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Now We're Talking

Author:	Joe Byrnes	Created:	10/3/2006 12:31 PM
All about news and life in Marion County, Fla.

A parade to success
	By Joe Byrnes on 11/25/2006 4:33 PM

Years from now, when Chris Stevens is fighting fires, the leadership skills and teamwork he learned at Lake Weir High School could make the difference. Maybe then he'll look back on these years, and one moment will stand out -- maybe Thanksgiving Day 2006, when, as drum major, he led the marching band in the Chicago parade. The Hurricane Band -- about 50 musicians, plus drill team members and chaperones -- departed Candler by bus for Chicago around 6 a.m. Tuesday. They were to spend the night in Murfreesboro, Tenn., and arrive in Chicago today. The parade begins at 8:30 a.m., when the temperature should be 37 degrees. At 7:30 a.m. Monday -- as during football season -- the band was in the school parking lot for practice. The temperature was just right -- about 37 degrees. Only, in the parking lot, there weren't 350,000 spectators -- just Band Director John Leschak ...

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Home repairs: Carpe diem
	By Joe Byrnes on 11/18/2006 2:34 PM

Two weeks ago, with all the confidence of blissful ignorance, I asked for a Wednesday and Thursday off to fix the only bathroom in my old house. The vinyl-covered wooden floor was warping around the toilet and lavatory, apparently from a leak. I could take care of that in a couple of days, I thought, and still go fishing on Saturday. If you're the owner of an old house, you already know how terribly mistaken I was. First I decided to seize the opportunity and paint the room in subtle blue with white trim. I had to tear the floor up anyway. That put me way behind from the start. I scraped and sanded the doors and trim - this took a day and a half. Afterward, the little room was ready for paint, and I was already worn out, and, oh yeah, absolutely no closer to my goal. The logical next step, of course, was to fix the window.

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Congrats! Now the job description
	By Joe Byrnes on 11/11/2006 4:32 PM

So you won the election. Now you're charged with serving all the people of Marion County, or at least those in your district. We did not elect you to serve the gun lobby or the anti-gun lobby, to spread your religion from the state House or ignore the Ten Commandments, to drill the creativity out of our kids or leave them unprepared for life, to forget the poor or dishonor our veterans, to burden us with heavy taxes or let our roads clog up with traffic. We did not elect you to pave the way for developers or ignore the demands of population growth. No. We elected you to serve our needs and protect our rights. Forget those special interests, those developer dollars and those demands of party loyalty. Think only about what's good for your constituents. And what is that? You will have to answer that question repeatedly, with help from the 315,000 of us who live here ...

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Art fest a feast for eyes, soul
	By Joe Byrnes on 11/4/2006 9:47 AM

Sunday at the Ocala Arts Festival - what a day! The afternoon sky was a cloudless blue and the air was 75 degrees. It was full of the smells of popcorn and funnel cakes. Bands performed, dancers twirled, and, under a sprawling oak, a woman with long black hair strummed a harp and a man played a wooden flute. Like thousands of others, my wife and I strolled among the white tents. Many of the artists had painted, photographed or sculpted natural scenes and animals. Horses, fish and wading birds were everywhere. Some of the works evoked a smile. Others - like the precise Florida landscapes of Crystal River's Charles Rowe and the photographic insights of Ocala's Herb Arndt - left me staring in admiration. Among the flowers of art, each of us could find a favorite nectar. For me, it was the oil and beeswax paintings of South Florida's Natalie Salminen - all birds and b ...

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A YouTube for your government
	By Joe Byrnes on 10/28/2006 12:58 AM

Thanks to the Internet, the wit and wisdom of your County Commission is never more than a few mouse clicks away. Marion County announced recently that videos of commission meetings are being posted at marioncountyfl.org. The staff will post them within a couple of days of the regular twice-monthly meetings. The extra effort will help us follow our government and make decisions about our own votes. By the way, Dunnellon, though less than one-one hundredth Marion County's size, beat the county to the punch months ago by putting recordings of its meetings on dunnellon.org. The county videos, however, are much more convenient. Not only can you watch the entire meeting, you can select the specific agenda item you want to see. So the public has a new reason to address the County Commission at hearings or at the end of the agenda. People can tell their friends to check t ...

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Thanks for Avatar deal; now stay on task
	By Joe Byrnes on 10/27/2006 1:42 AM

I turned on the radio as I drove to Silver River State Park on Monday for the announcement that Florida would buy 4,471 acres to help protect the water quality of Silver Springs. On WOCA, there was a rerun of the "The Big Bad John Program," with County Commissioner Randy Harris ridiculing the idea of using state money to search for the ivory-billed woodpecker, which was previously believed to be extinct. Now scientists say they've spotted the elusive crow-sized bird in the Panhandle. It confused me to hear Harris talking about those silly environmentalists, because I knew he and others had worked relentlessly to get the state to spend millions for the Avatar property. That deal - made with help from The Nature Conservancy and more than $2 million from the county - is all about preserving our environment. My own experience of the springs and Silver River is for the birds - the limpkins, little bl ...

