With nary a drop of blood spilled, we have declared ourself Governor of Skinny Island. Pictured here in complete ceremonial attire, we assumed office on July 29, 2019, before a small but enthusiastic crowd.  We accept this honor and responsibility in all gravity and with no reservations, but perhaps a little history is relevant to how we got here.

It is editorial policy of The Skinny Island Post to avoid politics, but we will make oblique reference here in order to establish our credentials.  We have long kicked around the idea of running for the actual political office of Governor of Florida.  As a sixth-generation native, whose ancestors established a Sea Island cotton planation not far from here on Amelia Island in 1790, we can think of no one more qualified, based on that attribute alone.  Our knowledge of the flora and fauna, back roads, cuisine, and dark secrets of the dangling appendage state, to say nothing of the extraordinary amount of real estate lost, stolen, given away, or sold by family over the years, (the total amount would undoubtedly exceed $1Billion in todays dollars), puts us in a league of our own.  But there was always the specter of vetting– there are things we’d rather not have revealed– and campaigning that threw us off.  Under the campaigning rubic there appears to be an inescapable insistence on meeting large numbers of people and being nice to them.  That would not do at all.  And ironically, we had the idea for a wall way before the current southern border proposal was pitched.  Ask anybody.  We’ve been talking about it for thirty years.  Ours would run from Pensacola to Jacksonville, just north of and parallel to I-10, stand twenty feet tall, and consist of kudzu-covered coquina.  Functional but decorative.  There would be three evenly spaced, bottle-necked entrance/information gates, (with no orange juice), manned by rude New Yorkers dispensing advice, directions and social commentary as only they can, and about a thousand exits, with smiling attendants handing out free t-shirts and charter school vouchers.  This was our signature, and in fact only, campaign proposal, and it took a beating in focus groups, so we gave up on the whole idea.

Clearly, declaring ourself Governor of Skinny Island seemed the next logical step.  The idea is to let the existing infrastructure, political, and economic systems continue unabated.  As inadequate and ineffective as they are it’s better than starting over and trying to administer such things.  We will focus only on quality of life issues as we see them, and that means making sure we’re content and comfortable.  It’s really not as big a job as it sounds.  Skinny Island is approximately 45 miles long and 3/4 to a mile wide at its widest.  The Governor’s Mansion, aka The Little Hacienda, sits almost exactly midway between the two inlets that mark the north and south ends of the island, so that makes things easy to keep track of.  We don’t need a world any bigger than that.  When you ignore everything from Ormond Beach south, which includes Daytona Beach and Daytona Beach Shores, which we fully intend doing, it gets even easier.  We don’t anticipate any major issues.  A recent map of Skinny Island is included below.  Important features are noted.  Nothing is to scale.