Depress ctrl and + keys together to increase text size; depress ctrl and – keys together to reduce
I just now polished off a lovely French omlette at Sippin’ Internet Cafe on Eaton Street, near Tropic Cinema, cooked by Cordon Bleu-trained chef and Sippin’s owner, Michael Kinneer. How this came about started yesterday, when Michael described an omlette he was thinking about creating, which included feta cheese, and I said I bet the omlette would be even better with goat cheese, which I thought used to be the same as feta cheese, but today feta is made from cow milk. I said I once I ate a goat cheese omlette at the Banana Cafe on the upper end of Duval Street, and it was excellent.
Let me start over.
Michael Kinnear, right, with friends from Ohio
When I arrived at Sippin’ this morning, after spending the night at KOTS, the city of Key West’s homeless shelter on Stock Island, I asked Michael to dream me up an omlette for breakfast, as good as the one he had dreamed up for me yesterday, before we had the discussion above. Michael said he’d gone out and found goat cheese yesterday, and how about a goat cheese, spinach, green olive and oregano omlette? Sounds wonderful, I said. It was better than wonderful, accompanied by Michael’s yummy homemade bread toast and his homemade fig and peach preserves.
There is something seriously poetic, or ironic, or bizarre, about sleeping in a homeless shelter, and then eating a Category 5 french omlette the next morning, as the now worn out remnants of a girl named Erika are visiting Key West with her water-laden clouds, as I am now being blocked by Outlook from sending out daily email blasts to my hit list, so I’m using my Yahoo back up email account, for now. If Yahoo blocks me from sending out email blasts, then that might be the end of the email blasts, and anyone who had been receiving them could then just check goodmorningkeyewest.com each day, to see what rummaged around in and made its way out of me into cyberspace that day.
Meanwhile, we had a monster rain storm last night over KOTS, just before 11 p.m. lights out.
I had brought with me my foul weather gear and a pair of water shoes I’d bought at K-mart on the way up to KOTS, so I won’t have to get wet my one pair of shoes, leather Rockports, which I found in the goodwill clothes bin in the front of Good Food Conspiracy health food store in maybe 2012. The Rockports fit my feet perfectly, have plenty of rubber left on the soles, can’t imagine why they were put in the free clothes bin, but am glad they were.
Before leaving KOTS this morning, I spoke with a homeless woman I first met in Key West about two years ago. “Jane” looks maybe 50, is petite except for what appear to be large designer boobs. When we first met, she told me of a local surgeon having butchered her stomach, so that she was unable to be seen in a bathing suit in public. She seemed to have difficulty expressing herself, as if she was in battle shock over something in her past; chronically spooked.
I saw Jane from time to time after that, and said hello, but we had no further conversations until maybe two weeks ago, as I was headed into KOTS and came upon her walking in. She asked me what I do? I said I am a priest. She asked where was my church? I said wherever I am. I’m not the kind of priest she knows. She asked if I could pray for her? I said, sure, and asked for her to get whatever help she needs, and told her what I had asked for.
She said her father had just died, she was all shook up.
The other night, Jane came up to me at KOTS, said she was in so much pain, she wanted to kill herself. I asked about the pain, where was it? Was it physical? Was it psychic? She said it was physical, it was everywhere; she’d been to over 100 doctors and had gotten over 100 different diagnoses, and no help.
I asked her to sit down beside me on the picnic table bench where I was sitting. She did that. We were facing away from the table. I told her I wanted to put my hand on her back. She said okay. I put my right hand flat on the middle of her back and held it there. Quickly, I was overcome by sadness. I started weeping. Then, I was balling. I asked out loud, to Jane and to the angels, “What happened to you that you have so much sadness in you?” I kept my hand on her back, and I kept bawling. I kept asking that question, and I heard nothing from her, or from the angels.
I asked Jane, did she remember her dreams? Yes. I said, maybe you or I will have a dream, which will help us understand why you are in so much pain. Let’s talk about it in the morning, before we have to leave KOTS. Okay.
Well, I didn’t even remember that when I woke up the next morning, not having dreamt about Jane at all. I was down to College Road on my bicycle, headed for Key West, when I remembered she and I were supposed to meet and discuss any dreams we’d had.
I told my lady Kari about that, when I visited her in the jail that same afternoon. She said maybe I healed Jane. Kari said she knew Jane somewhat, but not well. She’d had no problems with Jane, but thought she might be using crack. I had noticed that Jane smoked small cigars.
