In Florida, zoning boards are statutorily required and used to ensure controlled land development. They review applications for variances, special uses and rezoning requests and send their decisions and recommendations to the Board of County Commissioners.
Nearly 365 days ago, the Jay baseball team was on a field on a muggy night in Fort Myers celebrating its first state championship in more than a half century.
Last Tuesday night in Bonifay, nearly two hours from home, the season came to end as the Royals lost Game 2 to top-ranked Holmes County by a 3-1 score.
With the recent death of Pope Francis, the Roman Catholic Church has scheduled a conclave to begin on May 7. As a former Roman Catholic, now a born-again Christian, and a protestant pastor, I am interested in the conclave’s election process, so I decided to watch the 2016 Oscar-winning movie “Conclave.”
In 1999, congress declared May would be National Military Appreciation Month so the citizens of our country could publicly thank everyone who puts on the uniform of their branch of service.
It’s time to take a step back in the sports world and restore some sanity to it.
Because when you have someone make a threat to shoot an umpire, that’s a problem. A big problem.
One of the required courses in the seminary from which I got my degree was apologetics. For those not familiar with the term, apologetics is not a course in which you learn how to say you are sorry in meaningful ways. The term comes from the Greek word apologia which means “to make a defense” and is found in the Apostle Peter’s first letter to the churches in Asia Minor. He exhorts Christians to turn away from evil and be zealous for what is good, and “in your hearts honor Christ the Lord as holy.” Knowing that such a life will be noticed in a world that does not honor Christ the Lord as holy nor is typically zealous for what is good, he continues, “always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and respect.” The field of apologetics is engaged in teaching Christians how to defend the Christian faith.
The Ibis Road and Maikaira Ridge debacle has been at the forefront of Milton’s news for a couple of weeks now – though its roots stretch back over two decades. And this latest chapter of problems and actions and reactions has brought even more issues into focus.
Last week I was writing about my critics and this week I started scanning pages of one hundred-year-old copies of the Milton Gazette, which is now the Santa Rosa Press Gazette. I found the following printed on May 1, 1925 – which could have been my column last week – just said in a different way…
It’s easy to focus on the athletic talent of an athlete. But don’t ignore what they do in the classroom either.
There are a ton of athletes who get the job done on and off the court, not only locally at the high school level, but when they go off to college as well.
I used to make my living as a professional guitarist, and there is a universally shared experience among guitarists who have played in bands. At some point in your performance, someone is going to shout out, “Freebird! Freebird!” For those who don’t know, Freebird is a song by the southern-rock band Lynyrd Skynyrd, and it features several iconic guitar solos. I have heard that request often and most of my 6-string colleagues have as well. For the many times we’ve been asked to play the song, you’d think that we would take the time to learn it. I never have, and neither have any of my guitar playing friends. Perhaps, deep down, we fear that, were we to play it, we would be disrupting a long-established order of things.
