Looking Back In Time from the Tropics

Looking Back In Time from the Tropics

I have angled my new Tropics office chair so I can put my head back to see the night sky, flip flops on, a tall gin and soda in my hand, and a steadily growing sense of real peace and purpose in my life. If I were so inclined I could try and count all the stars I can see, but I don’t have that much time left in my life. Even had I started forty years ago I would never finish. That’s how many stars are out there tonight. Bright ones, dim ones, planets near and far, and our moon. They are all there and still the same source of wonder, inspiration, and beauty they have been since I was a small child.

All light from space takes time to get here. The speed of light is one of the most fundamental building blocks of physics; it is a constant that never changes (mostly). To look into space, and into the stars, is to look a really long way back in time. It takes ten minutes for heat and light from the sun to reach Earth, and even longer for the outer planets. Light from stars takes thousands and tens of thousands of years to get here, but those numbers are too big for me, and this blog post. Looking at tonight’s stars, with the gentle lapping of the Atlantic surf ten feet to my right, provides enough motivation to indulge some quiet intergalactic thinking.

I remember a very clear winter’s night in my mid-teens when my father and I stopped in our driveway to stare at the constellation of Orion. We had been on our way to a neighbour’s house for one of the impromptu neighborhood get togethers that were a part of our lives back then. It was cold and we weren’t dressed for it, but we stopped anyway, less than sixty feet from our destination and barely thirty feet from where we started. He and I we were tens of thousands of light years from that driveway as we stared up at a landscape of blackness defined by pinpricks of brightness. My father traced the outline of Orion and his belt and explained to me the names of all the stars that made it up.

We stood there for a couple of minutes and he helped me understand a spot in the heavens. As children he would outline the big and little dippers and try and teach us more of the constellations, but astronomy was a hard slog for a kid who would rather read books, daydream in class, and watch TV. In those two minutes I was unknowingly given a great gift by my father, one that I still carry. He showed me that gentle communication of knowledge is more important than thundering pulpits of self-important thoughts.

Throughout his life my father and I would occasionally argue about many things of import to me. A lot of those arguments are long forgotten and so they should be. They were the inevitable kind that happen between a father and son. But not the one that I most vociferously argued and it was somewhat ironic that I would invoke Albert Einstein. My father was a very practical, pragmatic, and logical man, a man who grew up in the age of reason and logic, and very tight finances. I was a daydreamer, and lazy, and very introspective. I would never by the stretch of anyone’s imagination ever be described as academically inclined. Our great argument revolved around which came first the idea or the practical application. He would argue you needed money first, and I said the idea came first. As happens with most dreamers in such arguments I was losing handily until I recalled Einstein’s quote, “Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world.” My father was unimpressed and failed to concede, but we always stayed friends no matter how much we disagreed. It wasn’t long after he passed away that I remembered that “discussion” and it struck me that one of my father’s greatest gifts to me was that moment under the stars, where he demonstrated the gentle breeze of wisdom against the blowing wind of knowing. It was in the quiet way he explained it, not just spouting facts and figures, then moving on. He tried to give it context.

Such are the thoughts that pass through the mind when they are given a chance to appear. Tonight’s stars are brilliant, and faint. There are some stars you had never seen a moment before, even though you were just staring at that corner of space, along with the more familiar stars and planets. The one’s you know by heart. The more my eyes grew accustomed to the dark the more lights I saw, and the more possibilities to see what I had not seen before. With some of these stars you had to use an oblique look, using both the rods and cones of the eye to get a better view of the dimmer lights. There was one collection of seven closely clustered stars that I could only see out of the corner of my eyes, an awareness it was there but not bright enough to fully coalesce into detail. Like a brilliant thought in a dream, the kind that fades before you’re fully awake to write it down.

A coppery green streak flies east across the sky, the flaming death of a space rock from “somewhere out there”. I make an outrageous wish, one with no hope of ever coming true, one of quiet desperation. It’s the same one I have made for the past few years. If you’re going to believe in such things always hedge your bets by making your wish truly outlandish so that if it does come true you can lay claim to a miracle. Then get on with your night.

