South of the Mainstream

2006-07-20T23:28:00.000-04:00

Pencil is a simple tool. It should be one of the six simple machines. Or a wonder of the world. Look at what has come out of the end of pencil.

It's one of the smallnesses that works.

Pencil drawing is a very soothing and satisfying activity for me. I teach drawing at the Audubon House and Gardens Museum and I am always amazed at how easily people settle into drawing. They fidget and protest they can't draw a straight line, haven't tried it since childhood, blah blah blah. Within 20 minutes, there they are drawing and completely absorbed in it.

It is very meditative. Even the kids racing in after school, clamoring to set up their equipment and catching up with each other's days, quickly calm themselves and give in to the mystery of the pencil as though it were a magic wand.

This is a drawing I did last night instead of painting.

2006-07-17T10:26:00.000-04:00

Things are improving in the two months since the last post. Hurricane season has begun and been pretty quiet so far, in contrast to last year when Dennis hit early in July. We have all seen "An Inconvenient Truth" however, and now the inevitability of global warming increases the dread of stronger storms.

Meanwhile, some drenching summer rains have enlivened the trees. The poinciana and gumbo limbo I thought were dead are in leaf! There are niches of deep shade in the yard! The poincianas, which normally celebrate the beginning of summer with glorious outbursts of flaming scarlet blossoms were unable to pull it off this year. A few trees spurted a few flowers, but at least they now have leaves and we can look forward to next year's blooms.

My friend Reen, a steel sculptress, just returned from the Artist Blacksmith's Association of North America conference in Seattle. I admire her tenacity in attending, since her entire studio with lots of heavy, expensive equipment and materials, was flooded to eye-level and salt water is ruthless on steel. She returned inspired, however, and refreshed. She's not sure how she'll rebuild her career, but her drive is back.

My admiration for her is a little wistful, I'll admit. The storm didn't wipe out my means to produce, but other events pulled the rug out from under my artistic life. The gallery where my work was selling well closed in the middle of storm season to make room for the MTV Real World: Key West production and never re-opened for miscellaneous reasons associated with the building's owner. My larger canvases need large walls and those are hard to come by in the littlemost Key West. I haven't unearthed a new gallery so sales came to a screeching halt. See my work at my website: www.lizardlicks.com

That has led to a slump entitled "Why Bother?" that I'm trying to overcome. I need to find a conference somewhere to refresh my attitude, I guess.

So here's a picture of the painting I'm working on now. It's 48" tall, 24" wide. It's a charcoal drawing that I've developed a way to preserve on canvas, then layered with transparent acrylic glazes. It's still under construction, but close to being done.

The second photo is my paintings at Sippin' Internet Cafe on Eaton Street, just off Duval in Key West. The cafe is a great little spot, just down from the new Tropic Theatre. I come here for Cuban coffee and to download files using their broadband.
It's also the venue for poetry slams and other interesting, small-format events.

The scene there attracts a mix of business travelers (or vacationers trying to catch up on what they’re missing) and some intriguing fringe types. During a recent workshop on wireless computing, the place was predominantly keys folks in flip-flops and T-shirts. Then a 50-year-old with a Mohawk haircut trudged in. Just behind him a six-pack of German bikers muscled through the room and clustered around one of the Sippin’ desktop computers. They could have been a pretty intimidating crew, except they were wearing shorts and sandals and their legs were very pale.

