a multipolitical walk along SE Ocean Boulevard

September 2, 2009:

The Stuart News obligingly published a notice describing the Martin Memorial Hospital's Auxiliary Book Fair, which was found to be open-for-business within the hospital itself, after brief questions to personnel asking whether it was open to the public or not. That the bacteria-count of potential book-buyers could be checked as they browsed is most probably one actual rationale to set up the book sale. The walk was an easy one to Hospital Avenue from Kcc, with multiple items to keep attention along the way, including the sight of a white car sitting in the Ocean East Mall parking lot that held a "Virginia Tech' license plate.

Various small metal items continued their flash and potential danger discarded in the bike lane; a yellow plasticene fishing lure six+inches long was lying on the Krueger Creek walkway wall, with three sets of rusting triple-hooks on the fish-shaped lure, north side SE Ocean Boulevard. Walking along Osceola Street from Palm Beach Road north towards Hospital Avenue was also an easy bypass of the St. Mary's Thrift Shop since birthday purchase was one purpose of the sale attendance. The Book Fair was accessible through the main lobby of the hospital, through one hallway and down a short set of steps into a recessed room filled with books, gifts and miscellaneous gadgets, as advertised. First, though, a small Starbucks bottle was removed from its placement wedged between two tree limbs alongside one of the hospital parking lots and tossed into nearby trash container.

After perusing the selection and choosing an appetizer cookbook to purchase for a close relative, the many red exit signs of the ground-floor facility were necessarily reconnoitered after payment because the main lobby was initially too crowded to negotiate exit (including mothers with small infants). At one point in the hallway, I faced one corner directly as if the dunce while worried hospital personnel attempted to re-conduct me towards an appropriate exit. Leaving the hospital the same way entered after the crowd cleared out, on Hospital Avenue, I decided to walk all the way to SE Ocean Boulevard and discovered a thick swath of dropped berries and a few acorns from trees in the St. Mary's churchyard -- paradoxically enough, while lawnworkers in an adjacent property operated a very noisy leafblower. The many small berries were in fact a slippery sidewalk hazard in front of St. Mary's Church, and a small pile of them were toed together with a foot, picked up and removed from the corner (placed into a plastic bag for all those observant small creatures too timid to access the bounty).

During the walk to the Book Fair, a small green coconut had already been removed from the sidewalk beneath its parent tree and carried away from dried brown and lifeless predecessors, to be tossed creekside at Krueger Creek, north side SE Ocean Boulevard. During the return walk from the Book Fair, the aforementioned yellow lure (resembling some kind of deadly faux banana) was removed and placed in a trash receptacle within the nearby creekside minipark, where much of the bagful of berries was scattered at water's edge and on grass for wading (AND waiting) birds and other aquatic creatures. A brief rest at Hospital Park's pond had been also another brown/broken Budweiser glass-bottle pick-up, to be bagged and tossed into the minipark trash can with the lure; a rusting metal rod separated from others used as transplant-tree-stakes, about a foot long, was removed from the intersection of Palm Beach Road and SE Ocean Boulevard, then set in some gravel under some private-property palm trees at the northeast corner.

Many dragonflies were hovering by Monterey Commons, some accompanying me a short distance along Monterey Road and KTR. The mushrooms were decimated by yardwork; an occasional berry was tossed to tiny/small lizards, various birds and dragonflies as well as to fish in the slough at the entrance/exit to Kcc from KTR while raindrops fell.

[Always carry plastic bread/tortilla/bagel bags when using a backpack -- there's a multitude of uses and social signals possible.]