Since 2002. Published Tuesdays and Fridays
Letters to the Editor with pictures
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[Key Largo Limestone and Miami Limestone] The Florida Keys form a crescentic chain of small limestone islands which extend from near Miami to Key West, a distance of about 150 miles. They are made of two main formations of Pleistocene age—the Key Largo Limestone and the Miami Limestone. The former, named and described by Sanford, is an elevated coral reef rock, and the latter, also described by Sanford, is an oolitic limestone in this area. The Key Largo Limestone is the surface rock of the Upper Keys, and the
Miami Limestone covers the Lower Keys. A contact found at Big Pine Key shows that the oolitic limestone overlaps the Key Largo, and core borings show that the Key Largo underlies the odlitic cover for the entire area of the Lower Keys. The Key Largo, therefore, extends for the total length of the Keys. A core placed at Dry Tortugas, 70 miles west of Key West, encountered it at 30 feet below sea level. The Key Largo has a maximum thickness of over 200 feet. |
![]() [The Abominable Snowman] That’s a misunderstanding of what Sherpa guides said during British expeditions to Mount Everest. The correct translation is ‘wild man of the snows.'” |
[“Hates the Keys and moved”] I read all the complaints the person made and don’t agree with any of them. The writer has a skewered opinion of what he sees. Some people can’t adjust to island living and need malls and superhighways and to get lost in the anonymity of a large city. Down here we tend to stick out and need to adjust our lifestyle so as no to stick out too much and create enemies. No one said it would be easy. You have to really want to live here. |
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[Charity Rip-offs] You may want to think twice about where you donate your money. How many times have we seen this with some of these charitable organizations that play on the heart? When the CEO is a lawyer, hang on to your wallet. Charitywatch.org rates the charities in terms of percentages that actually get to the intended people. Check this out about the wounded warrior project. Link |
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[Jehovah’s Witness] A former City of Key West Department of Transportation bus driver has filed a federal lawsuit against the city claiming his civil rights were violated due to his race and as a practicing Jehovah’s Witness. Bobby Walker Jr. claims that he requested, via a letter dated Oct. 23, 2014 to the city manager’s office, that he not participate in the annual Fantasy Fest parade and that his “participation in the Fantasy Fest parade was contrary to his beliefs as a Jehovah’s Witness,” the lawsuit states. He further claims that the next day, during a meeting with superiors, that city management officials “openly mocked (Walker’s) religious beliefs and threatened to write up Walker for purportedly not giving enough time to change the schedule,” the lawsuit states |
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[Toilet Paper] Why the poor pay more for toilet paper. Link |
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Monday was FKAA’s workshop to decide whether to spend over $200 million in infrastructure upgrades that they admit will raise rates for water and sewer. Rates that are already sky-high compared to most of the world. They had a nice glossy presentation and the conclusions no doubt reached before holding the all-for-show workshop. FKAA took over dilapidated Navy infrastructure that they knew would cost millions to patch or replace rather than let the Feds foot the bill. FKAA bought the dilapidated private Key Haven sewer system knowing it would cost millions to patch or replace. (And where does the Chairman of the FKAA Board really live, along with certain FKAA executives?). The presentation talks about prioritization as if they know how. We see that fancy architectural aluminum fences with motorized gates were installed to replace the chain link around their above ground facilities while all these urgent hidden repairs were ignored. They want to double the size and upgrade the Marathon emergency 1MGD RO water plant that has never yet contributed a drop to the pipeline. They wonder why the source water always has fecal coliform. With the shallow supply well about 30′ from the Marathon Yacht Club’s deep liveaboard boat basin, and just barely over 200′ from an FKAA onsite shallow wastewater injection well, and only a few hundred feet from another FKAA shallow wastewater injection well, and the shallow injection wells of the County EOC & offices plus State office (including DEP) buildings’ sewage treatment package plant, do you wonder how fecal got into the nearby water supply well at the same depth? Note that although Marathon has had central sewer for years, the FKAA, County, DEP, and Marathon Yacht Club have not bothered to connect as required by County and State law. Integrity and common sense both appear to be severely lacking in FKAA management, so it must be time for another big pay raise for the Executive Department. |
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[Hangovers] Is it cheap booze in the wells or dirty ice from the ice makers that is giving us very bad hangovers in the lower Keys? |
