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There is a post today at goodmorningfloridakeys.com, which you should be able to reach by clicking on this link: making rounds in the Florida Keys school district and other locked wards
Meanwhile,
Jerry Weinstock, M.D., of Key West, retired psychiatrist for the Florida Keys school district and avid fisherman and nature lover, replied to yesterday’s post at this website:
Sloan: Thanks for putting my published article in your Blog.
Some details that might be of interest. In my heart of
hearts I believe that Key West would be a far better
travel destination and more attractive and healthier
for residential living without any Cruise ships with the exception
of those smaller environmentally oriented ships that Cruise to
places like the Galapagos Islands and many other stellar
locations including Antarctica. When my wife and I Honey-
mooned here 54 years ago the Conch Train was running
and we took a tour for $5.00 a person -it was moderately full
and was well conducted. Elliot Baron has already requested
my references which I felt very good about sending them to him
immediately. Reese Palley moved out of Key West from a
most beautiful home on the water. Reese firmly believes and
has written about rising water. He believes and so stated that
we are poisoning ourselves-Key West most likely no exception.
Tom McGuane, a friend of mine, and Jim Harrison moved out
as they felt it was too crowded and fishing was deteriorating,
certainly those factors were in their rationale. What they would have
felt about Cruise Ships and Jet Skis, in my opinion, would be unprintable.
They vacated long before those came on the scene demolishing
our valued tranquility. Thomas Sanchez’s book about Key West
“American Tropic” is a delightful read. He wrote that his chief character’s
daughter died of Leukemia due to the pollution and toxicity generated
by our commercial policies, Last but not least hundreds of jobs are
being lost NOW due to our poor planned out construction policies and
subsequent fallout of lost properties and failing business. Only
jobs lost if monster Cruise ships don’t dock -that fantasy perpetuated.
Jobs now being lost don’t seem to matter also the Tax dollars lost, not
important only Cruise Ships with their toxicity and environmental degradation
are important. ——Jerry.
I wrote back:
HI, Jerry - De nada, republishing your letter to the editor in The Citizen today.
In my heart of hearts, Key West has sold out for cheap tourist dollars which arrive on giant cattle boats.
On TV news tonight, another Carnival Cruise ship caught on fire in engine room, passengers emotionally traumatized, somewhere over in Bahamas, as I recall. Third cruise ship hell trip reported on TV in not all that long, yet cattle keep filling the cattle boats, so I don’t see the cattle waking up.
I suppose there is global warming, and the seas are rising, but that’s happened in the past, as the ice caps melted, and the seas have shrunk in the past, as the ice caps expanded, so I have trouble separating human global warming, which I am convinced is underway, and Mother Nature’s global warming.
Beyond that, I don’t expect to see the seas rise much during the rest of my life, and, frankly, people who live in areas where the seas rise have to adapt, move to higher land, or evolve into boat cultures. I have published quite a few times that being an environmentalist and living in the Keys is an oxymoron, or does non sequitur work better?
Yet, I truly believe the Keys should be developed no further. They are already far too developed.
Who can say how the channel-raping study referendum will go?
I hope the vote against is crushing, 70 or higher percent. We’ll know election night.
My variety of levels of social living in Key West have left me with a view of the city perhaps not shared by other people. I used to like being there, even when my living circumstances were difficult. I don’t feel that way now.
I also used to like being in the Keys, and I nearly always wept when I left the Keys, and I nearly always wept when I came back, going back decades. I don’t feel that way now.
Perhaps familiarity with the undercurrents, the politics, the social cliques, the selective enforcement and free jail passes, the Bubba Justice system, bred contempt.
Perhaps just getting older and more jaded and more tired and more don’t give a shit anymore factors in.
I been speaking out publicly in the Keys since 2001. I been seeing no effect from my speaking out. I thank my lucky stars I do not get all bent out of shape, depressed, over how well my efforts do not turn out.
I do get bent out of shape, depressed, not long term, but lots of short term, over having to keep at it. I wish I had another job. I wish I was not on this planet, but I am on this planet.
Maybe some day the angels will run a novel through me about Key West and the Keys. I certainly have had plenty of experiences from which a novel could spring, but I can’t write a novel unless it demands that I write it. When that happens, it sits me down and writes itself through me, I’m just the scribe. So far, no demand. Just blogging. Before I had the websites, it was email blasts.
