Scorched!

Not hardly. I needed to get together with my attorney, Nancy Appleton (the blonde), and she suggested that we meet up at Scorch, dine in style, take care of business and I'd get to meet her new legal secretary (the brunette). Then over a few drinks and between umpteen courses of scrumptious food I got to sign my name on a seemingly endless stack of papers. The secretary (sorry, I can't recall her name) then notarized each signature in turn.

The lighting was quite dim in there but I managed to come up with a few recognizeable, if not crisp, shots by handholding the camera against the seat back at 1/2 a second. The food was fantastic and I stayed reasonably sober. I wrote Nancy a check, we said our goodbyes, and I took my stack of papers and went home.

Municipal Planning? Disaster!

OMNI International Mall ~ The Experiment Failed

This mall was The Great Experiment! It opened sometime around 1980 on Biscayne Blvd. (U.S. 1) a mile or so north of the center of downtown Miami. It had easy access to to the expressway system leading to the airport, the seaport, Miami Beach, and points to the north south and west.

It was constructed incorporating an existing Jordan Marsh department store, had loads of free covered parking, a totally indoor upscale mall, gourmet restaurants, and a convention hotel. At the time I was doing a lot of work for a big public relations firm. I shot the construction photos, grand opening photos, and managed to hold onto the account for a few more years. Lots of fashion shows, new store openings, conventions, and then they remodeled the entire place so there were more construction and grand reopening photos. About once a month they published a flyer featuring big sales and new seasonal merchandise. That's where this shot came from, one of those flyers.

It never caught on. The last time I drove by it was empty, deserted, and even Jordan Marsh was gone. They'd become part of the Federated Department Stores chain along with Burdines and Macy's. The public relations director went on to another mall and I started photographing store openings and fashion shows over there.

Claudia

Elena with Stephanie And Patty Fazino's Daughter

Frederick Meyer, A Hair People

Shooting All The Politicians (With Pleasure!)

Years back the term for this kind of shot (at least amongst photographers) was an Execution. You just lined 'em up and shot 'em!

Pam Solomon handles the public relations for the City of North Miami. We'd just held city elections and I needed some blog fodder. Pam needed some pictures for the newspapers. Thepriceofsilver has wider distribution (world wide!) and probably more followers and readership than anything Pam produces. Sorry, Pam.

The very beginning of the city council meeting is when they give awards and make proclamations. Our new mayor, Andre Pierre (That's him in the center, light colored suit, holding the proclamation), quickly got in the groove, presenting a proclamation to this delegation from some city in Haiti. I should have made notes, but I can always ask Pam and edit this piece later. Andre will quickly learn to put up with my sometimes sarcastic, snide and flippant remarks ,because he can't fire me, the blog has a wide local following, and one of the local Haitian Kreyole papers uses my photos, and sometimes they just translate my copy, with my permission of course. I get a few bucks, the paper gets it's story, and the political establishment puts up with me. Everybody's a winner!

Rubik's Cube ~ More Fascinating Than Females

I hadn't seen a Rubik's Cube in at least thirty years. Suddenly there it was, right at the next table. These two young gentlemen were totally absorbed in solving it, or trying to anyway. Back in 1974 it was without doubt the fad of the year. People everywhere were twisting and turning as the attempted to get each face of the cube a solid color. You'd figure out how to get one face, perhaps two faces, but all six? No1 likely! What the hell, it gave you something to do with your hands while you listened to some good rock music. It was cheaper than smoking pot. Girls never much seemed interested in doing it, although I've known a couple of them that could take one look at a 'cube's six faces, make a few deft twists this way and that, and there it was! Six solid colored cube faces. It's true. Girls minds are different. Solve the cube? Big deal!

Those two young ladies finished their coffee, got up, and left. These guys were still twisting and turning. Someday they'll learn!

Security System SCAM ALERT!

I've had an ADT Security alarm system on my house for five years at least, no problems. Today there was a loud knocking on my door. There stood Kevin Meyers, telling me that he was there to upgrade my system and install a new control box because my box was old and that Pinnacle had taken over monitoring service from ADT.