2006-05-12T15:46:00.000-04:00

Six months out from the storm. I'm getting back to the blog. While I was incommunicado, Key West was piling up heaps of storm debris. Waste Managment took that away. Then we piled up refrigerators, dishwashers, big screen TVs, water heaters and other appliances trashed in the storm. WI took that away. Then the piles of dry wall, sodden cabinets and delaminated doors grew up and WI took them away. Now in front of houses, instead of debris, there are FEMA trailers while folks replace interiors flooded by salt water and blue tarp roofs.
My household did better than most actually because, as a floating home, we floated and so didn't have any ocean in the living room. We had dock damage and our wonderful Toyota Previa was among the 80% of keys cars that were totaled in the saltwater surge, but we didn't have to rip our carpets and drywall.
Saltwater
Saltwater does quirky things with electricity. After the storm Key West had 40 electric pole fires as the salt conducted power strangely during a rain. Our dock power was overwashed and my husband had to carefully clean the circuit breakers to keep us on steady power.
Cars
As I mentioned, cars suffered in the flood. We were dealer-tag city for a while. The Overseas Highway hosted a steady stream of car carriers bringing new cars down and carting trashed cars out. Now there are lots of shiny new cars (it's too risky to buy a used one) and lots of brand new debt (insurance never seems to do it all).
We bought a van from our friend Stevie because we knew its history -- and Stevie does great maintenance, but my husband had to fly to New York (mid-winter) to get it.
Trees
Our gorgeous tropical jungle has been sadly changed. The trees were whipped by storms four times last year, and they are exhausted. The palms are drooping and the leafy trees were stripped bare so many times, they gave up trying to replicate spring. Now they are producing silly little tufts of leaves close to the trunk with bare twigs above. This means no shade as the weather heats up.
In addition, many trees didn't make it at all. One poinciana and a gumbo limbo in our yard are dead. They were the ones closest to the water. The ficus, that had all its topsoil (or what passes for it here in the keys) washed away down to bare roots seems to be making a slow recovery.
Small plants were washed out in droves. Lots of us just threw seeds out to see what would grow on its own and give us some time to get around to landscaping.
Taxes, Insurance
Taxes were depressing when we totalled up all our losses, but the worst is the insurance. Once again, as a houseboat, we did better than most here because no one will insure a houseboat. Landlubbers with mortgages are trapped in insurance hell as the various sorts (windstorm, flood...) raise premiums double the already pricey rate paid in the keys. The Keynoter newspaper quoted on its front page May 10, one agent whose clients' windstorm "went up from $4,400 to $11,400." A grassroots organization has sprung up to fight the increases.
Dread
So now we are less than a month away from the 2006 hurricane season and the island population is struggling to manage anxiety. Some businesses are closing, some folks are moving. We suspect that as soon as the school year ends, more will move. It's not just the storms, either. My friend Jill said today that just the threat of a storm cuts into the economics. If you have to evacuate, you lose several days work and run up expenses, even if the storm misses us. If there is clean-up involved, then more expense, more time lost and more days without tourists accumulate.
Half my stuff
We're pretty much committed to the area, so its anxiety management for us. Meanwhile, I'm packing boxes with my books, photos, precious items, some clothes and duplicate file records to drive up north later this month and put in storage outside the hurricane zone. Then, if I'm wiped out here, I still have something left.
Got my fingers crossed.
The Good Part
Key West is small and it's easy to help each other. After the storm, there were very few behavior problems. In fact, when the merchandise at the K-Mart got washed out into the nearby neighborhood, people brought it back and stacked it in the parking lot. When cars conked out, passersby would stop and help. We gave each other lifts and shared water and food. Mostly people were patient with one another while we waited for the semi at the high school parking lot to arrive with water.
The day after the storm roared through and we were still reeling, Mama's Flowers took their inventory of blossoms and left them in buckets around town with a hand-written sign, "Compliments of Wilma."
There was a cozy tenderness for the most part. That's what makes it paradise!

2005-11-21T09:39:00.000-05:00

Watch that first step...

Our dock traveled a bit with the surge and came down misaligned with the door to our floating home. Getting in and out was tricky. Coming home with groceries, you had to do deep knee bends to get the key in the lock, then jump two or three feet (depending on the tide) down to the houseboat floor. Leaving, you had to hoist yourself up, then touch your toes to reach the door knob and lock up.

2005-11-21T09:07:00.000-05:00

Royal Poinciana trees

(Photo: which way did the storm go? Norfolk pines at the Key West Cemetery point the way)
This morning, I put the espresso on and slipped into flipflops for the trip in search of freshly written news in my driveway-- or, as often as not, in my neighbor’s driveway. My neighbor doesn’t subscribe, so I know it’s my paper over there, but I hate to walk up to his door and take it.
On the way back, sightseeing in this new yard that Wilma left us, I check the water line on the workshop that several rains have not completely washed away, and notice that the trees also have a waterline of debris, including a spotlight and a bubble blower hanging in the limbs of the mangroves several feet above the dock.

