopes? Or maybe prevent them from seeking the regular medical care that they need?”

“No, no, no,” he claimed. “I’ve taken it myself many times, for one thing. And all three of these people are close friends. Each of them begged me to prepare this drink for them. They were quite aware of all the risks.” He went on to explain that all of his “patients” had been receiving conventional cancer treatments, assumed to be a combination of surgery and chemotherapy. One was an older woman from Cuba or Colombia who was already familiar with Petiveria. The other two were reportedly younger men.

Whereas herb companies sell the dried leaf to be made into a tea or to be taken in capsules, the botanist had a different recipe that he’d seen prepared by tribal curanderos. They used only the root, he said. He’d start with a large quantity of the roots, removing the outer bark with a vegetable peeler, like you’d peel a carrot. Then he’d cut the roots into inch-long sections and boil them in water for an hour or so. He’d then cool the mixture and strain out the roots, leaving a yellow, garlicky-smelling tea. The treatment consisted of drinking three approximately 16 ounce portions of this tea in a single day.

In each of the three cases where his friends took the herbs, he claimed, subsequent medical tests showed accelerated improvements in the patients’ conditions, and eventual remission, much to the surprise of the regular medical professionals, according to this fellow.

I pressed him on why, if this stuff was so effective, that the regular medical community had not picked up on it. His answer was vague, about the cost of research, the tyranny of institutional thinking, and so on. I warned him again about the seriousness of playing doctor, and he agreed that he would never present himself as such, but that in the cases cited the individuals had specifically asked him about the herb, and requested that he help them prepare the tea. “They came to me,” he said.

And would the results would have been the same without this modern snake-oil treatment? I don’t approve of what he did, and don’t advise anyone to take this or any other kind of herb without medical supervision. He did explain, however, that the herb grows wild in South Florida, in vacant lots and along roadways, and people have been using it for years. He even showed me three places in Key West where it was growing out of the sidewalks.

Captain Tony International?

We noted a letter to the editor in the Key West Citizen a few weeks ago written by our old friend (and helicopter pilot par excellence), long-time Middle Keys resident Lee Cranmer (pictured at left). Lee's letter suggested renaming the airport in Key West for former Key West mayor and popular Keys character Captain Tony Tarracino. Captain Tony died in November 2008 at the age of 92.
The newly remodeled airport terminal recently opened amid the usual fanfare surrounding such openings, and not a little controversy over design, construction delays, cost overruns, and the death of at least one man in the collapse of a concrete form. Add to this another controversy over naming the airport for a still-living politician, a former county commissioner defeated in the polls last year as one of a dreaded "gang of three," and you have the makings of a proverbial "hot potato" for the present county commission.
Perhaps that's why Lee's letter didn't get the attention that it deserved. But many people we've talked with think it would be a stroke of genius. A Keys resident since 1948, Tony embodied the island's reputation as a refuge for eccentrics and renegades who had found their way to the southernmost point of the continental United States. He was friends with literally thousands of people. And he served an honorable two years as the city's mayor.
And, in contrast with certain others, Tony has now gone on the that Great Dog Track in the sky. (Tony always maintained that he did his best thinking while serving as mayor at the now defunct dog track on Stock Island.)
As we think of the many bed tax dollars that the tourist industry spends every year to keep Key West's economic pump primed, we should consider the advantage of Captain Tony International printed on every travel document, air schedule, and plane ticket having to do with Key West.You just can't buy that type of publicity. Now, you can't blame anybody for not wanting to handle a "hot potato," but can it hurt to let the County Commission know how we feel? If Tony didn't embody the best of Key West, who did? And since when was Key West ever know for political correctness? It's time Lee's idea got some serious consideration.

What's With This? III

Remember this guy? He's the reknowned "Boy Buddha" of Nepal, who first created a stir back in 2005. He emerged from the jungle, so it was said, and spent several months meditating under a tree and dispensing an occasional word of wisdom, a la the original Buddha. It was reported at that time that he attracted a crowd of 10,000 people, many of whom were convinced that he must be the actual reincarnation of Buddha himself.
It was said that he sat immobile, meditating most of the time. At night his "handlers" would cover his place of meditation with a curtain. They claimed he neither ate nor drank. A French news crew was allowed to observe him over a 48 hour period, and they reported that they did see him eating a piece of fruit.
After a few months he disappeared, only to re-emerge in late 2008, looking hale and hearty as in the photo above.
The above photo shows the boy during his appearance in 2005 at the age of 16. He seems to have cleaned himself up considerably for his second appearance. The second time he stayed around for a shorter period, and has now disappeared again.
So what's a skeptic to think? He doesn't seem that he has started a cult, although with 10,000 visitors he certainly could have started one. We're left wondering about his third appearance: when and where, and to what signifigance. What does he do when he's not "on stage"?
And what about his handlers? What's their motivation? Helpful boddhisattvas presenting the young saint to the multitudes? Or perhaps only enterprising food vendors....I mean, with a crowd of 10,000 you could sell a lot of kebabs.

ADDENDUM: "Getting It Honest" (Cynicism, I mean.)
For several years this bumper sticker was seen on the rear of a VW van parked on Southard Street in Key West. Noted, that the people of Conyers downplay this nowadays.

Da Train! Da Train!

I recently had a chance to do something I hadn't done for ages: take a trip by train. I'd heard many stories over the years, some good and some bad, about our quasi-nationalized rail system, Amtrak.

