The pen is mightier than the sword, thus the sword defends the pen - given to me by my “editorial board” in the spring of 2001
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There is a post today at www.goodmorningfloridakeys.com, which you should be able to reach by clicking on this link: terminally dysfunctionally insane – Florida Keys school administration
Yesterday morning, from Naja Girard, co-publisher of Key West the Newspaper (www.thebluepaper.com), published every Friday online, and current president of Last Stand:
Have I been excommunicated? No email from you this morning…
Naja
About two weeks ago in a post, I accused Naja and her husband Arnaud of weening out on writing about Horace O’Bryant K-8 School’s construction record keeping woes. Later, when the occassion arose, I spoke well of Naja and Arnaud’s work in other areas of critical concern in Key West and the Keys. Perhaps Naja had not seen those later posts. In any event, I wrote back to her:
Not hardly, am running slow today with emailings; but, you can see today’s post at www.goodmorningkeywest.com; in part of it, strong tout for your and Arnaud’s N. Roosevelt Blvd. boondoggle article and cartoon in today’s KWTN issue. You guys do great work, but it looks to me you don’t want to get into/go after HOB or the school district. I probably will have something more on HOB tomorrow, based on something from Sandy Downs today, which expanded, and I sent it all to Larry Murray to ponder and hold forth on. Part of why I’m running slow with emailings today. I did not realize this time last year that I basically would be publishing nearly a daily newspaper online.
Naja replied:
We’ve got a lot of irons in the fire as they say. I am awaiting some public records that I requested from the School District to see if I can come up with anything that would shed more light (or at least help me get a little more detail on the situation). I’m seeing the HOB issue is getting pretty good coverage in the other papers. We’re such a small operation (could certainly use a few investigative writers willing to work for free right about now 
)
We’re trying to focus on stuff that the other papers aren’t covering well or at all. I am curious about the whole contractor “savings” issue and have asked for some follow-up on that, but generally am getting the impression that with Capt Ed, Pimbramsky, Kessler, Murray and you on the HOB issue, its being looked after pretty well without Arnaud and I sticking our two cents in. So, we may do a piece soon – depending on what comes our way this week from the School District files.
Yeah, this online news thing sure is a lot of work (we’ve been scratching our heads wondering how we got ourselves into this predicament). Can’t deny it’s interesting work… but I was literally up all night! How long have you been doing this??
Naja
I replied:
First, I dream to you this morning, but you were younger, maybe 30, as I said in the dream you looked about 30. You also were luscious, as in, turning me on. There were other women in different parts of the dream, but only you turned me on. Now, you can take that as a compliment, not a proposition. However, I have dreams like that from time to time, the person’s and the angels’ way of letting me know just how important that person, representational, also actual in our current waking life interaction is for me at that time, if not also long term. So, when I received your reminder and link for The Blue Paper this week, I opened it right up and saw that beauty demolishing job you guys did on Billy Wardlow and his confederates on the city commission, and on DOT. I knew I needed to tell my readers today that they really ought to see it.
As for how I do it? Well, you probably can’t do it this way, but, then, I don’t have a husband and young children to take up my time. I only have what happens, which leads to me writing about it on my websites, which is being arranged by the “editorial board”, that would be the angels. As they want me to get into something, they bring it to me in some way. I never go looking. It just shows up, either in a newspaper, in an email, at a city our county commission or utility board public meeting the angels tell me to attend. Or, in a movie I take in. Or in a dream. Or in a phone call. I never know where the material is coming from; only, it is coming, and there is no end to it in sight. I usually take two naps a day; sometimes only one nap, sometimes three naps, sometimes four naps. That’s how tiring/rough the incoming material can be on me physically and psychically. I never stay up all night, though. Each day is a deadline, like a daily newspaper. I’m more like a printing press and sewerage treatment plant, the angles are feeding the garbage and words through me. I’ve explained all of that in various ways before.
You and Arnaud are in a different mode, but even so, I believe you are being fed what to cover; I am certain you were fed to cover school district stuff. I also am certain, the angles did all they could to used me to persuade Larry Murray to write a weekly school district column for you, which would have left you and Arnaud free to cover topics more familiar to you. I also tried to get Larry to write regularly into the Coconut Telegraph blog at www.bigpinekey.com, which has a much bigger readership than my websites. So far, he seems content to write to me, for me to publish it. Alas, I don’t have the readership numbers the Coconut Telegraph and The Blue Paper have. Alas, Larry does not type and does not know how to use a computer or the Internet. His lovely wife does all of that for him, as he tells it to her. That may be why he does not write regularly into the Coconut Telegraph and The Blue Paper; it would be too much strain for his wife, given the other stuff he has her type for him and send out.
