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Standing above one’s peers has several advantages. In most cases, the tall individual will be immediately noticed and usually recognized, hopefully for positive and refined qualities. The elevated individual eventually attracts those with similar attributes in both altitude and other features. This collection has been referred to by a variety of terms. If a positive…

With the COVID-19 pandemic still with us, it would be helpful to contrast it with an epidemic that all but wiped the city of St. Joseph off the map. Off Garrison Avenue in Port St. Joe can be found all that remains of the lost city of St. Joseph, where the Old St. Joseph Cemetery…

Think for a moment about that person who annoys you. You know, the one whose actions or attitudes drive you crazy and make you want to run the other way when you see them coming. Most of us can name at least one person in our circle of influence we consider annoying. Some can think…

Apalachicola’s Chestnut Cemetery has a collection of some of the finest hand-carved headstones in the state, worthy of preservation and presentation. In an April talk as part of the Apalachicola Area Historical Society’s speaker series, Margo Stringfield, an expert from Pensacola’s University of West Florida on the state’s historic cemeteries, engaged the audience at the…

“True luxury is being able to own your time – to be able to take a walk, sit on your porch, read the paper, not take the call, not be compelled by obligation.” – Ashton Kutcher There is something right about a porch on a house. It doesn’t even matter what kind of house; whether it’s a…

If you haven’t visited the Orman House, and the adjacent Chapman Botanical Gardens, you are missing the blossoming back into life of what has become a sprawling portrait of Apalachicola’s history. With the early 19th-century house, administered under the auspices of the Florida Park Service, shuttered during the COVID-19 pandemic, and the Chapman Gardens becoming…

When America entered into World War II, Willie McNair Sr. was a man of 22. He would go on to serve  overseas in the Pacific, as part of the forces of the U.S. Army that would vanquish and occupy Japan. That was more than 75 years ago, and last Friday evening, on the occasion of…