I don’t believe in setting aside
one day a year as Thanksgiving Day, especially in the ‘age of COVID-19’. Liz and I will be celebrating separate from our families this year, but that's OK. I have always thought that we should be thankful more often than once a year, on the fourth Thursday
of November. We should take the time during this week and the next and the next
to show gratitude to everyone who has made a difference in our lives.
When life is going well, gratitude
allows us to celebrate and magnify the goodness. But what about when life goes
badly, like these past nine months? In the midst of the pandemic and the economic
maelstrom that has gripped our country, should we feel grateful under such awful
circumstances? Yes. It is essential. In fact, it is precisely under crisis conditions when we have the most to gain by a grateful perspective on life.
Trials and suffering can actually refine and deepen gratefulness if we allow them to show us not to take things for granted. Thanksgiving, was born and grew out of hard times. The first Thanksgiving took place after nearly half the pilgrims died from a rough winter and year. It became a national holiday in 1863 in the middle of the Civil War and was moved to its current date in the 1930s following the Depression.
According to Robert Emmons at Berkley, when times are good, people take prosperity for granted and begin to believe that they are invulnerable. In times of uncertainty, though, people realize how powerless they are to control their own destiny. If you begin to see that everything you have, everything you have counted on, may be taken away, it becomes much harder to take it for granted. But gratitude does not come easily or naturally in a crisis. It’s easy to feel grateful for the good things. In
the face of demoralization, gratitude has the power to energize. In the face of
brokenness, gratitude has the power to heal. In the face of despair, gratitude
has the power to bring hope. In other words, gratitude can help us cope with
hard times. I agree!
So if you are distant from family and friends on Thanksgiving this year because of the pandemic, it really is OK. Hopefully by next year, we will be back to what is more normal. Hopefully, we will be grateful that we all got through this awful time together and will be sitting at the Thanksgiving table together, intact. And in the meantime, just be grateful every single day for what we DO have!
My success as a Realtor in
Sarasota, Florida relies on the recommendations and support of those close to
me, and I want to take a moment and say a heartfelt thank you to my wife, Liz,
who is the wind beneath my wings, to my family and friends, to Re/Max Alliance Group and to all of the loyal
people in my life who continuously support me. I am very, very grateful.
I wish you and your family a Happy Thanksgiving...stay safe and be well!
I bet most of you have a container of orange juice in your refrigerator. I do. I drink it every morning and add it to margaritas
on the weekends. Those of us who grew up in Florida like I did probably take OJ for granted. My wife grew up in Southgate, which was an orange grove before
homes were built there. Her home, as did all the homes on her street, had a row
of orange trees in the backyard. As kids, we always had numerous mason jars of
fresh squeezed OJ in our freezer…we rarely had to buy it! But when we did buy
it, Tropicana was one of the only choices. I recently had to be in Bradenton
and drove past their huge plant and waited at the railroad tracks for a train
carrying tons of oranges. The “juice trains,” as they are now known, used to be white
but now are all orange and serve as a powerful form of advertising, running 10
trips each week to Jersey City and Cincinnati. Additional shipments trek 3,000
miles to California in specially-equipped refrigerated cars.
At one point, Tropicana`s machines in the plant processed
700 oranges a minute, automatically extracting all the juice at a rate of up to
1.3 million gallons a day, while oils are removed from the peels and the peels
are processed into cattle feed high in protein and carbohydrates.
So here’s little history of OJ! Anthony T. Rossi, was an
Italian immigrant who arrived in the U.S. with just $25. Florida orange juice
proved to be liquid gold. Rossi founded Tropicana in Bradenton in 1947,
delivering fresh-squeezed juice to local residents. In 1954, he found a way to
pasteurize the juice and was soon shipping millions of gallons around the
country.
By 1970, Tropicana shipped bulk orange juice via insulated
boxcars in a weekly round-trip from Florida to Kearny, New Jersey. By the
following year, the company ran two 60-car trains a week, each carrying
approximately 1 million gallons of juice. That was the year the “Great White
Juice Train” (the first unit train in the food industry, consisting of 150
100-ton insulated boxcars) began service over the 1,250-mile route. An
additional 100 cars were soon added to the fleet with small mechanical
refrigeration units installed to control temperature. Tropicana saved $40
million in fuel costs alone during the first 10 years in operation. Rossi’s
immense success in the fresh orange juice market earned him the title: “The
Father of Chilled Juice in Florida.” In 1978, Rossi retired and sold Tropicana
for nearly $500 million!