Overhead I hear a woodpecker. We have a family of them that return each year to nest in a piling. They have a little hole in the side of the piling and one of them will sit in there, head peeping out, presumably with the eggs and/or chicks inside, and the other will cruise for whatever they cruise for. They keep up a chattering conversation while the hunter looks for food.
I had missed them this year, but here they are. They were just above my head in the Alexandra palm. They glanced at me but were unconcerned that I was just a few feet from them. One was eyeing the red dates under the fronds. It’s called the Christmas palm because of those red decorations this time of year. More likely he saw an insect in the dates; he was angling for a way to light there and investigate closer.
The ficus next to the palm looks dead; the gumbo limbo is not looking lively either. The poincianas, bless their hearts, are sprouting new tender leaves – again! This is their fourth spring this year.
Poincianas are a wonderful tree, offering deep shade in summers without hurricanes and opening up to the sun in chilly northers.
It seems like just a moment or a day ago that I gathered it up as a little sprout from my friend, Reen’s yard in old town as she packed up and moved to Ramrod key.
It thrived effortlessly, first in a little clay pot and then, without a care, in the yard between the path and the sea.
It grew up with my daughter. Each year as she climbed it, they were both a little bit taller. In spring it wore a soft, frothy, light green canopy and flounced playfully in summer breezes, throwing a swirl of deep violet shade beneath it.
It didn’t mind the briny on-shore drenchings. It exercised in the wind and laughed off the salt as it held its end of a hammock.
It wore brilliant red when the sun was hot and, like my daughter, grew into a dancer’s body. You could swear it spun and jigged and kicked up its roots when you weren’t looking.
There’s something to be thankful for this week.

2005-11-14T18:29:00.000-05:00

Here's what my kitchen looked like after Wilma. What doesn't come through here is the smell of the soy sauce, sesame oil and cat food and the squishy, slidy feeling underfoot. There are still shards of dishes and glassware in the oven.
Everyone has their storm story. Every meeting in town now starts with an account of how each attendee fared. Overheard conversations include the phone number of a good cleaning person and comparisons of the benefits of Ambien versus Lunesta sleep aids.
The new replacement cars are turning up. "I got an SUV for my wife, a little Toyota for me and a Honda for my mother," said a friend. People are buying six packs of cars.
Duval Street downtown looks nice and tidy, but travel into the neighborhoods and the roads are sad little paths between six-foot tall piles of debris. It's dreary to see books, beds, big-screen TVs, computers and barbecue grills dumped at the curb alongside the washers, refrigerators and hot water heaters. And our trees look so wearied.
The good news, though, is the weather is terrific -- cool and breezy, low humidity. Makes ya' feel like cleaning, fortunately enough.

2005-11-04T20:22:00.000-05:00

Fantasy Fest Entrant update - Re-"floating" the parade
Fantasy Fest has been postponed to December 7 to 10, plus or minus a few days. The parade will be on the 10th at 7 p.m. and the parade entrant meeting is 5 to 7 p.m. Wednesday, December 7 at the Pier House Caribbean Spa conference room.
I have been getting feedback from entrants and ambassadors on how they are doing, whether their floats survived and whether they can reschedule.
It's amazing how many people have said their house and/or car(s) were totaled, but their floats survived!
A lot of vehicles got trashed. So let me know here if you have a vehicle that can tow a float and if you need one. Any other needs and offers for parade stuff -- generators, lights, music, personnel, etc -- are welcome, too. Leave info in the comments here ("I need a truck", "I have a truck") with a contact number and call each other and work it out. If that fails, call me.
We have a few weeks to get this together so check back and contact each other. I won't have time to do all the connecting, but you can use this as a resource center.
If you are NOT getting my e-mail updates and you wish to, e-mail your address to me: judi@marketsharecompany.com. And add me to your address book so I can get through your spam catchers.

2005-11-04T20:16:00.000-05:00

Fantasy Fest Ambassador update--

I know most of you are in the storm zone and I hope you fared reasonably well.
Our parade has been rescheduled for 7 p.m. Dec. 10.
If you are NOT getting my e-mail updates and you wish to, e-mail your address to me: judi@marketsharecompany.com. And add me to your address book so I can get through your spam catchers.
Our meeting will be 5 to 7 p.m. Tuesday, December 6, at the Pier House Caribbean Spa conference room.
Spread the word among your ambassador pals. I do not have complete contact information for some of you.
Let me know if you cannot be in the parade (I have messages from a few of you). I hate to miss you, but we’ll catch you next year. Also let me know if you need a ride.

Anyone interested in working the super boat races, please call 296-5334 and leave your contact info. Market Share will be assisting the races.

2005-11-02T21:52:00.000-05:00

The entrance to the road to my house hours after the storm passed by. We had to wade through the knee-high water you saw in the last photo to get here.

