small "g" gypsies

Blowin’ In The Wind settled onto the mooring ball next over from Kintala. Depending on which way the current is running we can sit in our cockpit and call over to Grand Kids sitting on her bow. There is pretty constant Ding traffic back and forth, and we usually end up spending a large part of each day on shore playing in the park with the kids, exploring the Library, and enjoying Beaufort. Sooner or later we will have to get back to concentrating on boat projects. Blowin’ In The Wind sat for a long time before being pressed into full time cruiser status, hiccups were to be expected. Kintala has a short list of things that broke as we came around the Keys, also to be expected.

The new city day dock, the Downtown Marina, and the mooring field in the background

Two family boats traveling together, one filled with kids, tend to draw some attention. To the curious, I have taken to describing our little band as a modern day gypsy family. We wander along with our overall plan (if you can call it that) driven by weather and the ease, or lack thereof, of living in the places we stop. We take odd jobs here and there, live off savings, generate a bit of coin from “internet income." Not a life of luxury, but one that suits us.

The Ladies Island Swing Bridge framing a full moon rise

(Should solar power and batteries ever improve to the point of carrying air conditioning suitable for a small boat, the “luxury” part will see a huge improvement!)

The label “gypsy” (small “g”) is often associated with “wanderer,” is mostly inoffensive and, in our case anyway, utterly appropriate.

For the most part people, as individuals, are curious and friendly. There is a bit of wistfulness attached to the idea of gypsies, a romanticism of being unencumbered. People like the idea of living that way in our increasingly frantic society. So, particularly with brief encounters, they tend to like people who have deliberately chosen a different path. That we are usually accompanied by three or four of the cutest grand kids on the planet (okay, just my opinion) likely doesn’t hurt.

Historically Gypsy (capital “G”) is a label not so well regarded nor inoffensive. The term is actually associated with the descendants of a single group of people who migrated from northwestern India about 1,500 years ago. Once they started to wander they never stopped. They called themselves, their culture, and their language “Romani”. To this day they are a persecuted minority in most nations, the ultimate “other” in a world where borders are the most important determiner of “who” and (sadly) “what” a person is. For some reason Italy has started an anti-Romani campaign, to the point where the government is breaking up families and taking children away from their parents.

Once in a while we bump into a little of the capital “G” attitude. Though we have heard of other cruisers getting harassed on a personal basis by an individual land dweller, our bumps come in the more impersonal form of official dictates about anchoring or shore access. (Think Miami and much of the central east coast of Florida.) At the moment about 3000 of us who use St. Brendan's Isle as our domicile, are facing a bump by the name of Chris Chambless. Mr. Chambless is a Florida Election official who is aiming to remove our voting rights because he does not approve of our lifestyle. It is possible he will succeed while being heralded by some as "protecting democracy." That this argument could eventually be expanded to deny millions of Americans currently not living inside US borders the right to vote is likely part of the plan. Will the courts, particularly this Supreme Court, go along with such a plan? If it ever gets that far I suspect they will.

Fortunately, there are so many other places like Beaufort, Oriental, Annapolis, or Fishing Bay that we can brush off the Miamis of the world with little ado. I also suspect a lot of us will figure out a way to vote in spite of Mr. Chambless and those like him. For myself, I will look for a way to continue to vote as a Floridian. I spend the better part of every year in that state, enough time that Florida law requires that both Kintala and the Ding be registered there. Because of the Electoral College votes count more in Florida than they do in some other states; at least when it comes to Presidential elections. In addition Florida politicians are often proponents of an agenda I enjoy voting against. Add those two things together and I love exercising my right to vote by voting in Florida.

All while I go about my small “g” gypsy way.


Note: here is a link to one of many articles about the Romani;

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/jun/27/salvinis-italy-we-roma-fight-dignity

Here are two links to the articles about the St. Brendan's Isle issue:

https://www.passagemaker.com/trawler-news/liveaboard-voting-rights-threatened-florida

https://www.passagemaker.com/trawler-news/st-brendans-statement

The Beauty of the Florida Sky

It's summer in Florida. Every day there are afternoon and evening thunderstorms that yield some of the most amazing sky vistas. For those of you who might be land locked in a city where you can't see the breadth of horizon that we can here, these are for your enjoyment.

