Mark Howell's - "Soundings"
Sunday, December 6, 2009
Soundings

America's first encounter with violent Muslim fighters was during the Barbary War of 1801 to 1805. (The root meaning of "barbarous" is stranger).

Two hundred years before the events of Sept. 11, the United States of America -- joined briefly by Sweden -- went up against the Ottoman Empire in a war on pirates.

For many years the Barbary States of North Africa, including the Sultanate of Morocco and the Regencies of Algiers, Tunis and Tripoli, had turned a blind eye to the eye-patched scourges of the high seas.

As British colonists, American merchant vessels before 1776 had come under the protection of the Royal Navy. But by 1783 the nation was on its own in the battle against piracy. In March 1785, Thomas Jefferson and John Adams, American envoys in Paris, offered a pay-off to the Barbary states in a London meeting with Tripoli's envoy to Britain, Ambassador Sidi Haji Abdul Rahman Adja.

The ambassador told the two Americans that the Koran insists "it is the right and duty of the faithful to plunder and enslave all nations that had not acknowledged the Prophet," adding that "every Muslim slain in this warfare would go to paradise." On the other hand, he was quite prepared to consider a tribute.

Jefferson passed this comment, and the offer, to Secretary of State John Jay who passed it on to Congress, which quickly established an annual pay-off to the pirate states to steer clear of American shipping -- and allocated the cash for it.

Soon enough, the U.S. was paying Algiers up to $1 million per year for the safe passage of American ships and a return of American hostages. By 1800, ransom and tribute paid to the privateering states amounted to 20 percent of America's annual revenues.

Immediately after his inauguration as president, Jefferson found himself extorted for $225,000 by the Pasha of Tripoli. Deciding enough was enough, the president said he would pay no more tribute. The war was on.

New frigates in the Amer-ican navy eventually won a couple of key battles in the southern Mediterranean with Jefferson having to pony up a ransom of $60,000 for American prisoners (he made a distinction between tribute and ransom).

Victory was declared and the United States Navy and Marines were now a permanent part of American government. But the piracy problem did not go away and the whole affair had to be done over in the Second Barbary War (1815), otherwise known as the Algerine War.

That would be the last of it.

But hardly the end of it.

• • • • •

Garrison Keillor and the cast of "A Prairie Home Companion" set sail for Key West on March 14 next year. They'll be aboard MS Ryndam on a cruise to the Yucatan, the third week-long spring-break cruise of the western Caribbean by the popular National Public Radio show out of Minnesota. The cruise leaves from Tampa.

"The purpose," says Keillor, "is to give hope to us in the frozen north through the blizzards and the miseries of car-starting and sidewalk-shoveling under the gray metallic skies of January and February so that we can glance at our calendars and see March 14 and imagine warm salt breezes and lunch in an outdoor taqueria in Costa Maya.

"In my case," he adds, "it is also to motivate weight loss and sit-ups so that I will look appropriate in my red Speedos at the aft-deck pool."

The ship stops at Key West to "commune with the spirit of Ernest Hemingway," then sails on to Belize, "founded by shipwrecked British sailors in 1683," and beyond to "jungly rain forest" and Mayan ruins.

"I love these cruises," said the radio superstar. "Never expected to, but I do."

• • • • •

A $5,000 reward is being offered in the search for a missing Florida Lottery winner from Polk County, reports Associated Press.

Abraham Shakespeare won $31 million in 2006. The 43-year-old was last seen in the Lakeland area in early April.

In April 2007, Shakes-peare was sued by a co-worker who alleged that Shakespeare had stolen the tickets from him.

Authorities say Shakes-peare won the suit in October 2007.

Anyone with information should call (863) 534-6379 or (863) 534-6200.

• • • • •

"Fiction aficianados," announces the Saturday Evening Post in promoting its online edition, "will appreciate Mark Howell's 'Not Just Another Plot.'"

This story by the editor of Solares Hill about two teenagers' unique relationship with the Hemingway House is published in the Post's January/February online issue. It has already received an honorable mention in the Lorian Hemingway Short Story Competition.

"Not Just Another Plot" will appear later this month at saturdayeveningpost.com/shortstory.

• • • • •

Tom Corcoran, author of the Key West murder mysteries featuring Alex Rutledge, is in town next weekend for a couple of book signings.

