Monthly Archives: June 2011

State v. Local Control

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New Florida Gov. Rick Scott vetoed $615 million in line items in a $69 BILLION state budget this month. Less than 1%. He also signed House Bill 7207 into law.

Them as whose oxen were gored are up in arms.

State Rep. Ron Saunders (D-Monroe County) has bemoaned the fact that the state Department of Community Affairs “which played a major role in making sure Monroe County governments adhere to Area of Critical State Concern mandates” is among the bovines “gutted.” See, House Bill 7207, the redesignated “Community Planning Act” essentially dismantles the D.C.A. by moving that agency’s duties to a new Division of Community Development.

Meanwhile, Gov. Scott came to the Keys for his first time as governor but I didn’t see him despite the fact that he stayed at a Marathon motel and spoke at the Marathon High School graduation.

Florida is bigger than many third world nations in land area, population, residential income, and tax revenue. Come to think of it, Florida is bigger than many European nations in all of the above.

To put that in perspective, the Florida $3 billion budget deficit is bigger than Vermont’s entire state budget.

Gov. Scott had made the Community Planning Act one of his priorities because oversight of development in the Keys should be handled locally rather than through Tallahassee.

“I believe in local government… It’s closer to the people,” he told the Keynoter. “I just don’t believe we ought to be running these things at the state level. I think that we ought to have local control of things. Each community needs to decide what they want to do in their community.”

Looking back to Vermont, local control is more than a buzzword.

Local control is on the lips of Town Selectmen, of voters at Town Meetings, of the 290 school superintendents serving Vermont’s 251 Towns.

New North Puffin Selectman Tom Tom Ripley summed it up, “We figure the one-size-fits-all solutions we get from the County or the State or the Feds or the One-World-Government fall well short of just letting our cities and towns muddle through our local issues.” Tom is North Puffin’s best known garbage man in a state where garbage collection is private enterprise and pretty much everyone with a pickup truck can be a trash hauler.

Indeed, Vermont has essentially no County government at all, relying on local boards to oversee our governmental needs from animal control to zoning.

On paper, local control looks as if it would be more expensive than the consolidated services available from the state or the Feds. After all 290 school superintendents just have to cost more for the 92,431 enrolled students than, say, a couple of dozen, right?

Right?

Of course, right. We know that banks gobbled up their neighbors and airlines swallowed their competitors to save us money. Of course, Judge Harold H. Greene broke up AT&T to, um, save us money, too.

There are other costs to government. A Facebook group “Abused Land Owners of Monroe County Florida Want Justice” reminds us that all is not right in Paradise. A familiar headline reads, “FBI investigates Florida political corruption in Capitol.” And Time Magazine reported that exclusive Palm Beach County, once the Kennedys’ winter playground, “has begun to rival Miami as the Sunshine State’s capital of corruption and political mischief.”

I guess the final answer is really a question: “Do you want the corrupt politician you can see at the Cracked Conch or the one hidden away in Tallahassee controlling how you use your property?”

Breezy

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My great grandfather, Enos Barnard, kept a diary. Many people in that age did; some have become a great resource of sociological, marketing, and real-time observations.

“The meeting was stirred by A.D.’s announcement more than by the Indian Mutiny.”
“Shipped 30 pounds of butter to NY on PRR for $31.”
“Patchy fog this morning but Sunny for the day. One little shower this afternoon. Breezy.”

Right. “Breezy” is showing up in modern weather reports but my great grandfather never used the word in his life.

Probably because he liked words and used them with precision.

Friday morning started pretty grim looking. 80° and 69% humidity which is better than it has been but the sky full of heavy-bottomed black clouds. It was supposed to be mostly sunny with just the slightest 10% chance of showers so the clouds confused us. And “becoming breezy.” Heh. East winds about 15 in the morning increased to 20 – 25 mph by my afternoon beach time. I guess breezy meant about 20 mph on Friday. Better than “fresh,” I guess.

Saturday was mostly sunny, and “breezy” again. Local television meteorologist Trent Aric called it “blustery” Friday night.

I see it will be “sunny and breezy” in Southwest Puffin with wind gusts up to 30 mph this afternoon.

