Tuesday, December 26, 2006

The Plot Thickens for Hemingway's Cats

The plot thickens for Hemingway's cats
Updated 12/26/2006 8:25 AM ET
Enlarge 1960 photo by Tore Johnson, Time Life Pictures
Ernest Hemingway at the stone mansion on Whitehead Street with one of his cats. The Hemingway Home is one of Key West's most visited attractions.
By Laura Parker, USA TODAY
Literary legend's six-toed legacies live on in Key West - much to the dismay of some. The fight over the felines has grown to include the USDA and the courts.
The legendary American novelist Ernest Hemingway lived in Key West for a decade in the 1930s, in a stone mansion on Whitehead Street with his wife, Pauline, and a six-toed cat named Snowball.
Hemingway divorced Pauline in 1939, but Snowball stayed on. Today, about 50 of Snowball's descendants roam the grounds, to the delight of many tourists who visit the Hemingway Home and Museum. But the cats won't be roaming much longer, if the federal government has its way.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture has cited the museum for violating a 1966 federal animal welfare law, and has threatened to impose stiff fines or confiscate the cats if the Hemingway Home does not do more to control the felines. Department inspectors say that the museum must be licensed as an exhibitor of animals, and that the cats, which sometimes climb over the wall surrounding the grounds, must be confined to the property.
After initially moving to comply with the government's demands, the Hemingway Home now is fighting them. The dispute has festered into one of those big-government-vs.-the-little-guy showdowns that involves a growing cast of characters, including locals in Key West, members of Congress, the U.S. Department of the Interior and, last week, a federal judge.
In an effort to resolve the spat, the museum sued last July in federal court and asked a judge to determine whether the USDA has jurisdiction over the museum. On Dec. 18, U.S. District Court Judge K. Michael Moore dismissed the museum's suit, saying that it first should pursue remedies in administrative hearings and appeals.
Darby Halladay, a USDA spokesman, says the agency will schedule a hearing before an administrative law judge.
"There's always a possibility of confiscation," he says of the cats. "The likelihood of that occurring, I can't state. But that is a remedy."
The museum also could face thousands of dollars in fines.
Cara Higgins, the museum's attorney, says that the federal Animal Welfare Act, which sets care standards for animals in zoos and circus acts, should not apply to the Hemingway Home.
The cats "are born and raised and live their lives in Key West," she says.
"They've been doing so for over 40 years. They're not sold, they're not distributed, they're not taken across state lines."
Neighbor's complaint
The dispute began when a USDA inspector showed up at the museum in October
2003 in response to a complaint about the cats.
Long negotiations and multiple inspections ensued. The USDA suggested several methods for containing the cats, including hiring a night watchman, adding an electrified wire to the top of the property's 6-foot stone wall, or adding to the stone wall, which Hemingway had built in 1937.
The museum countered that a wire could shock tourists as well as cats, and that altering the wall would put at risk the house's designation by the Interior Department as a National Historic Place.
At the height of the USDA's investigation of the museum, the agency rented a room in a guesthouse near the Hemingway property in order to videotape the cats.
In a report of one inspection, on Dec. 1, 2004, the USDA noted that "during the inspection, a cat was seen scaling the fence and leaving the property."
Another report cited the death of a cat named Toby, which had been fatally struck by a car after leaving the property.
U.S. Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, a Republican who represents Key West, wrote to Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns, calling for a compromise over the Hemingway cats. Ros-Lehtinen, noted that "this extraordinary museum serves as an essential bond to past and revered American culture."
The Hemingway Home flunked three inspections. When the USDA declined to grant it a license, the museum sued to try to avoid having to get a federal license.
The Hemingway Home is one of Key West's most-visited attractions. Although Hemingway wrote most of his novels in Key West, including To Have and Have Not and A Farewell to Arms, Higgins says many tourists come just to see the cats.
Key West is known as much for its cats as it is for its zany festivals and eccentric charm. Located 159 miles from Miami and 90 miles from Havana, it is the southernmost point in the continental USA. Cats arrived in Key West long ago with visiting sea captains, who employed them as shipboard rat catchers. Today, cats wander Key West.
The neighbor who complained about the Hemingway cats is Debbie Schultz, a former official at the local animal shelter who lives four doors away from the museum.
"I contacted the USDA," Schultz says. The museum "made it appear I am the villain, that I am out to undermine everything they stand for in cats, which is absurd. My whole thing is the cats need to be cared for properly."
Out on bail
Much of the dispute revolves around the wanderings of Ivan, an orange tomcat born in 2004, the year Hurricane Ivan killed dozens of people in the Caribbean and the USA. According to Schultz, Ivan the cat wreaks another type of havoc on the cat population that lived outside the museum wall.
She says Ivan often stops by a feeding station she keeps for neighborhood cats. Schultz says she took Ivan to the animal shelter six times. Higgins says the museum had to "bail him out," each time.
"I saw Ivan many times loose," she says. "Ivan is a very unneutered, very macho male cat, and in each case, he had one of the street cats pinned down," she says. "We have an ordinance that says a nuisance cat can be removed."
When Schultz first moved in, she was on friendly terms with the museum and had a key to the museum grounds. Schultz helped trap street cats, have them neutered and then returned to the neighborhood. She says after consulting with one of the museum officials, she began taking the Hemingway cats in to be neutered or spayed. She says she thought she was performing a service.
Instead, she says she eventually was told that she was persona non-grata and that if she didn't leave the museum property, the police would be called.
Higgins says Schultz's neutering and spaying had left the museum with almost no cats to promulgate the bloodline.