The first is on Friday, Dec. 11, from noon to 2 p.m. at Azur Restaurant, 425 Grinnell St. (with some fun lunch specials). The second signing is at the Eden House, 1015 Fleming St. during happy hour on the same day, from 4 to 5 p.m.

• • • • •

Art Levin, bartender, assistant manager and entertainment manager at the Hog's Breath Saloon, is now the general manager at the popular Lower Duval Street saloon. He will open the upstairs Writer's Room for private parties while continuing the room's service-industry nights (SIN) on Thursdays from 10 p.m. to 4 a.m.

"It's a unique room and I know the residents will enjoy their time in it," says Levin. Call 296-4222.

• • • • •

The New York-based artist known as MOMO is looking to work with 10 local residents through December to create new murals for interior and domestic spaces all over the island.

MOMO has done this around the country; his Key West effort is sponsored by The Studios of Key West and Public Art in Private Spaces.

The artwork will come at no cost to the residents. Participants must have ownership or approval to utilize an interior wall or living space for a new mural -- but they are under no obligation to keep or maintain the artwork.

MOMO documents each work with photography and produces a small booklet about Public Art in Private Spaces. He's looking for "a wide demographic of Key West residents and living spaces," says The Studios, which seeks interested home owners and residents who wish to meet with MOMO in early December and be considered for one of his murals.

Call 296-0458 or go to info@tskw.org

• • • • •

Annette Taddeo-Goldstein, whom we profiled in Solares Hill during her vigorous campaign against Florida Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen for the 19th District seat last year, has come out in vigorous support of Alex Sink for Governor, whom we profiled during her campaign to be Florida's chief financial officer.

Says Taddeo: "Of course, as a woman I'm excited about this opportunity of having the first female governor in our state. But I'm supporting Alex for so much more than that. I support her because she is a smart businesswoman who will bring all Floridians together, regardless of party affiliation, in order to move our state in the right direction."

• • • • •

Human see, human do?

Monkeys open bananas with a quick squeeze of the tip of the fruit, not by pulling at the stalk end like humans.

The monkey way is much the faster and more efficient way.

• • • • •

A piece in last week Soundings on the 1933 attempted assassination of President Franklin D. Roosevelt in Miami, in which the mayor of Chicago, Anton Cermak, was shot and days later died, has an update this week.

The fact is it was most likely not an attempt on FDR after all. Several scholars of the Mafia believe that Cermak was the actual target, not FDR; that the killer, Giuseppe Zangara, was a convicted felon and a runner for the mob; and that the killing was in retaliation for Cermak's war against organized crime in Chicago. The story is told in Gus Russo's "The Outfit," a history of such crime in Chicago.

There is even a Key West connection to it all.

Apparently the Cermak murder was orchestrated by David Yaras, a hit man for the Chicago Mafia (known as the Outfit) and a long-time friend of Jack Ruby. The story is that after the mob caught Zangara skimming mob funds, it ordered him to kill Cermak or face a terrible death.

Yaras had been involved with the Mafia's gambling interests in pre-Castro Cuba and after the fall of Batista he became the Chicago Mafia's liaison to the Cuban exile community.

Yaras had an office in the same Miami building as Santo Trafficante, Jr., don of the Tampa mob. Yaras had a son named Ronnie who ran a string of massage parlors and was murdered in 1974.

Many believe the man who murdered Yaras was a Trafficante associate named Sam "Fat Man" Cagnina, who in 1960 worked for the Key West Police Department before being fired for corruption.

(Two police informants linked Cagnina to the 1975 slaying in Miami of flashy Mafioso Johnny Rosselli, who helped organize attempts to kill Fidel Castro on behalf of the CIA and confessed before his death to playing a role in the Kennedy assassination.)

• • • • •

Also in last week's Soundings we claimed there are 13,983,816 ways to combine the six bouncing balls of Florida's lottery. Which is understated, points out Reader George Hurd, offering this math:

The lottery uses 53 numbers in 6 selections. The first selection can be any one of 53. The second, any one of 52. The third, any one of 51. The fourth, any one of 50. The fifth, any one of 49. The sixth, any one of 48.

The total of possible combinations will equal the total of multiplying 53 times 52 times 51 times 50 times 49 times 48. And that is 16,529,385,600.

• • • • •

Quote for the Week:

Sometimes I feel so way above

and believe me, above is not a very pleasant place.

You're alone there, and help is of no avail there.

That is the sorrow I see in God.

And no one can help him.

-- Gregory Nunzio Corso

(1930 - 2001)