As I was about to leave KOTS this morning, I saw Jane under the tarp covering the common area and walked over to her and said I had gotten up early the other morning and had left and only had remembered she and I were supposed to meet, after I was down on college road. She said not to worry about it. I said I had no dream about her that night. Did she have a dream she remembered? She said she could not recall.
Jane said she went up to her father’s funeral, and that used up all of her emergency money. He left her nothing. Yesterday, someone stole all of her clothes; the only clothes she had, she was wearing. She said her scalp was hurting really bad, covered with bumps. Again, she mentioned over 100 doctors and over 100 diagnoses. The last doctor she saw was a dermatologist, not the one I have used. She said he was not able to tell her what was causing the bumps on her head.
I said I will call a friend of mine in Georgia, who might be able to tell us what is causing the pain; she can read somebody from half way around the world. Really? Yeah, really. But her cell phone is out of minutes, and she told me she won’t get more minutes until the first of September, so it might be a couple of days before I can speak with her.
I did not say I’d had a dream last night, about me going into Mexico through El Paso, Texas. My friend in north Georgia, a psychic empath in shaman training, once was married to a Mexican man. She retained his last name, Garcia. Her first name is Brenda.
When I dream about Mexico, it’s usually about something having to do with Brenda. She has stayed different times at KOTS. She knows constant pain, her own, and other people’s she picks up all the time. She can be around someone a minute and tell what she’s picking up in her, or him, and how it’s making her feel and/or hurt, and where in her she’s feeling it, and what that person needs to be taking a look at. The same thing happens when I tell Brenda about someone I know and am engaging down here in Key West.
Pain, Brenda’s and other people’s she absorbs, and her psychology, make it impossible for her to hold down “a real job”. That, and the angels telling me to do it, is why I supported Brenda financially from mid-2005 until recently, when I no longer was able to help her out in that way.
The spirit work Brenda does has no value to this planet’s “sentient species”.
In Spanish, el paso means “the passage”. In my dreams, Texas is synonymous with the Devil, because the mascot of the University of Texas football team is the Texas longhorn bull. Horn = Devil, symbolically, in my dream code. That’s been demonstrated over and over in my dreams: Texas is about the Devil, Evil.
So, I could say, maybe I’m headed through hell to get to Mexico, Brenda. And maybe Brenda will go through hell, trying to get to the bottom of what is ailing Jane. I might go through hell getting to the bottom of what ails Brenda.
I also need to talk with Brenda about a ruckus she had about two weeks ago, after I told her, as things then stood, I could not send her any more money. She went haywire about me being with Kari, said really mean things about me and Kari. I needed to hear it, for it was how Brenda really feels. She wants to me with me, has all along. But I never felt it, and told her so many times.
Brenda lives in a beat up trailer, with windows broken out, in exchange for doing chores for the trailer’s owner. Brenda is on food stamps and, with a local lawyer’s help, is trying to get Social Security disability. Yet, she will try to help Jane, because no one else I know has a ghost of a chance of helping her.
Moving laterally, Jerry Weinstock, M.D., Psychiatry, retired (sometimes), added to his and my conversation reported in yesterday’s trolling for big game fish in local, national and international waters, Key West post at goodmorningkeywest.com, so here is the whole conversation:
SLOAN:———–Florida Outreach coalition—or Samuel’s house—best disposition for Kari –Yes drinking will destroy the future for you both—the relationship—- disintegration–
I have swam and conversed with the director of the Coalition—–she is strong willed and experienced and bright—-appeal to her –tell her you know me and I referred you for Kari.
try and work something out as the stress will turn her to drink—-and destroy what chance she has.——best of luck—Jerry
I replied:
I already spoke to Sam Kaufman about Kari some months ago. Sam is Chairman of Florida Keys Outreach Coalition’s Board of Directors. He said he felt something could be worked out, if Kari completed the JIP program successfully. However, going through FKOC’s program, or the Samuel’s House program, will not help Kari, if, due to her felony record, she cannot find paying work in Key West, during the day time. FKOC does not allow its clients to work at night; Samuel’s House might not, either. Even if Kari can find paying work in Key West, she will not earn enough money to be able to pay Key West rents after she is out of FKOC or Samuel’s House. Going into either program will only delay the return to society disaster, if I don’t somehow produce a wad of money.
