This means war

Bike up a couple blocks, and west till the land ends at the Truman Waterfront, and you come up on the Mohawk and Ingham, Coast Guard vessels in our little maritime museum.

As I noted in November, the Ingham is the most decorated vessel in American maritime history. When you look at the battle ribbons, you get a sense of that: a little like looking at a chestful of fruit salad on a full-dress uniform.

Check out as well the kill-credits to the left on the superstructure: One U-Boat and . . . 10 pot interdictions.

This is what war has come to.

A little night music

This spot is, after all, the original site of Saloon One.

Coming or going

So, you head out from the house and turn left on Duval and there, a few blocks south, next to the Scrub Club and just north of Katha's old Chicken Store, is a smoking pile that smells like somebody's trash heap in a place where they don't keep so close an eye on such things.

It's Hugh Morgan's childhood home, as it turns out, and it was doomed by the time the firemen got there.

If ashes to ashes is the rule, this falls as one undeniable set point.

A step above

Mallory Square has been cut in halves over the last few months to accommodate a replacement of its surfaces, but one constant has prevailed:

Will Soto has been there. Not right now on the high wire (not enough length), but dancing on the slack rope and juggling.

As he has been since the '70s.

When the Cultural Preservation Society got the lease for Mallory Square sunset festivities from the city, he was the senior performer.

And as a senior myself, I'm glad he's still juggling those torches, and knives, and jibes.

Safe Harbor

Eat your heart out, Monet: My picture came together, too.

No matter how much my mom is miserable, because she chooses to be, I'm joyous to let her caregiver, B.J., have a chance to be herself here and have an actual vacation.

One crucial question is, of course, food. We all need it, but some love new tastes. And B.J. could eat anything on a menu, while her husband back in Tennessee is just fine with beef and potatoes.

So we've fed her lobster, and yellowtail, and grouper, and snapper, and hogfish (this is at Hogfish Bar), and wahoo, and shrimp.

Mission accomplished.

Flying boats

Mom and B.J. have been here coincidentally with the regatta, which meant that when we went out to Salute for lunch, there were dozens of boats on the south horizon with spinnakers set, speeding left to right.

Thrilling.

But no more so than when we went to the Truman Waterfront today and saw them pulling out those big Farr 40 contenders, rocking in the air, centerboards positioned just so to fit in their trailers.

Stained-glass windows

Mom was being difficult -- which is a little like saying fish swim in water -- and decided she didn't want to go to the butterfly conser- vatory.

B.J. wanted to go, and I of course wanted her to feel as if this was her vacation, not just another part of her job.

So she and I went.

And wept, as the early risers fluttered about us in iridescent blues, greens, reds and oranges.

There are precious few religious experiences in my life, but this was one of them.

Obligatory tourist sunset

Lizards in heaven

It's almost a law here that you have to take tourists to Blue Heaven, and we wanted to let B.J. know that her time here with my mom was not just a job.

So of course we ended up with lunch among the roosters, one of which was jumping up to eat from my hand at the end of our meal. (I think B.J. really liked the morning-caught lobster, which is somewhat more difficult to get in Tennessee).

But over by the ping-pong table was this old sign, with letters a foot wide and a lizard less than half so.

Co-existence on a coral rock.

Home remedies

Yes, that is Robert with a flaming candle in his ear. B.J., my mom's caregiver, is gleefully holding it.

As a bit of back- ground: She's here with my mom, and Robert had jammed wax deep into his ear canal. And, as the natural-healing store around the corner confirmed, what you need is a hollow candle to suck everything out on a stream of hot smoke.

It did pull some goop out, but there was still a visit to doc-in-a-box.

All in all, it told me that it was wrong to think that there was only one of Robert's orifices that was flaming.

Playing Miz Irma out

I knew Mrs. Sweeting's service was going to be at St. Peter's -- she'd been such a key parishioner in her 96 years, as a teacher when they had a school, and Sunday School teacher all along, and head of this and that guild and league -- but it wasn't till I saw Skipper scrambling up the street with his snare drums that I knew she was going to get a musical march to the cemetery.

Skip is about the size of the little fife player of yore, but he handles drumsticks as if he were tall as Bubba Low Notes' tropical tuba.

And with police lights flashing at both ends of our tiny block, they launched a spirited version of "Amazing Grace" as they carried Miz Irma out of the church for the last time and the big bell tolled, and tolled, and tolled, and tolled, and tolled.

Thank you, Pat Robertson

Out cold

When the temper-atures fall far enough, you have to watch out for other things falling, including iguanas.