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[Complete and Finished] Some people say there is no difference between complete and finished. No English dictionary has been able to adequately explain the difference between these two words. Here’s an easy way to remember. When you marry the right woman, you are complete. When you marry the wrong woman, you are finished. |
![]() The cops told her that she was on her way to be sold as a sex-slave and drugged and forced into prostitution to a black gang that pays $10,000 for good looking white ladies, then kills them when they have had their fun and recovered their investment from renting the ladies out. This reminded me of those rumored guys with the nice yacht in Key West who would invite “sweet young things” for a boat ride that would turn out to be a one-way trip to international waters with the ladies sold as sex slaves to Arab traders. Be careful out there, ladies. Not all the guys are as nice and trustworthy as me. |
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[“Toilet paper”] Nice article about TP. Cost, number of sheets, double roll, fragrance, etc. But the only thing that you should be concerned with is it strong enough to prevent breakthrough? Who likes to end up with the shitty end of a finger. |
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Why did the cow return to the marijuana field? It was the pot calling the cattle back. |
[Hacking] Could a person do a search into someone else’s computer and read or download everything with just the web connection? I know it is probably called hacking, but I mean way beyond that like the government could do! |
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[Brats] The best thing that ever happened to my household is buying my brats their own cell phones. Sure beats trying to relax and watch a football game while they run amok. Easier than duct tape too! |
[“Gonzales Gonzales from John Wayne movies”] I swear I saw that guy or his doppelganger installing sewer laterals on Cudjoe Key. His PVC pipe installation skills were amazing, but I’d love to see him act in a Key West play. |
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In reference to the “free coconut palm” on No Name Key. The owner forgot to mention that the tree is still standing and that you’ll need a backhoe and large truck with a trailer to dig it up and haul it out. And by the way, this is the same guy who asked for a free handout/donation from the public to pay for his sewer connection. Get off your lazy ass and cut the tree away from your solar panels yourself! |
![]() Glenn Gray architect, pre-stressed concrete, stucco, two circular drives. We have guests now, cannot show but will advertise here and maybe a website with more after the guests leave on March 18th. You will love this house. Stay tuned please. |
[Highlight Text] Being old and going blind, I use this trick to read the CT easier. The font color often used is tough to see sometimes so I highlight the area by dragging my mouse across text so it acts like a high contrast area. It might help other old farts too! |
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It is that stupid time of year to change our clocks again. Most of the world does not do this. The only reason Americans do this is to get more labor out of our peasants with longer work days! Link |
[Sleep With Me] Should be the slogan for all the dating services which are no more than pimp sites. |
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[“Toilet paper review”] How come woman use 10 to 20 times as much toilet paper as men do? That bee hive hand bundle is nothing but wasting trees for a few drops of urine. Use some common sense. |
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[“Santeria legal”] How about if I am an Aztec and need to practice my religion of human sacrifice and cannibalism? Will the courts allow my Constitutional rights? Link |
[“Stink raised over pig in Old Town Key West] A pig is a farm animal and according to Monroe County law it cannot be kept in a residential area. So shoot the smelly thing. 3/4 of a million dollars for an Old Town house and you have to put up with low renter’s pig s**t. |
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Does anybody else has problems with their Toyota dashboards melting? Link |
It is past time for the organizers of Fantasy Fest to pay their own way to cover the bulk of the City’s expenses. The very successful Zombie Bike Ride is self-funded, so is the Red Party at Fogerty’s, as well as, Kelly’s Kinky Karnival and a myriad of other events that bear their own costs. Why shouldn’t FF do the same? After all, they reap the profits from FF, and just maybe the Fest will get back to the original “Let it all hang out” FF we loved before the advertisers and holy rollers took over. What we don’t need in KW is rule by Bible belters. |
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Don’t be afraid of growing older. You’ll still do stupid things–only slower. |
[Hacking] An old computer saying was, ‘If you plug it into the wall, they can plug into you’. Now it is even more so with WiFi. They do not need the wall plug! |
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[“Home page from Yahoo”] Resetting my Home Page to another is easy, but the point of the last post was to find out how I could get AT&T and Yahoo to give me decent input instead of the super market tabloid garbage I am paying for. No matter which ISP I went to they all seem the same level of garbage |
