key west history, part 3

THE CIVIL WAR

During the American Civil War, the state of Florida seceded and joined the Confederacy but Key West remained in Union hands because of its importance as a naval base. Most of the locals were sympathetic to the South and many flew Confederate flags over their “Conch” homes.

Fort Zachary Taylor was constructed between 1845 and 1866. It was a very important Key West outpost during the Civil War.

  

In 1861, construction began on two other important forts, East and West Martello Towers, and they served as sidearms and batteries for the larger Fort Zac.

 All three forts were connected to by railroad tracks for movement of military munitions.

So, for the American Civil War, Key West was loaded for bear. Key West held the largest cache of cannon in one place during the war but never a shot was fired.

at the end of the day

I'm guessing it was two years after I came to live in Key West before I saw my first proper sunset, (and by proper I mean, lounging out on the Gulf shore for the hour or two it takes to watch the day turns to dusk as the sun sinks into the sea).

You see, the second or third thing I did when I got to town was land a job in the at the Citizen (and for my out-of-towner readers, that's our local daily newspaper, the Key West Citizen).
Anyway the gig was from 4pm - 12am so, I'd be inside while the sun took it's ride.


After I'd finally freed myself of that mess I thought, "living in Key West and not seeing sunsets was as take it all for granted as living in New York City and not visiting the Statue of Liberty." So from every angle I could think of: Mallory Square, Fort Zach, Sunset Key or a barstool at Schooner Wharf. . .
I filled my head with sunsets.
"It's a beautiful time of day", I thought, "small wonder all these folks come down to see it."

Ever since I've made it a point, at least once or twice a week,
to find my way to the west edge of our island
at the end of the day.

sculpture key west

Sculpture Key West (SKW) is an annual Keys event dedicated to celebrating the arts. An outdoor event, Sculpture Key West features the work of artists from around the world at 4 distinctive venues. . .
Fort Zachary Taylor State Park, the Key West Garden Club at West Martello Tower, the KeyWest Tropical Forest & Botanical Garden and 540 Greene Street. (sorry, no website)

As I see it, the function of art is to draw the participant (I do believe viewing or listening to any form of art is a participatory action) to draw the participant, at least temporarily, out of their prescribed mindset. (although sometimes the impression can be lasting).
It can bring a smile, enrage passions, inspire new thoughts, inform or even confuse the holy hell out of you.

I experienced that gamut of motivations recently when I took advantage of my new found "auto-mobility" to visit a few of the SKW venues.
Here's a sampling of what I found. . .

Fort Zachary Taylor

Square Wave, Bill Wood

Photosynthesis, Myung Gyun You

Angel, Luciano di Rosa

Contemporary Cannon, Tom Risser

Hard Place, Jiwan Noah Singh

Key West Tropical Forest & Botanical Garden

Diaspora Series, Lori Nozick

Anima, Susan Bennett

No Longer Waiting, Roberta Marks

Key West Garden Cub @ West Martello Tower

Wall of Wisdom, Susan Johnson

Rasta Rooster, Bounce Margil

Angeline, Lynn Umlauf

Templates of Clouds, Maja Godlewska

Now this is one of those pieces of art that informs.
(at least, it taught me something new)

Laid out in a large circle were better than a dozen old album covers that had been transferred onto tiles at actual album cover size. They were records from the 50's & 60's by a dude called "The Mighty Sparrow".
Well, I'd never heard of him so, being the kind of inquisitive mind I am, I looked him up. . .

Sparrow Come Back Home, Buckley & Mark Harris

. . .and this cat is truly, "The King of Calypso"!
Check out these 3 links I've attached.
You're gonna love this guy!!

TEN TO ONE IS MURDER

DE BOTH AH DEM
CONGO MAN

if you're not outraged, you're not paying attention!

Harris School

"I haven't written a word in weeks!"
This I mentioned to a friend over dinner this past weekend.
"That's probably because Mercury turned retrograde in Taurus on April 18th " she told me, "and when that happens all kinds of communications can get snarled up."
"How long does it last?" I asked her.
"This one will be over on Tuesday. . ."
"This coming Tuesday?"
"Yeah the 11th".

Now, I've never been a big one for astrology but I must admit that after a few weeks of nothing much to say, I woke up on the 12th with so much stuff banging around in my head, it took me three days to write it all down.
Makes you wanna say "hmmm. . ."

