the road to hell is paved with good intentions, and there are far worse things than being homeless - Key West proving ground

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An email blast yesterday from Banks Brevatt, President of the insurgent Dump the Pumps, Inc. - www.dumpthepumps.com, which is trying to get the Cudjoe Regional Sewer System, still under construction, considerably more kindly to Mother Nature and lower Keys homeowners than Banks’ county commissioner George Neugent and a majority of the county commissioners are willing to do for her:

To Dump the Pumps Members, Associates and Friends,

Direct mail requests to area subdivisions for financial help continue to solicit a good response. This email is blind copied to those of you on our email list.

This is another request for assistance. We continue to fight grinder pumps in the Lower Keys. We are fighting this on the legal front and need money to cover expenses. No officers, directors or members are paid. All the energy is volunteered.

We had our day in court earlier this month. Our petitions against permits issued by Florida Department of Environmental Protection (FDEP) issued to the Florida Keys Aqueduct Authority (FKAA) were heard by the appointed Administrative Law Judge Cathy Sellers. We were in court Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, September 29, 30 and October 1. Now we wait. It will probably be 60 days from the beginning of this month before we hear anything.

This is not idle time. Attorneys for both sides will prepare written arguments for the judge to include proposed recommended orders.

We still have an additional suit filed in Circuit Court for an Emergency Injunction against FKAA. We await the Judge’s schedule on this one.

Some authorities treated our petitions as frivolous. The fact the FDEP and FKAA each had three attorneys present and active at the hearing speaks for itself. Additionally, we learned that FKAA spent over $50,000 of your money on expert witnesses that they had to buy. Our expert witnesses believed in our cause and charged us nothing.

Obviously, our legal fees continue to mount. As we continue the fight in the Lower Keys, we need several thousands of dollars. We need your help. This is another request to those on this list to do what you can to help. Any contribution with which you are comfortable will go a long way toward helping us continue our endeavor.

You can reach us through our PayPal account on our web site: www.dumpthepumps.com or by direct mail to:
Dump the Pumps, Inc. at PO Box 431956, Big Pine Key FL 33043.

Feel free with any questions or comments.

Banks Prevatt
For
Dump the Pumps, Inc.
305-872-5264

Moving down to Key West,

in yesterday’s Citizen’s Voice - www.keysnews.com:

“I would much rather be subjected to horror of naked painted bodies than the ear-rum rattling roar of motorcycles during bike week.”

While people fret and stew over such at the above, every day and night of the week, Key West’s Duval Street, which is where Fantasy Fest and Bike Week play out, is a continuum of booze and sex clubs and joints.

A Key West reader forwarded a howler yesterday, in response to the uplifting Ebola part of yesterday’ s post at www.goodmorningkeywest.com; I supplied the lovely Ebola pic:

http://kunstler.com/clusterfuck-nation/real-life-is-not-spin-art/#more-5212

Real Life is Not Spin Art

The authorities keep emphasizing that the nurse who caught ebola from Thomas Eric Duncan was sealed in her haz-mat suit the whole time she cared for the poor fellow and blah blah nobody knows how she could possibly catch the darn thing…. But the newspapers and cable news networks are not asking: What about all the people, ordinary civilians, that this nurse was consorting with off-work, after she took off her haz-mat suit and, let’s say, at some point stopped by the Kroger Store’s fabulous steam table display of take-out goodies behind the helpful and reassuring sneeze-guard on her way back home? It sounds like a new Netflix drama – The Fatal Mac and Cheese.

If one more person in that chain of circumstance falls ill, Rick Perry will have to ring-fence Dallas faster than you can say Guadalupe Hidalgo and then we’ll be off to the quarantine races in America. It will be interesting to see who’s shorting the airline stocks a few hours from now. I’ve got to pass through Dulles airport tomorrow myself, and then two more foreign hubs after that, and return to freakin’ Newark International at the end of the week when a fullblown ebola panic may be underway.

