Hang Angela Davis Now?

This old slide, showing a billboard advertising Islamorada's Theater of the Sea with some grafitti of the era, taken on Long Key in 1971, recently surfaced.
A thirty-something friend of ours, upon seeing it, said, "Huh? Who's Angela Davis?" I was completely taken aback for a minute, thinking, "What? Don't they teach history in our high schools any more?" Then I realized that I couldn't remember what she had done to engender such rancor, especially in the faraway Florida Keys. I had to look her up in Wikipedia.
Reflecting back it's remarkable how much the country has changed. And how much better off we are than those who live in places where ancient slights and schisms still claim people's lives.

Love Mock, Attack Real

(Islamorada, FL) A lady scuba diver from a Midwestern state narrowly escaped injury through the quick action of fellow divers, who frightened away a 400 lb. sea turtle which was apparently attacking her from behind. It was surmised that the marine reptile, not known for the acuity of its eyesight, mistook the woman's twin tanks and backpack for the shell of another turtle, and its advances were of an amorous nature.
The woman was reportedly wearing twin tanks, and a type of buoyancy compensator which was popular at the time (a SeaPro ATPack) which contained lead shot in lieu of a weight belt, (pictured above, also available in darker colors). The turtle recognized it as another shell, and proceeded to climb atop it in an aggressive manner. Some eyewitnesses maintained that the reptile gave the woman's black dive hood a playful nip. Earlier reports that it had punched a hole in her wet suit were discounted.

The Law's Delay, the Insolence of Office....Cutting the Gordian Knot

AT&T Inc. announced (a week ago) Thursday that it will cut 12,000 jobs – or about 4 percent of its global workforce – citing the slack economy along with corporate reorganization and declining demand for traditional landline telephone service.
At the same time they've also apparently started a more "flexible rate" policy. If you tell them that you can't afford to continue their services, they might give you a slight break in their rates.
Rare and fortunate is he or she, however, who has not at one time or another been ensnared in the Catch 22 of timeless bureaucracy. A man in upstate New York had to regain his commercial drivers license ab initio, with all the attendant costs, despite the fact that the problem originated not with him, but with a mistake made by the Department of Motor Vehicles. At least it was outrageous enough to make the news.
AT&T is certainly still coming out with an attractive array of products, if their ads are any indication, and their remaining employees are excellent at touting and selling new services. But you have to wonder if maybe they should have kept one or two people capable of cutting the Gordian knot. I now have an inch-thick folder of correspondence and notes to prove my point.
In the middle of last October we left an apartment we had rented temporarily in North Carolina, and called AT&T to have the phone and Internet services turned off. At the same time they talked us into ordering a pay-as-you-go cell phone, to get us through the time we would be without a regular phone. So far no problem.
When we got the next bill, we were being billed for a month's services in advance. We called, and they said ignore that bill, because you'll be getting a final bill in a few days. That same scenario has been repeated for four months now. We've spent close to four hours (no exaggeration) on the phone with them, and written four or five letters. Each time they say first that we didn't have the service terminated, but then they check it and say, OK, it was shut off, and you'll get a final bill in a few days. But all we get is an ever-growing bill (it's up to $400 and change now) and an occasional letter saying the bill is going to a collection agency.
Oh well, hope springs eternal, and maybe the fifth time's the charm. Hope so, anyway, and hope you are luckier....

Wisdom of the Ages

A number of years ago a friend sent me this card from an underage drinking establishment of our youth, a piece of memorabilia which has recently resurfaced. I don't recall seeing much dancing or dining in the place, contrary to what the card says, and can't imagine them catering a party, much less a banquet. It was located in Arbor Hill, even then a predominantly black section of the city. A long, dark "ladies' entrance," smelling vaguely of sweat and ancient vomit led to a darkened interior that looked very much like the inside of a log cabin. A political wink of the eye, so to speak, seemed to keep the authorities at bay, and the lads could get a six-ounce draft beer for ten cents without the inconvenience of showing a draft card. Needless to say, the place was a magnet for the more adventurous youth from uptown and the suburbs. OK, we loved it.
It's only with the resurfacing of the card that I noticed the doggerel on the reverse side, something we young swells would have dismissed as the Runyonesque ramblings of the retired World War I vets and other reprobates who were fixtures at the bar at the front of the establishment. Ironically I have now lived long enough to see it, despite the inventions of viagra, cialis, and other concoctions, as a timeless truism. Unless, of course, we could go back and have a couple more of Mike's clam cocktails....

More Bob Anderson: Let Us Now Praise Famous Authors

“The works of William Gaddis are taught in the freshman English classes of all the great universities across our land,” Bob Anderson often said. He was proud of the fact that he was not only an acquaintance of the man now often acknowledged as being one of the greatest of American postwar novelists, but that he had actually entertained the celebrated author in his own home.

