happy new year my friends

Wishing you all the very best.
a digital illustration by Art Winstanley
"A New Year in Paradise" © 2008 Arthur A. Winstanley

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christmas in key west

So I went out walking on Christmas Eve.
Mostly to get some evening air but also to see some Christmas lights around town.

I never really know where I'm headed when I wander out on my walks, I sort of just follow my nose and the internal guidance system does the rest.

That particular night, I found my way to BayView Park, which is the place where the official city of Key West Christmas Tree lives, surrounded by a sort of Santa's Village.

While I waited on the corner of Eisenhower Dr. and Truman Ave. for the light to change, a family came up from behind me and stood there also waiting for the light.
They were a family of a Mom and Dad, two small (I guessed maybe 5 or 6 year old) children - a girl and a boy - and their aunt (the Mom's sister).
I wished them a Merry Christmas, the light changed, we crossed the street and all headed into the park.
In the park we went our separate ways. They, to have their family frolic and me, to take a few pictures. I shot around them as best I could as the vibe wasn't right for me to make them the subject.

My subject was Christmas in Key West.
How we celebrate it and the way it looks for a half dozen weeks in a city that never knows snow.

Wandering around town that night, woke the ghost of Christmas past in me.
I relived my mother's butter cookies, how my grandfather lined up bottles of tawny port wine, like so many tin soldiers, under the tree to give as presents and how my own children badgered their mother and I at six o'clock on Christmas morning for permission to tear open their presents

Mine has been a good life. (dare I say, a wonderful life?)
Not without it's bumps and bruises to be sure but getting past the impact of those, is all about attitude and faith and I have plenty of both so, no worries.

The magic of Christmas-time is, at least for a few days, nothing much else matters.
The world seems to be just a little less frenzied, the people around seem to smile a bit more and the mornings (if you keep out of the stores and malls) are just a little more quiet.

The keys to Christmas (no pun intended) are compassion and love. One way or another, the more we give,
the more we receive.

happy merry

brass balls

If there's anything I've learned from my [longer than I ever expected it would be] lifetime, it's that there's not a problem this world can throw at you that can't be solved.

All it takes is an optimistic outlook and a pair of brass balls.

o.k, break's over

Between living next door (and I mean right next door) to a construction site for the past six months that, just about the time of my last post, got incredibly loud with beeping backhoes, roofers hammering, screaming circular saws and the incessant drone of a quartet of orbital sanders that sound like a swarm of large bees.

And the painful drain circling demise of the Key West the Newspaper (my bread and butter graphics/art direction contract), it's very confusing "resurrection by popular demand" and then having to re-design the publishing process as, for now, the BluePaper limps along from week to week.
I've been more than just a little distracted and honestly, not the happiest camper in the tent.

So, true to the rule that says "if you don't have anything nice to say (and trust me I didn't), don't say anything at all" I figured it was best to take a break from my normally optimistic blogging. (and believe me, all the pictures I shot during that break were really gray and gloomy - talk about art imitating life)

Anyway, I always had faith that in time,things would sort themselves out. After all, as the saying goes, " when God closes a door, he opens a window". But in this case that window was on the 14th floor and I don't do well with heights so the sorting out took a little longer than I'd wished it would.

Then yesterday I woke up (a good start), got out of bed, stood out on the porch coffee cup in hand, took a look around and thought, "look at where you live, the life you've made for yourself with caring friends and loving family and hey, you still have your health; get your sorry head out of your ass."

It was time to start dosing myself with some comic relief.
Bill Hicks, Jon Stewart, the Republican "Presidential" debates. . .

By the end of the day, the fog of funk lifted and I was back to my "it's all good" self.
Besides, it's almost Christmas and even and though I've been known, at times, to be an irascible son of a bitch,
I'm no Gingrinch.

So enough already; break's over.

my organic barometer

A few hours before the weather broke last week, I knew it was going to happen. How I knew didn't have anything to do with meditation, incantation, speculation or rain dancin'.
It was all about Maxine.

Cats live very structured lives.
"At 8AM, you'll find me over here and at 10AM I'll be over there. At noon, I'll come in looking for my daily ration of tuna and from noon to 4PM I'll be sleeping out under the plant stand on our terracotta tiled porch. But at 4PM I'll be back in the kitchen for dinner. . .
. . .And by the way, if you go to the bodega for beer, I expect you to have a dollop of milk in a bowl for me so we can both enjoy a cocktail."

Now most of that, except for the "gimme food" stuff, is her summer schedule. So like I said at the start, a few hours before our clear blue skies and sticky heat gave way to hours of gray skies and cooling rain, Max had again assumed her place on the one of my living room chairs that she believes
belongs to her.
It's a seat she never takes during the summer and it's been a behavior pattern I've recognized for as long as we've been living here together.

And when January rolls around, a few hours before the even cooler weather kicks in, I'll know it's time to start cursing out my drafty jalousie windows again because "my organic barometer" will be curled up under the covers at the foot of the bed.

national geographic @ key west the blog

Now this is a cool thing, someone at National Geographic Magazine noticed Key West the Blog and took a few minutes to write a complementary comment about it.

A friend told me about it and I thought "go on!" but curiosity got the better of me, I looked it up and sure enough;
there it was. . .
"paradise or paradox, it always depends
on how we look at it."