I never met any of the people you name, but I have heard of them. Weird, I lived those years in Key West and I ran with no writers, even though I had written four novels, and about 15 other books, non-fiction mostly, and a few poetry. I didn’t run with writers in the other cities where I lived, either. I really wanted, still want, to be able to make a living writing. But what do I know, if that happened, it might kill the creative spark, which doesn’t seem to give a shit about money; only about writing.
The great thing about blogging is, I don’t have literary agents and publishing house editors looking over my shoulder; the not so great thing is, I have angels doing that. I know some places on this planet, in America, where I could be locked up for saying that. A great thing about the Keys is, it’s really hard to get locked up for saying something.
Although once, I nearly got cuffed and hauled to jail by the deputy sheriff at the Key West library, when he caught me napping in the courtyard garden beside the library, which has a rule against sleeping. I nearly got cuffed and jailed after the deputy told me I was not supposed to be sleeping on that bench. I said I knew that, but I was dozing off in the library, and I knew that wasn’t okay, so I came out to the garden to sit on the bench.
Seeing that was not going down okay, I said what really happened was I passed out. Passed out? Yeah, I pass out a couple of times a day, nothing I can do about it. It can happen in an cafe, on a park bench, in a church. Was it a medical problem? No, it was a God problem. God made me pass out, and when I woke up, there was something God wanted me to do.
The deputy now is not calm. The deputy is not happy. I was sleeping on a bench in the garden, now I’m a threat, even though I have not threatened him (wink). He ushers me and my bicycle out of the garden with unkind words, and finally I ask if he doesn’t have something better to do, like catch criminals, put them in jail? Like in Alice’s Restaurant, there was yet another possibility I had not yet considered.
The deputy pulls out his pen and ticket pad, opens it, asks for my name. I tell him my name. He asks for my residence address. I say I have no residence address. He gives me the look, says, “At Large,” and writes that on the ticket.
The deputy goes inside the Library and brings out Tom Hambrick (I think is the fellow’s name), the county historian. The deputy tells me I am banned from the library. Banned from the library, what did I do to get banned from the library?, which was very important to me, because it then was my only access to computers and the Internet.
I said I am in the library every day it is open, all the library staff know me. I look to Hambrick. He says I am banned from the library. I say I can’t believe it. What did I do to get banned from the library? Again, I am banned from the library.
Then, the deputy tells me to get off the sidewalk. Get off the sidewalk? Yes, get off the sidewalk. But it’s a public sidewalk? Anyone can be on this sidewalk. Get off the sidewalk. I say it’s a public sidewalk. Hambrick is standing there for all of this. The deputy whips out his walkie talkie and calls in for backup.
Back up? Why are you calling for backup? I am not threatening you? (wink) You have the Glock. I am unarmed. The deputy’s hand now rests on the butt of his Glock. Hambrick stands there, protecting the deputy, I suppose, from the dangerous At Large fellow who passed out in the garden.
I shake my head, get on my bicycle and pedal off down the sidewalk, then onto Fleming Street, wondering if I will be shot in the back? Wondering if I am going to be chased down by KW’s finest and put in jail on Stock Island and lose my bicycle and all of my belongings?
I escape.
Just the night before, I was rousted out of my regular doorway on Fleming Street, where I had slept nights the preceding winter and spring, before I was sent to north Georgia for the summer, where the fourth novel fell out of me, a novel I seriously doubt I will ever match again. A novel I had no clue was coming, until I reached north Georgia, where I did not even know I was going to spend the summer, until I got there and met someone.
I wondered what had happened while I was away from Key West? What had changed. What had changed was 9/11. Way it looked to me, unable to shoot Muslim terrorists, KW and its finest had taken out after homeless people. Someone I had only met the night before, a poet it tuned out, who was in love with the Sufi poet, Rumi, and who was astounded that I knew not only of Rumi, but of his spiritual teacher, Shams, told me I could stay with him in his home. He had a computer and an Internet connection I could use.
You learn a great deal about a city when you live on its streets, sleep in its basement. You learn things you would never learn living on the upper floors.
You learn a lot about poets in a city, when you attend their meetings and you see they slave over and craft their poems, and you never did that; the poems that you wrote down burst out of you like taking a shit or having an orgasm, and all left was to fix words you misspelled and punctuation you left out, or should have left out.
