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Mother Nature lover/activist amigo Jerry Weinstock, M.D., Psychiatry, replied to yesterday’s ground zero Easter Egg hunt at Key West’s Higgs Beach, and other electrifying transcendental global warming and rising seas experiences post at goodmorningkeywest.com:
SLOAN: closing down a public facility-paid for by my taxes is an illegal perverse obscenity
and of course ILLEGAL -I am furious and I wasn’t even there.!!
The Indiana Law discriminating against individual sexual proclivities is beyond beyond horrific-
associated in my mind with the shutdown of PUBLIC facilities —although not directly related…
The “letter to the editor” in today’s paper against loud illegal motorcycle pipes is a long overdue commentary..
The Citizens article on the editorial page is exactly correct-a good one.
With a presidential candidate like Ted Cruz —-this country —has sunk to a low I have never experienced in my years.!!
[ Comment;: who will now arise to harness our knowledge to wisdom, our science -(factual ) -to conscience.
our power to humane purposes , our jealous, insane sovereignties, usually faith based, to federated global peace. ?
Who will call a halt to hatred , and organize a coalition for our shattered murderous suicidal world ????]
this last from my book -not yet copyrighted -my permission to use it —if you so desire. __CHEERS -SLOAN——Jerry
I replied today:
Morning, Jerry -
Nice, from your book.
What happened at Higgs Beach Saturday evening, it was, I learned yesterday, a Bob Marley concert, was just another example of what looks like mass psychosis to me. I’m sure Bob Marley was thrilled a concert was held in his name, and the public bathrooms were held hostage, so people who needed to use the toilet, like an expecting mother, a mother with a young child, a handicapped man, a elderly citizen, either paid the entrance fee for the concert, so they could get relief, or they tried to get into Salute’s bathrooms, which have one toilet each, at least, in the men’s bathroom. If they sang Bob Marley’s “One Love” at the concert, I bet he puked from heaven. Everything’s not alright.
“One Love / People Get Ready”
One Love! One Heart!
Let’s get together and feel all right.
Hear the children cryin’ (One Love!);
Hear the children cryin’ (One Heart!),
Sayin': give thanks and praise to the Lord and I will feel all right;
Sayin': let’s get together and feel all right. Wo wo-wo wo-wo!
Let them all pass all their dirty remarks (One Love!);
There is one question I’d really love to ask (One Heart!):
Is there a place for the hopeless sinner,
Who has hurt all mankind just to save his own beliefs?
One Love! What about the one heart? One Heart!
What about - ? Let’s get together and feel all right
As it was in the beginning (One Love!);
So shall it be in the end (One Heart!),
All right!
Give thanks and praise to the Lord and I will feel all right;
Let’s get together and feel all right.
One more thing!
Let’s get together to fight this Holy Armagiddyon (One Love!),
So when the Man comes there will be no, no doom (One Song!).
Have pity on those whose chances grows t’inner;
There ain’t no hiding place from the Father of Creation.
Sayin': One Love! What about the One Heart? (One Heart!)
What about the - ? Let’s get together and feel all right.
I’m pleadin’ to mankind! (One Love!);
Oh, Lord! (One Heart) Wo-ooh!
Give thanks and praise to the Lord and I will feel all right;
Let’s get together and feel all right.
Give thanks and praise to the Lord and I will feel all right;
Let’s get together and feel all right.
One Human Family poppycock Key West Chamber of Commerce propaganda.
I suppose I’m just an old grouch, Jerry, but I just don’t see any hope for the future of this planet, nor for the self-proclaimed dominant species living on it. Alex Symington’s “Ground Zero” article at Key West the Newspaper [http://thebluepaper.com/ground-zero/], about climate change, scientists fudging statistics for their corporate and government masters, scientists like you trying to get everyone else’s attention … Here are my two contributions to that “debate”, which looks to me is all over but the shouting. The first was in yesterday’s post, to which you replied:
Sloan Bashinsky says:
March 28, 2015 at 9:55 pm
Hard to imagine any real progress being made, if it affects corporate profits and/or funding for scientific research provided by big business, big military, big government …
I wonder two things about climate change (global warming):
First, how much is due to human beings, and how much is due to the planet perhaps going though a natural warming cycle?
Second, regardless of what is the cause of global warming, does anyone in this discussion actually think humanity will, or can, do anything about it?
I don’t see anyone I know, for example, giving up his/her car or truck, for a bicycle. I don’t see any cigarette smoker I know giving that up. I don’t see oil companies changing their spots. Nor chemical companies. Nor agribusinesses. Nor armies, navies or air forces.