There are many stars here I have never seen. That’s not really a discovery. I’ve realized for years that there are many things I might never see, but I am very pleased to get to see this. At home only the brightest stars and planets are visible due to a combination of air pollution and light pollution. Increasingly light pollution is in the form of some architects vision to light up buildings in some ego driven desire to exclaim to his mother, “Look Mom, I made this!”.  The rest of us are denied the inspirational and peaceful pondering beauty of the night sky.

Just over 200 miles north of where I lay is the place where America launched its rockets of exploration. From that place the human race thundered forward, and placed themselves on a neighbouring planetary body. It was an amazing time in the world. Thousands of people made that happen, and I am struck by a sudden thought, one born of experience, and a thought that best asks about losing one’s motivation, inspiration, and initiative. And I realize that every time one of those thousands of people suffered from a problem they couldn’t solve, an equation that failed to gel, a hatch seal that didn’t seem to fit, all they had to do was step outside and see the goal. The end result of their efforts was there to see, every night. There are more practical reasons to put a spaceport in Florida than motivating your workforce, but it sure didn’t hurt to place it where everyone could be reminded why they were doing it.

I even learned a business lesson from that thought. On nights like this my mind often jumps around to various places, and then lands someplace totally unexpected, only then to reform the thought into a reality moment. I realised that it had been years since the company I had worked for had managed to excite me about a corporate direction or goal. I remember vague platitudes towards explaining one thing or another, but nobody ever communicated where we were going. A vague goal of 2015 “your way” was floated up then disappeared. No updates that I recall, and even if there was nobody actually explained what we were doing and why we were doing it, or what product we were supposed to be creating. The entire company lurched along like that, and still does. It’s not just my former employer either, it’s rampant in business. You hear the same communication management spin words every day. Things like “strategic direction”, “restructuring to recognize client’s needs”, “rationalizing our manufacturing structure”, and such like. Reading about business these days is like reading the horrid cliché language used in sports reporting. It’s vague, non-specific, and frankly quite meaningless. It has become white noise, and nobody is listening.

Such language fails to inspire or motivate. One reason Richard Branson is such a leader in business is that he doesn’t, “leverage neutral language”. He speaks clearly and concisely to express the goals and expectations of his employees and the products they deliver. He doesn’t hide in his office; he leads meetings with intelligence, humour, and passion, and he’s got a company that’s going into space! I wasted a lot of my life in meetings with people who demonstrated none of those skills. That’s part of how I wound up here on the beach, under this carpet of stars.

The inspiration and motivation to put humans in space and get them to the moon involved looking up saying “that’s the goal”, and making sure every member of the team knew it. I was a school kid in those days, walking on the moon to me was a very real thing, an event that marked a point in history from which there was no turning back. It was an adventure that provided a parallel to my growing up, I was motivated by them, they were motivated by a challenge, and they were inspired to it by a goal and a destination they could clearly see.

And what they saw was space, the stars, the moon, and inspiration, all from here in the Tropics.

An Apology.

Apparently Local Radio isn't available outside the United States. A reader flagged this for me. I apologize, sympathize, and empathize that you can't hear it. It's a shame, but apparently the lawyers have spoken.

Tropics Radio

I would like to do a quick shout out of thanks to the folks at www.feedspot.com . They are a Google reader replacement that allows you to aggregate your feeds. Welcome to the readers who follow me over there.

 

Tropics Radio

Just after I got here I pressed the search button on the rental car’s radio and there it was, Local Radio. You don’t get Local Radio in urban areas. They’re more interested in serving a large metropolitan audience, with carefully proscribed "demographic content targeting" by an out of town “broadcast consultant” who usually has more data than sense.

