THE ULTIMATE SNAIL MAIL

        I like visiting the post office. I take pleasure in buying colorful stamps, chatting with neighbors, and the idea that you can still send a valentine to Seattle for fifty cents.
      Of course, it may not get there. Consider what just happened to me.

        A friend in Hollywood, Florida, mailed a car title to me a month ago. 

It should have taken two or three days to travel the 22 miles. It took ten days to get to my home in Coconut Grove.
        I signed it and sent it back to her by certified mail, which, they said, would cost four bucks and take two days.  After four days had passed with no delivery, I went on the USPS website to track it. I learned  the my envelope had been delivered to a post office in Gainesville.
       The next day the clerk at the Grove post office told me, my envelope had left Gator Town and was now "in transit".   When I was not delivered two days later I called the USPS help line.  A robotic voice thanked me for calling and said "...the expected wait time is 3 hours, 40 minutes".  Read on, it gets worse.
      I couldn't wait any longer, my friend needed the title. I went to the Gables title agency yesterday and paid $104.00 for a new one. I am planning to hand-deliver it.
      Today, 14 days after I sent off the certified letter, it was delivered two doors down. In two weeks it traveled 100 feet before arrived at the wrong, return address. A snail, dragging my envelope, could have gone that far in half a day.
    My neighbor was kind enough to walk it over.  I considered going back to the post office to get my four bucks back but I figured they had probably lost that too.
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MIAMI ROCKED

     With yesterday's shoot-out at Miami's Trump resort and the latest school massacre in Texas, we needed some quick,temporary relief.
Why not blank out at a Jimi Hendix concert?  How much can you mourn with Purple Haze pounding in your ears? 

    Of course, with Jimi being dead, we did the next best thing, we went to hear his little brother's band replicate those soothing, psychedelic sounds.

  Dylan & Leon

    Leon Hendrix was at HistoryMiami to help celebrate the 50th anniversary of Miami Pop, the pre-Woodstock festival I attended long ago. I went there the day it rained even though tickets were expensive, six bucks.  

    Still, I had a good time hearing John Lee Hooker, Canned Heat and Jose Feliciano. I recall walking  around Duane Hanson's sculptures of dead soldiers and motor cyclists and thinking I lucky I was to be standing in Miami rain.

    But last night the weather was perfect as we celebrated the past and the liberating 60's. 
Many wore tie-dye.
   Our history museum's "Miami Rocks" exhibit, which includes photography and memorabilia from the 1968 event, will be up through September.

   As an added treat, to get to it you walk past the history of Miami's parades which features none other than Coconut Grove's own version of Jimi Hendrix, King Mango.

         After the concert Leon met with his new fans. To the left is King Mango's best friend.
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60 MINUTES- THE WORLD'S SHORTEST ART SHOW

        When the sermon ended the art show began at Plymouth Church today. Thirty  artists, young and old, displayed their wooden bowls, 
paintings, and cupcakes to the congregation.


    The North Grove's Uta was there with her assemblage of the unusual.

Wine cork necklace

 Uta's Matchbox Art

I hocked a few fish, snake plants, and painted coconuts.

    Outside antique cars were lazin' in the sun. I was crazy 'bout this 1950 Willys Jeepster.    Unfortunately, my dad had the boring hardtop model. Once our family climbed in after a movie and it would not start. When my father mentioned that the key slot felt funny, we realized we were in a stranger's car.
  
1939 LaSalle


    After an hour we packed up and went home.  Much of the money made selling Little Shop of Horrors cupcakes

-and everything else- went to support the church's youth summer program.
          ______________________

PS:  In you're looking for painted chicken bones, Uta's the one.

Until the next'n,
Glennito

Yes, I look a little wacky here but posing with a painted chicken bone can bring out the silly in you.

SPRINGTIME IN CHARLIE'S WOODS

   The South Grove people's park continues to make progress.  I asked the city manager to help us a month ago.  Emilio Gonzalez approves of our project and said he'd set us up with some decent park benches, the kind that that don't put splinters in your butt.
 
  
     Charlie Cinnamon's historic house still stands. Two months ago the City of Miami told the developer/owner  (Andrew Raskin) that he must preserve it.  Raskin responded by suing the City for the right to tear it down.  He wants to replace Charlie's 1919 cottage with a pool for the huge $5 million box he plans to build next to it. He could have the pool, his giant box and Charlie's charming house on the double lot but he says he will not consider it.
  

    In a world of Raskins we still have flowers. Its raining again and the pink rain lilies have popped up to tell us so.  

