Since 2002. Published Tuesdays and Fridays
Letters to the Editor with pictures
Wednesday is Summer! “It’s summertime, summertime, sum-sum, summertime.” |
 |
| [“Mourning dove riot”] The reason they are acting this way is because you put out a feeder. They are the most unruly of birds around here. No manners at all. We had to take our bird feeder down after the doves started a riot and chased away all the cardinals. They made such a continuous commotion we had to remove the feeder. |
What time is it? Dolphin time, my friends, dolphin time! He found us, it took a while but he found us and we invited him home for dinner. He said, “Sure thing. I’ll just wait here in this cooler and cover myself up with ice.” I said, “That will be fine Mr. Fish.” ~Coconuts Bar & Liquor Store . Down Town Pine Key. |
 |
| Winn Dixie Deals for Dad. Link |
I don’t know what the Mosquito Control guys are doing, but I sure as hell know they are not killing mosquitoes. I think the new breed they dumped on us is prehistoric and can grow into small flying dinosaurs with 3 foot proboscises. When they start to bite and hit bone, I’m out of here! |
| [G-L-O-R-I-A] Growing up in Belfast, the writer Glenn Patterson assumed that everything that moved him musically came from afar. To begin with, it was England and Glam Rock, but gradually strange sounds began to infiltrate from even further afield. A school friend introduced him to Patti Smith. Patti Smith introduced him to ‘Gloria’. It was a convoluted route by which the song finally reached him – only a couple of miles from where it was written. Link Gloria |
 [FTR] ZIKA …It’s baaaaack! So far this year, here in Florida, at least 55 pregnant women have been infected. That is tragic because the evidence is becoming ever more clear that Zika is much more damaging to unborn children that was previously thought. Additionally, we are learning that Zika presents substantial risk of significant after effects to adults and children who contract the disease.
According to the CDC, in 2016, 10% of pregnant women with confirmed Zika infection had a fetus or baby with Zika-related birth defects. Remember those are only the known cases. God only knows how many pregnant women have actually been infected. Just for the record, according to census stats, there will about 7,700 live births by Monroe County mothers this year.
Research reported in 2017 tells us that reported after effects of Zika in adults has been expanded to include cardiovascular complications. So there you have it. It ain’t good. Let’s hope that our Mosquito Control Authority uses every weapon that is available in the fight against Zika. That includes GMO technology, Wolbachia technology, and whatever else is available. I’ve heard that the Bug Board management has some info on a brand new trap that homeowners can use themselves. I haven’t checked it out. I suggest that you give them a call and check it out. |
| [“Lousy, lazy, and drunken work force in the Keys”] This comment is a little harsh. According to the major news networks these poor folks were probably neglected by society, their parents, the schools or greedy capitalists. Maybe businesses should give them a chance to redeem themselves. They could also pay them a decent wage, say $25 to $50 an hour. There is, however, an outside chance that a good portion of them really don’t want to work. |
I’m looking to remodel my kitchen and 2 baths. Any positive comments on who I should use? I would like a timely job (ready when promised) this would include plumbing, tile, and sheetrock. Thanks for any input. |
| Why are new restrictions put on travel to Cuba with “the long-term aim of overturning” their government when China, which is an actual threat to freedom and our safety, gets more and more support and favoritism? Many “saw the Obama policy as an attempt to lull Cuba into complacency and undermine the foundations of a communist system based in part of near-total control of virtually every aspect of society, from animal-rights groups to the film industry” Similar to what Communist China does, but Cuba is nowhere near as terrible or repressive as China is. |
 |
| [Amazon Buys Whole Foods] Jim Cramer says Amazon.com’s purchase of Whole Foods is a “game changer” for the food industry. Amazon.com Inc said on Friday it would buy U.S. organic supermarket chain Whole Foods Market Inc for $13.7 billion, including debt, marking the internet retailer’s largest deal and biggest foray into the brick-and-mortar retail sector, Reuters reported.
