surrender, the road less traveled by

Gethsemane

From a Republican snowbird friend yesterday:

Subject: Two women talking in heaven joke:

1st woman: Hi! Wanda.

2nd woman: Hi! Sylvia. How’d you die?

1st woman: I froze to death.

2nd woman: How horrible!

1st woman: It wasn’t so bad. After I quit shaking from the cold, I began to get warm & sleepy, and finally died a peaceful death. What about you?

2nd woman: I died of a massive heart attack. I suspected that my husband was cheating, so I came home early to catch him in the act. But instead, I found him all by himself in the den watching TV.

1st woman: So, what happened?

2nd woman: I was so sure there was another woman there somewhere that I started running all over the house looking. I ran up into the attic and searched, and down into the basement. Then I went through every closet and checked under all the beds. I kept this up until I had looked everywhere, and finally I became so exhausted that I just keeled over with a heart attack and died.

1st woman: Too bad you didn’t look in the freezer… we’d both still be alive!

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Jonathan Horwitz commented on yesterday’s street people and environmental shaman work – Florida Keys and beyond post:

Jonathan Horwitz Sloan, you must be the fastest typer in the world! Had a nice read for a while, but then I realized it would take me the rest of the day and most of the night to read it all. There is a concept call “economy of words” also refered to as being “lean of speech.” If you want people to really hear you, consider this    <3<3 J
Sloan Bashinsky Sorry, Jonathan, I should have said read only the top two items in the “Big Pine Key – Mother Nature’s Last Stand” page at goodmorningfloridakeys.com. For there are a lot of other old posts under those two posts. Today’s post, “street people and enviornmental shaman work”, and other daily posts, are what my spirit controllers tell me to publish, day after day. I know it’s a lot to read. They know it’s a lot to read. But it’s free. And it’s mostly not taught anywhere else, as far as I know. It’s an archive, it resides in cycberspace, and in the Akashic Record. Maybe it is influencing, maybe not. I reported in a post the other day, I wrote to an old college fraternity brother, who had written that he was amazed at the profusion of my writings, that writing for me has become like breathing, eating, drinking water and going to the bathroom.
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Last night, Jonathan posted this to Facebook:

Ssshhhhhhhhhh……………..……
Ssshhhhhhhhhh.......................
 

 

Not wishing to disturb Jonathan in his meditation, between his frequent blasts on Facebook about how he and other people can fix the things in this world which bother them, and seeing that Jonathan’s and my shaman friend Erika Biddle had sided with Jonathan, I did not send him anything further yesterday.
I stopped working on this post for today and turned off the classical music and turned on the TV. Finding no movie that interested me, I turned the classical music back on and picked up the new mystical detective novel I got from the county library and read some in it. Then, I started getting drowsy and put the book down and waddled from the living room to the bedroom and turned in for the night.
Before dawn this morning, in a dream I am present at and observing what looks like a board meeting in my father’s company. No one I recognize, maybe a dozen people, men and women, all brainstorming how to fix different problems. After listening to them for a while, I say they will never fix anything, they are incapable of fixing anything. I pause, say, only when they give up and stopped trying to fix things does God step in and provide a solution. They are stopped in their tracks. One of the women nods, says yes. The dream ends.
I awaken, knowing the dream is about Jonathan and his save the world from whatever friends and their efforts, and that the message in the dream is universal, and that nothing will change on this world for so long as the masculine is trying to play God and fix everything, instead of surrendering to God, which is the feminine way, and letting God provide suggestions, solutions. I seldom see God mentioned in any problems I see other people trying to fix. I mostly see people trying to do everything themselves, as if they are God.
If the wife in the snowbird’s joke had stopped trying to find the paramour, whom she somehow knew was in her home, and had simply sat down and gotten quiet and asked God for help, she would have sensed where the paramour was and would have gone to the freezer and opened it and saved them both, so to speak.
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I had read about what the NYC police officer did for that homeless man. Inspiring story and glad you got it out at least to your readers whom I know are legion! Tim
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Me:
Legion? Isn’t that what the forces of Evil called themselves when demanded by an exorcist priest to state their name? I have no clue how many, or how few, people read my ravings, which have been a bit farther off the edge of the world laterly. Yes, that NYPD police officer giving that homeless man a pair of boots was beautiful.
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Tim:
Le·gion
multitude: a large number of people or things Roman army division: in ancient Rome, an army division of 3,000 to 6,000 soldiers, including cavalry large body of soldiers: a large military unit, especially an army I guess you are correct re the Biblical definition but I only meant the simple definition of a “multiple” or “large number” of followers. I of course had no intention to refer to either forces of evil; a Roman army division or a even to a large body of soldiers!
Yes, I have seen the boots story several times today on the Internet. That act of kindness has obviously touched the hearts of many.
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Me:
Apologies, I was trying to make a half-ass joke about having a legion (lot of) readers. I did not take your use of legion the way I twisted it. Saw on TV news tonight that the photo of the NYPD officer giving a homeless man boots went viral on the Internet. Maybe it infected the City of Key West. Another half-ass joke.
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Over dinner at Coco’s Kitchen on Big Pine Key yesterday evening, a snowbird amigo said I should run for sheriff. I laughed. He persisted. I laughed some more. He persisted some more.
I said, well, if I were sheriff, I would tell Key West that I would not receive any more of its homeless people for the crime of being homeless. And I would not receive any homeless people because they were drunk, unless the city sent me all of its drunks, starting with the ones on Duval Street.
My friend said I really am a trouble maker. I said I would not let the city use me  or my people or facilities to enforce the city social policy. I would not pay for that. I would be into protecting people from serious crime and putting serious criminals in jail.
My friend again said I really am a trouble maker. I said, yep, that is true. And if I were sheriff, it would go this way:
I would call all my people together and ask them which way they wanted the sheriff office to run?
Go light on everyone?
Go rough on everyone?
Everyone includes them, their families, their friends, important and unimportant people.
Which way will it go? You tell me, that’s how we will do it.
Meanwhile, we no longer enforce the marijuana laws, and we grow the weed on county land and regulate other people growing it, and we take a slice of their revenues, and we give all of that wampum to local charities. If the Feds don’t like that, tough titty. Let them enforce the marijuana laws.
My friend said I really am a  trouble maker. I really should run for sheriff. I said no way.
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This was on bigpinekey.com’s Coconut Telegraph yesterday:
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Marijuana–it’s one of the primary reasons why California experienced a stunning 20 percent drop in juvenile arrests in just one year, between 2010 and 2011, according to provocative new research. The San Francisco-based Center on Juvenile & Criminal Justice (CJCJ) recently released a policy briefing with an analysis of arrest data collected by the California Department of Justice’s Criminal Justice Statistics Center. The briefing, ” California Youth Crime Plunges to All-Time Low ,” identifies a new state marijuana decriminalization law that applies to juveniles, not just adults, as the driving force behind the plummeting arrest totals. Link
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Today, I’m driving down to Key West to have lunch with an old college fraternity brother who comes to Key West every year for the annual marijuana conference, which the Key West PD ignore and allow the participants to light up in any establishment where they gather, such as their hotel’s lobby, Camille’s on Simonton Street. Booze is far more destructive and dangerous than marijuana. Imagine the US Treasury receiving taxes on the manufacture and sale of marijuana, like it receives taxes for the manufacture of booze and cigarettes and other tobacco products. Think of all the US military hardware and wars that could pay for.
I’m now going way, way out on a limb on the day after the UN voted to recognize Palestine as a separate state. What’s the US and Israel’s beef? The French and the British, with plenty of nods from the US, made Israel a free state in Palestine without asking the Palestinians how they felt about it. And they did it because they, including America, did not want to receive millions of Jewish refugees in to their countries.
Now I’m going a whole lot farther out on that limb with this on bigpinekey.com’s Coconut Telegraph yesterday, responding to a query of the day before:
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["what did the Jews do that was so God awful that the Germans shot them on sight"]
To attempt to get to some kind of an answer to your question I will have to be as brief as possible as to perhaps do justice to your question would take an extremely long time, The Jews as a group as we generally know them today, are an extremely talented and energetic lot and as is their natural bent in the process they accumulate a lot of power and assets, thus we have the very fertile ground for human nature to take over as it will if left unfettered to express themselves in the form of class warfare, perhaps much the same way as is being happening to the American people today, cloaked in words of piety, and compassion, our leaders as those leaders in Germany did must create a paper tiger of sorts for the citizenry to rail against as in so doing they will ignore their own shortcomings while being brainwashed into believing that their station in life has all been caused by a greedy few at their expense. As simple as this ploy is, it has worked through the ages time and again, as we are presently witnessing in theU.S.and the end result of this chicanery is always very depressing. It is not the rich that is the problem, indeed in most cases they have been the fuel for good economies, but a big part of the problem lies with leaders with their nefarious schemes to maintain power and assuage their super inflated egos.
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Me to the Coconut Telegraph:
I once had a Jewish friend, who had left Judaism and had become deeply involved in the New Age religion, yoga, taoism and natural foods and purified water. He was super-reactive to anything that smacked of discrimination against Jews, racism against Jews, or of the Holocaust, even though he was born over a decade after the end of World War II. He became one of the people Jesus and Michael were taking in the same direction they were taking me. My friend knew who had grabbed hold of him, and after some struggle and lashing out at me, he surrendered to it. He was quick to lash out at me, if I said or did anything that punched his spiritual or Jewish buttons. Maybe that was why Jesus and Michael started working directly with him. Anyway, one day my friend told me that he was right then hearing from the aformentioned beings that the reason for the Holocaust in Germany, and also in Russia, which was about as severe as what happened in Germany, and for the Jewish diaspora generally, was karma for the Jews rejecting the Christ – what Jesus represented, his way of living. I had thought that for a few years, but had not dared say it to my friend. But when he heard it from his spirit controllers, he was blown away, collapsed and accepted it without any protest. I can tell lots of stories like that one, where someone I knew very well was confronted by said heavenly beings and was blown away. It used to happen a lot more than it does now. I can’t say why it happens less now. Many times have I been told by the same blowers away that the US needs to get out of the Middle East altogether and let Israel and the Arabs work it out or shoot it out, without the US helping Israel in any way.
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I wonder how much of that the owner of the Coconut Telegraph will edit out? Probably all the parts about me listening to heavenly beings. As for the US political leaders, I told some people yesterday that I was called a Libertarian recently and I laughed because I am so far left that Barack Obama is a Nazi. Translated – left is feminine, right is masculine.
Somebody has to champion the feminine in this species.
Speaking of which, received what appeared to be an email blast to a number of people from Jerry of Key West yesterday. This is another longish Sloan-and-Jerry two ships passing conversation.
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Contrary to the opinion of many, acquiring wealth is not a science, but an art, often a black art. An art in which the rational are often at a disadvantage. Acquiring wealth is essentially an heuristic process to which most refer as salesmanship. The world does not beat a path to the door of those who build better mouse traps. The trap must also be sold! Every time I stumble across a better mouse trap, I promptly find the best salesman I can and give him half. I haven’t found the right one yet. Salesmanship is akin to playing a musical instrument. A salesman conjures the irrational human mind to part with money like a well dressed man careful with adroit fluttering movements to cajole music from the strings of a violin or the Sapera charming a snake to withdraw from her safety. The cold, hard, rational presentation of a win win scenario is far too often not the immediate impetus for writing a check. Business leaders and others in positions of authority too often imagine themselves “rational” whereas in reality, few can even produce a useful definition of the word. Another way to put it: They don’t even know what the word means. The dictionary is also useless for this, ( link to look it up
dictionary.com/…rational ) The reason that even the Merriam Webster and the Cambridge dictionaries don’t provide a useful definition for “rational” is because the word’s definition is what computer programmers call “native.” That is… “not axiomatic.” The definition of rational is not constructed from words with which we are already familiar, but is constructed of the most fundamental terms of reason and logic. “A statement is rational if and only if it can be entirely restated in terms only of the fundament binary operator Nand or Nor.” Or in the colloquial, less concise and less precise: Only a rational statement can be restated more and more simply with only reiterations of the one same simplest relationship between any two concepts, such that if a question can not be restated without additional information to provide resolvable references to all of the components of its own answer, it is not a rational question. The more one actually understands and utilizes this definition of rational in one’s day to day decision making, the more rational one becomes. Making rational decisions instead of heuristic decisions is always good when one has the time to do so. If one is running from a hungry bear, heuristics is definitely the way to go! Or trying to interpret a dream, use heuristics please. Whereas rational decision making becomes a moral perquisite when making decisions which effect the lives of others. Math is not about numbers. The literal translation of the Greek term “mathematica logos” for mathematical logic is “to explain with words.” “Come now, let us reason together. Says the Ever Living… Let us consider your latter end.” –the book of the prophet Isaiah It baffles me! ! that some smart people still suppose that somehow, in some way, I forgot to apply the same rational rigor to my trust in the Hebrew prophets and the Messiah whom they describe as I apply to more complex subjects such as models of stellar gravitation, persistent autonomous schemata of social influence (conspirator-less conspiracies,) molecular evolution and autopilot software.
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Me:
I’d never heard the term: Heuristic (or /hyoo-ris-tik/; Greek: “???????”, “find”or “discover”) refers to experience-based techniques for problem solving, learning, and discovery. Where the exhaustive search is impractical, heuristic methods are used to speed up the process of finding a satisfactory solution. Examples of this method include using a rule of thumb, an educated guess, an intuitive judgment, or common sense. (from Wikipedia)
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 Some of your discourse seems a lament that you are not making any money off your bright ideas. I can relate to not feeling like I make enough money. Some of your discourse seems an evangelical defense of rational, intellectual thinking and an equally evangelical attack of intuitive, psychic thinking – masculine over feminine. Some of your discourse seems aimed dead at me without naming me. As for acquiring wealth being a black art, yes, it certainly can be that, as can salesmanship. The last time I had dinner with Jim and Vera Hendrick, Todd German was there, and Jim’s girlfriend Donna, whom I did not know was Jim’s girlfriend. Jim set out to convince me that Pritam Singh, contrary to my view, was a great guy. The way Jim set out to do it was by telling me what a great salesman Pritam was; so great, that he could make people see only what he wanted them to see, and not see what he didn’t want them to see. Sounded like Jim’s modus operandi, too, but what I said was, “That’s how Lucifer sells.” I had some years earlier written in a post that Pritam was possessed by Lucifer, and I imagined that was what Jim set out to dissuade me from it while out of his own mouth proving what I had posted about Pritam. Jim was a bit in his cups by the time dinner was over and he challenged me to a chess game, which I tired to decline, since there were other people there, but Jim was insistent, really insistent, so I agreed to play. He started out telling the others that he was going to tell me how he was going to play, and he would beat me even though I knew what he was going to do. Which, yes, he proceeded to do. After that game was over, he insisted on doing it again, again over my attempt to decline because the others clearly were uncomfortable, but no mater that from Jim’s perspective. And, yes, he did it again, and that was the end of the chess. I knew, felt, sensed in the moment that something monumental had just occurred, but it was maybe three days before I felt, sensed, the whole of it. The logic of it, if you wish. I knew I would not have further social interactions with Jim. Then, I wrote about it in a post. There then were a few rounds of emails with Jim, which also were published. I have heard your description of the Hebrew prophet Jesus, to put him in that category, although he was a good but further along than the Hebrew prophets of the Old Testament. I do not believe you yet know Jesus in the Gospels, and I base that one what you have written and told me. Jesus was about a way of life. He lived that way of life. He taught it to others. It is described in the Gospels and in Acts, mostly. It is experiential. Without the experience, knowing what is in the Bible is, basically, meaningless. Words, knowledge, do not replace experience. Reading doing unto others is not the same as doing unto others. Knowing it is more blessed to give than to receive is not the same as giving. Knowing turn the other cheek, resist not one who does evil, etc., is not the same as turning the other cheek, not resisting one who does evil, etc. To use a few examples. Claiming salvation through Jesus, while trampling his teachings, is irrational, denies Jesus. Claiming belief in Jesus, while living against his teachings, is irrational, denies belief in Jesus. Having direct, conscious spirit interaction with Jesus, angels of the Lord, is something else altogether. When that happens, as happened to Saul of Tarsus, as happened to Peter, as happened to the Old Testament prophets, as happened to Jesus, the texts, the rules, the bylaws, etc. fade into simply doing what you are told to do, or suffer horribly. That is explained in the Old and in the New Testaments, but having it explained does not substitute for living it. What having it explained does is provide a general survival map for when, if, it actually happens to you. When it happens to you, logic, as you understand it, pretty much goes out the window. As is sometimes said, God’s ways are not our ways, God’s timing is not out timing, etc. Or, as was later said, “There is more in earth and in heaven, than in your philosophy, Horatio.” Maybe more later. Sloan
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Jerry replied: when I intend to address you directly, I make no bones about. there are many in the world who think like you do and portions of my emails are directed to all of them. ” There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy. ” you, sloan, should do well to reform your thinking, to add to it. . . come to the acceptance of and embrace the balance between the heuristic and the rational. as it is, you deny the latter, and use the former to produce a poor copy of what the latter could have produced more easily and in better quality. you need to learn to trust. currently, you believe only what you want to believe, but are unable to even usefully describe what you believe. you don’t know if it right or wrong. you claim that you defer the legitimacy, the truth or falsehood of an idea to angels, but instead -angel or demon tells you to do something. then it is you who decides if it was an angel or demon and to do it or not. it is still ultimately you. you do not trust. how does one find truth if one gives up himself. one must think about that a little. there is a balance. one which I cherish and for which I thank God every day. “the way which leads to life. water from which one never thirsts again” that illustration is not original to the new testament. that is again the OT prophets. so are “shepherd, fishers of men, son of man, lost sheep, bodily resurrection, the meek inheriting the earth, wiping away tears, sacrifice of the heart not of meat, etc.” the Jesus of the OT is the Jesus of the NT. both say exactly the same things. if the one talking to you says differently, he is an impostor. tell me this. why is he called the son of man? the answer is not in the NT. it is in the old.
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I replied:
Jerry, I form and express my own opinions about lots of things, and I publish those opinions, including my opinions of what you send to me and my take on your thought processes. I do this in every post. What I write is rational, it makes sense to me, it makes sense to other people. It might not make sense to you or even other people, but that does not make it irrational. Nuclear physics makes no sense to me, but I do not say it is not rational. I simply don’t understand it and there is no indication that I should study it and understand it. I don’t know why Jesus called himself the son of man, and I’m not sure it matters why he did that. His mantra was living in God’s will, not in our will. I get plenty of input from angels about what is God’s will, as opposed to my will, and I go with that input because the alternative course has proven horrible for me. I keep telling you that you do not appear to have this relationship with angels, and you continue to belittle me for listening to angels, instead of just being me. Well, Jerry, I am me. I am someone who is leaned on ongoing by angels. Believe that or not. I really don’t care. But you should stop criticizing it, if it is not happening to you. The truth is revealed to me, perhaps because I am too stupid to find it myself. Everything I need to know about situations in which I am put to engage is revealed to me, if I do not see it on my own, when I need to see it. Your beef is not with me, Jerry, but is with Jesus, Michael, Melchizedek, and others they let have at me. Complain to them, if you don’t like the way I live, think, or what I publish. You sure don’t have to read any of it, nor does anyone else. I don’t see Jesus in the Old Testament. I see references to his coming at a later time. In the Gospels, Jeus said he brought a new covenant. He told people, it was said of old, and eye for and eye and a tooth for a tooth, but I tell you … He said on the two great commandments hung all the law and the prophets … The Letter to the Hebrews chides the Jewish followers to let go of the old Jewish priesthood, and to embrace the new priesthood in which Jesus was High Priest – Melchizedek. Why do you think Jesus caused such a commotion? It was because what he did and said was totally different from what the Jews were use to, what they read in their scriptures. He challenged them to be a lot bigger and a lot deeper. He embarrassed and infurated them. They did not want the new he brought. They wanted someone to rid them of the Roman yoke, of which he was not interested. Yet, he did rid the Jews of the Roman yoke many years later, after Rome made Christianity the state religion, which ended the persecution and oppression of the Jews by Rome. You continue to focus on theology and rational thinking, and I continue to focus on living and experience. I tell story after story of living, other poeple’s stories, my stories. I tell what my take is on those stories. I tell what I hear from the angels. What you or anyone else does with it is not my business. The 23rd Psalm, The Lord is my shepherd, is my favorite passage in the Bible. It was dramatically burned into my soul during a very dark period in 1992. It was mystical. It was for real. As is everything I experience with the other realms for real. I live on this world and in the other realms at the same time, and I am aware of it. Jesus did that. Acts shows how Paul and Peter did it. I will not move toward you, Jerry, no matter how hard you try. I am moving away from you, away from everyone I know. I used to know people moving in the direction I was moving, but they no longer are in my life. Some died. Some went away. I don’t know what became of them. Do not take that paragraph to mean I do not engage people, or I don’t not have fun with people. I do that. But it’s a dual reality. I am with them, and I am not with them. I can be with them in ways they cannot be with me, because they do not experience what I experience. They are often fun to be around. They provide respite to an otherwise seriously awful line of work. I am in spiritual warfare unceasing. It is what I was trained to do. I don’t know why you stay with me. I don’t know why you don’t find people to be with whom you like to engage, be with, have some fun and laughs with. You are a nice person, Jerry, but you are not fun to be around, your conversation is wearing, tiring. I get a sense you have me mixed up with someone else in your life, someone you want to change, win over, get his/her approval. Perhaps your father or mother, or a grandfather or grandmother, or a sibling, or someone. I get the sense you desperately want attention, affirmation, kudos. I get the sense you feel like you have not made it, proven yourself. I used to feel that way a lot; it drove me out of my wits sometimes. These days, I simply try to get up out of bed and deal with today, for it has enough trouble of its own. I do not ponder whether or not I am saved. I do not believe I am saved. I do not know what is my standing with God, or with Jesus. Nor does anyone else I know know their standing with God, or with Jesus, as far as I can tell. Sloan

