Night light

The flight was uneventful -- aside from meeting a fellow traveler with a dream job (he's a short-hop pilot around the islands in farthest Maine, and finally explained to me how helicopters work) and a soldier back from Iraq (I bought him a beer and he was glad to know I thought he ought to come home for good).

The fireworks started later, about two miles away.

It was 10:30 last night, and the power went out, the sky lit up and even inside the house it sounded as if someone had powered up Frankenstein's zapping, humming generator.

At first I thought a squirrel had self-immolated on our transformer. But there were no sparks in the woods, and the sky was flashing green, then blue, then red, all to that wild zapping hum -- and then lots of sirens.

No radio, no phone, no nothing -- and if it was the chemical plant down the road going up, I wanted to know about it and prepare to make tracks. So Robert and I pulled on some clothes, pried the gate and garage door open and went out to investigate. He was hoping it was a UFO.

We passed a carload of neighbors who told us U.S. 11 -- the old Cherokee Warpath -- was closed, so we turned around and went the back way to the little county road south of us.

Turned out a big substation two or three miles away had burned itself out spectacularly -- one of our local stations posted this cellphone picture sent in by a viewer -- and a sheriff on the way to the scene southbound had collided with a motorist escaping the fireworks northbound (just minor scrapes), so the highway was filled with fire trucks, ambulances, other cops.

The power came back about 3, with Robert still dreaming of ET.

I'll miss it

I'll miss the grand opening of these ixora blossoms, of course, but I'll also miss:

My book-a-day time on the porch.

Fausto's.

Slow strolls to the water and back.

Seagulls.

My island.

I'm packing, flying north for a while.

See you later.

Bless this house

When I went into the kitchen to make coffee this morning, thinking of the things I had to do to batten down the house to get ready to head back to unreality, the early light was giving a particular glow to the angle at the fridge.

On the fridge itself are some Hiroshige print postcards from my dear Lou. The little extraneous moons are magnets.

But hanging on the wall are the hamsa she also sent, over one of Ferron's little 3-D versions of our house, over one of his more punniferous whimsies. (If you look closely, you can see a martini glass on the roof: Drinks are on the house.)

Odd and wonderful, I thought, that the blues in all of those pieces -- the Hiroshiges, the hamsa, the houses -- all match.

Sometimes karma just plain works.

Mix, match, whatever

This is my usual angle on the front gate -- right now, I'm reading Margaret Atwood's "The Robber Bride" on the porch -- and that burgundy plant you and I see is the dipladenia I put in to replace the cat's whiskers that was dead when I got here a few weeks back.

So far, so good, and it was a wild addition to our inside-the-gate garden, considering the bright-red hibiscus just out of the frame on the right, the orange-sherbet ixoras lolling over the walkway, the plumbagos invading through the fence, the big mauve mussaenda against the porch, the neon-purple and hot-pink bougainvillea at the end of the parking space. . . .

Just after I took the picture I hacked the plumbagos back into some semblance of submission until Robert gets back here sometime next month. And I tried yet again to remember the source of a quote. Bette Midler? Phyllis Diller?

"If you can't decide which color to wear, wear 'em all!"

Aat lllaaaaaast

The CD player in my head went right to Etta James when the dark clouds rolled in late today, the air turned cool(er), an artillery barrage of thunder opened to the west and big, fat, heavy drops of rain started falling.

Eventually it was more shower than rain, but even that was welcome after all these dry, hot days.

Our friend Ferron (click that link to see other places I've mentioned him) had been sitting with me on the porch -- he'd come to pick up the incredible book about Burning Man he'd dropped off ("Burning Book," the best graphically designed piece I've ever seen, ever, and I devoured it cover to cover in one sitting today, laughing here and crying there) and to drop off a wicker picnic basket he'd scrounged up somewhere and didn't have room for and thought we'd like, as well as a DVD about Wilma's effect on Fantasy Fest '05, and to recount the entire plot of "Apocalypto" during a tall glass of limeade, which led to a discussion about pre-Columbian people. . . .

When the big drops started, I used painter's tape to waterproof "Burning Book" in a big Key West Aloe bag, and Ferron pedaled off to his place near El Siboney.