--"Th' unions ruined th' railroads!"
--"Rail travel remains the best and safest way to travel, and will be moreso in the future."
--"The condition of the railroads is a perfect example of why socialism just won't work!"
--"There's something romantic about train travel." (And so on and so on....)

Ironically all the above statements have an element of truth to them. But the only way to know for sure what modern train travel is like is to travel by train yourself and check it out.
Last week I purchased a one-way ticket from Raleigh to Orlando. The trip would take a little longer by train than by car, 13 hours, leaving around 9:30 PM and arriving a little after 10 the next morning. You'd have to sleep sitting up....

The train was running late, giving me time to check out my fellow passengers. There was a huge family who appeared to be from India, sitting off by themselves. I chatted with an older lady, who said that this was also her first train trip in years. She decided it might be simpler to take the train rather than hassle the parking at the airports. She had rented a sleeping berth. There was a teenage girl and her boyfriend, also both first-timers, who were on their way to meet her family who were already at Disney World. The girl's mother, who was waiting with them, having taken the train before, made sure they were equipped with cell phones, their own pillows, and other necessary supplies.

When the train did show up at the platform about 15 minutes behind schedule, it seemed like the first few people coming off it were having trouble walking. “Sea legs?” I thought. “The train lurches around so much they have trouble navigating when they get off?” The conductors, most of whom were black women, gave everyone a seat number as they got on the train.
I sat next to a young Air Force dude. “Wow, I’m glad that guy that was sittin’ here got off the train. He was really drunk!” Well, that explained the “sea legs” of some of the disembarking passengers. “He had his own bottle with him. I didn’t think they allowed that.” The Air Force guy was a little hyper himself. He kept drinking these "energy drinks," so he wouldn't miss a stop where he could get off and smoke a cigarette. In between times he worked a PPS (portable play station), tried to trade games for it with other people on board, and organized card games in the "lounge." He was here, there, then everywhere. By the end of the trip I was thinking, how can this guy possibly be in the military. I didn't see any i.d. or uniform, but maybe he was....
Amanecer en la Florida. The hardest part was sleeping in the seats. And oh! The get-off-to-smoke deal was a little complicated. The train made about a dozen stops, but only a few were long enough for smokers to indulge their habit. One fellow didn't make it back on, somewhere in South Carolina in the middle of the night. "Hey!" says the Air Force guy. "That bald guy got left behind!"
Apparently this was not uncommon. "The train didn't leave him," said the conductor, breezing by. "He left the train."
Thirteen hours after leaving Raleigh the train rolled into Orlando. The fare was $49, about the same cost in gas if your car got 30 mpg. If the trains were cleaner and faster, it would be a pretty good deal, but I guess "path dependence" says we keep the cars for a while longer, anyway.
Jim Kunstler’s latest rant includes some comments on an article about California’s proposed high-speed rail project, which appeared recently in the New York Times. (See Kunstler’s link at right.) He quotes:

It might have been nice if, say, in the late 20th century, some far-seeing governor had noticed what was going on in France, Germany, and Spain but, alas.... It would have been nice, too, if ... George W. Bush, when addressing extreme airport congestion in 2003, had considered serious upgrades in normal train service between the many US cities 500 miles or so apart...
...The sad truth is it's too late now. But the additional sad truth, at this point, is that Californians (and US public in general) would benefit tremendously from normal rail service on a par with the standards of 1927, when speeds of 100 miles-per-hour were common and the trains ran absolutely on time (and frequently, too) without computers (imagine that !).

It should be noted, too, that Jeb Bush, when he was governor of Florida, vetoed a plan to develop a “bullet train” between major Florida cities. We’re sure it would have been prohibitively expensive, especially in light of the history of Miami-Dade’s Metrorail boondoggle.

Still, with the maxing out of regional airports and the increasing price of gasoline and crowding of interstate highways, it would be nice to think that safe and economical rail travel might once again play a part in the national scheme of things.

The younger people I met on board seemed uniformly enthusiastic about train travel. Maybe it was the ability to move around and talk to other people while traveling. There are already a great many “Amtrak” groups on Facebook for fans of train travel.
Would I do it again? Well, maybe. As soon as I recover.

Changes in Blog Links

Jim Kunstler's blog, Clusterf**k Nation, has a new URL. Jim is an acerbic, opinionated son of a gun, but he predicted the spike in gasoline prices right down to the day, almost. Author and speaker, he's been sounding a continuous Jeremiad against American urban planning, or the lack thereof for years. He's also an artist--maybe not a Rembrandt, but his paintings (sample above) evoke a certain sense of upstate New York, where he makes his home. His blog is always worth a read.
Tom Kemper (who I can't remember if I ever met personally or not) has left Key West after a ten-year sojourn. His heart is in the right place, and we'll stay linked to his Bahama Village Blog for a while longer. You can't say he didn't fight the good fight on that crowded island, reminding us that paradise might well be best experienced via a short vacation, or even better, seen at a distance from the surrounding seas. (After almost forty years on the islands, I'm still amazed at how the local political dynamics work. No,if you wrote a book, nobody'd believe it. 'Nuff said: when ignorance, is bliss, 'tis folly to be wise.)
Good luck to ya, neighbor.

Oh! Almost forgot! I've added Rock Trueblood's Watchworld to the blog list. He's got a lot of economic news. But scroll down for some great insights into the current real estate situation in Key West. As usual, when the rest of the country catches cold, the Keys get pneumonia. Some heavy info there, and don't forget to check the comments, even if you have to read between the lines.