more render unto Caesar and God grubby scenarios

Larry Murry replied to this part of yesterday’s  Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s, and unto God that which is God’s – various grubby scenarios  post:

Not sure I would characterize the Athletic Directors’ pay as flim flam, if they are not being overpaid but it’s simply trying to make do with what is there in a climate where nobody is going to be happy with the make-do. Although John, you don’t like the idea, you know, as do the other school board members and Mark know, without an operations revenue influx, mostly likely through a tax increase, this school district’s employee morale problem will not abate and might well become more serious. Dr. Ed Shine [Superintendent of Schools candidate] told you that during his public interview at Marathon High School. Nothing has changed. Sloan

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Sloan:

I think you missed the point regarding John Dick’s comments about paying supplements to athletic directors.

Larry

I replied:

Perhaps I did, please explain what I missed that John said. I heard Mark Porter say the Athletic Directors’ pay, including supplemental pay, was not too high. Of course, why do Athletic Directors get preference might be asked? Rhetorical question, athletics is more important than education many would argue.

Larry replied:

John’s point was simply this:

1. In years past, faculty who also were athletic directors were given supplemental pay for the latter.

2. Then, a few years ago, athletic directors were converted into a fulltime job. At the time of the conversion, the supplements were folded into the salaries.

3 Now, the District is reverting to the old scheme of teachers who are also athletic directors. The intent of the District is to give them supplemental pay. John’s point is that people like Theresa Konrath at MHS were once given supplements, then had the supplement rolled into their pay and are now about to get what John views as a “second” or additional supplement.

Hope that all makes sense.

Larry

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Still looks to me that this is symptomatic of the School District not having enough money to make ends meet and resolve the low morale problem, and that an operations revenue influx is needed to fix that – translates to school tax increase.

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From The Key West Citizen today, my thoughts in italics.
Gentile will appeal ruling
BY TERRY SCHMIDA
Citizen Staff
It’s official. School District administrator Ken Gentile, whose use of a title some say he does not possess resulted in a five-day, unpaid suspension, will appeal the ruling, his lawyer Robert Cintron confirmed Monday. At issue is Gentile’s status as a Certified Public Accountant, a designation he claimed in a 2010 resume he used to get a job with the school district as an internal auditor, and has tagged his work with ever since. In fact, Gentile’s New York State CPA license, which was granted in 1987, lapsed in 1993. He has never held a Florida CPA license, but has maintained this fact is irrelevant, since he said he has never done CPA work for the district. Under former School Superintendent Jesus Jara, Gentile was shifted over to the administrative side of district operations, where his work has met with positive feedback from current Superintended Mark Porter.
My impression is Ken Gentile has worked very hard and the School District is better for it.
“This is much ado about nothing,” Cintron said. “I respect [School District Attorney Dirk] Smits. I like the superintendent, too. With all due respect I think they dropped the ball on this issue and I think this was a politically motivated attempt to destroy Gentile.” The controversy arose earlier this year when it was first revealed that Gentile is not an active CPA in any state. School watchdogs, Larry Murray, who ran for School Board in the August primary, and Sloan Bashinsky, repeatedly questioned Gentile’s integrity in a series of emails sent to Jara. But the former superintendent maintained the issue was a tempest in a teapot, and left it for his successor Porter to deal with.
I wish Schmida had contacted me. I consistently disagreed with Larry Murray, and with School Board members John Dick and Andy Griffiths, that Ken Gentile should be fired, unless Dick and Griffiths themselves were fired, or resigned, for hiring Gentile fully aware he had no Florida CPA credentials. Schmida might also have written that I, too, was a School Board candidate, which would have given his readers a sense of how deeply involved I was in school issues.
At a Monroe County School Board meeting in late October, Porter announced Gentile’s suspension, before going out of his way to commend the job Gentile has done for the board. “He has performed admirably in every facet I have asked him to do and has provided outstanding financial information and insight into other areas as well,” Porter said at the time. But Gentile isn’t pleased with the black mark on his record, and is hoping for relief from the Florida Department of Administrative Hearings, his lawyer said. “It’s our position that he is already authorized to use the CPA designation because he had a valid CPA license,” Cintron said. Cintron maintains that under the Florida regulations that govern out-of-state CPAs, Gentile was authorized in Florida to use the CPA designation, notwithstanding that at the time he did not have a Florida CPA license. The Florida regulations acknowledge that you can be a non-Florida CPA in Florida. “Florida allows CPAs from certain other states, including New York, given that they’re licensed in New York,” the lawyer explained. “The issue is whether you’re actually practicing as a CPA in Florida, which Gentile never did. It really is a legal argument as to whether or not Gentile had the right to use the CPA designation with his name, given that he was not practicing certified public accounting in Florida.” The State of Florida considers it a criminal misdemeanor to call oneself a CPA without actually holding the title, but requires the individual in question to be aware they’re breaking the law by doing so. In other words, if Gentile didn’t realize he was breaking the law, then he likely wasn’t. The Tallahassee-based Florida DOAH will now assign the case to a hearing officer, who will examine Gentile’s case before an administrative hearing officer. Cintron said the process to determine the fate of Gentile’s claim likely won’t take place before the first of the year. School Board Chair Andy Griffiths appears eager to lay the matter to rest. “If you pass the bar exam, they call you a lawyer,” he said. “If you move to another state, do they still call you a lawyer? I don’t know. Maybe the [DOAH] hearing will give us the answer.” Gentile’s attorney, meanwhile, predicts victory for his client. “In most any criminal prosecution the prosecutor almost always has to prove mens rea, meaning he intended to commit the crime,” Cintron said. “Did he intentionally violate this rather technical requirement? We maintain that he did not. But, in fairness to everyone it’s a very technical area in which people shouldn’t be quick to form a conclusion without understanding those nuances.” Cintron said the School Board knew when they hired Gentile that he didn’t have a Florida CPA license. “If you read the executive summary that was given to the School Board members, the first page says that they were able to verify that Gentile was licensed in the state of New York, but not in Florida. They hired him anyway,” he said.
Yep, and they have yet to take responsibility for it.
At press time Porter hadn’t returned phone calls, but Gentile affirmed that he had arranged to take his five suspension days off from Dec. 10 through 14.
I told Ken, who is devout in his Christian practices, that I did not think it was Jesus’ way to get lawyered up, but it was Jesus’ way, when called before the tribunals of men, to simply tell the truth and to accept what was handed down.
”I wanted to take them at a time when it would be the least disruptive to the district,” Gentile said. “That was mutually agreed upon with the board.” The DOAH officers have the power to reverse the penalty retroactively, he added.
==============================
Letter to the editor:
Allow yourself to look at reality of our streets
Erika Biddle and SheelMan Sheelman have collaborated on a work of art based in social and political activism called Hidden in Plain View. On at the Studios of Key West until Dec. 14, this exhibit particularizes life on Key West’s streets through photography and poetry. Key West’s sun, the thing that draws all (the homeless, the single-, double- and triple-homed) to this wonderful place, works differently on those who live exposed all day, every day. Sheelman’s larger-than-life black and white photos focus on faces so tanned they might be leather masks. Hunger and exposure work incredible changes in the human face and form. These people are not getting enough to eat; they are sleeping rough and are just barely ahead of an early, stalking, death. We walk past them to our warm (or cooled) homes where we will eat when we wish, and throw out food because left too long in our refrigerators (whose incredible convenience and safety we rarely note). Erika built Hidden in Plain View from her experiences in the Occupy movement. She, with others, experienced life lived in tents at Bayview Park, where she met the people SheelMan’s camera reveals. Erika, that rare person who cares about everyone she meets, led these discarded people to open themselves to the camera, to write down feelings and thoughts, and to share their memories and despair with the very community that ignores them. The poems question over and over again: “Why do you pass me by?” The question in every face is: “Why am I so worthless that you can’t even imagine that I could be (and, maybe, until recently was) just like you, that you could (sometime in the near future) be living like me?” If ever there were a demonstration of Key West’s One Human Family motto, Erika’s and SheelMan’s work is it. Hidden in Plain View reminds us of the family we close out when we close our doors, and puts faces to the people who live on our streets. This painful reality is easier to look at when presented so artfully. Please allow yourself to look.
Rosanne Potter Key West
Amen.
Perhaps this Sunday, The Citizen Editorial Board and Solares Hill will address Hidden In Plain View as part of Key West’s One Human Family.
============================
From my first cousin Leo yesterday:
This is my simple religion. There is no need for temples; no need for complicated philosophy. Our own brain, our own heart is our temple; the philosophy is kindness. Dalai Lama
Well said, this world sure would be a far different place if everyone lived in that way. Does this statement by the Dalai Lama mean he doesn’t need Buddhism, its temples?
I guess you would have to ask him.
==============================
There actually are several questions I’d like to ask the Dalai Lama, if I ever get the chance, but the one I asked my cousin Leo was rhetorical. The main question I would ask the Dalai Lama, it is said when someone asked Buddha about God, Buddha said that is too big a topic to even discuss. So is God too big a topic for the Dalai Lama to even discuss? God wasn’t too big a topic for Jesus to discuss in the Gospels.
==============================
Which led to this banter:
Leo
Ah Yes Rhetorical-I’ll have to be more aware of your grandiloquence in the future.
Me
I thought I was being sarcastic, but pompous probably fits just as well.
Leo
Bash-It’s good to know we can bat it around and still be friendly cuz. Leo
Me
Seemed to me the logical corollary of the Dalai Lama’s living forumla was he didn’t need religion. Another question I would like to ask is, if Buddha said the cause of all human misery is attachment, why hasn’t the Dalai Lama given up on getting Tibet back? I might also ask if maybe God wanted the Tibetans dispersed across the world, so they could share what they knew with other peoples?
Leo
“Every man makes a god of his own desire.” Vergil, Roman poet
Me
In Buddhism, the bodhisattva is held in highest regard, this is a Buddhist, usually a lama, I think, who takes a vow to keep returning to human form on this planet until all sentient beings reach enlightenment. Perhaps prodded by the angels, perhaps my mischief, I came to wonder if that was an impossible achievement – all sentient beings reaching enlightenment (people, if cetaceans are ignored, since they probably already reached enlightenment, and perhaps there are other sentient beings on this world not recognised by human beings). I also came to wonder if the first bodhisattva was an advanced lama, who, as he approached his time to depart human form, again, realized he would have to come back, again, and that realization was so distressing, perhaps even humiliating or mortifying, in the ego sense, that he came up with the idea of being a bodhisattva to make himself feel better. I have held both of those wonderings in my thoughts for about 20 years, and the angels have yet to tell me to stop having those wonderings.
=====================
Received this forward from a Republican snowbird amigo:
The America we all love and fight for until our dying day! Don Devaney

Letter from an airline pilot:

He writes:

My lead flight attendant came to me and said, “We have an H.R. On this flight.” (H.R. Stands for human remains.) “Are they military?” I asked.‘Yes’, she said.‘Is there an escort?’ I asked.‘Yes, I’ve already assigned him a seat’.‘Would you please tell him to come to the flight deck. You can board him early,” I said..A short while later, a young army sergeant entered the flight deck. He was the image of the perfectly dressed soldier. He introduced himself and I asked him about his soldier. The escorts of these fallen soldiers talk about them as if they are still alive and still with us.‘My soldier is on his way back to Virginia ,’ he said. He proceeded to answer my questions, but offered no words.I asked him if there was anything I could do for him and he said no. I told him that he had the toughest job in the military and that I appreciated the work that he does for the families of our fallen soldiers. The first officer and I got up out of our seats to shake his hand. He left the flight deck to find his seat.We completed our pre-flight checks, pushed back and performed an uneventful departure. About 30 minutes into our flight I received a call from the lead flight attendant in the cabin. ‘I just found out the family of the soldier we are carrying, is on board’, she said. She then proceeded to tell me that the father, mother, wife and 2-year old daughter were escorting their son, husband, and father home. The family was upset because they were unable to see the container that the soldier was in before we left. We were on our way to a major hub at which the family was going to wait four hours for the connecting flight home to Virginia .The father of the soldier told the flight attendant that knowing his son was below him in the cargo compartment and being unable to see him was too much for him and the family to bear. He had asked the flight attendant if there was anything that could be done to allow them to see him upon our arrival. The family wanted to be outside by the cargo door to watch the soldier being taken off the airplane. I could hear the desperation in the flight attendants voice when she asked me if there was anything I could do. ‘I’m on it’, I said. I told her that I would get back to her.Airborne communication with my company normally occurs in the form of e-mail like messages. I decided to bypass this system and contact my flight dispatcher directly on a Secondary radio. There is a radio operator in the operations control center who connects you to the telephone of the dispatcher. I was in direct contact with the dispatcher. I explained the situation I had on board with the family and what it was the family wanted. He said he understood and that he would get back to me.Two hours went by and I had not heard from the dispatcher. We were going to get busy soon and I needed to know what to tell the family. I sent a text message asking for an update. I Saved the return message from the dispatcher and the following is the text:‘Captain, sorry it has taken so long to get back to you. There is policy on this now and I had to check on a few things. Upon your arrival a dedicated escort team will meet the aircraft. The team will escort the family to the ramp and plane side. A van will be used to load the remains with a secondary van for the family. The family will be taken to their departure area and escorted into the terminal where the remains can be seen on the ramp. It is a private area for the family only. When the connecting aircraft arrives, the family will be escorted onto the ramp and plane side to watch the remains being loaded for the final leg home. Captain, most of us here in flight control are veterans.. Please pass our condolences on to the family. Thanks.’

I sent a message back telling flight control thanks for a good job. I printed out the message and gave it to the lead flight attendant to pass on to the father. The lead flight attendant was very thankful and told me, ‘You have no idea how much this will mean to them.’ Things started getting busy for the descent, approach and landing. After landing, we cleared the runway and taxied to the ramp area. The ramp is huge with 15 gates on either side of the alleyway. It is always a busy area with aircraft maneuvering every which way to enter and exit. When we entered the ramp and checked in with the ramp controller, we were told That all traffic was being held for us. ‘There is a team in place to meet the aircraft’, we were told. It looked like it was all coming together, then I realized that once we turned the seat belt sign off, everyone would stand up at once and delay the family from getting off the airplane. As we approached our gate, I asked the co-pilot to tell the ramp controller we were going to stop short of the gate to make an announcement to the passengers. He did that and the ramp controller said, ‘Take your time.’ I stopped the aircraft and set the parking brake. I pushed the public address button and said, ‘Ladies and gentleman, this is your Captain speaking I have stopped short of our gate to make a special announcement. We have a passenger on board who deserves our honor and respect. His Name is Private XXXXXX, a soldier who recently lost his life. Private XXXXXX is under your feet in the cargo hold. Escorting him today is Army Sergeant XXXXXXX. Also, on board are his father, mother, wife, and daughter. Your entire flight crew is asking for all passengers to remain in their seats to allow the family to exit the aircraft first. Thank you.’ We continued the turn to the gate, came to a stop and started our shutdown procedures. A couple of minutes later I opened the cockpit door. I found the two forward flight attendants crying, something you just do not see. I was told that after we came to a stop, every passenger on the aircraft stayed in their seats, waiting for the family to exit the aircraft. When the family got up and gathered their things, a passenger slowly started to clap his hands. Moments later more passengers joined in and soon the entire aircraft was clapping. Words of ‘God Bless You’, I’m sorry, thank you, be proud, and other kind words were uttered to the family as they made their way down the aisle and out of the airplane. They were escorted down to the ramp to finally be with their loved one. Many of the passengers disembarking thanked me for the announcement I had made. They were just words, I told them, I could say them over and over again, but nothing I say will bring back that brave soldier. I respectfully ask that all of you reflect on this event and the sacrifices that millions of our men and women have made to ensure our freedom and safety in these USA, Canada, Australia New Zealand, England.

