Mary Chapin Carpenter
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The indomitable, irreverent, irascible Sancho Panza responded to part of my role in yesterday’s baa, baa black sheep: observers, informants, snitches, whistleblowers and other catarumpuses – Key West post at goodmorningkeywest.com:
You forgot trouble maker, a.k.a.YOU! 
A million dollars? It could have been 100 Million and the outcome would have been the same!
34“Don’t imagine that I came to bring peace to the earth! I came not to bring peace, but a sword.
35‘I have come to set a man against his father,
a daughter against her mother,
and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law.
36Your enemies will be right in your own household!’l
37“If you love your father or mother more than you love me, you are not worthy of being mine; or if you love your son or daughter more than me, you are not worthy of being mine. 38If you refuse to take up your cross and follow me, you are not worthy of being mine. 39If you cling to your life, you will lose it; but if you give up your life for me, you will find it.
A true lover of wisdom has hands too busy to hold on to anything! He learns by doing and every pebble in the path becomes her teacher! Oink
I replied:
Yep, and I don’t recall, since the angels grabbed me in early 1987, talking with one Christian who agreed with what you quoted; nor anybody else, either. Just one of many things Jesus said in the Gospels, with which I found no Christian, nor anybody, in agreement. I imagine if America actually became a Christian nation, in the sense of actually living Jesus, the biggest moanings and bitchings would come from Christians. Especially, conservative Christians. That would be Republican and Tea Party Christians, although I have every confidence all but a handful of Democrat, Libertarian and other political-party-aligned Christians, and all but a handful of all other Americans would moan and bitch plenty.
Meanwhile,
a comment under the
- Water Quality Disaster: Whistleblower Accuses Department of Health
article at Key West the Newspaper (www.thebluepaper.com), caught my fancy yesterday, and I was not able to let it pass:
A vicious van dweller criminal amigo dropped USA in the sewer cheer into my Facebook chat yesterday:
-
8/3, 11:31am
Joe SugrueHey Sloan….hope this email finds you well. Check out this vid when ya get 40 min. Would love to discuss with you upon my return to the Keys!
https://m.youtube.com/watch?feature=youtu.be&v=bKwO1onXAaI
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8/3, 1:39pmSloan Bashinskymaybe I’ll be dead before the shit hits the fan USA; maybe I’ll have to run for president to get dead; my lady love Kari might not care for that, however. Agreed, USA and other countries are being run behind the scenes, and the puppet masters themselves are being run by something they may or may not see. I see no cure, absent supernatural interventions.
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8/3, 1:49pm
Joe Sugrue
agreed! we are a doomed species. And perhaps just as well. As Bill Hicks was quoted as saying “Enjoy the ride, It’s just a ride”.
Meanwhile,
pedaling my bad ugly but reliable lovable conch cruiser bicycle away from the county library on Fleming Street yesterday afternoon, I noticed a few small rain clouds headed toward downtown, and I hustled, I thought, away from where the storm clouds were headed, toward Bayview Park, in route to Higgs Beach Park, only to be caught in the rain. So, I pedaled toward the big covered pavilion in front of Salute Ristorante, which has a handicap ramp up which a bicycle can be pushed.
Arriving, I saw the pavilion was cabled off and a sign said it was only available to people who had a permit to use it. First I knew of that. Now getting more wet than I cared to get, I headed to the West Martello, and took refuge under its covered walk through.
Also in there taking refuge was Sue from the City Clerk Office, looking a bit wet herself. Said she was out for a walk, she lived nearby. We chit-chatted a bit about the weather and this and that, and finally I took my folding canvas chair off the front rack of my bicycle and set it down and sat in it, to watch through the Martello’s brick arch and shrubbery a now magnificent thunderstorm slinging lots of lighting. I love big thunderstorms, and along about 1998 noticed that when one arrives where I am, it heralds change for me.
This one hung around a while, and finally Sue gave up her walk and started to head back toward her home, as she asked me if I would be at the meeting tonight? The city commission meeting. I asked if anything juicy was on the agenda? Yes, commissioner Tony Yaniz’ item for twice a week garbage pick up.
I said someone should tell Tony to start his own Uber, a 2nd garbage company. Tony picks up the garbage once a week, and Waste Management picks it up once a week. Sue laughed, headed out of the protected walkway into the rain, toward her home.
Soon thereafter, two drowned homeless people, a man and a woman, came into the protected area and offered me a piece of fried chicken from Dions, which I appreciated, as I was getting hungry before, hopefully, the storm lifted and I pedaled all the way up to KOTS to spend the night under cover.
The homeless woman bought out her vodka and was having at that, even as she started griping to another homeless man, who had arrived shortly after I got there, about how somebody had stolen her purse and all of her identification, which is a horror story for a homeless person. However, this woman kept at it, getting more and more worked up, until the homeless man she was with started trying to get her to drop it, and that wasn’t going entirely the way he wanted it to go. I was getting uncomfortable there was going to be a fight, and I moved out of the Martello over to one of the covered picnic tables across the street, where I was out of the rain, which was starting to subside.
