Out and About Archive

We had a very eventful week last week. Between the three newspapers, we won 45 awards from the Florida Media Conference. Thirty-six of the awards were from the Florida Press Association’s annual contest. We didn’t win best overall, but I’m fairly sure we came in second in two circulation categories. I’m going to find out.

Have you heard of the perfect storm? Well, we are being tested here as of the last two-three weeks. Our awesome bookkeeper for the past five years decided she would like a summer to stay home with her children, so she gave us plenty of notice to find a new bookkeeper. One we hired and waited two weeks for, emailed in the day before she was to start and said she took another position. Another person actually started training, and it was obvious in the first few days that she barely knew her way around a computer, much less QuickBooks, so we had to say no thank you. By that time, it was mid-July and rightfully so, our bookkeeper went home to be with her children. And, at the same time, our front desk admin gave her notice because she got a job with better benefits…i.e., a government job, and we hired someone to replace her and four days of   training later, the last four days of our former team member’s time with us — she emailed us late one night and said she decided to stay home and homeschool her child. So that left us without a bookkeeper or a front desk admin. I told Gail, our Publisher, that this means something awesome is about to happen. And then, I found a quote from a friend of mine who is also going through some trying times. She wrote, “Whenever something important falls apart, it’s because something bigger and better is on the horizon. And, with sudden change always comes the deepest opportunities for growth. Well, we are definitely growing through this. The good news is that we used to put out a job opening and get zero applicants. Now, they are coming in all day long – which is a job in itself – weeding through applications, interviewing, onboarding, etc. However, well worth it when you end up with awesome team members like we have now.

This is probably a subject I should have taken more time to hash out before I wrote an entire column about it, but here it is regardless.

Last week’s column was a re-run from 2019’s Independence Day paper. I didn’t receive any complaints, and I thought it was still interesting and I hoped you would too. It was, after all, verified history from more than 200 years ago so…it wasn’t stale. It is always good to reminder during Independence Day celebrations.  

Happy July 4!

We need to be reminded occasionally that freedom isn’t free, and we know that only too well in our military community. Most of the signers of the declarations signed their lives away with the stroke of a pen. I recently ran across this on singer Michael W. Smith’s website, and it is a message that we all need to hear, regardless of the time of year.

I’m visiting a prison later this week in Blountstown and I was required to submit information for a background check before I got permission to go inside.  Let that sink in.  I totally understand, but the irony wasn’t lost on me. I heard that the prison is training inmates on how to operate a piece of machinery that I’m interested in knowing more about. And, because there is always a story, there is a story. However, I don’t have permission for the story yet. They have vocational programs and when the inmates that are in the program are released, they leave with a vocational certificate. I’ll have to see if we have any subscribers there. We have quite a few in prison. One time a paper was sent back to us because inside that issue was a story about how someone got in trouble for breaking someone out of prison. The note we received back from the prison office was that the story was too descriptive and gave details on how to sneak certain items into prison. The person that didn’t receive their paper missed it, so we cut that story out of the paper and sent it back to the prison. It was very appreciated. We appreciate our subscribers that happen to be in prison. At least it helps the prison guards read newspapers – because apparently, they are reading them before they are passed on to their rightful owners. My mom used to go to a maximum-security prison for women in Orlando every Sunday evening to lead a Bible study when she was in her 80’s. She was always nervous that she would make a mistake and not be able to go back. There were very strict rules about what she could wear and bring with her. Pens were not allowed, or sharp pencils. I’ll follow her lead when I visit the prison.   

This week I’m writing about mosquito control because they are out of control. I was trying to talk to my new neighbors, who recently moved here from Alaska, around dusk last week and we were all swatting mosquitos and dancing around trying to get out of the mosquitoes’ way. They were relentless. My feet and ankles were on fire. I finally had to tell our new neighbors that I just couldn’t chat anymore because – I couldn’t. I high tailed it back into my house – while zig-zagging back and forth trying to throw the mosquitos off my tail. I have found a few trying to follow me in my house. I found out that in the few months that our new neighbors have been here, they have also found the mosquitos to be overly plentiful. They had already invested in some kind of mosquito magnet machine that kills mosquitoes.  I would have checked it out if I didn’t have to literally run away.

We have done highly scientific research and found out that people that drink craft beer don’t litter. In Actuality, I know a runner who runs up and down Highways 98 and 87 and told me that he never sees craft beer bottles littering the side of the roads. And, I use to cycle up Hwy. 87 before texting on cell phones became a thing and about the time cyclists were getting run over by those texting and driving – and I can attest to the same hypothesis.

I’ve had the privilege of meeting a lot of people in the 24 years of working at Navarre Press, and I wouldn’t make a list in order of importance because it isn’t something you can quantify. However, I’d have to say that Pat Quinn would be very, very close to the top. He was an awesome man in so many ways. He was fun to be with because he was funny, honest, observant, wise, and so many other adjectives. To say that he had led an interesting life would be an understatement. Let’s just say he couldn’t have gotten another ounce out of life because – he lived it – to the fullest. And, in doing so, he contributed greatly to every community and person that he was close to. The Gulf Breeze Zoo celebrated its 40th anniversary last month, and I asked our team to pull the pages and pages of stories we have written about the zoo over the years and a sampling of the results can be found on pages C6 and 7. One of the stories was about “Remembering Colossus” which was written by our reporter John Richardson, who passed away last year and who is another person that I had the privilege of calling my friend. This is an awesome story and will give you a taste of what Pat Quinn was like and how fortunate we are to have the Zoo in our community.

I’m learning new traditions and entitlements as my children get older, and I find myself having conversations with them that weren’t even a topic when I was their age. My daughter’s husbands have brought up evaluating jobs on how long they will have off for paternity leave when they start have babies or continue to do so. Really? I was lucky my husband was in this country when I had babies.