This Fourth of July we are in a countdown to July 4, 2026 – our nation’s 250th. Is it a semiquincentennial or a sestercentennial? Bicentennial, in 1976, was a lot easier to say.
In 1976, there wa…
Just in time for our nation’s 250th Birthday, Walt Disney World will close its Tom Sawyer Island and its companion Liberty Square Riverboat on July 6. The boat, waterway and island will disappear in…
Surprise is the supremely effective tactic of war, in history and legend: Troy and the Trojan War, Trenton at Christmas, Tet and Normandy. Throughout history, the element of surprise makes the diffe…
It is the end of an era in Florida. Lu, the hippopotamus at Ellie Schiller Homosassa Springs Wildlife State Park, died June 8, 2025. The Florida Department of Environmental Protection’s Alexandra Ku…
For those reading the paper remotely, there has now been a week of rain in these coastal parts. It did seem like the rain would never come, as we had basically eight months of none. This was much lo…
Here in Boca Grande, during this hurricane cleanup, we have been well served by Lee County and its various departments, from Parks and Recreation to DOT. There had been a past sense, quite right, th…
Perhaps, as God intended, we are truly living in some sort of tropical jungle paradise. Quite regularly, folks are reporting seeing a pair of flamingos, up in the air, up and down the island, and Ca…
It was a good day to have three Lee County commissioners come to Boca Grande on Tuesday for a forum on parking. There were some (not us) who were worried that somehow it would be contentious. Indeed…
Some on this island are readers and devotees of Wendell Berry, the Kentucky writer whose thinking undergirds many of today’s ideas of agriculture and sustainability. One of his ideas that has been a…
This Tuesday, the first rain of the season arrived. It was a real rain, too, precisely at 2:29 p.m., and resulted in some “nostalgic” puddles on the sides of the roads, ably slurped up by the sandy…