“This is such a game changer. They will now dominate food within the next two years,” the “Mad Money” host said on CNBC’s “Squawk on the Street.” “I’m taking down numbers for everybody who sells food. Everybody. Because you can’t compete with Amazon. They will not let you compete,” Cramer said, noting Amazon can now “change the whole paradigm.” Maybe they’ll build a store here. Or will we only be able to purchase food with Amazon Prime. |
[Land-Sea Submarine] Except for being in Arabic, this is just a normal day in the Keys. Video |
| [Schools Hacked] The Sunday Miami Herald had a front-page article addressing how four school districts in Florida have been hacked. Apparently, the hackers are fishing mainly for Social Security numbers and who knows what else. I trust that the Monroe County School District has in place ample security measures to prevent any kind of hacking. I suspect that efforts to penetrate databases will continue and their search mechanisms will broaden. |
Earthquakes in the vicinity of the Yellowstone super volcano. Since Yellowstone is still very active, scientists assure us that it will erupt again one day. Link |
| I used to be afraid of getting old and sick. Now I’m afraid of getting ill and having to deal with our health care system. |
 [“Beach towels and swimsuits hanging on Mote Marine’s railing”] Go home you fufu rich from somewhere-elser! It used to be back in the day we were environmentally friendly down here, not flushing with every pee, and drying our clothes in the sun. I still do. Are you one of the turons who has recently bought down here and runs their AC 24/7/365 so your home is not dusty (coral dust)? Do you come in off the boat and immediate wash and dry your boat, suits and towels? Do you think the seafood is all from here? This writer bristles when I hear the accents and I run when you ask me, “Where ya from?” |
| The Mote Facility is here to save the already mostly dead reef. The coral growing they do is amazing, the coral plantings on the reef work. |
 |
| Ever wonder why you start getting diseases after you go to your first full physical exam? Maybe the doctors office or the hospital are not the healthiest places to be? |
 [“Murder for hire”] To Adam Linhardt, The Citizen Reporter: Your statement to my attorney that you do not know why I may not like you is so dishonest and transparent that it is clear you are either criminally stupid or stupidly criminal, doing the bidding of people who wish me dead or publicly discredited with their gun or with your written word. Both have failed and I will uncover this Zecca matter with or without your help. At this point, you still seem to be in some sort of denial or cover-up mode. These are your problems.
My problem is trying to uncover the “others” behind Dennis Zecca who were a part of my murder for hire and also drug smuggling into the Keys for distribution to our local Communities. My surprise and disappointment is how no one seems to care about uncovering these “others”, not the FBI, not the Department of Justice, not the Monroe County Sheriff, not the then State Attorney, Cathrine Vogel, and certainly not you. You write an article 2 1/2 months after a State Attorney investigation into a false accusation against me for bribery that was closed before it was open and you don’t see the problem? The person who fed you that information was using you to attack me and you allowed that to happen. It was well known in Marathon that I was getting married on July 4, 2013 and you publish a front page article on July 3, 2013 implying that I may have tried to bribe someone. Your article was nothing short of an attempt to publicly assassinate my character. Thanks for the wedding present, I will never forget it! Of course, I do not like you and for good reason. You never corrected your article with any sort of follow-up. You never documented the relationships and friendships between Mike Cinque, Peter Rosasco, Rick Ramsay and Dennis Zecca. You continue to protect your source for the information that was fed to you. This is not a source to be protected, they fed you false and incomplete information designed to publicly discredit me and ruin my reputation and you wrote and published an article that was incomplete. This person used you to attack me with misleading information the day before my wedding and you tell my attorney that you do not know why I do not like you? Think about how you would feel if you were in my shoes. You say that you would like to see this Zecca matter resolved but you seem to have picked the side that wishes to cover this up and wants it to go away. If you really care about solving this crime then the next time you talk with my attorney provide him with the name of the person who fed you the information about a State Attorney investigation that was not publicly known, even to me at the time because I was never interviewed, and because there was no truthful factual basis behind any of it. And do not pretend that you are protecting a confidential source or informant because they are no such thing, they are, in fact, an accomplice to ongoing criminal activity which you have become a part of by protecting them with you silence and refusal to name this “other” person. I have attached, once again, a copy of your July 3, 2013 article along with the April 2013 Investigative Report. It is most interesting and revealing the names of my accusers who you left out of your article. You may want to read them again and understand your problem. I have also attached a photo of you and Ralph Lucignano’s best friend, Mario DiGennaro which might jog some of your dormant brain cells. Please say “Hello” to Mario for me the next time you are together because he won’t talk to me anymore since Zecca’s arrest based on his last statement to me, that Ralph Lucignano was like a brother to him and that they were friends to the end. Of course, I am looking forward to the end myself! ~Bruce Schmitt |