Here in my corner of the tropics I found Local Radio has an amazing listenership of nearly 40% of the audience at some point during the day. On one shopping trip it followed me through all my stops practically uninterrupted. It’s in cars, stores, restaurants, homes and offices. Take that you urban slicing demographers! Local Radio does it by playing a range of music that has an appeal to a broad swath of the listenership. That appeal doesn’t mean they haven’t done their homework. Certainly the demographic in my corner of the tropics skews to over 40, but the listener results show a significant audience under 40 as well.

 

My interest in Local Radio is through a curiosity born of a former profession, and a keen interest in the local people themselves. The format of Local Radio is called “True Oldies”. They might call it that because they play Beatle’s music. From the dusty depths of memory I recall Paul McCartney saying something to the effect of, “ …you know you’re getting old when you hear your music in elevators played by The Strings Unlimited”. Now that may not be exact, and my memory might be wrong (it happens sometimes), but I think you get the general idea. Local Radio’s format is 60’s and 70’s with occasional dips into the late 50’s and early 80’s. The music programming is from a syndicated program supplier called “The TOC: True Oldies Channel”. Your host all day, Scott Shannon and his producer Beaver Cleaver!

It’s the music of my childhood, adolescence, and early adult years. The music that had me singing along, rocking along, dancing along, and generally getting along with the early parts of my life.

Everyone’s life has a soundtrack, and Local Radio seems to have mine. Like life, the music of Local Radio crosses genres, from Beach Boys, Beatles, Chicago, Elvis, Frankie Valli, Janis Joplin, Motown, Herman’s Hermits, Neil Diamond, Gallery, Rolling Stones, CCR and even some Disco. At one point I even heard Frank Sinatra. They take requests, do theme weekends, some light social commentary, and in general are quite pleasant to have around. They help to keep me company on those late nights when I’m trying to turn a phrase, parse a thought, and generally trying to enjoy my chosen craft of writing. More than once a “plot thought” has been inspired by a piece of music from The TOC.

Local Radio is more than the music. It has fishing reports from Captain Skip Bradeen “on the charter boat Blue Chip 2”. Several times a day he reports by phone on fishing conditions, fishing tips (slack off the reel at night), and local charitable events. He has sponsors that he mentions, if he has interesting clients on board, and where other captains are getting bites. This morning he referred to the clear tropic sky as Windex Blue. Then there’s Captain Slate’s Dive Report. A daily look at water conditions for snorkelling and diving. There are history vignettes about local points of interest, highly abbreviated local news, local and marine weather, and some low budget local commercials.  

It’s the local commercials that give me a solid feel for this place. Mostly they’re restaurants, Andy and Dave’s garage (for over 70 years), car dealerships, bars, pawn shops, marinas, real estate agencies, Rob’s 24 hour car wash in Marathon (across from Burger King) where he always “leaves the lights and water on”, Travis Bennett “…your gentle dentist at Mile Marker 103…”,  and well, I think you get the idea. Most of them are voiced by the proprietors themselves (Daniel from the Banana Café in Key West is my personal fave), or local announcers.

The whole package reminds me of hometown radio when I was a kid. We got fishing reports throughout the day on weekends, marine weather, hyper local commercials voiced by the station’s announcers, and music you could sing along to. It was a time when the city where I live had an economic focus on fishing and lumber, and everyone in town worked in those industries or the supporting businesses. Now my local radio at home has no marine reports, no hyper local commercials, and nothing much I can sing along to. My home city grew up and lost its local focus to try and be a “world” city, and it succeeded. The only cost was its Local identity. A few years back I totally abandoned local radio in favour of tapes, CD’s, and now satellite radio. At home local radio has become homogenized with similar formats and national chain store commercials, being broadcast across corporate media chains that, except for the all traffic station, made it irrelevant to my life.

Local Radio seems unpolished, and I like that. It seems like its run by people who care but know their limits. It doesn’t sound corporate. Local Radio is the perfect sound for this place because there isn’t much of a “corporate” feel to anything. There’s a “billions served” place a few miles south, the red headed burger girl and the King have stores a few miles north. There’s even one of those green mermaid logo coffee shops.