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Roadrunner cartoon come to life! |
Thank you Ed for placing the picture of the most handsome cat–Charles. Thank you for being so kind. Your comment was priceless. |
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Peary Court terms of use. Link |
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Well at least my pipes didn’t freeze this winter. |
I wondered why FKAA would use a pump-out tank truck if a lift station will not pump. There are connections to use an emergency engine-driven high capacity pump. Of course, the design is intended to restrict pump selection to E-One grinders, so pressures are often very high for a so-called low pressure system. That often eliminates the possibility of using an emergency pump since most can’t achieve that kind of pressure. (Not that FKAA actually owns one anyway) In Port Pine Heights, the resistance to pumping (head… which is not what I like to think of with that term) is so high that FKAA had to get special approval by the manufacturer because it is beyond the usually allowable head and causes the motor to run hot. I wondered if that was also the case in the far south reaches of Cudjoe off Puerto Bello, so I checked the DEP permit application. It did not say, so they may not have even calculated. What I did notice is that there is no redundant back-up pump on the lift station I looked at (violation of DEP rules), and the application says they get 36 gals/min with two pumps running. That is impossible with E-One. You are lucky to get 22 gpm with 2 pumps. This particular lift station has 95 homes connected to a manhole with 4 residential grinders- one of which is supposed to be an emergency back-up. Lots of luck, folks. The collection system will absolutely fail, and contrary to the official BS, is failing already. Document it for your lawsuit for loss of property value and peace of mind. |
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[“Sea level rise”] I must be reading this NOAA chart wrong- What I see is that the the mean sea level variation (MSL) from 1916 to 2006 was 2.24 mm and the mean sea level variation in 2014 was 2.33 mm. This show the difference in mean sea level variation from 1916 to 2014 is .09 mm or about .0035 inches. This means that the rate of increase in the Key West sea level has not really changed from 98 years ago. I thought the sea levels were rising at an incredible fast rate due to man made global warming- as least that is what our elected officials keep telling us. Could they be telling us a falsehood? Link |
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[“Hates the Keys”] To the person who is complaining about the Keys. We don’t need your kind down here. If you like Kansas go to Kansas. We don’t want to live in Kansas anymore. If you can’t see the beauty of the Keys, I’m sorry for you. No place is perfect, but all the things you whine about don’t exist under water, on the ocean, in a boat, or on an island. The Keys aren’t for everyone, but even though it was different 30 years ago when I first moved here. I still sit in awe every day when I wake up. If you don’t like drinking don’t move to a place where it’s considered a spot. |
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[The Beer Machine] I must have one of these! Video |
[“Smart drug increases brain use 100%”] Gee, that’s all we need is to have the idiots in the Keys take this and become 50% more intelligent up to the moronic level! |
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[“Looking for new insurance agent”] Isaksen Insurance is the best in the Keys. I’ve dealt with them all. He’s the only one that really cares. |
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Carol Saxe |
[“What’s up with From The Right guy”] He’s probably depressed from watching his party committing suicide on live TV. |
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[“Contribute for a sewer lawsuit or help fill the ranks of a lynch mob if that is what it takes”] Please people, let’s not get violent over the dung sucking sewer company’s methods of robbing us of our hard earned feeble income and retirement monies, let’s just invite them to a beautiful day of baseball or take them fishing! OK? |
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[“Insurance agent”] Back in 2006, they told me I had to have almost $10,000 in insurance premiums per year: $6000 for wind and $4 for Flood. Flood is useless when your house is 20 feet up and not required unless you have a mortgage. I opted to spend $10,000 on a metal roof installed by Rick Williams (R.I.P.) which was the best investment made. He was the best and I was so lucky to have him do the job. |
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Man, getting a bank loan is damn near impossible these days. |
[“Sea level rise”] While it’s true that when ice melts it takes up no more space (technically it takes up slightly less – water is one of the rare compounds that is less dense in the solid state – good thing too, or the lakes would have ice on the bottom!), the thought path is incomplete – ice above the water line will add to the water level when it melts. But even more a factor, as water gets warmer, it expands, and that’s a lot of the cause of sea level rise. I know a lot of people are climate change deniers (wishful thinking). I prefer to be one of the cautiously concerned and think we should stop as much pollution as possible for many good reasons. |