Anybody know this person? I was talking with a fellow at the bar last Friday night. He said he knew a few hot women down here that I might be interested in. After too many beers I forgot his name. I do remember he had one hell of a big mustache. Any help would be appreciated. |
| The U.S. military on Sunday shot down a Syrian Air Force fighter jet that bombed local forces aligned with the Americans in the fight against Islamic State militants, an action that appeared to mark a new escalation of the conflict. |
 |
| Can I trim the vacant lot next to me with about five gallons of diesel? |
 |
| [Discouraging food choices] Remember those viral videos of tilapia fish farms where they feed them raw sewage? Well, I just came back from the grocery with almost nothing. Big shrimp were on sale but I saw they were farm raised in a 3rd world country. That brought back the memory of the Orlando wastewater plant where the operators stocked the Clarifiers with some bait shrimp. They grew huge and happily multiplied, scarfing up the cornmeal and other undigested goodies in the partially treated wastewater. The operators had a great live bait supply and the water was cleaner, but I wondered about possible similarities to that foreign “shrimp farm.” Mussels were 2 lbs for $6, but the bag said “farm raised” also, in Chile, and I passed. I finally settled on a pound of ground lamb from the US and Australia. Sheep can thrive on just about any kind of poor pasture, so why pay to feed them GMO feed? It might be reasonably healthy meat, right? I cooked it up as one burger and bits to go in a sauce. I was astonished at how much water was generated by the cooking. It wasn’t grease like I first thought. My 1/4 lb burger looked like a slider and was pretty much flavorless. The burger bits amounted to about a half cup. I guess that’s why it was priced rather reasonably. |
If the media is proven to be instigating a civil war between the Lefties and the Righties, would that be grounds for treason? |
| I never would have believed that America might fall in my lifetime! The way people have hate for each other is not healthy. Who is behind this madness? |
[R.I.P Elizabeth Warner] Upon retirement she moved to Key West, Florida and became an active member of the Writer’s Guild there and later the Big Pine Writer’s Group. Elizabeth was an award-winning author. |
| [Religion] The faithful lose all arguments with non-believers when trying to prove the mythical place they call Heaven. I have a new argument they can use. Just say Heaven is in a parallel dimension. That would be a lot easier to believe and maybe make some sense to many of us who are open-minded. |
 [Yellow Fever] In 1865 the bark Adventure arrived in Key West in distress. Four of her crew were sick with yellow fever and sent to the Marine Hospital for treatment. The fever spread to the Army troops on the island and began an epidemic that caused 331 cases, with 71 deaths among the troops and an unknown number of case among the civilian population. |
| [Key Wasted] My family and I have lived in Key West for several years now and we still marvel at the waste of humanity here. People seem to give up when they move here. Nobody works at anything functional or productive, just do mundane labor to gain subsistence. All the wild parting and parades, the worthless efforts to help thy neighbors, the dysfunctional city government and the waste of hard earned tax monies for trivial projects are astounding! It is no wonder this town is called Amityville II else where! What a waste of a Paradise! |
 |
| [The Agony of Florida] Its rivers, bays, estuaries, and politics. Big Sugar controls Florida except for the rain. Link |
 [Too Many Sharks] I agree with the comment that there are too many sharks around now. There have been two shark bites very recently where the sharks went after speared fish. We used to chum the bottom for an hour before spearfishing and seldom saw sharks, but now they are plentiful even with no chum. The worst of it is that every stolen fish encourages sharks to associate swimmers with food and to be bolder. Last summer, I went for a drift dive using snuba across shallow patches inside the reef line looking for lobsters and fish. I had about a half dozen sharks circling me for much of the dive, which really discourages shooting a fish that is not worth fighting for. I know a guy who was lobstering and was body slammed by a bull shark. It knocked his mask and regulator off and winded him, so it could easily have ended badly. My “same ocean, same day buddy” jumped in before me and raced to the bottom once to get the best grouper before I had a chance. When I jumped in to the clear water and got about 40 feet from the bottom, I saw he was facing off an aggressive shark about 7 