Opinion Archive

Although my editor just shared with me that a recent survey indicated that each Floridians drank an average of 813 alcoholic beverages in 2020, this week’s Navarre Press has a lot more to do with drinking water.

However, it is related because we need good drinking water to make alcoholic beverages.

If you have not seen the news, the East Milton Wellfield Protection issue is about how three commissioners (Bob Cole, Sam Parker and James Calkins) voted to remove “existing” water protection rights for the citizens of South Santa Rosa and East Milton.

Let me repeat that, remove an “existing” water protection right.

Thank you to Commission (Dave) Piech and Commissioner (Colten) Wright for voting NO regarding lifting protections for the borrow pits and our drinking water!

To Commissioners (Bob) Cole, (Sam) Parker and (James) Calkins:  Please, at least one of you reverse your vote.  You are taking absurd chances with our drinking water.

As we approach the one-year anniversary of COVID changing our lives in almost every way possible, we could focus on the negative.

We have all lost something in the last 12 months. Some have lost people they loved, including one of their parents.

It’s been a little over 20 years, but I still remember the buzz inside the press box at Carter-Finley Stadium in Raleigh the night North Carolina State played Georgia Tech.

All the excitement on a warm night in mid-September centered around some freshman quarterback named Phillip Rivers.

The effects of January’s cold weather in Santa Rosa County have many characteristics.

In addition to the realistic possibility of the occasional subfreezing thermometer readings and frosts, there is the quiet.

Forrest Gump told the lady at the bus stop, “My momma always said life was like a box of chocolates, you never know what you’re gonna get,” then he popped one into his mouth.

Clearly, that was before candy companies put key cards in the boxes because, Forrest, you can know exactly “what you’re gonna get.”

For all the teachers and educators in this county who work hard every day to make a difference in children’s lives, I wanted to take a moment to say thank you.

Reading is a fundamental skill that isn’t easy for all children to acquire. We celebrate those efforts and that skill during Literacy Week.

I swear the Jacksonville Jaguars have raised Vince Lombardi from the dead and hired him as their next head football coach.

Never mind. It’s just Urban Meyer.

Between my current job and my former one, I have sat within a few feet of a police scanner for almost 25 years. 

It has been my background music, until a call comes in that requires our attention. Every emergency call is important, but from a news perspective, many are commonplace.