I'm driving Mom down to Ft. Myers for Billy's memorial service this week, so the blog will be on hiatus for a while.
Lynda reminded us of Billy's frequent request -- "If I have to have a funeral, I want people to wear lots of pink and listen to 'The 12th Street Rag' " -- so of course we've packed the proper colors, and can't wait to hear the Dixieland band they've booked.
See you later.
My Aunt Billy -- Dad's youngest sibling (with Aunt Liz, who's her twin) -- had heart surgery yesterday in Ft. Myers, and things didn't go well.
It was touch and go last night, but at least my cousin Lynda is on the scene to support her mom and her dad, my incredibly sweet Uncle Fred.
Liz is there, too, of course, and worried sick.
As are we all, who can do nothing but send love.
Our friend Ben is finally back from a dream trip: first to Macchu Picchu, where he tried a "strangers with candy" trick with an alpaca (or was it a llama?; find out how to tell them apart here), and then to the Galápagos Islands.
Ben's a pretty phlegmatic soul, so when his reports back started including superlatives, we knew it had to be good. Hard to miss, when you get two Unesco World Heritage Sites on one swing.
But he says his peak moment was at sea in the islands, right around rise or set of the full moon, counting stars in the absolute black of the ocean night. My kinda view.
Truth, liberty, language and the occasional freakish buzz -- George Carlin always aimed high.
And talked low, brilliantly, and by doing so invigorated the language and the debate, and spurred a remarkable Supreme Court decision (yes, it's "unquestionably 'speech' within the meaning of the First Amendment") and gave me some of the heartiest laughs of my life.
Since he hated euphemism, I'll just say I'm sorry he's . . . he's . . .
E's not pinin'! 'E's passed on! This parrot is no more! He has ceased to be! 'E's expired and gone to meet 'is maker! 'E's a stiff! Bereft of life, 'e rests in peace! If you hadn't nailed 'im to the perch 'e'd be pushing up the daisies! 'Is metabolic processes are now 'istory! 'E's off the twig! 'E's kicked the bucket, 'e's shuffled off 'is mortal coil, run down the curtain and joined the bleedin' choir invisibile!! . . . .
That column on the right is less serene than it looks.
Barn swallows built a nest at the top a few weeks back, and Robert has kept me from attacking it until the fledglings fled. Unfortunately, it was unilateral. The swallows attacked me and everyone else who went by, buzzing like little dive-bombers and even scoring a few wing-taps.
But Saturday the five babies flew, and this morning I went into action with the high-pressure hose, erasing the nest (and the guano down the column and crusting the plinth) in one big, satisfying flood.
Buddleia's common name, butterfly bush, is accurate enough; they love it.
But so do hum- mingbirds, wasps, bees . . . especially bees this time of year, which makes deadheading a little dicey.
No sudden moves as they buzz around me and overfill their little yellow saddlebags with pollen, already swollen from the blooming key lime across the pool.
So a slow snip, drop to the pile, another careful snip, more on the pile -- and by the time the pile goes into the back of the Gator, it's a challenge to carry it in a slow tai-chi ballet while the bees bumble about it looking for that last sip. No stings so far, but only because it plays out in the slowest of motion.
It took 12 years, but Nancy's House finally had a great fundraiser in Athens Thursday night, a tapas-and- wines bash at the Arts Center.
When a bunch of us started the organization all those years ago, we had terrific support in Bradley County, but McMinn was a tougher nut to crack.
But there we were as the Blackberry snapped in the capacity crowd, and at our table were the first three board chairs: me, Carolyn (seated right) and Meredith (seated second from left).
Quite a festive night, and truly wonderful to see so many Athenians turn out for it.
That's Robert in the blue shirt, rafting Saturday on the mighty Ocoee -- the site of the '96 Olympic kayaking competition.
Intrepid, though he made sure I tested the knots on the twine he used to make sure his sunglasses didn't go overboard.
I was sorting through some images today and found this one from our friend Kathy Roh- senberger.
She buzzed us a while back and snapped as she went by. The sun is glinting off the slate roofs, but it gives you some perspective on the place.
That tan area behind the main house is the courtyard. The garage and office above -- where I'm typing this -- are to the right of the house. At the left end of the pool, there's the cabana, with the summer house tucked into the woods at the left edge of the courtyard. The cutting gardens are on the far left.