Ros-Lehtinen Ros-Lehtinen Ros-Lehtinen Ros-Lehtinen
Ileana Ros-Lehtinen Ileana Ros-Lehtinen Ileana Ros-Lehtinen Ileana Ros-Lehtinen
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Ileana Ros-Lehtinen Ileana Ros-Lehtinen Ileana Ros-Lehtinen Ileana Ros-Lehtinen

Sunday, December 24, 2006

Miami Herald story

Some small carriers fight reform efforts

Safety advocates have urged the FAA to tighten regulations for small air cargo firms -- yet many carriers are opposed.

BY RONNIE GREENE

rgreene@MiamiHerald.com

For pilot groups and safety advocates, it's the solution to air cargo's perils: ''One Level of Safety'' in the sky.

That means more inspections, safety upgrades such as black boxes and fewer hours in the air for pilots -- helping bring the industry's regulations and safety record closer in line to giant carriers.

For the air cargo owners, it means more money and the specter that some will be driven out of the business.

With air cargo safety in the spotlight amid a Miami Herald investigation, the debate will likely soon come into focus as members of Congress push for an unprecedented review of the troubled industry.

In a hearing in September, U.S. Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, R-Fla., pressed the issue: ``Why is the standard less for small cargo operators?''

Advocates say the safety movement would help reduce accidents in a high-pressure business dogged by equipment breakdowns, poor inspections and companies operating on thin margins.

Since 2000, there have been 71 fatal and 166 nondeadly U.S. air cargo accidents, The Miami Herald has found. Most involved carriers flying under less stringent Federal Aviation Administration rules.

''When you are talking about human life, there is just no justification for having two different levels of safety,'' said David W. Smith, past president of the Airline Dispatchers Federation, which has pushed the issue for a decade, including in a 2003 letter to the FAA.

''The recommendations we made are not received well, and the simple reason is economics,'' Smith said.

Carriers -- and the FAA -- oppose sweeping reforms.

''You cannot have the same level of safety for a 747 as you can for a small single-engine airplane,'' said Stan Bernstein, president of the Regional Air Cargo Carriers Association, a Massachusetts group representing more than 50 carriers.

The group's founding chairman, Gary Richards, is president of a California cargo company, Ameriflight Inc., that has had nine accidents since 2000, three of them fatal, killing four. Richards did not reply to interview requests.

`ONE LEVEL OF SAFETY'

Even as the FAA studies how to rewrite rules governing cargo and other small commercial carriers, ''One Level of Safety'' is not on the table.

''It's somewhat unreasonable for you to expect all small operators to operate at those same requirements,'' said Jim Ballough, director of the FAA's Flight Standards Service. ``That would, in essence, if not stop [then] severely hamper that segment of the cargo industry.''

Some in the industry argue that ultimately it is up to the FAA to make the skies safer.

''It all falls on the FAA. If they don't do it, it doesn't happen,'' said Richard Nensel, a former physician whose Ohio company, TOL Aviation, services cargo planes.

The best operators, he said, diligently replace parts and send pilots for regular training. ``It costs money, but you've got to do it.''

He expects carriers will put up a fight to major rule changes, which can come from two fronts -- the FAA, which can issue new safety regulations, or Congress, which can legislate reform.

Ros-Lehtinen and U.S. Rep. James Oberstar, D-Minn., incoming chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, have pressed for a ''vigorous'' inquiry that could lead to new laws, saying too many pilots were dying.

FATALITY RATES

Small cargo planes are part of a family of on-demand carriers that had a fatal accident rate 65 times greater than larger carriers in 2004 -- and was the highest since 1996.

In 2005, the small carriers had 2.02 total accidents per 100,000 U.S. flight hours, National Transportation Safety Board records show -- a rate 10 times higher than that of large carriers. The difference was more profound in fatal crashes: 23 times higher.

''Boxes don't complain,'' said Gary Reins, a pilot seriously injured in a 2001 cargo crash in South Dakota. ``It's all about money. . . . Make one set for everybody. That would make more sense. Now, the operators would fight that to their dying breath.''

The NTSB cited him for flying into icy weather, but went a step further and said ''company-induced pressure'' was a factor in his crash.

Reins had argued against flying to Sioux Falls in horrid weather on a Beech 65 with a broken heater.

''Somehow, I survived it, hanging upside down in the cockpit. Had I not regained consciousness, I would have been consumed by the fire,'' said Reins, 62, who shattered his ankle in 22 places and walks with a limp.

Now on disability living on a Minnesota farm, he calls cargo the most dangerous wing of commercial aviation. ``As soon as it gets dark, dark and dreary, there goes the flying junkyard.''

Miami

Tuesday, December 26, 2006

The Plot Thickens for Hemingway's Cats

Sunday, December 24, 2006

Miami Herald story

Some small carriers fight reform efforts

Safety advocates have urged the FAA to tighten regulations for small air cargo firms -- yet many carriers are opposed.

BY RONNIE GREENE

rgreene@MiamiHerald.com

Thursday, December 21, 2006

Update: It looks like Ros-Lehtinen did say it! But does anyone care?

Wednesday, December 20, 2006

What a cool story

Saturday, December 16, 2006

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