Boomerang arrow

Maryl, JY, Gary and Muggs were over for drinks Thursday before dinner at Louie's, and I don't remember which one of them associated Valentine's Day with its initials. . . .

Which spun me back those many years to my early days on the editorial page, where I'd been brought in to add a bit of sauce to the ink. And in my bad-boy way, I proposed a ValDay editorial based on VD awareness. Brilliant, they said, so I did my reporting on STD rates, VD hotline numbers, condom use (this was waay before safe-sex campaigns) and even tracked down the head of the board of health, Dr. Eric Oldberg, for a pithy quote.

The good doctor, a society gynecologist, had received his appointment because one of his more prominent patients was Sis Daley, the mayor's wife, and I had to track him down at his home in Lake Forest for the quote. But I got it, put it in the editorial and smiled smugly at my thoroughness and wit.

Which was shot full of arrows the next morning. Dr. Oldberg called, not to congratulate me but to point out that the number I'd printed for the VD hotline was his home number, and Mrs. Oldberg was taking phone calls that started with "I've got this discharge. . . ."

Another paver on the road to hell, but it does get a laugh at a cocktail party.

Lavendoor

Colors always seem so much clearer after a good rain, and when I finally got back on the porch I was reminded just how much the door on Conch Casa, the rental cottage across the street, tickled my Aunt Liz a few weeks back.

It's hard to tell in the sodium-vapor streetlight, but the cottage itself is about the color of Tennessee Williams' favorite drink: well-blended grasshopper.

Brace for foul weather

Despite appear- ances, this is NOT the Bush Recession about to make landfall.

It's yet another relatively rare winter thunderstorm, and a severe one, about to paste us at midday Wednesday.

They started Tuesday, just as two friends from Dalton came through on a cruise, drinks on the deck and brunch. So much for the deck. They continued Tuesday night, when four friends from Cleveland came by for dinner, and the deck awning creaked over our heads before pouring gallons in theatrical cascades all around the table, though not directly on us, thank heaven.

We need to work on our deck karma.

Not in a million years . . .

You can't garden around here without a tree saw -- at least if you want to keep your OCD demon happy -- and I pulled it out the other day to lop a few hundred stringbean-shaped seed pods off our yellow elder to force new blooms.

About two-thirds of the way through the job, I noticed the blade waving wildly: that nut you see at the base had fallen off, lost somewhere in the mulch.

I had visions of trekking out to Home Depot -- it's just across the island, 2 miles at best; but sometimes it seems like the other side of the earth -- wrangling a new saw out of the display, jockeying it across the store to the nut display to find the right size . . . . Because I could never, ever, find the nut under all our plants.

Dispirited at the prospect of all that exertion, I hung up the wobbly saw and got out the clippers to get some low fronds off the licualas flanking the front steps (apparently they're fairly rare and hard to grow -- except they seem to like me). And there, in the mulch below, the shiny little nut gleamed like a diamond on a trash pile.

It was a sign. I got the saw back out, twisted the nut home and took some frond bases and shark-sleek seed pods from the Christmas palms out front.

The gods smile on the OCD-afflicted.

The green wall

In late afternoon, when sun makes reading on the porch hard, I retreat to the wing chair in the den.

Yesterday, looking over my shoulder to the front door, I noticed the wall outside -- a lattice of green, with licualas at the bottom, hibiscus in the middle and the big birds of paradise fanning over all.

And yet again, for about the third time in the day and the millionth in a lifetime, I fell in love with this place.

On not writing

Maybe it's the same thing Samuel Beckett was talking about in 1937:

"It is indeed becoming more difficult, even senseless, for me to write in English. More and more my own language appears to me like a veil that must be torn apart to get at the things (or the nothingness) behind it. Grammar and style, to me they seem to have become ass irrelevant as a Victorian bathing suit or the impeturbability of the true gentleman: a mask. . . ."