    The butterfly garden is thriving as well. Next to it a battle rages between the good native plants and the bad invasives. Neighbors take turns pulling out the snake plants and potato vines. While they are a healthy and green, they behave like fascists plants wanting to smother everything around them.


   



 The "woods" is a fun place.  We show movies in the clearing next to Charlie's cottage. There's also  tether ball and ping pong
now.

                                                       snake plants 

   

    But most folks go there to chill, to relax in a rare, cool, green space.  
 

    The green quiet is what we love most about Charlie's Woods and the park we're building around it. Come visit anytime.  Parking is free and soon, you probably won't even get a splinter in your butt.
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NOTE:  The new exhibit on "The Life of Charlie Cinnamon" opens next month at the Jewish Museum on Miami Beach.  It runs through September 19th.

BEACH BURN

      I was honored to be an artist at yesterday's Love Burn, an evening of music, fire, and poetry on the beach at Virginia Key.

    It was a six hour mini-version of the Nevada's annual Burning Man Gathering and an O,Miami Poetry Festival event.

   Like the big one in the desert, there were sculptures and costumed participants. I drew bad portraits, an art form I have perfected over many years.

  

 




I enjoyed drawing Sam the best.  His smile was infectious. 

Here's the moment when I handed him his drawing. 



   I love my two-minute chats as I draw new friends. 
    Most had never been to Burning Man and I explained, "See the wings burning behind me? They're three feet tall. At Burning Man they'd rise up thirty feet.  The flames would core a hole in the sky and probably sear your eye brows".
 
   When I got home l  learned Larry Harvey, the 70-year-old visionary who started Burning Man, had died a few hours earlier. I knew he'd had a stroke three weeks ago. One of his many friends sent this out,
 

         Larry was never one for labels. He didn’t fit a mold; he broke it with the way he lived his life. He was 100% authentic to his core. For all of us who knew or worked with him, he was a landscape gardener, a philosopher, a visionary, a wit, a writer, an inspiration, an instigator, a mentor, and at one point a taxi driver and a bike messenger. He was always a passionate advocate for our culture and the principles that emanate from the Burning Man experience in the Black Rock Desert.

As he told one of us recently, Larry liked to create “scenes” that made people consider the world in a new way. He was extraordinarily successful at doing just that.

The Burning Man Project has lost our original Founder.

   I've drawn bad portraits in the desert for the last two years. I never had a chance to draw Larry's. If I had, I expect it would have made him smile. 

 

PREZ PRAISES POLLUTERS AT FANCY NASTY

  Last night the President of the United States made a surprise appearance at Little River's Fancy Nasty Art Gallery.  He heard Grove artist, LeMaster, would be there touting his environmental art.

Grove artist, LeMaster, with his Marjory painting, and some fat fool. 

   He flashed some cheap cardboard signs and confronted the artist himself but few were paying attention.

   They've seen too much of that guy already.

VIEJOS WIN A SQUEAKER

   The game was interrupted by a baby in left field. I have no idea how she got there but once she toddled to the sidelines our softball battle continued.
    This was yesterday's game between Miami's old guys ("The Young Viejos") and a group of much younger men and women  representing the local art community.  It was one of many events sponsored by this month's O, Miami Poetry Festival. 
 
 The players
  
Young Viejo Augustin Gonzalez, 95, in a pensive moment.
      
     As softball games go this one was a little different. Batters had to recite a poem before they stepped up to the plate. Ron shares one of his originals                     

      One Young Viejo had his bat marked, "Ode Warrior". 
   The poetry people gave us these beautiful book bags and they got

autographed softballs from us.

Our lovely announcer, Melody Santiago Cummings

      I played a little but my main job was to emcee the show  

                 The ringmaster with his coach


and to occasionally hawk peanuts and crackerjacks.   
   
     The teams were evenly matched, some players were very good and some (like me) could use more practice. Us Viejos marveled at the speed of "the kids". We had forgotten how fast our feet could move fifty years ago. Rarely did our throws get to first base before the runner.
We had much more experience as we play twice a week.

    This rare mixing of generations was a delight, like a group of grandfathers happily going at it with their upstart grands.  

 Quincy (and everyone else) wanted Pito's autograph

     Popular singer Cuci Amador threw out the  first pitch. Another celebrity's sibling, Mangohead (the king's brother), tossed the second.

    By the end of the game the Young Viejos were ahead, 9-8, and the team was presented with the winner's trophy, a golden chamber pot.  

It could become an annual affair.

     By the game's conclusion everyone was smiling. No one cared who won. On a perfect April afternoon we were laughing, playing ball, and hearing some pretty good poetry.
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