So I watched the drops fall by myself, and when they were done the little peeper frogs chirped "happy" as I looked at the wet Rolling Stones tongues of mussaenda in after-storm light, the sky opal.

No death wish, as far as I know *

Last night, I was all shock, disgust and, finally anger.

Sen. Clinton's reference to the RFK assassination -- a chilling thing considering that the Secret Service was sufficiently troubled by the number of threats leveled against her opponent to start his protective detail more than a year ago -- was even more crass than I'd ever thought her capable of. And I thought she was capable of a lot. (I'm with Gail Collins of the New York Times on this, who months ago contrasted "The Audacity of Hope" with "The Audacity of Audacity.")

I slept on my rage. It had cooled enough that I gave a wry smile when I read David Rees' take on it: "She has a point: June is a great month for political assassinations. Why drop out of the race before all the assassins have had their say?" Indeed, let the process work itself out.

And then John Eskow's: "The Fat Lady has not only sung; she has showered, changed from her sequined gown into jeans, air-kissed the conductor, and already gone back to the hotel, where she's lying in a bathtub, drinking wine and daydreaming about her next gig."

Or Firedoglake: "She was signaling superdelegates and primary voters to pick her because she's less likely to get shot."

And maybe, just maybe, she actually heard the echo of the shot after she fired it. Here's how she looked when she issued what the Times called "one of those tedious non-apology apologies in which it sounds like the person who is being offended is somehow at fault: 'I regret that if my referencing that moment of trauma for our entire nation, and particularly for the Kennedy family was in any way offensive.' If?"

What a graceless exit.

- - -
* Those of you who do not follow baseball so carefully may not remember Sen. Clinton's "60 Minutes" appearance in March, when she was asked about rumors among know-nothings that her opponent is a Muslim.

STEVE KROFT: You don't believe that Senator Obama's a Muslim?

HILLARY CLINTON: Of course not. I mean that's, you know, that there is no basis for that. You know, I take him on the basis of what he says, and, you know, there isn't any reason to doubt that.

KROFT: You said you take Sen. Obama at his word that he's not a Muslim...

CLINTON: Right, right..

KROFT: …you don't believe that he's a Muslim.

CLINTON: No! No! Why would I? There's nothing to base that on. As far as I know.

Southernmost bound

The new Jewfish Creek Bridge -- a 65-foot-
high fixed span replacing the old drawbridge just north of Key Largo -- started taking traffic just in time for the Memorial Day weekend.

I say "started taking" because only two of its four lanes are open along its 7,500 feet, but you will notice that the one southbound lane is pretty full, which explains why our island is, too, for the holiday

I can't wait to drive over it and see what my part of the $93 million it cost has brought me, besides hot having to wait for those damned sailboats. Apparently the views of Barnes Sound, Key Largo and Florida Bay are spectacular. It just might be my new spot to spy the Keys-blue water and say, "Ah! I'm home."

Gleaming clean

Well, after a few minutes with a nice, clean towel, anyway. That's what it takes me to wipe the gradoo that our dishwasher leaves on everything it "cleans."

Maybe my mild case of OCD ought to be happy. I mean, I've always heavily rinsed things (OK, washed them pretty well) before I've put them in the dishwasher. But now, clap-hands fun, I get to pull out a fresh white flour-sack towel every time I open a "clean" load and buff out each of the bits of residue that our dishwasher leaves behind.

It is the one worst purchase we made -- the LG dishwasher, hungry as I was for a piece of European technology at a good price. Only the price was good. The dishwasher certainly wasn't.

Every time I open it and look at the crap sticking to everything or fogging over the finishes, I rocket back to my pathetic times at Scout camp, and the bark from Mr. Stout, our troop leader, when I held up an egg-crusted fork in disgust:

"It's been through the damn dishwasher. It's sterile. Use it."

Who knew they made LG's back then? And pity I hadn't packed extra towels in my rucksack.

Audacious hope

Earlier tonight, I put up an item reflecting how unhappy I was with Sen. Clinton's victory address in Kentucky. I deleted that item.

Because I've just listened to Sen. Obama's address in Iowa. And again I know: I don't have to be unhappy. Victory is on its way.