For the moment, I’m in Washington for a conference on population and immigration. Believe it or not there are some people who want to have an honest national conversation about these issues amid all the disingenuous chatter about “dreamers” emanating from the Oval Office in this miserable era of politics-as-spin-art. And along comes the galvanizing event of a really serious disease to finally force the issue. Nothing concentrates a nation’s attention like the specter of the people next door bleeding out through their ears and noses.

Welcome to the diminishing returns of the global economy. They’ve been there all along, but none previously were sufficiently vivid or horrifying as ebola. The Chinese FoxConn workers throwing themselves out the factory windows in despair just seemed like some kind of fraternity prank in comparison. Now something has got loose from the Heart of Darkness like the hissing beastie that burst out of John Hurt’s ribcage in Alien and water-skied out of the sick bay into the bowels of the cargo ship Nostromo. Sometimes a metaphor is just a figure of speech and sometimes it’s liable to set your hair on fire.

The ebola melodrama has all the mojo to set the global economy’s hair on fire. And it comes along at a very strange time: just as central bank hoodoo approaches the brink of its own epic fail – as in, accounting fraud, check-kiting, and public relations can only work as a place-holder for authentic economic relations for so long before the ominous shadow of reality sweeps in on black swan wings. The markets were already well into the puking stage of their own hemorrhagic contagion last week. Maybe the S & P starts bleeding from its eyes and ears this week.

There’s certainly blood all over the overburdened back roads of the Bakken play all of a sudden, where $88-a-barrel shale oil doesn’t even allow you to pretend that you’ve got a profitable venture going. The shale oil fairy tale has been at the center of a matrix of lies America has been telling itself about its economic meth buzz. Saudi America and all that malarkey, all in the service of America’s master wish of all wishes: please Lord, let us keep driving to Wal Mart forever.

Speaking of dreams and dreamers, that was a pretty shabby one. But here we are now up against one of the master facts of the day: our world faces epic, desperate demographic shifts as regions of it are proving to be very unfriendly to human habitation. How long do we pretend that all the refugees are welcome to come here, bleeding from their eyes and noses, as their dreams of laying sod for $6-an-hour or slaughtering chickens for the greater glory of Colonel Sanders collide with the diminishing returns of yet another Elon Musk sales pitch for the blessed denizens of Palo Alto aspiring to Godhood. I, for one, doubt that there’s enough room for all of us in that much dreamed-of for-profit spacecraft soon to carry us to worlds where the black swan’s wings have never cast a shadow.

The new World Made By Hand novel

!! Is now available !!

“Kunstler skewers everything from kitsch to greed, prejudice, bloodshed, and brainwashing in this wily, funny, rip-roaring, and profoundly provocative page- turner, leaving no doubt that the prescriptive yet devilishly satiric A World Made by Hand series will continue.” — Booklist

I replied:

Oh, wow, KA-POW!

I hesitate to read A HISTORY OF THE FUTURE or THE GEOGRAPHY OF NOWHERE. Besides causing my starving writer ego to feel like a c-grade wanna be scribe of human folly, born-again and the regular kind, by the time I finish reading either book a giant meteor (that could be metaphor, it could be sea to shining sea shining waves of not exactly amber Ebola grain, it could be a real meteor, it could be, hmmm, the Rapture, or whatever) might happen, and then the most likely splendid books I just bought would be moot, if not extinct, along with their author, me, and most everybody else - THE RISING OF THE PLANET OF THE MICROBES - nobody wants to live in Peary Court, nor for that matter, in Key West, nor for that matter, anywhere, except in the escape space ship named Cat’s Cradle Kurt Vonnegut secretly had built but he never told anybody.

P.S. Later yesterday, I found myself thinking catch-22, a paradoxical situation from which an individual cannot escape because of contradictory rules, which segued into my thinking when the U.S. allowed the two Americans infected with Ebola in west Africa to be brought back to the Center for Disease Control to be treated, instead of leaving them in Africa and treating them there, that opened a door, that is, an invitation, both in the spirit and in the ordinary course of human affairs, for people infected with Ebola to come to America to be treated. Takes immigration arguments to new heights, or depths.

