Late in the afternoon, toward the end of March, the Azamara Quest pulled out of Miami Harbor heading for Key West, Florida, and then on to Cuba. The air was hot and humid. My husband and I went out on our balcony to watch the land pull slowly away as we sailed out of the harbor. We could hear the music playing from the upper deck.
Key West is located on the southern tip of Florida. It divides the Atlantic Ocean from the Gulf of Mexico. It is known for many things but the one I found most interesting is that Ernest Hemingway lived there for almost eight years from 1931 until 1939. But he kept the house until he died. I often wonder if he was sorry he didn’t stay or expected and hoped to go back some day?
The time that Ernest spent in Key West was one of his most prolific periods for writing. During that eight year period, he worked on Death in the Afternoon, Green Hills of Africa, To Have and Have Not, For Whom the Bell Tolls and some of his short stories. The Snows of Kilimanjaro was written during this time.
Why am I talking so much about Ernest Hemingway? Because that was why I was looking forward so much to our one day stop in Key West. I’d arranged for us to take a tour in the morning after breakfast and then we’d spend time walking around on our own.
Once the tour was over, the first place we headed for was 907 Whitehead Street and this is what we found: Ernest Hemingway’s home.
We went to Miami Beach for four days in late March. We wanted to remember what the sun looked like. In Ann Arbor, the skies were either cloudy and rainy or it was snowing and cold. What would it be like to go outside in just a tee shirt and pants? We were both very tired of putting on sweaters, jackets, gloves, boots and hats every time we left the house.
Landing at Miami International Airport was WONDERFUL! The sun was shining. The skies were blue. The temperature was 76 degrees. We smiled as we put our jackets in our suitcases and called an Uber to take us to the hotel.
The Gates was in Miami Beach, a block from the ocean. We had great views from the room of the pool, the trees and flowers. Once we unpacked, we went out for a walk to see the neighborhood.
The receptionist at the front desk had suggested that we walk down to 17th Street and turn right. We were glad we did. There was block after block of restaurants and stores. The center of the street, which was very wide, was closed to traffic. All the restaurants had put their outdoor tables and chairs there, under large tents.
We picked a Spanish restaurant and ordered seafood paella and sangria. It was a wonderful evening. We enjoyed a slight breeze as the day faded into night.
What do you do when every time you push a button on the control panel, the words on the screen are all in French?
This story began when I was cooking Christmas dinner last December. We were all ready to sit down and eat. The buffet was just missing one dish—the sweet potatoes. I’d left them for last because they just needed a few minutes to cook.
I put the package in the microwave, shut the door and punched in the time. Silence. Mmmmm! I tried again and then one more time. The microwave had quit. I didn’t know if it was tired since I’d been using it all morning or, because it was purchased in 1992, after 25 years it was finished.
After everyone went home, my husband and I talked about getting a new microwave. We needed something that was reliable. In the past year we’d also been having problems with the oven. Sometimes it would cook. Other times it might not be in the mood. It had been installed in 1992 also. Actually, they were a wall combo and you really couldn’t replace one without replacing the other.
The best time to buy appliances like these is after Christmas and during the first week in January. The reason is a number of stores in Ann Arbor have sales at this time.
We quickly found out that a microwave-oven combination that has to be installed in the wall is much more expensive than just buying a microwave and an oven separately. And, you can only replace a wall combo with a wall combo. Otherwise the kitchen will look pretty strange.
So, we bit the bullet and went shopping. We quickly found exactly what we wanted with the features we required at three different stores. The only difference was the price.
We needed white so it would fit in with the rest of our appliances. Well, white is no longer the “in” color. So not only did we have to pay more, we had to wait. So, it wasn’t until the end of February that the microwave-oven combo arrived at the store.
On Thursday, February 22, the installer came out and installed the new combo and took away the old one. Everything went smoothly. After he left, I got out the instructions with the intension of learning how to use the different features on both ovens.
This is where the fun began. No matter what I punched in, the words that appeared on the screen were all in French. The first few times I used the iTranslate app to try to figure out what the screen was telling me to do. Then I realized that this was taking too much time. How was I going to cook a meal or reheat something?
I decided the best thing was to call Kitchen Aid, register the combo, and ask how to get the screen to speak English.
I called the number on the registration card and waited and waited and… You get the idea. After about 20 minutes a woman came on the line. She told me this was the number to register a product in French Canada. French Canada? I was in Ann Arbor, Michigan. She gave me the number to call for the United States.
