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.
Eau de Key West | Get a whiff of ubiquitous island essence
Couple years ago while visiting in Atlanta, I tossed my bag on the bed, unzipped the sides and flung them open only to watch my grandson wrinkle his nose and hear him say, "Oh. It smells like Key West." He was grinning so I decided he liked that tell-tale trace of Eau...
The Overseas Highway Survival Guide | Can ya get there from here?
When you live in Key West at the end of U.S. Highway 1, months scroll by between trips to the mainland via the Overseas Highway. On a good day, it'll take four hours to do the 160 miles to Miami. On a bad day? Hope you're wearing adult diapers or are prepared to wing...
The real Key West | What’s behind those dreamy tropical photos
There's nothing like a shared Instagram pix or a Facebook album to entice visitors to Key West. All that sand, sunny blue skies and big puffy clouds as background for sitting in a kayak in the green, towering mangroves puts our tiny island on a lot of folks' bucket...
Key West, Florida Keys: We’re not small towns anymore and that’s a problem
With its 81,708 residents, Monroe County, aka the Florida Keys, is a collection of makeshift small towns ranging from tiny Layton at 206 at the top of the Keys to Key West at mile marker zero with its 25,597. You don't need to remember any of those U.S. Census...
Key West weather | Or, what happened to the sargassum?
On Aug. 23, 1856, an American scientist forecast the now-weeks-long heat wave smothering Key West and the Florida Keys. The short scientific paper, published in the American Journal of Science and Arts, established the science of what we now call climate change. Just...
Fourth of July | Who gets to claim the holiday in Key West?
Considering that a name-dropping chunk of Key West's lineage springs from white, wealthy, sometimes-slave-holding planters loyal to the British Crown back in the day and also from less affluent, but equally loyal black and white Bahamians, I'm going to put this out...
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.
