Southwestern Florida, baseball, and gratitude

We've been in Ft Myers for a week. While this isn't Key West, and more's the pity, I can see that this is a more "regular" place where people live and work,  and just happen to have a way better winter than much of the rest of the country. Maybe because it reminds me of the things I didn't like about where I grew up, I'm not that enthusiastic about the big highways, the strip malls and the traffic. And I'm still not totally sold on the Florida culture, with its gated communities, chain restaurants, apparent Fear of Bad People, and "Stand Your Ground" laws. However, and it's a very big however, it has been a pleasure to have a life in which you can go outside in February, drink a tropical drink under a palm tree, and ride your bike or walk on the beach in the middle of winter. I'm not complaining! And I can definitely picture spending most of the winter here somewhere, especially some charming place like Sanibel Island, where you wouldn't have to go far away to get what you need for the day, and could walk or ride your bike to get things done. So, I guess, too early to make a Florida Pronouncement of any sort. I'm thinking about it. Is "ambivalent" a decision?

But the main thing, besides (obviously), the weather, is...baseball. Specifically, Red Sox baseball. How thrilling is it to escape the New England winter and then find yourself on a warm day watching your own fellas out on a green field?

Pitchers all in a row

Amazing. And did I mention that Abbie was there, too? An embarrassment of riches! Abbie's wonderful roommate Kate has equally wonderful parents, who invited them both to spend their February school vacation with them in Naples, which is quite near where we were going to be anyway...so we were lucky enough to overlap with them all a bit. We are looking forward to attending the first two games,when Spring Training actually begins, although they are day games, and it can be pretty brutal out there. When we were at the ballpark on the first day, it was so thrilling to be there, and so festive an atmosphere, it was almost rock and roll.  Suddenly we are saying "There's Koji!!" Like he was a rock star. Which, now that I mention it, I guess he is. Anyway, big thrill to be here, especially when we are escaping what we know is going on at home.

Jet Blue Park, or Fenway South

Abbie and Kate being warm in February

On to Thomas Edison. I learned a lot of things about him yesterday. Yes, he was a Jersey guy,
although he was born in Ohio. What I didn't know was he spent much of his career trying to figure out a less expensive way to make rubber. This, and a desire for more privacy, led him to southwestern Florida at a time when it was pretty much covered with jungle and mosquitoes. He bought up a lot of land in the Ft Myers area at a time when there were no roads here, no railroad could bring you here, and the journey from St. Augustine took almost a week. There were two great things for him here: a place to get away from the difficulties of fame and winter weather, and a lot of bamboo growing on the property that he bought. He spent much of his time trying to find an easier source of rubber, and also a way to make his light bulbs last longer. He was working on a bamboo filament for the light
bulb that would allow the bulb to burn long enough that people would be willing to buy into this
electricity thing. (By the way, he offered to provide electricity for the town of Ft Myers and all the
people who lived there--probable a few hundred at that point--and the town said NO. People were just too scared to want it near them.)  Anyway, he built a big laboratory here:

Inside the laboratory

and spent winters here for many years.

The thing that was most moving for me about all of this,  never mind what electricity means in general, this is the guy who brought us the PHONOGRAPH.

Early phonograph, but recognizable

When I think about what my life would be like without recorded music, I just want to fall on my knees in gratitude for this man. And MOVIES!!! Walking through his house and his laboratory and thinking about all the things that he did to change the world makes you feel humble as a human. That this kind of  grace and genius is possible among our species is pretty stunning, and amazement and
gratitude is a big part of seeing this place.

One of the more astonishing stories here is that he had a very close friend and business partner named Ezra Gilliland. This was one of his closest friends, and the man who introduced Edison to his second
wife Mina, after his first wife died at 29 and left him with three small children. Edison was so fond of Gilliland that he asked him to be his next door neighbor in Ft Myers. He built him a beautiful house next door, exactly the same as his own, with a beautiful breezy walkway between the two houses.

Everything was quite wonderful until the two of them had a falling out about some kind of business
situation, and they stopped talking. Apparently Gilliland didn't want to sell his house and move away, and Edison "encouraged" him to do so by cutting off his electricity and water! So eventually, big
surprise, he agreed to sell his house to Edison and it became the guest house, where Presidents and celebrities of all sort came to stay.

