Urp

No, this isn't our house -- just a shot I found on the web and found . . . well, "appropriate" probably isn't the right word.

But considering our recent guests for Fantasy Fest and just after, and the present Halloween, and the various levels of overindulgence always associated with everything on our little island. . . .

At any rate, Jerry and Gene staying for a few days, and then my cousins Rob and Kathleen for a few after, and the Obamacalls, and life in general have had me hopping sufficiently to keep me from writing anything for longer than I'd hoped. My apologies.

But that doesn't mean I haven't been taking pictures, some of which I hope to have up after Tuesday.

Thanks for your patience.

The blues, in a good way

Dan, who runs the campaign office here, has a great policy: Sure, you can pay for a sign or a sticker (stickers are in short supply); but better, you should earn it. Make 200 calls, and you get a yard sign.

I rocketed past that last week, and we have only so many linear feet of frontage, so I have to content myself with one little sign that I've earned a dozen times over. I'm thrilled that it's not just the plumbago context that brings so many thumbs-ups from the constant stream of traffic on our street.

The ground-war scripts change every day -- today, it was to urge supporters to vote early, by mail or at the Supervisor of Elections' office -- but the message is unwavering: This is the time for change, and you can be the change.

Please do vote early. If you do, I can take you off my call list, sit back, and eat the cookies I took into the office.

Three weeks and counting.

At 9, 10, 11 and 12

Sailor's delight

"I went to buy a toaster today," I said in my best deadpan voice, "and they gave me a bank, free." He laughed.

Robert and I were sitting on the front porch as the hot day bowed out with a little tropical shower -- the pats on the roof always call us out -- and talking about how the markets had melted, yet again, and our portfolio had shrunk, yet again. We've worked through all the balance sheets -- what expenses to cut as our income falls -- and I always have to remind him that forbearance of hand-milled soap does not fall under the category of "grim."

And then the storm moved on, and the clouds lit up. Which, I thought, is a decent metaphor for what will get us through this mess. Though not that the end of this day.

Spadework

You prune and tend and fertilize, and you go on with your life.

You toddle on over to campaign headquarters, sling a 12-pack of Diet Coke into the fridge for everyone, get the orders of the day and sit down and dial.

You might be looking for volunteers, or for undecided voters, and you dial and talk and encourage and persuade the very best you can, because you truly believe that if things go wrong in 26 days, you will never forgive yourself if you didn't do everything you could.

On your several lists, this being the place it is, are an English-born writer with 11 novels (an avid supporter, you quickly and gladly learn, who volunteers to knock on doors for the first shift of the Saturday canvass -- click this, click that, and the system schedules her), a legend of a pollster, an old Conch politician facing jail time for a horrid drunk-driving accident who won't let you off the phone, a state rep, an incredibly supportive restaurant owner you know. . . .

You make a few hundred calls and go home. Where you discover that the mussaenda you pruned those few days ago has gone about its own vital mission and generated a new bloom finally big enough for you to get a picture of, maybe an inch across.

It's only the dawn

Just as the sun's coming up, I'm out front picking sapodilla leaves out of the rosemary and the plumbagos (is it just me, or are there more leaves this year?), fiddling with little trims on the jasmine, checking on the new plantings.

I'd gladly be deadheading the hibiscus, but they are still having terrible trouble with mealybugs.

At any rate, sometimes when I look up, the dawn has turned our tin roof the most delicious shades of sky-blue pink. . . .

The night the lotus fell

Maybe it just wanted to break out for some fresh air. Maybe it wanted to end it all. Maybe it thought it was an Asian stock index, crashing at 4 a.m. our time.

Whatever the reason (I suspect it was a misrated "75-pound" picture hanger), Alicia's big pasteled lotus came down with one hell of a bang-and-shatter in the hours before dawn.

You can't imagine the shards, hundreds of them, and countless bits of glass grit. I took care -- only two cuts! -- but the cleanup still took most of the morning. Pick up big pieces, vacuum up the sparkly dust, damp-wipe the floor -- and even after three passes, the cloth was covered with minuscule sequins, or tiny stars glinted in the carpet.

So, a quick call to Alicia and then out to Art Mart on Stock Island, where they remembered framing it -- and later seeing it with our red "sold" sticker on the wall at Mangia Mangia. They're going to check with her to see if plexiglas will be safe (its static can pull pastel off paper, but she should know whether that's still a danger after a few years' curing). They asked me if I wanted the nicks fixed, but . . . nix. A few scars show character.