Just inhale

I wish this were Smell-a-Blog, so you could lean in, sniff deeply and know exactly what I'm talking about.

Our dwarf plumeria, where the driveway meets the front fence, for example, captures more than its share of sniffs when passers-by lean in for a closer picture of the blossoms and, nostrils flaring, bend down for the full impact.

I've lost count of the number of times in the last week I've been asked what they are.

But I've also lost count of the times, on the porch at night, when I've heard strollers pass and take in a particularly deep breath and say to a companion, "Did you smell that?"

That was certainly our night jasmines, which pack a pound of scent into every tiny half-inch trumpet.

Daytimes, you have to get your nose right into the plant to get the sweetness. At night, it fills the street.

Faya on the playa

It looked worse than it was -- 15 minutes to put out, not a lot to feed on -- but when the scrub vegetation on some dunes at Smathers Beach caught fire the other day, everyone felt even hotter, if that's possible.

Before people say "How are you," they're saying "Damn. Early summer!"

And if you've seen the Interstate closures in central Florida, or the smoke clouds over Miami from the giant Everglades blaze (which, not incidentally, threatens the already ridiculously rare Cape Sable seaside sparrow), you know that the mainland shares our drought.

The Weather Service says it's getting into the high 80s here daytime. Tell that to the two t-shirts I sweat through by 8 a.m. doing little garden stuff, or to the thermometer in the car, which is registering high 90s.

I know this carries huge risk in the "be careful what you ask for" department, especially in the tropics, and especially with The Season That Must Not Be Named approaching, but please:

Let it come down!

Flown the coop

I have been hesitant to write this, hoping beyond hope that this chicken would -- yes, wait for it -- come home to roost.

But no. George (seen here in a file photo) no longer provides our morning serenade, nor do any of gang from around the corner at Bobby's who used to challenge him in the occasional turf war.

I had heard some time ago from Don, who was watching our place and is the handy guy at Duval House, that some guests there were less than charmed by our gypsy fowl. He hinted darkly that he had humane traps we could use if we wanted to quiet the dawn patrol, and we said no, but thanks.

He's away on vacation now, so I don't have to ask him the difficult question.

And now just before the sun comes up, when I'm sitting on the porch with a good cuppa French Roast, I hear them off in the distance, most likely in Bahama Village, but not George's distinctive crow.

I miss him. But as with everything else, the tide rises; the tide falls. And one of these days there'll be a rooster renaissance here just as surely as chicken eggs hatch in 21 days.

Like the gentle rains

We all know Portia's heart-rending speech, which I thought about when planting (replanting, actually), a standard of Duranta repens by the side gate.

Robert put the original plant in months ago, and while we were gone the gremlins got at the watering system, so when I got back it was twigs.

So when I was out at SearsTown for a haircut (Armando is back in the chicken-catching business, and quite well, thanks), I stopped in and picked up another.

Its other names are golden dewdrop and pigeon flower, but I can never remember much beyond "that little indigo flower that falls in such pretty cascades," though this time I did notice the yellow mini-pop-beads that justify the "dewdrop" part. I guess I've always trimmed the flower stalks before they set their berries.

I was out on the porch looking at it between reading in the afternoon light today when I heard a huge crash at the corner. I ran there and saw a local's rental car, headed east on Olivia, impacted by a German tourists' rental car, north on Center, locked in fatal combat.

No one was hurt. Another neighbor called the cops. I gave the local my cell phone, so she could let her niece's daycare know that all pickup bets were off. I swept debris out of the intersection, brought out glasses of limeade in the hot sun and got traffic around the mess. (At least it was less clogging than the horrible day our mahogany hit the street.)

And after the cop arrived, took statements, called tow trucks and issued reports, I gave the Germans a ride to the airport so they could pick up a fresh car, throwing in a botanical tour along the way. (She was happy to know the Latin names of so many tropical plants; he was not so happy, with his first accident in 50 years of driving.)

They offered to take me out to dinner, but I thought of Portia, and the pure quality of mercy, and declined with many thanks, wished them a much better vacation from here out, shook hands, and went home to my duranta.