There’s not much else colored corporate here, and I don’t hear advertising for corporate chains. Maybe corporate people don’t feel right in this place. There are a lot of individuals here who are wary of outsiders who aren’t tourists. This place shows skepticism towards change, and it’s a good thing too. There are severely limited natural resources. The land is crushed coral, with mangroves, palm, and pine trees. The highest natural point is 15 feet above sea level, and one local joked with me even that was man made. At its widest point it may be half a mile across. A lot of people came here to get away from the one size fits all “corporate” influence in their lives. I think Local Radio helps play to that. Local Radio here is unpretentious, like the locals I’ve had the privilege to meet.

That’s why I like Local Radio; it knows its customer base is the listener, not the advertiser. The advertisers show up because the listeners are there, but Local Radio needs that organic link to the audience to bring in the money.

Here in the small market, the argument of syndicated programming versus locally employed DJ’s can be raised. That argument goes away when you fill other air time with short features, newscasts, and community oriented columnists. Captain Skip Bradeen mentions many local events and causes during his reports.

Local Radio seems to remember that the audience matters, it doesn’t seem to care for the advice of data heavy, micro slicing, demographic spouting, over paid consultants who don’t live here. Local Radio trusts its gut to get it right.

So Local Radio is what I’m listening to, here in the tropics.

 

BTW – if you’re interested in listening to Local Radio follow the link and click on “listen now”:

http://www.themixtrueoldies.com/index.html

 

 

What Time Is It?

What Time Is It?

 

Don’t ask me? I gave up wearing a watch months ago. Here in the tropics there’s a whole world of time difference, it's an entirely different temporal reality. An hour’s drive north of here, where the ugliness of humanity begins to show itself, marked and disciplined time begins again. For those who care about such things it’s also known as Eastern Time.

In my part of the tropics it’s tide time, sun time, and night time. I once heard this place referred to as a drinking town with a fishing problem. I can’t disagree. It always seems to be 5 o’clock, though I personally like to wait until after lunch. Meal times are flexible, but I have yet to enjoy beer with my morning eggs. Somehow it doesn’t seem right to enjoy a cheddar and mushroom omelet with a beer.

Time morphs with the sun. Sometimes I’ll be sitting watching the mangrove islands while intermittently reading and writing. The whole visual definition of the islands change, and the sun imbues them with color, depth, and texture. I fail to note the passage of time because the view moves through time with me. There is only the moving sun, and the passage of tides to give you any sense of temporal motion.

The world outside doesn’t exist if you don’t want it too. You have to go in search of it. There are TV’s in the bars, but they are, inevitably and predictably, locked on sports channels. The only TV’s I’ve seen tuned to news are the ones in Radio Shack and Kmart, and even then I never… 

 

… saw anybody standing around watching.

Sorry, I got lost there for a while. A great white heron is wading through the shallows in front of me and for a few minutes I just lost track. I’m learning to allow for sufficient “distraction time” in my day. I can’t expect to get much done, so I don’t.

Every few days I make a trip into “town”, such as it is. That means driving about five miles up the road to a small collection of strip malls that are the commercial “centre” of my tropics town. I get beer, groceries, and occasionally gin.

The only acknowledgment I make to the passing of time involves a very large martini made from Boodles, vermouth, splash of bitters, and a fresh lemon slice. I’ve heard scurvy is a constant threat in the tropics. I don’t have martini glasses so I use a big wine glass. I sip it down as the sun goes down. The sun plays against the clouds over the Atlantic, painting the ever changing formations in whites, oranges, reds, and gold’s. It’s a passive and natural drama that inspires and challenges me to describe, so except in the most general terms I don’t.

Every day I have chosen to acknowledge the unusual passing of time with a toast to God, as painter. It’s the best way I’ve found to salute the very nature of time here in the tropics.

