I say this without waver or desire to offend by any perceived standard of indelicacy; viz., it was another awesome day on Key Largo, clear blue sky, a soothing southerly wind and warm beguiling temperatures. The anticipatory chitter-chatter about the pool was the 5:00 pm social gathering at the island point to celebrate the last sunset of the year. “Bring an appetizer to share and your own beverage.”

For me however the New Year’s Eve party started at 3:30 pm this afternoon,  the moment I tricycled back home following a day of solar absorption and lighthearted conversation while wallowing nonchalantly in the pool. Nor was the festive buoyancy the evident prolongation of sunshine after surpassing the Winter Solstice. The sunlight yet streamed brilliantly above the tops of the palm trees when only days before it had mournfully threatened to dissolve into obscurity.

Continue reading →

One day long, long ago before the sky had clouds, in a time when touching was a means of communicating, a little boy named Lex met a little girl named RayRay. RayRay was a very pretty little girl with ten toes and blonde braided hair.

Continue reading →

Anyone who has conducted an insightful examination of global history soon discovers that the theme of benefit is governed by interested parties. These two polar elements of existence – advantage and control – are in the result effectively in the hands of whomever is at the steering wheel. The alignment is as elemental as nutrition and appetite; that is, people (like any animal) are instinctively governed in what they eat by what they want to eat. This paradigm is however changing. Which is not to suggest or pretend like Pollyanna that people are becoming more altruistic or beneficent; rather that appetites are changing albeit predominantly unwittingly.

Continue reading →

We were late getting going this morning, a bright and clear, fresh day with a predicted high of 72°F reminiscent of Hilton Head Island. I couldn’t convince myself to make my bed (that youthful legacy of the Protestant Work Ethic). So instead, wavering on the edge I slumped back onto the bed, burying beneath the duvet to avoid the breeze of the overhead fan and to cover my impudence. It was after eleven o’clock before I stumbled into the shower and did what I could to improve my plummeting public appearance.

Continue reading →

We’re nearing the end of the effect of the northern snow storm, reportedly for the locals here a 4-year record. The ambient temperature (68°F) is rising by the hour and the grey clouds are dispersing. By tomorrow it should be 72°F. In an effort to regain my toppled stability, I donned my black bathing suit, mounted my tricycle and went for a swim in the central pool. There was no one else there. The water was cool but far from frigid. The refreshment soothed my aching limbs, arthritic ribs and lower spine. I plunged and swam back and forth from one end of the pool to the other, extending my body from the middle, left and right, up and down.  I suspect the few people who occasionally ventured into the pool area to attend one of the nearby condominium management offices viewed my wintry, watery enterprise quizzically.

Continue reading →

“The south-western part of Kerry is now well known as the most beautiful tract in the British isles. The mountains, the glens, the capes stretching far into the Atlantic, the crags on which the eagles build, the rivulets brawling down rocky passes, the lakes overhung by groves in which the wild deer find covert, attract every summer crowds of wanderers sated with the business and the pleasures of great cities. The beauties of that country are indeed too often hidden in the mist and rain which the west wind brings up from a boundless ocean. But, on the rare days when the sun shines out in all his glory, the landscape has a freshness and a warmth of colouring seldom found in our latitude. The myrtle loves the soil. The arbutus thrives better than even on the sunny shore of Calabria. The turf is of livelier hue than elsewhere: the hills glow with a richer purple: the varnish of the holly and ivy is more glossy; and berries of a brighter red peep through foliage of a brighter green.”

Excerpt From
The History of England, from the Accession of James II — Volume 3
Thomas Babington Macaulay

Continue reading →

Listening to Dave Brubeck playing O Tannenbaum on Ultimate Calm Christmas Jazz. It is the required relief from Handel’s Messiah and Mantovani’s Greatest Songs of Christmas. Appropriate to have some music on Christmas morning or indeed any morning for that matter, as I have always done while munching my sliced green apple and reading the overnight email. I caught myself staring blankly out the lanai window over the boat slip onto what at first I thought was a flashing light from the second storey balcony of the townhouse opposite.  It proved to be an overnight light which remained lit this grey Christmas morning, hidden behind the tarnished palm fronds tossed about in the cold northern wind.

Continue reading →

Doc Kelly was well-known for his magnanimity. It was not uncommon for example for him to accept potatoes or corn in payment of his medical services, especially from those who would, as fate would have it, oblige him to travel by sleigh on a blustery wintry night from Town to the nearby Village of Barnhart Mills where several of his more elderly and struggling patients lived. They relied upon him and his good advice, always given cheerfully and without restraint. They would have given more to him in compensation of his professional services, but they hadn’t any more to give and Doc Kelly knew that. It is no accident that if one is good at something in particular, one is often so in general. While it may be considered an odd extrapolation, the beneficence of Doc Kelly was so widely disseminated as to include not only human kind but also animals, particularly the small ones which are so often ignored on the theory that their diminutive size somehow accounts for a greater likelihood of survival in the harsh winter months, an observation which Doc Kelly understood to be patently erroneous.

Continue reading →

Throughout his nearly 80-year-long artistic lifetime, (Jonas) Mekas embraced the diaristic form, arguably more than any other through cameras, sound devices, and written journals, while maintaining a radical dedication to elevating the personal and poetic aspects of daily life, always seeking to capture the essence of the moment. Mekas recorded what was happening in front of him in the present, the here and now. With an emphasis on that which is typically regarded as the small and insignificant, he was unwaveringly committed to sharing “fragments of paradise on Earth.”

Elle Burchill, Microscope Gallery, New York, NY

Continue reading →

With the promise of wind, rain and cool weather today it was appropriate for sleeping late. But the moment I arose I saw that my email in-basket was pleasingly visited with a number of messages from friends. It was that time of year to connect with friends at Christmas! I punctuated the welcome ceremony by adding a cup of black coffee to my ritual morning repast of sliced green Granny apple and sprouted multi-grain toast with Kerrygold Irish salted butter, peanut butter and honey.

Continue reading →