Or maybe it's winter blahs; my version of Seasonal Affective Disorder persists, I think, even under relatively sunny skies. It's the day length as well as the brightness.

Or maybe it's just writer's block.

Which I will try, try, to step on and, lifted, look around a bit.

Facing sunset

They were here the better part of a week, and they left a week ago today, and I'm just now getting back to normal.

My mom (she's the one in the black) came down on the big hydrofoil from Fort Myers with my Aunt Liz (in maize, with her grandchildren Junita and Federico) and my Aunt Nadine (with her second son, Robert, a Baptist pastor from Orange County), and of course we had to go out to Higgs Beach to make long shadows in the winter sunset.

There was some dinner and dancing at La Te Da, brunch amid the chickens at Blue Heaven, slow walks along Old Town streets -- the usual tourist stuff. And it was great.

But three women in their 80s, used to independent living but having to interact under one roof. . . . Well, it wore me the hell out.

True love

I don't know Cynthia Edwards and Rick Boettger, who wrote a letter to the editor of the Citizen debunking an incorrect listing of a real-estate transaction on their house on Olivia; they were horrified their friends would think they were moving.

But I know quite well what they feel about this place. From their letter:

We love this place above all others. Mostly it's the people, and not just our friends. People we barely know, or even just see on the streets or at events, are the most complex and interesting we've found anywhere on earth. The mixture of Conchs, snowbirds, writer/artists, village folk, tourists, "guest workers," dancing ladies and wise old ecologists, spiritual seekers and grizzled fishermen is a pastiche of vivid humanity that puts Steinbeck's Cannery Row to shame and makes Hemingway's Parisian Moveable Feast seem downright Vegan.

We watch sunsets, chase angelfish, play tennis, and bike home through the balmy quiet back streets of Old Town. Impromptu concerts, small theater, drinks overlooking the Bight, rides on friends' boats, the Tropic Cinema, the ability to make a difference in local issues . . . no place else can compare.

Suffice it to say, no, 1402 Olivia St. No. 1 is not for sale. We're here to stay.

Tidying up

Mom arrives Thursday for the better part of a week, along with two aunts and a cousin, so naturally we're laying in supplies, doing a little cleaning (not made any easier by the total failure of the mechanical door to the laundry) and primping the house and gardens.

Busy time -- and perfect for posting a few leftover images from the Yucatan cruise. Here are three moments at sea that took my breath away -- evening, the moonlit night and dawn. Add your own music and lyrics ad lib:


[I'll add a Whitman lyric here, one set to music by Vaughan Williams:

Word over all, beautiful as the sky!
Beautiful that war, and all its deeds of carnage,
must in time be utterly lost;
That the hands of the sisters Death and Night,
incessantly softly
wash again, and ever again,
this soil'd world. . . .]

Fallen with the mercury

Casualties of the cold, wind-shriveled leaves from our pink mussaenda littered the garden floor before I raked 'em up in chilly fingers this morning.

Not surprising, I suppose, since the plant's minimum range north is Hardiness Zone 9B. (Our typical weather puts us in either 10 or 11, depending on who you ask.)

Still, worse things than leaves could have dropped. This morning's Keynoter said residents all through the Keys were picking up fallen iguanas, knocked out of their trees by the cold. A biologist said they weren't dead, just stunned for a good long while, and cautioned against bringing them indoors to revive, pointing out the harrowing tale of a woman in Marathon who'd pulled a comatose 5-footer into her house. It was not happy when it started stirring again.

The same biologist pointed out that since iguanas aren't native here -- they're invasive, in fact -- folks should feel free to euthanize them humanely: Pack 'em in a cooler with some dry ice, and let the carbon dioxide do its deadly work while they're still out . . . um, cold.

The things you learn in the tropics.

Separated at berth

A leftover from the trip, tied up at the end of a 6-mile-long pier in Progreso.

Sorry about the headline.

Blame it on my cold meds.