Whether plexi or glass, it should be hanging on a very secure nail by week's end: I found a burly header for the pocket door behind the failure point.

Barging in for repairs

Time was, we'd have multiple power cuts a day, and it just didn't make sense to reset all the digital displays, so 12:00 became the metronome of island life (though it's always 5 o'clock somewhere).

But City Electric -- oops, now it's gone all 20th Century and become Keys Energy Services -- still blinks out pretty regularly. Sometimes it's a car hitting a pole way up the road. Sometimes it's just an old transformer giving up the ghost. But they're usually fixed in minutes.

And then there was the four-hour gap the other night. Everything died, and the city was quiet except for motorcycles -- no hum of air-conditioners, no running pumps, no nada. We had candles on the front porch, and Robert rambled out to reconnoiter, coming back to announce that the 801 had generators and a festive crowd.

But I was puzzled: four hours? I understood better a few days later, when the Citizen published a picture of the bucket-truck-on-a-barge chimera that had to be assembled to patch the overwater line behind Hilton Haven.

Indigenous

Three quick sights from the walk on Saturday showing that (a) Islanders are crazy about signs and (b) egrets will indeed eat big clumps of wet weeds.

Earned it

I stopped into the Obama office at about Mile 2 the other day to see if I could buy a sign, and Dan, the guy who's running the county campaign, said he'd rather give me one if I did some volunteer work.

What they needed most, he said, was some basic feet-on-the-street canvassing to clear up a voter list. ("Crocsplastic" will never replace "shoeleather" as a term of art, but the basic idea never changes.)

So there I was today, quickly briefed and sent out to knock on doors and ask some questions. I was paired off with Bob, a strategic planner from Chicago who'd been laid off and came down to volunteer because he and his wife had bought a house here last year.

We spent four hours going up and down streets on the eastern edge of Casa Marina, gaining data and blisters and having a great time. Turns out we had some friends in common back in Chicago (he actually worked for the Trib at one point while I was there, in info tech management), and he was rapidly inputting data when I limped home to nurse my tired toes.

And hobble across the porch to put the sign up.

Fire and water

Our continuing torrents -- Octobers always rack up the most rainfall, by far -- have put everything around the house on steroids (the MiracleGro probably didn't hurt, either).

The Bahama firebush at the head of the parking space has decided to celebrate with a few dozen blossoms.

They're only about an inch long, but I think they're pretty hot.

The crib sheet

Cleanup time

It's amazing how things grow here -- and while we were away, they had a riot.

There were five of these seed stalks on the palms out front, for example. And though they're pretty on a rainy evening, glistening in the mist, they soon get messy, dropping dozens of tiny flowers from each of their hundreds of knobby little pods.

So down they came . . . and then we called Jon, our landscape guy, to bring his crew over to do the serious trimming.

So now the yellow elder is back to manageable size, primed to send out blossoms. The aralias are tied up, the buttonwood buzzed, the leaves raked and the thryallis that dropped their little yellow flowers into the pool pulled up and tossed out. The result: 25 huge bags of yard trash.

And then it rained. So we got wet getting new materials and putting them in, including a huge peace lily for a hole in the corner behind the pool, and some Tahitian gardenias for the gaps left by our sickly ground orchids, and some extra ferns. . . .

It seems that in his zealousness to keep everything fertilized, Robert burnt some of our stuff to a crisp. So I fired him and hired Jon to come back every month to fertilize and prune and make the jungle bloom.

Treasure-keeper

I've met two men in my long and happy years who have taken joy in telling me the secrets of jewels -- one an old gem dealer in Bangkok, who taught me more about rubies in an afternoon than most people know in the lifetime; and the second in Chicago, who was patient over decades sharing his knowledge of stones colored and clear.

We just heard that Sidney, who made gems his life, died over the weekend. The newspaper said he was 89, though I suspect he was as many million years old as the treasures he loved.

The world has lost some of its sparkle. Still, Sidney, like a diamond, is forever.

Floored

We spent Monday unpacking and storing: Jerry's breastplate and helmet for Fantasy Fest, the light shield Ray fabricated to cut glare on the stairway sconce, 10 pounds or so of coffee (so much cheaper on the Mainland), a dozen packages of pecans from Ellis Bros. (I was so sorry to hear that Miz Irene had died; her pralines live on!), the usual flip-flops and T-shirts and sweats. . . .

And then we got down to the carpets.

