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As of something was in the wind, just after I published this today, this came in from my oldest Bashinsky first cousin Leo, from a bit south of Birmingham, Alabama, his and my home town.
Not to be deterred, however …
Yesterday evening outside of the dome, on White Street Pier, where the air still is breathable and refreshing, I bumped into a fellow fool I know somewhat and sat down with him on the bench he was borrowing from the city.
My fellow fool said he’d lived in Key West since 1990, and it’s just not the same any more; nowhere close to what drew him here. I said it was said during Tuesday night’s city commission meeting that 60 percent of the Key West real estate property owners don’t live here. He said, wow.
I said my father had a home on Lower Matecumbe Key for many years and I drove down to Key West sometimes. It was a really funky, kicked back, seedy town back then. The Keys were very different back then. Then, they built the new bridges and brought down the bigger water line from the mainland. Before that, the old water line was maxed out; nobody could tap into it, who was not already on it. When the new water line was operational, development exploded in the Keys. The grim rest is history.
My fellow fool said he’s had his fill of the Key West, needs to move on but is still deciding where to go. I said I feel about the same. Coming here and living on the street gave me a view of Key West I didn’t want to have. Then, getting involved in the city’s politics gave me even more of a view of the city I didn’t want to have. Lots of wealthy people have homes here, but live elsewhere. They come down here and enjoy the city for a while during the winter, then they leave when the snow and ice melts where they live. They don’t get involved in the city. They don’t know the city. They just know the fun things their money allows them to know. My fellow fool agreed.
I said Mayor Craig Cates says Key West is a wonderful place to live. That’s understandable, he grew up here; it’s his city. My fellow fool said, yeah, and it just came out that Key West is the 5th most dangerous city in Florida. That was in the sense of what might happen to someone on the city streets, in its bars, and encounters with its police.
In the sense Tom Milone, who is white, learned when he was jumped one night by several black teens and beaten nearly to death.
In the sense of Charles Eimers, who is white, being profiled as being homeless, which he was not, and being smothered to death on South Beach by white Key West police, who later received praise from a Grand Jury and were told even more force could have been used.
In the sense of Matthew Murphy, who is white, being tasered from behind by a white cop on Duval Street, without warning, and Matthew fell to the sidewalk and went into convulsions and from then on was paralyzed and in a hospital.
In the sense of a black Bahama Village male resident, Bahama Village is predominantly black, being cavity-searched by two white cops in broad daylight in front of numerous black Bahama Village residents. Bahama Village-city police relations have been horrible for decades.
In the sense of Theo and Diane Glorie, who are white, nearly getting killed in a race riot, started by about 20 black teens at Theo and Diane’s coffee house on the corner of Petronia and Whitehead streets.
That’s the kind of stuff which earned Key West its 5th most dangerous city in Florida designation.
Actually, the city is far more dangerous, because the ocean around the city is infested with flesh-eating bacteria. Every diver and physician down here knows, if you go into the ocean with a cut or nick on your skin, you have a good chance of contracting that flesh-eating disease, which is resistant to antibiotics and very difficult to treat, and fatal if not arrested. See pretty pics.
People also have been known to get sick from just being in the ocean down here when it was super dirty (polluted) - nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, fever.
Mayor Cates says such is not true. Key West’s ocean is beautiful and clean. He would change his tune, if he contracted what generally is called MRSA down here. The flesh-eating bacteria. He would change his tune if he had had my experience with MRSA, which my doctor’s pills were unable to cure. Many rounds of pills he gave to me knocked the MRSA back, but then it returned. Over and over that cycle ran, until finally the angels who own me cured me. But for them, I suppose I would have died from MRSA. Visitors come to Key West, contract MRSA, go back home, the MRSA erupts, they and their doctors have no clue how it came about.
Well, let’s move laterally, to another of my favorite Key West topics. My happy thoughts in italics. I added the pics.
Columbia, S.C. homeless internment camp, before civil rights activists went haywire and the camp was shut down
In today’s Key West Citizen, the city and county’s daily paper newspaper, also available online - www.keysnews.com:
Friday, September 19, 2014
Clock ticking on homeless solution
Commission to vote Oct. 1 whether shelter will move to Easter Seals site
BY GWEN FILOSA Citizen Staff
gfilosa@keysnews.com
The city commission will decide once and for all Oct. 7 whether the old Easter Seals lot on College Road is the best location for the overnight homeless shelter.
How poetic, Oct. 7 is my birthday.
Mayor Craig Cates said this week he plans to bring forward a resolution to force a decision as the city is behind schedule in settling a lawsuit over where the Keys Overnight Temporary Shelter (KOTS) has sat since 2004.
