Ever had one of those days where you are trying to hurry up and get the most important work done so you can go home early in the heat of the day (83 degrees – 75% humidity) and mow your yard?
Well, I have – and that day is today.
James Calkins is not new to making controversial statements, but last week at a Board of County Commission meeting, he crossed a line.
He openly refused to apologize and in fact, to the shock of the audience, doubled down on his words.
For almost four hours, the line of people stretched around the walls of the enormous church foyer then curled around a corner and extended back into the church’s sanctuary.
Hundreds of people had come that evening to pay their last respects to my wife’s brother, Dave, a testament to a life well lived by a man well-loved.
I have been a firearms dealer for 46 years, the last 39 years in Santa Rosa County.
I have always strived to facilitate the sale and transfer of firearms to law abiding citizens and keep accurate records. I have had a good relationship with the federal ATF and a clean record. However, ATF has recently changed their rules and enacted a “zero tolerance” policy, resulting in ATF aggressively putting gun store owners, including myself, out of business.
I recently attended the graduation ceremony for my son-in-law, Jon Crider, who graduated with his Ph.D. in Microbiology and Immunology from the University of Mississippi, otherwise known as Ole Miss.
He also wrote for Navarre Press for a year before he married my daughter in 2016 and left for Mississippi to pursue his doctorate degree. You may see his byline in the coming weeks. He starts teaching at Belmont University in the fall and will be working on data driven stories as a data journalist this summer.
Today is the official start of the Atlantic hurricane season.
Forecasters are finding this year’s hurricane season hard to predict. They have said the current warmer ocean temperatures would normally be expected to increase tropical storm and hurricane activity, but we also have an El Nino event brewing, which usually has the opposite effect.
“He’s going home,” we both pronounced with confidence. My wife and I have been binge-watching the History Channel’s reality show “Forged in Fire.”
After watching an entire season’s worth of shows, we noticed a trend: the contestant who boasts the most in their introductory clip tends to be the first one eliminated. The moment a contestant begins his boast, we make our pronouncement. We are correct more times than not.
It was the middle of March. The day of my birthday to be exact. And the Navarre Raider softball team won a game that kind of sent a message that it was on its way to having a pretty good year.
I was there to witness the Raiders hammer Niceville 16-6. The same Eagles who have long been a thorn in the side of Navarre over the years. Until that night, the Raiders had never beaten the Eagles in run-rule fashion.
When I was younger, this was my favorite time of the year.
School was just letting out, I had the summer ahead of me to go to the pool, play outside, go to summer camp and enjoy the weather. I’m grateful to have the winter weather behind me, but summer doesn’t have the same appeal to me now as it did back then.