Their cold-blooded systems get to such s-l-o-w slow-motion levels that gravity takes over.

When nature takes its course, they revive. More serious it is for the sea turtles when our waters drop, as they have in the last week, into the 40s: They drift slowly toward hypothermic death unless pulled out and slowly warmed, and the Turtle Hospital has had a record stream of loggerheads, greens and hawksbills.

It's even more deadly for the reef fish. The Upper Keys have giant stinking ponds of marine corpses swirling into the mangroves, from parrotfish to mullet and bonefish.

It isn't just the chill. It's the length of the chill. And it's been deadly.

On impulse

Robert let me know about noon Sunday that he was inviting Dwight, Michael and Postal Wendy over for dinner after bingo, and I pretty quickly scoured the fridge and decided that I needn't have a coronary (which Michael narrowly avoided last week).

So I did angel hair with a low-fat grilled-chicken arrabiata sauce, and a quick green salad with balsamic vinaigrette. But for dessert?

I was flummoxed till I noticed the pears in the fruit basket. Halve 'em, core 'em, poach 'em in white wine perfumed with ginger, nutmeg and cinnamon; keep 'em warm on the stovetop and serve with a dollop of mascarpone and a drizzle of berry sauce -- and you've got the perfect finish for a cold winter's night.

I didn't mind that Wendy was a no-show: It just meant chef's privilege for that extra piece of pear.

A warm meal

We went out to dinner at Seven Fish for Ben and Ken's last night here, and they treated us -- which they shouldn't have.

Not that I didn't love my fresh-caught pompano, which was marvelous.

Their visit was a treat in itself, made even sweeter by the fact that they brought Toby along, which let him have a chance to give us some farewell nuzzles, wobbly as they were, and us a chance to scratch him behind the ears one more time.

You'll note the sweaters, long sleeves and layers, by the way. And as they left for the mainland I kept trying, and failing, to think of the perfect opposite of frying-pan-to-fire.

Winter light

Days that are solid gray, unbroken cold, are a rarity here.

So are wind-chill warnings -- the Weather Service was actually reminding us to bundle up, and reporting on the location of warm shelters that churches have been opening throughout the Keys.

So when there was a glimmer of sunshine playing with the blinds in the den, I had about two minutes to capture it while it lasted.

Well, La-Te-Da!

Sometimes I forget just how talented Chris Peterson is, and I don't just mean the witty and scrumptuously risque routines, the chutzpah of changing onstage, the facial control it takes to look like different characters under the same makeup. . . .

I mean the pure singing, something I appreciate more every time I hear him, and even more than that when I see the reaction on a newcomer's face.

Like Ken's, seen here after the show with his new girlfriend.

Sailor's delight

We planned a start-of-the-year sunset sail with Captain Steve, which he insisted he was not canceling despite the rainy cold front blowing in from the west.

So there we were at the appointed hour at his catamaran in the old seaport, under umbrellas in a frigid drizzle with no cap'n in sight, when we finally got our cell phones synchronized to find out it was scrubbed after all.

So into the car, onto the south end of the island for a drink or two under canvas at Salute.

And then it cleared enough for us to wander out on the old Casa Marina pier to see what turned out to be a fairly respectable end-of-day after all. Still bloody cold, though.

The shoe drops

Ah, there she is:

A much more con- ventional view of the Sush, in the shoe, dropping at midnight.

That bright light in the background is John Zarella's vantage point for CNN, and somewhere at top right in that sea of little faces are Robert, Ken and Ben. Not moi. I have been trampled, shoved, poked and jostled quite enough at these things; and if I'm to witness a mad scene, it's gonna be Lucia under some nice proscenium.

Still, Robert says it's the best New Year's show he's seen in our little Pink Triangle. Considering it's only a block and a half from the house, I'm surprised I couldn't hear more of it from the porch.

Hap-pee New Year?

Sushi, who you saw from another angle if you watched CNN's coverage of New Year's Eve here, was captured taking a break from her usual activities in this picture.

I've taken a bit of a break myself -- a blogcation, if you will -- but I'll catch up by dropping a few tardy bits in.

Right after Christmas it was busy, with Ben and Ken and Toby here. Then into the new year it was rainy and cold while they were here, then it was just damn cold.

I mean, wind-chill warnings? Yes, and a few record lows, with everybody layering up and hunkering down.

Didn't exactly inspire me to get out and see things, let alone write about them here. But, like Sushi in the picture, I'm finally gonna do what I have to.