The following editorial was in yesterday’s Citizen, my interjected thoughts in italics; I supplied the victim’s pic:

Mother Nature

The Daytona Beach News-Journal

Amendment 1: Land conservation Don’t restrict budgeting authority

OUR VIEW
Published: Sunday, October 12, 2014 at 5:30 a.m.
Last Modified: Friday, October 10, 2014 at 7:18 p.m.

Amendment 1 on the November ballot — titled the Florida Water and Land Conservation Initiative — is not a vote for or against the environment. Rather, it is a referendum on process: How should state government fund environmental projects?

The answer should be: not by legislating through the Florida Constitution.

The proposed measure is a response to the Legislature taking money from environmental trust funds to balance the state budget during the lean times of the Great Recession. Florida Forever, the conservation and recreation lands acquisition program signed into law by Gov. Jeb Bush in 1999, was supposed to dedicate $300 million annually to environmental projects. However, since 2009 lawmakers have spent about 95 percent of that money elsewhere.

Amendment 1 aims to restore the original funding level by requiring that, over the next 20 years, at least 33 percent of annual revenues from the document stamp tax on property transactions be spent on environmental conservation.

There should be no argument that Florida’s natural resources are a vital part of the state’s economy that cannot be allowed to be abused or ignored. Growth requires a clean water supply, and the state’s beaches, lakes, rivers, springs and woodlands attract numerous visitors and provide abundant recreational activities.

Water conservation is particularly relevant in this area, where the health of the Indian River Lagoon has become a primary concern. The state needs to spend more on projects that reduce nutrients and pollutants in spring sheds.

Amendment 1, however, is not the way to achieve that.

Well, if the fine Florida lawmakers don’t protect Mother Nature like they are supposed to protect her, if they ignore their own laws passed to protect her, how is she going to be protected from those foxes in the hen house and wolves in sheep clothing except by an amendment to the Florida constitution? This editorial looks to me like it maybe was written by one of the foxes or wolves’ lackeys, or simply by one of the foxes or wolves, who, the dumb-asses, will become extinct, if they don’t stop killing Mother Nature.

On the homeless environment front, a letter to the editor in yesterday’s Citizen (www.keysnews.com), my interjected thoughts in italics:

Monday, October 13, 2014
How about trying a 3-strike rule for the homeless?

It is disappointing, the lack of process with the homeless shelter and the homeless.

Has the city looked at Little Hamaca near the paintball course. It looks like the city owns property there already. Purchase leftover FEMA trailers, use tents and the existing fence. Move the paint ball course.

Move the paint ball course to where? Your house, after it is torn down and the rubble removed?

I can count two dozen homeless on my bike ride at 6:30 a.m. on any given day, I am sure the sheriff’s department and the Key West Police can do the same — folks who sleep in their cars, in the white utility trailer along South Roosevelt, behind every trash can on White Street Pier. If we make it more difficult for the homeless to exist, then they will either take advantage of the services the city is providing, or they will leave.

Dream on. You would know better, if you lived with the homeless for a few weeks.

Sunday morning last week, along Atlantic to White Street Pier and then Higgs Beach, the homeless had many sleeping bags and blankets along the sidewalk on the north side of the Atlantic. Every picnic shelter was taken by the homeless.

Put up the same remote pay stations used for parking in the city lots. Charge $5 for the day. Define the times the shelters are available.

How much will it cost the city to enforce it? How many people will actually buy the day tickets for the shelters?

Can we make people earn a night at the shelter? You have to spend one hour for every night you stay cleaning up an area of Key West. You need a signed voucher to get back in.

No, you cannot do that, which you would know, if you had gotten yourself informed about what legally can be done to manage homeless people. It is not illegal to be homeless - yet. You cannot make homeless people stay in a shelter at night, and also make them pay to stay there - pay with money, pay with labor. You have to provide the shelter for free, if you are going to make homeless people stay there at night, or at anytime.

It is also shame that at St Mary’s, where many get a meal every day, that their staff has to clean up the property after the homeless leave. Make them clean up after themselves.

St. Mary’s staff is all volunteer, they have a very different point of view, going back to the soup kitchen’s founder, St. Dorothy Sherman, Key West’s only living saint, whose policy was, and still is the soup kitchen’s policy: “It’s our job to feed homeless people, it’s God’s job to change them.”