I always thought, if seas rise, the thing to do would be to move to higher ground, instead of trying to fight the rising water. Yet here in the Florida Keys, the view is to stay and build higher, raise the roads, etc.
Then there is my age factor. I’m 72. I just can’t get excited about one-half of Key West, for example, being under water in 50 years. I see plenty of things in Key West crying for immediate attention, and not getting it. Such as, 6000 affordable rental units are needed.
I imagine Mother Nature would be delighted for climate change to defoliate the human population on this planet. Perhaps she’s in on the global warming. Perhaps she’s defending herself from human beings in a sneaky way.
Perhaps ETs like global warming. Perhaps they are helping it along, because they want this planet for themselves after it is warmer and more suitable for them than its current temperatures.
Perhaps human beings are slated for extermination by powers that be, which oversee such operations, and global warming is part of the human exit strategy.
I imagine only the discovery of a cheap new form of energy, perhaps cold fusion, perhaps conversion of dark matter, readily available to all (fat chance), will lead to human beings not mining this planet for energy, and not filling the atmosphere with chemicals.
Another solution is a lot less human beings. Oh, I already said that :-).
Sloan Bashinsky says:
March 30, 2015 at 3:16 am
Your comment is awaiting moderation.
It really don’t matter how this is spun, it’s gonna take non-human solution(s) to straighten out the mess Earthlings have made of things among themselves and of this planet.
I usually have all I can say grace over, Jerry, just dealing with what is dead up close and personal in front of me.
Unless something unexpected happens, later this morning I will try to rent a car, if one is available, to move my relatively few belongings to my friend Todd German’s home on Cudjoe Key, where I stored some belongings when I moved from Little Torch Key to Key West in late August 2013. Todd said, if I can’t get a car at a reasonable rent, we can use his pickup truck this afternoon.
Todd has offered me a room in his home, for a while. He offered me refuge months ago, when it seemed I was about to go homeless, because I no longer could pay the rent where I was then living, and now have to vacate because I called the police on a Latvian man who had attacked this home and his wife.
Imagine my surprise to then be told by my landlady that I had to move, and she said yesterday that I made it all up. The Latvian man did not attack this house or his wife. He was doing yard work with a hoe, and he tripped and fell, and the hoe went through their bedroom window. It was just an accident. Glass was all the way to the other side of their bedroom, and shards from some kind of pottery, and her ankle was bleeding, and she was terrified, I was in the bedroom by then - the look in her eyes and on her face, like I said - terror.
He had been screaming at her. He had come in drunk early that morning and had scared the hell out of our landlady. She had screamed at him for half an hour. The common refrigerator now is filled with beer, the Latvians’ beer.
I’m glad I’m leaving. Only a certified lunatic would stay there, after going through that, and I only told about 10 percent of it here.
The silver lining of living on remote Cudjoe Key will be I won’t be attending city commission meetings, as it will be far too problematic to use the schedule-unpredictable night time city shuttle bus which runs up to Marathon and back. I have come to dread city commission meetings. I am thinking the angels really flubbed, because I can’t imagine they wanted me escaping having to attend city commission meetings.
This morning, over breakfast at Burger King, my lady love Kari said she never wanted to see me again, to never call her again. We’ll see if she never calls me again. Combination of factors, booze leading the way, and my being moved up to Cudjoe Key, which will crimp big time my spending time with her in Key West. Perhaps that’s why I am going up there, to put distance between us.
Hell, the angels gave her to me to engage and fall into love with. My dreams were steady and clear about that. And that’s what happened. I figured all along how it would go, unless the angels worked a major miracle. Maybe they still have one in mind, and maybe they don’t. It’s their way to put me into mission impossible situations, to see what I’m made of, to refine me. I learned I still can fall in love; I learned my plumbing still works. I saw once again that angels don’t think anything like human beings.
There is a fun article in today’s citizen about a homeless woman who did No. 2 in Cowboy Bill’s, after being asked to leave. I’ll reproduce that article in today’s post at goodmorningkeywest.com. It kinda reminds me of closing the public bathrooms at the Bob Marley concert. I crapped in bushes many times, when I live on the street in Key West, after the urge came and it was still dark and no public bathrooms were open.
Ciao,
Sloan
Citizen Staff
A 39-year-old Key West woman landed in jail after she took matters into her own hands when a Duval Street bar refused her the use of its toilet, police said.
Kara Beth Cohen, who police said is homeless, defecated on the floor of Cowboy Bill’s Honky Tonk Saloon, 610 1/2 Duval St. earlier this week, according to a police incident report.