feet long that had his full attention, zigzagging and arching about 10′ in front of him. He had no fish to steal but he had seen a fat grouper duck into a hole, as did the shark. What my buddy didn’t see was the considerably larger shark quietly sneaking up directly behind him. I raced to the bottom to defend, but when they saw me coming, they both took off and we did not see them again, even though we shot fish. Most of my unnerving shark encounters have been when diving “with” him, but nowhere near, so I think that is one more reason to have a buddy nearby. But he would get annoyed if he saw me during the dive, so most dives were essentially solo, with a big pony bottle for air backup. I strongly recommend the pony, but not the solo diving. I also discovered that while a mirrored mask will let you get much closer to a fish, sharks become much bolder if they can’t see your eyes looking at them. Australian surfers would paint eyes on the bottom of their boards to discourage sharks, and Mote’s shark cam reportedly discovered that hammerheads will abort an attack if seen by the prey. They like to ambush. I once had a feeling in about 80′ of water that I should look behind me and discovered a hammerhead about twice my size was a few feet from my fins when I saw him. He turned away when I spun about and pushed the spear toward his face, but he circled me the entire dive, which destroyed my eagerness to shoot fish, and my buddy saw that he even followed me right to the boat. I had no fish, so the shark was probably just curious, but his previous buddy lost a fin to a hammerhead just before getting back to the boat. The boat then caught a rogue wave and sank. They had a long swim, with one missing a fin. That buddy gave up diving and took up golf. But I had a golfer relative that was chased from a water trap by an alligator. The gator was faster at first, but he had more stamina. And adrenaline I bet. Sharks can hear your heartbeat, so try to stay calm if confronted. If he hears your heart speed up, pretend you’re excited about shark for dinner. You are big and unfamiliar, so possibly a risk to them and not on the menu, hopefully. Even predators try to avoid injury. And don’t try to out swim him to the boat. It’s fun for predators to chase creatures, and especially creatures that are panic scared. Some of this advice may work on land sharks too |
One of the most accurate product review I’ve read. |
| [Mosquito Spraying] Helicopter Rides. Does anyone know about the frequent helicopters over Port Pine Heights? Are they using the helicopters to give rides to the elite? I am getting tired of the noise. It seems they are taking off and landing from the same place. |
Time for another enjoyable afternoon with the Keys Writers Group, this Wednesday, June 21, 2017, 1-3 pm at the Big Pine Library Conference Room. Optional social hour at Bistro 31 at noon, arrive by 11:45 am if you want breakfast (the home fries are delicious)! I Look forward to seeing you there. |
| Someone asked if FKAA requires a 3 digit IQ of job applicants. They would be disappointed to learn that there are no IQ requirements at all.of job applicants or of those that select them. Bloodline is much more important and with that goes KW Conch inbreeding- typified by sociopathic insanity when there is a measurable IQ from what I can deduce. Previous FKAA Executive Director Roger Braun is reportedly famous for having explained failures by saying, “What can you expect? I’m working with a bunch of inbreds!” (referring to FKAA management, of course). Bloodline rules in Key West based government, and where that leaves off, it helps to hang at the Masonic Lodge from what I hear. Check around and you will be amazed at how many in power have both connections. ~cudjoefail@mail.com |
 |
| A mistake repeated more than once, is a decision. ~Paul Coelho |
 [Pollution] Whispering Pines has the Keys most polluted canal, look it up. Weekly and monthly renters don’t inform their guest that they can not throw fish carcass in the canal. After videoing NASA house renters throwing dolphin carcass in the canal yesterday, I went out and explained that they couldn’t do that and why. They said ok and after I walked off they continued to throw them in. I should have called game warden because one lady was cleaning and throwing in what looked like a 15″ dolphin as fast as she could. Probably because they thought I may have called. Put a sign on your cleaning stations telling your guest and renters not to do it. The canal is so polluted that if your kids fell in it would probably give them an infection. Code enforcement refuses to enforce any rules at all in Whispering Pines. |
| [Habitat for Humanity ReStore] Let’s be honest here. If that is even possible. There was nothing in this world wrong with the Habitat for Humanity ReStore. They are demolishing it for another reason. How many people who shopped or worked there found it to be unstable? It is a solid structure and that was an evil thing the county did. Why isn’t there a complete and total shake up and removal of bubbas? How much longer can the residents sit back and get abused in every single way possible. |
 [Crash] The U.S. Navy’s USS Fitzgerald struck the Philippine container ship ACX Crystal near Japan on Saturday morning, leaving the destroyer seriously damaged and at least seven sailors missing.