He asked way to many questions and wanted my credit card number. He told me that it would be cheaper than I was now paying but threw out a figure that was more than I'd been paying. I asked him for more identification and he showed me a different one of those cards in the picture. I asked for a drivers license. He didn't have one with him. He'd been dropped off to canvas the neighborhood, he said, and went back into his memorized sales pitch. I told him that I didn't believe him, yet he didn't want me calling ADT to check out his story. He just plain didn't want to give up! I guess he knew that there wouldn't be all that many people home mid-afternoon on a Wednesday, I was home, and he wasn't going to give up!

Finally, I grabbed the cards hanging around his neck and jerked them free from the nylon webbing. Actually, the clasp broke. I told him to get the F out of the neighborhood or I'd call the police. He took off on foot, nearly running. I called Pinnacle. They told me that he needed "retraining" but took down the information I gave them. Then I called ADT. They told me flat out it was a scam. Pinnacle was going to every house with an ADT sign and trying to scam the homeowner. They also said that Pinnacle wasn't the only company doing that. If you have a security system be careful!

Happy Birthday Jonathan

June 24th is my son Jonathan's birthday. He's 33 years old, the same age that I was when he was born.

As I was sorting through the contact sheets a few weeks ago looking for pictures to post on thepriceofsilver I wondered what would it look like if I scanned the contact sheets, then cropped out a few frames, made them bigger, and posted the images. It might be interesting to see several shots in a row, as they were shot! I decided not to "clean them up" or increase the contrast. This is the way they look.

In the top picture Stephanie is teaching Jonathan to eat solid food from a spoon. Below that Patty is playing with him. She now has grown kids of her own.

Last night she called after seeing some of these pictures posted on the blog. She wants to get some prints. "For the memories." I'm thinking maybe I should tell her to come over and print them herself. When I first met her she was a student at Barry College taking a photography class. She wanted to use my darkroom for a special project she was working on. That was close to forty years ago. The sink, the enlargers, everything is where it was back then. She might even enjoy doing it!

Three Generations

This was always one of my favorite photographs of Elena. I guess I should really say "with Elena" because I like it as a picture, not just because she's in the photo. The angles of her arm, my leg, my dad's cane, the slight off kilter of the photo itself all just seem to work together with that little smile and staring eye.

My dad, Donald Kaplan, had a stroke in 1970 about the time he'd turned 53, leaving him paralyzed on the right side. Right after Elena was born we asked him to come here and live with us. He was a defeated man though, too young to contemplate a life of hobbling around with a cane and leg brace for the rest of his life. He didn't want to go anyplace or do anything. He never managed to get the slur out of his speech or use his left hand well enough to easily do the New York Times crossword puzzles that he'd always loved. He and my mom had been divorced for years, she'd been remarried for awhile but was single again, and every few weeks she;'d take hin out for dinner. After about a year he decided that he missed living in Massachusettes, his old friends, the cold of the winters, and moved back up there, spending the rest of his life in a nursing home. He was 73 when he died, about twenty years after having the stroke. My mom, a year younger than him, died the following year.

The camera I used was an Olympus Pen W, a tiny little thing that got 72 pictures on a 36 exposure roll. It had an extremely sharp wide-angle lens, and it was small enoughto easily carry in a pocket. Film for it was "free". When I wouldn't finish a roll on a job I'd develop what I'd used and save the rest, marking the cassette "short roll". In the Olympus Pen I'd still be able to get at least a dozen shots on it.

Elena, Our First Child

My mother had always wanted another child, a daughter, but it never came to pass. After I was born she never managed to get pregnant again. Instead, she spoiled me. She was ecstatic when Elena was born! If she couldn't have a daughter of her own at least she'd have a granddaughter to cuddle, show off to her friends, and play with. My wife Stephanie had a daughter to feed, bathe and change diapers. I soon got drafted also, and learned the fine art of diaper changing.

Now my son Jonathan, with a bit of help from his wife Deborah, has turned me into a grandfather, but my mother passed a way about a dozen years too soon to meet Gabriella, her great-granddaughter.

Elena's New Baby Brother Jonathan

1976 was the "Bicentenial Year", the two-hundreth anniversary of the birth of our nation, the United States of America. High school students painted fire hydrants to look like little Revolutionary War soldiers. There were lots and lots of parades on the Fourth of July, Independance Day, and fire works made sleep next to impossible that night as well as the night before.

