If you’re reading this, either the world did not end as the Mayan Apocalypse devotees would have us believe, or we are in the final day of our time on planet Earth.
I choose to believe that the Mayans simply knew that astronomical changes would take place, such as the shifting axis of the Earth, and the coming warming period that we exacerbate every day, and knew that the calendar would have to be shifted to new changes of seasons.
And it is appropriate that the changes take place on the winter solstice, the day when there is supposed to be the least time for sunlight of the year.
It seems as though there is always an unintended consequence attached to a statement made that at first glance appears to carry a great deal of common sense.
Such is the case with a statement made by new District One County Commissioner Danny Kolhage at last Wednesday’s Board of County Commissioner’s meeting.
First, let me say that I hope each and every one of you have a wonderful Christmas, and here’s wishing you the best of New Years.
I think we’re all glad (except the little ones) that the Christmas holiday is nearly behind us. The mad rush to get everything done, the lines, the stress and the bustle are all something we can do without more than once a year I’m sure.
Though I will miss the smiles and good cheer that follow this season, there are many things I won’t miss.
In what seems to be another attempt to just simply put off the hard decisions, the Monroe Board of County Commissioners was given some preferred options this week for keeping the level of vehicular service on US 1 at a level acceptable to the state.
Level of service calculates how well traffic flows through the Keys, getting our tourists and locals out and around these bridge-linked islands.
One can never tell what tomorrow will bring in the Florida Keys.
My wife and I are still relative newbies in the community having been on Big Pine just 13 years, but we have long felt that too often the Lower Keys outside of Key West and Stock Island often get treated like the relatives no one wants to talk about.
We found that it was tough to get special events going here and keep them going. Usually the event died for lack of manpower as newer folks moved in from other areas where someone else always did these things for them and they didn’t have the initiative to go out and do them for themselves.
I can’t say that about my lovely wife. If someone else has an interesting event, she wants it for our community as well.
So it was with that mind set that we resurrected the Lower Keys Lighted Boat Parade some four years ago for the Christmas holiday.
Now that short-term solutions to Florida’s unemployment rate have fallen far short of the mark in making any real headway against the problem, maybe our state leadership should give up the tried-and-true, but never-worked methods it has been pursuing and actually take along-term approach to bringing quality jobs to the state.
Most of my life I have been extremely proud of my really, really crappy handwriting.
When I was but a youngster in grade school and the teachers would give me consistent grades of D or below on handwriting skills, I wore that grade as a badge of honor.
It was part of my personality that no one could have handwriting as bad as mine.
I figured, as long as the teacher could read it, and more importantly, as long as I could read it, what was the harm?
As I got older and decided that being a reporter/writer was what I wanted to do with my life, I tried to clean up my handwriting, but the cause was lost. I had spent too many years being proud of sloppy penmanship to make much of a difference at that late date.
Of course, I made that decision when I was still in high school.
Today ends another hurricane season in the Florida Keys and marks yet another year we managed to squeak by without any serious storms battering our diminutive shorelines.
Hurricane Sandy caused a few days of rough winds and some rain as it swept past us on its way to a clobbering of the northeast, but for the most part, we were able to glance at the Weather Channel occasionally and go on about our business.
But that doesn’t mean the threat of a major storm slamming our island chain is gone, even though chances are good the threat is gone for this year.
We are back into early-arrival snowbird season. Welcome back. We’re glad you’re here.
Of course, you could have left the cold weather where you found it and not brought it down to us, but thanks anyway for being here.
But if this piece is about any of you, take heart.
District Three County Commissioner Heather Carruthers had an excellent idea Wednesday when she suggested that the county look into hiring an independent internal auditor.
That auditor supposedly would be charged with keeping track of county equipment and auditing revenue streams to try and keep the county off the front pages after the iPhone/iPad scandal of recent months and the theft of landfill fees by a county employee in the Upper Keys of recent weeks.
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