According to one expert, there’s a good chance the collision was caused by the errors of human crew, despite the presence of onboard systems intended to prevent deadly collisions at sea. Much like the systems in advanced automobiles, those systems are designed to not only see a ship’s surroundings, but also calculate whether it’s headed for a crash. It’s possible those alert systems failed, Dyer says. But it’s far more likely a human pilot or captain on one of the ships made one or more missteps that proved impossible to correct. |
| “Build your own website in less than an hour.” Uh, huh. I wonder why designers charge thousands of dollars to do that? Oh, to look professional and to inspire confidence for the visitor. |
I now know why us old people save money. To pay young people to do the hard work. I tried to cut down a bad tree and it cut me down! |
| [Irony] Kentucky’s Coal Mining Museum is run by solar panels! |
 |
| [Bill Cosby] I was watching the news the other night and went into a semi sleep, so can anyone let me know if the jury was hung or Bill Cosby was hung? (Ed: Old joke my mother used to tell: “I know he was hung, but how did he die?”) |
Antarctic sea ice hit 35-year record high Saturday. Antarctic sea ice has grown to a record large extent for a second straight year, baffling scientists seeking to understand why this ice is expanding rather than shrinking in a warming world. Link |
| Has anyone worked with Turnkey Vacation Rentals? If so, what’s your opinion? Link |
Use a paper clip to help put on a bracelet when you don’t have anyone to help you. |
| The DEP requires a “discharge monitoring report” (DMR) to be filed monthly by wastewater plants. DEP is lenient and allows the whole following month to get them in. It appears that FKAA has not filed the report for the Cudjoe plant since the March information was finally filed on April 27. Check the calendar- we are way past April, yet no April or May DMR. How bad was the April DMR that they don’t want anyone to see it? On the last day of the month, FKAA has all the information to file the next day instead of waiting as long as legally possible, and now as long as illegally possible. Good faith would be indicated by promptly filing those DMRs, but there is sure not much of that at FKAA, is there? Contact a Board member and ask why not. Very unprofessional and irresponsible. |
[Name That Bug] “Brown-neck Ceiling Bug” identification: looks to me like a False Bombardier Beetle. |
| FTR says our growing uncivility is “a path that might well lead to the destruction of our Constitution.” The only thing wrong with our Constitution is the 2d Amendment. Our Constitution should be updated to reflect current times, every couple of hundred years or so. Guns are a problem one political party refuses to recognize to the detriment of the nation’s safety and each other. |
 |
| The closed Wharf restaurant on Summerland Key is going to be called Seafood Shack when it reopens” Is that why the sign says: TONIO’S OPEN OCTOBER 2017 Is he buying seafood from Billy, formerly Billy’s Crab Shack? or is he going to import his fish like everyone else does down here?I also heard there’s going to be pizzas. Yeah, with Slice of Paradise still for sale, Mangrove Mamma’s and Papa Jim’s all delivering and Boondocks offering flatbread pizzas and the Italian place on Cudjoe, pizzas and Italian food is a needed spot in the Lower Keys. I remember when all we had was Raymundo’s in Cudjoe Gardens? I guess we need more Italian food to feed all the New Yorkers and Jersey Guernseys moving in. |
Where is the adult toy shop on BPK? It should be very popular on that key! |
| Why can’t those refugees fix their own country and get rid of their problems? It seems like people just run away looking for free handouts in other places. Not in my hood, that’s for sure! |
 [Anarchy] When I was a kid back in the Stone Age I went to school to learn how to think. Over the past 8 to 10 years I’ve observed the emphasis has changed to what to think. I’ve seen advancements and achievements change into derision and obstructions. Individualism and personal responsibilities are things of the past. The beginnings of anarchy are splashed over the media on a regular basis. Fortunately, I won’t be alive to observe the results of this dangerous trend. Good luck to what used to be America. She had a nice run. |
| [Joke] In honor of hurricane season, here’s a joke:
Q: What did the hurricane say to the coconut tree? |
Commissioner Neugent comment on deep well. |
| [?] This is what happens when you live a life in apartments, walk or take taxis to work, never see the sun or play in nature until you retire in Flaraduh. It’s called spring, and you’re witnessing nature. The why, is called love, or in their case, breeding. This is the same reason you people are refusing to swim in the ocean. No clue as to what’s around you! |