And that little white patch at the bottom of the picture is a stand of a grass we call silver sword, though I don't know its real name. Sprouts white, grows cornstalk-style variegated green and white, matures to full green with a giant plume taking it to 10 feet or so tall by fall. Lovely.
The drawback to the two giant plumerias we got from Cheryl and her mom a few years back -- they were so big the two of them couldn't wrestle them into the house for the winter anymore, and now they're at least 6 feet tall and just as wide -- is that big branches tend to break off.
But there's a fine upside, too: Branches on a plant that mature will root, leaf and bloom almost instantly after you stick 'em into some dirt.
Thus this offspring of Ethel (Lucy is the red one) is now blooming happily next to the elephant ears at the summer house.
The dell in the distance, for those of you who haven't been here, holds the bench at the south end of the shuffleboard court, under the sweet bays, and that spot of russet farther back is a dwarf Japanese maple outside the living room.
With the magnolias, sweet bays, gardenias and now plumerias putting on a show, I don't know who's happier: the bees or my nose.
I got a bunch of wish-you- were-here calls during last week's Pride cele- brations.
I missed a great party.
Here's one scene from Duval Street during the big parade. That's La Concha bedecked with the big flag. And the guy on the right, Joseph, used to be our regular teller at the bank.
Not dressed like that, of course, but even dressed as you see him here, he wouldn't have raised many eyebrows.
I don't think that would happen here. But there. . . .
Well, things are just different. It's less buttoned-down, to say the least, but I have not one whit less confidence in the institution. In fact, I may have more. Here's a shot of Phil, the bank's president, in their lobby last Halloween:
I think last time I tried to inventory holly varieties here, I gave up around two dozen -- and of course the hill part depends on which one you count. The top of the east pasture is a good candidate, as is the one across the lake, or best of all the high meadow behind the greenhouse.
At any rate, as I was plucking oak leaves out of this well-sculpted but spiky hedge next to the summer house over the weekend (reminder to self: next time, wear pants and a shirt), I was struck by how clean the storm had gotten them.
No more yellowish film of pollen, just a brilliant green gloss. I was out watering because after the rain, nada in terms of water except what comes from hoses and sprinklers.
I was doing some sprinkling of my own: the university station was playing a baritone (didn't catch who) singing Mahler's setting of the Rückert song "Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen." I play Janet Baker's mezzo version in my head when I need a fix of pure, beautiful Viennese Weltschmertz, and honestly I don't think I've ever heard a man sing it before, and surely not in the summer sunshine, in the breeze and glossy green.
So there's a good chance you'll see some salt spots if you look closely.
I am lost to the world
with which I used to waste so much time,
It has heard nothing from me for so long
that it may well think me gone.
It is of no consequence to me
Whether it thinks me gone;
I cannot deny it,
for I really am lost to the world.
I am lost to the world's tumult,
And I rest in a quiet realm!
I live alone in my heaven,
In my love and in my song.
A few people have asked if we might have been hit by a tornado.
I'm better at reading trees than radar, and ours were sheared off in all directions, which tends to tell me there were some rotational winds. Then I pulled up a still image from that night's weather, and that purple crescent was all around us.
Where's Max Mayfield when you need him?
One big pine on the driveway was uprooted; another was snapped off 15 feet up or so. A big maple by the weeping cherries lost an 8-inch-thick limb (and took out part of a cedar). The water tank barely escaped disaster.
If they'd been sustained winds, it would have rated at least as a Category 2: I've never felt the house shake before.
The weeklong orgy of bridge was just finishing up -- with its attendant house- guests, breakfasts, lunches, dinners and disputes about who should have bid what (thank heaven I was in the kitchen) -- and I thought I could get back to posting when. . . .
We had a bit of a storm overnight, and this view just after dawn was just the start of the mess.
We had to call John Stepp to pull three trees off the drive so Paul could start his drive back to Sarasota, and I'll have more pictures after we get the key lime repotted; it's at the right end of the picture below, on its side, roots exposed, pot shattered.
Calloo, callay, and I choke up every time I think about it.
