Santa visits Stock Island

Red-letter day

We didn't quite make it to midnight mass -- a pity, considering it's just down the street -- but Christmas Eve and Day were just about perfect in every other way.

Brunch at Heaven, dinner with Alice, sweet rolls and egg nog early
. . . and presents, of course.

And not to get too gooey about it, but the best gift of all was having Hoyle, Sharon, J.H., little Ro and Dandy -- the poodle -- with us for the holiday. God bless us every one.

And to all a good night

All-terrain vehicle

At least one lump of coal goes to Al, not that I know who he is -- aside from Florida tag J05 QQW.

He lurched into, and parked in, the plumbagos Monday night. I noticed it pretty quickly when we got back from Schooner Wharf, where Caffeine Carl was burning the place down.

I waited on the porch till he lurched back to his Jeep from the Duval bars. I pointed out the damage, and he drove lurchingly away.

Had he apologized even minimally, I might not have called the cops to report a drunk driver, complete with license plate and direction. But he didn't, and I did, and I hope he didn't run over anything else on his way home.

Fine bunch of chestnuts

More greenery

. . . In this case, the oleander on the other side of the driveway.

It's recovering nicely from fall's onslaught of the dreadful little spiky caterpillars that find it such an enticing banquet item.

I've just brought out the heavy artillery to cope with the rust that's still plaguing the dwarf plumeria.

The electric key lime shop

Season's greenings

We're still recovering from the bridge party, and getting ready for the arrival of Robert's brother, sister-in-law, two boys and dog this weekend for Christmas Week.

So here are some season's greens to deck these halls: a traveler's palm from around the corner.

More when I can.

Bye, Bettie

"The Notorious" Bettie Page died the other day, age 85.

Like so many others -- you knew about Stepin Fetchit and Gloria Swanson already, didn't you? -- she had a close Key West connection.

"In 1959," said the obit, "she was lying on a sea wall in Key West when she saw a church with a white neon cross on top. She walked inside and became a born-again Christian."

Not the usual trip here, but not much about her was usual.

Oh, there was a northern Southernmost connection, too: Sen. Estes Kefauver of Tennessee, Page's home state, launched a congressional investigation of her work and character.

Life is just a . . .

The splendid table

Here's how it looked this afternoon, decked out in Robert's flowers. I got a minute between the rolls and the ham to get a shot, but didn't have a chance to take any pictures during the party.

Let's see: Ham and fresh warm rolls, with mayo, mustard or chutney. Chicken satay, with peanut sauce. Shrimp. Goat cheese torta, layered with pesto, roasted peppers and tapenade. Fruit. Lemon asparagus. Red, yellow and orange peppers. The chocolate truffles and Trinidads were over next to the sofas.

And to pass: devils on horseback -- dates stuffed with roasted garlic, wrapped in bacon, fastened with a toothpick, brushed with a teriyaki glaze and broiled.

Joyce, who's 91 and British and delightful and plays bridge often with Robert, was particularly fond of those. "I can't see very well," she said, "but I can certainly taste."

We rented St. Peter's lot, just up the street, for guest parking, and of course asked Father Don to stop by. He was the last to leave -- he had scotch, rather than the white sangria that I'd made several gallons of (a great, cheap Spanish blanco, plus peach schnapps, plus a little limeade concentrate and a dollop of pomegranate juice, garnished with a Christmas-red maraschino).

I stuck with the sangria, and for a few minutes there I didn't even notice the dozen or so little chef cuts I had on my fingertips.

Relentless happiness

So, I was out picking stuff up for the cocktail party we're having for Robert's bridge group Tuesday -- about 50, I think -- and my stops were, in order:

Gordon Foods, Albertson's, Publix, the Restaurant Store, Fausto's on Fleming, Fausto's on White. . . .

Busy. Except that I had a flat tire in the Albertson's parking lot. So I went into a barber shop (not mine; it's in Searstown), called triple A, waited for the nice man with the heavy equipment. I was a little crestfallen that I didn't have the camera with me, because this was a superb example of the intersection of flatness and tire.

And by the time I got to White Street, because the Fleming store didn't have the dates I needed, I was a little frazzled.

Jimmy was at the cash register, and of course smiled and asked how I was. A little tired, I said, and mentioned the flat tire.