Click on the logo to give it a read.

who's in the details?

Some folks say, "the Devil is in the details".

Other folks say, "God is in the details".

The real deal is, it's just us; here and now,
alive in the moment.

What we think and how we choose to live is who we are.

"We are in the details".

There's no demon or deity about it.

hmmm. . .

Well so, last week was a busy week in ArtMan-land.
Between having to appear in court as a witness on behalf of my good friend, the nefarious Dr. Cooper, trying to remember how to tie a Windsor Knot and wrapping up a months-long project of a mouthful of dental work I needed to get done (don't cringe, it didn't hurt), there wasn't much time to think, or write, about much else. But after a quiet weekend and an extra down day due to rain. . .

I didn't choose to get up close and personal with this thing so I don't know what it is or what it does.
From where I stood it struck me, artistically, as a visually interesting representation of functional industrial sculpture and another illustration of how human-kind exists beside nature rather than in accord with nature.

Left to itself, nature in Paradise, or anywhere else for that matter, doesn't need or want anything.
All it has to do is breathe. Nature is a self-sustaining eco-system. (you knew that)
The air, the ocean, the coral, the trees, birds, fish, geckos, iguana and our freakishly large bugs. . .
Everything just naturally and effortlessly supports
everything else.
Throw in human-kind however and it all gets a little trickier.

We need paved roads, gas stations, electricity, flush toilets, cell phone towers, Dion's Quick Chick Chicken and whatever this thing is.
But when you get real about it, all those things aren't human needs; they're human wants.
Whatever this thing does, it's man-made and so, designed to force a desired result; nothing natural or effortless about it.
(human-kind exists beside nature rather than in accord
with nature)

Our civilization could have evolved just as naturally and effortlessly as the geckos, iguana and the freakishly large bugs. But it didn't and I know, as well as you do, that it's way too late for us to go back to living like Gauguin's Tahitian beauties.
We're stuck with the mess we've made.

I've heard it said (and maybe so have you) that if every bug on Earth (freakishly large or otherwise) died off, the planet would die with them. But, if all of human-kind died off, our small blue marble of a planet would prosper.

Just a little something else to make you think, hmmm. . .

cayo paloma

Alright, alright, I admit it. I did an illegal thing, pulling off on the shoulder of the road on the 7 mile bridge for a non-emergency stop.

I was driving back down the Keys the other day and out the corner of my eye was Pigeon Key.
Now, I've been there a time or two for the annual arts and crafts festival but never thought it was much to
write home about.
Still, on that particular day, it seemed to be
calling out to me. . .
Artman. . . Artman. . . Artman. . .
(Christ, sometimes I just hate when that happens!!)

Long story short, I was compelled to pull off the road, get out of the car, nearly get creamed by a mile long Peterbilt seemingly doing a million miles an hour and take this
damned picture.
(it was the perfect place to become the proverbial bug
on the windshield)

But I got the shot and, very luckily, still live to tell the tale. . .

Pigeon Key, originally known as "Cayo Paloma" is a small, 5-acre island located off the old Seven Mile Bridge (seen in the background there) just short of 50 miles north of Key West, below Marathon Key in the middle Keys.

Early Spanish explorers named it for large flocks of White-crowned pigeons (Columba leucocephala Linnaeus) that roosted there.

Originally, Pigeon Key was a work camp for the Florida East Coast Railway.
During the building of Henry Flagler's Overseas Railroad Key West Extension between 1908 and 1912, there were, at times, as many as 400 workers housed on the tiny island.

A few of the buildings from the Flagler era remain on the little rock and are now part of the Pigeon Key Historic District.
Today, they serve as housing for educational groups, administrative offices for the non-profit Pigeon Key Foundation and the Bridge Tender's House has been converted into a small museum.

The last thing I wanted to say about Cayo Paloma was a thought that came to me while I was editing the wide angle photograph seen above and has to do with that portion of the old Seven Mile Bridge.
By all accounts, it really is 7 miles from Pigeon Key to the next spit of coral (which I'm pretty sure is Duck Key to the south) and in between there's nothing but water. Can you imagine being on a train, running down that single track, wider than that single track with no railings on either side? Looking out the windows of the train on either side, all you'd see is water.
But for the bumping and grinding of the steel wheels,
I'll bet you could imagine that you were flying over the ocean.

How cool is that?

that sorry day

"September 11, 2001" © 2001 arthur a. winstanley

I drew this one exactly 10 years ago today between 9 & 10 in the morning while I was watching the events in lower Manhattan on September 11, 2001.

There's not a whole lot anyone can say about that sorry day that hasn't already been said and I'm not even gonna try here. But I did want to pay a moment of homage to all those souls who were, through no fault of their own, put in positions of absolute powerless-ness.
No one human being has the right to put another in that place.
It's just wrong.

I don't believe in the existence of "heaven" or similary, in the existence of "hell".
But karma is our reality. We, all of us, will reap whatever
we sow.

Outside the mainstream consciousness there remains a question as to who is responsible for the crimes of that
sorry day.
I'm not sure we'll ever know for sure and, 10 years gone,
I'm not sure it matters. But whoever is responsible, knows they are; and will, in this life or their next, be fated to
realize a reckoning.