I was hoping to get the VIC teams set tonight but family life beckons. Tomorrow it will be -- or as soon as my webmaster returns from vacation. He has to tell me how to set up private and confidential e-mail through my server.

Tonight I learned of another tragedy in The Bahamas Family Island of Bimini. Here is the story from Bahamas Uncensored:

"In the early hours of Friday 13th January 2006, the Compleat Angler, a Bimini landmark burned flat to the ground. The Compleat Angler was the hang out of Ernest Hemingway when he came to Bimini to fish in the 1920s and 1930s. Some believe that the character from his novel The Old Man and The Sea was based on a man from Bimini. The hotel was a tourist landmark, owned by the family of the late Harcourt Brown. Inside the Compleat Angler was a museum dedicated to Hemingway, with photographs and personal statements and books about his life and times. That has all gone up in smoke."

I wrote about the Compleat Angler in this blog recently. It was a week before both my parents passed away after a difficult period, and as I knew what was about to happen, I reached into the past for a small piece of comfort. It was one of my favorite places to relax in the entire world, and I shall miss it.

And maybe you recall that on December 19th, there were eleven Bimini souls who perished in a terrible seaplane crash in Miami. That was Chalk's Airline, and I've flown on that flight to Bimini, less than 60 miles away, where a small community of 1,700 lives, and where no family was untouched by that accident. Even I knew one of those who perished.

This has been an awful month for Bimini.