On your bike?, he asked.

No, the car.

Well, I bet you had a spare, he said and gave me a great big grin.

You're relentless, I told him, and thanked him for making me laugh, and he laughed, too.

One more time

The mussaenda drops bracts by the dozen daily now, along with yellowing leaves, making my morning cleanup patrol a little more challenging.

I need scissors to cut the spent stems (you can see what I mean here), and the other day I had to get out the long kitchen tongs to pluck clumps of dead bracts out of the Tahitian gardenias we put in the front bed, where the interplanted impatiens have grown too high and too full to let me step in and reach them directly. And yet.

The few bloom heads that do survive are still putting out flowers, little half-inch-high shots of joy in those pink pillows of bract.

They're not leaving for the season without a fight.

Good night, moon

The planes, the planes

Every time I sleep in the upstairs guest room -- also known as the Snoring Escape Chamber -- I don't need a flickering TV to put me to sleep.

Good thing, because it doesn't have one. Den and kitchen, period.

But it does have something even better to count than sheep: planes, angles, intersections, folds, recesses. Three dormers in one room provides for a lot going on, especially if the fan is turning, turning, tur. . . .

Performing nightly

The jasmines are back in full force, though here, in the afternoon rain, there's no hint of their real power.

They just look like thousands of tiny white trumpets (click the picture to see), and they don't smell like anything but rain.

Stop by again about 8 tonight. They're almost invisible in the dark, but sight isn't the sense they overwhelm. Their wall of sweet perfume carpets the place to the middle of the street.

The halls be decked

The first wreaths you might have noticed were the smoke rings around Sushi, but she was just taking a few drags, so to speak, before stepping up to the mike at La Te Da to emcee the "Share the Wreath" fundraiser for AIDS Help.

When we went last year, we ended up with two wreaths. Well, same story this year, but with money tight all over, the bids were a lot lower.

It was a special treat to get Ginger King's feather wreath (on the inside of the front door). She's a former queen of Fantasy Fest, and about the most vivacious charity supporter on the island.

Fausto's wreath (and here it is) was a treat, too: It came with a basket of jams, chocolates, salamis, coozies, eco-bags, a tote, a gift certificate. . . .

Everything but a glue gun, which we had to run out and get this morning to reattach three pieces of fruit.

Springing eternal

The dwarf plumeria outside the front fence has had me worried lately.

It's suffering terribly from rust, and we've tried every manner of remedy, organic and otherwise.

Jon, our landscape guy, suspects it's from overwatering, so I've dialed the system down a bit.

And just when I feel like giving up -- pulling another 10 or 20 diseased leaves off -- there it goes, bouncing back with new leaves, new bloom heads. New hope.

Delicious day

Pardon the lighting. I assure you it tasted better than it looks, and I was just too eager to dig in that I screwed up the exposure.

So if you can't tell that it's a filet au poivre, a cone of frites and a nice bottle of Malbec, I'm sorry. I'm not sorry I scarfed it down (with a bite of Robert's duck confit salad, and after the pâté we shared).

A meal fit for a . . . birthday, and one where the odometer rolls big time.

I'd been dreading it -- well, "dread" is too strong a word; but certainly not looking forward to it.

And then in the shower in the morning I started laughing. At least I can still bathe myself, I thought. Small blessings.

And then the large blessing of having this meal, at 915, just around the corner.

Magic -- and mermaids, too

You know it's Christmas when "The Nutcracker" is on the local stage. And you know the locale is Key West when the story's Christmas reception is a palm-sheltered garden party, the scary villain is the Rooster King, and Clara sails with the prince to the coral reef, to descend in a diving bell and be entertained by the Sea Fan Fairy and her court.

We went Saturday night, and it was nothing short of magic.

Joyce Stahl, a retired ballerina who lives on Eaton Street now, brought her whim of iron to bear several years ago to adapt the story to Key West, and she did an astonishing job. It's wonderful to see the dozens of children in the performance scurrying around as the little chicks you really do see around town, or swimming as anemones, angelfish, reef fish or shrimps.

And it's fun to see friends onstage in various supporting roles.

But then the amazement: When the Snowy Egret Queen dances across the Salt Ponds, just try to catch your breath.