The Urban Dictionary calls the word breezy “a combination of the two words which describe a woman that is easy. The word ‘broad’ is combined with the word easy creating the derogatory word ‘breezy’.”

That was a lot of help.

Breezy could an adjective meaning “pleasantly windy.” Yourdictionary.com comes closest to my own idea by calling breezy, “slightly windy.” And the American Heritage dictionary calls it “a light current of air; a gentle wind.” Now we’re talking.

The second American Heritage quantifies the breeze as “any of five winds with speeds of from 4 to 27 knots, according to the Beaufort scale.”

Uh oh. That’s still a pretty informal approach to a definition.

Sir Francis Beaufort’s Wind Force Scale gives wind speeds in measurable velocities and describes those speeds in terms of empirical observations at sea or on land. A light breeze (3-6 knots) brings mall wavelets and leaves begin to rustle. In the gentle breeze (7-10 knots), brings some whitecaps to the Straits and the leaves and small twigs move constantly. Moderate breeze (11-15 knots) means small breaking waves, dust and paper in eddies in the air, and palm fronds dancing. The fresh breeze (16-20 knots) is getting serious with some spray coming aboard and small trees swaying. A strong breeze (21-26 knots) takes your garbage can.

I fell in lust with Kay Lenz when she played Kate Jordache in the TV series Rich Man, Poor Man but she made her bones as Breezy, a teen-aged hippy with heart. Clint Eastwood directed her in the film of the same name. It’s a schmaltzy story of a hitchhiker who escapes a man who wanted her for only sex.

So I’m thinking the weather peeps should use the appropriate qualifiers unless they want us to use these breezes only for sex.

Par-tay

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This is Poly House Party Weekend!

June 3-5 marked the first ever international DIY festival celebrating my polyamory my way. Of course, it could also celebrate your polyamory your way. And his. And hers. And theirs.

Organizers David Trask and Jessica Karels suggest it will be “kids of four parent households, poly-fi triads, primaries and their play partners, the ethically non-monogamous, the happily unpartnered with their lovers, the incidentally monogamous, the polysaturated, the overly or overtly single, the doubly heartbroken, the label-resistant, those too-complex-to-explain, and our wonderful not-wired-that-way supportive allies.”

My advice to you is get married: if you find a good wife you’ll be happy; if not, you’ll become a philosopher.
–Socrates

Poly House Party weekend could have barbecues and keggers in Seattle, pot lucks and raves in Philly, picnics and blues dances in New Orleans, play parties and Tantric retreats in Montreal, game nights, field days, fundraisers, cuddle parties, and a black tie dinner in Key West.

“It is a community bonding experience, our way–because everyone will do it a little differently.”

I want a good wife. I’ll take a couple of them if they’re good enough.
–Mark Twain

The South Puffin Par-tay is a little different than everyone else’s. I cooked up my special batch of pulled pork (easy on the nyuk nyuk jokes, there, big fella) for the last few days and Joe came over for dinner.

See the girls are somewhere else. Or I am. One is taking apart a decrepit hot tub and the other has a weekend tournament which means I get to spend the Poly House Party weekend feeding my neighbor and making fun of Rufus’ taste in beer.

Only two things are necessary to keep one’s wife happy. One is to let her think she is having her own way, and the other is to let her have it.
–Lyndon B. Johnson

“Does not living together make polyamory easier?” Our long-married friend, Polly Dent, asked. She and her husband Paul live together and on the same block as his lover.

It certainly makes the logistics easier. Cuddle parties are unusual when the guests of honor show up on a Skype conference call.

Sometimes I wonder if men and women really suit each other. Perhaps they should live next door and just visit now and then.
— Katherine Hepburn

Ahh, Kate. Who’d have thunk you were a hermit, too?

Nancy has retaught me the value of solitude without the negative of being alone. Anne has told me how much she likes to regroup alone occasionally.

Turns out that our polyamory our way includes a remote cabin.

[Editor’s Note: gekko and I shared a four-part polylocution plus these Afterglow posts. Please visit her recent piece, Regarding Bonobos, and use The Poly Posts index for the entire series and for other resources.]