Two blisters and three quarts of sweat later, Robert had cut the pads (well, I found a quick way to cut the den pad with a good knife, but he did the scissor work on the others), and we finally had everything down. He still thinks the big Tabriz has to come out a few inches, but I like the way the medallion kisses the long sofa.

Besides, my back isn't quite ready to move everything off and back on again.

Looking homeward

Saturday on the road, that night at Malinda's. Sunday brunch with Hoyle and Sharon and the boys, and then Sunday night, late-ish, hauling stuff out of the car, through the overgrown plumbago hedge and into the house.

Home.

But not before Robert had the chance to ride up the new Jewfish Creek Bridge, snapping this just-before-sunset shot of Key Largo's bayside (click to see it in the distance) as we whizzed along at 35 m.p.h.

Taking the hint

One of the dogwoods along the drive has an early-turning branch -- almost like a shock of gray in an otherwise dark coif.

And as if the nip in the air weren't enough, along with the "last day of" notation on the calendar, we're packing up to make the trek south. I'll be out of touch for the next few days, but rest assured: We're getting back to Key West . . . just in time for Bike Week.

There are no unmixed blessings.

Home fires burning

With a fancier flash I could have softened the image a bit so the pergola still showed, and the candles glowed better.

But you still get the idea of the scene the other night when Ken and Ben put together a little end-of-season supper for us. There were tea lights in the gardens, along the paths, atop the wall, dangling from the crossbeams. . . .

We ate too much, drank too much -- and laughed far too much.

Sparkling and delicious.

Season's gleanings

Pickings get slim after summer has had its way with our gardens: They get that played-out look, full of leggy stragglers and hangers-on.

Which is why Robert made gold from straw with this little centerpiece he pulled together for a dinner with Ben, Ken, Kathy and Carl.

Those purplish leaves are from the smoke trees outside the library -- one great backdrop for the last zinnias standing.

E = mc²

Which is to say, "exhila- ration is mac and cheese -- deluxe."

I've written before about the accoutre- ments that can be folded into Chef Louis' most popular and durable creation.

And on a night with fall's first chill in the air, and hearts needing a bit of warming, too, it's comfort food sublime.

We went whole hog, even extra grinds of pepper.

(And yes, that's the Virgin of Guadalupe glass Lou sent me years ago. Filled for extra warmth and comfort.)

Sweet dreams

We bid Tot farewell on Monday.

Robert's aunt -- Leah Augusta, formally, but known with love as 'Gusta, Tot, Tata, Totsie -- was the last in her league.

Her sisters were the Paumega Girls -- Pauline, Mary Elizabeth and Augusta -- the family anchors. Summers at Tall Timber, cocktails with Nonny, wife of Big Bob, mother of Amy and Bob, dear friend of Amanda and John.

She visited John in his later days, until she herself wandered into Alzheimer's labyrinth, and we could laugh with her only in memories and dreams.

Sleep well.

Sunday funnies

Yep, that's Amerika's Sweetheart down at front-row center, no doubt researching her policy toward Vikings -- which probably is that we shouldn't ever second-guess them, either.

At any rate, tough times like this give wordsmiths a field day -- pros and amateurs alike.

Some of the weekend's best:

"So the Republicans have decided to run against themselves. The bums have tiptoed out the back door and circled around to the front and started yelling, 'Throw the bums out!' . . . It is a bold move on the Republicans' part — forget about the past, it's only history, so write a new narrative and be who you want to be — and if they succeed, I think I might declare myself a 24-year-old virgin named Lance and see what that might lead to." -- Garrison Keillor.

"The economy is in a tailspin. The financial sector is lurching about on rubbery legs. We’re mired in self-defeating energy policies. We’re at war. And we are still vulnerable to the very real threat of international terrorism. With all of that and more being the case, how can it be a good idea to set in motion the possibility that Americans might wake up one morning to find that Sarah Palin is president?" -- Bob Herbert.

Q: I'm sure you've seen all the comparisons in the media and among Republicans of Sarah Palin to Wonder Woman. How do you feel about that? A: "Don’t get me started. She’s the anti-Wonder Woman. She’s judgmental and dictatorial, telling people how they’ve got to live their lives. And a superior religious self-righteousness -- that’s just not what Wonder Woman is about. . . . Worry about your own life! Worry about your own family! Don't be telling me what I want to do with mine." -- Lynda Carter.

"At an Alaska Municipal League gathering in Juneau in January, mayors across the political spectrum swapped stories of the governor’s remoteness. How many of you, someone asked, have tried to meet with her? Every hand went up, recalled Mayor Fred Shields of Haines Borough. And how many met with her? Just a few hands rose. Ms. Palin soon walked in, delivered a few remarks and left for an anti-abortion rally." -- From a long New York Times story on her management style.