Bob had worked for CBS in New York for many years (claiming, in fact, to be the one who "discovered" Andy Rooney: an apocryphical tale to be related later), eventually "burning out” sometime around the early Seventies. He and his wife Annie sold their New York digs and moved to Jericho, Vermont to settle Bob's jangled urban nerves. They say Jericho’s now a bedroom community for Burlington, but back then it was an out-of-the-way rural place. Bob and Annie busied themselves making Tiffany-style lamps out of stained glass and selling them by mail order, a business they continued until the day Bob figured out that the hourly return on their labors was substantially less than the existing minimum wage, and retired altogether.They’d also acquired a house in Key West near the current Key West Seaport, which was then still a working commercial area of shrimp docks and fishhouses. One of their neighbors was a local grande dame of some renown who for a period of time ran an ongoing salon of, well, original Key West characters, the real kind who gave the place its zany reputation, but who are now for the most part extinct, displaced by generations of poseurs and arrivistes, as predicted accurately by Ernest Hemingway 70 years before in his novel “To Have and Have Not.”

It’s told that eventually the doyenne tired of hosting her parade of characters and one day without explanation threw them all out, withdrawing the welcome mat forever, but not before Bob had made the acquaintance of a young lady from New York who was William Gaddis’s second wife, Judith.

Before Bob and Annie journeyed back to Vermont in the spring, they extended an invitation to the Gaddises, through Judith, to join them for a country weekend at their place in Jericho. The appointed summer weekend was established and the invitation accepted, and although hindsight might have dictated a “let’s not and say we did” scenario, a commitment having been made, the Gaddises were obligated, for better or worse, to make a trip up to Vermont.

One can only imagine the arrangements made in Jericho that week leading up to the day of arrival, the weeding and mowing, the trips to the ABC store for the proper wine and spirits, the preparations for a perfect and memorable feast, the proper positioning of various pieces of memorabilia throughout the old farmhouse for conversational purposes. “William Gaddis is coming! William Gaddis is coming!”

About three o’clock Bob started to get worried that he hadn’t heard from them. They were, of course, on their way, and he’d send specific directions on how to get to his house. On the other hand a lot could go wrong. But if for some unfathomable reason they weren’t coming, they would call.

Instead of worrying about it, Bob decided to raid the liquor locker for a “stiffener” to steady his nerves. It’s a long trip. They probably set out late. They’ll come rolling in soon.

Nowadays people drive with their ears glued to a cellphone. People have even been killed in accidents while diverting their attention from the road ahead to the text messages of their cellphones. But as recently as 30 years ago, especially in Vermont, making a telephone call, especially a long distance telephone call, was not as simple as punching in a few numbers on a hand-held device. You’d have to find a pay phone and go through an operator, and you’d better have a handy supply of quarters to feed that pay phone, providing it was working.

Bob checked the phone at the farm house. There was a dial tone. It was in good working order. He’d better hang it up though, because they should be calling any minute. He strode out onto the front porch, looking down the empty stretch of Route 15. There was hardly a car in sight on that warm Vermont afternoon. He went back in and poured himself another drink.

Around five o’clock the phone finally rang. They were at a general store about forty miles south on Route 7. They got lost on some back roads in upstate New York. With a little luck, they’d be there in an hour.

By the time they finally arrived, Bob, having taken counsel of his fears that they weren’t really coming, had already had a few too many. Of course the guests had a long day’s drive, and a little attitude adjustment was in order. There was an obligatory round of drinks before supper, and what kind of a host would not join his newly arrived guests in a libation? Bob had another one.

When Annie finally brought out her feast, Bob was already entering a phase of incoherency. Raising his hand to make a point, he slumped forward, passing out face down in his dinner plate. Judith said all she could remember, when he came up, was that he looked like a Santa Claus, because of all the mashed potatoes in his beard.

I heard this story from Judith. Bob never mentioned it. He did say now and then that he’d known and admired William Gaddis. Perhaps he’d forgotten that he’d been carried up to bed by one of the greatest of American postwar novelists and two women.

We Are What We Eat

MSNBC ran its program on Jonestown again the other night.

(For the few who might not have been born yet when the events at Jonestown took place thirty years ago or who are otherwise uninformed, an American religious leader, Jim Jones, led over nine hundred of his followers to the jungles of Guyana, South America, to set up an experimental agricultural colony. He went completely mad, and induced almost all of his followers to take their own lives, and the lives of their children, mostly by drinking Flavor-Aid laced with poisonous cyanide.)

Someone commented, “What planet were they ON?” Answer: a very small and compact planet, the Jonestown settlement. And the mind-control aspects of cults are well known, as is the fact that for every charismatic, manipulative leader there seem to be dozens, if not hundreds, of unquestioning, sheeplike followers.
But there’s another aspect to the Jonestown situation that the documentary touched upon only briefly. The original plan was to create a self-sustaining agricultural settlement, but coastal Guyana’s poor tropical soil doesn’t lend itself to traditional agriculture. The people had been living on a diet of rice and little else for months, while working and living in tropical heat. Their bodies were depleted of minerals and salts. Most of them must have been suffering from borderline malnutrition, notably the lack of certain vitamins necessary for mental acuity. They became passive and more likely to accept anything they were told. So it was easy for Jones to talk them into mass suicide.