 

Flip Flop Nation

Flip Flop Nation

Usually footwear is not my preferred choice of topics. My personal footwear choices revolve around shoes and socks. Always have, even as a kid. I played road hockey in dress shoes. They were just more comfortable. Many years later I had a mentor who suggested that appropriate footwear should fall into two categories, comfortable, and sturdy enough in case you need to run for your life.

In my career and personal life I always kept that in mind, so much so that an unconscious habit formed in buying shoes. In my later career I wore tactical boots that were waterproof but breathable. They laced right up the ankles to prevent me turning an ankle on slippery ground or getting in and out of my truck. Over my many years, there were cowboy boots, ankle boots, brogans, running shoes, rubber boots, loafers, and assorted walking shoes. Whatever my day to day adventures required at the time.

I never quite got the whole sandal and flip flop thing, especially on airplanes. In case of a need to vacate a burning airplane, who are the people that get hurt the worst? Not the ones with their shoes on. They’re the ones having to carry the others through burning fuel and sharp objects. By that time the flip flop wearer’s feet are so badly damaged they won’t feel comfortable ever showing their feet again. Same thing in the workplace. Do you think it’s a good idea to wear sandals while changing out the fat in the deep fryer?

Suffice to say that except for the beach I rarely go barefoot, and even then it’s usually in a pair of aquasox. I have an extra excuse now. Any wound to the foot of a diabetic can be deadly. There has been a spike in a disease that’s found in the water here. If you catch it, the area around the infection site (usually an existing wound) begins to turn purple and as it spreads you feel like you’re on fire from the inside. 

http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/11/07/3737183/clarification-deadly-seawater.html

What started me on this post are the flip flops sitting next to my new office chair here in the tropics. This is not my first pair. Years ago I bought some really cheap ones to use as shower shoes when I traveled. They dried quickly and kept me from picking up any foul foot issues. I threw them out last year when they had seen their last journey. Here in the tropics flip flops are great for around the house. I splurged on this new pair by spending $3 at Kmart.

I make sure I wear them when taking out the garbage and recycling. All these little lizards seem to choose just anywhere to relieve themselves, and it doesn’t matter if it’s a door, wall, or the middle of the garage floor. The lizards and other creatures have no sense of etiquette. It’s like it used to be, before we trained the dog owners.

So my flip flops have come in handy. I don’t wear them when I go out. They are impossible to drive with. Back in the middle of the dark ages when I was learning to drive, my instructor (from a real driving school!) put his foot down on the topic. He described quite eloquently what happens when you need to do an emergency braking maneuver, but you can’t get to the appropriate pedal because your footwear is tangled up and halfway off your foot.

However, here in the tropics I’ve found it’s a better experience when you can feel the world beneath your feet. So when I’m in the office, I spend most of my day barefoot, and to the chagrin of my neighbours, shirtless. Though there is a bit of “pot” and “kettle” at play with that. As soon as I get back after being out, I find the relaxation is quicker when I take off both shoes and socks. Somehow being barefoot allows me to get back to my “quiet place” just that little bit faster.

Sadly, it’s also quicker for the little bloodsucking insects to take advantage. For some reason they only like my right side. I got here two months ago, and got devoured, but only on my right side. I had allergic reactions to most of them. Thank all the good powers that be for Benadryl anti-itch cream! I had one bite on the back of my neck (right side) that grew to quite the size, almost as big as a boil ready to be lanced. Within three days it was gone. The little critters love my right ankle, the top of my right foot, and the back of my right knee. After two weeks of gorging on my highly prized blood, they backed right off. If I wore shoes and socks I probably wouldn’t have had this problem.

Maybe it was nature’s idea of a tropics hazing, because now I’m down to a couple of bites a week with very little swelling. Or maybe there’s something in my blood that killed them all off.

But you’re still wondering why I wear shoes and socks when I go out in the tropics? The tropics are a beautiful place, but the words of my old mentor will never leave me, the bit about running for your life. These parts of the tropics have critters that hide and bite and sting the unwary. It also has critters that carry guns, have nasty dispositions, and don’t like getting caught with a load, be it pharmaceutical or human. I may be one of the only guys in running shoes, but I’ll be the first guy to find cover.

