Written by Boca Beacon Reader on . Posted in Letters to the Editor.
To the Editor: Hurricane season has finally arrived, and as you share advice with your readers to best prepare them, there is one simple step they can take to help keep them safe and avoid making a difficult situation worse – contacting 811. Repairing damage after a storm seems like a harmless action, but […]
Written by Sheila Evans on . Posted in Profiles.
Kevin Mills is almost an institution in Boca Grande and Gasparilla Island. Nearly everybody knows him.They recognize him by the brown uniform he wears and the big brown truck he drives, but mostly they recognize him by his smile and his infectious friendliness. Kevin is our UPS delivery driver. “Our” is appropriate because this is […]
Written by Marcy Shortuse on . Posted in News, Sports & Outdoors.
Written by Boca Beacon Reader on . Posted in Letters to the Editor.
To the Editor: We are deeply disappointed to report that Governor DeSantis has signed Senate Bill 540, legislation that will decimate citizens’ planning rights and imperil the future of Everglades restoration. We regret that he did not heed the warnings of so many Floridians like you, including more than 5,770 who signed our veto petition, […]
Written by Marcy Shortuse on . Posted in Community.
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Written by Marcy Shortuse on . Posted in Community History, News.
The Whispering Bench is gone. Early Saturday morning heavy equipment operators came and began to gouge it out of the earth, while Boca Grande residents gathered around and did their best to protest it. Some tried to block the way of the equipment. Others tried to climb on the equipment. There were epithets thrown, as well as more than one projectile.
Someone in the crowd was heard to say, “They just started a war.”
It’s not as much about the bench as it is about the mentality of those who are moving here. Many of these are people who don’t know or care about the island’s rich history and, more to the point, they don’t know about how things have been done around here for almost 150 years.
But it didn’t matter in the end; the job was done.
Written by Dave Horton on . Posted in Boca Beacon Back Pages, Columns.
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Written by Sheila Evans on . Posted in Profiles.
After college he worked in the social sciences. “I was working in a research center at the University of Pittsburgh, in the field of ‘learning psychology’ for 10 years,” he said. “The robotics institute at Carnegie Mellon University was founded while I was doing that. Pitt and Carnegie Mellon are adjacent to one another, and I knew a great many of those people. I went to the dean of the School of Engineering and said, ‘I don’t know anything about robotics, but I know about research centers, and I can help you.’ I got hired on the spot.”
It may be that being confident, and being able to look an opportunity in the eye and not blink may be other skill sets he has been bringing to the table throughout his career.
He noted that this was during the very earliest days of robotics. “It was the first time I’d heard the word,” he said. “And Carnegie Mellon is, to this day, the pre-eminent center of research and development in the field of robotics.” In the end, Todd spent 30 years in the field, helping to make it what it is today.
Written by Boca Beacon on . Posted in News.
Over the past week, the red tide organism Karenia brevis was detected in 86 samples collected from Florida’s Gulf Coast. Bloom concentrations (>100,000 cells/liter) were present in three samples: one from Sarasota County, one offshore of Lee County and one offshore of Collier County. In Southwest Florida over the past week, K. brevis was observed […]
Written by Marcy Shortuse on . Posted in Boca Beacon Back Pages, Columns.
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