Revel, schmevel -- we want warmth

So, we'd just gotten back from the Yucatan when it was New Year's, and we watched the dachshund parade (no charity, no real organization, no purpose besides a good walk for a hundred or so weenies) over lunch at Willie T's, and then traveled the block to watch CNN whipping up the crowd for the drag-queen drop (I dare you to say "Sushi's shoe" fast three times).

Though I got jostled a lot -- what a surprise -- you can see her waving at the center of the picture if you squint.

But then we found out that we had to start dealing with what Malinda gave us at Christmas: really, really bad colds.

And then the really bad cold: It hit 45 degrees Wednesday night, with 35-m.p.h. gusts that took the wind chill down into the 30s. In other places in January, that's almost balmy, of course. But here, it's a record; and for those of us accustomed to 70s at the least, it calls for mufflers, sweaters, parkas and gloves.

(Robert had a brilliant insight five years ago, during the last bad snap, when we were in a drafty, unheated rental on Elizabeth Street: If you're at all aware of fashion history, you can tell when people got here -- or the cold-weather clothes they got at the thrift shop got here. Every hemline and silhouette has had its sell-by dates, but temperature trumps style in the islands.)

The shivers also call for hot, nourishing food, and since I didn't feel like chili I made a Cuban cousin, picadillo.

You can click on that link for a basic recipe -- and though every cook makes it differently, my version is a cumin-scented mix of ground beef, onion, peppers, capers, olives and raisins. It stands on its own or fills sandwiches or empanadas -- or, in our case, enchiladas.

It's just what the doctor ordered.

Passage! . . .

. . . Immediate passage! the blood burns in my veins!
Away O soul! hoist instantly the anchor!

Cut the hawsers -- haul out -- shake out every sail!
Have we not stood here like trees in the ground long enough?
Have we not grovel'd here long enough, eating and drinking like mere brutes?
Have we not darken'd and dazed ourselves with books long enough?

Sail forth -- steer for the deep waters only,
Reckless O soul, exploring, I with thee, and thou with me,
For we are bound where mariner has not yet dared to go,
And we will risk the ship, ourselves and all.

-- Leaves of Grass

For all good little reef fish

Chasing Orion

It's the hour when Orion is plunging headfirst into the Gulf, chased by a solstice moon, and I'm packing to chase him west, too.

We're going to the Yucatan for Christmas, slow-sailing from Tampa Monday night, so Robert's nephews can clamber around Chichén Itzá, and I can once again climb a ruin instead of just feeling like one.

We'll be back in about a week. Hasta luego.

New kid on the block

Until last week or so, he patroled one block south, but now he's strutting up and down our street, too, doing his call-and- response with the other early birds you can hear from 5 a.m. or so.

His "Ai-a-raii-oh" is a far cry from cockadoodle-doo (where did people come up with that, anyway?), and quite distinct, once you become a rooster connoisseur, from the calls coming from Duval House down the block, or from over on Olivia.

It's a pity Katha Sheehan's Chicken Store has flown the coop, replaced by a condo, of all things. She had a ton of things themed to our fowl climate, including the phenomenally popular "I like cocks" and "I like chicks" bumper stickers.

She did not, however, carry the sticker I've seen around town and now want for myself: "I love Key West's chickens . . . with black beans and rice."

Season's gleanings

Janie -- the former Janie Loomis, whom Robert took to the prom in the Dark Ages -- came over for dinner the other night, along with Paul the audio guy and his partner Steve, who's the head of gay tourism here, and Robert thought we should have a seasonal centerpiece.

So instead of flowers, we went over to MARC, where they'd just sold the last of their 1,800 trees, and pulled a few huge remnants from the trash pile. Then on to Albertson's for fresh fruit and nuts. Then Ben Franklin for some little skewers. Then home to the drill, to get a few dozen nuts ready for sticking.

And a few hours later, voila. Martha Stewart, eat your heart out.

Karma bandit

Yes, that's St. Peter's behind him, and a sign from the city that reminds people to pick up their dogs' waste.

