This week, we have a story on the sale of Eldred’s (pictured here). Of course, we all know it needs a new custodian. Its current, old Florida, charming and useful state, cannot survive when the prop…
We appreciate the many personal visits from residents coming by to pick up their 4-Digit Phone Book. We have a standard ritual for it, namely we check to see if the listing is correct, we give each…
Of the two big religious holidays, it is Easter that is the one that makes the most sense, culturally to Florida. In the imagination, Christmas is a cold weather holiday, and a “too hot” Christmas i…
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. Inst…
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 Gasparilla…
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 who…
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 with…
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 pa…
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 h…
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 f…