I called and after another twenty minutes, a different lady came on the line. After registering the product, I asked her how to get the oven and microwave to speak English. “Oh,” she said. “That’s easy. Just press Tools and choose option 9.”
I did and put my iTranslate app away for another time.
I was intrigued by the title–Beyond The Wall: The Human Toll of Border Crossings. This lecture was sponsored by Wallace House and given at the Ford School of Public Policy at the University of Michigan on Wednesday, January 31, 2018.
There were three speakers: Brooke Jarvis, Jason De Leon and Ann Lin.
I was especially intrigued by Brooke Jarvis, a journalist and 2017 winner of the Livingston Award for her story “Unclaimed “. It was featured in The California Sunday Magazine in 2017.
About 18 years ago, a man was found in the desert of the southwest United States. There had been some kind of accident and he was taken unconscious to the hospital. He was in very bad shape.
The man had no identification, and because he was unconscious, no one could ask him who he was. This man was kept alive for years on respirators. But, who was he? What was his name? Where did he come from? Did he have family waiting for him?
Eventually, after 18 years, a Border Patrol Agent came to see him. He was determined to find out who this man was. He ordered the man’s information put in several government databases. Within two days the man was identified and his sister located.
For families of people who try to come to the United States illegally, a source of great trauma is, if they don’t make it, how does the family find out what happened? For years these families suffer–wondering, worried and traumatized.
Our current border walls and surveillance systems in the southwest United States are quite secure. The only way left to try to cross illegally is through the desert. Many people, if not most, die because of the terrain, lack of water and the terrible heat.
Currently there are about 800 bodies in morgues in the southwest United States waiting to be identified. There are also online websites for families seeking information about their loved ones who never arrived.
Wouldn’t it be humane, once someone has died trying to cross, to let their families know? Technology has advanced so much that this could be done by the repatriation of bodies or DNA evidence.
I grew up trusting the police, the courts and the justice system. In elementary and high school civics classes, I learned a lot about the American system of justice, the importance of telling the truth and that everyone is innocent until proven guilty.
I loved watching court dramas on TV. Some of my favorites were Dragnet, Judd for the Defense and Perry Mason. I believed the police always told the truth, the lawyers did their best for their clients and the innocent always went free.
Fast forward to today. I just finished reading Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson* which was published in 2014. Bryan wrote about his experiences defending death penalty cases in Alabama from the 1980s until now. The stories he tells are heartbreaking.
For the most part, his clients are sitting on Death Row because they are poor, African-American and have had bad to abysmal representation in court. If they weren’t so poor, they could have afforded a lawyer who would have attempted to represent them, if for no other reason than to keep getting paid. And, if they weren’t African-American, having an all-white jury in Alabama might have been a plus.
In Just Mercy, the author doesn’t just talk about legal motions so much as tell stories. And the stories are heart breaking. There’s Walter McMillian, who was on death row for six years after being convicted of murdering eighteen-year-old Ronda Morrison, a clerk, working in a dry cleaners. It didn’t matter that he had numerous witnesses, one of whom was a police officer, to the fact he had been attending a church fish-fry many miles away at the exact same time. In Walter’s case, Sheriff Tom Tate and other law enforcement officials and witnesses were so determined to convict him that they committed perjury and fabricated evidence.
At one point, when Walter protested his innocence, Sherriff Tate replied, “I don’t give a damn what you say or what you do. I don’t give a damn what your people say either. I’m going to put twelve people on a jury who are going to find your goddamn black ass guilty.”**
Then there’s the story of Michael Lindsey. In the spring of 1989, several other of Mr. Stevenson’s Death Row clients asked him to help Michael. He was scheduled for execution in May. After that execution, they asked that he help Horace Dunkins, who, even though he was mentally retarded, was scheduled to be executed in July and then Herbert Richardson, who had gotten P.T.S.D. in Vietnam, and who was scheduled for August. Everything was happening so fast—so many executions and not enough time for good defenses.
There are also a number of stories of people who were exonerated and freed from prison after tremendous amounts of work. This would have never happened without both the resources Mr. Stevenson was able to bring to bear, such as first-class criminal investigations, and his own brilliance in presenting the evidence so convincingly that courts could only decide in favor of his clients.
If you’re interested in how our justice system really works and like sitting on the edge of your seat until you find out the verdict, this is the book for you!
* Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson, 2014, Spiegel & Grau, New York.
**Wikipedia: McCarthy, Colman (October 10, 1995). “A Matter of Death and Life”. Review of Circumstantial Evidence: Death, Life, and Justice in a Southern Town by Pete Earley Bantam. Retrieved December 14, 2017.