"We all expect a certain amount of deceit from people running for office, in the form of fudging, distortion, exaggeration and omission. But the McCain campaign's approach . . .is to normal political attacks what Hurricane Ike is to a drive-through carwash. . . . He has chosen to smear his opponent with ridiculous claims that he thinks the American people are gullible enough to believe. He has charged repeatedly that his opponent is willing to lose a war to win an election. What's McCain willing to lose to become president? Nothing so consequential as a war. Just his soul." -- Steve Chapman.

"If we’ve learned anything from the GOP convention and its aftermath, it’s that the 2008 edition of John McCain is too weak to serve as America’s chief executive. . . .No longer able to remember his principles any better than he can distinguish between Sunnis and Shia, McCain stands revealed as a guy who can be easily rolled by anyone who sells him a plan for “victory,” whether in Iraq or in Michigan." -- Frank Rich.

Quite the banquet

Would have been interesting to listen through the keyhole this weekend at the marathon meetings called to carve up the Lehman Brothers turkey. The Journal printed a partial guest list:

"In addition to New York Fed President Timothy Geithner, government officials in attendance included Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Christopher Cox. The Wall Street executives included Morgan Stanley Chief Executive John Mack, Merrill Lynch Chief Executive John Thain, J.P. Morgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon, Goldman Sachs Group CEO Lloyd Blankfein, Citigroup Inc. head Vikram Pandit and representatives from the Royal Bank of Scotland Group PLC and Bank of New York Mellon Corp.

"Other industry leaders that attended were Credit Suisse CEO Brady Dougan, Morgan Stanley Chief Financial Officer Colm Kelleher, Citigroup Chief Financial Officer Gary Crittenden, UBS AG Chief Risk Officer Thomas Daula, J.P. Morgan investment bank co-head Steve Black and Goldman Sachs Co-president Gary Cohn. . . . In all, about 30 banks were represented at the meeting. . . ."

Huge

'Running out of time'

Let's see. In the last few days:

-- Fannie and Freddie became one with the Borg. (The Sun found a real Freddie and Fannie in the UK -- both feeling the crunch.)

-- Continued unemployment claims rose over 3.5 million for the first time since 2003.

-- The July trade deficit grew to more than $62.2 billion.

-- The venerable House of Lehman pre-announced almost $4 billion in losses, carved itself up and sold off pieces -- and seems to have trouble peddling the carcass for soup stock.

-- WaMu said it expected $4.5 billion in loss provisions for the quarter. (Not to look on the bleak side, but my hat is off to self-evident.org, which provides some perspective: "The largest bank failure in U.S. history was Continental Illinois National Bank and Trust Company. When it failed in May 1984, it had $41 billion in assets and $30 billion in total deposits. According to the FDIC press release, when IndyMac failed in July it had $32 billion in assets and $19 billion in deposits, making it the second-largest failure in history. Washington Mutual has $310 billion in assets and $182 billion in deposits. [Their market cap is now below $4 billion.] So think of WaMu as 10 IndyMacs.")

-- U.S casualties in Afghanistan rose to 113, already making this our deadliest year there since we invaded in 2001 to hunt for bin Laden. The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Adm. Mike Mullen, told Congress: "I'm not convinced we are winning it in Afghanistan." But, he added, "I am convinced we can." He also added: "Frankly, we are running out of time."

And people are nattering about frickin' lipstick?

- - -

Update: Gene Robinson nailed it Friday morning -- "As long as people are talking about barnyard beauty tips, they're not talking about substance. Any day spent arguing about meaningless ephemera is a small but significant victory for a campaign that has nothing to say."

Why I love my newspaper, Vol. 392

Though "hospitals were closed and emergency response -- including the Coast Guard's -- was limited, crowds swamped the White Street Pier and Higgs Beach to watch the breakers crash as floodwaters rose in the usual areas of South Roosevelt Boulevard, Atlantic Boulevard, and the southern ends of Duval and Whitehead streets. . . .

"A Publix tractor-trailer driver had to be extricated from his semi after a wind gust overturned it on the Channel 2 bridge at Mile Marker 72 around 6:30 a.m. The driver reportedly had only minor injuries, but the accident shut down both lanes of the bridge, effectively severing the Middle and Lower Keys from points further north until wreckers lifted the truck out of the road shortly after 10 a.m. . . .