Foot note:

I know everyone who has served their country who reads this will have tears in their eyes, including me. Prayer chain for our Military… Don’t break it! Please send this on after a short prayer for our service men and women. Don’t break it! They die for me and mine and you and yours and deserve our honor and respect.

‘Lord, hold our troops in your loving hands. Protect them as they protect us..bless them and their families for the selfless acts they perform for us in our time of need.. In Jesus Name, Amen.’

There is nothing attached. Just send this to people in your address book. Do not let it stop with you. Of all the gifts you could give a Marine, Soldier, Sailor, Airman, & others deployed in harm’s way, prayer is the very best one.

GOD BLESS YOU!!!

=========================

Me:
Do you want me to publish this, and say, yes it indeed is moving, and which American president murdered this brave soldier over nothing, G.W. Bush, or Barack Obama?
Snowbird replied:
It’s irrelevant which President sent him there, although it was probably Obama. It’s the bravery of the soldier and his family and the compassion shown by the pilots, flight attendants and passengers. Why make it political?
Me:
See my comments in italics:
========================
I respectfully ask that all of you reflect on this event and the sacrifices that millions of our men and women have made to ensure our freedom and safety in these USA, Canada, Australia New Zealand, England.
If this ain’t political, I’m a Republican. I hate what happened physically and psychically to every American soldier who served in Korea, Vietnam, Central America, Kuwait, Iraq and Afghanistan. I hate it all the more because I do not believe they fought for my freedom, nor for your freedom. They fought for something else. Yes, I know they believed, or most of them believed, they fought for my and your freedom. Yes, I know they were brave. They sacrificed. What I hope the next person who creates a forward like this does, he/she uses it to lament needless American wars and the loss of life and limb and the soul damage such wars wreak on American troops and their families, and on the enemy troops and their families, and on the US budget, and on the other countries’ budgets.
Foot note:
I know everyone who has served their country who reads this will have tears in their eyes, including me. Prayer chain for our Military… Don’t break it! Please send this on after a short prayer for our service men and women. Don’t break it! They die for me and mine and you and yours and deserve our honor and respect.
‘Lord, hold our troops in your loving hands. Protect them as they protect us..bless them and their families for the selfless acts they perform for us in our time of need.. In Jesus Name, Amen.’
There is nothing attached. Just send this to people in your address book. Do not let it stop with you. Of all the gifts you could give a Marine, Soldier, Sailor, Airman, & others deployed in harm’s way, prayer is the very best one.
GOD BLESS YOU!!! I would modify this prayer, by asking God to open the eyes of all Americans and their elected officials and the military-industrial complex, so they see what is really going on and they stop doing it and bring home the US troops they have needlessly and/or selfishly put into harm’s way.
==========================
Snowbird replied:
You’re entitled to your opinion, but it seems to me that you have big problems with national security policy since 1945. I think most Americans aren’t there now and hopefully never.
Me:
I have big problems with invented and/or political wars cast as national security policy, which very definitely is politics.
As I read pre-WWII history, the Japanese felt they had no other choice but to attack America, because of American foreign policy toward Japan. I sadly appears that Roosevelt knew the Japanese fleet was headed toward Pearl Harbor and he let the attack happen, because he wanted America to enter WWII.
Are you sure that airline forward wasn’t a made up story, which many political forwards are.
Snowbird replied:
I would feel that I was used if that were to be the case. I heard that about FDR, but I hope it wasn’t true. It hasn’t been proved and I hope I am not disappointed. The irony of WWII is that stupid bastard Hitler declared war on us for no good reason, which was just what FDR and WSC wanted. However, it had to be done and I’m glad we made the necessary decisions.
Me:
In our advanced years, we both know little that comes out of the White House or Congress can be trusted, regardless of which party is on top.
I read a truly chilling book in the early 1990s, which convinced me that Churchill and the Allied Command knew for a fact that Adolph Hitler and his top inner circle were demonically possessed, how it happened, and how that enabled to them to take over Germany so totally, prelude to WW II. This information was buried after the war, it was decided the public could not handle the truth.
The Spear of Destiny, Trevor Ravenscroft – not for the faint of heart
===============================
Sloan Bashinsky
keysmyhome@hotmail.com

Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s, and unto God that which is God’s – various grubby scenarios

From my first cousin Leo yesterday:

Leo Sullivan-Bashinsky

This is my simple religion. There is no need for temples; no need for complicated philosophy. Our own brain, our own heart is our temple; the philosophy is kindness.

Dalai Lama

Sloan Bashinsky

Well said, this world sure would be a far different place if everyone lived in that way. Does this statement by the Dalai Lama mean he doesn’t need Buddhism, its temples?

Leo Sullivan-Bashinsky

I guess you would have to ask him.

===========================

more on that at the very end of this long post, after the Alabama Crimson Tide babble with an old Alabama amigo, meanwhile

===========================

Fwd from Larry Murray:

Date: Fri, 23 Nov 2012 17:48:13 -0800 From: aljolson2@yahoo.com Subject: Internal Auditor For The County To: bigpinenews@aol.com CC: carruthers-heather@monroecounty-fl.gov; rice-david@monroecounty-fl.gov; neugent-george@monroecounty-fl.gov; boccdis5@monroecounty-fl.gov; kohlage-danny@monroecounty-fl.gov

Editor:

I wholly endorse your recommendation to support Commissioner Heather Carruthers’ proposal that the county establish the position of Internal Auditor. While the County Clerk performs auditor functions for the county, the time and energy of that office is limited. Having someone full time in the county, reporting directly to the BOCC, would be very valuable.

I have only one reservation. The School Board, two and a half years ago, hired an internal auditor that reported to the Board. Everything worked well the first year as the appointee took his job seriously and reported monthly to the Board. Unfortunately, the SB Internal Auditor lost interest in his auditing activity as he was drawn in to the inner circle of the superintendent, something of a conflict as he was employed by the Board.

The School Board also, for unknown reasons, lost interest in the functioning of the internal auditor and acquiesced to his transfer to the superintendent’s office. With that transfer came the end of the experiment with an independent internal auditor.

If the county is going to have an effective independent internal auditor, it is incumbent on the BOCC to take that office seriously and to provide regular oversight and direction to their appointee. Otherwise, everything will slide down the gutter as happened in the School District.

Larry Murray

=======================

My reply to All:

The School Board also lost interest in its own voluntary Audit & Finance Committee, if the School Board ever had interest to begin with, which how that went leaves in doubt. The County Commission ignored its Independent Auditor, Monroe County Clerk of Courts Danny Kohlage, who warned the County Commission of the Druckemiller situation and the County Commission ignored that warning. If the County Commission ignored Danny Kohlage, what causes us to think the County Commission will do any better with its own Internal Auditor, whose job is at the County Commission’s leisure? Wouldn’t the County Commission prefer to use new County Clerk of Courts Amy Heavlin, who apparently has much auditing experience, and who does not depend on the County Commission for her job, than hire someone at an additional wage and benefits cost to the taxpayers to do what Danny Kohlage did but was ignored? Sloan Bashinsky

========================

Another Fwd from Larry Murray:

Date: Fri, 23 Nov 2012 17:26:11 -0800 From: citizenlarry007@yahoo.com Subject: Well Done! To: John.Dick@KeysSchools.com CC: mark.porter@keysschools.com

John:

I would like to compliment you on your insightful comments regarding the Salary List at Tuesday’s meeting. Without your investigative skills, the list would have been approved without question.

Calling attention to “bumps” for some new directors was valuable. At the time Superintendent Porter announced his new organizational chart and the creation of directors, I raised questions about salaries for those directors and whether or not there would be adjustments upward for the currently lesser paid. My concerns were swatted aside. Apparently, there was an attempt to increase these salaries and you headed it off. Kudos.

I also liked that you caught the flim flam with supplements for athletic directors. I think we would agree that the whole supplement issue calls for a thorough analysis. I have been trying for 6 weeks to obtain a copy of this year’s supplement list. When I returned home from the meeting, I did find in my email something resembling a supplement list, though I hope to obtain something more usable. I expect that your reading of the supplement list as well as mine will reveal some interesting anomalies.

Your commentary about the list of supplements reminded me a lot of the John Dick of old. Now that you are no longer chairman, perhaps you will have the time to do the investigative research at which you are so good. I expect that Ed Davidson will work closely with you in that regard.

Larry Murray

======================

My reply to All:

Larry, have you had time to go through the supplemental pay list?

Not sure I would characterize the Athletic Directors’ pay as flim flam, if they are not being overpaid but it’s simply trying to make do with what is there in a climate where nobody is going to be happy with the make-do.

Although John, you don’t like the idea, you know, as do the other school board members and Mark know, without an operations revenue influx, mostly likely through a tax increase, this school district’s employee morale problem will not abate and might well become more serious. Dr. Ed Shine [Superintendent of Schools candidate] told you that during his public interview at Marathon High School. Nothing has changed.

Sloan

===================

On bigpinekey.com’s Coconut Telegraph yesterday:

[F**K The Homeless]

The Hidden in Plain View project is nothing more than a blatant exploitation of a particular societal group who have been coerced into willingly “performing” for no benefit whatsoever merely for the ego-stroking of a few clever people eager for the opportunity to get their names mentioned again in the public forum. That, and the community-garden-for-the-homeless scheme that spawned it is a sad attempt to con the public: it will never function as anything more than a convenient outdoor toilet and a place to put a self-serving brass plaque. So who does this feel-good fiasco benefit?

From the TSKW.ORG web article on the exhibit: “Special project grants from the Florida Keys Council of the Arts and the Southernmost Homeless Assistance League, as well as community contributions and private donations aided in bringing this vision to life.”

OK, so now we know the real impetus for the project: free flowing government grant money is easier to get than actually doing something useful for this segment of society and makes fools feel good from the sterile sidelines. Making a circus act of our homeless people is not useful to them, but it is very useful for the few big heads involved. The people responsible for this project and those who have latched onto it like leeches have used the homeless citizens of Key West to pad their own wallets a little while padding their bloated egos a whole lot more.

Sycophants always attract one another to their mutual back-patting orgies. Interesting that they fawn and bleat about being Shamans. True Shamans don’t boast and flaunt about it. Rather, I say shame is more appropriate in this case.

======================

My submission to the Coconut Telegraph:

Reply to yesterday’s “F**K the homeless Actually, only one shaman, me, claimed to be a shaman. However, the inspiration for Hidden In Plain View was Erika Biddle’s, the hard work was hers, I was just a bit player; and I was who told Erika she is a shaman, to her shock, as she had no clue; and I was who published that Erika is a shaman, without telling her I was going to do it. As far as I know, no one who contributed money to the exhibition made a penny back from it. As far as I know, the few who did contribute money understood there was no profit in it for them or for any organization they represented. Obviously, the people who were deeply involved, Erika, photographers SheelMan and Ralph de Palma, and the financial contributors, including me, received “free advertising”. Perhaps they will somehow profit from that. Perhaps not. I can’t help but wonder, though, if this attack was fueled mostly, or totally, by the author of the attack knowing I was tangentially involved late in the event. Homeless people were presented, finally, as real people, instead of as a one-sided circus act so often panhandled on the Coconut Telegraph and in The Key West Citizen in articles, Citizen’s Comments, letters to the editor. More than this author can possibly know, I know how truly awful homeless people can be. More than this author can possibly know, I know how truly beautiful homeless people can be. More than this braveheart anonymous author can possibly know, I know how truly like the worst homeless people he is underneath his self-righteous mainstream disguise. Sloan Bashinsky

=============================

Nashville J replied to yesterday’s Thanksgiving Saturday homily – even as we do unto the least of these in plain view post:

Sloan:

Really – are you really surprised that the Citizen has not done anything on the Hidden in Plain View exhibition? They want the homeless to just go away and not bring attention to them unless it is something BAD they are doing. Maybe The Hidden in Plain View exhibition didn’t buy enough advertising in the Citizen for them to need to cover it and alert others about it. It’s always what is good for the Citizen and the Conchs, NOT what citizens really might need to know about.

Sorry I never got to taste Isa’s wonderful food but she certainly appears to have touched many lives thru it. RIP Isa !

J

=======================

I replied:

Well J, I would have thunk, maybe I should say, ass-u-me-d, after that whoopee loud editorial slamming the previous Sunday’s Romney-endorsement editorial and making much hullabaloo about Key West being all about One Human Family and demanding that from the city and The Citizen, The Citizen might have covered the Hidden In Plain View opening, which put in the shade any past art opening in Key West by several light years. But then, The Citizen’s Gwen Filosa had written a darn good announcement of the Hidden In Plain View opening a couple of days before it happened, so I suppose the The Citizen could fall back on that as an excuse for not covering the opening itself. Even so, that’s no excuse for The Citizen’s wholly-owned subsidiary, Solares Hill, which mostly is about the arts and history, not covering the opening. The high society Conch Color weekly rag, published by Tom Oosterhoudt, didn’t cover the opening either, even though some Key West luminaries were there. If you feel up to paying for it with a credit card, go to keysnews.com and click on the electronic edition of The Citizen today, the latter of half of which is this week’s Solares Hill. About a 2-minute download on my laptop.

See what all art happenings, book reviews, etc. get big coverage in Solares Hill today, while the all-time blockbuster super star art opening of all Key West time gets no mention whatsoever that I saw when I scrolled through it a little while ago. Same happened last week, the first Sunday after the smash opening. I look forward to the member of The Citizen Editorial Board who wrote that One Human Family editorial demand, I know this person quite well, he attended the Hidden In Plain View opening, making a heap of public commotion about Solares Hill hyping every art happening under the sun and moon in Key West but Hidden In Plain View. It was not in jest that the soul drawing I was moved to do for the opening has written on it, “One Human Family” in faint pink letters, over which in bold black is a Swastika, and on another part of the drawing is written, “The road to hell is paved with good intentions, but there are far worse things than being homeless.” You very well may have hit the nails squarely on their heads in what you wrote to me. Yes, you would have loved Isa’s cooking, into which she put her soul and her self. Sloan

========================

Sancho Panza replied to the Isa part of yesterday’s post:

On 11/25/2012 10:05 AM, sloan bashinsky wrote: The Gift? Sad that people wait until we are gone to let us know how much we meant to them! ~ 0 ~ Even sadder still… to hear a caged bird singing beautiful songs to her beloved… the wind! ~ 0 ~ Messages in a time capsule cast onto infinity… the shaman’s last dance of power!

==========================

I replied:

Well, I suppose if someone dies, whom we loved and/or respected, and we did not know it was coming, or had not seen that person in a long time but we had wonderful memories, we all could say nothing and go forward as if nothing had happened, sort of like we do anyway, I suppose. Sometimes I wonder what, if any, noise my leaving this life might instigate? Perhaps it will the the sound of one hand clapping. But then, perhaps there will be loud cheers that they don’t have to listen to me or receiving my ravings any longer. I don’t imagine it matters to much to the one who leaves, though. For them, it might be a great relief that it’s all over, after they realize what has happened and get used to the idea. I really don’t know for sure, because I don’t remember how I felt the last time I left. Or the time before that, etc.

============================

Sancho replied:

That’s true, death can come suddenly… my father died that way… fell and hit his head! If only we could follow our own advice… but we don’t. The people that know Sloan Bashinsky will sooner or later die too… in about 100 years all memories of Sloan Bashinsky would be crowded together as part of the useless, New Age bunch of parasites from the 20th century who believed that angels and other spiritual agencies ruled their destinies. God will be truly dead by then, so don’t feel to bad, you will be in good company. Maybe Jesus, you and I can get together for lunch at Isa’s place in the sky! :-)

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I replied:

It’s been my experience that New Age people tend to view me as close kin to the devil. But then, so do Christian people. Most people, perhaps not all, have emotions, and when someone important to them dies, they need to deal with the emotions they experience over that loss. You learn that when your son dies.

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Sancho replied:

I don’t want people to cry for me at all… I would much rather they throw a big party in celebration of my life… I mean, it is not as if death is something unnatural… sooner or later we all need to take that trip… but I can understand your loss of your son being a shock to you… I can understand that because it is an aberration… there should an order to death and dying!

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I replied:

Actually, there is no way you can understand the loss of my son, unless you experienced a similar loss. What people do when I depart this life is their business, but I fixed it in my will so they can’t haul my remains back to Alabama to be buried. My ashes are to be spread in several locations in the Keys. Not sure that is good news to everyone in the Keys, what if my ashes are “radioactive”? I hope when I depart, it is with a sense of nothing left undone that I could have done, all insults inflicted by me on other people resolved, by interpersonal interaction or by karma being lived and thus burned. I hope I leave looking forward, that I am expectant. That I have no regrets. Pretty tall order.

==============================

 

Sancho replied:

 

When I was 14 my brother was killed in a revolution… never found the body(common “grave” burials were…. common). My Mother went literally crazy after that… she could not accept that he was really dead… there was no body to buried, to mourn… and she latched on the desperate hope that he was alive, “somewhere”. I’ve lived through that and felt(feel) her pain… as I write these words, tears swell from a place seldom touched… you too don’t know about having to uproot everything that was familiar to you and move to a an alien World as a poor refugee… we’ve all have had our pound of flesh exacted from us by life!  My mother didn’t have the luxury of feeling sorry for herself for long she went to work in a factory for minimal wage… just enough to keep my sister and eye with a roof over our heads… never took a penny of assistance from the government because she was obsessed with one thing only, to bring my brother’s son and his mother here… a lot tragic things happened after that but I better stop here.
==============================
From the Dominican Republic, Sancho is a retired Lucent Technologies scientist, fluent in several foreign languages, including English

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Jerry, featured in yesterday’s post, replied:

As I asked, do you know the three purposes which Jesus Himself gave for His appearance on earth. Telling us how to live better lives was not one of them. That was Buddha’s job. And its not that people misunderstand Buddha, He is understood well enough. Buddha just screwed it up by miss understanding the relationship between humans and the universe. Of course, his daddy was very rich, so people listened. Do you know the reasons Jesus gave?

Some silly people ask me, ” how do you know the reasons Jesus came?” hint: the reasons Jesus gave start with Jesus saying: “I came for this purpose” Do you know the reasons Jesus gave for His coming?

