Mark Howell's - "Soundings"
Sunday, August 29, 2010
Soundings

The place to see the candidates on election day last week was the triangle where US 1 meets US 1A.

Crowded onto that small piece of real estate were Matt Gardi, Republican candidate for state representative; Demetrios Efstratiou, candidate for county judge; Howard Hubbard, candidate for the Mosquito Control Board, together with Mrs. Hubbard, and Jay Marzella, also candidate for Mosquito Control Board. Standing at the side of the road was school board candidate Judy Wild with her sister, Carol.

Despite its popularity with the candidates, the spot was of little help to them. None won.

• • • • •

Key West's own Robert Frost International Poetry Contest has reached a new level of prestige.

Today administered by The Studios of Keys West after 16 years in the hands of the Heritage House Foundation, the contest appears in the September/October edition of The Saturday Evening Post.

This year's first, second and third place winners in the adult category are featured in their entirety in the magazine. That's Douglas Crago's "Spec," Marian Kaplun Shapiro's "Calling You" and Frank Cunningham's "Inside the Skyline."

Also appearing are the first, second, third and honorable-mention winners in the haiku division. That's Ernest J. Berry's "Moonlight," Dr. Bruce Ross' "Grandfather's Cane," Sandra Simpson's "Midsummer's Eve" and Ernest J. Berry's "Hurricane:"

hurricane

the candle goes out

with the cat

• • • • •

We are told that Conch artist George Carey was touched by the front-page story that appeared in Solares Hill just days before he died on August 6 in Wheeling, Va.

Diane Gibson of First State Bank and the Chamber of Commerce has sent us a newspaper cutting from the year 2000. It speaks to the provenance of one of Carey's great sculptures in Key West, "Moolah," the big manatee on the boulevard outside of First State Bank.

"Weighing in at three tons," goes the report by Maureen Zambito from Port Clinton, Ohio, where Carey had his studio, "the 15¬½-foot creature is 'my most challenging piece of sculpture so far,' said the artist. 'I was told it would be impossible to clad the steel in this way.'

"The manatee's skeleton is made of heavy steel wall tubing and 14-gauge steel plates. Over the ribs and supporting framework -- 16 feet around its generous waist -- Carey has applied a surface of brass-clad steel plates, making the manatee 'skin' virtually indestructible and weatherproof.

"Carey formerly taught welding to high school students. His expertise in the field and in shop work, combined with his talent as a painter, has made this manatee sculpture possible. And it didn't hurt that, at one point in his career, he owned an autobody shop.

"'I feel like the manatee is a part of me,' Carey remarked. He is married to Marsha Carey, an instructor at Martins Ferry High School, and returns to Key West every February for a one-man show.

"He got involved in the steel-sculpture habit when he was teaching welding at Key West High and the excess metal began to mount. Carey created a huge conch shell out of this trash and the high school displayed it as its mascot emblem. After that, requests began to roll in for similar pieces for other buildings and the rest, as they say, is history."

Moolah the Manatee, installed at First State on the boulevard in November 2000, was commissioned by the bank in support of then-Mayor Jimmy Weekley's Art in Public Places initiative "for the enjoyment of all citizens and visitors."

The bank continues to take care of "Moolah" while Carey's other statues on school and college properties have previously been cared for by the artist himself on a regular basis. Now Carey's fans hope that forces will coalesce to ensure the statues are maintained.

• • • • •

The origin of the word "moolah" as slang for money is unknown but it may be from the Irish phrase, moll oir, meaning "pile of gold."

• • • • •

A team from Senior Care Group out of Tampa will be holding a job fair at Florida Keys Community College on September 10 and 11.

Human resources director Kevin Goyer is coming to town with a staff from home office, including bilingual personnel. He anticipates a large turnout of applicants and hopes to hire approximately 100 employees from applications received.

On-site interviews will be held for RNs, LPNs, CNAs, housekeeping, maintenance and dietary staffing.

Goyer will also be interviewing for PRN clinical staffing and hopes to have at least 30 people on an as-needed on-call list.