I'd noticed him before, of course: the guy who brings his pit bulls down our street and checks around to see who's watching. If I'm behind some foliage, the dogs poop at will. If he spots me, he makes a big show of stalking over to a waste can, rummaging for paper or a plastic bag, picking up some of the mess and dropping it loose into a can.

This time Linda, who runs the guest house just up the street, had spotted him and asked him to do two things: bag the waste and drop it in his own can. And I could hear his top-of-the-lungs profanities three houses away, so I grabbed my camera and went to her aid.

By the time I got there, so had the priest and sexton from St. Peter's, all asking him in normal tones to pipe down. So he got louder, dared us to take a swing at him and called the police, saying we were threatening him and restraining him unlawfully.

Our white-haired vicar meekly pointed out that he beat us in height by several inches, had a distinct advantage in age and had two hefty and surly dogs to boot, which inspired a bit more invective in the minutes until the two cruisers pulled up. The lead cop, a woman, spoke briefly with us and asked us to leave, which of course we did.

Not five minutes later, he and the pit bulls retreated down the street, apologized to me briefly over his shoulder in quite a lovely tone, said the cops had told him to bag and tie his waste and carry it home, and that I wouldn't see him again. And I haven't.

First thing in the morning

Nothing exceeds like excess

We went to MARC -- the daycare and learning facility for the developmentally disabled, with the best plants in town -- for a wreath for our door a few weeks back.

It was a lovely little thing, in fraser fir that smells quite wonderfully out of place in the tropics.

But then there was Wednesday. La Te Da was having a wreath auction benefiting AIDS Help, and one thing led to another.

Actually two others, after a few cuba libres. We picked up JT Thompson's lovely eucalyptus wreath, which is now scenting the entire house from its spot above the flitch beam, and this from J-Ho, with his signature starfish, plus sea urchins, balls and deely-bobbers we had to wrestle into place to get the damned front door to close.

The well-tempered chime

Linda, who owns the guest house just up the block, has been enter- taining her best friend for the last week.

Vicky had been scheduled to fly home to Missouri on Monday -- but then the ice came, and she couldn't get a guaranteed flight until Thursday morning.

We had her over for drinks Tuesday night, and learned more about university politics than we might care to remember. But one thing was hard to think about:

With the Glass Reunions wind chime tinkling in the high-70s breezes, ice seemed so far away.

Sparkling

We went to Alice's to celebrate our 30th -- we'd gone there for our 29th, too -- and though Alice had the night off, the kitchen was in top form, and of course Tony provided his usual wry but perfect service.

So we feasted on two kinds of duck (Shu-Mai, and glazed with cranberry), coconut shrimp and the velvet robe of perfect night air.

We were about to go when the guys at the next table, who'd been together 38 years, sent over perfect little glasses of bubbly moscato to toast our little celebration.

Perfect.

At the center

Robert talked me into taking a dozen images into the art shop and seeing if they'd translate well into large- format prints, so I've spent the last few days looking at pictures and culling some we both like.

This one I took this morning, looking down into a licuala palm next to our front steps. The big, ribbed leaves are quite remarkable: The texture is like thick, green parchment.

It's a little abstract for him, but I like it.

Our tastes on things like that differ a lot, but it seems to work anyway: We met 30 years ago today.

Hole in the wall

That little stump you see behind the garbage can used to be a schefflera, and the schefflera used to fill that gap in the green wall -- and camouflage the can pretty well.

But Arthur, our next-door neighbor, hacked the plant up a few days ago. He and Franka probably want a little more light through that jalousie, with the thready days of winter coming on. It's their plant, after all.

When Jon did our plantings, he asked whether we wanted to cut out the random stuff hanging over this edge of our lot. Absolutely not, we said, and I still tend those plants as well as I can, taking yellowed leaves off but still leaving as much of the wild look as possible.

Scheffleras being what they are, I expect to see a dozen tiny umbrellas springing from the stump in a month or so, and a full growback in about a year. I'll keep you updated.