==========================

It’s one thing, Jerry, to read that announcement, it’s another thing altogether to experience what Jesus modeled and taught, which fuses in the soul what he came to this world to do. Jesus was not theoretical, he was empirical. He lived and taught soul science, which human science even yet does not recognize, or fathom. He offered no free ticket to God, but a way to live that brought a person closer to God, as he demonstrated in his life, and as his disciples demonstrated in their lives. As did others demonstrate in their lives, who are unnamed in the New Testament, but who lived in that time. As did others, who lived in later times, some of whom are known in history, others are not known. Some called themselves Catholics, or Christians, some did not. But they all, each in their own way, lived the model Jesus provided and taught. He told his disciples in the Gospels that he had flocks of which they knew not.

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Jerry replied:

You don’t know the purpose Jesus himself gave for his coming, do you?

Stop telling people what or why Jesus did things and I will stop asking you questions.

Jerry

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I replied:

I know the church line, and I know my experience, which don’t seem particularly in sync. I often hear Jesus died for my sins, but objectively, how could he do that, if I was not yet born? I often hear salvation is through grace and of our own we can do nothing, but Jesus certainly taught differently in the Gospels, and his brother James said by his (James’) works we would see his faith.

It might go differently between us, Jerry, if you explained your relationship with Jesus, and your views of what he did for you.

Sloan

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Jerry replied: [this is long, read, scan, skip as suits you, same for all the rest of this post, although you might be interested in the Alabama Crimson Tide banter next to the end, and the question I would like to ask the Dalai Lama, at the very end of this today]

The conventional account is this: “All are born into sin. Jesus’s death forgives sin. All anyone must do to gain salvation is accept the gift of Jesus’ sacrifice.”

This makes no sense and is not what the prophets taught. No one thought to ask the question: What is sin? The words “sin” and “forgive” are at the heart of the misunderstanding. It doesn’t matter what word was used originally or into what word it was translated. That is unimportant, because what ever word had been chosen, it would have been that word that would have been the focus of thousands of years of misinterpretation.

Everyone makes mistakes that hurt others, but which they did not intend. Some make far more mistakes than others. A few intend to do things that hurt others for their own gain. (reprehensible) A few, whether by chance or careful planning, do no harm to anyone. None of these are the sin into which we were all born.

Think of it this way. Sin, in this context, merely means inadequacy or inability. Quite literally to “miss the mark” Like that of a child who is too young to take care of herself. She is incapable of doing what is required to continue her existence without help.

She can’t procure food. She doesn’t even realize that food must be acquired. In her young experience, food just appears on the table when it is time to eat. That is how we see it. Food just grows in the field. It just happens. We give no thought about the immense complexity of biological processes which literally turn dirt into nutrients. We presume natural processes have no origin. We think, it just happens, in the same way a young child thinks food just appears at dinner time. The child never thinks to thank mom for preparing the food and mom never thinks to thank God for preparing the creation to produce food without which both mother and child would die.

It was not that the first man did something harmful and therefore all his descendants are charged with the crime. It is that mankind in her infancy is fundamentally incapable of taking care of her self. You and I are human and therefore inherited this fundamental incapacity. If mankind is left to her own devices, she shall inexorably self destruct. No Karma or eight fold path to enlightenment will bring her around. No rapture will take her out of it. The path leads inexorably to death –ultimately to extinction.

“Salvation” or the continuation of humanity and the immortality of a few do can not come by the efforts of humans –because we are fundamentally incapable, just like a young child is fundamentally incapable of taking care of her self.

God sees one human doing a kindness for another the same way you or I see a little child bringing a glass of water to her thirsty sibling, not realizing the glass was filled with a house hold cleaner. We smile on the child, instead of being angry, knowing the goodness that the child meant, but the child is completely ignorant of the danger she caused. Even so, our kindnesses for one another are fraught with unseen dangers. “We are all born into ‘ sin.’ (inadequacy, incapacity)”

The parent steps in, praises the child for her effort and replaces the glass with a plastic cup of fresh water. This is what Jesus did, His whole ministry. God does this for us all the time, but like children we are constantly ignorant of it.

Jesus of Nazareth, didn’t come to this realization over the course of His lifetime. Instead, He created the universe to express this truth in the first place and to teach His children this truth. His prophets foretold His coming; and He came at the appointed time to fulfill the promise that as Father of mankind, he would take our hand and guide us to salvation, the saving of mankind. When He came, His disciples thought that all the promises would be fulfilled. He explained to them that the prophets spoke in riddles for the sorting out of the leadership from the rest (“how else shall I do for the daughter of my people?” –Jeremiah 9:7) and that the final fulfillment would come in two parts. Matthew 24 and Acts of the Apostles 1 “When they therefore were come together, they asked of him, saying, Lord, wilt thou at this time restore again the kingdom?”

It is mankind’s fundamental incapacity which causes most of us to say to our Father, like the children we are; in our hubris we say, “Dad, you can’t possibly know how it feels to live my life. Dad, you don’t know what you are talking about. I have it all figured out.” Paul explains all this in his letter to the Romans chapter 5.

Most will not learn, a very few will. The kingdom of God is like unto a very rich man who has many children and many businesses. Most of his children will grow up to work in his factories, but a few will be wise enough to be management. The wise will lead the rest of humanity into an era of peace and prosperity.

The world will be fundamentally different after this promise is fulfilled, in an old testament kinda’ way “They shall beat their sword into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore.” Isaiah 2:4 and Micah 4:3 This sort of peace and love is the old testament which is renewed not done away by the Messiah, Jesus of Nazareth.

Only those who suffer and take from their suffering the balance between mercy and justice are fit to rule mankind. This is the example of suffering which Jesus provided and why John the baptist had to suffer and why Jesus warned His followers that they shall suffer. The way of Jesus is not the way of the multitudes, but the way of the leaders. “Narrow is the gate and straight the passage which leads to immortality (those who lead mankind,) few enter there at.”

There is a reason that blood was important, but that reason is beyond the scope of this short explanation.

In the Words of Jesus

1) He came to reconfirm the good news of the coming Kingdom.

Jesus said to them, ” I must preach the kingdom of God… for I was sent for this purpose” –Luke 4:43

” Do not think that I came to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I did not come to abolish . . . not the smallest letter or stroke shall pass from the Law until all is accomplished” –Matthew 5:17-18

2) A kingdom taught and explained by the prophets. The establishment of this kingdom will be violently opposed by men.

Isa 2:12, Isa 13:9, Isa 29:5, Isa 47:8, Jer 25:32, Jer 30:23, Hag 2:6, Mal 4:1, Rev 6:12, Rev 8:7, Rev 9:1, Rev 18:21, Isa 5:26, Isa 11:12, Jer 32:36, Eze 11:17, Eze 20:33, Zec 4:1, Zec 4:11, Rev 11:3, Isa 11:11, Isa 27:12, Isa 54:7, Isa 56:8, Isa 60:4, Jer 16:14, Jer 23:3, Jer 23:7, Jer 31:7, Jer 50:4, Eze 28:25, Eze 34:11, Eze 36: 24, Eze 37:21, Eze 38: 8, Eze 39:25, Hsa 1:10, Joel 3:1, Mic 2:12, Mic 4:6, Zep 2:1, Zep 3:18, Zec 10:8, Isa 48:10, Jer 9:7, Jer 30:4, Jer 30:11, Jer 46:28, Dan 11:32, Zec 13:9, Mal 3:2, 1Cr 3:13, 1Pe 4:12, Job 19:25, Job 33:24, Isa 26:19, Jer 30:8, Eze 37:13, Dan 12:1, Mat 7:13, Jhn 5:24, Isa 2:2, Isa 60:10, Isa 60:15, Jer 3:17, Jer 23:5, Eze 37:24, Dan 7:21, Dan 7:27, Mic 4:1, Zec 8:1, Zec 12:3, Zec 14:8, Zec 14:14, Rev 19:19, Zep 3:8

” Don’t imagine that I came to bring peace to the earth! No, I came to bring a sword. I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. Your enemies will be right in your own household” –Matthew 10:34-36

Jesus said, ” For judgment I came into this world, so that those who do not see may see, and that those who see may become blind” –John 9:39

” I have come to bring fire to the earth” –Luke 12:49

Therefore Pilate said to Him, ‘So You are a king?’ Jesus answered, ” You say correctly that I am a king. For this I have been born, and for this I have come into the world ” –John 18:37

3) Establishing this kingdom is not meant to harm, but to heal. They that rule the earth now are not fit. It is for the healing of the nations, that the lost sheep, the meek, shall be given the earth as a possession and to command. Under whose direction and control, “They shall beat their sword into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore.” Isaiah 2:4 and Micah 4:3

” The Son of Man has come to save that which was lost” –Matthew 18:11

” The Son of Man has come to seek and to save that which was lost” –Luke 19:10

” I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly” –John 10:10

“The Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve” –Mark 10:45

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Jerry replied again:

To be very direct and tell you what Jesus did for me.

Prepares my food in the field for months while man harvests, processes and serves it for only days.

Prepares the air we breath and the planets and stars in their courses.

Prepares the brain chemistry and the biology that allows me to live and to think.

Provides through His prophets a world view that explains all things and comforts me with the promise that He is our father and that He will never let something bad happen to mankind or to me.

I learn from the prophets that the world is much bigger than I could ever imagine and that He will protect me from the real dangers and that the dangers I perceive are harmless, like a child afraid of the dark.

My death is nothing. It is easily rectified, but my survival in reality is far beyond my ability. He comforts me with the knowledge that He, like a loving father for his son, shall stand between me and destruction.

I learn that mankind’s suffering serves a purpose and will end.

He made an example of all this in his suffering and his resurrection so that I can know all these things as certainly as I know ancient Babylon existed or that Anaxagoras measured the diameter of the world. I know these things because of the ancient records, the same ancient records that record the prophets and the life of Jesus of Nazareth.

==========================

I replied:

If Jesus is our father and the Creator of this world and the air we breathe, etc., then why did he tell his disciples to pray to God, “Our Father who are in heaven?” Why did he refer to God as his father? Looks to me you have Jesus mixed up with God, but then, so does Christendom. Thanks for clarifying where you get your info, from the Bible, which influences your thoughts and beliefs. My experiences with Jesus seem more up close and personal (often jolting) than your experiences with him. We are in agreement, our physical deaths are nothing and our survival in reality is beyond our capability, and Jesus stands between us and destruction, or self-destruction might be more accurate, in the soul sense. Don’t see what got you so worked up. I parroted Jesus from the book you hold so dear.

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Jerry replied:

Others were also confused about the relationship between Jesus and the Father. But Jesus says. “Have you been with me so long now and yet do not realize that if you have seen me, then you have seen the Father.”

Like I already said. I got worked up because you painted Jesus as a Buddha wan’na be. Someone who will do anything to make one feel better but do nothing to make one better.

I do not agree that death means little or nothing. It is everything for most of life. And it is not more accurately our self-destruction. God is not the god of only thoughts, ideas and feelings. He is the God of the whole world in which we live. Humanity will not be destroyed in the sense that we will lose knowing who we are. We will be destroyed in the sense of starvation or a meteor impact or disease.

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I replied:

Jesus meant the Father was operating through him, so if those around Jesus saw him, they saw the Father. If Jesus was the Father, to what did he pray in Gethsemane? To what did he say, Not my will but thy will be done, O Lord? I have never painted Jesus as a Buddha wannabe. I have always painted him as bringing the way to God. Where do you get the idea from anything I ever wrote that Jesus was about making people feel better. He worked people over something awful in the Gospels, when they were out of line. He berated his disciples for not hearing what he was telling them many times. He said steep is the way, narrow the gate; many are called, but few are chosen; the labor is great but the workers are few; many will call him Lord and he will say he never knew them. He spent his entire ministry trying to help people be better, by behaving differently, and the was crucified for his effort by people who didn’t want people to hear what he was saying, and who didn’t like what he had said to them about their behavior. He leans on me something awful, in an effort to make me better, perhaps a hopeless case, but at least he tries. Destruction of the body, human death, is inevitable, regardless of cause. Destruction of the human race on this planet probably is inevitable. Destruction of the soul is the real threat, and that is what Jesus tried to teach people stop doing to themselves and to start living as God would have them live, as he explained to them many times in many ways. At least, in the Gospels that’s what he did. And you criticize me for explaining all of that bad news in what I publish? You criticize me for trying to make people feel good? I give kudos when they are due, but I don’t fawn.

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Jerry replied:

do you really want to talk about thus stuff? or are you going to tell me I just don’t feel it the first time you and I don’t agree on something?

do you really want to talk about thus stuff? or are you going to tell me I just don’t feel it the first time you and I don’t agree on something?

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I replied:

Jerry, from the get go back at Sippin’ in Key West I have told you that you and I are not on the same page, and probably not in the same book – I do not mean the Bible by that, I mean a state of perspective and response to life. I have told you why that is, you are living from your neck up, in your mind, which is impressive but it has not understood what Jesus was about. And it tries to reduce everything to scientific explanation, yet loses objectivity when speaking of Jesus and has no sense of spirit physics, based on all I have heard and read from you. You speak to what with which you have had no experience, from all you have told me, which is direct interplay ongoing with that which is not of this world, as if it is of no consequence and only you have the answers. You come across as stuck in the manic phase of bi-polar disorder. I don’t like writing that. I don’t like having discussion with you, because of how such always go. You have created a world, outlook, which I suppose is comfortable to you. I can’t say the world in which I live, or the things I see and am shown, are comfortable to me. I don’t get to choose what this world is, should be. I get to live what it is, unfiltered as far as I can tell.

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Circling back to Alabama and a topic I know all too well because my father and Coach Paul “Bear” Bryant were best friends, from an old childhood friend, who because of a dream I once had about him, calls himself in his emails to me, The General:

Subject: Alabama v. Georgia

More importantly, friend Sloan, are you going to track down Kevin Butler and wager a pint on the game next weekend? Hope you have a Blessed Holiday Season. The Gen

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I replied:

Remind my few remaining brain cells who Keven Butler is? I ass-u-me he lives in or near Key West, if I’m to try to track him down? As for wagering a pint, if I could drink a pint, I’d buy said Keven Butler one, if I could track him down, without wagering on the game. Out walking this morning, I gave the angels a bit of hell for Notre Dame winning yesterday, after I had told some people in a nap dream shortly before the LSU-Alabama game that all the pretenders must fall. Alabama fell soon afterward. The next week, Kansas State got smashed and Oregon got eked, perhaps with a bit of semi-blind instant replay referee help. I kept waiting for Southern Cal to pull it off last night, but it was not to be. I told the angels this morning, maybe Notre Dame is the real deal, they looked pretty strong most of the season. And maybe Notre Dame-Alabama would be a great title game, given I don’t think the Tide ever beat the Irish before. But darn, I said, does Georgia look strong, and darn are them dawgs salivating to get even with the elephant for past insults. I suppose I will be somewhere watching it, maybe here at Walden, which is where I watched all the other football games this year, and last year. Or maybe Kevin Butler, whoever he is, offers a new viewing opportunity. Ciaosky

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The General replied:

Kevin Butler was an All-American place kicker/punter for Georgia, and later for the Chi Bears,who, if I recall correctly, you watched a bit of football with a few years back in one of your Key West hangouts. The Tide has beaten ND a few times (Legion Field, 1986) but has had national titles snatched away by the Children of Touchdown Jesus as well. Enjoy. TG

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I replied:

I remember a KW amigo introducing me to Jake Scott in a sports bar, perhaps Kevin Butler was there, too. I had some conversation with Jake about his Georgia, Canadian Montreal football and NFL Miami Dolphin days, as I recall, and wrote about some of that, as I also recall. In my previous email, LSU-Alabama should have been A & M-Alabama, about hour before that kick-off I dreamt of saying all pretenders must fall. Then, Johnny Touchdown delivered the coup de grace, with some help from a slightly not wonderful Tide offense and a slightly mesmerized Tide defense.

Thanks for filling in the blank about the Tide beating the Irish. That was the year I had moved to Santa Fe and was living on an entirely different planet. Wasn’t that also the year the Bear Jesus resigned and went to be with the other Jesus?

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The General replied:

I think you are right and I just had the name wrong because I heard Butler’s name mentioned yesterday.

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The General was a serious Bama fan before one of his daughters went to Auburn. He wasn’t entirely right in the head after that, trying to serve two masters and all. I didn’t have the heart to remind him that Bama clobbered the Tigers 49-zip Saturday, playing the reserves most of the second half, after running up a 42-zip first half lead.

There actually are several questions I’d like to ask the Dalai Lama, if I ever get the chance, but the one I asked my cousin Leo was rhetorical.

The main question I would ask the Dalai Lama, it is said when someone asked Buddha about God, Buddha said that is too big a topic to even discuss. So is God too big a topic for the Dalai Lama to even discuss?

God wasn’t too big a topic for Jesus to discuss in the Gospels.