That’s how novels came out of me, too.
That’s how just about everything I publish comes out of me. I’m a ton of a laughs at writers and poetry workshops. About like that deputy found me a ton of laughs, and all I did was pass out on that bench all by my lonesome. Nobody else was even in the garden until the deputy came outside and you know the rest.
I bet you might find how I met Sandy Downs pretty interesting, the first time in 2002, the second time in 2007.
Sloan
Jerry replied:
Sloan: being a Psychiatrist and practicing one comes in
contact with many creative people —most of the patients
I would look forward to seeing and treating—some of the time they give me
back as much as I give them. —-you have had some interesting
experiences and stories.————Jerry (40 years of practice here.)
(I am now ” pretty much” retired from practice.)
——————————————-
My all-time favorite movie about psychiatry meeting a creative person is “Man Facing Southeast,” which was set in Argentina, I think, and is subtitled. I also liked what looked like a knock off to me, “K-PAX”, in which Keven Spacey played the person from another planet.
How I met the other well-known certified lunatic (photo) in the Keys, in 2002,
is described toward the end of the glad tidings from Key West: channel-widening charade, Tree Commission shenanigans, Tabernacle Church Jesus karma post at this website, which you should be able to reach by clicking on that link. I didn’t get Sandy’s name that time, so I didn’t know until she told me a few weeks ago that it was she, as described in that post.
How I met Sandy in 2007, which really was the first time, because that time I knew who she was, came about in this way.
I was living up here on Little Torch is how it started. Driving down to Key West one day, I saw a bunch of younger people in their twenties at a bus stop on Cudjoe Key. Usually I stopped and offered rides to people at bus stops, but this time I kept on going for some reason. Yoweee!!! A huge horrible caustic pain erupted in the left side of my neck and down my left side and behind my left eye. Yoweee!!! I kept driving. Yoweee!!! it was getting worse. Maybe I better turn around, drive back toward the bus stop, see if that helped. Yes, by the time I reached the bus stop and the young people, the pain was gone. I u-turned on US 1 and stopped in front of the bus stop and asked them if they wanted a ride into Key West? Sure! I think there were six of them. They piled into my Highlander, one up front, three in the back seat, the other two in the cargo space behind the back seat. Off we went to Key West.
We got to talking about this and that. I said had run for the county commission the year before, against George Neugent. We talked some about the environment. I said my position was no more new development, period, the end. The Keys already were way over-developed and no one in the Keys could stand before mirror and honestly say otherwise. They agreed. They said they worked for Tarzan Tree Care, run by Sandy Downs and her husband. Did I know Sandy? I said no, but I had heard of her. They said I really needed to meet Sandy, she and I were into a lot of the same environment stuff. I said I would like to do that. What did I do when I wasn’t running for office? I write. What do you write? Books, email blasts. What kind of books? All kinds. In fact, in that box back there in the cargo space are copies of my last novel. Do you want copies? Sure. We will give one to Sandy. Okay.
That was the novel which fell out of me in north Georgia in the spring and summer of 2001, which I described to Jerry Weinstock yesterday. I had recently gotten it published by a print to order online publisher - www.PublishAmerica.com. I had given maybe ten copies to the county library in Key West, where I again was in good graces, to spread throughout the library system. I had been a guest author at the library in Key West, to talk about that novel and writing and how the novel came about. You can read how the novel came about, hardly your ordinary Muse activity, by clicking on this link at goodmorningfloridakeyks.com - HEAVY WAIT: A Strange Tale, by Sloan Bashinsky. The Muse predicted the novel in a dream, as I slept in the usual Fleming Street doorway on cardboard boxes, just down from the bookstore, the night before I headed to north Georgia to write the novel I did not yet know the dream had predicted. A novel I kept telling a woman I had gotten sweet on up there in north Georgia was being written by God. After she read the finished manuscript, she said it was written by God.
