Key West continues to be home to writers. It has always been. Still is. Will be in the future. Something unending about the attraction writers have for the Keys.

Even the young are involved.

Books & Books at the Studios of Key West is sponsoring an event saturday October 14 titled the Great Works Speaking Competition. The theme is to “bring the written words of life through the power of reading and performance.”

Performance is the key word.

Participating Key West and Lower Keys high school students will each select a written work by a Key West author to read. The reading will be nuance based. The students will add facial expression and body language to the readings. Thereby adding additional life to the written words.

Prize money substantial. The highest scoring student will receive $750. Second place, $500. Third place, $250.

Each participant will receive a Letter of Recognition and a line on their college resume.

The door to enter has not yet closed. Telephone 305-320-0208 for particulars. Visitors welcome.

The event is made possible through the generous donation of Key West snowbirds Fred and Joanne Klein.

Trump started the bleach ingestion remedy to combat coronavirus. It did not go far in the U.S., though some did try and became sick.

Bleach as a remedy has been silent for quite a while. Till now. It has reappeared in Bolivia.

Yes, doctors are injecting bleach to treat COVID in Bolivia.

Somehow bleach got successfully peddled as a “preventive” and “cure.” The belief in bleach is also spreading through Latin America.

Bleach has found legitimacy. Many doctors/clinics sponsor and provide the bleach remedy. Including hospitals.

The bleach composition is a mixture of chlorine dioxide (a bleach used to disinfect swimming pools and floors) and saline. A 12 hour drip is required.

In addition to being used intravenously, it also comes in spray form.

The Bolivian government supports its use as an alternative treatment for COVID.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the Pan Am Health Organization are both opposed to its use.  The organizations have listed all kinds of problems, including death.

Epidemiologists in Bolivia are against the use of bleach. They attribute the bleach’s popularity to Bolivian people looking for easy solutions.

Epidemiologist Rene Soria Saucedo said, “We have enough on our plate with COVID alone, but now we are seeing even more complicated cases because people have consumed chlorine dioxide. It’s a burden on the health system that’s not manageable in this country.”

There are those who require organ transplants. Not all have been vaccinated. Those not vaccinated have placed themselves in the same position as those who were working and refused. Get vaccinated or you’re out of a job! Re those awaiting transplants, get vaccinated or you are off the waiting list.

The problem is occurring across the U.S.

The reason therefore simple. Even more compelling than the worker who refused to be vaccinated. All transplanted organ recipients are required to take immunosuppression drugs to prevent their bodies from rejecting the new organ as foreign. The problem is immune suppression drugs also make recipients highly susceptible to becoming infected  with coronavirus. The increased risk of dying is 20-30 percent.

William Healy turned 50 this week in 1856.

Maria Gutsens was Matron of Mercedes Hospital in Key West for 23 years. On this day in 1934, she received the Cross of the Order of Carlos Manuel de Cespedes, the highest honor given by the Cuban government.

Maria remains well known even today.

The former hospital is on Virginia Street. It is an apartment complex today. Many who have stayed at the apartment complex over the years claim they were awakened in the middle of the night by a strange happening. A nurse was standing by their bed holding a hand or touching their foreheads. Most so touched were sick.

Upon awakening, the “ghost” disappeared. It is believed the nurse is Maria’s ghost.

I came across an interesting line concerning Facebook’s 7 hour outage earlier in the week: “The day Facebook went dark.”

A good title for a book.

I am beginning to think Texas may be the future of America.

Texas is the second most populace state in the U.S. Frank Bruni in a recent New York Times opinion piece wrote, Texas “has become a provocative theater of performative defiance and a laboratory for imposing the will of the minority on the majority.”

Steven Pedigo in another New York Times opinion piece viewed Republican Party representatives a small minority in Texas. Lacking in numbers to even qualify as a majority of Texas Republicans.

Re the elected representatives, Pedigo wrote they are “backward looking, exclude huge swaths of Texas’ citizenry and run against the grain of many of its new stakeholders’ values.”

Texas is representative of the “new” Republican Party. Those who have been elected as Republicans. Laws recently passed and lawsuits arising suggest to me Texas may be where a for real revolution could begin. One similar to but harsher and longer enduring than the insurrection of January 6.

Street demonstrations will swiftly turn into shooting and knifing confrontations.

One motivation to revolt is the lack of stability. The new Texas abortion law a perfect example.

A law passed that does not make sense and should not have been. A federal lawsuit was immediately brought opposing the new law. A detailed court decision recognizing all the wrongs inherent in the law came down within a few days.

A very few days later, a 3 judge appellate court reversed the injunction by the lower court and reimposed the full force and effect of the original law.

The 3 judge appellate panel is of the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals. The next step will be for the entire Fifth Circuit Court to hear the case. I assume it will be swift and a decision forthcoming in 2 weeks.

Then regardless who wins at that level, the next step will be the U.S. Supreme Court. The place where several Justices has been champing at the bit to reverse Roe v. Wade.

My concern is the instability of the law. The abortion case has been through 3 steps of litigation in less than 10 days. Each time the court reversing the lower decision.

People cannot live with such instability.

They also cannot live where it is obvious what the final decision will be and the adverse effect it will have on most of them.

It is almost guaranteed the full Fifth Circuit will uphold the Texas law. It is the most conservative circuit court in the U.S. A total of 16 judges. Five Trump appointees.

My sense is many elected Republicans think the people they represent are stupid. Many ordinary citizens believe the federal court system has been contaminated by far right conservative judges and Trump appointees. Many of today’s judges don’t care what the people think. They are only concerned with how to word and approach their decisions to reach the result desired.

The United States cannot sustain itself with such leadership.

We are heading for an abyss.

Enjoy your day!