"The quality of mercy is not strained;
It droppest like the gentle rains from heaven
upon the place beneath. It is twice blest:
It blesseth him that gives and him that takes. . . ."

Not to worry

I shouldn't have fretted so much about the mussaenda.

I was devastated when January's cold snap denuded it, and worried when I hard-pruned it later to encourage new blooms, according to all the garden-guide instructions . . . and still nothing.

That sweet little acrylic, which showed it tall and bushy but still bloom-free, wasn't exactly a vote of confidence.

But holy cow!

As she walked by the house yesterday our neighbor Frankie called out, "I never saw that one before! Beautiful! Beautiful!"

And, just as I thought two years ago when I saw it first on a walk in Truman Annex, my whole heart said yes.

▄

As the light was fading today and the night jasmine were doing their overpowering thing, a guy walked in front of the house and stopped in his tracks. He reached into a backpack and pulled out a huge camera, with an even bigger lens, and then noticed me sitting on the porch, reading.

"Please?", he said, pointing to the flowers by the street.

It sounded like a German accent, so I told him in what Göthe-era German I have that he could do as he wished, and it was my pleasure.

"Very old-style, very nice," he said, and grinned, and started taking what must have been three dozen pictures of our dwarf plumeria.

The curse of memory

I was listening to Sen. Clinton's speech Tuesday night, with its "we can still claim victory" theme, and suddenly the Wayback Machine kicked in. Oops, a vortex.

It was August of 1974, just days before the mawkish* final wave from Air Force One as that other lying, conniving, money-grubbing bastard, that other practitioner of the Southern Strategy, headed off to San Clemente, and the Guardian of Manchester proved again the wisdom of seeing ourselves through others' eyes.

Their classic Page One headline:

Nixon is dead — but
he won't lie down

* Mawkish originally meant "maggoty" (from Middle English mawke, maggot), hence squeamish, nauseating, hence tending to render squeamish or make nauseated, especially because of excessive sentimentality.

It's in the air

When the plane door opened Sunday afternoon, I took my hoodie off even before I got out of the seat.

The Keys air was rolling in, and I was ready to roll out.

My bag was maybe 12th off the carousel, and when I got outside I looked for the cabbie with the biggest smile. She was tall and lanky in denim, with long grayed hair and a huge grin. "Welcome home," she said.

"Does it show that much?", I asked.

"I've seen you around, and you look so happy to be back" she said, and hefted my bag into the trunk of the shell-pink cab. "The front seat has better A/C," she said, but opened the windows and we both took a deep breath.

We turned onto South Roosevelt and she said, "I've always known it from the air -- coming back, I mean. For me, it's when I cross Card Sound on my motorcycle. I can smell it."

And so could I, as we went by Smathers Beach and then past Higgs -- the hint of iodine, the salt tang, a gassy bit of mangrove.

And so I was home. Monday was trimming the palm pods, sawing off old fronds, cleaning the pool, pruning the salt-killed shoots dangling into it, sweeping up leaves, pulling the plumbago into some sort of disorderly order (I ran into Linda later at Fausto's, and she confessed she'd been snatching blossoms while we were gone -- good, I said!), cutting back the jasmine . . . and I'd soaked through a T-shirt by 8 a.m. Early summer.

When I talked to Robert, he said it was sweater weather again in Tennessee, in the 50s.

I decided to chill out on Tuesday, but only metaphorically.

Surprise!!

No pictures -- yet -- from the surprise (to Robert, anyway) bash Friday night to celebrate his and Ben's 60ths, so I'll use a place-holder from the little slide show we put together.

I got some shots from Ben's camera, but left mine at home, wary of tipping our hand.

Ken, you see, had set up drinks at the Museum Center and dinner at Ahmed's for a few dozen friends, but the pretext was a planned dinner at his and Ben's place, preceded by a spur-of-the-moment stop at the Museum to see some table decorations. . . .

If you know Robert at all, you know it was almost impossible to delay him to the proper time -- everything but nailing his feet to the floor to keep us from leaving early so he could get some cut peonies into water and arranged for the dinner he was expecting.