Try to keep from laughing when you realize the sunken treasure ship, with its dancing jewels, isn't Mel Fisher's Atocha, but "A Toe Shu."

And when the Sea Star Fairy and her cavalier do their final grande pas -- well, you appreciate just how well Stahl mixed huge local talents (e.g., our electrician's wife, who runs her own dance studio and is gorgeous) with some imports from, say, the Russian State Ballet.

Bravo!

Meat pies a la Sueño Todd

Not stuffed with priest or vicar, let alone Royal Marine, but plain old leftover picadillo.

I was feeling too lazy to make my own crusts, so I hopped up to Fausto's for piecrust (really good) and puff pastry (a little fussy) and cut them to various experimental sizes.

And rapidito, there they were: empanadas savory and piping hot.

We made quicker work of them than Sweeney made of the judge.

Sounds the right note

Well, can you think of a better name for a piano bar here?

It's in Alice's old space, and they've moved the bar to the wall where the giant mirror used to be, and put a huge grand piano in the corner at Amelia and Duval. There's still some wrangling whether they can open as a bar bar, so for the moment they're a restaurant with a bar -- and one hell of a talent lineup.

Amen, brother

Canon Jim Naughton, of the Episcopal Diocese of Washington, on why he doubted breakaway Anglicans would draw many more adherents:

“I think this organization does not have much of a future because there are already a lot of churches in the United States for people who don’t want to worship with gays and lesbians. That’s not a market niche that is underserved."

One, two, three

What to do on a shivery night?

Let's start at the bottom:

Picadillo, of course, simmered long and thickened just a bit (ground beef, onions, garlic, cumin, oregano, paprika, coriander, cilantro, red chili pepper, raisins, chopped olives).

Roll big spoonfuls into corn tortillas in a casserole.

Top with queso and good green chile, and pop into a hot oven.

The last step starts with the plate at the top, plus a fork.

Vigilance!

The island is full of Conch Cruisers -- beaters mostly held together by bumper stickers, or bedecked with shells or figurines, or painted with great tropical motifs.

There's even one vintage Jeep with a garden behind the driver's seat, trailing foliage out of the cargo area.

I hadn't seen this one until I pulled into Fausto's the other day for some Old Town salsa and a loaf of ciabatta.

And I feel so much safer now.

Dwindling down

The cold, which has re-snapped in the last few days (overnight temps near 60), seems to have put the end-of-season period after our mussaenda.

It's been blooming outrageously since May or so -- so much that passers-by would inevitably stop and ask what is it and whether they can grow it.

I've been out there in front of the porch every morning, picking up dropped bracts, snipping out those long, streaming tendrils holding the bloom heads, keeping it as tidy as possible. But now more old leaves are yellowing and falling, and the clumps of foliage are leaving in droves.

I'll miss the color, especially when, as here, the low sun gives it such a lovely backlight.

Recession accomplished!

From the Associated Press today:

The Bush administration backed off proposed crackdowns on no-money-down, interest-only mortgages years before the economy collapsed, buckling to pressure from some of the same banks that have now failed. It ignored remarkably prescient warnings that foretold the financial meltdown, according to an Associated Press review of regulatory documents.

"Expect fallout, expect foreclosures, expect horror stories," California mortgage lender Paris Welch wrote to U.S. regulators in January 2006, about one year before the housing implosion cost her a job.

Bowing to aggressive lobbying — along with assurances from banks that the troubled mortgages were OK — regulators delayed action for nearly one year. By the time new rules were released late in 2006, the toughest of the proposed provisions were gone and the meltdown was under way.

"These mortgages have been considered more safe and sound for portfolio lenders than many fixed-rate mortgages," David Schneider, home loan president of Washington Mutual, told federal regulators in early 2006. Two years later, WaMu became the largest bank failure in U.S. history.

The administration's blind eye to the impending crisis is emblematic of a philosophy that trusted market forces and discounted the need for government intervention in the economy. Its belief ironically has ushered in the most massive government intervention since the 1930s.

"We're going to be feeling the effects of the regulators' failure to address these mortgages for the next several years," said Kevin Stein of the California Reinvestment Coalition, who warned regulators to tighten lending rules before it was too late. . . .