Sloan Bashinsky

keysmyhome@hotmailcom

Thanksgiving Sunday homily – Godspeed, Isa, and other adventures in Paradise

From facebook yesterday:
Pamela Mooney
I was just informed that we lost our Beloved “Isa” today. It saddens my heart but I know she is in that Big Island in the sky making black beans for all our friends and Captains! RIP Isa, I will always love you! Pamela.
Janet Wood and 14 others like this.
Rhonda Brewer So sad….. Loved her to pieces. She only spoke Spanish to me me and my children. Bendiciones Mrs. Isa.
Scott Nielsen Pam, are you talking Manny and Isa’s , Isa? I used to work for them when I was 12.
Christy Penrod RIP Isa…my family loved her so. I have known her since I was 11. I know she is in a better place…
Christy Penrod I wish she woud have given me her recipe for the salad dressing she always made!
Heather Starr-Bagwell RIP Isa…. she will forever be in our hearts
Toni Ayers Bennett So sad! Oh the memories!!!! Hugs to u Isa!!!!!
Gretchen Born Twichell RIP Isa, you were 1 of a kind, forever in our hearts!
Leslie Manzini Isa brought much happiness to all of us! Manny and Isa’s ~ a memorable part of my life.
Sloan Bashinsky Me, too – I ate many of Isa and Manny’s meals, at both of their restaurants, and at the Green Turtle Inn, when they cooked there. It was eating their snapper fingers at the Green Turtle that caused me to love eating fish. Their conch chowder was to die for. Ditto key lime pie.
Toni Ayers Bennett Omg the turtle steak bbeans n rice old days….. But there will never ever b a key lime pie or conch chowder to rival hers!!!!!!
Chef Michael She was one special Lady…RIP
Mike Hamilton God bless
Teresa Ambrose Watkins I just heard .. So sad .. Like family.. Lived near and worked for ..Rip !!! Isa ..
Debra Wells Werner Heaven just gained another angel – Love you, Isa – my heart goes out to her family – RIP to such a special soul.
Charla Otte Chico It is so nice to see how much she influenced so many! We will miss her alot!
Juanita Russell Knudsen A true legend to Islamorada has been called home. We will look forward to all your wonderful cooking again in the heavenly home. RIP Isa. Prayers for Manny and all her family
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Bob, of Blue Hill, Maine, responded to yesterday’s Thanksgiving Saturday homily – even as you do unto the least of these in plain view post, which I put on Facebook in segments:
Tell me more!
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Back and forth re yestersday’s post with a Locust Fork, Alabama woman, from whom I had not heard in quite a while. She became an email pen pal while I was writing to my websites about my brother Major’s disappearance and suicide in March 2010, and became a constant source of support. Locust Fork is out in the sticks, about 35 miles north of Birmingham. I came to call her “Morticia,” but right now I can’t remember why.
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She wrote:
I enjoy your posts. Thank you for sending them. Chris
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I replied:
Well, kiss my foot! I thought maybe not hearing from you in so long that you had morticia-ed, glad to hear you didn’t! Hope you and hubby having a good Thanksgiving and the weather ain’t too terribly cold up there.
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She replied:
We are in Panama City Beach FL. Been here since Tues leaving Monday. Just the two of us for Thanksgiving. We are not your typical folks. We go out of town to avoid family at all cost. No all is well health wise for both of us. I will be 59 on Christmas Day.. I don’t plan on morticing out any time soon. Hopefully Gary will not either. Thanks for all the good articles.
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I replied:
I mostly was okay with being around my and my wives’ families over Thanksgiving and Christmas, as long as it didn’t last too long, but these days I wonder how I would hold up but don’t get to find out living down here in Asteroid Belt. Hope you and Gary enjoy P.C. and it’s not too cold there. The posts keep churning through me, almost like maybe I’m a typewriter and something else mostly is banging the keys, although I get some time on the keyboard.
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She replied:
It is actually hot here. I have not touched the sand or water. I will do that today. Gary and I are truly introverts. Family gets on my nerves so bad I never would care if I saw one on either side again for the remainder of my life on earth. I can’t see why anyone would not love KW.. but then it has its problems like any where else. To us that just visit it occasional it is a tropical paradise, but to those that live there. Just the same as everywhere else. crap sometimes. Alabama… no hope for it.. We are so racist and about 90 years behind the times. I don’t think I will ever live long enough to see it change. I hope I do. But doubtful of it happening.
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Bill, of Alabama, an old Vanderbilt fraternity brother wrote yesterday:
Hope all is well with you. I am astounded by the profusion of your writings.
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I replied:
Hi, Bill. All is what it is with me, I hope it’s alright. My writings have become like breathing, drinking water, eating food, going to the bathroom for me.
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Love Lane Jack of Key West wrote re yesterday’s post:
…Pastor Sloan of the Keys…!
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Once upon a time, as I stood at the base of the ramp at the soup kitchen on Flagler Avenue in Key West, Angela McCain opened the side door and came out, looked at us, said, “Let’s have Pastor Young say the blessing today.” That was me, Sloan Young, maybe more about that later. My prayer was, “We thank you for this food and for the people who prepared it for us.”
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Replying to yesterday’s post, Jerry of Key West wrote:
These words sound comforting, but they mislead. Terribly so. They trivialize Jesus’ purpose, turning His coming into the here and now, turning Jesus into a Buddha wan’na be. By such, these words harm those who read them. You should know yourself what Jesus said about the purpose of His coming before telling others what He is all about. Treat His coming with more respect than a prop for your story. If this is really what Jesus is all about, then all humanity is truly lost. He came instead to reclaim humanity. His will shall be done, His purpose shall not be frustrated. Those who try, shall be restrained, but not here nor now. It is as His prophets describe. Do you know the three purposes Jesus himself gave for His coming?
=========================
I replied:
In the Gospels, Jesus spent a lot of time and expended a great deal of effort trying to show by his model and explain by his words how to live in God’s will on this world and be reclaimed by moving closer to God. Somewhere in the Gospels, Jesus told his disciples that if they heard his sayings and did not do what he said to do, they were like the foolish man who built his house on sand and when the flood came the house fell down and how great was that fall! The prayer he taught was, God’s kingdom come, God’s will be done, on earth …. (as in heaven). His trial in Gethsemane was whether to go with what he wanted, his will, or surrender to God’s will. That, to me, sums up Jesus in a nutshell – God’s will, not my will, be done, on earth. As for his standing with God, Jesus told his disciples they could blaspheme him and they could be forgiven, but if they blasphemed the Holy Ghost (who was to come to them), they would not be forgiven. Looks to me Jesus held the Holy Ghost above himself when he said that to his disciples. His words are really pretty simple, but they are so difficult to live, usually, that the early churches came up with a much easier salvation formula. I read somewhere, and ran it by quite a few Buddhists who did not dispute it, that Buddha said he was not divine and a teacher greater than he would come. Most of those Buddhists were Americans raised in the Christian church. When I told them they would do better to try to live as Jesus said to live, I did not get a warm welcome, even though if they did live as Buddha said to live, they would live pretty much as Jesus said to live. About the same happened when I said much the same thing to Americans who were born Christian and became followers of India yogis, Taoists, Sufis, New Age leaders. I told them they went there trying to find the Jesus who had not worked for them in Christianity. A few of them laughed, admitted it. Living as Jesus modeled and taught others to live is a baptism in fire and in spirit, as he and John the Baptist said in the Gospels. In no way, Jerry, do I deminimize Jesus. To the contrary, I do my darnedest to remind people who he was and what he stood for and was and even still is about.
==========================
The way the angels, one of whom is Jesus, taught me to view my relationship with Jesus was, he, not I, knows where I stand with him and with God. My job is to do my best to live as he taught his disciples to live, and to do what I am told to do, and to not do what I am told not to do, which requires a great deal of nudging and correcting, with occasional encouragement, from Jesus and his cohorts, who remain ever hard on my case.
==========================
In that same vein, from Tim Gratz of Key West:
Great column today. Do you remember we first met when you gave my daughter and me a ride from Sugarloaf in March of 2007? At that time I was actively planning an anti-slavery rally we held at the high school on March 25, 2007. However, I did not follow through work on that until my passion for the issue was re-united in the spring of 2011. Are you by any chance able to attend a noon meeting of the Keys Coalition in Key Largo this Wednesday? I would love to introduce you to the current pastor at Glad Tidings. He is of Bahamian descent and is an educator and former pugilist. See http://jonathancarey.org/
[About sex and other forms of slave trafficking, about which I have had many email conversations with Tim, and a few face to face.]
=========================
I replied:
I don’t remember that, Tim, but consider I probably have stopped and picked people at bus stops maybe 200 times since I moved to Little Torch Key the first time, in the spring of 2006. That’s going to and from KW. Key Largo too far to drive for something I might get weird over like what happened in the Marathon church.
[The presenter hawked his new business, in which he hoped to make money educating people about sex trafficking in children and adults. I told him it was forbidden to commerce in such a terrible thing. Then, I left.] Perhaps you and the new Glad Tidings minister and I can break bread in KW.
===========================
Tim replied:
Well I always remember that act of kindness on your part and now I think there may be some sort of cosmic significance in it in that I was working on an anti-trafficking rally at the time. I can assure you the meeting in Key Largo will not be as the one in Marathon. I need to get to the Coalition e-mail to show you the speakers. Yes it would be good I think for you to meet Dr Carey. I am sure that he, like I, would agree with much of what you write re what Jesus really meant. By the way I once asked him the question you raised about whether Jesus was homeless and his answer was in the affirmative. I assume you may have read his thoughts about how Glad Tidings can help the community (front page of last Sunday’s “Citizen.” What are your thoughts about the concept of synchronicity?
Tim
===========================
I replied:
Looks to me there were several venues we would engage together after that initial meeting, all of which, yes, was arranged, and, imagine, still unfolding. If the angels tell me to go up to Key Largo for the presentation, of course I will go. I read the Glad Tidings article in The Citizen and was left wondering what the church’s new direction would be. I don’t get involved with churches for a while now, but perhaps that will change. Mostly, church people and ministers don’t seem comfortable with me, and for sure I seldom am comfortable in that venue. Maybe Dr. Carey will cure me of that. Synchronicity, serendipity, if it isn’t happening, something is wrong.
==========================
Tim replied:
If the angels tell me to go up to Key Largo for the presentation, of course I will go.
Well, I shall expect to see you then! Perhaps you can promote it in your blog and get some of your many friends from the Upper Keys to attend. Hopefully Connie will be able to attend. As you may know she is busy moving. I have heard Mr Feldman present before and he is very good. ==========================
On trafficking, I wrote this to Tim few days ago, responding to something else he had sent to me:
I think it is a worthy effort to stop a horrible practice which has many facets worldwide, but as I’ve written before, I don’t see any real dent being made in it and I hope I’m wrong about that. I still think the Duval Street magnet is the prime engine for slave trafficking in the lower part of the Keys, and I still think that’s where Keys Coalition should put its efforts, even though they are likely to go for naught.
 ==========================
From a Republican snowbird friend yesterday:
You are incredibly naïve about Israel and the Arabs working together.  The Israelis have offered to make the deserts bloom and help their adversaries enjoy a plentiful life.  Unfortunately, some people don’t know when to accept a good deal.
==========================
I replied:
I’m not in the least naive. I think the odds of peace in that area are zero minus. Yes, the radical Muslims can be blamed for it today. I suppose the French and British can be blamed for it historically, if my recollection is correct that they created Israel out of Arab land. ==========================
The way I became Sloan Young was, I was told to drop Bashinsky from my name and be my first and middle name at birth. The way I became Sloan Young Bashinsky again, was I was told to become Sloan Young Bashinsky again. Simple as that.
Likewise, the way I became homeless went back to my being told to give my 3rd wife the power to decide what, if anything, I would receive from our joint assets, if she and I split up. Simple as that.
The one thing Jesus told his disciples in the Gospels, which I seem not to have experienced, or perhaps I just don’t understand what he told them, was his yoke was easy and his burden was light. In comparison to the alternative, perhaps.
I heard nothing in my dreams last night about going to Key Largo for the trafficking presentation. That means Jesus and his cohorts have something else arranged for me on that day.
Lucky them, eating Isa’s cooking every day now.
Little did I know when I was eating Isa’s wonderful cooking in that other life in Isalmorada, dreaming of becoming a flats guide, what lay in store for me.
Meanwhile, The Key West Citizen and Solares Hill’s continued loud inhuman silence about the heavenly Hidden In Plain View homeless art, poetry and music exposition smash opening is deafening.
Sloan Bashinsky

post Thanksgiving Saturday homily – even as we do unto the least of these in plain view

Lisa, who once babysat my daughters and thought I was a terrible man because I hunted doves and brought them home and picked them, then cooked them on a bbq grill, while I got drunk, replied to yesterday’s another kind of Black Friday hidden in plain view – Key West, mostly post:

We bought a meal for a homeless man and his dog yesterday.

I replied:

Somewhere in the Gospels, Jesus told his disciples he was hungry and they fed him not, and they asked him when did that happen, and he looked over at some beggars nearby and said even as they (his disciples) did unto the least of these, they did it also for him. Maybe that homeless man and his dog were Jesus and an angel?

Lisa replied: It made my whole Thanksgiving day. What a wonderful feeling. He looked so grateful. I put two cans of dog food in the bag too.
I replied: He was grateful, his pooch, too. Elsewhere in the Gospels, Jesus said it is more blessed to give than to receive. Some years ago, I was given a slightly different version of that, which is: giving is receiving.
Lisa replied: And thank you for sharing that story out of the bible with me. Very meaningful indeed.
I replied: de nada, in fact, we could ask, wonder, when are we ever not in church?, in the sense that Jesus seemed always in church, albeit perhaps not in the way the church of his day, or churches of later times, viewed church.
=======================
In the movie “Brother Sun Sister Moon,” young Francis of Assisi had a vision in church, wherein Jesus asked Francis to help him repair his church. Thereafter, Francis fell gravely ill and seemed to be sure to die. His mother ministered to him and eventually he came out of it as if a miracle. Shortly thereafter, he had a falling out with his wealthy merchant father over giving away some of his father’s goods to the poor. That led to Francis stripping naked in the town square and handing his clothes to the town priest, and he walked out of town. He ended up at an old falling down stone church some miles away and, dressed in burlap, began rebuilding the church stone by stone. Time passed, he was joined by others from the town. Time passed, most of the common people had joined him. Finally, the area biship sent soldiers to the old church when Francis and his followers were away for the day, and they burned the old church and killed a man who had stayed behind to look after it.
Distraught, Francis traveled with two of his disciples, barefoot, in burlap, to Rome to seek audience with the pope, to be told why this awful thing had happened. On reaching Rome, they somehow got to where the pope sat on his throne, surrounded by his court in all its fine plumage, who wanted the pope to send the three beggars away. But the pope urged Francis to speak, and Francis looked around, forgot what he came all that way to say, and quoted the passage from the Gospels about serving two masters and the birds of the air and the lilies of the field, which enraged the pope’s court. However, the pope was smitten by something and came down from his throne and went to Francis and blessed him, and then the pope went to his knees and kissed Francis’ feet, and then the pope commissioned Francis to go forth and preach the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Christendom was the church Francis had been asked by Jesus to help him repair.
It is reported and recognized by the Vatican, that shortly before he died, Francis received the Stigmata, eruptions on his body of the physical wounds of Jesus on the cross, the first such stigmata recognized by the Vatican. The “beggar monk” Franciscans remain today a major sect in the Rome branch of Catholicism.
In the Gospels, Jesus told a man who had said he wanted to follow Jesus, so that the man would understand what that would be like, the foxes had their dens, the birds had their nests, but the son of man had no place to lay down his head. This was the passage I mentioned to Erika Biddle, when she first approached me about participating in Hidden In Plain View. She laughed, said she knew the passage very well, and had mentioned it herself to people from time to time.
A young pastor at Glad Tidings Church in Key West told me one Sunday afternoon at Higgs Beach, as his church fed perhaps 100 homeless people, including me, that that passage did not mean Jesus was homeless. He said Jesus had a home. I asked where? He said Jesus stayed with his mother when he wanted to be inside. I asked where was that in the Gospels? The young minister never was able to believe Jesus was homeless, even though it is in plain view throughout the Gospels that during his ministry Jesus was homeless in the secular sense, but not in the God sense.
========================
I drove down to Key West yesterday to see “Life of Pi”, and en route stopped at a bus stop on Summerland Key and offered a man, woman and their daughter a ride into town. The man and woman politely declined, said they would wait on the bus, which locals know means waiting until whenever likely as not. I said I often give people rides at bus stops, they declined again. I drove on.
The movie was pretty darn interesting, if you are into shipwrecks, stranded at sea, faith, miracles and poetry.
Driving home, I stopped at a bus stop on Sugarloaf Key, same Key Mangrove Mama’s is on, and offered what appeared to be a homeless man a ride, if he was going as far as I was going. He said he was going to Summerland Key. I said to get in, which he did with a day pack and four plastic grocery bags holding his possessions.
He said he was headed to Summerland Key to try to find a friend who lived on a boat, with whom he had stayed a few times. He was up that way, he said, trying to find a woman on Sugarloaf who owned him a little money for work he had done, but she was not home. He said he usually slept at KOTS in Key West, and would sleep there that night, if he could not find his friend who lived on a boat.
I said I had lived on the street in Key West, and had stayed at KOTS. I knew that scene. He said I seemed to be doing better. I said my father died and left me an inheritance, otherwise I would still be sleeping at KOTS. He said not all that long ago, he lived in San Diego, had a 3-bedroom, 2-bath home, a pretty good job, but the economy went south and he lost everything he had.
He said he had applied for Veteran’s disability and hoped to have that soon. I asked where he was in combat? He said it was after Vietnam, he was in “intelligence.” I said I understood, he could not tell me anything about that. He said, yes.
I said I once met a fellow in the St. Mary’s Soup Kitchen line, when the feeding happened at the church itself on Truman Avenue. I said after talking with the fellow a while, I figured out and said he had been in the CIA or something and he could not tell me about that. He said that was right. I said I imagined he was the kind of fellow, if someone messed with, he could make them wish they had never met him. He said, yes, that was right. I was thinking about that fellow just before I picked up the former intelligence fellow on Sugarloaf Key.
I was thinking I might write about him today, and then I picked up someone sort of like him, also about the same size – short and thin, or wirey.
The fellow from the soup kitchen and I became pretty close. He probably is the most well-read person I ever met. He spent a lot of time in the Key West library reading Barrons, the Wallstreet Journal, the New York Times. He knew the Hindu scriptures. He knew the Buddhist scriptures. He knew the Sufis. He knew the Bible. He knew anything I ever mentioned that had been written. He put me onto John LeCarre, the English spy thriller writer. He encourged me to read The Brothers Karamazov, which I tried to read, but Dostoyevsky’s introduction and the begining of the tale wore me out.
Except for a couple of years after he settled a lawsuit and had some money, when he rented an apartment, he lived outside, slept in plain view, and ate at the soup kitchen. At one time, he had been married, he and his wife lived in Key West together. She still lived in Key West. Sometimes they conversed.
He sometimes did soul art, which he sold on the sidewalk, if anyone wanted to buy it. He stayed low profile, nearly invisible. He said he rebuilt all the windows in the Customs House. He was a master carpenter. He worked a while at the Wild Bird Rescue Center, and had ringneck pigeons eating out of his hand and perching on his shoulder. He also was prone to go on long benders, which invaribly ended whatever job he was holding down at the time. He introduced me to “The Breakfast Club” at Schooner Warf – no solid food.
I have a soul drawing I did of Dave in the fall of 2002, pasted to my refrigerator door. On it is written, “Patience pays.” He told me to keep it for him. He much later gave me one of his soul drawings, which has the yin-yang symbol on it, and is entiled, “Balance”. I have that pasted to a kitchen cubbard door.
Dave holds Pastor Omar, who used to feed the homeless every Sunday morning at Higgs Beach, in the highest regard of all Key West ministers. Omar fed the homeless there until County Commissioner Heather Carruthers and her Friends Higgs Beach Committee started terraforming Higgs Beach so that no homeless people could use the picknick kiosks ever again. That was where Omar fed the homeless. I don’t know where Omar feeds the homeless now, if he still feeds them.
I ate many Sunday meals with Omar and his flock, but eventually I wore out listening to his sermons which followed, and I stopped mooching off him because I didn’t feel right taking his food but not his words. Omar himself was homeless for a while, said often that the Lord lifted him up out of it, and he kept telling us that we, too, would be lifted up out of it, if we had the faith in Jesus that he had.
We all had faith in Jesus, we all but one Jewish man I might write about another day, since I was his next-door neighbor for several months in the first half of 2004, when we lived in tents just off the Bridle Path across from Smathers Beach.
Far as I could tell, believing in Jesus didn’t get one homeless person I knew in Key West, or anywhere else, off the street. Yet often I heard Pastor Omar and Glad Tidings preach it.
The fellow I picked up yesterday mentioned he had only a few cents to his name. That was when he was telling me about a seizure he’d recently had, which made him nearly bite his tongue in half. He said being homeless had taught him humility. He said all the tests the doctors ran on him came up with nothing, he was not epileptic, apparently. Maybe he was seized by Jesus? What do I know.
For all I knew, he was Jesus. We didn’t talk about Jesus or God.
When I let him off on Summerland Key near where his friend kept his boat, I gave him $20, which I said was for food and if he spent it on booze, I would come back and get him about it. He said he did not beg. I said that was why I was giving him the money. He had told me he was broke, he did not smell of booze, he seemed sincere.
He asked me my name. I said, “Sloan”. He told me his first name. I drove away figuring all of that was arranged for me to write about it and about the other former intelligence officer today. Of course, it was all arranged. There is no other way it could have happened.
=====================
After writing all of that yesterday evening, my dreams last night were pretty rough, lots of spiritual warfare. In the last dream, after dawn, some other people and I had almost made it safely to our destination, but the final leg was blocked by police and then I was told we needed to don nun habit to go the rest of the way, as if that would disguise us.
As I lay in bed pondering that advisory from heaven, I realized I had written nothing about Sister Moon. She was Francis’ childhood sweetheart, Claire, who joined his movement and took vows of celibacy after she realized Francis had married God and they never would be married in the human way. From Claire sprung the Poor Sisters Claire, the “beggar nun” counterpart of the Franciscans.
I also was reminded of homeless women I have known, but I felt I might write about that another day, as it might take a while to do that.
Then, I thought of Francis’ prayer, which is infused with the Holy Spirit, which is the feminine essence of God. Might be, Claire was the Muse for this prayer.
Lord, make me an instrument of your peace.
Where there is hatred, let me sow love.