But finally there he was through the revolving door -- with noisemakers and "Surprise!" written all over his face. Ben, careful soul that he is, hates the unexpected, but was game for the evening if he knew what to expect.

What none of us expected was the de facto gay pride parade marching from the Museum's back door to Ahmed's front. Hilarious time, though Ro mock-grumbled that if he'd known everybody would be there, he'd have worn some proper jewelry.

I can never thank Ken, Ben, Ahmed and the rest enough for making it happen. And for being such great co-conspirators.

Calm in the storm

I bring you this serene image -- that's the majolica rooster in one of our kitchen windows -- in a vain attempt to take myself to the same mindset.

I should be more phlegmatic, with an emphasis on the "phlegm" part, given my cold. But yesterday the jackhammer was about the final touch.

Earlier in the day we'd opened the pool, taking the cover off after the long winter to find the usual collection of bleached leaves -- but also a heavy, grainy precipitate that I vacuumed out as best I could for a few hours.

Still, there's a residue in whorls on the pool floor that can't be dislodged, even with a brass brush. Turns out Ray has been adding the wrong kind of salt (softener pellets instead of plain rock salt), and I suspect the "improvements" in the chemistry are what's streaking the pool. We'll probably have to drain and acid-wash it.

Then there was the joy of navigating storm-tossed traffic to get paint for the apartment over the garage, which we're freshening up in anticipation of a full house for Robert's June bridge tournament, and supplies for my little jaunt to Key West to visit our real roosters, starting Sunday. Any time I'm tempted to complain about South Florida traffic, remind me about Tennessee. They may be rude in Miami, but at least they know how to drive.

Then the jackhammers. The red quarry tile in our breezeway was starting to buckle, so Jim-Bob Construction (I swear I am not making that up; and anyway, they're nice guys) started taking it out to put a fresh layer down, but discovered that the concrete substrate had to go and began excavating in earnest. So beyond the noise, there's the grit slowly migrating everywhere.

Maybe the Romans, with their aqueducts lasting millennia, knew something we don't, and that's why their concrete is still just ducky. Or maybe they were lucky not to have pneumatic paving-breakers around when they suspected they might have a flaw.

An eye for detail

Don -- the neighbor who works at Duval House -- called the other day. We like hearing from him: Besides being a nice guy, he walks past the house a half-dozen times a day, and keeps a good eye on it.

But his news was surprising: "There was a guy painting your place this morning." Roy back to touch up something he'd missed on the exterior? "I mean, he was across the street and doing a painting. He's good, and he said it was one of the prettiest places on the island.

"He said he'd give me a picture of the painting when it was done. I'll send it along to you."

And so he did, and here is the shot of Richard Matson's acrylic on board, 8 inches by 6.

Robert, of course, wants a whole-house portrait, and I'm sure there will be opportunities for that.

But I'm with Mies -- God is in the details -- and I like this one a lot.

Scentsless

You'll have about as much luck smelling the mint patch by the breezeway as I have this morning.

I got back to Tennessee with a sore throat, which morphed into sniffles after the big bash at the Museum Center Saturday night, which went to full-blown cold by Monday morning.

Thanks so much to the various sneezing tykes at Disney and on the plane.

Now I'm going to brew myself a nice, hot cup of mint-and-lemon tea and break open a fresh box of Puffs.

Daikon squared

After the tempura, we went out on the balcony of the big teahouse at the Japan pavilion -- a wonderful vantage point for Ken and Ben's introduction to Illuminations, Epcot's amazing show of fireworks, flames, lasers and music.

We saw it first at the millennium celebration, but it still gives us goosebumps.

The real entertainment

Besides this little snack excursion at Liberty Hall (where all of us noticed that you could tell the animatronic George Bush from the real thing by his eloquence and grace), we had:

"New American" (and way tee many martunis) at Boardwalk's Flying Fish, burgers at Pecos Bill's, shrimp and prosciutto pasta at Victoria and Albert's (she would not be amused, but we were), confit at Bistro de Paris, mahi at the Coral Reef, more than we could eat at Hollywood and Vine, carryout at the Tusker House, Cubans at the ABC Commissary, tempura at Tokyo Dining. . . .

And Rolaids as needed.