Choices

With Kintala resting in the state of Florida for several months, and with plans to return here next summer, it seemed reasonable to shift our official place of residence to the Sunshine State. There was some

paperwork hassles involved, but not as much as one might think. The finale was getting Florida driver's licenses, which turned out to be a very low key, even pleasant, experience. Having wrestled with Missouri's DMV for more than a decade, we were expecting the worst.

I never really thought I would end up as a Florida resident. I have spent a lot of time in the state. The last job I had involved regular visits to Ft. Lauderdale, with occasional stops in Key West, Ft. Myers, Jacksonville, and Daytona. Family vacations in my growing up years usually meant a week or so at a Florida beach or dive spot. Still, Florida is about as far south as America goes and it is brutal hot here in the summer. Insects actually own the state. They lease living space to the humans, getting paid in bites, itches, rashes, and just general unpleasantness. And I am not a big fan of hurricanes. I often said that “Florida was a nice place to visit but I wouldn't want to live there.”

Oops. One of life's little twists and turns.

Another of those twists is landing in Florida during a presidential election year, a “swing” state. For most of my life voting for a President was a duty that didn't really matter. The states I voted in were pretty much one flavor of politics or the other. With few exceptions there was little doubt into which column the electoral votes would fall. But, for reasons I will have to explore some day, Florida votes actually matter. Unfortunately, that means that the residents of Florida, which now includes yours truly, are being blasted with all of the attack ads literally millions of advertising dollars can buy.

Fortunately, Deb and I don't watch television, listen to commercial radio, subscribe to a newspaper, have a front door that campaign workers can knock on, or a mailbox into which they can drop fliers. (It never occurred to me that would be one of the advantages of living this life-style.) When I want to find out something about a candidate, I usually go to a web sight and read their position papers. The one place I don't look to for information is attack ads, which is pretty much all that those advertising dollars are being used to buy. Attack ads are, to me, just that; slander, propaganda, innuendo, and outright fabrications. They work of course, which is why all those advertising dollars are being spent. But that says more about us as American voters than it does about the pluses or minuses of any particular candidate. I can't even blame the ad buyers. If the job one is assigned to do requires a hammer, one doesn't go out and buy a tape measure.

I do understand that no politician is going to admit to mistakes, past indiscretions, failures of policy, or failures of conscience. Few will ever say, “We tried my idea and it was a disaster. We should try something else.” Normally one would think a free press would point out that kind of history. But the US has an entertainment industry rather than a free press; and that industry's only reason for being is to rake in advertising dollars, including those advertising dollars spent on attack ads. Thus attack ads are, unfortunately, a nearly useless attempt to fill the role the media has abandoned. One of the many serious flaws in our experiment in democracy.

But this is the only democracy we have, and my vote will (very slightly) matter this year. I hope to cast it as a quiet-minded, rational, thoughtful human being. A tall ask, that, since I'm not sure many of us qualify as quiet-minded, rational, thoughtful human beings. Quiet-minded, rational, thoughtful, and human being, may be a contradiction of terms. Nor is such something our society values or teaches. We like conflict, emotional outbursts, shoot -from-the-hip, over-the-top, free-wheeling, free-for-all bar fights. (And hyphens. Really. Think about it.) 

And it may be that a quiet-minded, rational, thoughtful review of this election will leave one thinking, “Well, now what do I do?" There is no one running who is quiet-minded, rational, thoughtful...hell, even their humanity is questionable.” Not their humanness, their humanity. (Note: there appears to be 25 some odd people running for President, and I don't want to suggest that none of them would be welcome on Kintala. But only 5 or six have any real name recognition, and only 1 of 2 will take the oath of office. And of that group, I can't imagine looking at any of them while thinking, "there's a person I would want to take on an afternoon's sail.") 

We will all just have to do the best we can and hope something workable survives past November. But I am glad to live a life that is light-footed, mobile, open to new experiences, and more self-reliant than some others. I am glad to have a boat full of tools that we know how to use.

And the Islands are only a day's sail away.

Punta Gorda Photos

The moon setting on one horizon at Sanibel Island

The sun rising on the opposite horizon

Crazy traffic on the ICW behind Sanibel Island

From our visit to the Peace River Wildlife Center where they rehabilitate injured and sick birds and turtles.

Love, love, love these birds.

Babcock Ranch Preserve in Punta Gorda

Babcock Ranch Preserve in Punta Gorda

This guy was about 6 feet long and eyeballed us for quite a while

 

Florida is full of beautiful flowers and trees

And, of course, beautiful sunrises and sunsets

And good music everywhere...