The Key West Mystique
Key West Island News
Key West Island News connects Key West residents and friends of the island, fosters our One Human Family culture and advances understanding of shared goals for our island community
Linda Grist Cunningham | Columns and news analysis
Key West Island News editor Linda Grist Cunningham has written more than 4,000 columns — in print and on the web — since 1968. She hates writing and is compelled to do it anyway.
Key West infrastructure | What happens when the pipes break?
Well, that was fun, huh? You know, the night the bars shut down and the water stopped running? You probably didn't know it until you went to get some water in the middle of the night and went "what the heck." That's what happens when the Key West infrastructure...
Key West sargassum 2023 | Four months early and already piling up
No. Just no. It's not time for the Key West sargassum 2023 update. I don't write about Key West sargassum until June; heck maybe not until August. So, one beautiful Saturday morning back in mid-February, out on an Argo Navis sail with the Key West Art and Historical...
Key West architecture | Can we afford to preserve history?
Key West's looking pretty spiffy these days. Especially its residential neighborhoods with their ubiquitous Key West architecture. From Old Town to the far reaches of New Town, there's new paint, spruced-up fences, cleaned-up front yards and enough semi-manicured...
Key West local | Are you one? Maybe or not
When I'm off-island and someone asks me where I'm from, I tell them Key West. When I'm home on the porch and someone asks, I say, "Where would you like me to be from because I probably lived there." I'm not a Key West local. I was born in West Virginia, traipsed...
Key West cruise ships | Imagine the crowds if there were still three ships a day
I can't get Rob O'Neal's picture of the cruise ship Norwegian Dawn out of my mind. Rob says in his social media post on Jan. 21, that he shot the picture from about three miles away as he was heading back into town. The 965-foot long ship, which docked at Pier B on...
Chinese spy balloon? Boring. We’ve got Fat Albert and the F-35s
Chinese spy balloon? Meh. While the conspiracy brethren and their political media managers were agog last week over that Chinese spy balloon's cross-country journey, the Florida Keys were all "hold my beer. I'mma gonna make me up a Facebook meme." When you've got Fat...
Dear Connor is a collection of columns Linda writes for her grandson, Connor. Though he may never read them, they help her make sense of the world.
Dismantling the 14th Amendment: Keeping it upbeat in Key West when the world isn’t
I love my Key West Bubble, but national dissonance is dribbling through today. I am unsettled at the prospect of living through the dismantling of the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The 14th Amendment, ratified by the states in 1868, can be boiled down to this: Oops, when we wrote the Constitution and the Bill of Rights (the first 10 amendments), we were thinking only of straight white men with money. Perhaps we need to fix that?
Dear Connor | As the American democracy unravels, can there be hope for your future?
American history is filled with "times like these." Three times we have been here. I believe we will be OK. Though my rage boils over too often, I believe in Americans-in-the-middle. I believe there are extremists on the right and the left -- and I believe they do not, do not, represent who we are as a people. They get the attention and the headlines today; spoiled children clamoring for their own ice cream cone, unwilling to share and willing to fight to the death to keep what they believe is theirs and theirs alone. Getting through this transition will not be for the faint of heart. But get through we will.
Hurricane Irma | In September 2017, Linda Grist Cunningham created and launched a Facebook Page that aggregated news coverage during Hurricane Irma. She was off-island at the time visiting her mother in Virginia. Her husband remained in Key West. Over the three weeks that she and her partner journalists John Teets maintained around-the-clock coverage, they reached almost a million people around the world. These are the columns she wrote each day. Hurricane Season is always June 1 – Nov. 30.
Hurricane Irma | 5 years that changed Key West and the Keys
Once a month I drive to Marathon and back for a board meeting. I've done that since before Hurricane Irma clobbered Key West and the Florida Keys on Sept. 10, 2017. For five years that 100 mile round trip has been my gauge for our recovery from...
Hurricane Irma: 9-23-17: Closing up shop. Saying Godspeed. Going home to the Cat 5s
When we launched Key West Hurricane Irma, our online news coverage, we weren’t sure when “quit” would happen. We were confident we'd know. Today is the anniversary of knowing. It was time to wish our house guests farewell and Godspeed.