Sea the horizon at Ft. Zac

Anyway, I want to get my 2¢ in on that oil thing out in the Gulf.

Call it disaster, fiasco, catastrophe, debacle; I've even heard it called an act of God! Call it whatever you want but just don't call it a " leak". I mean have you seen the underwater video of what's going on out there?
Seriously, if you haven't, here's a link. . .
OIL "LEAK" MY ASS!!

Sea Grapes at Ft. Zac

The notion of offshore oil drilling being anything near the neighborhood of "safe" is as bogus as the concept of "clean" coal.
Alright, but they're gonna do it anyway and we all accept the idea that, in this world, sometimes stuff happens. But, if you or I screw a pooch or make a mess (figuratively or literally), we take it on the chin and clean it up. With none of this not my fault, blame the other guy crap.
Did you catch any of those Senate hearings? (that's where I heard it called "an act of God")
Christ on Friday! It was like three 7 year olds arguing over who spilled the milk and special interest driven politicians (barely adolescents themselves) asking all the wrong questions!
What do they care who screwed up? The real deal is, how are the three stooges gonna make it right?
If the Senate really wanted to know what went wrong and how to right it, don't you think they'd want to be talking to the roustabouts (the guys who really do the work) instead of the corporate white hairs?
. . .Deliberate incompetence all around.

Up close & personal at Ft. Zac

Last week I saw the head guy from the EPA on Meet the Press. He was saying that if TransOcean, BP and Haliburton couldn't get it together, the government would step up to get it done.
(again, I was not reassured)

Then a radio talkshow (probably Hannity or something)
I heard two really stupid comments about all this;
One caller said, and I'm paraphrasing here, the liberals are just trying to use the spill for their own agenda. There's no disaster. Oil comes from the ground so it's as organic and natural as the water and birds and fish.
The other caller said the shrimpers and fishermen had nothing really to worry about because the oil would come up and float on the surface and the fish, after all, live under the water. (gotta love the "average" American)

Thanks to Reef Relief Founders

Do I know if any oil will wash up here?
Not really, I'm not so familiar with the motion of the ocean out there. But whether or not we get actual floating oil or "tar balls" at Ft. Zac, there are sure to be other types of impact. Already the oil is affecting oxygen levels in the water and sealife is suffocating and, the longer the oil is out there, the heavier it'll get; then it'll start to sink.
For our already fragile reef system, that can't be good.

Thanks again to Reef Relief Founders

. . .And as long as I've spent the afternoon ranting anyway,
I want to get one last thing off my chest.

It's a question really, for a guy I heard about a couple of weeks ago who calls himself "Jesse James". . .

Dude, are you out of your flippin' mind?

Sandra Bullock

a walk in the park

At last, our weather has started to moderate a bit and, I'm happily not the only person to have noticed the change.
Lord how I love living here. . .

gone fishin'

lying in the shade like a lazy dog

There's not a lot going on today so I'm just lying out here in the shade like a lazy dog. I'm sure I ought to be worrying about terrorism, counter-terrorism, over-the-counter terrorism or something but today I can't inspire the interest.

I am, though, having a thought of "thanks again" to Helen and our friends from Save Our Pines for putting an end to the Sate sanctioned Australian Pine chain-saw massacre. Because of their good work, the birds still have a place to sit and I can lie in the shade like a lazy dog and let my mind go wandering through the galaxy.

Remember when the only time we used the word "trillions" was when we were talking about the number of galaxies in the universe? Now we can argue about a Federal budget in "trillions"! The Republican Party (who really ought to re-name themselves the "Going Away Party") say it's too much while the Democratic Party says it's too little. I personally can't get my head around how "trillions" of anything can't be enough.

What's "more than enough" is six kids. My parents had six kids and raised us all under the same roof. It was a "trying" experience for all concerned, (the older I get, the more I ask myself. . . "what were they thinking?"). So why, someone tell me why, is a girl with six kids clamoring in the kitchen already, fooling with fertility drugs and breeding eight more? (the media calls her "Octo-mom" but I'm betting, if it weren't for FCC rules, they'd be calling her "Octopu#*@. . ." [think James Bond])

Anyway, now the girl's got fourteen kids and the "powers that be" are in her business and Dr. Phil is in her face. They won't let her take her kids home because she's judged to be broke. But when she solves that problem, getting a million dollar offer to do a part in a porn flick, the "powers that be" won't let her take her kids home because she's judged to be potentially immoral.

