FLORI-DUH AGAIN?

       They don't call us Floriduh for nothin'. Last week we elected our own version of Trump to lead the state.  A similar regressive,  Rick "Skeletor" Scott, beat  the Dem's Bill Nelson, in the Senate race, by the narrowest of margins, forcing a recount.

   Yesterday I became one of thousands of volunteers trying to help this desperate situation.  Of course, we were hoping the recount, which was still continuing, would allow Senator Nelson to  squeak past Scott.  We still had a small chance for progressive light to shine on our Sunshine State.
    I drove to our county's elections office at 5 a.m. to serve as a "citizen observer".  I discovered that it is one of the rare times we don't have traffic problems in Miami.  If I had my way it would be 5 a.m. all the  time, "Traffic Sanity Savings Time". 

    Upon arrival I was asked to sit in a room with dozens of other volunteers.  Two were Republicans. I'm not sure I had ever seen one before.

 

    Republicans working for Skeletor

After three hours we were led into "the vote count room". 

    Surrounded by muscular, tattooed policemen and numerous not-pumped-up-at-all government officials, we then watched county employees sort ballots that had been rejected by the vote-count machines in the Florida's senate race.

   Observers were not allowed to touch them. That photo of me? I'm reading instructions. 

    Each ballot was perused by twenty two-person teams.  I watched over Team 13 with my Republican counterpart.  We were cordial but didn't talk politics.  We watched each Team 13 ballot as it was perused, classified, and placed accordingly into one of three bins.  

    There were "undervotes", thousands of ballots in which people did not choose who they wanted to be our next senator.  Most that I saw voted for all the other races. Did they think there was no difference between Skeletor and Mild Bill?  Did they drink too much cafe Cubano beforehand?  Go figure.  It was clearly on the first page of the monster 8-page ballot.
    A few were "overvotes", ballots where certain citizens voted for both senate candidates. One chose "everything".  This deranged person filled in every choice circle, voting for every candidate and every "yes/no" on referendum questions.  There are some weird voters out there.

    The third bin was the "I have no freakin' idea what this person wanted.  I'm letting someone else decide".  These were ballots in which people marked both candidates, then, they tried to clarify their mistakes with an extra circles, check marks, worded explanations, or what seemed like abstract art.
     These people should have said, at the time, "I made a mistake, please give me a new ballot".  It's an easy problem to rectify.  These third bin ballots were taken to the god squad ("canvassing board"). This group of five, in the front of the room, tried to make sense of this pile of ballots.  

Some came from as far away as California to help.






    So that's how it was at our county's elections office yesterday.  We were hoping for a recount miracle but it looks like that will not happen.
Skeletor's margin is as thin as a hair on your head bit it will allow him to regress our state for six more years.  It makes you want to move to California.
     On the other hand,  the Dems did quite well on a national level.  It gives us hope for our troubled country.
              ____________________________

IT GETS UGLIER

         I live in a Coconut Grove bubble. 90% of the people around me are liberals. They love hugging trees, each other, and Barack Obama. Seldom is heard a discouraging word.
But that's changing.

      The conservatives are getting more vocal, empowered, I suppose, by the President.  Just this morning I was talking to a neighbor by the road. As I stood next to my Andrew Gillum and Bill Nelson campaign signs, an older man bicycled by.  When I smiled and waved he growled, "I hate your politics!".
      He was gone before I could invite him in for coffee. 
     A week ago, just before the election, I was getting ready to play softball with my team in Coral Gables.  The right fielder told me, "If that black guy wins (Gillum) I'm leaving the country".  Oh well, many of us were saying the same thing about Trump two years ago. 

      Last Sunday I was admiring the bowls made by the Wood Turning Society at the Fairchild Ramble. Next to me a sweaty large man told others, "Its a crime that the FBI hasn't locked Hillary up.  It's because the FBI is filled with criminals like her.  They want make trouble for our President just because he talked to Russians.  What a crock of sh-t.  It ain't no crime to talk to foreigners. I spoke to a Scandinavian last week.  Should I go to jail?  Damn, it makes me so angry I could pop!

    I was hoping he would pop if that was something that would render him silent.  Having coffee with him was out of the question. I'm sure that would make me pop.

     We had a few victories last week.  Hopefully they will lead to a slow turnabout for this battered country, a chance for everyone to be nice to each other again.
                  ______________________
                        ________________

SOONER THAN PLANNED, Charles R. Corda, 1952-2018

        My neighbor, Charles Corda, lived with his 95 year-old mother across the street from us. Enjoying her dementia, Mae Corda would sing popular songs from the 1940's behind their French blue gate to anyone passing by.  She had an exceptional  voice. 

We found her delightful and Charles would smile, growling in his thick Bronx accent, "She may be nuts but she's happy, and, strong as an ox.  She'll probably outlive me."

       She did. Yesterday Charles, 66, died of an apparent heart attack on his back porch. His mother was not present as she had moved to a nursing facility two years ago. Mr. C is survived by his mother, a sister,  daughters Marissa and Samantha, and his faithful Basset hound, "Chuck".