So I yield the floor to the Washington Post's Eugene Robinson, who is far more eloquent than I:
There will be plenty of time to chart Barack Obama's attempt to navigate a course between the exigencies of the old politics and the promise of the new, between yesterday and tomorrow, youth and experience, black and white. For now, take a moment to consider the mind-bending improbability of what just happened.
A young, black, first-term senator -- a man whose father was from Kenya, whose mother was from Kansas and whose name sounds as if it might have come from the roster of Guantanamo detainees -- has won a marathon of primaries and caucuses to become the presumptive presidential nominee of the Democratic Party. To reach this point, he had to do more than outduel the party's most powerful and resourceful political machine. He also had to defy, and ultimately defeat, 389 years of history.
It was in 1619 that the first Africans were brought in chains to these shores, landing in Jamestown. That first shipment of "servants" did not include any of Obama's ancestors; it's impossible to say whether some distant progenitor of his wife, Michelle, might have been present at that moment of original sin. Ever since -- through the War of Independence, the abolitionist movement, the Civil War, Reconstruction, Jim Crow, the great migration to Northern cities and the civil rights struggle -- race has been one of the great themes running through our nation's history.
I'm old enough to remember when Americans with skin the color of mine and Obama's had to fight -- and die -- for the right to participate as equals in the life of the nation we helped build. Watching Obama give his speech Tuesday night marking the end of the primary season and the beginning of the general election campaign, I thought back to a time when brave men and women, both black and white, put their lives on the line to ensure that African Americans had the right to vote, let alone run for office -- a time when Democrats in my home state of South Carolina were Dixiecrats, and when the notion that the Democratic Party would someday nominate a black man for president was utterly unimaginable.
Tiresome, isn't it? All this recounting of unpleasant history, I mean. Wouldn't it be great if we could all just move on? Bear with me, though, because this is how we get to the point where, as Obama's young supporters like to chant, "race doesn't matter." No one will be happier than I when we reach that promised land, and we've come so far that at times we can see it, just over the next hill. But we aren't there yet.
This is a passage from an e-mail I received in April from an Obama volunteer in Pennsylvania: "We've been called 'N-lovers,' Obama's been called the 'Anti-Christ,' our signs have been burned in the streets during a parade, our volunteers have been harassed physically, or with racial slurs -- it's been unreal."
Yet the amazing thing isn't that there were instances of overt, old-style racism during this campaign, it's that there were so few. The amazing thing is that so many Americans have been willing to accept -- or, indeed, reject -- Obama based on his qualifications and his ideas, not on his race. I'll never forget visiting Iowa in December and witnessing all-white crowds file into high school gymnasiums to take the measure of a black man -- and, ultimately, decide that he was someone who expressed their hopes and dreams.
When historians and political scientists write books about this extraordinary campaign season, surely they will seek to assess what impact Obama's race had on his prospects. But they will also devote volumes to exploring how he put together a fundraising apparatus that generated undreamed-of amounts of cash, and how his organization drew so many new voters into the process, and how his young supporters made use of social-networking Web sites such as Facebook and MySpace, and how his delegate-counting team managed to consistently outthink and outhustle everyone else. It will be written that Obama's nomination victory owes as much to adroit management as it does to stirring inspiration.
Will Americans take the final step and elect Obama as president? Should they? Is this first-term senator up to the job?
We'll find out soon enough. At the moment, to tell the truth, I don't care. Whether Obama wins or loses, history has been made this year. Maybe there's more to come, maybe not; but already -- after 389 long years -- it's safe to say that this nation will never be the same.
Take about 4 pounds of cooked and cubed chicken, lots of cheese, generous amounts of heavy cream and white wine, several handfuls of pine nuts, two boxes of noodles and a nice schmear of pesto.
That's enough for two big, heavy pans of lasagna al' bianca for the bunch Robert invited over for dinner Wednesday, on the eve of the big bridge tournament at Joe's. Add a big, colorful salad, and bracket with appetizers and desserts by his card partner, Carolyn, and it ought to keep their mouths busy with something other than bids.
We're also getting houseguests for a week -- there are a few days of play beyond the end of the match on Saturday.
Sometimes I feel like the Prince of Wales. No designs on Camilla, of course, just a kinship with the motto on his crest:
Ich Dien -- "I serve."
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 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.
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.
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!"
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.
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.
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."
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.
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.
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.
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!
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.
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.
