Editorial
The value of the story of Gasparilla Island and old Florida
March 21, 2024
This Tuesday, retired history teacher and certified tour guide David Bredemus brought a tour bus to Boca Grande. It was not an ordinary bus tour group, interested in drinks, theater or casinos. In…
Local support for our tourism ‘commons’
March 14, 2024
In the English tradition, there is the common. Not common as an adjective, as in ordinary, but the “common” as a noun, as in the places that we all own together, as a public. Many here on Gasparil…
Hot dogs with the Methodists at the Strawberry Beach
March 8, 2024
On Sunday morning, the day after the Strawberry Festival, a four-year-old boy posed a question.
“Can we go to the Strawberry Beach?”
The boy, unconcerned with actual geography, thought the w…
Redundant systems and Boca Grande’s Auxcomm
February 29, 2024
In the aftermath of Hurricane Ian, communications for Cape Haze and Boca Grande went back to the pre-Flintstones era.
That might sound extreme. It is not, as Barney and Fred had dial phones wi…
Cape Haze at nexus of American sawfish revival
February 23, 2024
We reside in a sawfish aquarium, Charlotte Harbor. It’s Jurassic Park, and you don’t have to visit Universal Orlando.
Last Thursday, sawfish expert Tonya Wiley delivered a talk in Cape Haze as …
Like looking into the sun with the Geographic
February 22, 2024
Sixty years ago, the National Geographic came to Florida. The magazine devoted over 50 pages to this state, in a major feature called “Florida Rides a Space Age Boom.”
Some of us might admit to…
Lake Okeechobee’s waters will run beginning Saturday
February 15, 2024
This weekend, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers will let the waters run out of Lake Okeechobee. Saturday was to be the day. In their press release, they described it as a measure that would prevent…
Free ‘Range Light’ children across the island
February 9, 2024
In two generations, many places have gone from children being “seen and not heard” to no children at all. Florida (or let’s blame Arizona) is inventor of the world of “55 plus,” where dogs are leg…
Moon after Yule, Wolf Moon or Labradoodle Moon
January 26, 2024
For anyone up early Wednesday morning, there was a particularly effective full moon coming through the clouds, different from a clear-sky full moon. With the clouds intermittently covering and unc…
We’re in a pickleball here on Gasparilla Island
January 18, 2024
This week, Lee County voted to turn one of the two tennis courts on Wheeler Road into four pickleball courts. The case should not be viewed as simply that pickleball is winning over tennis (which …