Ahoy matey! The 9th annual Pirates in Paradise Festival in Key West is almost here!

From November 29th through December 7th, celebrate the Keys’ and Caribbean’s rich and colorful maritime heritage with the likes of Blackbeard, Captain Kidd and Sir Henry Morgan.

Top quality entertainers and re-enactors from around the country will join Key West’s own crew, the Bone Island Buccaneers for a week of piratical escapades. Each day, join Captain Finbar and his crew onboard the schooner WOLF for pirate attacks and sailing adventure that will give you tall tales to tell for a good while!

The ye olde festival also coincides with the official end of hurricane season. On the night of Nov. 30th, gather at the USS Mohawk Memorial Museum for the Official End of America’s Hurricane Season Party and watch NOAA weathermen burn the Hurricane Flags, signifying the official end of hurricane season.

A highlight of this year’s festival will be the Pirate Tavern in Fort Zachary Taylor, open each night from Dec. 4th until the end of the event. Come enjoy a frothy brew and hear sea stories that’ll take you back a few centuries to when piracy was the law of the seas.

And you wouldn’t want to miss the Walk the Plank National Championships on December 4th!

Well shiver me timbers! The Tropical Inn Bed & Breakfast is right in the middle of everything for ye land lovers that need a dry place to stay!

If you’re like me, the conclusion of the 2008 election can’t come soon enough. The barrage of political advertisements and signs will disappear for the next couple of years. As citizens, it is our duty to participate in the process and be informed.

Every four years, the Little White House in Key West has an informative exhibit of the electoral process for the presidency. The exhibit this year will be on display through November 30th.

This year’s campaign has been the longest in history. And as we saw in 2000, more individual votes do not necessarily translate into a victory. The Electoral College actually elects the president in mid-December, a citizen votes for the slate of electors for their state. So in essence, the presidential election is actually 50 separate state elections. A candidate needs 270 of the 538 available electoral votes to be elected.

So how is this accomplished? Each state has a certain number of electors based on the number of representatives they have, plus 2 senators. Florida for instance has 25 representatives in Congress so the grand total of electoral votes for Florida is 27. A candidate must win the popular vote in enough states to get to 270.

The exhibit has interesting electoral history and explains the process in great detail, from beginning to end. If you will be visiting Key West this month, this exhibit at the Harry S. Truman Little White House will help you gain a good understanding of how the process works.

All with the benefit of the sun and fun atmosphere of Key West!

The 2008 hurricane season has been a busy one thus far. The Keys have been marginally affected, with 3 named storms coming within striking distance of Key West.

Key West did sustain a direct landfall from Tropical Storm Fay late in the afternoon on August 18^th. Mainly a rain event, the storm did force the evacuation of tourists and residents alike. Fay went on to affect the entire state of Florida, dumping over 20 inches of rain around Cape Canaveral, resulting in much flooding of that area.

Other, much stronger storms Hurricanes Gustav and Ike, were close but fortunately passed to the south of Cuba as they made their way into the Gulf of Mexico. Each storm forced precautionary evacuations and preparations and rain bands from each lashed the Keys with some strong storms.

One other affect, from Ike specifically, was the disruption of fuel supplies to the Keys. Some stations ran out and others inflated their price as a result of Hurricane Ike and its eventual landfall around Texas oil fields and refineries as a Category 3 storm.

The good news is that we’ve made it past the peak of the season in the first part of September. And the tropics are quiet right now so let’s hope it stays that way!