1976 was also the year my son Jonathan was born, a Bicentenial Baby as they were called. Here he's being held by his loving older sister Elena who was five at the time. Next to her is our friend Patty Ho-Chan. She was a student at Barry College and staying with us at the time. Born in Guyana and raised in Freeport in the Bahamas, her dad was East Indian and her mom was Chinese. She was raised Anglican and Barry was a Catholic shool. This being South Florida she ended up marrying a Jewish guy from Israel and had two daughters, but one passed away from leukemia.

Patty lives nearby but now calls herself Pat. Lately she's gotten interested in politics just like Elena and me. She calls me Big Brother and I call her Little Sister. Elena never calls.

Click on the photo and it'll get big enough to see.

Father's Day ~ The Tradition

It seems that a man isn't really "dressed" unless he's wearing a necktie, although the days when a middle class man wouldn't go out or to work without a tie are well into the past. There's a whole mystique about ties, their styles and their patterns. The English put stock in which direction diagonal stripes should be. It's a class thing with them. I guess on some subconcious level we've all accepted that stripes going in the direction of the left shoulder are indicitive that the man is high class, although on this side of the Atlantic it's not easy to find a tie like that.

As for color, red is a symbol of power. Patterns consisting of little dots are called "neat", stripes are "rep stripe", from time to time paisley comes into favor. The bottom picture shows an abstract pattern Calvin Klein design from about 1980 on the left while the right hand tie belonged to my paternal grandfather and is late forties/early fifties.

I guess it's lucky that I'm a photographer. We're kind of expected to project an artsy image of ourselves, not really expected to wear ties at all for the most part, so if we wear a vintage tie of the currently wrong width, or a slightly gaudy floral pattern nobody seems much surprised.

The uppermost tie represents my love of fishing. It WAS a father's day present a few years ago, and likely as not so were some of the others. I recently culled through my collection, threw a few away because they were stained or getting a bit frayed from knotting and unknotting them. Silk doesn't hold up all that well to abrasion. I only wear silk ties. They knot better and they hang better. Silk is limp and it has a luster, not a shine.

Missing from these groupings are some of my favorite ties, the ones designed by Jerry Garcia of the Grateful Dead. Yup, a rocker who like to paint abstracts and markets a line of neckties based on his paintings. He's been doing it for years and they're genuine silk to boot. The dude has class!

Preparing To Rule The World!

No More Leaky Roof!

Another Oldie ~ Springtime In Boston 1964

Some memories are sharper than others but my memories of Jay are still crystal clear. We met at the bus station in Boston. I used to take the bus every few weeks to visit my dad in New Bedford. Jay was from Scarsdale, New York and would take the train to Boston and then the bus to the ivy league prep shool that she attended in Hyannis on Cape Cod. Her dad was quite wealthy, an oil broker. We were both at the bus station waiting for our buses and struck up a conversation, exchanged addresses (people wrote letters back then and I didn't have a phone)and got on our buses.

A few days later a letter arrived, I wrote back. We exchanged two, maybe three letters, then one day there was a knock on the door. Jay was there, suitcase in hand. I used a neighbor's phone and called her father. The next day he arrived to get his daughter and drive her to school. Jay and I exchanged a few more letters and then there was that knock on the door. Once more I called her dad.

He said that I seemed like a responsible guy and that if he came to get Jay most likely she'd be back at my place within a day or two, or worse, just run off and nobody would know where she was. He suggested that she should stay with me and he'd send a check every week to cover expenses. I agreed. Every few weeks we'd take the train to Scarsdale and spend a weekend with her folks. I soon fell very much in love. The relationship lasted close to a year, and then she decided that she liked one of my friends better. I used to run into her on occasion over the next few months but then I think she moved to New York.

This was shot in Boston Commons in the early spring of 1964 with a Leica III-C and a 35mm f/1.8 Canon lens, and the badly faded print was probably made from an Ektachrome transparency. Jay, if you're out there someplace please send me an email, just for old time's sake.

Nicholas The Story Teller

I first met Pat a month or so ago at one of Bonnie Schwartzbaum's campaign parties. Pat has passion for politics but she doesn't drive. I offered to drive her home. She lives just a few blocks from my house and I told her that if she ever needed a ride someplace just give me a call. I figured that was safe because her apartment was only a block away from Publix and within two or three blocks of both a Walgreens and a CVS.

A few days ago the phone rang. Pat needed a ride about forty blocks and and thanks to the good planning of Miami-Dade County's public transportation system that required two busses each way on a rainy day. I was free and she was ready when I was. I drove over there. She was waiting on the porch.