I’ll leave my flip flops for safely enjoying life at home, here in the tropics

Getting Used To The Tropics

Getting Used To The Tropics

“And so you’ve come to the Tropics, and heard all you had to do, was sit in the shade of a coconut glade while the pesos roll into you…”

                       From “The Tropics” – Bertie Higgins/Sonny Limbo 1982

Well the pesos aren’t exactly rolling in. The only thing rolling in is the tide. And that suits me just fine. For a northern boy there’s a lot to get used to. Punishing sun that’s rough on people and machinery, salt air that’s corrosive and disfiguring, and humidity so intense that you break into a shirt ruining sweat just thinking too hard. There’s wildlife that’s quiet, and in some cases would like to kill you for no other reason than you’re alive. Some of it comes in glorious colors, like the iguanas in neon green. I’m used to wildlife that only picks a beef with you if you scare it, or get between mama and the cubs.

Here it lies in wait.There are the little lizards that you find in the drawers, on the walls, underfoot, under a door handle, or in your bed. I am not going to stoop so low about commenting on lizards in my bed in any other context.  That would be crass.

Speaking of neon green iguanas, I got a fright when I walked out of the Radio Shack up at the K-Mart mall. I just walked out the door and there was a four foot neon green iguana with spikes on its back suddenly running across my path. It had been sunning itself and I wasn’t looking where I was opening the door. That was a quick lesson in always looking where your next step lands.

The birds are vastly different. Graceful Great White Herons, curved bill White Ibis’s, Pelicans, Ospreys, and Vultures all make appearances over my new office chair. I consider a visit from the Pelican a real treat. In flight they remind me of old flying boats. I can spend an hour watching the Great White Heron hunting in the water in front of me. I had an Osprey explode out of the pine tree next to my office chair. Like an arrow it flew straight to its prey about 70 feet offshore in the shallows. Frightening and majestic at the same time. Seagulls are one third the size they are at home. The Vultures you will often see soaring over the roadways, looking for the easy meal. They usually don’t have to wait long.

I have yet to see any of the deadlier creatures. I am hoping to make it to the end of my time here as sighting free as possible. Though they are cutting back a bunch of overgrowth out by the highway so there may be some displaced critters slithering around somewhere.

The people have a whole different system of marking time. The morning means the afternoon, the afternoon means tomorrow, and tomorrow means eventually. It’s frustrating to be at the mercy of a different temporal marking system. Now don’t think I’m picking on these folks, I’m not. It’s the way they are, and eventually you get used to it. Heavy emphasis on eventually. And even at that you don’t understand until you yourself realize that you have occasionally lost hours at a time just “being”. Time seems to move according to a coconut clock.

That’s the only term for it. I have no deadlines here, either real or imagined. Getting lost in the sun dappled sea, staring at the small mangrove islands just off the coast of where I’m staying is commonplace. I never intend to lose time, it just happens. It’s somewhat like taking an unexpected nap, except when you wake up you know you haven’t been sleeping. I no longer find it strange that more “alien abduction” stories come out of the south. I’m not really a believer; I’m only putting forth an alternate explanation.

Getting used to the tropics also means getting used to looking at other worlds. Except when the moon is full, the skies are so clear you can see back in time just by staring at the sky. The great line from 2001: A Space Odyssey always comes to mind, “My God, it’s full of stars!” As a city dweller at home I can see some stars, the really bright ones, but the grand landscape of space is denied us mostly due to light pollution. It’s hard to inspire your kids to great explorations when you can’t expose them to the true size of a universe sized landscape. It’s no wonder they find greater inspiration in a TV and a hand controller.

