Opinion Archive

No finger pointing. No excuses.

Navarre’s football team wasn’t playing the blame game after its crushing loss to one of its biggest rivals in the Beach Bowl two weeks ago.

There are times when we are uncertain what will happen if a particular public policy is implemented.

A proposal in Congress about cuts in interchange fees on credit cards is not one of them.

Only the government could put “stormwater mitigation” and “COVID-19” into the same sentence.

In another twist to the long story of federal funding for the pandemic, the stormwater mitigation task force met last week to decide what stormwater projects to submit for COVID funding.

There is a song called “Joy,” performed by pianist George Winston, which I can credit in part with the beginning of my true writing life.

After college, I had originally gotten into social work and, although I was an English major, had not yet discovered the magic of writing. This song, along with a powerful friendship with someone at that time, connected the two.

My idea of an enjoyable morning is sipping coffee with my wife at a café and watching the world pass by. Our favorite perch when we lived in Naples was a bagel shop in a very busy plaza.

On Friday mornings, we’d seat ourselves at a table facing the small, very full, parking lot to watch the clumsy ballet of cars attempting to enter and exit.

Sometimes residents and visitors are concerned about a surprise encounter with one of the 45 species of native snakes. In the cooler weather these coldblooded reptiles are unable to avoid the chance meeting which usually ends badly, at least for the snake.

In reality, it is far more likely to find a weed given a name based on one of its features which mimic a snake. One of these is corn snakeroot, a native wildflower currently blooming in Santa Rosa County.

Dansby Swanson sat in a dugout on one of those hot and humid summer afternoons here in Florida that leaves you feeling as if the planet is on fire.

It was 2016 and Swanson was in town with the Mississippi Braves for their series against the Pensacola Blue Wahoos. Prior to one of the games that week, the highly touted Braves prospect was made available to the media.