Almost as soon as she got in the truck she insisted that I take five dollars "for gas" and we did her errand. On the way back I was getting hungry and suggested that we go by Jimmie's Place and get some supper. While we were eating Nicholas came in so on the way out I introduced them to one another.

I first met Nicholas five or six years ago at the coffee house, the Lunastar Cafe,where he frequently tells stories on weekend nights, which is directly across the street from City Hall. He sometimes actually walks around town dressed like that, staight out of the middle ages. But then I frequently walk around town carrying my toy monkey, Monkette, and she too is well known at Jimmie's Place. The characters you see on the streets around here are almost as nutty as the ones you'll find inside City Hall.

Click on the picture and it'll get big enough to read Nicholas's contact information.

Dang! I'm Feeling Light Headed! Who Stole My Hair?

Rabbi Lang was there for the swearing in of the new mayor, city clerk, and the one out of two coucilmen who could prove that he was actually a city resident. Several clergy of various faiths said prayers, but as I looked at the rabbi I thought "Al, if you ever do decide to put on a yarmulke you'll need two dozen hair clips to keep it in place and a couple of ounces of lead sinkers to hold it down!" Time for a hair cut! The last one was the end of October, just before I got the photo for my new eight year drivers license.

Vivette gave me a great haircut. There sure was a lot of hair on that floor! On the way home I noticed that a couple of the council candidates in the recent election had yet to clear the city of their campaign signs. I think the law says that they have something like two weeks to do it before code enforcement is supposed to cite them. I'll have to check that out tomorrow...LOL

Time Travel ~ A Break from Reality

I've been way too involved in the recent North Miami political crap that's going on around here. One council candidate has a court hearing set, claiming that her opposition isn't a qualified resident. The Florida Department of Law Enforcement is sending an investigator here from Tallahassee to look into that and some other problems with the recent election. Time for a change of pace!

The files turned up these shots from May 2006 when I had a photo exhibition at the local Starbucks. The other guy was the manager at the time and I think the woman worked there.

Thanks to James Mitchell my childhood toy monkey was becoming a regular character on The Price Of Silver. This was before Monkey flew out to San Francisco to visit Todd Frederick and returned to Miami with Monkette. Since Monkey was about 62 at the time I let him take early retirement and Monkette has taken over the Toy Monkey job on the blog.

The only other newsworthy thing to relate is that I have an appointment at 10 AM tomorrow for my first haircut since late October of 2008. I'll try for some before and after shots. Maybe even some during shots!

Don't Rain On Our Parade!

About eightneen or twenty years ago Scott Galvin and I both ran for North Miami City Council. Back then we had "at large" elections. You had to campaign and win city wide. The wealthier east side precincts near the bay had more money to spend and with few exceptions managed to get their own people elected time after time. The few exceptions were also wealthy people, often living in the old spacious "manor houses" that dot some areas of the central city, dating back to the days when North Miami had pineapple plantations back in the 1920's.

I ran against an established incumbant because the mayor encouraged me to do so, but that's another story. Scott ran because he was young and full of fire and enthusiasm. Too young, a lot of people thought, but he came back about decade later and won. We'd both lost, but not by much, and in my case the incumbant had dropped out but another guy with lots of his own money to spend got elected. Most people now concede that Scott is probably the best person we've ever had on the city council, and they now think that it's a shame that he lost the race back then. We might have had a much better city had he won.

Scott and I started a petition drive to change the city charter back to district elections. We got the signatures but the city council had the final say about putting it on the ballot for a charter change. One councilwoman was arguing against doing it because it would "divide the city", but I could see that the city was changing as more and more "minorities" were buying houses. Sure, a few rednecks were moving out, but it seemed a peaceful enough transition.

As this was being debated by the council I went up to the podium and addressed the council. "You don't want to go to district elections because you're afraid that there wil be a black face sitting up there with you!" The council chambers got really, really quiet, like everybody had stopped breathing. You weren't supposed to say things like that! Not in public anyway. I continued "But I'm telling you that if we don't go to district elections, in four years there won't be a white face up there!"

The council voted to put it on the ballot, the electorate voted to change the charter, and we now have four districts. They're not exactly as Scott and I had envisioned it. The council had managed to draw the boundaries so Scott and I ended up in the same district. A couple of years later Scott ran and got elected. I'd been instrumental in getting a mayor out of office, getting the first woman mayor elected, getting Scott a winnable district, and I decided that it was time to take a break. Let Scott deal with the agravation. He's done a good job.

