Opinion Archive

I grew up with snow and ice in the winter, the smell of burning leaves in the fall and tulips popping up in strange places in the spring, along with a sea of mud.

The summers in Illinois were warm enough for swimming and boating, as long as you chose the right day of the year and the right time of the day.

It is interesting how habits creep their way in and out of our lives.

When I arrived in Navarre late in 2018, it was my habit to work out four to five days a week.

Resilient seems to be the most fitting word to describe the senior athletes who will walk across the stage at graduation Saturday inside the Bay Center in Pensacola.

It’s fitting because it took a lot of resilience mixed in with mental toughness and a willingness to adapt to get through a senior season that was anything but normal.

In the days before mass-marketing, big box retailing and internet sales, people had to create their own solutions to the wants and needs of daily life.

The results were based on the materials at hand and were often imaginative, but sometimes bordering on the absurd.

Helen Keller wrote, “I cried because I had no shoes until I met a man with no feet.”

Blind for most of her life, Keller’s fame as an author and human rights activist shows that she chose not to wallow in self-pity. I must confess, I have wallowed in the past, only recently in fact.

As I’m writing this on Tuesday, it is Navarre Press’s 21st anniversary May 25, 2021.

It is difficult to believe it has been that long, especially since our community is working on some of the same issues we were facing 20 years ago.