MARINA

Coral Gables, FL

This sketch is more about the circumstances in which it happened than the sketch itself. For a few years, I had been pushing to get Rotary International interested in the global over-population problem, the root cause of most human suffering. The RI President in 2000, Frank Devlyn of Mexico, agreed, and had organized three Rotary conferences in different parts of the world to study the question of how Rotary could apply its great humanitarian capacity toward the over-population challenge. Three conferences were held that year in Luzern, Brasilia and Delhi. I planned to make all three conferences. In preparing travel to Brasilia, I called the airline, and was told that a visa was not required, that an ID would do. The morning I arrived at the Atlanta airport for my flight to Brazil, I was asked for my visa. Humm. What to do? The Brazilian Consulate is in Miami, so I immediately boarded a flight for Miami, with the plan of securing the visa and continuing on to Brasilia from there. The Miami Consulate is in Coral Gables, on the Biscayne Bay. When I arrived there that morning, the Consulate was two hours from opening. What better way to kill a few hours than to sit in the cool morning breeze on the bay, and sketch. Got the visa, made the flight, and was only a half a day late getting to Brasilia. That’s the story.

Our youngest son was studying music at the University of Miami at the time, and although we did not hook up on this trip, my wife and I found this area, especially Coconut Grove a few blocks from this location, to be great for weekend get-away’s.