Never would I have thought to hear that the state of Florida will be getting rid of standardized testing. I remember vividly the days of FCAT until its replacement in 2015 with the current FSA. I remember the dread of having to sit in a classroom as an elementary and middle school student fo…
Take a seat, Florida Man, preferably in a classroom at one of the state’s many highly rated colleges and universities.
Prior to his death, Los Angeles’ Sunday night talk show host Terry Anderson used to open his broadcast with a heads up to his listeners: “If you ain’t mad, you ain’t paying attention.”
Quite often, as I listen to politicians and their propaganda, they seem to have an Ozymandias complex.
Are you ready for “Eat Your Last Horse Day”?
While I remember a time when I didn’t have a microwave as part of my kitchen, I refuse to revisit that time in my life. Same thing with my dishwasher. You can’t have them.
Hi, I’m Buttercup and I was born in 1973 in Wichita, Kansas at Cessna General. That makes me 48 years old in “people years,” 336 in “dog years,” and maybe “48 -1 in airplane years.” They call me a 150 and apparently, I’m pretty popular. My current master PIC (Pilot in Command) John takes goo…
Dragging splayed fingers through the surprisingly warm water, a sparkling glow startled my senses. It was instantly clear this would be better than I anticipated. A sense of magic filled my thoughts as I splashed embers by flicking my wet fingers. Digging deep with my paddle, an electrified …
Sitting here at the computer at 2 p.m. in my ‘casual Friday’ nightgown, I feel like a punching bag, battered from every direction. By turns bewildered, confused, hopeful, disbelieving, anxious. Every day, I have to dodge the slings and arrows of life, find something to calm me in a world tha…
A few weeks ago, I wrote about the possibility of Governor Ron DeSantis running for president. At the time, it seemed like he would be the best option for the presidential nominee in 2024.
Many parents my age are currently experiencing empty nest syndrome/euphoria as they send their children off to college in hopes that, someday, their “babies” will graduate and come back home to pick up all of the junk they left crammed under their beds.
Many years ago, my wife had a customer in Singapore who was visiting us here in the States. Over dinner, I asked him about all the rules Singapore had at that time:
Gander, Newfoundland has an airport that has served as the last safe place to land before flying across the Atlantic to Europe and is the first place to land coming back if there is a need to refuel or deal with an emergency. Sept. 11, 2001 there was an emergency.
With a forecast hovering right over 100, it promised to be a hot day for hiking. Considering the night before included several inches of rain, we planned accordingly to try and hike somewhere the trail would be passable. I don’t mind puddles and slogging, but lately some of my favorite locat…
I’m right infrequently enough that I like to point it out when it happens. This time, I wasn’t only right. I was downright prophetic.
Early on the morning of September 11, 2001, I was a newly minted warehouse supervisor for a farmers cooperative.
Back in August, our very own Florida State Senator Ben Albritton was able to secure the role of Florida Senate President during the 2024-2026 term. This is a significant accomplishment for Senator Albritton, given the fact that our rural district does not have the political clout that many o…
A Sept. 1st letter in the “Opinion” column reminded me of a quote said to be from Winston Churchill. “If you’re not a liberal at 20, you have no heart … and if you’re not a conservative at 40 you have no head (brain).” It looks like that formula doesn’t work for everyone. The letter was chee…
As we watch the sad withdrawal of Americans and Afghan allies, in front of the Taliban advance, our nation considers the meaning of all the American lives lost and many more physically wounded. I wonder if this will be the last war Americans will be physically involved in.
Sebring International Raceway has been welcoming race car fans for decades for the famed 12 Hours of Sebring, but the oldest continuously operating auto endurance racetrack in North America is just the start when it comes to racing adventures in our area.
So what can the plight of a little cafe tell you about the state of the American economy and the changing face of work? A lot, as it turns out.
There are two kinds of history. One is the kind we learn about in school or read about, or hear the first-person accounts from the people who were there at the time. As time goes on, we experience some revision of history based on who is recounting it and what available information and evide…
Recently, the New York Times published an op-ed written by Atossa Araxia Abrahamian, “There Is No Good Reason You Should Have to Be a Citizen to Vote,” which it described as “part of a series exploring bold ideas to revitalize and renew the American experiment.”
At my age, I’ve seen some truly dumb things that people have done. In this day and age of social media and phones that can record video, the stupidity is broadcast for all to see.