Can we create a three strike rule? Chronic public intoxication, fighting, theft and trespassing make it a year in jail. Gets them off the street and maybe clean and sober for a while. Or use the services that can help.

You talked this over with Sheriff Rick Ramsay, yes? He told you he loves that idea, yes? He said he loves spending $85 a day per homeless person, plus whatever medical and detox care each homeless person requires, to be in his jail, yes? He told you he loves his jail being Key West’s alternate homeless shelter, yes? He told you he houses and releases homeless drunks ongoing, and he detoxes them, and when they are released, they head straight to the nears booze outlet, yes? Just like all your boozing mainstream friends do, and maybe even you, when they feel the shakes coming on and they need another drink, yes? Or maybe their, and your, drug of choice is cocaine, or Valium, or Oxy, or Zanax, or meth, or heroin?

Just a few thoughts with limited space. Yes, we live here full time, work in town, pay taxes and believe in “One Human Family.” But enough.

Deb Armitage

Key West

With all due disrespect, Deb, you know nothing about homeless people, and you know nothing about one human family, for if you knew something about either, you would know homeless people are mainstream’s shadow, its reflection; homeless people are needed to remind people like you, but for the grace of God, you would be homeless, and if you keep this sort of thing up, maybe God will treat you to the experience, to help you get over yourself, and to teach you there are far worse things than being homeless. Far worse. For your sake, I hope you are not a Christian. For if you are, you advocate doing to your Lord and Savior what you advocate being done to the least of these in our community.

Below is John Donnelly’s comment under the David Wolkowsky: “God Wasn’t On Duty One Day.” article in the current Key West the Newspaper (www.thebluepaper.com). I had hoped the angels were going to let me dodge publishing this below, but I didn’t get the free pass. I provided John’s pic.

JOHN DONNELLY OCTOBER 12, 2014 AT 3:23 AM
Individuals in positions of trust have been betraying those dependent upon them for guidance and leadership, since the inception of man. Politicians that ‘the people’ chronically vote back into office are rewarded, even though they take actions that destroy the planet and denigrate the quality of our lives.

Developers and elected officials have more gimmicks, alibis, Trojan Horses and reasons to kill our island way of life, than any ravaging Ebola plague.

Key West and the rest of the country, has precisely gotten the leadership they deserve.

For many years I’ve remained silent concerning my experience with Jim Hendrick.

Some years ago, Jim Hendrick stood with me against the forces of darkness that had targeted me for destruction. As fate would have it, the individual in charge of this ‘dark empire’ was eventually assassinated via a contract hit.

It was during this time on a Christmas Eve night, that my door was pounded upon by processors representing this enormous empire. These agents served me with a law suit from this mega millionaire. He had been disrupting the lives of many residents in Monroe County, through his incessant ‘code violation style’ of conduct.

On a hunch, I called and spoke with Jim Hendrick at his office on that Christmas Eve night. His kind and courteous manner was comforting. Mr. Hendrick intelligently discussed what was before me, while offering encouragement and strength. His counsel was welcomed and effective….

On behalf of several large communities in the Upper Keys, Mr. Hendrick went on and prevailed against a powerful entity ‘hell bent’ on disregarding the welfare of his neighbors, solely for self gain.

Mr. Hendrick’s success brought peace and calm to many neighborhoods. Basking in the glow of his victory, my adversaries crawled back into their holes.

I emailed John:

Hi, John - the way your comment began, I mistakenly ass-u-me-d you were talking about Jim Hendrick and his developer and government officials ilk:

“Individuals in positions of trust have been betraying those dependent upon them for guidance and leadership, since the inception of man. Politicians that ‘the people’ chronically vote back into office are rewarded, even though they take actions that destroy the planet and denigrate the quality of our lives.
“Developers and elected officials have more gimmicks, alibis, Trojan Horses and reasons to kill our island way of life, than any ravaging Ebola plague.”

I have questions about your Jim Hendrick praise report.

