"For many people, a visit to Key West is a trip to the fringe - a louche dead end filled with exotic slackers. ...
"Yet, if you live elsewhere in Florida - and happen to have grown up in another state - Key West provides a nostalgic return to normalcy.
"The first time I drove into town, from my new home in Fort Lauderdale, I was struck not by the alien but by the once-familiar: porches, alleys, chickens, white picket fences, people on bicycles. I had left the world of condos and gated communities and seemed to be on a childhood trip to grandmother's house, a house that - in a bewildering but beguiling twist - had been uprooted from central Pennsylvania and set down in a tropical garden."
- from "The Joys of Travel"
Here's to the city's swift return to normalcy.
One big difference between this year and 1992, when Hurricane Andrew struck, is the fact that 25 years ago South Florida had a classical music station. Its music was a balm to many people; the Kings Singers’ You Are the New Day, played in the immediate aftermath of the disaster, has been cited as an inspiration for the region’s recovery. Now it’s the jazz station WDNA’s moment to step up to the plate. Perhaps, when this is all over, with Joao Gilberto’s Desafinado.
Yesterday I drove up to buy some kabanosy – garlic sausage that doesn’t need refrigeration – at the Old World Polish Deli in Pompano Beach. The woman behind the counter, here four years from Bialystok, seemed quite cheerful about the advancing hurricane. I also added a few Prince Polo bars (Polish KitKats) to cover my need for comfort food. Down the street I stopped at Big Apple Books and bought, fittingly, Ruth Reichl’s Comfort Me with Apples. The people there were also quite sanguine about the storm but, then, they have a lot to read.
At Publix I bought arugula, carrots, lemons, grapefruits, peanuts and the largest red cabbage I had ever seen in the store. Then I drove to Bob’s News on Andrews Avenue to pick up The Spectator. Because it’s $8, I don’t often buy the jaunty, irreverent British weekly – which employs a High Life columnist and a Low Life columnist – but this is not a time to deprive oneself. Here’s hoping sausage, salads, and sparkling prose will see us through this thing.
A friend from Nashville wrote yesterday: "I felt like the whole town was in that classic Life magazine photo of people in a theater wearing 3D glasses." While a friend on Facebook asked: "Now that the sun has seen its shadow, how many more weeks do we have of Donald Trump?"
This weekend a friend noted that people will make plans years, sometimes decades, in advance because of scientists' predictions of an eclipse, but they'll ignore scientists' warnings about climate change and rising seas.