Key West

I started this morning with a visit to the Ernest Hemingway home and museum. Obviously there is a lot of history and many stories associated with Hemingway and with the house. Far too much to include in this short post. I took the free tour with Robbie as our guide. He was extremely knowledgeable and entertaining. We toured the home and were able to seperately look through a gate at the separate writing studio. Currently 54 cats reside on the grounds, many of them direct descendants of Hemingway’s first six-toed cat; although they exhibit the full range of feline phenotypes, many of them have inherited the six-toed trait. An entire staff is retained to manage the cats on the grounds, including veterinary care. One of the amusements was what Robbie called the alimony wall - portraits of Hemingways many wives - most replaced in quick succession. We heard the back-stories of several books, as well as the story of the cat drinking fountain constructed from a large urn and a urinal.

My next stop was Gallery on Greene . In this gallery, Nancy Frank curates the work of about 30 artists, both local to Key West and Cuban, all with varied styles. She also leads art tours to Cuba, something to keep in mind.

From there, I found - with some persistence - Nancy Forrester’s secret garden . Nancy is, by trade, an artist, but, via a long circuitous route, ended up creating a sanctuary for pet parrots that had either been abandoned by or outlived their owners. Sean, a volunteer, was there to tell us about the parrots, the history of the project, and all of the issues associated with pet parrots (which of course are also applicable to other exotic pet species). Of course, as with other species, wild parrots are threatened by deforestation and other environmental issues. Sean is extremely knowledgeable, and not shy with his opinions. I very much enjoyed learning from him and conversing with him. A theme for this portion of the trip seems to be animal rescue and rehabilitation.

After a much needed iced coffee break at The Funky Rooste r, I found a recommend temporary tattoo parlor. Feruz, originally from Uzbekistan, drew my dragon tattoo. Interestingly, rather than the traditional henna, he used a temporary ink made from the Jagua fruit, which lasts longer and has a richer color. The fruit, relatively new to the Western world, is well known in Latin America and also has many culinary and medicinal uses. While he worked, Feruz told me a bit about his family (all artists) and how they came to arrive in the U.S. I was very pleased with the result.

I took a break during the heat of the day to download and edit. Then I headed out to Louie’s Backyard for dinner on the balcony with an ocean view. I chose the more casual upstairs cafe rather than the main floor restaurant. At the next small table over were Aaron and Jill, down from Michigan to celebrate their 20th anniversary. After they gave me many good tips for when I visit Michigan, the conversation veered into an exchange of ideas about world views. I really appreciated this conversation for a few reasons. We managed to completely avoid labels, scripts, talking point or dogma. We had an intelligent discussion about ideas. Although I have some guesses, I actually don’t know what is their political affiliation as that was not part of the discussion. One of the more interesting ideas that Aaron proposed was the complete dissolution of the Federal government. His idea was that the highest level of government should be at the State level, and that any higher level government should be by coalition. (I hope I am representing his ideas correctly) Of course, only after we parted ways did I think of some salient question that I might have wanted to ask. For example, how do you deal with foreign policy with no centralized Federal government? Also, the country with the most infamous coalition government today is Israel. At the moment, that isn’t working out very well for them. How would the U.S. version avoid those problems?

I then stayed out at the beach to photograph sunset. It was not very impressive, but there was a full moon, which did provide some visual interest.

Tomorrow I will visit a few more destinations in Key West.