“If somebody comes up with a better location, I’m all for it,” Cates said Thursday. “I’m not forcing it. I’ve been trying to bring this forward. We’re behind. We have to do something.”
He’s going to force it, but he’s not forcing it. Maybe I need to get a copy of the Key West bubba conch dictionary; it seems different from the Alabama redneck dictionary I brought with me from the mainland many years ago.
Last October, the city agreed to settle a lawsuit brought by Sunset Marina homeowners who claimed KOTS went up in 2004 without city leaders taking it through the proper permitting.
A lawsuit Mayor Cates told me the city would win, it was a slam dunk.
Rather than go to trial, the city promised to relocate the shelter, which can hold up to 140 men and women nightly and empties out each morning at about 7 a.m.
But since then, city leaders haven’t made much progress on the relocation, City Attorney Shawn Smith told commissioners Tuesday night.
“Nothing has been brought forward,” Smith said. “You’re already behind schedule. You have to make a decision.”
The legal timetable gives the city until Feb. 26 to have secured relocation approval from the planning board.
In December, City Planner Don Craig presented a list of Key West locations that could accommodate a homeless shelter. Commissioners ranked their favorite as the Department of Juvenile Justice building next door to the county jail off College Road, but since the building is already filled with tenants it was later scratched as an option.
That’s not why it was scratched. It was scratched because the Sheriff said no way, and because various laws precluded putting adult homeless people, some of whom are sex offenders, near juveniles.
That left the city’s second-place site, the old Easter Seals property whose neighbors include the Key West Golf Course Homeowners Association, which has shown distaste for the plan for more than two years.
The best site would be deeper into the sheriff’s land, away from the marina and condo association which brought the unwinable lawsuit. The golf course association has promised litigation, if the city tries to locate the new shelter at the Easter Seals property. The same lawyer who brought the unwinable lawsuit represents the golf course association, too. His family developed the golf course community and owns the golf course.
Commissioners meet next at 6 p.m. on Oct. 7 at Old City Hall, 510 Greene St.
On Tuesday, they were shown some designs for a new homeless shelter complex at the Easter Seals lot. Landscape architect Keith Oropeza volunteered a year ago to draw up some plans for free as a way to help the city.
“A roof, some fencing, a shade cloth and that’s it,” Oropeza said. “This is by no means a luxury facility.”
Oropeza’s Power Point presentation depicts a buffer of trees and greenery between College Road and the shelter complex, essentially masking it from the drive-by view.
Let’s see, just about right next door is Bayshore Manor, a county assisted-living facility for elders. Next over is the city’s popular botanical garden and tropical forest. The other way is the local animal shelter. Down the way is an elementary school. Great location for a new homeless shelter.
Commissioner Tony Yaniz
took issue with the plans, saying he hadn’t heard of them until a week ago. He added that he has spent the past year arguing the city should build workforce housing on the old Easter Seals lot.
I agree with Tony.
“The clock has been ticking on affordable workforce housing in the city since 1940,” Yaniz said. “I think we have a much more critical problem with the fact that the people who work for a living in this community can’t afford a roof over their heads.”
Amen, Tony. Alas, and you are included, Tony, the city government is so frantic to hide homeless people away at night, they can’t be forced to stay hidden away during daylight, that it has put that ahead of far more important housing needs. The city would save a lot of money and help a lot of people, who presently are not being helped, by just letting the relatively few city homeless people, probably 300, fend for themselves like they used to do, while the city helps the thousands of low-income city residents have housing they can afford, before they before homeless, or have to move away to some place where they can afford housing.
City Commissioner Mark Rossi said Key West taxpayers can’t shoulder the entire burden of sheltering the homeless.
“It’s not just the city of Key West’s problem,” Rossi said. “I’d be more than happy to do a joint venture with Monroe County. I realize the clock is ticking. Let’s sit down with the county again.”
Baloney. Key West should foot the entire bill of sheltering its homeless people. Key West has caused the sheriff and the county government and the county taxpayers and the criminal justice system and the courts a lot of trouble and expense by jailing Key West’s homeless people and sending them to the nearby hospital, just to get them out of sight temporarily. There is no cure for homelessness. It is an integral part of Key West, county and American society. Get used to it. Deal with something you can do something about, if you have the will to it. Build about 1,200 public (Housing Authority) rental units in Key West, which poor working stiffs can afford. Save them from becoming homeless in a city with the highest cost of living in Florida - mainly due to severe over-development resulting in high-priced transient rental units, and mass immigration of wealthy people, many of whom live here only a few months of the year and rent out their homes for top dollar when they are away. Do you provide your many employees with affordable rental housing, Mark Rossi? Do you pay them enough to afford Key West out of $ight rental hou$ing?