Who was the now deceased assassinated dark empire person? That might be important if there was a prior relationship between Jim Hendrick and that person.

What evil, specifically, was the dark empire person and his dark empire doing to you, and to other people, and what, specifically, did Jim do to stop it?

What year did Jim stop it?

Did you pay Jim to stop it? Did he do it for free? Did he do it as the Monroe County Attorney, as part of what he was paid to do?

I believe you know, John, that when Jim was Monroe County Attorney, he apparently solicited a bribe of County Commissioner Jack London, and later Jim advised parties to that matter how to deal with the US Attorney being after them, and that’s what got Jim charged with witness tampering and conspiracy, for which he later was convicted and then was disbarred. The statute of limitations had run on the bribery allegation, or I imagine Jim would have been prosecuted for that, too. I imagine Jim would have gone to prison, for that, if he had been convicted.

I believe you also know, John, that despite David Wolkowsky emphatically telling Arnaud and Naja that Ballast Key is not a man-made island, Jim Hendrick put into the letter he had Wolkowsky sign, to be presented to the county commissioners and county growth management staff:

“… Ballast Key was created by man rather than by natural processes such as coral accretion or mangrove growth.”

Thanks for answering my questions,

Sloan

John replied:

Sloan,
Please forgive the delay in my getting back to you.
Your invaluable grasp of perceptions and understandings, brings lucidity and clarity into the lives of many. Copious numbers of individuals are comforted and enriched by your insights…
My experience with Jim Hendrick was described in an ambiguous manner by design.
However, his conduct was recounted on a ‘factual basis’.
I’m a simple man, I do not claim to know all of the wrangles that occur behind the scene during an event or individual’s life.
What concerns me most, are the results of one’s action. What are the fruits of their labor?
In the instance I identified, as our County Attorney, Jim Hendrick took on an extremely wealthy mega-developer, with alleged ties to some very dangerous people.
Many communities were being negatively impacted from ‘code violations’ emanating from this conglomerate.
Jim Hendrick stopped these abuses via the court system. He infused a ‘quality of life’ back into the lives of a lot of people.
Since that time, so many years ago ( I can’t come up with a number that I feel comfortable with), I’ve not spoken with Mr. Hendrick.

I’m familiar with his fall from grace… However, I’m forever cautioned by my own sins and serious breaches of conduct…

With Love, Blessings & Respect,
John

I replied:

Hi, John -

Am puzzled by the vagueness of your reply, and it leaves me … cautious?

Did Jim Hendrick represent you in court as a private attorney? If so, did you pay him, or did he do it pro bono?

Or, in the court action, did Jim act in his capacity as Monroe County Attorney?

I hardly imagine you intended it, but reading your comment under the blue paper article, I wondered if Jim somehow had something to do with the dark empire man later being assassinated? I imagine I know people in the Keys who, if they read your comment, wondered that, too?

Perhaps you do not understand a KEY issue for the Bernsteins and Walshes, and thus for Jim Hendrick, re their hope to development of Wisteria Island, is it is a man-made island, and, therefore, they want the county government to treat it differently from other offshore islands. That was the reason for Hendrick writing the letter David Wokowsky was to sign, with this in it:

“… Ballast Key was created by man rather than by natural processes such as coral accretion or mangrove growth.”

That was not a mistake on Hendrick’s part, in the sense he didn’t know better. He wrote it that way on purpose.

I don’t see you allowing your sins and serious breaches of conduct, whatever they were, or are, holding you back in any other situations you have taken, and are now taking, hard to task.

Am hoping Jerry Weinstock and Christine Russell’s ideas for Wolkowsky giving Ballast Key to a nature- protecting entity, preferably an existing nature preserve, will appeal to Wolkowsky and resolve the Ballast Key situation.

Sloan

John replied:

Sloan,

Jim Hendrick did not represent me in court.

He had nothing to do with my case.

To the best of my knowledge, those implicated in the murder were tried and convicted.

I concur with Jerry Weinstock and Christine Russell, in giving Ballast Key to a nature- protecting entity, preferably an existing nature preserve.

