It is not just liberal or conservative media — it is an entire nation stoking each other with fearful flames of the Covid pandemic crisis. It has turned so inane and so desperate that basic facts and good news are no longer allowed.

The Town Commission and especially the community should be wary of two changes to Longboat Key’s building and zoning codes that threaten to undermine the integrity of the island.

There we were — a hobbling collection of knee replacements, back braces and patella straps all clustered together like a tennis-racket-wielding think tank. And I felt the air temperature and humidity rise as all these sweaty guys breathed and weighed in on the Covid question.

The irony continued: all of Longboat Key toddled unprotected for weeks after the schools closed in and out of Publix touching the fruit, stroking the ATM machines and coughing at the deli counter.

The City Manager made some critical errors this past year, but he did do one thing right. He would do well in baseball — hitting the ball successfully one out of three times ain’t all bad!

Tree clinging to the edge of City Island. Photo by Steve Reid

Thoughts raced through my head: Is there a rabid raccoon nearby? What’s wrong with Popsicle? Should we take him to the ER? I fell into the usual male mode of instinct mixed
with arrogance mixed with decisive action.

I worried that we would drive off with the money and I would end up slit throat in some shed and only a link via an eBay account and a grainy photo by airport security as my legacy. I thought of my wife and six children. I walked out with that fake faith in humanity we conjure when there is really no other alternative but to go forward with a plan.

It seems celebrities and criminals go by single names — Sting, Oprah, Eminem, Jeter, and then of course presidents and Hitler and the like all end up branded by a single moniker which culture adopts. And so the seller of the BMW insisted in three phone calls that he goes solely by Hussein and when I pushed the issue he capitulated to, “OK, Mr. Hussein.”

SCAT drivers are the most aggressive New York cab school of driving jockeys I have ever witnessed. You would think St. Armands was a closed racetrack the way the SCAT bus races to its next empty spot with a sole lonely bicyclist aboard.