In search of today’s “real” America: Welcome to Tampa?

The next time I get into one of those verbal political brawls that include aging boomers reminiscing about their bucolic lives in “Back-when-I,” an, I am certain, perfectly splendid picket-fence of a hometown, I’m hauling out this nugget from Nate Silver: If you want...

Build two parking garages in Key West? Please, no

The most popular tourist game these days is searching for that single, elusive parking spot. Top down on the signature rented orange Camaro, there they go around the block, the one riding shotgun pointing to, oops, not that one. If locals talk ceaselessly about...

Mosquitos and Zika virus: A challenge to Key West tourism

Nothing said summer in the old South like the taste of boiled peanuts, the smell of tobacco drying in the barns and a big, ol’ cloud of DDT wafting on the evening breeze. I was one of the mid-century modern barefoot kids running down the dusty North Carolina street...

Sharing bathrooms: The 1970s ERA argument redux

Seriously? We are arguing about sharing bathrooms again? Didn’t we get that out of our collective political systems in the five years it took to kill the Equal Rights Amendment? On March 22, 1972, Congress sent the simply worded, proposed 27th amendment to the...

What are we going to do with Florida’s old people?

Given our graying population and rising sea levels Florida should be the role model for managing old people and coping with flooding backyards. We aren’t, though in fairness to Florida, neither is any other state. Americans — outside of deep-thinking tank...

No guns at the conventions — but Smathers Beach is OK

In the spirit of “we ain’t got the good sense God gave a goose,” we’re fixing to tar-and-feather poor “Jim,” the West Coast anti-gun guy who started that petition to allow folks to carry guns inside the arena at this summer’s...