Breezeway between the houses

Edison's next neighbor was Henry Ford, who lived later on just next to the now-guest house on the same property. Ford was beholden to Edison because when everyone else told him his quadri-cycle motorized vehicle idea was crazy, Edison was his big champion. They became very good friends, and went in a Model T to the Everglades camping together, where they got drenched by a big thunderstorm. Sounded familiar to me...but way worse than mine, and not in small part because of the inventions of both men.  Ford tried to interest Edison is going into business with him, but mindful perhaps of what happened with Gilliland, he said no, and they remained friends to the end of their lives (in spite of the fact that Ford was quite an anti-Semite, which Edison apparently was not). By the way, synthetic rubber was invented while Edison was still working on other natural rubbers, so, oh well. He had invented so many things--at least one patent every year for sixty five years--that he was just on to something else.

One more thing about Edison: there is on display there a list he had made of all the ways in which a motor car was better than a horse-driven vehicle, and all the ways an electric car would be better than a gasoline-powered car. Also a quotation on the wall about how if he were going forward, he would put his money on solar power for electricity, saying that he hoped we wouldn't wait until all petroleum and other fossil fuels were gone before we learned how to make it work. Too bad.

Besides the delight of seeing Abbie and Kate, and Kate's parents, we also had the pleasure of coincidence when Bob's sister Anna and her husband Farrell were here, and we were able to spend time with them, including at the Edison and Ford estates. So great to see familiar faces! Doesn't somebody else want to overlap with us? We are going to Mobile  next, for Mardi Gras, and then on to New Orleans for a week in the Big Easy. Anybody?

Everglades: Birds, Crocodiles, Alligators, Mosquitoes

First, the good news: The Everglades is a great place to see wildlife. It is gigantic, and the National Park is huge. The campground is 38 miles from the entrance, and once you’re in, you’re in. You’re not thinking you’ll just go somewhere and do something else for a while. Or, if you are, you’ve got another think coming, as the saying goes. If you are looking to get away from it all, this just might be the place.

Sea of grass

The ability to see wildlife up close is amazing. We’ve seen SO many exotic and beautiful birds, including being able to watch them feed in the water, and work on their nests, from quite nearby. We’ve been deep in the mangrove forest, which looks like something out of a science fiction movie. We’ve seen alligators slowly moving through the water, with mostly just their eyes and a bit of a snout skimming above the surface. We’ve seen butterflies of every imaginable pattern and color. We have seen a sky so open that you can see the horizon in every direction. We’ve learned so much about the plants and animals we have seen by spending time with the Park Rangers, who are seemingly all young and so full of enthusiasm about the environment here. Much about the way it looks here, where ocean sits next to swamp, which leads to forest so thick you couldn’t possibly walk through it, which comes up against an ocean of grass, that leads to fresh water lakes, is just impossible to describe, and will be impossible to forget.

That’s the good news.

The good but also not so good news is that what makes the Everglades a place different from anywhere else is that the whole bottom of Florida is, or was, a huge watershed. Florida is a seriously flat place, and fresh water from Lake Okeechobee is supposed to drain down all over the southern part of the state. The ocean meets a big saltwater marsh and swamp environment, and in between, there is a transition area that is a combination of both fresh and salt water. This is what makes this place so diverse. There are both crocodiles (salt water) and alligators (fresh water), and birds and plants that belong in each environment, including the ocean, the ponds, the estuaries and swamps. But starting in the mid-20th century, the water coming down from the big lake started getting diverted to cities and for agriculture. So the environment is changing, and lots of wildlife have left. Many of the most unusual birds, like flamingoes, are gone. Some of the most common birds here, like egrets and herons, and storks, have apparently been diminished by as much as ninety percent. Some of the birds we have seen are endangered. So I’m glad to have seen it all while it is still here.

