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.
Hurricane Milton is a Category 5 as I write this, and it is heading toward Central Florida where I lived for the first 19 years of my life. I have a lot of good friends there that I have invited to come to Navarre, but they want to “hunker down.” Contrary to advice, I would do the same. It is difficult to get back and I know that firsthand. My husband was in Iraq or Afghanistan in September 2004 when Ivan was headed our way and by order of the Air Force, the families had to evacuate. I evacuated with our children to my parents’ home in Orlando, which had just been hit by Charlie the month before with 104 mph winds. They were still cleaning up and there was a lot less foliage than the last time I was there. After Ivan left, I called our Santa Rosa County Public Information Officer at the time, Don Chinery, and asked him when he thought schools would be back in session. He thought it would be months. I called my in-laws and asked if their grands could stay with them for a week or a few months – and they said sure. They met me near Atlanta, and I handed the children and a dog and a cat off to them. They were saints – and are angels in heaven today. I quickly headed back to Navarre and bought a cooler and started loading it with things to eat on the way back. I got back with little difficulty. The next day I went to the Emergency Operations Center in Milton and was asking where the water and supplies were for Navarre and was told it was too difficult to get there – true story. I promptly let them know I arrived from Atlanta the night before and was able to get to them that day…they could get there. And they did.
I feel as if I need to clarify a post I made on Facebook during Navarre’s win over previously unbeaten Tate two weeks ago.
I posted that the Navarre culture runs deeper than one guy. That guys may transfer out, but the culture returns year after year.
