Skip to main content
Search Results for “as”

LETTER TO THE EDITOR: Englewood yoga instructor enters final week of beach yoga challenge

Written by Boca Beacon Reader on . Posted in Letters to the Editor.

To the Editor:
Facing off against what has proven to be a mean season of hot summer days under a blistering Florida sun, on August 6 Kris Hleuka of Loving Light Yoga is set to complete a streak of 31 consecutive days leading fellow yoga enthusiasts in their regularly scheduled morning yoga practice on Englewood Beach. Pinch-hitting for Loving Light owners Lata and Robert Coykendall, who after 15 years of sponsoring Englewood’s Community Beach Yoga each and every day (holidays included) decided to actually take a vacation, Hleuka was asked to lead during what turned out to be a record-breaking heat wave.

Cutting the Gordian Knot that is the Boca Grande cell tower

Written by Marcy Shortuse on . Posted in News.

Another chapter has been written in the ongoing “Gordian Knot” saga of the Boca Grande cell phone tower, as this week cell tower committee members have announced that Lee County has finally issued a demolition permit for the Bakery Building. 

At the same time, the committee has had contractors come out to look at the wall between the bakery and The Barnichol Hardware, to determine if it is possible to start construction on the new cell tower base while the building still stands.

It wasn’t days after Hurricane Ian hit the island hard on September 28, 2022 when cellular services started putting up COWs on the island. These Cells on Wheels were placed in the middle of town, as well as one at the north end. There are no COWs south of 1st Street. Even with the COWs, service has been unreliable for many for 10 months now, with some people – primarily on the south end of the island – having no service at all.

Islanders do what they do best when it comes to establishing emergency communications … they do it on their own

Written by Marcy Shortuse on . Posted in Community, News.

When the winds died down on September 29, about 12 hours after they began, there was a lot of work to be done on Gasparilla Island. There were people to check on, roads to assess and to clear, wires down to deal with and much more. Our island first responders have been through this before and can triage the situation to formulate a plan of action quickly … but there was one problem. 

There was no way to communicate. Telephone lines were down and our cell tower was destroyed.

What that toppled cellphone tower took away was much more than the ability to chat, surf the web and text. It took away the ability for first responders to interact with each other – agency to agency – to perform the work that is required after a storm of the magnitude of Ian. Much of it is life-saving work, and the inability to do it was deeply disturbing. To this day – 10 months later – there are people on this island who need the immediate ability to communicate to stay alive, and they do not have it.