Just a couple of guys hanging out in the sun

But now some of the bad news. In the Everglades they are having a weirdly wet winter. What this
means for us is that within a few hours of arriving, we were both covered with mosquito bites. Covered! They are so prevalent that just going in and out the door brings them in….and then comes that terrible moment when you kill one inside, and get blood on your hand, meaning it’s too late! This has impacted our ability to enjoy being here, because the early morning walk or the evening talk given by one of the Rangers is just out of the question, at least at the southern end of the Park, by the ocean, where we are staying, since the salt marsh mosquito is the really prevalent one at the moment. So cooking outside is out, which has complicated things for us a bit. And then….there was the rain. We went out for a tour led by one of these young Rangers (a very enthusiastic woman about 28 who lives in the Everglades during the winter and Alaska during the summer), when there was a sudden downpour. When we got back home we found out that everything inside was wet, because of course we left the trailer open to the breeze. The beds were soaked, and lots of the rest of the inside of the trailer too. We couldn’t really take things outside to dry because there was apparently more rain coming, and there was no place to hang things up that they wouldn’t get blown away in the wind. We hung things around as best we could inside and decided that our best bet was to stay indoors and watch a movie. (Did I mention: no cell phone service, no ability to get a signal to use for wi-fi, no radio, no newspapers?) To cheer ourselves up we watched March of the Penguins, which was about as unlike the Everglades as any place you can imagine! After that we managed to find a semi-dry place to lay down and a couple of semi-dry pillows, and tried to sleep.

Then came the storm. And I’m talking a REAL storm, the likes of which I don’t believe I’ve ever seen. SO much lightning, thunder, and wind-driven rain….and a howling wind that was shaking the trailer. It was too intense to sleep through, and all I kept thinking about was the people in tents! It was so dramatic, and there was nothing for it but just to wait it out, and survey things in the morning.
The next day it was quite a bit cooler, and so windy that the mosquitoes seem to be somewhere else. And we had a nice bike ride, on a day that wasn’t hot, which was a delight. The pillows are out in the sun to dry, and the clothes that are hanging off every surface in the trailer are flapping in the breeze, and will be dry before the day is done. And I discovered a different area in the campground where they have warm showers because of a solar water heater, which was thrilling!

I’m itchy...damned itchy. But I’m clean, and my clothes are drying out. We’ve got nothing to do,
nowhere to go, and several books waiting to be read. That’s not so bad, right? I started to cheer up.

Can you see him here, just under the surface?

And today we went on a long canoe trip led by a Ranger. It was a three hour tour of both fresh and salt water ponds, and it was so beautiful. The “three hour tour” DID make me a little anxious…..but unlike Gilligan and his pals, we made it back,  although there was a point when the Ranger said"See those  bubbles under the water there? Stay to the left, that's an alligator," that I wasn't so sure.  But we made it back, and I was proud of myself for neither running the canoe into anything or tipping over. Hooray for me!

Tomorrow we are off for civilization. We’re heading across the state on the Tamiami Trail (which I found out today means between Tampa and Miami) to the Gulf side of the state. We’ll be in the Fort Myers area, where we will see Abbie on her February vacation (hooray!), and visit with Bob’s sister and her husband, who will be on a vacation from New Jersey, if it stops snowing long enough that they all can get out (!), and we will visit with some old friends who used to live in Boston. And then….Spring Training! GO, RED SOX!

I think the wilderness part of this trip is over, at least for now. That’s okay with me, and here’s hoping “civilization” isn’t so riddled with mosquitoes!

Dry Tortugas National Park, Key Largo, the Coral Reef

View from the Fort; color variation is about water depth

While we were staying in Key West, which I freely admit right now, I was sorry to leave, we took a day trip to Dry Tortuga National Park. It's about 70 miles out to sea, and it takes about two and a half hours to get there on a boat run by the National Park Service. It's called Dry because there is no
source of fresh water there (and not much shade either, I would add), and Tortuga means turtle, and I
guess there were a lot of sea turtles there at the time. Almost the entire island is covered by a fort,
which was  put there to protect the shipping lane, and it was a Union fortress during the Civil War. It also served as a prison during that time, and boy it's easy to see how that worked,  because you'd have a heck of a time getting way.

One of the things that is great about touring a place like this is that the Park Rangers give you a lot of detail. It's easy enough to notice that it pretty hot there--and we were there in January -- but when you start hearing about the place, you can see why it might be a place they would send someone to do life at hard labor. You really feel for the Union soldiers, too. For instance, the only way to fire a cannon ball was to put the cannon ball into a blast furnace, and take it out with tongs, and hold it away from your hot self, and run like hell (it was really heavy and red-hot) to whichever cannon was ready. Then do it again. In a WOOL SUIT. With no fresh water.