On Friday, Cohen remained at the Stock Island jail on $1,000 bond. She faces charges of trespassing and disorderly conduct. In Florida, the disorderly conduct law is defined as brawling or fighting in public or an act committed “to outrage the sense of public decency.”
Police arrived at the Duval Street bar at about 8:40 p.m. Wednesday night, where an employee told them he had asked Cohen and her boyfriend to leave because they were not allowed on the property due to a prior incident involving the boyfriend, the report stated. Cohen asked to use the restroom and was refused, police reported, so she proceeded to sit down and defecate on the floor.
When the employee told her he was calling the police, he said Cohen began walking away, only to sit down onthe step closest to the seating area to begin defecating again, according to police.
Police found Cohen nearby at a restaurant, where she was inside the restroom, Officer David Paul Fraga said. Cohen said she was pregnant and needed to use the bathroom, Fraga reported. She added that she hadtaken a laxative earlier in the day and that it was not her fault she defecated on the floor because she “had to go bad,” police said. “It’s important to note that Cohen was not obviously pregnant,” Fraga wrote in his report, and classified the incident as a trespassing violation.
One of Cowboy Bill’s owners said he was called to the scene and saw Cohen defecating on the steps of the deck, police reported. The owner told police he had staff members escort Cohen and her boyfriend out of the bar. Cohen was wearing a jean skirt, purple shirt and sandals at the time, police reported.
Wonder how this will go, if it turns out Cohen is pregnant? Either way, I bet the Sheriff is thrilled to have another homeless person living for free in his jail.
Correction to the Keys Overnight Homeless Shelter (KOTS) part of yesterday’s ground zero Easter Egg hunt at Key West’s Higgs Beach, and other electrifying transcendental global warming and rising seas experiences post at goodmorningkeywest.com.
Me amigo Mike Tolbert, who is a night monitor at KOTS, called me to say I’d been suckered by Karen Jo: she was not banned from KOTS by a fellow named Richard, who now was running KOTS, because she would not fuck him anymore. Mike said there is no Richard on the KOTS staff, and Karen Jo has not been banned.
Mike lit into me again about my publishing again what Kari had told me about Randi Cohen Brown, Executive Director of Southern Assistance Homeless League (SHAL), giving a monitor an order to open and shred uncollected homeless people’s mail. Kari had told me she had seen and heard Brown give the order, and then she had seen the mail being open and shredded, after any money in the mail was removed and set aside. Mike said he had checked, there was no record of a post office investigation.
I told Kari what Mike had said. She said she had talked with a post office official in Tallahassee, when she filed her complaint, and he had told her there would be an investigation. Later, she had talked with him again, and he had said the investigation had been done. She said again, she had personally seen and heard Brown give the order, and she had personally seen the shredding.
I went to where Karen Jo hung out at Higgs Beach Park, next to the dog park, and found a number of homeless people there. But no Karen Jo. They said she’d had a seizure that morning, and they had called 9/11 and an ambulance had come to take her to the hospital on Stock Island. She has had seizures in the past, they said.
I saw a black woman there, whom I’d heard talk the day before with Karen Jo about the man at KOTS, whom Karen Jo, who is white, had said had banned her. I introduced myself to the black woman. She said her name was Kimberly Thomas. I asked her for the name of the KOTS employee Karen Jo had told me about? Robert, Kimberly said.
I told Kimberly what I’d just heard from Mike Tolbert about Karen Jo. Kimerbly said she knew Mike, liked him. Kimberly said Karen Jo had lied to me about being kicked out of KOTS, and why it happened. Kimberly said Karen Jo and Robert had been an item in the past, but Robert had married. Yet sometimes Karen Jo stayed in Robert and his wife’s home, and Robert was trying to get Karen Jo to get help.
Kimberly said she had lived at KOTS for 5 years, 2006-2011, and she had stayed there again, briefly, about 6 months ago. She said it was run better, and it was cleaner, when Florida Keys Outreach Coalition (FKOC) ran KOTS for the City of Key West. It went down some after SHAL took over running KOTS for the city.
Kimberly said there were lots of problems at KOTS, no matter who ran it. Dirty. Disgusting situations in the women’s bathrooms/showers. Homeless people misbehaving, monitors misbehaving.
I called Mike back, and told him all of that. He said Robert had only just come to work there and he had no say over banning people from KOTS.
Mike said, after Randi Cohen Brown became SHAL’s Executive Director, she started cleaning house. All the old KOTS employees were gone. It is running a lot better now.
Mike invited me to stay at KOTS, see for myself what is it like. I said I was afraid of what I might catch, if I stayed there. I said I’d told the city commission recently that the county health department should do random inspections of KOTs. Mike said he agreed. I said, then why don’t he and Randi go to city commission meetings and tell that to the mayor and city commissioners? Mike said that wasn’t going to happen.