With Love, Blessings & Respect,
John

I replied:

Hi again, John -

Thanks for clearing up the assassination part of my confusion.

I remain confused about,

“On behalf of several large communities in the Upper Keys, Mr. Hendrick went on and prevailed against a powerful entity ‘hell bent’ on disregarding the welfare of his neighbors, solely for self gain.
“Mr. Hendrick’s success brought peace and calm to many neighborhoods. Basking in the glow of his victory, my adversaries crawled back into their holes.”

with respect to whether or not Jim was the County Attorney at that time, and how he fixed your problem.

Probably not relevant at this juncture, if I read correctly a nap dream I just came out of, which left me thinking maybe the Ballast Key musical has moved to a different phase, which is encouraging David Wolkowsky to give Ballast Key to Mother Nature.

Naja posted a new comment I submitted along that line a few hours ago, under which Naja commented:

“Note: Last Stand has not expressed any interest in becoming the recipient of title to Ballast Key – this was merely a suggestion by a commenter.”

Sloan

John replied:

Sloan,

Many communities, along with their citizens and ‘home associations’, were disturbed by the pleather of ‘code violations’ emanating from this conglomerate.

Petitions, letters and complaints were filed with the county against this establishment.

As county attorney, Jim Hendrick successfully represented ‘the people’ against this notorious Code Violator… .

With Love, Blessings & Respect,
John

I replied:

Thanks, John. I don’t know why that was so difficult to tell me. I finally started wondering if Jim Hendrick had put you up to post your comment about him under the blue paper article?

Did you get a chance to speak with Jack Bridges about what my friend down here in Key West told me about Jack and a friend coming to her at Rosemary Enright’s suggestion, to try to get my friend to support Jack instead of Bonnie Helms, who was my friend’s lawyer?

Sloan

John replied:

Sloan,

It wasn’t difficult for me to convey my experience to you. I wrote the same thing in 3 or 4 different ways, in the hope that I might get my point across, in a manner that I felt comfortable with. I hung in their with you, throughout the explanation process…

It doesn’t say much to my integrity, if you considered that someone could put me up to saying or writing something that I knew to be untrue.

Jack Bridges is an exemplary individual. On the firing line of life, he has stood tall in rendering assistance to those least able to fend for themselves.

Jack Bridges epitomizes the term ‘gentleman’. However, I will confer with him concerning your friend’s complaint.

It might be a waste of our time, as Mr. Bridges may influence or twist me in a manner that would cause me to report a falsehood.

With Love, Blessings & Respect,
John Donnelly

I replied:

John,

I only asked you about Jack Bridges, because you had told me that you could not imagine he would have strong-armed anyone, and when I explained further what my friend [who is a client Lawyer Bonnie Helms, who is Lawyer Jack Bridge’s opponent in the judge race] had told me about it, and Jack and his friend wanted my friend to put a vote for Jack Bridges sign in her yard, you said you would speak with Jack about it when you got back from the mainland. So, when I don’t hear from you for about two weeks, I start wondering …

You extolled Jim Hendrick for helping you with a problem, I simply wanted to know if Jim responded in his capacity as county attorney, or as a private lawyer, he was the county attorney and had a private practice, and if the latter, did he charge you or did he do it pro bono? When people don’t answer simple questions, I wonder why? When they don’t ask the same simple questions, asked again, I wonder why even more?

As county attorney, Jim was supposed to straighten out stuff in his “jurisdiction” - it was part of his job description. I imagine he helped other people when he was county attorney. I’m sure his private practice clients felt he was helping them, even the folks who got him to facilitate the bribe of a county commissioner. Even the Bernsteins and the Walshes. Even the Peary court developers. Even David Wolkowsky. [I spaced out including Pritam Singh,]

I found myself wondering the other day, after the [David Wolkowsky: “God Wasn’t On Duty One Day.” ] blue paper article broke, if wind of that article and its reader comments got back to those people, would they find themselves thinking maybe they ought not be associating with Jim Hendrick any more? But right now I’m thinking probably they could care less. Birds of a feather.

I’m just sharing my thoughts with you, John. This is not something I wish to publish.

