ASK THE BIRD: Will South Africans take over housekeeping at Mar-a-Lago? Is pronoia real? And am I Travis McGee's granddaughter?

Miss Mingo answers your questions every Saturday here on Tropic Press. Some of her responses may actually have at least a tangential basis in fact.

Editor’s Note: Hermina Hermelinda Obregon, a.k.a. Miss Mingo, is a recovering newspaper reporter living in a bungalow off Duval Street in Key West, where she answers the pressing questions of the day about life, the news, and the best happy hour prices. You can support her bar tab by becoming a paid subscriber.

DEAR MISS MINGO:
Your comment about Trump and DeSantis hating Mexicans and thus insisting on renaming the Gulf brings to mind a question. Has Trump fired, or more likely turned over to I.C.E., all those undocumented Mexicans who maintain the grounds, clean the rooms, cook in the restaurants, bus the tables, wash the dishes, and otherwise keep Mar-a-Lago staffed and running smoothly and replaced them with hard-working, white, and fully documented legal South African immigrants? Just wondering.
Doug

Dear Doug:

How clever of you to have sussed this out. (And how clever of me for finding a way to use the word “sussed” in a column).

Yes, some of those thousands of white South Africans will soon be displacing the imported help Trump has employed at his private club in Palm Beach.

Most, however, have a different destination.

Given the depth of race-relations experience white South Africans have accumulated during years of apartheid, the majority will be assigned as I.C.E. agents

DEAR MISS MINGO:

Is “pronoia” a real thing? My holistic wellness “Witch Doctor” says it describes me well. I call it just being a regular Floridian. But now I’m second guessing that I’ll meet a fabulous mate tonight who’s fascinated I’m so radically pronoiaic (sic?).

Deighton

Dear Deighton:

Thank you for sending along this screenshot that defines this fascinating new word.

At the risk of annoying your witch doctor and ending up as an effigy filled with pins and needles, no, you are not pronoiac. Because there is no such thing.

The universe neither conspires against you (or any of us), nor does it take an interest in your well-being.

The universe is largely a cold, heartless vacuum with bits of hydrogen and other elements sprinkled in here and there, and even were it sentient, for which there is zero evidence, you (or me or your witch doctor) would no more capture a sentient universe’s attention than you would pay heed to any microscopic spec of bacteria in your colon.

It’s possible that an imaginary universe might take notice of larger objects—say Uranus—but I can tell this response is going down the toilet, so I am cutting it off right now.

However, since the bartender here at Irish Kevin’s hasn’t cut me off yet, I think I will now order another round.

DEAR MISS MINGO:

Folks up north say you’re Travis McGee’s granddaughter.

Cheers,

Ray Martinez

If only, then maybe I’d have gotten a cut of the inheritance. But I am the niece of his best friend, Meyer, from Uncle Meyer’s fourth marriage. Ha! His biographer, John D. McDonald, never mentioned all the marriages and the exes, did he now?

I do remember hanging out on the Busted Flush up in Fort Lauderdale at the Bahia Mar marina when I was little, and I recall Travis being very kind to me, but almost never without a glass of Boodles gin in hand.

One time, Travis and Uncle Meyer took me on a trip to Key West, and I fell in love with the place. As soon as I graduated from Miami’s Lightgate Institute of Extranormal Studies, I moved to the Keys and have since rarely returned to the mainland.

For a time I lived on a houseboat like Uncle Meyer and Travis, but it was wrecked during Hurricane Irma. That’s when I settled into my little bungalow off Duval Street.

Uncle Meyer was really good with numbers, and when I started college, I thought I might become an economist like him. But I switched to journalism when I realized my limitations with math.

You know what they say: There are three things you never ask a journalist to do: Add and subtract.

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Got a question for Miss Mingo? About life, the news, or clever ways to avoid paying bar tabs? Write to her at MissMingo@Tropic.Press

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Hermina Hermelinda Obregon—a.k.a. Miss Mingo—was an award-winning newspaper reporter before she involuntarily joined the diaspora of journalists leaving the newspaper profession. She now lives with her two cats—Deadline and Dateline—and her pet iguana Skippy. If you wander the streets (and bars) of Key West, you’ll doubtless run into her. She’ll be the woman wearing the ridiculous flamingo hat. If you want an autograph, you’ll have to buy her a Cuba Libre. There’s more about her here.

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Thank you for reading this edition of Tropic Press. You also have access to the Tropic Press website for additional and previous posts, an archive of posts from our advice columnist, Miss Mingo, occasional guest commentaries, and information about The Strange Files series of mysterious adventures and other books.

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