The city has a month-to-month agreement with the county right now for KOTS, which sits next to the Sheriff’s Department headquarters and the county jail.
“It becomes a city of Key West problem solely because of the geography and the fact we’re the only ones in the whole county doing anything about it,” said Commissioner Clayton Lopez.
“The other municipalities are sitting back to see what Key West does. We’re the last island in the chain, that’s why they come all the way down. We’re the ones offering services, that’s why they come all the way down.”
Baloney. There are hundreds of homeless people up the Keys: on Big Coppit, on Big Pine, in Marathon, in Islamorada, on Key Largo. Key West launched its own homeless crusade, then tried to get the county to pay for it. I told the County Commission in the fall of 2003 not to let Key West get away with that. The County Commission didn’t listen to me then. So far, they still don’t seem to be listening, although County Commissioner David Rice
does seem to be listening. He’s the only county commissioner with any experience dealing with homeless people. A psychologist, David ran the Guidance Clinics for many years. Those clinics dried out and processed lots of homeless people, who also were addicts. David said at the county-city “homeless summit” last spring, that he agreed with me: there is no happy solution to homelessness; the best that can be done is try to manage it, and how much do you wish to spend doing that? David said at the recent homeless forum in Key West, hosted by non-city/county non-profits, which actually have hands-on experience with homeless people, that Sloan Bashinsky and Father Stephen Braddock are the two people in the Keys he looks to on homeless issues. Steve spearheaded that homeless forum. He heads up Florida Keys Outreach Coalition (FKOC), which gives down and out people another chance, if they have clean urine. The guidance clinics have long been a feeder of homeless people and addicts to FKOC. David, Steve and I know you do not mix homeless addicts with homeless people who do not booze or use other drugs, if you are trying to turn homeless people around. When I lived on the street in Key West, 90 percent of the street people were active addicts. That still seems to me to be the case. Mayor Cates and the city government know about Steve Braddock and me, but they do not ask us for advice. They get advice from people who tell them what they want to hear.
Not wanting Key West to feel selectively picked on, here’s a Facebook thread started by someone else:
The way to deal with ISIS isn’t to bomb, it is to dry up their funding and weapons sources which have been coming from Saudi Arabia, Qatar and weapons from the US …
This evening, the US began bombing near Baghdad and announced plans to bomb Syria.
President Obama’s order to bomb is without Constitutional authority.
His announced plans to attack inside Iraq and Syria are illegal acts of war against sovereign nations that have no intention nor capability of attacking the US.
President Obama’s motives are not superior to the United States Constitution or International law. He and members of his Administration involved in the planning and execution of these wars must be held accountable under the law.
Congress must do its job and cannot stand by idly while this President shreds the Constitution.
This is not a question of the IS and what it stands for. This is a question of the US and what we stand for.
The way to deal with ISIS isn’t to bomb, it is to dry up their funding and weapons sources which have been coming from Saudi Arabia, Qatar and weapons from the US distributed through or captured from rebel/mercenary channels.
?#?ISIS? ?#?Constitution? ?#?Syria? ?#?Iraq? ?#?InternationalLaw? ?#?War?
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Sanity Clause You wrote: “The sacred feminine is absent from this planet”?! If that were true Sloan B. would not have been on this planet to write it. -
Sloan Bashinsky Do not equate women with the sacred feminine, Sanity Clause. Two entirely different things. The Holy Spirit, to use Christendom’s lingo, is the sacred feminine. Although Christendom doesn’t know that. It’s all male trinity ignores half of God.
Being infused with the sacred feminine is a seriously life-changing experience, be you male human, or be you female human.
Ciao maim, the beatings will continue until morale improves
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Sanity Clause The Yang cannot and never does exist without the Yin; regardless of whether or not the Yin is perceivable. There is no real division extant in Allah-ha {transliteration of Aramaic word for God}. God is not schizo-. I do not belong to any group of Age of Aquarius Believers and I resent being put in such a cubbyhole. Have an ice day.
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Sloan Bashinsky My apology, you mentioned that cubby hole … Okay, the yin is not perceivable, in the main, because she is suppressed, in the main, by human beings, their societies. Laotzu, credited with founding Taoism, Tao, the Great Mother, must be amazed over how little of yin is operational in China and other parts of Asia where he once had great influence. The French had some understanding when they sent this to America …
Sloan Bashinsky
keysmyhome@hotmail.com
