Letters to the editor with pictures since 2002.
Published on Big Pine Key’s garbage pick-up days,
Tuesdays and Fridays.
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 [Tropical Fruit] I have a family-operated tropical fruit farm on Big Pine Key. We have been growing a large number of species of natives, rare palms, and other trees for forty years. About 12 years ago we started to focus on fruit trees and we were just getting in to production then Hurricane Irma pretty much wiped us out. We replanted a number of trees and established another farm on a property we acquired on the mainland. The new site is better suited for a number of species, like Lychee, Jaboticaba, Avocado.About four weeks ago I inquired about renting a space at the Fruit Fiesta to be held at the county park on Big Pine Key. I talked to the county agriculture agent and everything seemed fine. A day or so later I received an email from the agent saying that their team decided I could sell other plants but not my fresh organic tropical fruit or my fruit trees since it would compete with other vendors. Since their signs said local venders welcome, and I am local and I grow all the organic fruit that I was planning on selling, I was very surprised. The fruit trees I wanted to sell where all grown and mostly grafted by me. I asked who made the decision as to who could sell fruit and received no answer. I also asked why they would give preferential treatment to others. I also pointed out that it was in the interest of the general public to have more sellers since I would have mango varieties, and other fruit that other venders were unlikely to have. Not to mention that my prices would be cheaper. I was wondering if anyone else had a similar experience with this event. |
| [Luck] You can’t always be unlucky. |
[Pennies Bad] Get rid of pennies. Remember the useless $2 bill? Pennies are useless, that’s why there’s no cent key on a qwerty keyboard. Save the quarter, it’s very useful. |
| [Passing the Buck] Ever hear of utility company or other server entity that actually admits fault? I went thru such an event with the water company a few years back. “It couldn’t be their meter was faulty” They said I had a leak. They made me jump thru the hoops and guess what, their great hi-tech water meter was screwed up! |
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| [Missing Irma Big Pine Key Group] The Administrator of the group Herve Thomas passed away 13 months ago and we cant get the Admin switched on the website. There’s not an active Admin to approve your group admittance. |
Air Force One plane has a paint problem (among many other issues). Link |
| The rifle itself has no moral stature, since it has no will of its own. Naturally, it may be used by evil men for evil purposes, but there are more good men than evil, and while the latter cannot be persuaded to the path of righteousness by propaganda, they can certainly be corrected by good men with rifles.” |
This lithium-ion battery kept going (and going and going) in the extreme cold. Subzero temperatures were no match for the experimental battery. Link |
| [Passwords] Apple’s passkeys could be better than passwords. Here’s how they’ll work. Can a new system improve the way we sign into websites and apps? Link |
White line fever |
| [Puppy Meal Wheel] It’s dinner time for this pack of seven Doberman puppies so they all gather around the food bowl and create the puppy pinwheel. Video |
[ X-Files Trailer] The tenth season of X-Files commenced January 24, 2016. Video |
| [Misogyny] When men give up their role as head of the household, become feminized and allow women to run the roost, that’s what happens. -reinstate the draft and the real boot camp -abolish the 19th Amendment. Short of that, we’re doomed. Even most real women agree with this. |
[Big Pine Adventurer] Greer Broome taking a break from playing in the water at Picnic Island. Of all the places we’ve learned to visit at Big Pine, Picnic Island seemed to be the “it” place. |
| [“War guns”] So, what are you saying? What that poster said was that he/she has no idea of what the laws are but bitches and moans about things not understood for the lust of it! These types are what is destroying our country. |
 Fort Myers’s first cattleman, Jalee Summerlin, bartered the twenty slaves of his inheritance for his first herd of six thousand head in the 1840s. He was a veteran of the Seminole Wars and a pioneer cattleman on the Alachua Prairie, moving huge herds with his cowboys and a grub wagon all the way from the St. Johns River |