So here we are, standing in the rain outside the polls. Michael Blynn, an imcumbant from an eastside district got re-elected. Central city resident Michelle Garcia is now awaiting a court hearing because it seems that her competition for the seat, a Haitian, doesn't qualify because he hasn't lived in the city long enough. The Haitian community is now trying to cast this whole thing as racial. I got punched in the face mostly for being white. The woman who punched me doesn't even live in the city. Ma'am, you punched the wrong guy!

I really don't know who that gentleman is that's holding Miahael and Michelle's umbrellas. I got to stand in the rain. The little light colored areas in the photo are caused by raindrops on the lens. They wiped right off and the lens is fine.

Can North Miami Ever Put Humpty Dumpty Back Together Again?

Can North Miami ever put Humpty Dumpty back together again? I don't know what gave me the idea. I wanted to show how fractured, torn apart really, North Miami seemed during the election. The trouble was that we were being torn apart by people who didn't even live here. Yes, we have a substantial Haitian community, but the last thing we needed was a bunch of Haitians who live elsewhere in the county, even from the next county to the north, coming here and stirring up trouble at the polls during a city election.

Even worse was when the city council was validating the election results these people packed the council chambers, yelling and shouting that North Miami is a Haitian city.

I got the idea of tearing up one of these index prints into a fractured mess arranged over a toned down black and white print showing myself sitting at a Board of Adjustment meeting. Toward the left you can make out another board member.

Since election day a lot of folks have aproached me to tell me how upset they are that these non-residents had tried to creat such chaos here. White and black, Haitian, Jamaican, American black, it everybody was upset about it. Rather than tear us apart it seems to have made us a more cohesive city. That's as it should be. That's the American way. We're a melting pot. It makes for an interesting blend. Humpty Dumpty is doing just fine.

Racial Hatred or Friends And Neighbors? Have It Your Way!

Racial hatred or friends and neighbors? Have it your way. The supporters of Marcellus were not only going around handing out their campaign literature at the polls but they were grabbing stacks of Michelle Garcia's campaign literature out of her hands and the hands of her supporters.

Michelle might have blonde hair and look a bit like a white girl, true, but she is white! That didn't seem to upset her friends and neighbors, who not only came over to the North Miami Public Library for early voting but dressed up for the occasion as well.

I love to see people taking their children to the polls, teaching them about the way democracy works. You vote for the one who is most qualified and who shares your ideals about how the city should be run. Here in North Miami racial hatred should not be enshrined as an ideal. It shouldn't be enshrined as an ideal anywhere.

Just a note. PLEASE READ! This is about the election photographs.

The original photos and negatives are not being stored in my house, plus the images are now all over the planet and in the hands of law enforcement.

The photos are all copyright(c)2009 Al Kaplan. The photos in the rest of the blog are also copyright, but the photos and copy pertaining to this election and its aftermath may be linked to without further permission. Just don't reproduce them in your blog or publication without expressed and written permission. Thank you.

Out Of The Elevator ~ Bedlam In North Miami

I don't think this many people showed up for a North Miami City Council meeting since the council voted to raise the water bill! Not even when they voted to give themselves that ten-fold salary increase plus lifetime health insurance and a generous expense allowance.

But this wasn't a bunch of irate citizens protesting increased taxes. These people were here to make damned sure that their candidates were going to get sworn in, regardless of any traditional niceties like being residents for the required tiime before the election, or whether their supporters at the polls were intimidating voters and other candidates alike. There's some indication that some of the people aren't really legal residents either.

There's a video of the action at the polls complete with cars with out of state license plates bringing people to the polls. There are photographs of my getting attacked and beaten up by a woman at the polls because I was taking pictures. She doesn't live in the city.

The new mayor, Andre Pierre, was sworn in. Now there's some reason to believe that there were irregularities in his campaign also. The bigger problem, which is in the courts now, is a candidate for city council. There is good evidence that he hadn't lived in North Miami for the required full year before filing to run. He'd just lost a race in another city and a lot of his supporting documentation still had him listed as living in that other city.

The bottom photograph shows the other candidate, Michelle Garcia (the blonde woman),sitting with Carol Preger who lost the City Clerk race. Notice the cop? Our candidates shouldn't need police protection. We never needed it before!

