Opinion Archive

We just wrapped up the 9th annual fishing rodeo and we are already looking forward to next year which will be our ten-year anniversary of the rodeo.

The next Navarre Fishing Rodeo will take place on October 1 and 2, 2022. (kind-of rhymes) I’ve been involved with the rodeo since the inception so I can say, with confidence, this wasn’t my first rodeo.

“Michael, lead us in another one of those familiar, old hymns,” the pastor said in the middle of a worship service. I was gripped with fear because I didn’t know any other hymns than those we had just sung, but there was no avoiding his request.

I was the church’s new minister of worship, thrust into that position, so it seemed to me, with no other qualification than I was a musician.

It’s a beautiful Monday afternoon. The sun is shining. No rain threat in sight. Playing golf at the Club at Hidden Creek seems like a great idea for the Navarre golf teams as they head into another week.

That great idea, however, might as well not be an idea at all because the Raiders have no chance of playing golf on this day in late September.

It’s a funny thing getting old. Not funny like Comedy Central, but funny like interesting.

You spend decades getting there but somehow fail to notice, and then you wake up one morning and the world has tilted a bit on its axis.

In contemporary Santa Rosa County, there are some colorful native insect residents which have a desire for specific plants. Monarch butterflies are one species, but another is the Gulf fritillary.

The object of the Gulf fritillary’s dining obsession is the passion flower.

Businesses help the communities around them in ways most of us don’t realize and could never have imagined.

For example, when a dump truck and car collided Tuesday morning on U.S. Highway 98 in Gulf Breeze, both drivers were injured and the highway was blocked not just by the damaged vehicles, but by 20 cubic yards of dirt that the truck had been carrying.

Florida’s workforce is poised for disruptive change as automation, artificial intelligence and other innovative technologies take hold in the coming years, accelerated in part due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Shifting demographics as the Baby Boomer generation exits the labor force will also fuel broader changes for the working population.

When this column is printed, my wife and I will have just celebrated our 34th wedding anniversary and I can say after these many years, marriage is great!

We were married three months before I entered full-time ministry. The timing was fortuitous because it quickly became apparent that I wouldn’t be worth spit as a pastor without my wife.