| [Destroying Knowledge] After hearing that Mayans were still offering sacrifices, the Catholic missionary, Father Landra, ordered the priests to burn the entire Mayan library in the Yucatan, putting an end to Mayan writing. The evil priest thought the writings themselves were evil. He convened an inquisition thinking writing represented evil. He killed and maimed hundreds of simple people for god’s glory. |
[Ahead of His Time] Technically Moses was the first man to download files from the cloud using a tablet. |
| [Who Is He?] He was incomparably skilled at pulling the strings of his listeners’ emotions and successful at playing on not only their fears and resentments, but also their hopes and desires. He was a virtuoso at reeling people in. He hit a nerve not only with what he said, but how he said it. The agitated state into which he regularly worked himself seemed genuine and authentic, and his audience overlooked his tendency to lay loose with the facts and interpret them in extremely idiosyncratic ways. He was interested not in the truth of his statements, but in whether they produced the maximum effect. Right from the beginning he was a master of lies and deceit. He had no relationship to the truth of what had been. It seemed that, to suit his needs, he could forget some facts while convincing himself of others. He combined his speaking talent with a sophisticated sense of effective staging, for magical settings and light effects. ~Hitler by Volker Ullrich |
I too was out back last Thursday when it was dead calm—and silent. There was no breeze or water slapping at the hull—just silence. Not too many people get to experience true silence. This is what it’s all about |
| [Monkeypox] Forget it! Folks just aren’t interested. We’re done with sickness. |
Sugar is hiding everywhere in today’s widely-accepted diet, but meanwhile its devastating effects are creating more deaths than automobile accidents. Video |
| [Guilty Conscience] Nobody innocent has ever asked for a presidential pardon before being accused of a crime. |
[Cordless Hose] Home Depot releases new Bluetooth Cordless Garden Hose. You can find this product in the blinker fluid aisle. |
| [High Insurance Rates] “Woman Contracted STD in Car Awarded $5.2M.” And you wonder why auto insurance rates are high? Link |
 [No Joke] $5.07 gas on Big Pine Key Thursday. It’s the best gas money can buy. |
| [Guns] They do not fire on their own. Men fires them. But just think of the pleasant world, if there were no guns. No guns, no problem. |
 [“Tropical fruit festivals”] There is a tropical fruit festival at the county park in Big Pine next Saturday, the 18th. There is a tropical fruit festival at the Truman White House next Saturday, the 18th. Why isn’t there one at Grimal Grove on Big Pine Key? Whose idea was it to schedule them both on the same day? And why limit it to those two? Why is Grimal Grove discriminated against? |
| [Frankenfish] Cloned crayfish accidentally created in an aquarium are conquering the world. Link |
 [Bathroom Ghost] Have you ever witnessed something you believed was supernatural? During the Christmas season, after my husband died suddenly in June, I took my two daughters, ages 4 and 9, to a department store to get our Christmas pictures taken. When we entered the store they both needed the restroom. We were all still in a state of shock and trauma from their father’s sudden death and the girls had bickered and verbally sparred, the entire 30 minute car ride to the store. My nerves were shot long before that. I was a wreck.We entered the restroom, which had three stalls. They went into the first two stalls and began talking back and forth while I stood leaning on the sinks near the door. A well dressed, middle aged, woman entered the restroom immediately after us. She looked me full in the face and smiled so warmly that it took me a bit off guard. I smiled back. Then she just stood there listening to my girls prattle on excitedly about Christmas, as she smiled. I thought it was a bit odd but sweet and it was only for several seconds. She then turned to me and said, “Children are such a great blessing, aren’t they?” Suddenly, I wanted to cry! In my grief and stress I’d almost forgotten what treasures my little girls were! I nodded and she entered the last stall. Within a second or two another woman entered. I said, “They’re all in use (the 3 stalls) but my daughters will be done in a sec.” The woman stepped back to the last stall and said, “No this one is empty,” as she opened the door and stepped into the stall the other woman had just entered and not exited. I have no idea who or what that woman was but she not only turned my day around, but maybe my life. |
Oh yes, you can! |
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