2005-11-02T18:39:00.000-05:00

Hurricane Wilma, Key West, corner of Eisenhower and Flagler (Luani Plaza)

2005-10-28T14:23:00.000-04:00

Ahhh
I've had a hot shower and washed my hair. The power, water and TV are on and life is settling into it's new reality with a few of the basic comforts. Our houseboat got shaken like a vodka martini so there is some chaos to be had, butno major damage. All the termite beads got shaken loose and sprinkled over everything, so it's nice to be able to vacuum again. The termites were evicted with a tenting last year, but they didn't pack their bags when they left.
At one point I saw five little round pearls on my bedroom carpet. "What's this?" I thought, filing through my memory cache for misplaced necklaces. Picking them up, I realized I had four perfect lizard eggs and one hatched shell that must have tumbled from their hiding place. i consider this a sign of good luck.

2005-10-27T16:10:00.000-04:00

Wilma, the Stories

Man, what a wallop Wilma delivered us here in the keys. And from what I'm hearing, it's worse on the mainland. The thing about a small place is that it is very manageable. Long lines here are more like chat rooms and wherever you go -- the FEMA center, city hall, churches, unemployment office -- you know somebody or their cousin.
The stories that I'm hearing are incredible: People being chased by the torrent of water; people who went to the official shelter and left terrified not of the storm, but of the other people there; people who saw fist fights over gas on their way back from evacuation; dozens of households trapped at the end of a long lonely road after all their cars were flooded.
I've written parts of my story here. Now it's your turn. This thread is for your story.

2005-10-25T20:55:00.000-04:00

New Reality

So now, the day after the storm, our world has changed. No power, ice and water hard to find. Gas scarce. Generators and various saws and sirens alternate with a surreal silence. Nothing is level or clean. Comical storm results: a traffic lights hanging four feet above the pavement; a downspout twisted into antic sculpture and a bright green iguana drinking dull green water from a storm-polluted swimming pool.

Internet is difficult so this will be brief. The server is quirky, perhaps because all the wiring in Florida is wet.

Fortunately Wilma was followed by a norther -- funny in itself since both are a little out of season (opposite seasons). So it's cool and dry. And sunny, so people have their carpets, towels and bedding draped over their cars to dry out. Lots of people pushing cars that were flooded yesterday.

Still Key West is a tiny island and the people are pretty mellow. No looting I've heard of and the atmosphere is casual, chatty in the lines for ice and still good-humored most places. One of the advantages of smallness, I think. Big cities get overwhelmed. Here, it's manageable.

Let's see how I manage tomorrow.

2005-10-25T01:45:00.000-04:00

Wallowing in Wilma's Wake

Wicked Wilma whacked us. The Florida keys got a storm surge from the south and one from the north, each washing completely over our 2-mile-by-4-mile island (highest elevation 17 feet). So you can say we're all washed up.

The power went out around midnight as the winds blew and objects thwacked into the outside walls and shutters. The water came up, went out, came up and took it's time going out, but when the tide went out, the island drained. That's one nice thing about an island, the water has a place to go.

Now the soundtrack here is generators and sirens. Tomorrow the chain saws will start.
My own houseboat did well -- no leaks, no damage except a couple of scrapes. It's very well built with 12x4 beams and hurricane strapping. It's been through the edges of Andrew, the eye of Georges and the middle of Wilma, along with all those baby storms in between.

It bounced around a bit and the dock is demolished. My kitchen cabinets spilled out so the floor is now a lovely mix of Cheerios, soy sauce, sesame oil, popcorn kernals, dish shards and glass splinters. But it's just clean up. And, oh yeah, replacing the china and glassware. Anyone who wants can send me pretty dish or glass.

The boat has been for sale for a while. Now I really feel like selling it. I'm what they call a motivated seller. If you're interested, see it at www.nu-flotilla.com and make me an offer.

Gotta go for now -- I'm working on generator power and gas is gonna hard to come by here.

Oh -- the times on my previous posts may be a little off. I keep forgetting to adjust them.

2005-10-23T21:39:00.000-04:00

Fantasy Fest parade

As the coordinator of the Fantasy Fest parade it falls to me to organize the about 5000 people who end up on the parade route on the last Saturday in October.

The festival, which began in 1979, is a ten-day costuming event, but in fact, one of my big problems is keeping clothes on the parade entrants. The festival has always been a little raunchy, well, bawdy. I was there for the first one when an exotic exhibitionist named Sister customized the parade as a gold-painted, and otherwise nude,hood ornament on a fancy car.