The last time I looked (or heard a politician speak) we were a nation of over-devoted Christians. . .
What ever happened to Matthew: 7-1?

I have a good friend who gets pretty judgmental at times (maybe you do too). Don't get me wrong, I enjoy her good company and I love her to tears but when I see the critical cleaver coming, I'm out of there. Whatever she gets on about - sex, politics, religion or how this one does one thing and that one does another - I can't bear to hear it.

I'd rather be lying out here in the shade like a lazy dog and hearing the wind whisper to me through the tops of these beautiful trees. It's whispering to me now. . .
"Chinese Food. . . Chinese Food. . . Chineeeeeeese. . ."

civil war days @ fort zachary taylor

Looking for a quiet day at the beach last week, Jazz and I stumbled upon "Key West Civil War Days" at Fort Zachary Taylor.

Built between 1845 and 1866 and named for the 12th U.S. President, who died in office during it's construction, Ft. Zac today sits within 54 acres of State ParkLand. But back in 1861, after Florida seceded from the Union, Ft. Zac (along with Ft. Jefferson in the Dry Tortugas and Fort Pickens in Pensacola) remained in Union hands throughout the war.

Although the fort never saw hostile action, it became the anchorage for Confederate ships captured by the Union blockade squadron. At some point the garrison commanders realized that although the fort was impregnable from the sea, it's back door was wide open to a possible attack by Confederate sympathizers in Key West.

So they quickly pointed ten cannons at the town and turned a section of the land access causeway into a drawbridge. But for all that, an attack from the town never came and, as far as I know, the troop transport, supply and communications rail line that connected Ft. Zac to the East and West Martello shore defenses was never interrupted.

In it's day the Ft. Zac was state-of-the-art military stuff and at any given time there might be 50 to 500 men stationed there doing a lot of thirsty work. But Key West is a "water water everywhere, but not a drop to drink" kind of place so the Ft. Zac had it's own desalinization plant to produce fresh water.

The fort's designers also came up with a tidal flush latrine system. But even though we have four tidal shifts a day here, they are very shallow; too shallow to flush the latrines effectively. So soon enough the waste collected, the water backed up, mosquitos had a new breeding ground and in 1862 Yellow Fever tore through the fort like grass through a goose, killing on average, 15 men a day.

By the time the outbreak was over, better than 300 soldiers were infected with the disease and 70 or so were dead.

At the end of the Civil War, in 1865, troop strength at Ft. Zac was temporarily drawn down only to be re-garrisoned for the Spanish-American War and World Wars I & II. (that's a lot of fighting for a "peace loving nation")

In those years, even though not a shot had been fired in anger to or from the fort, between Yellow Fever, hurricanes and "military justice" very nearly 1,000 soldiers would not be going home again. So with so many needlessly dead guys to it's credit, you might ask, "is Fort Zachary Taylor haunted?" Well I think so, but hell, I believe world peace is possible. So let's go with other folks opinions. . .

Some time in the late 1960's/early 70's a Naval Engineer named Howard England was digging around the fort for artifacts. At some point a bearded guy in a Civil War era uniform asked him, "what be you lookin' for sonny?" England answered that he was looking for guns and munitions and stuff, then asked what the soldier's name was. The soldier introduced himself as Wendell Gardner, told him to dig over here and vanished. Howard England dug over there and uncovered a gold mine of Civil War era armaments and artifacts. It was later discovered that Sgt. Wendell Gardner had indeed been garrisoned at Ft. Zac and had died there in 1862.

Another story comes from Harry Smidt, a park historian who tells of seeing a Civil War soldier while narrating a guided tour of the fort. The soldier, standing guard near a gun emplacement, was seen by everyone on the tour and Smidt stepped up to speak with him. Snapping a salute he said "report soldier" and the soldier came forward toward him. Yes, you're right, Harry had the same "holy sh*t what have I done" moment you or I would have had and quickly snapped another salute saying, "the fort is secure". The soldier halted, returned the salute, did an about face and faded from sight.

Now, I would never had gotten into the ghost thing except that while I was pouring over my pictures, I found this one. . .

Look in the orange square. I had just been around that corner to the left shooting pictures of the latrine. There was no one there but me and, I kid you not, when I shot this one of the long angle of arches (now cropped so you can see the bodily forms better) I didn't see any human shadows. But there they are and enough said. . .