Today Tropicana, now a division of PepsiCo, is the world’s
largest producer of branded juice. And although citrus greening and changing
tastes have reduced consumption in recent years, the average American still
drinks more than three gallons of the sweet, sunny-hued beverage a year. Their
juice is 100 percent oranges. A 59-ounce container contains juice from 16 fresh
oranges and a tiny amount of natural oils from the peel. Juice extractors squeeze
34,000 oranges per minute and the plant processes 48 million oranges and fills
2.5 million containers in one day, for a total of 900 million containers per
year.
The processing plant operates 24 hours, seven days a week, employing
employs 900 workers. There are 2,000 to 2,500 workers who pick oranges. About
95% of Florida’s orange crop goes to juice. Sadly, citrus greening disease has dropped Florida orange
production from 244 million boxes in 1998 to 70 million this season. Florida
produces 49 percent of U.S. oranges, just behind California, where greening
hasn’t hit commercial groves.
So enjoy a glass of Liquid Gold OJ…made in America, made in
Florida, made right here at Tropicana! Cheers!
When I was a kid in Sarasota, I spent many hours outside, climbing the banyan trees in my neighborhood, riding my bike, running on the beach and many other outdoor activities that most kids do. I was a Boy Scout and spent those days camping and roaming the woods and enjoying nature at Camp Flying Eagle. Then we grow up and get too busy for our own good. We think we have to 'go on vacation' to spend time playing outside as adults. And now that we have a really good reason to spend time in the fresh air, we just don't do it enough.
The COVID-19 pandemic has tended to keep most us close to home and thankfully, we can work from home most of the time. But sometimes, we want to get away! We are
being very careful so we don’t go out to dinner or to concerts and plays and
the like. But this can lead to ‘cabin fever’. Knowing that spending time
outside in the fresh air is fairly safe if social distanced, we plan to ‘park
it' more often, especially now that Fall is right around the corner and we have a ton of places in Sarasota to choose from.
Beyond Sarasota County's beautiful beaches, shopping, dining and cultural
amenities, there really is something else to make you feel better…get a glimpse of Sarasota’s
"natural" side and its authentic beauty in our area parks! Sarasota county is home to many local parks and some of
Florida's beautiful state parks as well, including Myakka River State Park, Spanish Point, Oscar
Scherer State Park and Myakka State Forest. All are unique and feature a
special, pristine Florida.
Everybody benefits from the offerings our parks provide. Direct exposure to nature has its own benefits on mental health, reducing stress and increasing happiness. In our increasingly digital world, unplugging is more important than ever. Being outdoors makes you healthier and happier. Fortunately, you don’t need to drive for days to a remote national park or drop
a grand on fancy gear to enjoy the life-improving power of the outdoors. The
nature fix you crave is closer than you think. There are so many reasons to
head to one of Sarasota’s parks and take a refreshing break. Even walking for 25 minutes through a greenspace has
positive benefits for your brain.
We
have easy access to park and recreation amenities. You should just go. Put your cellphone down. Turn off the dang news. We all need peace and tranquility in this crazy world. Go sit on a bench and catch up with nature.
People watch. Bring a picnic lunch. Take in the sunset. That's the best thing about most parks! You
don't really need to have a plan or have to “do” anything to enjoy—and benefit
from—them. Simply going for walk by yourself is reason enough. Be a kid again!
Here is a link to help you find an area park that’s just right for you…you won’t believe how many there are to choose from!
One of our favorite parks is Historic Spanish Point...take a look at this video and if you haven't been and would love a quiet walk through Florida history, GO!
When I was a teenager, my first job experience was working
with my dad. He was a builder in Sarasota who bought empty lots, built spec
houses one at a time and sold them. I was exposed to every aspect of building a
home and after I put in my time in the Air Force, I had a few other professions,
including…building houses again. Everything back then was by the book…literally.
There were no computers to design houses, order materials for houses or MLS
software to sell houses. But then it happened. The thing that tied everything
together for me later in life. Computers.
My first computer did not have a hard drive or a mouse and
had to be booted with a 5 ¼ floppy disk which loaded the operating system. Then
another floppy had to be loaded with whichever program I wanted to run, such as
a spreadsheet or a word processing program. The year was about 1988 and I had
been bitten by the computer bug. I found it fascinating, logical and I began
learning on my own.
Fast forward to 1998. In what seems like a decade that
flew by, computers had exploded into our everyday world. At that time, I was a
computer programmer and trainer. I taught DOS, accounting and programming classes at what was then known as Sarasota VoTech, and became SCTI, Suncoast
Technical Institute. I was also a private computer consultant to small local businesses and I built and sold computers on the side. I finally decided I needed to reinvent myself using what
I know and love, so in 1998, I began my career as the IT (Information Technology) Director
at Re/Max Properties, now known as Re/Max Alliance Group. Back then, pretty
much everything concerning buying and selling homes was still on paper;
only the business systems and accounting were managed on computers.