Meanwhile, Kari is really suffering in the jail due her allergy to the soy meat substitute diet, and perhaps due to scabies. She told me the other day, after dinner, she had an immediate reaction to the “meatballs” she’d eaten in the jail cafeteria. You are a physician in good standing in this area. Can you call Sheriff Ramsay and speak with him about Kari and any other inmates who might be reacting to a soy diet? Kari has dragons galore to try to come to terms with, to complete the JIP program in good standing. She does not need soy and scabies dragons on top of that dragging her down.
Thanks,
Sloan
Jerry wrote:
The actual coalition director is a woman —–she gave me her phone and address and name at one point but I was swimming and put it somewhere and apparently lost it.
She was in the process of making the coalition viable…..
I would think the scabies may be causing Kari her most troublesome symptoms or adding to an already highly annoying symptom complex. It is treatable
with money you could get her food.–solution to that problem. $$$$$$$
my sincere best wishes to you both—-Jerry ( I realize I am not solving the problems)..–SORRY SORRY !! Jerry
I replied:
Jerry, scabies is not causing Kari’s big weight gain, her awful indigestion, her feeling she’s about to pop; soy meat substitute is causing that, and, from what I read online, her soy allergy could be causing her skin sores and itching; she is adamant it is not scabies, and the jail nurse and doctor don’t think it’s scabies. I cannot get food to Kari in the jail; that is not allowed, just as it is not allowed for me to give her prescription drugs, even her own; they have to be approved by the infirmary doctor, or by an outside physician to which she is referred and taken. If she had meds when she went in, she did not, the meds would have been taken from her and put in her locker, to be returned to her when she was released.
I wonder how Father Steve Braddock might feel about FKOC being so mismanaged and in need of the new director’s help? He runs the operation. He is its CEO. She works for him. Maybe you have FKOC mixed up with Southern Assistance Homeless League, which was a mess for a long time, and some years ago Steve stopped having dealings with SHAL and was in on the starting of the Continuum of Care, from which he and FKOC recently pulled back having an active interest, due to internal politics reminding of the SHAL internal politics.
Maybe it’s time for Archangel Michael to pay folks a personal visit.
Jerry wrote:
SLOAN: as I understand it—was an outreach program designed for problems similar to Kari’s dilemma—-this was at dawn and I was trying to meditate and exercise —-so my fault I didn’t play close enough attention————she may have been trying to get it underway and developed, functioning, and integrated —she didn’t show again -so it is a question except that a comprehensive program is trying to be worked out…….all I know right now.
MOST IMPORTANT:
I have dealt with allergies in my practice -some even potentially lethal and without exception they are more complex than just allergy—-psych. problems are prodigal, profuse —-unconscious , conscience -takes time and work.
Often the emotional problems when they begin to clear the allergic symptom complex -lessens and not infrequently VANISHES ———-the brain controls all —-this is simplified of course—-your understanding is important.—(-a decent hamburger would help -maybe the pope will issue a special dispensation- or even a commissioner will grant permission——-given her suffering and your suffering and the medical aspect. )
SINCERELY<
hope-hope-take care ——-Jerry
(Connie was here for several hours a few days ago)
discussed other issues
I replied:
Don’t see a county commissioner telling the sheriff how to run his jail.
The only such “coalition” known to me in the Florida Keys, which does “outreach” for people with problems such as Kari’s, is Florida Keys Outreach Coalition. I think they have a woman director, my friend Brenda in north Georgia told me that quite a while back, and I spoke to her on the telephone about Brenda maybe coming back down here and getting back into FKOC’s program. Maybe 2 years ago. Brenda decided she didn’t want to come back down here.
For a long time, I have viewed allergies and other medical symptoms as having a psychosomatic (soul) component, but few people are willing to look at their troubles in that way, and it’s not something most physicians are willing to consider, in my experience. Kari does have a soy allergy, however, and it will not resolve through psychotherapy. For her to get relief, the soy meat substitute has to be replaced with protein she can digest and use, hamburger is the cheapest substitute I can think of.
Kari told me before she went back into the jail, what was going to happen to her physically after she was in there. It happened just as she had described. She started gaining a lot of weight, her G.I. tract started hurting badly, she started having lots of gas, she broke out in sores on her skin and awful itching. All of that she told me would happen after she was back in the jail. Sometimes patients know exactly what’s wrong with them.
Kari had a dream before she went back into the jail, while she was deciding whether to try the JIP program. In the dream, she was a guinea pig running on a treadmill, being experimented on and experimented on, until she was worn out, ragged, exhausted. That dream caused her to hold out as long as possible turning herself in for violating her probation by drinking vodka.