Where there is injury, pardon.

Where there is doubt, faith.

Where there is despair, hope.

Where there is darkness, light.

Where there is sadness, joy.

O Divine Master,

grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled, as to console;

to be understood, as to understand;

to be loved, as to love.

For it is in giving that we receive.

It is in pardoning that we are pardoned,

and it is in dying that we are born to Eternal Life.

Amen.

Then I thought of this photo, which I saw posted on Facebook recently, and saved and sent to a Facebook friend yesterday, who has a pretty big following. A Vietnam veteran, he eventually moved to Scandinavia, as part of his shaman training and development. His name is John Horwitz, and he is a good friend of Erika Biddle, who introduced me to him.
Johathan replied:
This should be a major poster! Thank You, Sloan!
Jonathan posted this today to Facebook:
We can help one another to find out the meaning of life, no doubt. But in the last analysis the individual person is responsible for living his own life and for ‘finding himself.’ If he persists in shifting this responsibility to somebody else, he fails to find out the meaning of his own existence. You cannot tell me who I am, and I cannot tell you who you are. If you do not know your own identity, who is going to identify you? Others can give you a name or a number, but they can never tell you who you really are. That is something you yourself can only discover from within.
Thomas Merton, Prologue to “No Man Is an Island”

To all of which, I add this which fell out of me in the spring of 1994:

Rosa Mystica

Sweet Mystery

Blood of Christ

Living water

without which

there are no Rainbows

and God is dead

Shalom

Sloan Bashinsky

keysmyhome@hotmail.com

a different kind of Black Friday hidden in plain view

On bigpinekey.com’s Coconut Telegraph yesterday, Thanksgiving Day:
Giving money to the so-called homeless is a waste of time. Doesn’t anyone remember Mr. Golden Voice?
Yes, he was given a job at a radio station and was not able to keep his act together. Something people who are determined to fix street people should keep ever in mind. I don’t usually give street people money unless they are getting on a Greyhound bus headed for some place else and need traveling money for food. I often have bought street people a meal. I sometimes have told street people that boozing is not doing them or God any good. I sometimes have told mainstream people the same thing. I once asked Key West Mayor Morgan McPherson at a candidate forum, if missing spending time with his family was the worst thing about being mayor, which he had said, did that mean he was going to spend less time in bars and more time with his family? He replied that sometimes he just needed a drink. That seemed to satisfy most people in the audience.
======================
Also on the Coconut Telegraph yesterday:
[Homeless Art] Dear Mr. Norway guy, I am so glad you had fun viewing the local natives, i.e. the homeless. Aren’t they cute? They can do so many clever things, like crapping on your yard, passing out on the sidewalk in front of your house, yelling obscenities in front of your kids, fighting over who gets the last swallow of booze and best of all, getting injured following their lifestyle and making all of US (not you) pay for it. I did not notice you mentioning making a large or even a small donation for the care and maintenance of these great tourist attractions. Since they rate as “free entertainment” you should immediately correct your dereliction.
======================
Actually, it was an American woman with a PhD in Marine Fisheries Science, who is married to a Norwegian man.
Yes, there are plenty of homeless people in the Key West area, who are just as you describe.
However, Hidden In Plain View is not about raising money for local homeless people. It is about art, poetry and music which relates to homeless people.
Perhaps if you take in the showing at Studios of Key West, you will develop more tolerance, but probably not.
Perhaps some day you will be homeless and then you can hate yourself for that. You already hate yourself for something, otherwise you would not be so bitter toward homeless people.
I can’t help but wonder if you ever did any of those grubby things you have seen homeless people do? I have seen people who were not homeless do plenty of grubby things on Duval Street. And even worse things in Duval Street joints. And even worse things elsewhere.
=======================
After reading this part of the Editorial in The Key West Citizen today, I wondered if the author and the Editorial Board considered how their words might include homeless people?
=======================
No need to sanitize our community character Ask anyone who has moved to the Florida Keys, or more specifically, Key West, why they left the frigid north, and, of course, they’ll tell you it’s for the weather. Of course it is. What’s not to like — unless there’s a hurricane out in the Atlantic making a beeline for the Keys? But if you ask people who came here, say 15 or 25 years ago — residents whom some like to call “freshwater Conchs” — they might give you a second reason. They came to Key West for the funky community character. It’s hard to describe “funkiness.” It’s a laid-back way of life — before you discover you need two or three jobs to survive. It’s live and let live. It’s that you meet people who are doing all sorts of things in Key West that are far different from the way they made a living up north. Maybe they were doctors or business people or factory workers. It doesn’t matter in Key West. They live the way they want to live. Maybe on a boat. Maybe as a handyman. Maybe still in the same profession. The laid-back (funky) Key West has a way of sucking in visitors and making them residents.
=======================
It is a fact that Key West attracts homeless people because they know they won’t freeze in the winter, they know there is a free homeless shelter, they know there is a soup kitchen which feeds a good meal daily, they know there are free medical services, and, if they are veterans, they know there is a VA clinic, all in Key West.
There is a nice lead story in The Citizen today – www.keysnews.com – about the soup kitchen, where I ate hundreds of meals. Dorothy Sherman started the kitchen years ago. After she went to her great reward and was eulogized by Peter Batty at St. Mary’s Star of the Sea on Valentine’s Day, 2004, as a living saint, Angela McCain, who had worked beside Dorothy, took over the kitchen and runs it still.
I remember one day several years ago at the Conch Duplicate Bridge Club, Angela, a darn good bridge player, and I were talking about the kitchen and the city’s determination even back then to change homeless people. She said, “It’s our job to feed homeless people; it’s God’s job to change them.”
Mostly, Angela meant street people. That was before the big increase in homeless who live in their vehicles and with friends and relatives. The people who do not like being homeless and are in shock and want more than anything to get back into housing and having a job. The people who truly can be helped, because they want to be helped. The people who are terrified they will end up being street people like the men featured in the two comments on the Coconut Telegraph.
There even are street people who fear they will end up like those men. Street people who don’t cause anyone trouble. Street people who are doing their best to just get by each day, who just want to be left alone. There are all kinds of street people, just like there are all kinds of mainstream people.
I have a dear friend in Key West who looks like a street person, with a beard and hair he never trims. He drinks when he can. His health is terrible. He lives in subsidized housing thanks to disability payments. Otherwise, he would live on the street until he gave up the ghost, which would be pretty quickly because he simply would not be able to survive living on the street and/or staying at the homeless shelter at night.
How did he get to be like this? As a boy, he was pretty ordinary, other than he was a very good up and coming chess player, and he liked to draw mandalas which would have made any high Tibetan Buddhist lama stand up and take notice. He didn’t care much for school and drew mandalas in class. He played in chess tournaments. That was his life until he reached age 18 and was summoned by his draft board.
He declined to be inducted and sent to Vietnam. He was indicted and hauled before a federal judge and given the option of induction or prison. He chose prison. 3 years, starting age 18, he lived in a federal prison because he did not want to go to Vietnam. Imagine, if you can, what 3 years in a federal prison would do to a young man that age. To a young man whose only aggression was focused on winning chess games.
He took on all comers for three years in that prison, day and night, and never lost a game. But when they let him out, his soul was broken; his life became one disaster after another. He left the Pacific Northwest and came to Key West, where he has lived many years.
Lots of people in Old Town know and like him. All the wait staff in Harpoon Harry’s know and like him. He used to dine there regularly when he had more money.
He used to run the coffee counter at Anchors Away, the local version of AA and NA. He made a little on the side there, which subsidized his disability checks. He was sober. He mentored others trying to leave addiction behind. He took on all comers at chess over the counter.
That’s where I met him, because I was attending meetings as a requirement of being in the Florida Keys Outreach Coalition residence program. I wasn’t particularly addicted, but it was required that I attend daily meetings if I wanted to stay in FKOC’s program. So I attended, and I met Patrick, and I watched chess games, but did not play.
That was before I was told in a dream in early January 2005, “You need to learn how to play chess.” That was how I started playing chess with Patrick and people he knew, at Anchors Away, even though I no longer attended meetings, because I was not in FKOC’s program. At that time, I was living in a Chevy Blazer and showering daily at the public showers at the police station which parents of the school next door made the city get rid of.
Disaster then struck. One of Patrick’s good friends went missing. Finally, Patrick went to the fellow’s home and found him, dead. Dead for a while. I was really bad. Patrick undertook to help the fellow’s family wind down his affairs, distribute his personal effects. It took a while.
And it took Patrick back into earlier traumas.
A woman he had known and loved had drowned in a river in which they were swimming, after they’d had too much to drink, or smoke, or both. He, miraculously, was saved after he heard to dive to the bottom, which he did, and the current took him out of the hydraulic in which they both were trapped. That wasn’t very long after he was let out of federal prison.
Disaster struck again. Anchors Away applied for grant assistance and received it. I’d never heard of an AA house doing that. I was astounded. The result was, they had to pay Patrick by check, instead of by cash, for his work at the coffer bar. They had to report it, Patrick’s disbility payment was at risk. He quit working there. Not long afterward he was heavy on the sauce again, after years of sobriety.
At my invitation, he came to the Hidden In Plain View opening. No doubt, people who did not know him probably figured he was homeless. Everyone there except Jim Hendrick, whom I had introduced to Patrick a few years back and they started playing chess.
But if they talked with Patrick for any time, they would get to know one of the most interesting people they had ever met. And if they played chess with him, they would get their ears pinned back, most likely. I think Jim Hendrick finally took one game from Patrick, perhaps when he was napping from too much libation.
Patrick probably has hundreds of mandalas he has drawn, in files in his apartment. People into Buddhism and/or mandalas might wish to meet Patrick, get to know him, buy a mandala. They come through him, from somewhere beyond.
People who like playing chess, who want to improve their game, might wish to meet and play with Patrick. He likes playing at Harpoon Harry’s, which has a chess mat and pieces. I buy him lunch when we play there.
Key West school principals might wish to contact Patrick about starting chess clubs in their schools and him teaching students how to play chess, which will strengthen their minds and sharpen their wits. Perhaps a modest stipend could be paid.
No, I did not discuss any of this with Patrick. Anyone interested, contact me and I will pass it along to Patrick to see if he, too, is interested.
Meanwhile, as Vietnam did, America’s stupid white men’s wars in Iraq and Afghanistan bred a whole new generation of street people and people who but for disability and subsidized housing would be street people.
If America goes to war in Iran, Syria and/or Palestine-Israel, there will be even more of that.
Sloan Bashinsky

Hidden In Plain View homeless exposition goes viral

Distant in-law Ron, a developer in North Carolina who once vacationed frequently in Key West, replied to yesterday’s homeless people aren’t necessarily what they appear to be – Key West post:
Sloan, first, a Happy Thanksgiving to you.
Question?   Do you think the “Hidden in Plain View” folks could do a slide show of the art  on some sort of DVD and sell them to folks like me to support the homeless folks  ?  If you stir that pot, and it works, put me down for 10.  If this is  as good as it sounds, it could be a hot item on the national scale.  Viral  for money.
Regards,  Ron K.
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I posted Ron’s to Erika Biddle’s Facebook page.
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Day before yesterday, Erika and I had a late lunch at Harpoon Harry’s in Key West. She told me of a fellow in Marathon, who had been homeless, who is bursting with ideas for helping homeless people. His first idea is to set up a repair shop outside a popular Key West business, Harpoon Harry’s for example, where homeless people with fix-it skills repair appliances, bicycles, clothing, etc. Key West people bring to them. I told Erika it is a terrific idea. Later that day, she sent this:
Erika Biddle shared a link

here is an article in the NYT reporting about we talked about today…XOE
Amsterdam Tries to Change Culture With ‘Repair Cafes’
www.nytimes.com
Amsterdam’s Repair Cafe encourages people to bring old items that they might have otherwise thrown out to have them restored by expert volunteers.
 

That night I dreamt of my younger daughter, the eye doctor, turning into Rudi Rozema, featured in yesterday’s  homeless people aren’t necessarily what they appear to be – Key West post. Rudi was adept at taking three or four discarded bicycles and ending up with two pretty good bicycles. He was pretty handy with tools in other ways, too. He was born in Holland, which didn’t seem confidential after I had received the link from Erika yesterday.
Amsterdam Journal

An Effort to Bury a Throwaway Culture One Repair at a Time

 

Ilvy Njiokiktjien for The New York Times

Gathered around tables in what appeared to be delicate operations, participants tried to fix items that had been set for the trash.

By SALLY McGRANE
Published: May 8, 2012
AMSTERDAM — An unemployed man, a retired pharmacist and an upholsterer took their stations, behind tables covered in red gingham. Screwdrivers and sewing machines stood at the ready. Coffee, tea and cookies circulated. Hilij Held, a neighbor, wheeled in a zebra-striped suitcase and extracted a well-used iron. “It doesn’t work anymore,” she said. “No steam.”
 

Ilvy Njiokiktjien for The New York Times

One man came in to have the charger for his laptop repaired.

