Sanibel Journal

A week or so before The Isolation, I was thinking about a month of March with warm, sunny Sunday afternoons, when we would give Island Jazz concerts on the patio in front of BIG ARTS.   I needed a sun umbrella that I could clip onto my beach chair, so that I wouldn’t fry to a crisp during those concerts, I thought.   So I ordered one from Amazon. I haven’t used it because of The Isolation.   Within a couple days after the March 8 concert, my husband Tom and I knew enough about the corona virus that we decided to cancel all seven of the remaining concerts for the season. This No-Knead Bread tastes like something we would buy in a bakery in Paris. Then came a stream of orders from Amazon.com that tell one aspect of the story of our isolation.    Each week of The Isolation, we have ordered everything from the local Bailey’s General Store that we can – but there are perturbations in the supply chains, and sometimes Bailey’s cannot deliver certai...

William McAdams, Sr., was a tall man with fair skin and blue eyes.  He was of Scottish ancestry, the sort of Scot who knew much about cattle and horses, and who wrote many letters.  When he was 25 years old, he was already known as one of the best farmers in Illinois; he was a particularly well-known breeder of Shorthorn cattle. In 1861, at that young age of 25,  he entered the Union army's 59th infantry and was given quartermaster duties in Company H.  This was not a simple job; there was no effective supply chain during the Civil War.  McAdams and his colleagues had to acquire supplies as the army moved through the South.  How was this accomplished?  Well, McAdams and his colleagues would sneak out to the next town, ahead of the other soldiers, and they'd steal the best horses, cattle, and food that they could find.  That's how a large part of the provisions were procured. War is hell.  This Company H was in the battles of Pea Ridge, Bay...

For three weeks now, the Cooley household of two has been in strict, self-imposed isolation.   As we isolate, I strive to maintain my sense of place in the world.   That place has changed a bit lately. What I do and decide affects others.   I think about that.   JS normally cleans our house once a month, but I decided not now – not until the pandemic is over.   So I texted her (that’s her preferred mode of communication) to ask if she was okay and if she needed money; I said I could pay in advance for cleaning to be done next Fall or whenever.   She texted back that she is good, no worries.   A friend later told me that JS is more concerned about being able to stay away from the virus than she is about money.   She was frightened when she saw careless people still vacationing on Captiva.   I will check back with her again soon. I was concerned about my younger brother who lives alone in Tampa, because I had not heard from him or...

May 25, 2015 -- Sanibel Island is loaded with visitors on this Memorial Day weekend.  Bailey's grocery was busy on Sunday after church.  Many customers spoke Spanish.  A dozen or so sported tattoos all over their arms and even some necks. A double rainbow over Sanibel in June 2013. The bicycles on the shared use paths are ridden by people of all shapes, sizes, colors, and ages.  On the average, visitors on Memorial Day weekend are younger than wintertime snowbirds and visitors. At this time of year, the assortment of people on Sanibel looks a little more like the rest of the state. After all, this is the time of year when Floridians visit Sanibel.  Times are better; gas prices are lower. Unemployment in Florida is dipping below 5 percent.  Working people are opting to take a mini-vacation to Sanibel Island, a dream spot for Floridians. They come to bicycle, to fish, to enjoy the beach.  The weather is not too hot for them; they're used to it....

December 27, 2014 – The Social Action Committee at my church last year discussed the problem of Styrofoam cups – or, more accurately, polystyrene cups.  We know that polystyrene is bad because we are forbidden to put it in our regular recycling bins in Lee County (where Sanibel and Captiva are located), and the assumption is that it goes to the landfill instead.  Well, that isn’t exactly right, because all household trash in this county is taken to the award-winning trash-burning power plant, where its volume is reduced by 90 percent and it is turned into an inert ash.  The ash is what goes to the landfill. That sounds good, but I remember the problematic trash-burning power plant in Columbus back in the 1980s and 1990s.  It was plagued with emissions containing too much dioxin, as I recall, and perhaps too much mercury, too. But the Lee County trash-burning power plant does not seem to have those emission problems.  In fact, it is held up as a model ...

October 28, 2014 – Even the short and routine walk down the street to the community pool can yield surprises.  Several days ago, a small alligator (4 or 5 feet long) was sunning itself on the grass between the lagoon and the dirt road where I walked.  The alligator’s mouth was open, giving the impression of the gator smiling, or perhaps getting ready to bite something.  But that’s not the case; gators usually do this open-mouth thing to cool off.   What surprised me was that the weather was not hot; the temperature was a comfortable, dry 72 degrees F.  I didn’t think the gator should be that hot.  I hope he/she is okay. After I swam my 2 kilometers, I walked back to the house.  On the way, I noticed that the gator was gone. Alligator sunning in the grass in March 2011, in about the same spot where I saw a smaller gator with mouth open last week . The next day (Friday), I decided to run in the deep end of the pool.   Su...

October 23, 2014 – Bailey’s General Store is at the heart of Sanibel.  Literally, it is in the middle of the wide part of the island.  Functionally, Sanibelians go there often to acquire the basics for everyday life – namely, groceries and hardware. Bailey’s is in a ground-level building that pre-dates hurricane code, and it has a long covered sidewalk in front, part of which is decked out with rocking chairs, a few small tables, and other chairs.   The other part of the covered front walk is where all the doorways into the grocery and hardware store are located.  The center doorway is the most frequently used entrance, and that’s where the manager/owner Richard Johnson (married to Mead Bailey Johnson) often permits nonprofit organizations to set up a table from which raffle tickets are sold or information is dispensed. Turtle on a log on Chowder Pond, in our back yard. My friend David and I were scheduled to sit at a table there on Monday, for tw...