This is in the National Vietnam Memorial Museum in Chicago. It’s the dog tags of every person who lost their lives in the Vietnam War. It’s a powerful statement. America home of the brave, Thank you for your service. |
| [Wastewater] From a Miami Herald article talking about S. Florida’s mandated requirement to reuse more treated wastewater: “Monroe County, which is not subject to the law because it never used ocean outfall, reuses some of its water but has a harder time finding users since so little is used for irrigation, said Julie Cheon, a spokeswoman for the Florida Keys Aqueduct Authority.” Link
Somebody lied. On their DEP collection system permit applications, FKAA claimed 40% of metered water on the islands of Upper Sugarloaf, Cudjoe, and Summerland is used for irrigation. 40%! According to FKAA, the other islands use about 25% for irrigation. That was a rather obvious deception to enable downsizing the Cudjoe treatment plant to avoid drilling a deep well. DEP engineers and FKAA’s own consultant had previously told them at least one deep well would be required if they used one plant for the entire Cudjoe Regional service area. Even with those absurd assumptions for irrigation water, the totals of DEP collection system permits in the Cudjoe Regional indicate the plant is undersized by 394,120 gallons per annual average day. We have an engineer’s technical memo to FKAA claiming that if reuse water was made available to Cudjoe Key that the residents there would use more irrigation water than they now use for everything! It didn’t say that outright, but when compared to historical metered water quantities it did. How did he arrive at such an illogical conclusion? Essentially, the engineer used Google Earth and assumed everything green on developed Cudjoe was well irrigated and that everyone would eagerly pay for another meter to avoid the sewer charge for irrigation water. Some might call him delusional, but it looks to us like just another professional engineer who will attest to whatever his client or employer wants. The attached rather eloquently phrased quotation as reported in the News-Barometer edition of June 16, 2017 seems to us more like possible delusion if not just boastful bull. No “state minimum requirements” of significance have been exceeded in the Cudjoe Regional. Quite the opposite in that DEP made many extreme exceptions based on FKAA’s unrealistic and/or fraudulent “reasonable assurances.” And none of the other FKAA wastewater plants besides the fraudulent Cudjoe plant even claim to reach “the highest level of treatment.” The news column itself appears to be a prepared press release to sway public opinion rather than true news reporting. The well is approved by DEP only for operational testing, and all indications are that the deep well pumps will not operate safely as intended in the existing tiny structure intended for pumps 1/10 the size. The intended continuous operation is impossible at less than half plant permitted capacity since that is the slowest that one influent pump can feed the plant, and the deep well pumps are paced on the influent pump and restricted to an even higher minimum pumping rate. FKAA currently reports far below half capacity in this off-season with relatively few sewer connections completed. The Operating Manual for the deep well as submitted to DEP shows a normal range of water level on page 110 that goes to one foot above the overflow to the shallow wells. Those wells are not to be used once the deep well is operational. At best, that must be considered irresponsibly reckless engineering. Considering the vast amount of public money spent on this project (and continuing), and the extensive alarms sounded by numerous knowledgeable citizens, why has the BOCC not authorized one or more of their pre-budgeted consulting engineering firms to review and report on the adequacy and appropriateness of the overall design and certain design specifics of their design-build-operate leasee FKAA? Remember that this is County-owned infrastructure that will be a public burden to maintain and/or rebuild for decades, and the whole purported purpose of the system was to protect nearshore water from sewage pollution alleged of septic tanks. |
| Submit anything but National Politics to island@bigpinekey.com For National Politics go directly to that page, log in, and post your comment. NATIONAL POLITICS |
The CDC ups the ante even further. They caution women not to travel to areas that have Zika and to avoid having unprotected sex with men who have traveled to Zika areas. Researchers have discovered a distinct pattern of Zika associated birth defects; they’ve named it Congenital Zika Syndrome.