Scroll down for more photos and coverage.

"NORTH MIAMI IS A HAITIAN CITY AND WE HAVE THE RIGHT TO RUN IT!"

Marcellus and his entourage were doing a great job of acting like a bunch of little boys who'd just been told that they couldn't go outside and play ball until they'd finished all of their homework.

In the top photo attorney John Dellagloria is presenting his case that Marcellus wasn't qualified to run for the council seat because there was evidence that he hadn't actually lived in the city long enough. The case was already filed in the circuit court and Dellagloria argued that Marcellus couldn't be seated until the court rules in about six weeks. His client, candidate Michelle Garcia, is sitting behind him wearing a grey suit.

I can usually take a sharp photograph at slow shutter speeds, in this case 1/8 of a second, but when I have shouting irate arm waving guys dancing two feet away from my feet it isn't very easy. If you look closely though, you'll see that it's mostly the people that are blurry, even the woman across the aisle, because they were moving too fast. The ceiling, chairs, etc. are fairly sharp.

When Marcellus's attorney started to argue his side of the case it was mostly that Marcellus should be seated now and the judge could later remove him, but that ignored the fact that any of his votes on council items would become null and void if the judge removed him. That would cause a lot of havoc, requiring everything to be done over again, and perhaps trigger some lawsuits in itself.

Several other people came up to the podium claiming to be co-council, but with no proof to back up the claims, and did their share of shouting. There were times where the mayor had a problem getting the audience to calm down and stop screaming and chanting. Overall, their main argument was that white people are a bunch of racists and hate Haitians. Thankfully we had a good police presence. Chief Shannon and his men excercized restraint and didn't make any arrests. The decision was made to let the court decide. The incumbant councilman, a Haitian, will retain his seat until the judge decides who will be the replacement.

I doubt that the bailiff at the courthouse will put up with that kind of behavior. They'll make arrests. Last I heard it's official: NORTH MIAMI IS AN AMERICAN CITY.

Let's Argue The Law. That's Why We Have Laws.

The argument that followed us out into the lobby of the council chambers came down to whether or not Marcellus should be sworn in as a councilman. The white guy facing away from the camera towards the right foreground is outgoing Mayor Kevin Burns. Michelle Garcia was claiming that Marcellus didn't meet the city charter's residency requirements and the case is in the hands of the circuit court to determine if Mr. Marcellus or Ms. Garcia should get the council seat.

Marcellus's attorneys claimed that the mayor and council constitute a quasi-judicial board who have the job of validating the vote in accordance with the city charter. The city attorney and Ms. Garcia's attorney were claiming that since it's already in the hands of the court the council couldn't act on it until the issue of Marcellus's residency was settled.The attorneys for Marcellus kept referring to him as "Mr. Marcellus" but referred to Ms. Garcia as "Michelle", a very sexist outlook in these times. The place was packed with Marcellus supporters who kept trying to shout down Mayor Burns, there were lots of uniformed police present, and scattered throughout the chambers were plain clothes police as well.

The final decision was to let the circuit court decide the matter. If the council seated Marcellus and then the judge voided that decision then any city business that he'd voted on during a council meeting would be nullified. The decision was greeted by much shouting and cursing that "North Miami is a Haitian city" , that we're a bunch of racists for not seating Marcellus, etc., etc. There are already two Haitians on the council, we've had a Haitian mayor before, and we have a black city manager so that argument doesn't hold much water

The police escorted Ms. Garcia to her car and a patrol car followed her home "just in case". Throughout the night her house was checked by a patrol car driving by every fifteenminutes or so. I spoke with her late last night and spoke with her again this morning. She was fine. I'm still hurting from the pummeling Marcellus's goons gave me a couple of weeks ago.

This morning I received a call from an investigator with the Florida Department of Law Enforcement (FDLE) in Tallahasee. He'll be in town next week and wanted to set up a meeting with me. He has the photographs that were here on my blog, so next week I'll be having a chat with the FDLE. Monkette is sitting this one out.

Enough Bullshit For This Election!

According to Monkette her friends have been telling her that a bunch of duppies are now living in the Enchanted Forest Park. I've yet to check out the veracity of her claim but it seems to add an interestiug new twist to our park system. They're supposedly invisible and can't be photographed but she came home with this sketch of one of them.

(More to follow...)