This is the place that Dr. Mudd, whose first name I can't remember--but I'm sure it wasn't Roger--the
doctor who treated the broken leg of John Wilkes Booth (which he broke by falling off the balcony
after shooting Our Man Abe) was taken to serve a life sentence for his crime. He was chained with leg irons to a brick wall.

The mosquito problem there was really bad, partly because when they originally built the moat around the fort, they made the walls of the moat just slightly too high for the tide to come in and replace the water. In addition to the stagnant water, the fact that the water didn't get replaced was further complicated by the fact that this moat was their only sewer plan. So you can see you've got a mosquito situation. Someone arrived who had Yellow Fever, and of course the mosquitoes bit that guy and then bit everyone else. Pretty soon they had a raging epidemic, and they needed Dr. Mudd in the worst way. They let him out of his leg irons and he saved the lives of many of the men there. Eventually I think he got a commuted sentence. I forgot to ask the Ranger if this guy is the source of the phrase "your name will be mud," but if he is, it doesn't seem fair.

Inside the fort

One of the other parts of our day excursion was the opportunity to go snorkeling. The water was
fabulous, and we did see some nice fish, but the whole thing was rather embarrassing. First of all I
kept getting afraid I'd get way out there and forget the rhythm of clamping my teeth onto the tube and breathing into the tube without using my nose or opening my mouth; and then when I was in the shallows I found it impossible to walk with the flippers on, and kept almost falling down. I miss my friends and family, but I have to admit I'm glad none of you were witness to this display. Although you would have had a good time, I'm sure!

Since we left Key West, we have spent three days in Key Largo. These have been mostly spent riding
our bikes around looking for a town (there isn't one), and doing bike and trailer maintenance, laundry, grocery shopping, and so on. Bob is a great person to travel with in this way, much like he is at
home, because he just sees that something needs to be done to a bike or the trailer, and just sets about
doing it.

At John Pennekamp State Park

The highlight from our Key Largo time is that there is a state park here that is mostly underwater, and includes one of the worldbiggest coral reefs. Yesterday we went out in a glass bottom boat run by the park, that takes you out about forty five minutes away--but still inside the park-- so that you can look at the reef through the floor. It was really cool! It was pretty impossible to take any kind of picture, but this will give you some kind of idea, and maybe if you enlarge the picture on your computer or phone you might see something.

Today we are off for a few days at the Everglades. I'm looking forward to it, but also dreading it a bit. In addition to the part time job of trying not to get sunburned, the mosquitoes love me. We didn't have problems in Key West, but in the last few days I've gotten a lot of bites. And the Everglades is a SWAMP, for goodness sake.  I'll keep you posted.

Key West. Hemingway. Cats. Chickens.

I never have liked Hemingway all that much. The only time I really ever gave him much thought was in college, when I took a wonderful class about the expatriot American writers in Paris in the 1920's. We read Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Gertrude Stein, Dos Passos and so on. (Wasn't UCSC a great place to go to school?) In that class, we had to try to write in the style of each of the writers. I found out that Hemingway's short declarative sentences are much  harder to achieve than one would think. I guess I do admire his writing style quite a bit, but it's hard to admire a lot of other things about him. However,  today I spent a little time with him, and I quite enjoyed it.

Hemingway's house

The studio

His house is spectacular. It was built in 1851 by a very rich man, and it was so well constructed that it has never been damaged in a hurricane, and it was built so well on the HIGHEST POINT in Key West--at, get this, 16 feet above sea level--that it even has a basement, which is very unusual here because of flooding, and the basement not only stayed dry but was perfect for a wine cellar, and his collection was apparently the only thing he took with him when he left. The rest of the house is still full of his stuff.

An unimpressed cat laying on a display case at Hemingway's house

The thing with Hemingway and his cats is pretty weird. He believed that they were lucky omens, and particularly thought that six toed cats were lucky, and when he had a few of them, he let them roam freely. He had 50 or 60 of them around the property when he lived there, and gave them all the names of movie stars or other real people. There are 45 of their descendants at the property now, and about three quarters of them have six toes.