I knew Sister as part of the windsurfing crowd that I hung with. I remember an Easter bonnet party we had on Smathers Beach. We had a chapeau contest and a balloon chase on windsurfers and a pot luck picnic. Get a bunch of athletes together and soon you have the classic beach antics. My slide show from the era reminds me of the ten-person pyramid and the circle of head stands. I remember the limbo. Sister was behind me, wearing her Easter bonnet and nothing else. Don't look back!

This year, the challenge will be getting out of town entrants and spectators down the road after Hurricane Wilma goes through and getting the town cleaned up. My hope is that we will have power and water and won't be relying on Red cross Brunswick stew.

I know this town, though. There will be no stopping a parade on Saturday night. I was pondering the possibilities, or rather the improbabilities of producing a parade under these conditions, when Liane, in our festival office, told me her mother,Phyllis, a long-time islander here, said there would be a parade of some sort even if it was just us locals.

"Of course," I thought, realizing that I didn't have to push this river. This river would flow right along, no problem. I always say that at a certain point, the parade process changes from me putting it together to the parade dragging me behind it. Here we are. All I have to do is try to keep up now.

See you all Saturday. We'll be having a parade. We may be wearing wetsuits and life vests and be preceded by a front-end loader full of debris, but I just bet there won't be any problem gettting a parade on Duval Street.

2005-10-23T14:31:00.000-04:00

Preparing for the Wilma Wash-O-Matic

The lines are tied, three out of four cats are accounted for, shutters are up. All our A-list possessions have been packed and schlepped to our friends house -- Bounce the Clown and Mademoiselle Oo-La-La. The 2pm advisory just came out and Wilma is racing across the Gulf of Mexico straight at us. The satellite photo proves Wilma is bigger than we are. My argument that Key West is a tiny island and therefore easy to miss, doesn't hold up here.

I can hear the first few raindrops from the first serious outer band. Not a bad sound, gentle in fact, rhythmic.

Packing food for today and tomorrow, first aid kit, board games. I'm packing all my favorite clothes since my friend Donna tallied up the value of her possessions and decided clothes were expensive to replace. And my favorite shoes. But not my sweaters. I guess that means I'm not serious when I say I'm moving out of the hurricane zone.

2005-10-23T12:31:00.000-04:00

Parade of Pi

I just read Life of Pi, the story of the boy in a lifeboat with a tiger. I'm in a parade with a hurricane.

2005-10-23T12:12:00.000-04:00

I begin this blog the morning Hurricane Wilma,the Wonder Whirlwind, has finished with Cozumel and turns it's hungry maw toward Florida, where Ilive in KeyWest on a houseboat, exquisitely vulnerable from the directionwhere Wilma drools.
Wilma is expected to visit my living room this evening,aftersunset, if there is a sunset. Tomorrow this 2500-square-foot, two-story house on a barge may be splinters in dirty water.
This is the fourth serious hurricane threat this year. Each one steals a week from our livesat the best outcome. We secure things, put up shutters, pack up everything and move at least half to a friend's house on higher ground. We gather up the four cats and load their carriers, a litter box and the cockatiel in her cage into the van and drive away.Then we come back, usually after a delay caused by an accident on one of the bridges or a wash-out and move back in, clean up yard debris.
So three weeks of this summer have gone to that and now the unpredictable Wilma. We won't drive away for this one. We will stay at higher-ground's house. We'll know tomorrow morning this time if that was a mistake.

Freaks, Geeks, Goddesses and Wilma

Not only is Wilma breathing down my neck, but Fantasy Fest's fangs are teething on my jugular. I am the parade coordinator for Key West's ten-day costuming festival. The parade is secheduled for the 29th -- next Saturday. wilm comes immediately before and has already cut down the ten days to six, and practically speaking, five.

With the comforting drone of Brian Norcross in the background, I am still preparing for a parade that the city insists must go on. And I believe there will be no stopping some sort of parade next Saturday. We may be wearing personal floation devices (giving new meaning to parade FLOATS) and leading off with a front-end loader to scrape a path through the debris, but there will be a parade. I am thinking of requiring my parade ambassadors, a corps of 100 sober parade route officials to the usually drunken spectacle, to wear life vests just as a symbol of the survival of our sense of humor. i hope we will have our sense of humor. Although I am experiencing lapses in mine just now.