All aglow

The old harbor, stretched out from the Pier House, had a glow I could feel Thursday night.

We'd gone there to give me a one-night-early birthday present: Carmen Rodriguez singing in the Wine Room, whose huge doors open onto the patio where I got this shot.

She was in fine form, and so was Donna the bartender, radiant in anticipation of a move to St. Thomas.

The night was balmy -- as was my birthday itself. To my mind, weather doesn't get better than southerly breezes in the 80s, and I couldn't stop smiling at the palms swaying and flags snapping around town.

We ended with a glow, too: Vie and Mike from the Flamingo came over for drinks, and closed a perfect day.

Might as well make the best of it

I've been watching the financial- market mess with dismay, of course -- and not a little anger.

It's tough seeing your portfolio melting like ice on Higgs Beach, and maddening to know that the markets are just now tumbling to lending practices that are both stupid and greedy.

I reserve a special place in fiscal hades for the ratings agencies -- Moody's, Standard & Poor's and the like -- that looked at crazy "packages" of loans and blessed them with AAA ratings, which in some cases have soured to no rating at all in weeks. These people get paid for that kind of judgment?

And then there are the direct perps -- agencies like Freddie Mac that were foolish enough to embrace a category of borrowers known as NINAs and brazen enough to value their debts Grade A. NINA, after all, stands for "no income, no assets." These are creditworthy?

And as the credit market sneezes, Wall Street catches not a cold but pneumonia.

So the other day, when the market laid yet another egg, I had only one response:

Make a frittata.

Shine a light

Old Sol is almost at his weakest, and yet. . . .

There are a few golden moments every day when the chandelier lights up and sprinkles a thousand prismatic glimmers around the dining room -- even painting spots in the den.

Click on the picture and you'll see the tiny rainbows.

Sometimes I feel as if my eyes are imitating old Dom Pérignon's tongue: "I am tasting stars!"

Another fine mess

The yellow elder at the corner of our front fence has been particularly glorious this year -- I think it liked the trimming Jon gave it when he put in the rest of the garden.

But those hundreds of globes of bright-yellow flowers have their downside: down under, there's a mess of dead and dying flowerets that coat the lower plants and of course our parked sedan.

It's one of those price-of-paradise things, trading one good thing for one not so good.

This morning, for example, we had the second day of blooms from a slew of hibiscuses -- they usually last only a day -- because it had been so cold overnight, down into the upper 60s. We broke out the fleece slippers for our coffee on the porch. Not to worry about cold toes too long, though: It flirted with 80 this afternoon.

You do the math

{[nAG + (nCG x CGF)] x nM x nD} = HEQ

where AG is the number of adult guests, CG is the number of child guests, CGF is the Child Guest Factor [CGF = (16-n)², where n is the child guest's age], M is the number of meals, D is the number of days stayed and HEF is the Host Exhaustion Quotient.

Don't get me wrong. It was terrific to have Malinda and her brood here for the better part of the week around Thanksgiving; just exhausting. Here's Esmond giving Addison a taste of mango sorbet at a lunch we had on the beach after parasailing, one of Addie's quieter moments at a res- taurant. By the end of the visit we were eating mostly at home.

The morning after they all left (biscuits and gravy for 12, plus a few dozen scrambled eggs), we were just starting to clear debris when Roy came by. He was Nick's best friend, and it turned out that that night was the only chance we'd have to cook dinner for Steve, Roy and Roy's partner, Ken, who was going back to the West Coast the next morning.

So we did a rapidito total-house cleaning and served up a very garlicky tetrazzini (Steve hadn't had turkey yet), a little salad and carrot cake.

After that, we pretty much crashed for a few days, aside from an opening night at the Red Barn Theater, the Christmas parade, bowling at the Monkey Bar. . . .

Until now.

Self-referential

The Iguana Cafe, leveled by Wilma,
is on its way back. Me, too.