Maybe this doesn’t seem to have anything to do with how I met Sandy Downs in 2007, but it has everything to do with it. I had not been able to find her in the telephone directory or online. Then, out of the blue, she emailed me. She said she had been looking all over for me, but couldn’t find me. She gave her phone number. I called her. She said she had read HEAVY WAIT and had loved it. She had given it to her father, and he had loved it. She had found my email address online, by then I had started goodmorningkeywest.com, and was working on starting goodmorningfloridakeys.com. Sandy said she was reading stuff I was writing online, she wanted to get together and talk. I said okay. We met at Coco’s on Cudjoe Key. She talked me to death for about two hours. I was way over-loaded. I said, finally, I wondered why she was telling me all of that? She said she didn’t know.
The next year, Sandy decided to run for sheriff. I put her with Deer Ed, who runs bigpinekey.com’s Coconut Telegraph bitch and praise gossip blog, which gets more hits than any website in the Keys except the who’s been jailed lately page on the Sheriff’s website. Deer Ed had built my websites. He built Sandy’s campaign website, the kick-off for which he touted on the Coconut Telegraph. Same day Sandy’s campaign website went live, it was hacked and the page busting the Sheriff and his department was destroyed. Same day, the Coconut Telegraph was hacked and destroyed. The F.B.I. was brought in. It’s Internet wizards confirmed the hacks, but were unable to trace down the perps. Sheriff Department perps, Sandy maintained. Or someone close to the Sheriff Department, I figured, who could not be traced. Someone who really knew how do it and get away.
I wondered why my websites were not hacked? I had touted Sandy’s campaign website going live.
I wondered why Sandy’s website was hacked, if she was known to be crazy and a liar? I wondered even more why Deer Ed’s website was hacked? I’m being facetious. Somebody really did not like what Sandy had on her website, and the same somebody really did not like Deer Ed building Sandy’s website and putting on it what that somebody really did nor like. The truth.
Wing nuts wrote in to the Coconut Telegraph accusing Sandy of being paranoid, making it up, even though they knew from Deer Ed that the Coconut Telegraph had been hacked and destroyed the same day as Sandy’s site was hacked and destroyed, and even though they knew Deer Ed had built and put Sandy’s site online. Deer Ed published a comment on the Coconut Telegraph, “Just because you are paranoid and think people are out to get you doesn’t mean people aren’t out to get you.”
That’s when I saw just how fucked up the thinking of some people writing into the Coconut Telegraph was. They accused Sandy of being paranoid, but they did not accuse their beloved Deer Ed, who was seriously freaked out because he had built huge defenses into his website, which he had not done for Sandy’s website. The hacker had gotten though Deer Ed’s huge defenses and crashed his website because he had built and put Sandy’s website online. Deer Ed had no doubt of that. He told me he had no doubt.
So, that’s how HEAVY WAIT led to my meeting the other well-known certified lunatic in the Florida Keys, who is my dear friend, who still talks me to death. Sandy Downs, who introduced me about a month ago to Jerry Weinstock, M.D., not herself knowing Jerry is a psychiatrist. I learned that by googling Jerry, and then asking him about it. That’s how I found out he spent most of his career being the Florida Keys school district psychiatrist. Now here he is kibitzing with the other well-known certified lunatic in the Keys, about trying to save what’s left of Mother Nature down here from people who could care less about Her. Personally, I think She is able to take care of Herself in the Florida Keys, and it won’t surprise me to see Her do just that via a lady or two or three named CAT 5.
In 2006, I was asked about the hurricane evacuation schedule at a candidate forum in Tropic Cinema in Key West, Hometown! PAC’s first candidate forum, as I recall. I said the way I see it, the Keys are a hurricane zone. People in the Keys who worry about hurricanes maybe should move where there are no hurricanes. I did not say the angels had already shown me in a dream that they would tell me in a dream when I need to leave the Keys because of an incoming hurricane. I was still playing the county commission race straight. That ended soon thereafter, as I knew it would. Playing it straight ain’t in the angels’ dictionary.
How many times now, have I told of being asked in my sleep one night, when I was in north Georgia in 2001, “Will you make a prayer for a Divine Intervention for all of humanity?” I awoke, asked for a Divine Intervention for all of humanity. Three days later was 9/11. I’m still wondering if the Divine Intervention happened, and if it happened, what it was, or is?
Sandy Downs seemed to have no trouble seeing Hurricane Sandy clobbering NY City as karma for how America responded to 9/11. Sandy seemed to have no trouble seeing the Sandyhook School massacre as karma for America’s drone killings of civilians overseas.
Sloan Bashinsky
keysmyhome@hotmail.com