He was rather famously married four times, and each time he picked out the next one when the other one was still around. One of the fun stories we heard today was that when wife number two found out that while he was off as a war correspondent he had taken up with a journalist who would become
wife number three, she decided to spend some of his money while he was away. She dug up the backyard, where his beloved boxing ring was, and had a spectacular in-ground pool put in there, to
the tune of twenty thousands dollars...during the 1930's! It is still just amazingly beautiful. Near the pool is a drinking fountain for the cats, which he had installed....after he and some friends dragged a ceramic urinal from Sloppy Joe's bar, down about four blocks. He laid it on its side and kept it filled with water. This was partly for the cats, but also meant to piss off the wife. The wife then had it tiled in, and had an Italian olive oil vessel built in above it, and turned it into a fountain. He and this wife went back and forth like this until they finally got divorced. At some point in the story, he threw a penny at her, saying, since you are determined to take my last penny, here it is! She had that penny set into the stone out by the pool. It's still there.

The urinal-turned-fountain

The pool.

His study was very interesting. He produced about two thirds of all the work of his career in that room. His typewriter is still on the desk.

Hemingway's study

Anyway, it was an interesting visit, and worth a few bucks. Key West is an unusual and interesting place.  It seems very relaxed, and everything seems to happen on Island Time, which means it takes us all day to do very little. There are walks to take, and bike rides to take, and naps to take. It's not a bad way to waste time.

There are chickens everywhere, especially roosters. They are walking around all over the place: at the post office, on the street, in the parking lots, walking across the walkway. They too seem quite relaxed, but all day long there is quite a commotion of cockle doodle doo, and I suppose it could get on a person's nerves at some point. Oh well, just have a tropical drink or take a nap, I guess, or just walk the other way.

There are chickens and roosters everywhere

Tomorrow we are taking a daylong trip by boat to Dry Tortuga National Park. The biggest question in my mind is: how I can manage to spend all day outside without coming back as red as a lobster.? Or a
 rooster?

Day 29, in which we discover that we are amateurs

We are in Key West, which is a pretty damned fine place. Some people suggested to us that it was too commercial, or too schlocky, or something. (I think these must have been the same people who said Rome was too hot and dirty; then, when we were there... it was magical.  Key West might be like that.)  I'm sure that if we had been here in the 20's...or the 30's, or the 70's, or whatever... we would know how this just isn't what it used to be. But we weren't.  And we don't. So all we know is, this big campground, which is way too crowded and close, is very friendly, and festive. And an easy place to be.  And this town, which is too much...whatever...is very relaxed and easy going, and pretty damned easy to hang around.

In the meantime, we are thinking we are all that, because we are eating our meals at home and not going for the schlocky or the fancy and spending so much money.   We have figured out in the time we have been traveling that we can eat well on less money. We can find a local fish store and buy 3/4 of a pound of fish to grill, and it is just right. We can buy our own wine, and drink it at dinner for a half, or a third, of what we would pay at a restaurant, and like it better than what we could afford out. We have discovered that at Publix you can buy steam-in-the bag vegetables and brown rice that cook in the microwave. We have our easy-to-clean tablecloth, and candles, and plastic wine glasses that are
ALMOST like real glasses. When we leave home, we have learned that you can have a drink in the fancy hotel with the best view...without sleeping there, and then come home and make dinner.  We thought we had it all figured out. A little easy elegance on the road?  I was feeling pretty puffed up about how are getting it all figured out.  And then today, in my walk in the campground, I started looking at all the campsites here.  There are a lot of people who are doing what we are doing, and really as a way of life. AND....they taking it just a little bit farther. They've got the outdoor carpet
outside their door.  They've got their chairs outside, not just under the awning, like us, but with a little fence around,  to mark their space. They have a little sign that says George and Carol, from Georgia, are here. They have little lights around the palm tree near their site, or across their awning.  They
have an OUTSIDE TV set up in their little porch, so they can sit outside in their little space, with their beverage, and watch a movie!  I think I am just realizing.... I am out of my league.

I can't decide if I'm supposed to be like them. Should I quick go out somewhere and find the rIght indoor/outdoor carpet for outside the front door?  Should we get the right tschotchkies?  Lights? Or should I embrace my amateur status and revel in being one of the Regular People? All I know is...that it's a pretty sweet life, being in a nice spot in the world, living a nice life, but not getting too ahead of myself about what I should be doing. Spending some time thinking it's all pretty easy.

But I AM  thinking about some nice little white lights to mark our spot...