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[Healthy Beer] New high-protein, low-calorie Barbell Beer targets gym-going drunks. Link |
[“Home page from Yahoo”] Open your Yahoo email page then set that as your home page, then if you want news, open a new tab and enter the address of the news page you’d like such as CNN, Google news (which I think is customizable), etc. Also the google.com page is highly customizable too. You can have your email, news, etc, all on one home page. Link |
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[“Yahoo”] You really don’t pay Yahoo to connect to the internet for your email and education. |
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Is Japanese beer recycled twice before they export it to the US? |
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They really uglied-up the cool pedestrian bridge they are building on Cudjoe. The aluminum rails really are an eyesore next to that cool bridge that spans the gap. Why didn’t they go with the concrete barriers like all the other fishing bridges? Are they protecting babies that may be walking on the bridge? I have a bad feeling that the brother-in-law aluminum railing guy was needing some alimony money. |
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[“Low budget sewer connection may prove to be less of a bargain”] Could this comment possibly have been written by a overpriced local contractor or relative? Can you say $1,500 to $2,000 more for the same job done by these third world companies? These local firms must be using best practices trench engineering, state of the art nano-PVC piping and some really premium bedding gravel to justify their prices. |
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[Refund Denied] It’s a darn shame when Summerland Key Sandals refuses to give refunds for defective goods. We have shopped there ever since it opened, but unfortunately today was the last time ever. They can take advantage of the tourists all they want, but that will also come back to bite them in the butt. So sad. A very sad and long gone x-customer. ~jpvdt@aol.com |
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In Zen meditation you sit on a cushion called a zafu with your legs crossed, back straight, hands at your knees or in front of you in a gesture called a mudra. You face a white wall and watch your breath. No matter what you feel-great tornadoes of anger and resistance, thunderstorms of joy and grief-you continue to sit, back straight, legs crossed, facing the wall. You learn to not be tossed away no matter how great the thought or emotion. That is the discipline: to continue to sit. |
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[The Ross Sisters Redux] The Ross Sisters were a trio of female sibling singing dancers consisting of Aggie Ross, Elmira Ross, and Maggie Ross, (whose real names were Veda Victoria, Dixie Jewel and Betsy Ann Ross). The Ross Sisters performed as a 3-part harmony trio, in which they also danced and did acrobatics and contortionism. Their public attention peaked during the 1940s. Notice there are no belly buttons. They weren’t allowed to show them back then. Video |
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[The endangered “dead” Keys Marsh Rabbit] A cat will kill for fun, that’s just what they do. So my friends, if you have a outside cat it is killing most everything & anything it can. |
[“Happy birthday Maya”] You did not rescue Maya. She would have been happier in life as a working sheep dog in Calf. |
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[Hates Cuba] Ever been to Cuba? I have many times and only on business. I would not live there if it was free. It’s all gangsters and commies with their hands out. Everything is based on payola. You think the Caribbean is low rent, you’ve seen nothing yet. No thank you, I will not party there ever! |
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New Florida drivers exam. If the blonde takes her hand off the wheel, grabs a cell phone or opens her mouth, she fails! |
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After seeing the grotesque pictures of Walmart customers, I swear to God I will burn it down of they try to build one here! Link |
[Barroom Decorum] Some locals were talking about the loudmouth snowbird crowd disturbing everyone in a local tiki bar. The noise was unbearable until the bartender rang the tip bell and got their attention to say, “Keep it down you’re in civilization now!” They got the message. Thank God April is only a few weeks away! |
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Often talked about – rarely photographed! |
This Peary Court fiasco is nothing but another wallet fattening scam as was all the developments in the Keys. These builders and politicos could care less about our Keys and the old days which are long gone when we were free here. It is all about the money and big egos trying to be big shots. When the Keys are all covered in concrete and low renters, then where are we going to go? |
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[FTR] Deer Friends: FTR is alive and well. Been spending more time on Face Book than on Coconut Telegraph since our Deer Ed decided to downsize and modify the format a bit.
This election is the most bizarre in my lifetime. It is fascinating and yet deeply disturbing. (continued on the National Politics page …) |
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