Ms. Held had come to the right place. At Amsterdam’s first Repair Cafe, an event originally held in a theater’s foyer, then in a rented room in a former hotel and now in a community center a couple of times a month, people can bring in whatever they want to have repaired, at no cost, by volunteers who just like to fix things.
Conceived of as a way to help people reduce waste, the Repair Cafe concept has taken off since its debut two and a half years ago. The Repair Cafe Foundation has raised about $525,000 through a grant from the Dutch government, support from foundations and small donations, all of which pay for staffing, marketing and even a Repair Cafe bus.
Thirty groups have started Repair Cafes across the Netherlands, where neighbors pool their skills and labor for a few hours a month to mend holey clothing and revivify old coffee makers, broken lamps, vacuum cleaners and toasters, as well as at least one electric organ, a washing machine and an orange juice press.
“In Europe, we throw out so many things,” said Martine Postma, a former journalist who came up with the concept after the birth of her second child led her to think more about the environment. “It’s a shame, because the things we throw away are usually not that broken. There are more and more people in the world, and we can’t keep handling things the way we do.
“I had the feeling I wanted to do something, not just write about it,” she said. But she was troubled by the question: “How do you try to do this as a normal person in your daily life?”
Inspired by a design exhibit about the creative, cultural and economic benefits of repairing and recycling, she decided that helping people fix things was a practical way to prevent unnecessary waste.        “Sustainability discussions are often about ideals, about what could be,” Ms. Postma said. “After a certain number of workshops on how to grow your own mushrooms, people get tired. This is very hands on, very concrete. It’s about doing something together, in the here and now.”        While the Netherlands puts less than 3 percent of its municipal waste into landfills, there is still room for improvement, according to Joop Atsma, the state secretary for infrastructure and the environment.
“The Repair Cafe is an effective way to raise awareness that discarded objects are indeed still of value,” Mr. Atsma wrote in an e-mail.
“I think it’s a great idea,” said Han van Kasteren, a professor at the Eindhoven University of Technology who works on waste issues. “The social effect alone is important. When you get people together to do something for the environment, you raise consciousness. And repairing a vacuum cleaner is a good feeling.”
That was certainly true for the woman who brought her 40-year-old vacuum, bought when she was a newlywed, to a Tuesday night Repair Cafe. “I am very glad, very glad,” she said as John Zuidema, 70, sawed off the vacuum’s broken nozzle. “My husband died, and there are all these little things around the house that he used to fix.”
To some, the project’s social benefits are as appealing as its ecological mission. “What’s interesting for us is that it creates new places for people to meet, not just live next to each other like strangers,” said Nina Tellegen, the director of the DOEN Foundation, which provided the Repair Cafe with a grant of more than $260,000 as part of its “social cohesion” program, initiated in the wake of the political murders of Pim Fortuyn, a politician, in 2002, and Theo van Gogh, a filmmaker, in 2004. “That it’s linked to sustainability makes it even more interesting.”
Ms. Tellegen added that older people in particular find a niche at the Repair Cafe.
“They have skills that have been lost,” she said. “We used to have a lot of people who worked with their hands, but our whole society has developed into something service-based.”
Evelien H. Tonkens, a sociology professor at the University of Amsterdam, agreed. “It’s very much a sign of the times,” said Dr. Tonkens, who noted that the Repair Cafe’s anti-consumerist, anti-market, do-it-ourselves ethos is part of a more general movement in the Netherlands to improve everyday conditions through grass-roots social activism.
“It’s definitely not a business model,” Ms. Postma said. She added that because the Repair Cafe caters to people who find it too expensive to have their items fixed, it should not compete with existing repair shops.
The Repair Cafe Foundation provides interested groups with information to help get them started, including lists of tools, tips for raising money and marketing materials. Ms. Postma has received inquiries from France, Belgium, Germany, Poland, Ukraine, South Africa and Australia.
Tijn Noordenbos, a 62-year-old artist in Delft, started a Repair Cafe there four months ago.
“I like to repair things,” he said, noting that the repair shops of his younger days had all but vanished. “Now, if something breaks, you take it back to the store and they say: ‘We’ll send it to the factory and it costs you 100 euros just to check out the problem. It’s better if you buy a new one.’ ”
William McDonough, an architect, said, “What happened with planned obsolescence is that it became mindless — just throw it away and don’t think about it.” His “cradle to cradle” design philosophy, which posits that things should be built so that they can be taken apart and the raw materials reused (though not necessarily repaired ad nauseam), also inspired Ms. Postma.
“The value of the Repair Cafe is that people are going back into a relationship with the material things around them,” Mr. McDonough said.
Take, for example, Sigrid Deters’s black H&M miniskirt with a hole in it.
“This cost 5 or 10 euros,” about $6.50 to $13, she said, adding that she had not mended it herself because she was too clumsy. “It’s a piece of nothing, you could throw it out and buy a new one. But if it were repaired, I would wear it.”
Marjanne van der Rhee, a Repair Cafe volunteer who hands out data collection forms and keeps the volunteers fortified with coffee, said: “Different people come in. With some, you think, maybe they come because they’re poor. Others look well-off, but they are aware of environmental concerns. Some seem a little bit crazy.”
Theo van den Akker, an accountant by day, had taken on the case of the nonsteaming iron. Wearing a T-shirt that read “Mr. Repair Café,” Mr. van den Akker removed the plastic casing, exposing a nest of multicolored wires.
As he did, Ms. Held and Ms. van der Rhee discussed the traditional Surinamese head scarves that Ms. Held, who was born in Suriname, makes for a living.
When Mr. van den Akker put the iron back together, two parts were left over — no matter, he said, they were probably not that important. He plugged the frayed cord into a socket. A green light went on. Rusty water poured out. Finally, it began to steam.
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A few hours after our lunch the day before yesterday, Erika and other Key West people received awards at a City Commission meeting for their efforts to increase the city’s recycling rate and to get a mandatory recycling ordinance passed.
About 120 miles down at the end of coral atolls, Key West of all places needs to recycle as much as possible. Yet its recycling rate is low, and it pays mainland firms to truck all of its garbage and wastes to the mainland, to be incinerated or taken to landfills.
Perhaps repair shops could spring up all over Key West – there are empty storefronts where such could operate until needed for something else. Perhaps homeless people could be recruited to man these repair shops and get paid a modest fee, or donation, for their efforts.
When I ran for Mayor of Key West in 2007, I proposed the city hiring homeless people to dress like pirates and be litter cops patrolling the streets of Old Town and other areas where tourists go, politely asking tourists to pick up their cigarette butts, empty drink cups and other litter, under penalty of getting stuck with a plastic sword or shot with a plastic cap flintlock cap pistol, and if that fails to get results, write the litterbugs a ticket.
Right after I proposed that in a post, I was called and interviewed by a New York City nationally-syndicated radio show. Thereafter, I was interviewed by several radio stations around the continental US, and a station in Honolulu.
The radio show hosts thought it was creative way of getting some homeless people back to work, and it  would help stop littering, which is very heavy on Duval Street, and I thought it would be great publicity and a tourist attraction for Key West.
Meanwhile, perhaps some sidewalk business owners in Key West might be interested in having repair shops manned by homeless people set up outside their establishments, and perhaps some owners of empty store fronts might be similarly inclined. Perhaps this is something Key West Mayor Craig Cates and Southern Assistance Homeless League (SHAL) and/or Florida Keys Outreach Coalition (FKOC) might sponsor.
Further meanwhile, Dorothy Jane Dankel’s lovely letter to the editor, featured in yesterday’s homeless people aren’t necessarily what they appear to be – Key West post, is in The Key West Citizen today, and there are interesting homeless and other Thanksgiving articles starting on the front page – www.keysnews.com . Unless you are a regular subscriber, you usually have to pay 50 cents with a credit card to open the electronic edition.
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On a somewhat more Litttle Torch Key front, some thoughts came into my mind yesterday …
Once upon a time, I did a lot of soul fishing with people from various walks of life, including the mental health profession and prison inmates.
What came to me was to offer to do free weekend soul-fishing workshops for homeless people and people who are not homeless. The “goal” would be for the participants to see that deep down inside they are really very much like, all part of God’s one human family.
The operating “theory” for the soul-fishing workshops would be this poem, which fell out of me about a week after I first went homeless, on Maui, in August 2000.
All fig leaves burn
All ugly seen
All pain loved
All truth beauty
All people one
All time now
The only entry requirement would be that participants be sober. Soul fishing does not go well under the influence of alcohol and other mind-altering drugs.
These names came to me as possible non-homeless volunteers for a kick-off group, which would meet for three hours Saturday morning, three hours Saturday afternoon, three hours Sunday morning, and three hours Sunday afternoon:
Mayor Craig Cates; County Commissioner and innkeeper Heather Carruthers, whose County District is entirely in Key West; City Commissioner Mark Rossi’s wife, who is a practicing psychiatrist; Father Steven Braddock, CEO of Florida Keys Outreach Coalition; Wendy Coles, outgoing Exeuctive Director of Southern Assistance Homeless League; Ed Swift, of Historic Tours of America (conch trains, trolleys and amphibious ducks); Margaret Romero, citizen watchdog and recent mayor candidate; Bob Kelly, of the Truman Waterfront Advisory Committee; Jim Hendrick, adviser to developers; Christine Russell, citizen activist; Todd German, banker, Chairman of Hometown! PAC, member of The Citizen Editorial Board; Naja Girard, citizen activist, officer in Last Stand; Tom Milone, citizen watchdog and former city commission candidate; Teri Johnston, City Commissioner and building contractor.
No, I did not run this by any of them.
The workshops might be held in the County Commission meeting room in the Harvey Government Center. There would be no syllabus, no outline, other than to meet and talk and face what all comes up with an open mind and a brave heart.
A co-sponsor of the first workshop might be Erika Biddle, mainstream shamanka.
No, I didn’t run this by Erika, either. But maybe in female shaman ways she put me up to it.
Happy Thanksgiving
Sloan Bashinsky

beautiful fragrant blossoms are in the eye of the beholder – American and homeless politics

This Sunday homily begins with a fun US Budget cartoon from Nashville J, and moves mostly downhill from there. For those still interested in FlaKey school district train wrecks, there are  derailed locomotives and box cars at the end the this track. Before you get there, you will see sex trafficking and homeless attractions.
It is their duty to pass a budget – yet – they do nothing but play games.
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I quipped: You are surprised?
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Of course I am not surprised – why would they start now. I just get pissed off that we’re at a minimum 16 TRILLION in debt and they won’t even attempt to produce a budget and try and stop the runaway spending train.
J
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I didn’t quip: Perhaps they have deep-seated drives to experience real bad train wrecks, that makes more sense to me than the B.S. they bandy about.
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In The Key West Citizen today:
When the dust settles, we are all Americans
I am old enough to remember a time when we fought elections tooth and nail, but the next day, on the very next day, we prided ourselves on becoming Americans again. I would urge us all to that state of mind. Especially the winners of our elections. The day after the election, you winners represent us all. Please remember this simple truth, and please remind each other of it whenever someone seems to forget: You are no longer Democrats or Republicans. You are American leaders, entrusted and informed by the country and system of government you serve to place the interests of all us first. Our soldiers and sailors do not go out and fight and die for Democrats or Republicans. You spit on their sacrifices when you make your party more important than your country. As for the rest of us, the same applies. I read today of man — admittedly a disturbed man — who killed himself over the election. That is a very messed up extreme of an all too prevalent attitude. By buying into the rhetoric of campaigns predicting dire outcomes should the other side win, people forget the simple truth. Politicians lie to get elected, and play on your fears to win your support. Obama can’t destroy America. Neither could Romney. But forgetting we are all Americans can destroy us. A house divided is a house conquered. It is as true today as it ever was. It is many days after the election. God bless America. And Gold help us to remember who we are.
Peter Anderson Key West
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Alas, Peter, you have hit the nail squarely on the head. Most Democrats and most Republicans, and the Tea Party, have quit being Americans and have become their political parties, which are religions, just as Christendom, Judaism and Islam are religions. Their religions are more important to them than their country. Their religions are more important to them than God. I do not think they would like God helping them remember who they are, but I hope God answers your prayer.
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America is a plant with diverse blossoms
The national elections of 2012 show America to be a huge plant. This huge towering, almost stately plant contains six beautiful blossoms, two shriveling branches, and one big thorn. The six gorgeous blossoms are women, African-American people, Latino people, Native American people, and Asian people. Beginning to bloom for all to see and appreciate is a branch that is different from older, traditional blossoms. This branch is meeting horrendous opposition to blossoming, or even existing, on Plant America. Recent elections, however, confirm its existence and continuing development, recognition, and acceptance. The main feature of these blossoms individually is that they exude a delightful fragrance. Their combined fragrance is pleasing and inspirational, reflecting the fragrance of God. There are two shriveling branches, decaying, beginning to die. One branch is Republicans, previously cooperating with Democrats in placing America over ideology. With the infestation of the Tea Party, that goal was replaced by the powerful thrust of extreme political and social radicalism. The other shriveling branch is we white, elderly males, once held in high esteem and dignity. We became self-trapped in dogmatic paternalism, forfeiting ourselves as a point of power. The third branch is the Tea Party, characterized by actions and attitudes that prick, hurt, divide, attempt to destroy. They have brainwashed themselves that they are right and everyone else is wrong; that their ruthless and reckless actions are somehow constructive, will magically return America. All false. I look at the six blossoms and smell their delicious fragrance and rejoice; I reflect on the shriveling branches of Republicans and we white, elderly males, and am filled with sadness. I observe the out-of-control destructiveness of the Tea Party and I am filled with disdain and disgust. In spite of the decaying scent of the shriveling two branches, especially the regurgitating stink of the Tea Party, the exhilarating fragrance of the six blossoms permeate the cosmos. Their inspiring fragrance joins the fragrances of all the plant-countries of this world to give a universal scent of unity, peace, and joy. The fragrance of our world is appealing.
Jim Remington Key West
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Okay, Jim, tell that appealing universal scent of unity, peace and joy to American children and women trapped in the sex trade. Consider this forward from Tim Gratz, of Keys Coalition:
A NEW SENATE CAUCUS TO FIGHT TRAFFICKING- Mail from an attorney contact in the Polaris Project: Senator Blumenthal (D-Conn) is helping to launch the official Human Trafficking Caucus in the United States Senate. Its inauguration will be [Wednesday--today]. Myself, as well as several other staff from Polaris will be in attendance. We’ll probably post pictures on our facebook page afterward so definitely look for those. It is a very significant moment for the anti-trafficking movement.
We will send more information as we receive it.Senator Rubio has been very active in anti-trafficking work (has co-sponsored bills with Senator Rubio) and we assume he will join.
IMPORTANT ANTI-TRAFFICKING FILM COMES TO TROPIC ON NOVEMBER 21:
(info came from our good friend Shirrel Rhoades who will of course be reviewing the film for “Solares”)
Of course we urge you all to attend the film (“TRADE OF INNOCEDNTS:)
Mira Sorvino is an important anti-traffickimng activist.Many of you have no doubt viewed her impassioned speech to Senator Wyden’s Subcommittee which is on our website.
“HALF THE SKY”
Assume most have Net Flix.Urge you to watch this mopvie, based on the book of the same name by Nucholas Kristoff and his wife.The anti-tafficking segment tells the dramatic story of Somaly Man, a trafficking survivor in Cambodia.
And let me say this about that:
In my opinion the life of  a young girl is as important whether she lives in a third-world country or in Monroe County.It is important to us that we raise awareness in our community of trafficking both domestically and internationally.
I urge you to watch “Half the Sky”.I guarantee you will be moved by all of the film.
Tim Gratz
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Okay, Jim, tell that appealing universal scent of unity, peace and joy to homeless people. At the rate Congress and successive USA presidents are going, homeless people will dwarf the blossoms you singled out. In time, the blossoms you singled out might all rally together to defend themselves against homeless people, most of whom would like nothing better than to be left alone by the eight blossoms you singled out. Perhaps that is why The Citizen and Solares Hill have not reported anything about easily the most important art and poetry opening in Key West’s history.
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On Hidden In Plain View’s Facebook page:
“The Art Heart Connection Book” is an amazing collection. Beautiful artwork, compelling poetry, simple yet strikingly unique.
More photos of this exhibit are available on my website at: http://www.rwdepalma.com/p245840493
Photo: More photos of this exhibit are available on my website at:  </p><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />
 http://www.rwdepalma.com/p245840493

The book made out of a lobster trap
In case you couldn’t come to the opening reception. The Studios of Key West will be open on Sunday between noon and 4pm.
On a more somber note:
Erika Biddle

Activities like sleeping, eating, sitting, and begging in public spaces can carry criminal penalties. Sometimes, homeless people are often selectively targeted for criminal cases involving loitering, jaywalking, trespassing, or open containers. The selective enforcement of “quality of life” and public decency laws (e.g. those involving public urination or personal hygiene) can also be detrimental – especially considering that homeless people often simply do not have access to the necessary public facilities, particularly at night. In some cities – like Orlando, Florida – groups who share food with homeless people can even be punished according to the law! These examples are not theoretical; people are actually being arrested for these “crimes” simply because they look different, because they are homeless. Let’s not go there Key Wester’s remember One Human Family is our official motto. XOE
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Erika told me of seeing a KWPD officer give a sleeping homeless man in Bayview Park a hard rap on the head to wake him up. When Erika asked the officer why he did that?, he said because the homeless man wasn’t supposed to be sleeping in the park. I was day time. Unfortunately, there a lot of people in Key West who are just like that police officer in the way they view homeless people. If I were those people, I’d be a hell of a lot more concerned about the fools running the national government. I told someone the other day, it isn’t other countries I worry about; it’s America.
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Nashville also sent:
NEVADA CITY (CBS13) – A police chief says he’s found a one-of-a-kind way to manage a growing problem in his city, and it’s putting the homeless on the hot seat. A new law would give Nevada City the power to hand out permits to a small group of homeless, which would give them permission to sleep in public. While the new ordinance would give some homeless a place to stay, it would tell others, mostly the troublemakers and the criminals, to stay away. “I come down here every fall,” said Bob Barton, who chooses to be homeless in Nevada City. For Barton, the new ordinance that would essentially identify law-abiding homeless and reward them is music to his ears. “The goal is to start managing the homeless population within our city,” said Chief James Wickham. Wickham asked council members to pass a no-camping ordinance. “It just basically means you can’t set up a tent. You can’t live in your vehicle. You can’t live in the woods in Nevada City,” he said.

That is unless you have a permit.

The chief says his program is one of a kind, making only a select few of the city’s homeless population an exception to the law, like William Peach. “There’s some of us out there like me who try to blend in with the community,” said Peach. However, others who come to Nevada City to commit crimes or with a criminal history won’t be so lucky. “Those are the ones we really don’t want in our city and that we’re trying to keep from camping in our city,” said Wickham. “We’ve seen a huge upsurge in homeless people,” Teresa Mann said. Mann, who owns a business in downtown, says it’s about time. And so do the homeless who stay out of trouble and want trouble to stay away. “If they’re homeless and heartless, hey, we got a place for them,” said James, who is homeless. “It’s called county jail.” For now, the police chief will give out about six to 10 permits. He’ll check back in six months to see if the program is working. If it is, that’s when he says he’ll give out more. Wickham says he’s identified at least 60 homeless in his community, and 500 homeless countywide.

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I replied:
I think the police chief is using far too small a test sample. His method might work okay where there is available land in a city for camping, but Key West’s only available land is environmentally-protected hammock and wildlife sanctuary, where no camping permits can be issued. The Higgs Beach area across the road could provide camping space for perhaps 100 campsites, but it’s owned by Monroe County, and KW City would never agree to it and I don’t see MC being interested in any event. However, MC telling the KW that the available part of Higgs Beach for camping will be opened up for that purpose sure might end up in KW finally telling MC that it will accept a deed to Higgs Beach. For some time MC has wanted KW to take over Higgs Beach.
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I found myself telling Key West Mayor Craig Cates yesterday in my thoughts that he should try to keep KOTS and let it sleep homeless people who are using booze and/or other addictive drugs, and he should use the new homeless shelter he wants to build at the Easter Seals property to sleep homeless who are not using booze or other addictive drugs. He will have to segregate users from non-users, or the new shelter will simply be a bigger KOTS and lots of homeless people will not use it because they don’t want to socialize with and sleep next to drug addicts any more than Mayor Cates wants to socialize with and sleep next to drug addicts.
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On the number of homeless in the Key West area, from Father Steven Braddock yesterday:
To: keysmyhome@hotmail.com Subject: Fwd: Homeless Point-in-Time Planning Meeting From: frbraddock@cs.com Date: Sat, 17 Nov 2012 09:20:02 -0500
Sloan:
I believe your 500 estimate of the total number of unduplicated homeless in Key West/Stock Island will prove to be close.That would include those sheltered and unsheltered, individuals and families, including children.Those on the streets, in the mangroves, living in vehicles/derelict vessels, and all residing in residential programs.
The sad truth is, there has not been a good homeless count done in several years.In fact, last year SHAL decided not to conduct a count of those on the street al all and only counted those who were sheltered and entered into the Homeless Management Information System.
The newly formed Monroe County Homeless Services Continuum-of-Care, Inc., will be taking over lead agency responsibilities from SHAL at the earliest possible date.A date yet to be determined.But, the Monroe CoC has already assumed full responsibility for overseeing the 2013 homeless count scheduled for January 29th.See below for more information.
I am away until the 26th.Have a blessed Thanksgiving.See you on the rebound.Thanks again for your part in making Hidden in Plain View a reality.
Peace,
-S
The first  planning meeting for the January 29th, 2013 county-wide Homeless  Point-in-Time Count will be held on November 20th in the DCF  conference room (#304) at 10:00am. (please note location change  from previous notice).
The 2013 Point-in-Time  Homeless Count (PITC) will be a one-day street-based and service-based  unduplicated count and subpopulation survey of sheltered and unsheltered  individuals to identify how many people in Monroe County are homeless and  their subpopulation characteristics on a given day. (January 29th)
The Department of  Housing and Urban Development (HUD), the largest source of homeless program  funding, requires that continuum of care (CoC) communities that receive HUD CoC  funding (such as Monroe County) perform a “one-day, point-in-time”  unduplicated count and subpopulation survey of sheltered (every year) and  unsheltered (every other year) homeless individuals during the last week of  January. Results of the 2013 Homeless Count and Subpopulation Survey will  provide the State, County and local cities with benchmark numbers that will  serve as the basis for developing local community and countywide strategies to  help people exit life on the streets and by which the success of our efforts to  provide effective programs serving homeless individuals and families can be  measured.
If you are not able to  attend this meeting but would like to be involved and receive planning updates,  please email Stephanie Kaple at FKOCwomen@comcast.net (Stephanie is away  until 11/19 and will not be responding to email until she  returns).
Click here to take a virtual tour of FKOC!
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Sloan Bashinsky
goodmorningfloridakeys.com
goodmorningkeywest.com
goodmorningbirmingham.com

bigots, one nation under God, homeless art exposition

On bigpinekey.com’s Coconut Telelgrah yesterday:

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Some of the posts attacking F.T.R. [From The Right] are so simple-minded that one hesitates to even bother with a response, perhaps against my better judgment, however I will question a few statements. A poster stated that he knew many Christians, but none that would vote for a Catholic. A statement expressing a fact like that is ludicrous at best. Does he really believe that J.F.K. was elected without a vast Protestant backing. Then to condemn someone for being against the Dem party after he tells his readers he is also bigoted against Dems is very bewildering, to say the least. As for Mr. Goldwater’s extremism, Goldwater replied “extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice”. What was really the point of that ” Christians” post? It seems impossible to decipher what it was you were trying to say.