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An old friend in Hospice
	By Joe Byrnes on 10/21/2006 1:50 AM

Editor's Note: This column was published in today's paper. Frances died at 7:30 a.m. today, peacefully, in her sleep. I went to see an old friend Tuesday, a feisty redhead, a Scottish lady, a pioneer in the news business, an advocate for Marion County's farm kids. As a Star-Banner writer for decades and author every week of "That Reminds Me," Frances DeVore is a friend to many of you, as well. She turned 92 last week. Tuesday, Frances lay in a hospital bed at her house in Reddick. She had come home the night before, under Hospice care, after suffering kidney failure. Schnitzel, her small black dog, stayed quietly under the bed. Her stepdaughter, Penny Hull, leaned against the wall and her face was full of sadness and acceptance. The doctor had said Frances would die soon. Tuesday afternoon, she was unr ...

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No, Mr. Cretul, the election is in November
	By Joe Byrnes on 10/20/2006 2:12 AM

At the Ocala/Marion County Chamber of Commerce political forum Monday night, there were moments of mind-numbing tedium, flashes of hilarity and some useful debate. The laughs: John Wayne Smith, an independent with radical Libertarian ideas, offered up the concept of two-story highways! And state Rep. Larry Cretul couldn’t remember the date of Election Day. Is it in December? The discussions of growth and political philosophy among the Marion County Commission candidate are worth catching near the end of the nearly three-hour program. Below you’ll see the rebroadcast schedule for the local Education Channel stations, Cox, Channel 12; Bright House, Channel 17; Comcast, Channel 99; Cablevision of Marion County, Channel 13; Oak Run and Pine Run, Channel 19; and Ocala Palms, Channel 11. T ...

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Voter info-opportunities
	By Joe Byrnes on 10/15/2006 10:03 AM

For those of you interested in local politics, here’s a list of upcoming forums, thanks mostly to Susan Vogel, Marion County public information officer: 1) Oct. 16 at 5:30 p.m., the Ocala-Marion County Chamber of Commerce-sponsored Hobnob & Candidates Forum at the Ocala Hilton Hobnob admission is $15. To order tickets, call the chamber at 629-8051. It’ll be broadcast live on the Marion Education Channel. “There will be a live feed into the hobnob so that you can hear the candidates respond to a series of questions from a panel comprised of Chamber members,” according to the chamber Web site, www.ocalacc.com. This forum includes a long list of candidates. So you’ll get a glimpse, at least, of what each one is about. 2) Oct. 22 from 2 to 5 p.m., the Smart Growth Coali ...

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Let the children play
	By Joe Byrnes on 10/14/2006 1:57 AM

A couple years ago I learned the value of cruise control. I used to stress about my place in the traffic on Interstate 75 and seethe at drivers who cut me off or rode my bumper. Now I just let them drift past as my wife and I, coasting at 70 mph, talk politics or chat about the boys or relive some long-ago family feast. A report Monday by the American Academy of Pediatrics brought that lesson to mind. It relates, as I see it, to the joys of childhood and the anxiety that goes by the name of time management. You, too, may know the quiet horror of wasted time — of important things left undone — that gnaws at my thoughts. It is a symptom, I think, of middle age, when the minutes count against you as lost opportunities in the face of dwindling years. Every so often, I'll write down whole new sets of resolutions, with schedules and calendars and promises to rise early or ...

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Stearns and Keller discuss Foley
	By Joe Byrnes on 10/8/2006 11:05 AM

What have we learned in the past week? Well, for one thing, Americans should get to know their members of Congress, but should never leave their children alone in the House. In the latest scandal, U.S. Rep. Mark Foley, R-Fort Pierce, resigned after he was exposed for sending raunchy instant messages to underage former Capitol Hill pages. The House ethics committee and FBI have begun investigations. New details are steadily coming out about what House Speaker Dennis Hastert and other Republican leaders knew and when they knew it and what they didn't do to protect teenagers under their care. The whole situation is disturbing. But Rep. Thomas Reynolds, R-N.Y., especially got to me when he shirked responsibility by saying he passed questions about Foley on to Hastert, his "supervisor." Let's be clear. No other congressman is his supervisor, and Hastert is not your rep ...

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A theme for Marion

By Joe Byrnes on 10/6/2006 5:40 AM

Marion County songwriters can do better than the Ocala theme song written for our Tourism Development Council by a St. Augustine-area marketing consultant.

I made that boast a couple of weeks ago and asked local musicians to send in songs capturing the allure of this beautiful county. On the whole, I guess, most musicians expect to get paid for the hours it takes to write and record music.

But two songwriters did respond: Alan Height with a country music selection and Leslie Botello with lyrics. I think they did well.

Botello captures the calm, scenic and friendly qualities of Marion County that we need to value and preserve. Here's the beginning of the song:

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