Sweltering weather seems to be our current reality even if pumpkin everything is advertised all around us. Being one who adores a steaming cinnamon gourd latte, I just couldn’t do it. Thankfully the coffee shop was able to ice my brew down and I walked out coolly caffeinated. We’ve got month…
You have seen them swoop down majestically from the sky. You have even seen them sitting all along the ridge of the piles of garbage at our county dump – this symbol of America, the American bald eagle. But have you ever seen one up close? Have you ever felt the weight of one on your shoulde…
In the course of 20 years that the United States spent in Afghanistan, this nation lost 2,448 American heroes. On Thursday, the nation heard the news of another 13 brave men and women being added to that list.
Our long-time production director, R., died from glioblastoma – a particular nasty and deadly form of cancer. R was with us almost 30 years. His former career was primarily as a newspaper accountant up in Pennsylvania.
We have completed the first three weeks of school, and like in other districts across the state and nation, we have experienced success and faced challenges. The teachers, staff, administrators, students and families of Highlands County have done an amazing job rising to these challenges, an…
As I type this, I’m looking at an anniversary I would just as soon skip. Tomorrow is the second anniversary of the death of not only my beloved mother-in-law, but my beagle, Barney (they died within an hour of each other).
I keep getting asked if I’ve gotten the COVID-19 vaccination. I tell them it was an easy decision for me: yes. The moment I was eligible, I got the Moderna vaccine. The available data I had access to — that we all have access to — makes it clear to me that getting the vaccine is a smart risk…
One of my family holiday traditions was to have a complicated jigsaw puzzle laid out on a card table that invited anyone passing by to try and find a few pieces to fit. Eventually when it was time to take down the tree and put the decorations away, the puzzle was finished. A few times there …
Our gal has been in college the past few years, which of course necessitated the back and forth of move-in day. From that first year where shopping equaled hundreds of dollars in needs such as mini fridges, bedding, organizers and a contraband coffee maker, we enjoyed the ability to outfit o…
The brief period between President Joe Biden’s brave prediction in early July that a Taliban takeover in Afghanistan was highly unlikely and his subsequent comment in mid-August that there was never any way to avoid chaos during our withdrawal leads one to ask: When, exactly, did chaos becom…
Governor Ron DeSantis may have been too ambitious when it came to reopening the state and the complete removal of pandemic restrictions.
For a little while during my early childhood, I had a playmate who was the envy of all her friends. Nobody in my neighborhood had any money. Her mother was one of the few with a car. Life was slow, diversions few with just one long, hot summer day after another.
We are fat because grain-based food is the cheapest food source we can buy. We mix grain with salt and sugar to make it taste good. Relatively empty carbohydrate calories, plus salt and sugar, equals excess pounds.
There are people I know who absolutely adore shopping. It’s a great adventure to them. They’re the type that park outside of a store before Black Friday to grab all the bargains they can.
Last Saturday afternoon I was surfing channels on the TV and caught the last part of a special interview featuring the 25th anniversary of the movie “Field of Dreams.” It is one of my all-time favorite movies and the first time I saw it I was in a theater all by myself. That was special all …
I’ve driven around a lot, and with eight roundabouts in the county — soon to be nine — I’ve driven a round, a lot.
Hearing the bird before I saw it, I hustled to grab my camera just in case I would be able to grab a few photos. I really wanted pictures of a mangrove cuckoo, but unless I was willing to risk life, limb and all manner of mosquito-borne illnesses, it was not happening on this trip.
I come from an era when young women were brought up to depend on fathers to protect us until we got our ‘Mrs. degree’ and transferred the burden to a husband. That was just the way it was. I went along with the program but, gradually, I had my consciousness raised.
It was 73 years ago this month that my dad, Allen Funt, brought “Candid Camera” to television. Remarkably, between his career and mine we hold a record with the only entertainment show to have produced new episodes in eight different decades.
Republican or Democrat, liberal or conservative, there is no way anyone can look at the issue in Afghanistan and say that the United States handled the withdrawal of troops in a correct manner. Within a matter of months, we have witnessed the Afghan government crumble to its knees as the ins…
My Lab puppy, Thurber, makes me laugh out loud every day.
“I have lived in Dona Vista, 2 miles north of Eustis, for almost 30 years. I have seen the conspiracy to force county residents into every city limit. All cities are doing it! I have tried to bring attention to this fact to my County Commissioners, and my House of Representatives members and…
I know firsthand that fishing is more of a “sickness” or “obsession” than a sport. My infection began when I was growing up very close to Lake Saltonstall in East Haven, Connecticut. My friends and I would spend hours on end fishing in that lake.