Some years ago in Haiti I witnessed a similar scenario, although in this case the preacher himself was the victim. Earlier in the day it had rained. The boss was checking on some equipment in one of the sheds on the site, and slipped on the rain-soaked wooden stairs. He somersaulted down the steps and came down hard on his back, breaking a scapula. I drove him to the Hopital General in downtown Port-au-Prince in the hope of getting an x-ray of the shoulder and some sort of medical treatment.

Although the hospital itself seemed like something out of the pages of Dante’s Inferno, they did have some x-ray equipment, and the staff did their best to accommodate us. The process took the better part of two hours. During this time a young, earnest blond-haired American showed up at the hospital. He seemed extremely upset. He said he was a missionary from a Pentecostal denomination, one that I wasn’t really familiar with.He said that he was living in a small country town on the southern peninsula, and that he had been there for about eight months. He felt for sure that Satan was up to his old tricks in the village where he was working. Just the day before, for example, a woman caught her four year old daughter stealing, and to imbue her with a sense of Christian morality, she immersed the girl’s hand in a pot of boiling water. By morning it appeared that this may not have been such a good idea, however, and the missionary, the mother, the little girl, and some townspeople began an arduous day-long trip, fraught with mechanical breakdowns and misadventure, into the capital in search of medical help. “I can’t help but think that Satan followed us here tonight!” said the young man, his eyes searching the trees in the darkened street beyond the hospital. It was apparent that the guy had been having a rough day. A long trip in a series of Haitian tap-taps is a wearing experience, even for a young person. Still, his whole body seemed to be twitching unusually.

“So, you’ve been out there in the village this whole time?” I asked. He said that he had. “And what kind of food do you eat?” I asked.
“I eat what the people eat,” he said. “I didn’t come here to lord it over them and have my own special food. What’s good enough for them is good enough for me.” It was then I noticed that he had sores on either side of his mouth. I remembered from somewhere in my past (an eighth-grade science class, perhaps?) that this was a symptom of some kind of deficiency disease, like pellagra or beri-beri. (It’s actually caused by a lack of vitamin B-12 in the diet.)
“Dude, I’m not a doctor,” I began, “but I think it’s really a good idea to take vitamin pills while you’re here. I mean, I do, and I feel much better.”

I was about to tell him about the sores at the sides of his mouth, and how it was caused by his diet, when one of our Haitian engineers rushed into the hospital. He’d heard about the accident via the jungle telegraph, and had come looking for us. He’d already made arrangements for the boss to be examined at a private hospital in Petionville, where one of his cousins was a doctor.

I went to wish the missionary good luck. He was still looking out at the trees into the darkened street outside. “Look! Was that a bat?” he said. I never ran into the guy again. I hope he remembered to buy a bottle of vitamins before he went back to the village.

Monkey Island

The Rhesus Monkey (macaca mulata) is native to Asia, its natural range encompassing northern India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Burma, Thailand, Afghanistan, southern China, and some neighboring areas. They have close-cropped hair on their heads, which accentuates the expressive, humanoid appearance of their faces. They are an adaptable species, acclimated to many habitats, including some in close proximity to humans. This is most common in India, where they are associated with Hanuman, the Hindu monkey god. A few troops of introduced rhesus monkeys reportedly now live wild, not only in Florida but also in South Carolina!Monkeys used for research come from private labs which raise them for that purpose. This was the source of the moneys that escaped to form the South Carolina colony. In the early seventies colonies were set up on two offshore islands in the Florida Keys.
We’d heard stories about these islands. When we acquired a used canoe a number of years ago, it seemed downright tempting to paddle out quietly for a closer look. It was a long and strenuous paddle, especially before we figured out how to use the tides and winds to our advantage. (Time your arrival with the low tide; that way you’ll take advantage of the outgoing tide on the way out, and the incoming tide on the way back in. Stay in the shelter of islands as much as possible in an adverse wind; use a following wind to your advantage.)
Once we got out there, we were treated to an exotic sight, an alien species adapted to our local ecosystem. The monkeys seemed to form troops of ten to twenty individuals. They expressed curiosity about us, but interestingly would not look any of us directly in the eye. When it became apparent that we were staring back at them, they would quickly avert their glance.
Another odd thing was that each troop seemed to have a slightly different appearance. The face color on some groups was more reddish. Others seems to have a more yellowish cast. Although we’d been told that they didn’t swim in salt water, we saw a group of twenty or more leap out of the trees from one side of a narrow creek, swim a few strokes, and disappear into the trees on the other side.By the late 90's tree-huggers were convinced that the monkeys were denuding the islands of vegetation and polluting the water. It’s certainly true that one of the islands had had a good deal of its mangroves stripped of leaves. We never saw any major evidence of pollution in the water. In any event the monkeys were gradually evacuated, someone said to similar islands in the Bahamas.