I told Mike again what Kari had again told me about homeless people’s mail being shredded. Mike said KOTS only got a shredder about a month ago. He’s been working there maybe 6 months. I told Mike yet again that had invited Randi Cohen Brown to write to me, telling her side of it, and I would publish that verbatim, and I had not heard from Randi.
I told Kari what Mike had told me. She said there was a small shredder when she stayed at KOTS and did volunteer work there maybe a year ago, about six months before Mike went to work there. The shredder fit over a wastepaper container. She saw it. She saw it being used to shred homeless people’s mail.
Not once have the angels corrected me about that. If they thought Kari had made it up, they would have seen to it that I knew she had made it up. They saw to it that I learned Karen Jo had made up what she had told me about her being banned from KOTS.
After I talked with Mike, mi amigo Brenda up in north Georgia called me. I told her what all I was deakubg with, and about Mike’s invitation for me to stay at KOTS. I said my life is rough enough right now, but staying at KOTS would be like going to hell. Brenda said, for sure. She had stayed there for three months herself. It was hell.
Maybe KOTS is better now.
I hope so. I was banned from KOTS in early 2005, because I told the night monitor that the monitors the night before had talked loudly throughout the night before, and had kept me, at least, awake.
Upon being told I was banned, I pulled out my cell phone and called Charles Davis, who ran KOTS for FKOC, I told Charles what was going on - all right in front of the night monitor. I handed my cell phone to the night monitor and told him to talk with his boss about it.
I listened to the night monitor fight with Charles for about five minutes, before throwing in the towel and rescinding the ban.
I talked to Charles again. He got onto me for not calling him about the two monitors the night before. I said, well, I knew this monitor, because he, Charles, had introduce me to this monitor. So I figured I was okay telling this monitor what had happened the night before.
I’d had much the same thing happen in 2003, when I was in FKOC’s program. A client’s room was stinking. I told the house monitor. All hell broke loose. Even other clients were having at me. I moved out, went back to living on the street.
Last night, Kari and I were joined by two homeless men on the bench in front of Winn-Dixie. I had met one of the men before. Young, about 25, he said he had stayed at KOTS one night, to get his local identification. Then, he had lived outside. He has been hitchhiking the US.
He was quite interesting. He was not an addict. He knew about a lot of things. He is a welder. Got laid off by the US Government, when he was on Honolulu. Went to traveling.
He said he had applied to work at K-Mart and was hired, pending background check and drug screen, both of which, he said, will come back clean. He asked if the city had ever thought of having a litter patrol? I asked if he wanted to do that for the city, for pay? He said, yes, the city really needs a litter patrol. I said I agreed.
I said, back in 2007, when I ran for mayor, I promoted the city hiring homeless people as litter cops. Dress them up like pirates, with fake swords, daggers and pistols. They go around town uttering pirate oaths at litterbugs, telling them to pick up their litter, or get to walk the plank, fed to sharks. And, if the litterbugs didn’t pick up their litter, the pirate littler cops pull out a citation pad and give the litterbug a real ticket. Great PR, and gives homeless people jobs.
Word of that got out. I was interviewed by a nationally-syndicated radio station, live, in New York City. Other radio stations heard about it and interviewed me, including a Honolulu station. But it went nowhere in Key West. So good luck, was what I was telling the young man. But, if he wanted to give it a try, go see City Manager Jim Scholl and tell him Sloan sent you to see him. Then, go to a city commission meeting, maybe, and during closing citizen comments pitch a littler patrol to the mayor and city commissioners. Good luck.
The four of us got to talking about homeless people smuggling booze into KOTS at night. I said Mike Tolbert had told me earlier in the day that they were turning away people who had containers of booze in their backpacks, spoiling their party.
Kari said homeless people can skate through that by putting vodka in water bottles and putting the water bottles in their pockets - can’t search their pockets. I said I’d tell Mike to tell KOTS bosses to start searching homeless people for water bottles, dry up their taking booze, other than in their stomachs, into KOTS at night.
If KOTS banned homeless people who had booze in their bellies, very few homeless people would stay at KOTS at night. If the City of Key West banned tourists and locals who had booze in their bellies, Key West would be dang near a ghost town.
Booze is a narcotic, it rivals heroin and lots of other fun chemicals people use to escape themselves and their lives and this world. Try to get an alcoholic to admit booze is a narcotic and he/she is a drug addict. Good luck.
Ciao,
sloanbashinsky@outlook.com