I am so very glad my father convinced me to take typing my sophomore year in high school. He said it would always come in handy later. He had taken typing at some point in time. He had no clue just how handy it would come in. I wonder, often, what he thinks where he now is of his oldest son? Even though, he was already getting glimpses when I was winding down my law practice and writing consumer-oriented insider tells all the secrets books, based on my experiences practicing law.
Well, I don’t suppose any of that helps you not have to stay up all night. I still am interested in writing a weekly column for The Blue Paper, on top off all the other little skirmishes I get involved in, but I think were I to do that, it would be on topics that originate from wherever, not particularly geared to what you and Arnaud might have brewing openly, or out of sight. It would be a surprise each week. If the angels are okay with that. Maybe I should have taken their counsel before writing that above, but there is no doubt I could write stuff about the school district, for example, the likes of which your readers never will see in The Citizen or the Keynoter. Tomorrow’s post will be an example, as things are going so far today. You might have to be willing, at times, to put up with my letting other people have their say, and I make my response. That’s not standard journalism, it’s interactive journalism; it’s different, it’s in the moment; it’s poignant.
There are many facets to just HOB. Personally, I feel the public is more interested in seeing the dynamics, than reading through something which might mostly only interest an accountant, that would be Steve Pribramsky, or a former IRS auditor trainer, that would be Larry Murray. Dynamics give readers a feel for the players, the prospects, or lack thereof; the people who got voted into office, the people who got hired to do a job, the people who stuck with the school district issues even though they didn’t get voted into office, or hired, or appointed to a committee.
Feel free to use as a letter to the editor my tout of your take no prisoners N. Roosevelt article today. I imagine Billy Wardlow will be thrilled to read it.
Sloan
The tout:
Also down Key West way, this week’s edition of online Key West the Newspaper is available – www.thebluepaper.com.
Here is the teaser for the feature article, which makes city commissioner Billy Wardlow out to be an idiot, a lying idiot, in fact; the city government out to be about the same; the Florida Department of Transportation out to be in league with the Devil, which would be the contractor doing the job. The cartoon is from an earlier blue paper edition; in the article today is a new cartoon. You need to open the link above to see Arnaud Girard’s latest artistic mischief.
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I started this website in mid-2006. Now there are over 2,100 separate posts in the Archives, maybe half again as many different posts in the www.goodmorningfloridakeys.com Archives, and over 300 different posts in the much newer www.goodmorningbirmingham.com archives. Before the websites, I was publishing daily to my email contacts list, going back at least to the fall of 2002, when I became involved in a referendum for a Citizen (Police) Review Board going on the ballot in Key West. Dennis Reeves Cooper, founder and publisher of Key West the Newspaper was heavily involved in that referendum going on the ballot, much to the dismay of the then city commissioners and then mayor, Jimmy Weekley. Some of my daily missives back then about Dennis and me were well-received in city hall, and, I suppose, that is what launched my publishing career in Key West. That, and when I gave Dennis a soul drawing with “The pen is mightier than the sword, thus the sword defends the pen” on it, he gave the drawing back to me. As Naja wrote in The Blue Paper this week, “It may be unpleasant, but somebody’s got to do it.”
Meanwhile,
last night, Larry Murray told me that his wife had seen an Andy Griffiths school board member ad in this week’s issue of The Blue Paper, and he wondered if that is why Naja has posted likes to Andy’s school board Facebook page? Larry wondered if Naja wants to keep Andy’s ad in The Blue Paper? I said, I wonder if that’s why Naja hasn’t published anything about the school district? I opened www.thebluepaper.com and on the home page, on the right side where the ads are, is an Andy Griffiths school board member ad. Clever of Andy; that might make it difficult for Naja and Arnaud to cover the school district with the same vigor they cover other subjects of critical concern in the Keys. As might Naja and Arnaud having children in Key West public schools. I don’t have children in Keys schools, and I don’t take ads, and I don’t worry about how other people might take what I write about them, or about what is dear to them. I worry about doing what the “editorial board” tells me to write, in the way they want to me to write it.
In that regard is a new blackboard jungle praise report today at goodmorningfloridakeys.com, which you should be able to reach by clicking on this link: terminally dysfunctionally insane – Florida Keys school administration
Sloan Bashinsky
keysmyhome@hotmail.com