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I sent this reply to the Coconut Telegraph:

Goldwater said “extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice” after he was pressed about his own right-wing views and whether or not he sided with/condoned the John Birch Society. You and FTR know that, if you were around back then, and that Goldwater’s extremism led to a very lopsided win for Lyndon Johnson and the downfall of a number of Republican office holders in that election. If Romney had let the modern Goldwater Party, ie. the Tea Party, rot; if Romney had stayed in the Republican center, he might well be your new US President. But he was so cowed by the Tea Party that he tried to sound like he was with them. I wrote about Christians I know, not about Christians I don’t know. I wrote that I am bigoted against the Republican Party, the Tea Party and the Democratic Party, and against politicians, and against those who claim Jesus as Lord but do not live as he lived and taught others to live. I admitted my bigotry. FTR did not admit his bigotry against Democrats, although he spews it in every edition of his commentaries.

For yucks, ponder this: Someone I knew pretty well in the mid-1990s, after reading my Facebook post that three nights before 911, I was asked in my sleep if I would make a prayer for a divine intervention for all of humanity, and that the angels told me that Hurricane Sandy’s visit to NY City was karma for the way G.W. Bush and Barack Obama and many Americans reacted to 911, wrote to me:

Willow – the night before 911 I dreamed that America was a bloated pig, about to cut its own throat! Enjoying your stories.

Me – You really dreamt that the night before 911?

Willow – yeah I really did.

Me – Shazam!

I wrote in plain English, again. If you again did not understand, that means you do not understand plain English.

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Letter to the editor in yesterday’s edition of The Key West Citizen:
Angry white men made this country what it is
I remind your readers that “angry white men” formed our country, the most remarkable and successful form of government our world has ever seen and one that endures. The signatories literally put their own lives, their family’s lives, and their personal fortunes on the line when they boldly signed our Declaration of Independence. Today, Tea Party members, Republicans, and independents like myself and their advocates endure uncalled for disdain from liberals. All we want is a return to the principles that have guided us well so far for over 200 years. I was recently at a Renaissance Festival in Pennsylvania and the “queen” and her entourage were walking around. She gave a talk in feigned Shakespearean English and said to our crowd, “Take a knee.” This meant the crowd should bow to her. It was all done in lighthearted jest, but at that moment it struck me that most of humanity has forever been under the yoke of another. Liberals might illiberally say we are under the yoke of the rich “angry white men” but the evidence is that we have made great inroads toward individual freedoms over the our hundreds of years in existence. It does not mean that we should hand out Obamaphones or other entitlements or start setting up political guillotines like a 1700s French revolution and start figuratively beheading those friends, relatives and neighbors of different thought. Nearly half of your neighbors and friends voted against the president getting four more years — for very valid reasons. Now that Obama has been re-elected, these American people want to know how Obama will handle the myriad problems he inherited from himself. How will we get our astronomical national debt down? What about the Middle East? To those who say the GOP has extremist views, what about the Democratic convention and the crowd chanting on live TV for removal of God from their bylaws? That is about as extremist as one can get.
Robert Tollen
Key West
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I dunno, Robert. America claiming it is one nation, under God, is about as extremist as it gets. I imagine the angry white men who started this country are plenty angry about how the Republicans, the Tea Partyians, the Democrats and the Independents are behaving today on Capital (spelled that way on purpose) Hill, and elsewhere. There is no way to get the astronomical US debt down, because astronomical is close kin to infinite. If you think it’s bad now, Robert, wait until the next presidential race. You will be thrilled to death.
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Another letter to the editor in The Key West Citizen yesterday, to which I responded in italics yesterday.
Art exhibit breaches stigma of homelessness
As we watch the victims of Superstorm Sandy struggle to reclaim their lives and homes while offering them compassion and sending relief, let us keep in mind that many of our island’s homeless residents have experienced their own private Sandy. Addiction, mental illness and economic factors are just a few of the roadblocks facing the growing number of homeless individuals and families around the world. Seven years after Hurricane Katrina, homelessness in New Orleans has more than doubled to include some 4,900 people. Recovery is only possible for those who can find the help they need. If you feel fear, anger or frustration toward the local homeless people who camp in our parks, pee on our streets and bathe in our public restrooms, you are not alone. We often fear the things we don’t understand and become angry when we feel we have lost control of our surroundings.
A part of the reason they pee on your streets is because there are few public restrooms and they are locked at night. The help 99 percent of the long-term homeless (street people) need is beyond human capability. Anyone who still thinks street people can return to mainstream living, if only they do …… (laundry list), is naive. People who actually are involved in trying to return street people to mainstream living know the recidivism rate is very high, about the same as the recidivism rate for people who enter AA or NA – about 95 percent. Only God can overcome something like that.
Most of us who hold jobs and pay dearly for housing believe we would never be reduced to living on the streets in such squalor. But the reality is that many of us are just one disaster, bank account or addiction away from similar hardship ourselves. As history and nature have demonstrated, “there but for the grace of God” goes anyone on the planet.”
I am the living proof of that, I never dreamed I would be homeless, until I was. No program got me off the street. No program could have gotten me off the street and kept me off the street. My father died and left me an inheritance, which got me off the street. But for that, I would still be on the street, or living in a shelter or an extra room or a vehicle. For reasons I cannot fathom, I am unable to make enough money with the skills I have, even with my Social Security retirement benefits, to not be homeless. I do not have the physical ability to hold down a dishwashing job, which I know how to do. And even if I did have the physical ability, I would not make enough money to pay the rent in Key West and still have enough money left over to eat and have decent shoes and sufficient clothing. All I really am able to do with any endurance is read, write and speak, but, as I said above, I am unable to make a living doing that, even though I hear I am pretty good at it.
This week, The Studios of Key West is presenting a bold and timely exhibit that attempts to breach the stigma that so often surrounds homelessness. “Hidden in Plain View: The faces and stories of homelessness,” opens at 6 p.m. today at the TSKW armory. A multimedia event coordinated by homeless advocate Erika Biddle, the show includes contributions from local artists, poets, filmmakers, sculptors and schoolchildren, some of them homeless themselves. One of the local artists and poets is me.
I would like to encourage the Florida Keys community, especially those who want to rid our streets of the sick and destitute, to attend this exhibit with an eye for solutions based on compassion and creative problem-solving. In the end, we really are One Human Family with the same basic needs for food, shelter, compassion and kindness from others.
Bridget McDonald
Key West
I counseled Erika to steer clear of anyone with their own agenda for Hidden In Plain View, such as Southern Assistance Homeless League (SHAL), if it wanted to use the event to promote SHAL or fix homeless people or eliminate homelessness. I told Erika it was crucial that she simply focus on the event being an art, poetry and music homeless exposition, to which homeless people and non-homeless people could contribute and/or attend. Erika agreed with me and did that. She understood the event itself was the goal. She understood the event itself was art, poetry, music, and she is its muse and the steward God chose to bring it off. The event is Erika’s art, poetry and music. She is the composer and conductor, and the rest of us who contributed are the symphony and we sit in the audience as well.
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The Hidden In Plain View opening was a smash success. Nothing in the exhibition is for sale. The penetrating black and white photos lining the walls stole the show, although there were plenty of other attention-getting attractions. I told Father Steven Braddock that I was an amateur street person compared to the people in the black and white photos.
People already were there when I arrive ten minutes before the official 6 p.m. opening. Quickly, there was a big crowd, which kept replenishing with new arrivals, as early arrivals left. There were quite a few homeless men there, and perhaps two or three women who recently were homeless. I talked a while with a local photographer I know, who when she first arrived in Key West lived in her vehicle.
It was totally calm, convivial. I never saw such a crowded art opening, anywhere, and I used to be married to a visual artist. And, I never felt such power in an art exhibition – nowhere close. Deep power, what was visible was but the tip of something far bigger.
When I said I wondered what might come from it, if anything?, Theo Glorie, owner of Coffee Plantation, said Key West says it wants change but it doesn’t. He said nothing changes in Key West, and nothing will come from the exhibition, and I could quote him.
Soon afterward, Steve Braddock and County Administrator Roman Gastesi and I had a spirited conversation about holding the exhibition next in the Murray Nelson Cultural and Government Center on Key Largo. Roman seemed fully behind the idea. I said I would contact Superintendent of Schools Mark Porter about hanging the show after that in Coral Shores High School, Marathon High School, Sugarloaf School and Key West High School, in sequence.
Mayor Craig Cates was there with his wife, Cheryl. I was glad to see them, but did not see any of the city commissioners or the city manager. I didn’t see Mark Porter there, either. If they didn’t make it last night, I hope they and the county commissioners and the school board members all see this exhibition while it still hangs at Studios of Key West.
It is really, really good. Erika Biddle shot the moon, which for her incomplete grasp of American idiom means she got the whole enchilada, knocked the lights out. Kowabonga! Shazam! Holy Toledo! Hot damn! But don’t take my word for it. See the exhibition for yourself.
Mayor Cates told me last night that the new, bigger overnight homeless shelter on Stock Island will make a lot of things better. I said enough beds for all the homeless people to sleep at night will be better, but if they let in people who are drunk and/or doped, it will be a steep haul, because the Florida Keys Outreach Coalition (men’s) and Samuel’s House (women’s) shelters do not accept applicants who do not have clean urine. So where will most “graduates” of the new, bigger shelter go next?
That’s the Catch-22. If the new, bigger shelter requires residents to have clean urine, that will prevent about 95 percent of the area’s homeless people from using that shelter. Where will they then sleep at night? Outside, or in jail, depending on how the city government tells its police to deal with it.
There also are the invisible homeless, who live in vehicles and have children, pets, and aren’t allowed into KOTS (Keys Overnight Temporary Shelter). I wonder what provision for them, if any, will be made at the new, bigger shelter, if same ever is built? Good Samaritans force women with small children, and people with clean urine, into a shelter filled with drug addicts? I don’t think so.
I still say, in God’s eyes, we’re all homeless.
Sloan Bashinsky
goodmorningfloridakeys.com
goodmorningkeywest.com
goodmorningbirmingham.com

America was a bloated pig, the donkey in the well, hidden in plain view

Facebook chat with the daughter-in-law of an Auburn football great who became a pretty darn good Birmingham lawyer, re my escape from the Vietnam draft via a miracle at the Birmingham Draft Board, as reported in yesterday’s homeless people, Nazis, draft-dodgers, bigots and atheists – Florida Keys and USA post.

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Sloan, Do you remember the lady’s name at the Draft Board in Birmingham? My father in law’s (Gusty) mother worked there and I have heard many stories of her doing similiar things. My daughter is named after her (Adrianne Yearout) and I have had people recognize her name and tell us their draft board story. Kim

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I never knew her name, Kim. From what you wrote, it sounds like she had more to do with the divine intervention than I have long thought. Sounds like she might have disappeared that application for a student deferment. Might be fair to say I’m a bit blown away by your sharing this. If you remember, give Gusty my fond regards. Thanks. Sloan

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I will. Hope you are doing well.

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Someone I knew as Leaf when I lived in Boulder, Colorado, after reading that three nights before 911, I was asked in my sleep if I would make a prayer for a divine intervention for all of humanity, and that the angels told me that Hurricane Sandy’s visit to NY City was karma for the way G.W. Bush and Barack Obama and many Americans reacted to 911, wrote:

Willow Arthur the night before 911 I dreamed that America was a bloated pig, about to cut its own throat! Enjoying your stories Sloan

:-) Sloan Bashinsky You really dreamt that the night before 911?

Willow Arthur yeah I really did.

Sloan Bashinsky Shazam!

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Judy Jack of the Summerland Key area launched this discussion yesterday: simple as this: if not for men..there would be no wars…can’t they stop the insanity…if they can’t negotiate the issues…why are they still in control??? jj

Bucky Montgomery I agree 100%.

Carl Hagensen BULLSHIT!!!!

Sloan Bashinsky Yep, Judy, but if not for women, there would be no men, although I suppose some religious people would disagree.

Doug Bittner I’m with Bucky !!!

Deborah Belford Amen

Sloan Bashinsky I once knew a very wise woman named Dora Kalff, who studied under Carl Jung and then developed Sandplay therapy. Most of her students, including my wife in that life, were women. She often told her students, in order for real change to happen on this world, the women will have to go first. I argued about that with her once, in her side yard in Zollikon, outside Zurich, but she said I was mistaken, the women would have to go first. I suppose if women withheld all their favors from men, until men straightened out their behavior, that might have an effect.

Elaine Coyle Yes Judy. True. And I don’t know why. I do believe once it was the opposite

Sloan Bashinsky In some aborigine cultures, and in other areas of the world, women sometimes had more influence in their communities, tribes, civilizations, than men had. Western civilization, however, is skewed into masculine dominance, the three dominant religions – Judaism, Christendom and Islam – seem to be influential. Most of this species today, perhaps some aborigine cultures differ, is male-dominated. About a month ago, I was asked to make a prayer for a divine intervention of the feminine into the United States of America, and I made that prayer. In my experience, in me, in my affairs, in what I see in other people’s thinking and behavior, and in their affairs, the feminine is really different from the masculine. She is introspective, she waits, she moves with the flow, instead of trying to control the flow. She is fond of the word no.

Carl Stephenson NOT True anymore sorry…It is a mindset..women too..unfortunately..

Sloan Bashinsky The feminine did not change, people did, women, too. If she is returning, it will help, a lot, but the changes might not be easy.

Jewel Jones They no longer are in NH. Women controlled now : )

Richard Lapidus I’d pick Women leaders any day over Men!

Sloan Bashinsky Well, I probably wouldn’t pick Bachman, Palin, Rice or Pelosi … but, for sure, men sure have made a mess of things and that’s not something they can wiggle out of, although I have lots of confidence many of them will surely try …

Sloan Bashinsky Someone I knew as Leaf when I lived in Boulder, Colorado, after reading that three nights before 911, I was asked in my sleep if I would make a prayer for a divine intervention for all of humanity, and that the angels had told me that Hurricane Sandy’s visit to NY City was karma for the way G.W. Bush and Barack Obama and many Americans reacted to 911, wrote:

Willow Arthur – the night before 911 I dreamed that America was a bloated pig, about to cut its own throat! Enjoying your stories Sloan :-)

Sloan Bashinsky – You really dreamt that the night before 911?

Willow Arthur – yeah I really did.

Sloan Bashinsky – Shazam!

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Another woman I knew when I lived in Boulder, after reading of my escape from the Vietnam draft, wrote:

Paula Heikens-Mathewson I love to read your writing….. and then what happened?

Sloan Bashinsky And then what happened? Not enough ink and paper, but a lot of it got told, still gets told, at goodmorningkeywest.com (the oldest website), goodmorningfloridakeys.com and goodmorningbirmingham.com. Probably a year of reading there. Darn wild ride, doubt I could pay the light bill by selling tickets for it. Hope you and yours are doing well. I hear the world ends on Dec. 21, end of Mayan Calendar. God only knows how much money some people made peddling that exit strategy. Maybe it will be the end, or the beginning of the end, of what ain’t working too good, and the beginning of something that works better.

Paula Heikens-Mathewson every day is the beginning and the end, right? We are all well here. Doing the best we can. Thanks for being out there.

Sloan Bashinsky Out there, Paula? Yeah, off the grid out there :-) . Love the donkey in the well story. Knew you and Leaf in Boulder, she’s younger than you, met her in maybe 1993, you were back in Vermont for some time by then. On Paula’s Facebook page:

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One day a farmer’s donkey fell down into a well. The animal cried piteously for hours as the farmer tried to figure out what to do. Finally, he decided the animal was old, and the well needed to be covered up anyway; it just wasn’t worth it to retrieve the donkey. He invited all his neighbors to come over and help him. They all grabbed a shovel and began to shovel dirt into the well. At first, the donkey realized what was happening and cried horribly. Then, to everyone’s amazement he quieted down. A few shovel loads later, the farmer finally looked down the well. He was astonished at what he saw. With each shovel of dirt that hit his back, the donkey was doing something amazing. He would shake it off and take a step up. As the farmer’s neighbors continued to shovel dirt on top of the animal, he would shake it off and take a step up. Pretty soon, everyone was amazed as the donkey stepped up over the edge of the well and happily trotted off!

MORAL : Life is going to shovel dirt on you, all kinds of dirt. The trick to getting out of the well is to shake it off and take a step up. Each of our troubles is a steppingstone. We can get out of the deepest wells just by not stopping, never giving up! Shake it off and take a step up.

Remember the five simple rules to be happy:

1. Free your heart from hatred – Forgive.

2. Free your mind from worries – Most never happens.

3. Live simply and appreciate what you have.

4. Give more.

5. Expect less from people but more from yourself.

You have two choices… smile and close this page, or pass this along to someone else to share the lesson .

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Here’s another donkey in the well story, of sorts:

Hidden In Plain View Grand Opening – homeless art, poetry, music exhibition reception 6-9 p.m. today, November 16, 2012, Studios of Key West, White and Southard Streets, homeless people and mainstream people all invited

The show features compelling images of our homeless community by photographer Sheelman. Also on display are a variety of multimedia images, films, poetry, quilts and the art-heart connection book, combining the work of established local artist with the poetry, drawings and written words by homeless people. A raw and revealing exhibition giving a human face to what is typically ignored. Walk on White – Hope to see you on Thursday. XOE Erika Biddle

“Teasers” from the Hidden In Plain View Facebook page, lots more there to peruse, but this exquisite work of art, the exhibition itself and all its unique parts, really can only be seen and appreciated at Studios of Key West, also known as the Armory.

Photo Imagine Homeless with pets are not allowed in shelters...
Hope to see some of you there tonight.
Sloan