Mark Howell's - "Soundings"
Sunday, September 5, 2010
Soundings

We did a quick search for "poem of apology for Iraq" but came up with nothing.

Our Google search produced instead "Bishop Brougham's Apology" by Robert Browning, which for some reason seems worth quoting anyway:

Our interest's on the dangerous edge of things.

The honest thief, the tender murderer,

The superstitious atheist.

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"It is an old mistake to place hell beneath the earth." -- Browning.

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Larry Murray of Big Pine writes that in last Sunday's Solares Hill wrap-up on the primary election we said MarioDi Gennaro "did not carry any of Monroe County's 32 precincts."

"In a sense," says Larry, "that is true. Unfortunately, Monroe County has 33 precincts, with number 33 being the Ocean Reef community.

"Di Gennaro received 218 votes from Ocean Reef, nearly 10 percent of his total and 83 percent of those cast in the precinct. You can draw your own conclusions from those pesky numbers."

Both Mario Di Gennaro and Barbara Bowers carried Precinct 33 decisively. Bowers tells us that in three precincts she received a plurality of the votes, although not achieving a majority as she did in 33.

Precinct 33, as Larry points out, is Ocean Reef Club. Which, as they say, is sui generis.

The Ocean Reef Political Action Committee interviews and endorses local candidates and encourages every club member to vote as a unit for its endorsed candidates.

Ocean Reef has been consistent in achieving this goal.

Judge Reagan Ptomey, who received 64.8 percent of the vote countywide, received 97.3 percent of the votes from Ocean Reef.

Di Gennaro, a candidate for the District 4 county-commission seat whose countywide percentage was 35.2 percent, received 83.3 percent of Ocean Reef votes.

Several other candidates carried Ocean Reef decisively this year but lost countywide. That's Mosquito Control candidates Howard Hubbard and Tony Gibbons, who lost to Dick Rudell and Jack Bridges respectively, and Democrat Mosquito Control candidate Jay Marzella, who lost to Dan Dombrowski.

Unlike every other Monroe County precinct, the overwhelming percentage of Precinct 33 votes are cast by absentee ballots.

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The Saffir-Simpson Scale is used to measure the strength of hurricanes (see our cover story this week). It was developed in 1971 by the engineer and meteorologist whose names it bears and it was first used extensively in the 19874 hurricane season.

Here are the Saffir-Simpson categories:

Category 1 is a hurricane with wind speeds from 74 to 95 mph; Category 2 has wind speeds from 96 to 110 mph; Category 3 has wind speeds from 111 to 130 mph; Category 4 has wind speeds from 131 to 155 mph; Category 5 has wind speeds in excess of 156 mph.

Hurricanes of Category 3 and above are considered major hurricanes. In the opinion of meteorologist Simpson, no structure, regardless of how soundly engineered, can escape major damage from a Category 5 hurricane.

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Kim Romano is WomanKind's new executive director, succeeding Betsy Langan who has made the long-awaited transition to grant writer for the organization.

"I told you I'd be back," joked Kim, who moved from Key West to Cambridge, Mass., back in 2001. "Betsy has done an outstanding job and I'm very glad she's staying," she said.

Kim will head the women's health-care center founded by Gazelle Lange and Renee Grier, both of whom served on the Healthy Start Coalition's board of directors during Kim's 10-year service as executive director of Healthy Start.

Said Janis Childs, president of WomanKind's board of directors: "Kim is a perfect fit and a welcome addition. We are thrilled."

"My goals for Womankind are simple," said Kim. "I want women -- and every man who loves a woman -- to know that we care for all women, be they wealthy, low-income, heterosexual, lesbian, teen or members of our cherished senior community."

Kim holds a degree from Harvard University and is the director and producer of "Muriel," an award-winning documentary about a Key West woman.

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HS 2 is holding an Open House on Tuesday, Sept. 7 from 6 to 8 p.m. in its new location at 1127 United St., across from Glynn Archer school (the home school is now in the Conch house that used to be Montessori charter school.)

It is still accepting students for grades 9 through 12 and also 7th or 8th graders who are ready for high school subjects.

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Here's an opportunity to take a look at future plans for the Truman Waterfront. The District 6 community meeting on Thursday, Sept. 9 at the Nutrition Center at the Frederick Douglass Gym, 111 Olivia Street, starting at 6 p.m., is open to the public and will include a discussion on the waterfront as well as an open forum to talk frankly with local police officers about the neighborhood and the residents' needs and expectations.

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Dr. Ross Williams tells us his chiropractic and nutrition practice in Key West has a new face in the front office. "My wife Jody Smith Williams has joined the practice," he says, "to keep me on my toes and add her organizational moxy."

Jody, who contributes a Going Green column in Solares Hill once a month, will also spearhead the clinic's green certification application process. "We think we're pretty green already," says the doc, "but we want to make sure we're doing as much as we can do and have a well-respected third party give its assessment and stamp of approval."

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Chris Belland, principal columnist of Solares Hill's Going Green, and his partners Ed Swift and Moe Mosher of Historic Tours of America, are featured as tourism trendsetters in September's issue of Florida Trend. Concludes Swift about Key West then and now: "I think it's cleaner than when we were a Navy town. There's a lot more foliage and plants."

Continues the story: "'I came down to Key West for the weekend and here I am,' Belland, 62, says. Swift, 64, a former Monroe County Commissioner, ran a camera store. Mosher, 78, was Swift's barber in high school.

"'We love history, all three of us,' Swift says. 'We love restoration.'"

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Classical guitarist Matthew Jampol performs Spanish guitar highlights and his new concerto in the Alan S. Maltz Gallery, 1210 Duval St., every Thursday and Saturday nights at 8 p.m.

A pre-concert dinner at Banana Café at 6 p.m. and a personal gallery tour by Maltz (official wildlife and fine art photographer for Florida) followed by the 8 p.m. concert costs $64 inclusive.

Reservations required; call (305) 304-1437 or visit www.keywestconcerto.com

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The American Civil Liberties Union and the Center for Constitutional Rights have filed a lawsuit challenging the government's authority to carry out "targeted killings" of U.S. citizens located far from an armed conflict zone.

The civil rights groups were retained by Nasser Al-Aulaqi to bring a lawsuit in connection with the government's decision to authorize the targeted killing of his son, U.S. citizen Anwar Al-Aulaqi, whom the CIA and Defense Department have targeted for death.

The complaint asks a court to rule that using lethal force far from any battlefield and without judicial process is illegal in all but the narrowest circumstances and asks the court to order the government to disclose the standards it uses to place U.S. citizens on government kill lists.

The groups charge that targeting individuals for execution poses the risk that the government will erroneously target the wrong people. In recent years, the U.S. government has detained many men as terrorists, only for courts or the government itself to discover later that the evidence was wrong or unreliable.

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There are 170,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 ways to play the 10 opening moves in a chess game.

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For Linda Bean

there's only the next

horizon

the last

sunset

lingers

lovingly

its memory

guiding us to the next

-- Bud Navero

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Quotes from the Week:

"You're not going to hear it."

-- Florida Republican Party vice chair Deborah Cox-Roush on Rick Scott as Columbia/HCA CEO when it paid $1.7 billion settlement to avoid criminal charges.

"[Scott] is 100 percent consistent on conservative principles."

-- Incoming House Speaker Dean Cannon