Before that dream, when Kari was seriously considering entering the Guidance Clinic booze rehab program in Marathon, she was told in her sleep, if she did that program, when she completed it, police would come and get her and handcuff her and take her to prison. That dream stopped her from going into the Guidance Clinic. It would have stopped me from going into the Guidance Clinic, if it had been my dream and it was me in her shoes.
I hope the angels drop a pile of money on me. Without that, Kari is up shit creek without a paddle, or a canoe. Same for Brenda. And about the same for me, although I do have Social Security retirement benefits, and I am able to sleep nights at KOTS, which banned Kari, forever. “The coalition” will not be able to solve Kari’s dilemma. Only a pile of money will do that, and then only if Kari stays off booze and cigarettes after she is out of jail.
Sloan
Jerry wrote:
SLOAN___——-without question you have a difficult problem. I won’t discuss allergies with you as your experience is far too limited and you have drawn your conclusions already. !!!!!
Some of what Kari suffers from are WITHDRAWAL effects which can last a LONG time.
but do diminish with time and COMPLETE SOBRIETY….. !!!!!!
That Kobe hamburger at Publix really looks good -but a bit pricey—-she probably would benefit from that quality, if she could have that instead of SOY BURGERS.
well—- best of good wishes and my best to Kari—————-Jerry….
I replied:
Alcohol withdrawal causes extreme G.I. distress, farting, skin sores and itching? Are you serious?
The cheapest hamburger in Publix, if it is real hamburger, would help Kari.
A fellow KOTS client in Sippin’ right now, who has spent a good while in the jail, said the soy in the jail comes in a big bag, in granualized form, like animal feed. They can mix it in with other stuff, like noodles, and make patties out of it, and put different flavors on it, and make it taste like meat and even chicken. But it’s soy.
Maybe Kari’s mother will read about that, try Aramark. I don’t have the money to do it. Kari’s mother told me months ago, on the telephone, that it bugged her that the jail would take money she sent to Kari’s commissary account, to reimburse the jail for times Kari went to the infirmary to see a nurse or the jail doctor.
Night before last, I told Kari in a dream that, last night, she and I would be doing something together. Maybe this is it.
Ciao
Moving to another wing of the Key West cuckoo’s nest, in today’s Key West Citizen (www.keysnews.com) is an excellent example of government by default and nonsense, my further cheer in bold italics, I added the pics.
Sunday, August 30, 2015
Leaders say Truman Waterfront Park doesn’t need committee
BY GWEN FILOSA Citizen Staff
gfilosa@keysnews.com
Friday marked an odd anniversary for city government in Key West: One year since the volunteer appointed Truman Waterfront Advisory Board has met at Old City Hall.
The minor milestone’s meaning, though, differs greatly for those in the loop of the long-awaited construction of the $60 million Truman Waterfront Park, land the Navy gave the city in 2002, and all of which remains an abandoned field and some pavement.
$60 million? Last I heard at a city commission meeting, maybe a year ago, it was $30 million, max, and the mayor and city commissioner and city staff had no clue how they were going to pay for it, and its success as a park hinged heavily on the city being able to acquire an easement over what is called Admiral’s Cut, a piece of the waterfront adjacent to Truman Waterfront. Admiral’s Cut is own owned by the Walsh family, which owns the Westin upscale hotel which connects to Admiral’s cut, which lies inside the cruise ship on the left in the photo below. Truman Waterfront is the undeveloped land around the old Navy harbor.
City leaders say that after some 15 years of planning, the waterfront park’s creation will be under way this December and the board’s work is done, while the two longest serving advisory board members say they need to reconvene soon to represent the community.
“They did a great job,” Mayor Craig Cates said of the advisory board. “I’m not sure if it’s still needed. We came up with a design and now we’re down to what we can afford to build. They don’t make that decision. They’ve already done all the work.”
The advisory panel was meant to oversee concepts, not construction, said City Manager Jim Scholl, who added that he hadn’t known of the one-year anniversary without a meeting.
“The whole Truman Waterfront Advisory Board was created to help shepherd the concept and the designs,” Scholl said. “I think they’ve served their purpose. Whether or not they’re still needed isn’t up to me so much.”
I don’t see how the advisory board was needed, if it designed a waterfront park the city could not afford to build and then operate. Surely the mayor and city commissioners knew the city could not afford to build and operate an upscale park on Truman Waterfront, before the advisory committee was appointed and started spending money on a design the city could not possibly afford.
An original advisory board member disagrees.