Driving poses some challenges. There are three kinds of drivers in my neck of the Tropics, the ones in a whole hell of a hurry to kill themselves, and those who are in no hell of a hurry at all. The third kind, like me, are trying not to have any contact with the other two. The first kind are usually in large domestic pickup trucks, the second kind usually in full size domestic cars. Both kinds usually wear a hat. I was heading up “the stretch” to Florida City one afternoon when a whole line of us was passed, on the right, by a guy in a big black Dodge pickup. We were all doing about 65 in a 55 zone. Now to understand this you must realize that “the stretch” is only two lanes wide with a grass shoulder and a turquoise concrete median. Did I mention the pickup had the guy’s business name, number, and logo on it? And to top it off we all got to the first stoplight at the same time. In fact his lane choices were so poor in town that I passed him when he got stuck behind some folks turning right. I think they were turning right, nobody uses turn signals.

I like the short hand they use for directions. Oceanside or Bay side? It’s like being in Hawaii, Diamond Head or Ewa? The whole Mile Marker thing is a godsend to tell people where you are, and so you know where you are. The first two digits in an address are the Mile Marker, and the last three digits the address within the mile. Simplicity itself, so long as you know which direction is ascending and descending.

The clouds here are spectacular. They are the clouds of childhood. Well, not my childhood. I grew up on the west coast where clouds come in flat, thick gray sheets and hang around for weeks on end. Here you can see never ending shapes and textures. At sunrise and sunset they come alive with colour and drama. The sky changes every few minutes. If you don’t like it now, wait 10 minutes and a whole new tableau will open up before you.

You get used to expecting less, and expectations in general get modified. I don’t expect to watch TV because I don’t get TV here. There’s no cable where I’m staying, and I'm too far from a major city to pick up anything off air. So it’s the local radio station with its mix of 60’s and 70’s “oldies”, whatever's on the iPod, or the mix of silence with ocean sounds and breezes keeping time in the background. 

Internet is expensive. I’m using a $70 4G LTE box and buying 10GB of data at $90 a pop. There is regular internet in people’s houses, just not where I’m staying. So I manage with less because I expect less. Less being vastly relative when you’re used to 400GB a month for $75.

I’m so busy getting lost in time I actually don’t miss my old ways of information gathering. Though to be totally honest I gave up on TV news delivery about a year and a half ago. There isn’t really a need to catch the news here. The news I care about involves the weather, fishing, and diving reports. Every day here is timeless, but it also goes by too soon. So to spend any of that time at the “content whim” of corporate media driven more by a tiresome consultant’s “suggestions” for content with a negative emotional hook, would be wasteful in the extreme. I’ll take the local radio with music I can sing to and that revives mostly pleasant memories, the iPod with its personality of the eclectic shuffle, and the stars.

I’ve had to give up some of my old dietary ways. I have had to convert to eating more fish because it’s cheap and fresh here. Or the sandwiches from Chad’s that are the same size as a Prius. For snacks it’s fresh apples, strawberries, or cut veggies. There’s a pizza place I really like though their small size is 12 inches as opposed to 10 inches at home. So a “small” pizza is good for two meals. However there is also a great BBQ place that has the best ribs this side of Corky’s in Memphis! Beer is much cheaper. There's a mostly local beer called Key West Sunset Ale that has captured my affection, though my legendary love for Landshark lager is also indulged. Every night involves a sundown ceremony of a Boodle’s martini and red, orange, and gold clouds. Can’t get Boodle’s at home, and so my home is the lesser for it.

I’m getting used to being isolated. I’m in a very quiet and gated community. A lot of people here use electric golf carts to get around. Everybody waves at you as you drive past them. I’m not used to that. I’m used to the car horns of morons who can’t read the Yield sign at the roundabout in front of my apartment, or the terminally deaf motorcyclists who seem to think that their demonstrated virility rests solely on the noise coming out of a muffler. So I’m trying to get used to the sounds of gentle and soft. 

It’s an adjustment. One that takes a while. One that takes understanding. One that is not entirely unwanted, and not overly difficult to make.

And so I’ve come to the Tropics…