There’s a new counter-terrorism unit in the Keys, which you can learn more about and join by going to savingthekeys.com or savingkeywest.com. One of the ringleaders is Suki Miller, who reminds of Sandra Downs of Cudjoe Key, whose steel-magnolia, heart-felt viewpoints can be read in the “Believe It or Not” menu page of goodmorningfloridakeys.com. If I knew how to provide easy-to-use “click-here” web links, I’d do it.
Meanwhile, a correction to yesterday’s posting, “Development.Religion.” What I was sent by a third party looked to me like it said Pritam Singh got his spiritual start reading the autobiography of an India yogi named Muktananda. Actually, this is what happened to someone who had been to Pritam’s posh spiritual retreat in Woodstock, Vermont, paid for with money Pritam had made on his developments in the Keys. How Pritam got started spiritually, I was corrected, was with an India yogi, whose face appears on the packaging of herbal teas, the writer said. And, when Pritam realized this great man was raping his young female students, he spoke against it, and then had to get the hell out of Dodge, so to speak, with a pack of eastern-style Elmer Gantry-worshipping vigilantes hot on his tail. Later, Pritam became a Sikh, and even later, a Zen Buddhist, as well. Even as the original great one still resides in Pritam, pulling pretty near all the strings, unfortunately. Unfortunately, because Pritam has enormous potential for good, but it cannot be realized because of this yogi resding in him, who has enoromous potential for whatever suits him.
Further meanwhile, below is the text of an email last night to Ken Wadlow of the Keynoter, with a copy to Keynoter Key West Bureau Chief Alyson Crean. I corrected grammatical errors in the original — pretty hot under the collar when I wrote it. This is not the first time I’ve had this kind of thing happen with the Keynoter, and it has happened with Key West Citizen, as well. I don’t know if these two newspapers are simply lazy, prejudiced, or just don’t give a damn. I do know that Keynoter Editor Larry Kahn asked me to take him off my email list, which I did for a while, then put him back on because he’s a journalist and I was making a lot of noise about Keys and Key West politics. I also know the copy of yesterday’s posting sent to the Keynoter Publisher Wayne Markam was returned “undeliverable.” And, I know that once upon a time someone in the Keynoter tried to block all my emails to individuals in the Keynoter, and when Alyson Crean heard of it, she raised hell. If you know Alyson, then you know she did it real sweet like.
______________________________________________________
“Another Un-arrrrrgg!-uably weird year?” — title of Wadlow’s article
Weird indeed, Ken, for me to read under your byline just now, after being told of it by a friend, “Sloan Bashinsky was convinced his campaign to dress up Kew West City staff and the city’s homeless population was pirates would get him elected.”
I never said or believed that. I never believed I would get elected. I would have died of fright if I had been, and said so plenty of times. I declined to ask anyone to vote for me at candidate forums and media interviews. I said I came from outside of the box, and if I got elected, then it would be very different. People who wanted things to stay much the same should vote for Morgan McPherson or Jimmy Weekley, is what I recommended over and over again. I also said neither Morgan nor Jimmy could take Key West where it needed to go, and I was the only candidate who could, and I needed two years to do enough to get the city moving in a different direction, and would not seek reelection.
What I said about pirates was the city could draw a great deal of attention to itself, thus increase visitors, thus increase business and therefore city revenues, by dressing up the Duval and Mallory Square area police in casual pirate attire. Likewise, parking meter cops, and homeless people who wanted to be litter cops. And for stores and shops and restaurants and bars and lodging employees to dress so. And to turn Key West into the pirate capital, er, capitol of the world, nay, matey, the universe! That’s what I said, and I believed, and still believe, it would do for Key West what no other idea yet floated will do, or even come close to doing.
Also, in conjunction, I wanted the city to acquire, not annex, but acquire Wisteria Island and turn it into a clothing-optional nature/camping park, using city operated ferries to take people out there for a fee, and a fee to be there; and put environmentally friendly concession and toilets out there, solar operated, with a cistern to collect drinking water; and create a Wisteria Nature Society, to take memberships for a fee and sell Wisteria nature Society relics (T-shirts, charms, posters, flags, whatever), also run by the city; and to make that known all over the world, nay, the universe. I said the island would pay for itself.
And, I wanted to get dorms for Florida Keys Community College, because that would make it a world-wide attraction to students, give them an affordable place to live, and turn them into world-wide emissaries for Key West and the Keys.
I had other weird ideas, none of which you mentioned in your utterly just-fell-off-the-turnip-truck blip on the radar article, either.
Don’t take my word for it, Ken. Ask Alyson Crean, Kyle Teal, Wayne Markam, Larry Kahn at the Keynoter . . . Or maybe you should just become a publicist for Sonny McCoy, whose county commission seat is now coming up for grabs, and I’m grabbing in spades, as anyone who’s been following the daily postings to goodmorningkeywest.com and goodmorningfloridakeys.com, or who, like the aforementioned Keynoter folks, receive copies of those postings by email, certainly know. But don’t be distracted by any of that weirdness, Ken. You might just have a terrific future in politics. A terrific future.
Where’d you folks get this guy, Alyson? Or, maybe I should ask, where’d he get his information?
Sloan