About fifteen minuted later, I started toward KOTS, getting wet, but not bad, as the storm kept receding, and by the time I reached KOTS, the rain had stopped completely. There were less than usual homeless people there; some were soaked, and their belongings, too. Rain ain’t fun for homeless people; maybe I was to blame?
I had told my parched garden vegetables in the organic garden behind May Sands school the day before,
that I was sorry I’d been gone, I also was under the weather and had not come by to water them with city water, which I did that day, even as I had told them what they needed was a good rain soaking. They got that yesterday, and I’m sure they were happy because city water is full of stuff they don’t like nearly as much as they like rainwater.
Amazing, Florida Keys Aqueduct Authority spends its own ratepayers’ money advertising its chemicalized tap water on local radio stations as the best drink in the Florida Keys. My garden vegetables don’t agree. Nor did my garden vegetables on my land on Little Torch Key, when I had that. The good rain yesterday probably filled the cisterns at the organic garden and for a while I will be able to use real water to irrigate my garden plot, even as I keep drinking Florida Keys Aqueduct Authority tap water. Been drinking it since the 1950s. Now you know what’s wrong with me :-).
Meanwhile, my dreams at KOTS last night were interesting,
but I was not entirely clear what they meant about how to go about my life, so maybe I’m going to sit on that another day or two. I do think, though, I’m supposed to be at tonight’s city commission meeting to give Tony Yaniz a boost into his own garbage collection company. Perhaps I’m even suppose to write Tony a poem about it. Perhaps I might do that now, if there is a poem lurking. Let’s see. Hmmm. Maybe Mary Chapin Carpenter is lurking about the premises.
“I Take My Chances”
I took a walk in the rain one day on the wrong side of the tracks
I stood on the rails till I saw that train
Just to see how my heart would react
Now some people say that you shouldn’t tempt fate
And for them I would not disagree
But I never learned nothing from playing it safe
I say fate should not tempt me
I take my chances, I don’t mind working without a net
I take my chances, I take my chances every chance I get
I sat alone in the dark one night, tuning in by remote
I found a preacher who spoke of the light but there was brimstone in his throat
He’d show me the way according to him in return for my personal check
I flipped my channel back to CNN and I lit another cigarette
I take my chances, forgiveness doesn’t come with a debt
I take my chances, I take my chances every chance I get
I’ve crossed lines of words and wire and both have cut me deep
I’ve been frozen out and I’ve been on fire and the tears are mine to weep
Now I can cry until I laugh and laugh until I cry
So cut the deck right in half, I’ll play from either side
I take my chances, I pay my dollar and I place my bet
I take my chances, I take my chances every chance I get
I take my chances, I don’t cling to remorse or regret
I take my chances, I take my chances every chance I get
I take my chances
I take my chances
Now the words to that song are indeed nice, but hearing her sing it makes all the difference, so here’s a link for hearing her sing it on the David Letterman show, when she was up for 3 Grammys in the same year:
Mary Chapin Carpenter - I Take My Chances [2-19-93]
Well, maybe I’ll share this here thing I wrote to my diary the other day …
Captain Tony
sloanbashinsky@outlook.com
moi, today, 4 August 2015, in front of Sippin’ Internet Cafe, Eaton Street, Key West,
before launching today’s Kamikaze,
which, in Japanese, means
Divine Wind
It seems to me that no legitimate study has been performed for a PERMANENT fix to the sewage issue. It seems to me that the only solution is to pump the sewage out of the keys. As long as the coral is dying the problem is not solved. Deep well, shallow well studies are simply BS to waste money and allows for more corruption which is quite obvious. Stop thinking about short term and think long term. If the Keys are going to survive the power must go to those with a brain who want to serve the masses and not themselves.
Bozewell, not sure what pumping all the sewerage out of the Keys would entail and cost, and how long it would take to do build that “evacuation route”, and where would all of that sewerage be treated and where would the treated wastewater then be sent?
Beyond that, Keys human sewerage is only part of the cause of the reef dying and the sea around the Keys being polluted. You have cruise ships dumping sewerage, raw to somewhat treated, off shore. You have massive petrochemical runoff from streets, yards, gardens, golf courses, parks, into the the sea caused by rain in the Keys. You have massive petrochemical run off in south Florida toward the Bay of Florida, which run off then makes it way down to the Keys. You have seriously polluted canals throughout the Keys, polluted because they were dug too deep, were too long, too many bends, and not sufficient tide exchange to keep fresh sea water in them. You have development and dredging, still, which puts silt into the water and makes it hard for the algae on which corals feed to use photosynthesis to survive and reproduce.
It’s a great big mess; it may not now have a cure, even if all the human sewerage is piped to the mainland. The invasive species has done this. Maybe exterminating the invasive species is the only chance for the reef to come back to life and for the sea to return to what it was before white people found the Florida Keys.