       Last week the retired architect/interior designer told me he was moving to Utah, "Someone's offering me 'one point four' and I'm ready to go."  I didn't like hearing this because lately he had become a "save the Grove" activist.  Charles helped us fight monster projects, -like Grove Bay- that threaten what we love about our village.



      He then invited me into his house, "Come on in. You may want my horse barn" (which he pronounced, "bon").  I toured the yellow, 1940's house filled with packed boxes and bunched paintings. It looked like he was going somewhere.

    He offered me a few of his art works including the meticulously crafted horse stable. It was complete with ten horse statuettes and equestrian hurdles. He had made this incredible tableau for Samantha, the youngest of his daughters.  Taking up an entire six-foot table, it was not meant for me.  
    I did accept a wooden manikin which I promptly named, "Charles".

       
    My neighbor had a large camper and big plans, "I'm moving to Springdale, Utah, next to Zion National Park. It's perfect there". He added, "I'll buy a little house and spend the rest of my days in God's own country".
      He did move but sooner than expected. They rolled his body into a large white van last night.  Hopefully he did make it to God's country.
                          _______________

    On 11-17 thirty of us attended a memorial gathering for Charles on at a Grove art gallery.  His paintings and photographs were all around us.   During the gathering, led my his lovely daughters, we learned more about his life and heard good news about his
canine companion, Chuck.  He's been adopted by person who enjoys "older dogs"!  

Comment:
I will miss him.  As a local activist, he was great at doing research and making complicated problems (and crimes) easy to understand.

And yes, Charles spoke truth to power. 

Peter R. Ehrlich, Jr.
Lemon City,
Miami, Florida

MOVIN' ON TO TEXAS

      It's hard to leave Utah's spectacular Canyonlands. You're exiting God's version  Disneyworld knowing everything beyond will be a little less amazing. 

     Winding down from a sprawling mesa we camped in a park we'd never heard of "Hovenweep". 

 
 It was next to a small canyon that the natives had ringed with dwellings hundreds of years ago.
            OUR CAMPSITE DWELLING
   In the distance we could see what looked like an Indian, four miles long, protected by a puffy gray blanket.

         
              In the morning we passed this metal recycling facility in Blanding, Utah, strictly for the birds.

    Driving south towards New Mexico we passed Mesa Verde, Four Corners and the cowboy movie main stay, Ship Rock. Perched on flatness, you can see it looming large for an hour before you pass.

     I had never been to Cuba until this adventure. Funny, the folks inside never heard of cafe con leche.
Camping in the hills outside of Cuba, New Mexico, we happened upon a group of camouflaged hunters.  They blew mating calls on their elk horns, practicing for the beginning of elk season just hours away.  The men were very friendly as they explained that they might be killing bear and mountain lions too.
    As we set up to camp nearby, they warned us to keep a tree or two between us and any mother elk as "they are very protective of their young". 
     We had a 400-mile drive to Texas the next day.  We headed out very early to avoid  the mother elk and the bullets chasing their husbands. 
     Towards the end of our drive, outside of Fort Sumner, NM, I saw a sign directing me to the grave of Billy the Kid.  Francesca was asleep so I figured, "What the heck".
   A few minutes later, heading down the side road I thought, "What am doing? Looking for the grave of some punk who killed 8 people 130 years ago".
    Then I saw the metallic teepee, a  memorial to the 10,000 Navajo Indians who were force to walk 400 miles from their Colorado home to this desert dump. After 3000 of them died on "The Great Walk"and their subsequent incarceration at Fort Sumner, the U.S. Calvary herded them off to another, less-horrid, reservation.  
     Why gangsta' Billy gets all the attention is a good lesson in American revisionist history.
I later learned his gravestone has been stolen twice.  Note: Should you steal it again, please don't put it in our backyard.

     This day was meant to get us to one to one of the coolest places in America, the home of rock n' roll legend Buddy Holly in Lubbock, Texas. 
  
The Cactus Theater in Lubbock where Buddy Holley and the Crickets once performed.

    Like Billy, Buddy died young. We knew the city had created a spanking new "music center" for his fans and we had to be there.

Air BnB lesson: check locations carefully, we ended up in Kendall-like suberb in Lubbock.  

Downtown Lubbock was
lots of fun. We strolled around, bought peppers and pumpkins at their farmers market, then headed to Buddy's museum the moment it opened.

                    Leaning on the museum's gigantic Buddy Glasses

The converted train station had all his guitars and memorabilia. Next door we toured the house where he wrote "Peggy Sue".  We saw it all including a somber glass showcase. Inside, perched on a pedestal, were Buddy's glasses recovered from the 1959 plane crash site. 

     After a couple of hours we headed south, staying ahead of a looming storm, to make our way to another great Texas music city, Austin.
                  ___________________
   
Preferring coffee to Coke
   

CANYONLANDS!

   
                         Where's Waldo?  Where's our camper?  Lingering next to the Dirty Devil.