"The Overseas Highway was shut down once before the Publix semi overturned. Shortly after the 4:13 a.m. high tide, rising waters breached a sand berm at Sea Oats Beach in Lower Matecumbe, carrying seaweed and other debris halfway into the road. Officials shut down a 1-mile stretch of northbound U.S. 1 for several hours while they cleaned up the mess.

" 'We had lobster traps and wood in the road. Things that are harder to drive over than seaweed,' Islamorada Public Works Director Myles Milander said. . . .

"A conga line of sailboats held their positions in the narrow creek just north of Jewfish Creek, a sanctuary for boats whose mangrove trees protect all but the protruding masts from the gusting wind. The few boats that remained anchored on the Blackwater Sound side of Jewfish Creek were tucked tightly against mangroves, some with owners aboard, riding it out. . . .

" 'Thank God this thing went south of Cuba,' one sailor said. 'If it had hit Marathon as a 3 or 4, we wouldn't have had much of a chance.'

"The consensus was that the Florida Keys dodged another bullet.

" 'Light a candle, say a prayer, cross your fingers and remain aware,' Jack Hackett said, reciting his hurricane mantra at the Schooner Wharf Bar. . . .

" 'I initially thought this was going to be our Katrina,' Hackett said over drinks. 'When it didn't make that turn over Cuba, I let go a super-sigh of relief. But I shuttered-up nonetheless.' "

Phooey

Shocked!

Maybe I haven't been paying attention for the last several decades, because if I had, I'm sure I might think it was a cheap ploy to bring it up now -- but John McCain actually let us know tonight, talking about himself, that he'd been a prisoner of war.

I can't imagine the persuasion it must have taken for him to bring it up, at least a dozen times, dismissive as he is to the politics of personality.

- - -

And does anyone else who works with community nonprofits find it sad that the party has reduced a thousand points of light to one point of ridicule?

Momentary cool

The view from inside one of the clumps of elephant ears at the summer house caught my attention the other day: cool shade on a very hot day.

I keep going back to the image when I feed the need to decompress, thinking about the Republicans' stunning choice for veep and the astonishing treatment of the press outside the convention hall.

The GOP was, of course, the talk of our weekend, and most of us were, of equal course, planning to vote for Obama -- poultry is not a reliable constituency for Col. Sanders. And there was bafflement at the selection of a small-town mayor turned small-state governor as the person to step in if . . . .

Let's just quote The Politico, which looked up the Social Security data: "According to these statistics, there is a roughly 1 in 3 chance that a 72-year-old man will not reach the age of 80, which is how old McCain would be at the end of a second presidential term. And that doesn't factor in individual medical history, such as McCain's battles with potentially lethal skin cancer....

". . . For a man who has lived 72 years and 67 days (McCain's age on Election Day this year), there is between a 14.2 and 15.1 percent chance of dying before Inauguration Day 2013."

And some who have a problem with that are facing -- shall we say "challenges" in getting the message across. Did you know that credentialed journalists have been arrested on felony counts in St. Paul? Did you know private homes were raided? No? Well, those nasty mainstream media have obviously been busy defending their own hides, so click here or here to find out.

At least when it happened to me, 40 years ago last week, when I faced machine guns before getting pepper-sprayed and clubbed at Chicago's convention, "the whole world was watching." I'm in a cooler place now, but getting hotter by the minute.

Puck's bad boys

All the numbers were in the negative over the weekend -- was that when we were vetting Sarah Palin?

Oh, sorry, nobody vetted Sarah Palin.

It was during the shuffleboard marathon that started early Saturday and finished just before lunch on Monday.

Rick, the ace accountant, was keeping the scores and stats as well as competing -- games played, games won, regardless of teammate.

It got brutal at times. Was a puck on the line, and thus invalid? Independent judges were called in to avert fistfights. Was a 10 sitting there like a fat duck? Just wait for the opponent to obliterate it, sending it careening off into an ankle (or a flowerpot -- we lost only one this time on the arbor side of the court, though it was a particularly nice one in blue and yellow).

And then there was that amazing string of 10-offs by both sides, leading to the scoreboard at the top.

But there were moments of grace. Corey had the best form -- at his height, all he had to do was bend properly at the knee to get a perfect glide. Ken did the best down-the-court prances after a particularly deft shot. And Jerry, of course, was masterly and incessant with the jibes and trash talk.

When the last puck whooshed, we had lunch, and Robert and Ken came out with the grand prize for the best percentage. The crown and boa went to Enrique, who couldn't have looked more regal.