Sloan

After the angels jumped my bones this morning, I wrote:

Hi again, John -

I went back to sleep, and the angels took me to task for going “light’ and not wanting to publish this. They reminded me of something I nearly published a few days ago, which I tell you now.

The federal trial judge put Jim Hendrick on probation. The US Attorney appealed, arguing Jim should get prison time. I advised Jim several times not to fight the US Attorney’s appeal with lawyers, but to let that go whichever way it would go. That was what Jesus and Buddha would have done - Jim was raised an altar boy, then was trained by Jesuits, then he quit Christianity and became a Buddhist.

Jim fought the appeal hard, the 11th Circuit Court of U.S. Appeals agreed with the US Attorney, and reversed the probation sentence and remanded the case back to the trial court. By then, the judge who had put Jim on probation had retired. A new judge was assigned the case. The new judge was a Notre Dame graduate, a devout Catholic, I learned by Googling the judge. I wrote the new judge a letter, as directed by the angels, asking him to allow Jim to stay on probation, even if the probation was more severe. I shared the letter with Jim and advised him to simply go before the new judge and demonstrate true remorse, and throw himself on the mercy of the new judge.

As the date of the hearing approached, Jim told me they had come up with a secret weapon, but he did not elaborate. I traveled with Todd German to Ft. Lauderdale for the hearing in the U.S. District Court there.

The new judge said he would only allow one witness, beside Jim, to testify for Jim. The one witness was the secret weapon. The one witness was Father Tony (last name now escapes me), who was the priest at the Catholic church on Big Pine Key. Father Tony and Jim had been buddies for a long time. The one witness went on and on about Jim’s good character, his good deeds, including helping Father Tony give communion in church. Jim, who had rejected Christianity and had became Buddhist. Father Tony had to know that, but he did not tell the judge.

I sat in the audience, amazed. What was the devout Catholic judge to do in the face of that?

Jim next spoke to the judge. Jim said he had dishonored his profession, his family and his community.

Then there was a great deal of argument from the US Attorney and Jim’s lawyer.

The judge said, okay, he was not there at the trial, so he was at a disadvantage trying to second-guess the trial judge. However, the federal guidelines were clear, and the probation sentence Jim had received was inappropriate, because the first judge had not followed the federal guidelines in putting Jim on probation. The first judge had not done the required inquiry, background check, and so forth and so on.

The judge gave Jim a far more strenuous probation. House arrest for nine months, as I recall, during which Jim was restricted to leaving home onto to go to work and to do community service, as approved by his probation officer. There was a lot of community service ordered. During that time, Jim had to wear an electronic tracker. If he completed that part of the probation successfully, he would be able to move about freely, but he would still be on probation. He completed the strenuous probation successfully and was moved into the easier probation. I don’t recall how long that was for.

Sloan

As a U.S. Marine, John experienced very rough combat in Vietnam. He has an article about that in the current blue paper, here’s the link: Grunt—Gunner—Sage—Brother—Friend…..

When I read the article yesterday afternoon, I wished John had not written it; I wished the Vietnam war had never happened … I wished John, who suffers acute post traumatic stress still, I see it in most everything he writes, had never had that experience … I wished John would stop writing about his time in Vietnam in that way, and would start spending as much time, energy and effort trying to stop America from making war today, as he spent trying to win the Vietnam war, which was, alas, the work of the Devil, as far as America was concerned.

John’s Marine Corps friend, eulogized in John’s blue paper article, finally died of the soul wounds, and perhaps the chemical wounds, he received in Vietnam. I thought, reading John’s article, what a waste. What a horrible waste. All those young American soldiers killed and maimed in body, and also in soul. All those Vietnamese soldiers and civilians killed and maimed in body, and also in soul. Such a thing never should be celebrated. Such a thing should be mourned and learned from and not repeated.

The road to hell is paved with good intentions, but there are far worse things than being homeless. A good start for everyone is this prayer I saw on Facebook yesterday.

Be careful what you ask for, though. You might be really surprised over what that kind of help entails. Really surprised.

Sloan Bashinsky

keysmyhome@hotmail.com