“The board should be meeting now that there’s actual progress being made,” said Jim Gilleran, a local bar owner who is an inaugural member of the board. “I’m looking forward to the next meeting.”
Gilleran said he isn’t upset by the advisory board’s one-year break.
By the year’s end, crews could break ground by starting on the roads and utilities, city engineer Jim Bouquet told the Historic Architectural Review Commission last week.
The city ran advertisements in the Sunday paper for bids on the first part of the first phase of development on a park that at last count is estimated to cost $58.5 million to finish, plus maintenance costs.
At that city commission meeting I attended maybe a year ago, there was no talk of this price tag; it was under $30 million, and they were talking about different ways the park and cruise ships docking outside the new park, at the outer mole pier, would pay for the construction of the park and for its costs of operation. They, the mayor and city commissioners, had no clue how they would pay for any of it, and I told them that during citizen comments, and it was way too expensive, and not to go forward with it. At other city commission meetings, I told them to build as much affordable rental housing on Truman Waterfront at the Navy would let them build there. I told them that after talking with Ron Demes, the Navy’s civilian spokesperson, told me the Navy had no objection to the city building affordable housing on Truman Waterfront.
Advisory board members learned last week from the newspaper that the city plans a $225,000 bathroom pavilion next to the interactive water fountain at the waterfront park. HARC approved the bathrooms 5-2.
“This is one of the things that is very disconcerting,” said Richard Tallmadge, an advisory board member appointed by the mayor in 2010. “We’re coming up to a very critical time in the life of this project. As soon as the unveiling of the plan and the cost of this plan is brought forth to the public, we need to have the Truman Waterfront Advisory Board convened and weigh in on what is doable and what isn’t doable.”
Tallmadge and Gilleran both noted the importance of the only existing building at the waterfront, the historic military structure known as “Building 103” in the plans.
Right now, Building 103 remains without a purpose in the Truman Waterfront Park, although city staff has proposed in the past that a private developer may want to put a restaurant in there. Estimates on renovating the historic building range from $3 to $5 million.
For years, the city counted on developers to build a marina that would generate funding to maintain the park. That plan was derailed when the Navy in 2013 closed its harbor to public boaters, citing the need for military training in the waters.
A great deal of time and commotion went into letting those developers, the local Spottswood family, tie up Truman Waterfront with their idea of how it should be developed with them using other people’s money to retain part of the waterfront and build a mega yacht marina, which they would operate, or sell, without, apparently, anyone asking the Navy how it felt about mega yachts using its harbor, and finally the Navy stepped in and said that wasn’t going to happen, and then the advisory committee, encouraged by the mayor and city commissioners, took it to where it now is today, which looks like pure economic madness to me.
Bathrooms were originally planned for Building 103, but city staff this year said that any water fountain requires by law bathrooms.
“It’s not the city’s fault,” Tallmadge said of the waterfront park project’s slow-moving progress. “It’s nobody’s fault. This is not a finger-pointing exercise. It’s just a statement of fact.”
Oh, Richard, there is a heap of fault and plenty of places to lay it, and that’s a statement of fact.
“Nobody’s on the same page and nobody’s listening,” said City Commissioner Mark Rossi. “All the residents want down there is nice soccer fields, an exercise park. There’s nothing. We don’t need a $58.5 million park. I’ve said it all along.”
Oh? Do I recall, Mark, that you voted to go forward with this boondoggle, after I told you and the other elected officials not to go forward with it.
Key West has about $18 million stored up to begin building the park, which for years was always pegged at costing about $30 million.
In June, the city commission received a new report that had a price tag of $58.5 million — a figure that turned quite a few heads at Old City Hall and came without any details.
Commissioner Tony Yaniz blasted the park plans as “Disneyland South.”
Yeah, but didn’t you, back a ways, vote to go forward with it, Tony, after I told you and the other elected officials to shelve it?
Tallmadge was much more diplomatic.
“That is the best guesstimate that the designers have been able to provide thus far, to build the whole thing,” Tallmadge said. “That is completing the park as designed.”
But he added that the community could have been asked what it was willing to invest in the project before the master plan was drawn up and priced by the architectural design firm hired by the city.
“The board can continue to be an effective and thoughtful contributor to this,” Tallmadge said.
Looks to me the board thinks money grows on trees. Looks to me the board needs to show the mayor and the city commissioners where those trees are growing in Key West. Failing that, the board should say no more.
gfilosa@keysnews.com
sloanbashinsky@outlook.com
