I met a gentleman a week ago who told me that his son is the pastor of a “growing church.” We like to hear churches described that way, but what does it mean? It is typically meant to communicate that the number of people attending that church is growing. No reflection on the aforementioned “growing church,” but increasing attendance is not necessarily the evidence of a growing church.
Every week Sandpaper Publishing, which includes Navarre Press, Santa Rosa Press Gazette, and the Crestview News Bulletin and Sandpaper Marketing have a meeting. There are sometimes up to 17 of us meeting from all over Northwest Florida. Part of that meeting includes shout outs to team members that went over and above. It is awesome to hear the team give each other well-deserved kudos. I’ve noticed quite a few selfless and thoughtful displays of awesomeness while out and about in our awesome community and I’m going to highlight a few of them this week. I’d like to do this more often and we are going to start “Shout Outs” that will be featured each week in the paper…and I decided that while typing this column. I know our awesome team will be able to pull this off by the time you read this column and by the time my column is written today (Monday,) there will be a QR Code at the end of the column that will direct you to a page on our website – just for “Shout-Outs.” This is specifically for good awesome displays of great customer service and just being a great citizen of our community.
In just a few weeks, voters in Santa Rosa County will head to the ballot box to make important decisions that will impact our community for years to come.
Give the Florida High School Athletic Association a little credit. At least it didn’t wait until a third major hurricane hit the state to make changes to the football schedule.
Last Monday, a press conference was held to announce that the regular season was going to be extended by a week to allow for extra time to get all the games in that might have been impacted by the hurricanes.
I have admitted before in this column that I am a horrible horticulturist. My home is the place where plants go to die. Yet, as I type this column, outside my window sits a tall, lush basil plant – a picture of health. I had purchased it as a small plant along with a big bag of plant soil at the garden center earlier this year. With regular watering it did well for about a month, but one day it began to look tired and wilted. I gave it some plant food and more water. The plant must have assumed that was its last meal because it soon looked dead. I was about to add another plant to my list of kills until my wife said in passing, “I think your basil plant needs more soil.”
There seems to be controversy, discrepancies and conflicting news reports about the Federal Emergency Management Agency running out of money due to the number of illegal immigrants crossing our borders. It depends on what news source you are reading or watching. However, I trust actual video of a news conference where Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, who signed off on our open borders, warned FEMA is running out of money to aid hurricane victims – on camera and in his own words. Now, there seems to be a public relations correction that claims this is not the case. However, FEMA is documented as spending over $1 billion feeding, housing, and transporting illegal immigrants across the United States in the past two years. And, then there is the fact that Congress has passed five bills appropriating $175 billion in aid and assistance in response to Russia’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine. That is a lot of money leaving our country. I want to share a Facebook post from a resident of one of the small Appalachian areas that was isolated and almost wiped off the map by Hurricane Helene. It is very telling and untainted by national news reports since they are not getting a lot of “news.” I’m masking the area out of privacy for them. Let’s just call their town “Mountainville.”
The Santa Rosa County Board of County Commissioners recently signed a resolution urging citizens to vote no on Amendment 4. Bradford, Collier, DeSoto, Gilchrist, Jefferson, Lee, Liberty, Okaloosa and Sarasota Boards of County Commissioners have all signed similar resolutions.
I went out to the University of West Florida a couple of weekends ago ready to cover a cross-country meet bright and early on a Saturday morning after a late night of covering football in the rain.
I don’t mind waking up early. I’ve always been an early riser.
I am afraid of heights and have been all my life. I once worked in the city of Toronto, and from my workplace I could see the CN Tower. Occasionally I would look up from my work to watch its elevators climb the outside of the spire then disappear into its pod 1500 feet off the ground. One day, in what could only have been a moment of insanity, I agreed to visit the CN Tower with my parents and my wife.