• • • • •

The Woodstock Alumni Registry has opened and, beginning this week, anyone who attended the 1969 Woodstock Music and Art Fair -- or attempted to attend! -- plus residents of the area who volunteered or participated in the event in some way, can now become part of the festival's permanent history.

"We invite Woodstockers from around the globe to join the database and tell their story about the experience," said Wade Lawrence, director of the cyber-museum. "These unique narratives help preserve history for generations to come."

To register and complete the survey, visit www.surveymonkey.com/s/woodstock_attendees

• • • • •

From The People's Theater of Key West comes a casting call for Wednesday Sept. 1 and Thursday, Sept. 2 from 6 to 8 p.m. at Downstage Theater, 3340 North Roosevelt Blvd. (next to Wendy's and Conch Town Liquor). The house opens at 5 p.m. for script perusal.

Needed are three women and two men. All ages and types are encouraged to audition; all levels of experience are welcome. Also needed are a prop master, costumer and stage manager. This is all on a volunteer basis.

Sides will be available for pick-up before the call on Tuesday, Aug. 31 from 6 to 7 p.m. The actual show will run Thursday to Saturday with a Sunday matinee beginning Nov. 11 through Dec. 12, with a possible extension to Dec. 19. (No show on Thanksgiving.)

Call 294-6813 or visit peoplestheaterofkeywest.com for more on this.

• • • • •

Ants outnumber humans a million to one -- and the total weight of all of them on the planet just about equals the weight of all the humans on Earth.

• • • • •

It's called the Great Disruption and we're in it.

Author Paul Gilding with publishers Penguin/Bloomsbury will release internationally next April a book that's already building a green head of steam.

"The Great Disruption: How the Climate Crisis Will Change Everything (For the Better)" is about what's happening now as "Mother Nature and Father Greed hit the wall at once," comments Thomas Friedman on the book and its Australian author in the New York Times.

In a preview of the book just seen by Soundings, "We need to brace for impact," writes Gilding. "The Great Disruption started in 2008 and global crisis is no longer avoidable.

"It is not simply about fossil fuels and carbon footprints. We have come to the end of Economic Growth, Version 1.0, a world economy based on consumption and waste, where we lived beyond the means of our planet's ecosystems and resources.

"Old industries will collapse while new companies are literally reshaping our economy. In the aftermath of the Great Disruption, we will measure growth in a new way: as quality rather than quantity.

"Yes, there is life after shopping."

• • • • •

The bloody Crusades through Eastern Europe and beyond left a trail of psychic damage that has yet to be fully understood, let alone put behind us.

According to "A Troubled History: Religious Wars and Religious Freedom." by D. J. B. Trim, it was when the Crusades were over that Christians first began to face "sustained repression and at times brutal persecution by the Ottomans.

"Although Orthodox Christian communities survived, abhorrence toward Muslims was engendered and attitudes were entrenched that literally took centuries to erase -- attitudes of suspicion and hatred toward both Muslims (the conquerors and oppressors) and Roman Catholics (perceived as having abandoned their fellow Christians).

"The separate identities of Bosnians, Croatians and Serbians in the Balkans are largely defined not by language but by religion. Historically and culturally, Bosnians were Islamic, Croatians were Catholic and Serbians were Orthodox.

"The wars between these three religio-ethnic groups in the 1990s and the genocide practiced by Serbian extremists against Bosnians were in a sense the last rites of the religious wars begun in 1370."

• • • • •

We once asked a Serbian woman of our acquaintance, a graduate of the University of Belgrade, how it was possible for a large group of people of which she was a part -- well-educated, middle-class, international and contemporary in its outlook -- to wreck everything in an outburst of genocide?

"You don't understand," she said.

Understand what?

"The TV," she said. "The state TV that cockroached the Muslims. Night after night it called Muslims cockroaches. It was all we saw. We never watched anything else.

"We thought you were watching it. We thought the whole world was watching it."

• • • • •

Quote for the Week:

"I have always been contented but I have never been satisfied. To be dissatisfied means that you are ambitious to progress, to do things not that you may be richer but that you may be useful, and to take a part in the work of the world."

-- Henry Morrison Flagler

(1830-1913)