• Jewish students at FAU are owed an apology
• Fountain pens, quill pens, old pens and nickel pencils
• Sean Hannity and the other radio jerks
• Trayvon Martin shooting requires federal investigation
• Words that ‘inspire’ can also be misused, as history of Ku Klux Klan in Florida shows
• Caffeine withdrawal can cause one heck of a headache
• Roosevelt Wilson will join us; we see Haley as Romney’s running mate
• Age may tell story as Romney and Gingrich face off in Florida
• GOP top candidates in Florida will have to overcome the deficits of age
• Maybe Robert Champion Jr. should have been home, studying
• Seminole football team deserves encouragement rather than doubt
• Mitt Romney hopes that this will not be his last supper in Tallahassee
• Did secession die with Jefferson Davis? Burial speech in Tallahassee praised new, unified country
• Moonpie and a Nehi
• Fewer bookstores and that uneasy feeling that we could have done more to prevent this loss
• End of world is around corner, authorities predict - While the demise of Earth is predicted, many people seem to be skeptical. ...
• Gore tells victim’s parents he has become different person; his death takes 19 minutes at Raiford - Remorseful killer David Alan Gore, strapped to gurney, was dead in 19 minutes after lethal injection. ...
• Bragging about what you’ve done can get you to the death chamber quite a bit faster - Prisoner set for execution April 12 could have learned a lot from Charles Profitt....
• FAMU professors patent new medication for schizophrenia - African-Americans suffer three times rate of schizophrenia says recent research ...
• Murder comes without any warning as rage can build in state’s prisons - Any prisoner can become dangerous and there are ways to make deadly weapons and time to do it. ...
• Many innocent may languish in prison on corrupt testimony, legislative payment shows - Dillon case, Pitts and Lee demonstrate that justice is sometimes difficult to come by in Florida...
• Clues to a murder: forensic botanist finds the little things in death - David Hall helps law enforcement trap the bad guys with botanical clues...
• Honduras jail fire recalls horrific Florida prison blaze where 38 perished amid lingering questions - A scene of racial fights, the Florida road prison in Jay exploded into fire in 1967, leaving truth yet to be fully told. ...
• Waterhouse executed proclaiming innocence - Convicted murderer Robert Waterhouse, 65, died by lethal injection at the Florida State Prison in Starke, with unsettling words....
• Florida Senate kisses an emotional goodbye to prison privatization - Public prisons get a valentine as senate proposal fails in a 19-21 vote; meanwhile, execution slated today...
• Group alleges more financial links to privatization; vote could be today - A watchdog group alleges that privatization backers have financial links the effort ...
• Florida A&M Rattlers have played in 25 of the 46 Super Bowls - Dallas star Bob Hayes won a Super Bowl ring and an Olympic gold medal. ...
• Freedom rider rabbi remembers his arrest in Tallahassee airport 50 years ago - Ministers eventually served sentence, worked as road crew before release from jail ...
• Second Harvest signature soups will help fight child hunger on Wednesday at Capitol - One in six people locally struggle for enough to eat ...
• Cancer patient slips away from hospital to give stranded bus riders a last Christmas gift - In his battle with cancer, he relied on city buses . . . and now he had a plan to help people who didn't know the buses were down for the day. ...
The green green grass of home
Spiders are spinning webs for autumn, telling the world it’s time for summer vacation.
No rain for a few days and the heat is oppressive. Our city finds itself in the Gulf latitudes and subject to all that warmidity.
Friends are out traveling all over the earth, something we want to do some day. But that someday slips by.
We admit to being moss-backed, but sometimes being at home can bring some curious satisfaction.
Not long ago my dog and I were roaming one of the Lake Jackson landings where the sparkling white water lilies and the gay yellow lotuses were popping out. We don’t remember both plants parading at once, but our mind sometimes plays tricks .
Our lab mix Kelev cantered for the water as we took in the scenery.
Suddenly, within a patch of weeds, we saw a striking, all-white white passion flower.
Not your ordinary combination purple and white passion flower. This was the first of its kind we had ever witnessed.
This lovely white vine flower, which the Spanish priests declared represents the passion of Christ in the New World, was climbing through an assortment of unspecified bushes, not too far from a good and fragrant supply of dog fennel. It was surely a variety that one can find only by the right combination of time and circumstance.
Gardeners know what I mean, and wildlife enthusiasts track the special grass pink orchids out in Liberty County that sprout only after the forest has burned. Special combinations, perhaps the early cool and late hot weather, had caused the passion vine to outcompete its foes. If this white passion vine bears fruit, we’ll be there to gather it in a few months and plant some of the seeds.
Archaeologists at San Luis tell us that the Apalachee Indians used the distinctive mellow tasting passion fruit for food.
They’ve found the seeds in their excavations.
Our second adventure occurred only a few days later when we were west of town, in and acid bog, investigating one of our favorite curiosities, the carnivorous plants. What my friend and I discovered was an astounding number of blooming white flowers of the venus fly-trap plants.
They were growing amid the other carnivorous plants such as the flat red sundew and the newly sprouting dewthreads, both of which catch unwary bugs with their special glistening glue.
Within the mouths of the carnivorous pitcher plants and in the folds of the leaves of the flytraps one could see evidence of the last struggle of various insects to climb out or eat their way out of doom.
Beautiful pink and white terrestrial orchids were nodding their heads, and dragonflies zoomed around.
A beefly, a fly that masquerades as a bee, posed over a clover, and the famous St. John’s wort, with its medicinal uses, dappled the bog.
Now, all of this is to say, that one does not need to stray far afield to find wonder.
Sometimes, it is found quite near the green, green grass of home.