    They call it "The Big Five".  People come from all over the world to see southern Utah's five most mind-boggling parks.  They begin with the Grand Canyon,

  its depth so vast on first sight, it makes you cry.
     But there is much more nearby starting with the Grand's "opposite",  Zion National Park.  Think of it this way, when you go to the Grand Canyon you're looking down into an incredible, colorful canyon, too big to fully comprehend. When you visit  Zion, 100 miles northwest, it's the other way around. You're at the bottom of another fantastic canyon, looking up.
 
   
    I suppose the 900-foot spires rising all around gave it its heavenly name. On our third visit there, earlier this month, we were again inspired by Zion.


  INSPIRED      Painting in  the visitor's center.
    

    Francesca and I hiked a bit then jumped on our bikes to coast down the canyon road.

 Francesca served dinner under the eye of Watchman Tower.  Later, we spoke to a ranger about short hikes (Pi wasn't allowed on trails) and she told us, "Don't hike up into any narrow canyons tomorrow.  The hurricane is coming and a flash flood could spoil your day".

   At first, we thought she was kidding, a hurricane in Utah?  But she was right. Hurricane Rosa had made landfall in Mexico and was headed our way.
Being South Florida storm vets, we knew this would be like a 'cane drifting up into Kentucky to bring rain and possible flooding without the crazy wind.  
We were okay with that. The next morning we hiked up the river but not too far.

     
   You exit Zion to the east by driving through a mile-long tunnel punched through a canyon wall. On the other  side there's another version of Utah splendor complete with mountain goats grazing.

     Heading north we passed the incredible rock

towers ("hoodoos") that pop up at Bryce Canyon NP. 

It seemed strange not to stop  but we had visited twice before.  Our plan was pass up this -and- the Grand Canyon, so we could see other nearby national parks for the first time.

   We got to Escalante NP's visitor's center just before the hurricane. Park service employee Shannon Holt showed us the life-size paper-mache Diabloceratops her crew made for the 2018 Pioneer Day Parade. "It's Utah's biggest event", she exclaimed, "bigger than the Fourth of July!".  It celebrates the day Brigham Young, his 8 wives and 54 children, came to Salt Lake Valley for the first time and he said famously, "This is the place!".  I imagine the full text was, "This is the place that can accommodate  me, my 8 wives and 54 children!"
    While Diabloceratops and Native Americans no longer living in the area, there are plenty of Mormons to take up the extra space. 

     We told the center's rangers we wanted to get away from people so they directed us to this slot canyon.
    
  Places like this are why we are drawn to Utah.

The rocks' spectrum of browns and oranges are due to its iron content. 

We needed to eat before the Rosa flood so we stopped by "Magnolia's" outside the Anasazi Indian Center. The museum was very good but the French fries even better.  I had gobbled half of them when the 'cane rain began. The locals were thrilled to be getting a hurricane as it had been such a dry summer.  How un-Miami.

    As we drove up into the 9000-foot mountains the rain got as thick as fog.  They say Escalante is filled with incredible canyons and pine forests but I could barely see the road with "Rosa" blowing through.  
     We proceeded slowly as windshield wipers waved furiously. At one point I asked my wife to roll down her window to take a picture of the mountains we could not see.  She refused (for good reason).  When the rain let up a bit, I saw cows by the road  and tried the same thing. So much water blew in I might have well stepped outside. 
     But I did get my picture,




           "Cows Enjoying the Fall Colors and Hurricane Rosa".



      We were able to drive past the hurricane and into Capitol Reef National Park.  Interestingly, there are no capitols or reefs there, just the burnt orange beauty of extended desert canyons, ancient petroglyphs, and what I remember most, fresh peach pie.
     The white guys (Mormons in this case but it could have been any Europeans with superior fire power) kicked out the Indians from the park's verdant valley in the late 1800's. They raised cattle, children, and planted orchards. Thirty years ago the area was declared a national park.  The U.S. government threatened to kick out the Mormons but they came to an agreement. Mormons were allowed to stay in their village (it's called "Fruita") as long as didn't mind the annual  swarm of park visitors.
 
     Now,  a few families remaining make a living working for the park or making pies and ice cream for people like us. Visitors are allowed allowed to wander into the orchards to pick apples, pears, or peaches. 
     After fattening ourselves we rose up out of the valley to return to rocks and desert. Rounding the last big hill before the flatness, we saw the most amazing sight,

 

       
   We were agog again. Francesca was nice enough to pose with what seemed like a mythical mountain-top fortress.


     We then took a right in Hanksville and headed down a piece of straight road called "The All-American Highway". We have no idea why they call it that but it led to one of our coolest camping spots, a National Forest campsite, -where there are no trees- next to the Dirty Devil River.
 
 Not too many people either.




 Room for twelve at our picnic table


     In the morning we scrambled down thirty feet, just past the "table", to play our version of
Hollywood Squares, "Utah Holes". 

      Tuckered out and hungry, I suggested that we go 100 mile back to Fruita for more pie.  Francesca, being the wiser of us two, fed me  home-made granola and hot coffee until I was ready to move on. In ten days we were supposed to be back in Miami.

                       _________________


                    Pi wondering where she will wake up next