These were the early days of transitioning to MLS software on
the computer and more importantly in today’s world, moving from paper to
paperless Real Estate transactions. At that time, not many of the Agents had
personal computers, but that changed quickly and my Re/Max office grew and
built a much larger building. It was my job to set up the entire network of
hundreds of computers and related equipment in this new office to take us
forward into the 21st century. I have memories of my wife Liz
crawling around on the floor, hooking up the network drops for all the new
computer workstations & printers for the agents. For the next 10 years, I
held their hands when they were frustrated with all the new technology; I
trained them on all the various software programs needed to do transactions…and
we spewed out a LOT of paper! Our Re/Max office and the department I managed was
one of the first Real Estate offices in Florida where transactions became paperless! We had entered the world of online forms that could be filled
out and signed virtually.
After 10 years of serving the staff and agents and Re/Max…and
learning from them, I decided it was time to use everything I had learned,
reinvent myself again and become a Realtor. Fast forward again to today. Now I
fly through home searches on MLS, sign offers and contracts online, manage my
client contacts from special software programs (as opposed to a Roladex!),
create timelines for all of our sales, set up property showings online, open
locks with my cellphones to show homes…it’s a completely different world. And
in such a short amount of time! Magic! Had it not been for the ability to
conduct business online virtually, this ‘age of COVID19’ would have been devastating
to our business.
The introduction and adoption of technology by Real Estate
agents has clearly provided access to information such as listings, mortgage
rates, fees and neighborhood demographics--previously unavailable to consumers.
That increase in the quantity of available information has led to better
quality information which, in turn, has led to better-informed consumers. Armed
with more information, clients have demanded more specialized services as well
as better service from Real Estate agents such as myself.
As it turned out, I was was heavily involved in every aspect of the housing industry, from building the product to helping design some of the original Real Estate contract online systems, to getting the property information from multiple brokerages online, and finally helping the public find the ideal home for themselves. I was
literally on the ground floor of all of this…building homes, the computer
revolution and selling homes. I am grateful that for the past 12 years, I have been able to pass on my expertise as a Realtor to assist
my clients and help them find just the right home in my hometown…Sarasota!
While thinking of things to do outside in the fresh air
during the COVID-19 pandemic, I happened to drive by Bobby Jones Golf Course on
my way home. I have not played golf in years, but enjoyed it when I did and now
Bobby Jones is undergoing changes with a smaller course and adding walking park…right up my alley! This got me thinking about the history of golf in my home town of Sarasota.
It’s a very popular pastime, especially for retirees who move to the Sarasota
area.
Did you know that there are over
90 golf courses in the Sarasota/Manatee area? But Bobby Jones was one of the
first ‘real’ courses. Was this the first golf course in America? Some say so. Let's let others argue about who was
first, but to be sure, Sarasota was certainly a precursor of golf in the United
States.
According to Sarasota History Alive, John Hamilton Gillespie
built Sarasota's first golf course in 1905. It was a nine-hole course located in what
is considered downtown today. It was Sarasota's only golf course until the
1920s. In 1924, the course was sold for development and Sarasota did not have a
golf course. The first 18-hole course built was Whitfield Estates Country Club.
To help promote the new course, famed golfer Bobby Jones came to Whitfield
Estates at the request of the developers. The City of Sarasota was eager to
build a golf course and purchased 290 acres, located 2 ½ miles from downtown,
from the Palmer Estate and the East End Land Company. The 18-hole course was
formally opened on Sunday, February 13, 1927, before a gallery of 1,500
golfers, with Bobby Jones as the star attraction and it was decided to name the
course after Jones to “give it prestige.” The first members of the club read
like a who's who of prominent early Sarasotans. Some of these members were
early politicians Hugh Browning, Harry Higel, and of course, John Hamilton
Gillespie, physicians Jack and Joseph Halton, landowners Owen Burns, Ralph
Caples, Honore Palmer and J.H. Lord. The club drew up rules for the
organization and by-laws for playing golf on the course. To play golf for the
winter season cost $10. For those who did not want to commit to an entire
season, the fee structure was $5 for one month, $2 for one week and 50 cents
for one day.
During its eighty three years, Bobby Jones courses have
challenged such immortals as Walter Hagen, Tommy Armour, Gene Sarazen and even
the “Babe”, George Herman Ruth. Past LPGA greats including Patty Berg, Babe
Dedrickson Zaharias and Louise Suggs made Bobby Jones a regular tour stop in
the mid 1950’s. The current British Course record is 62 set by Sarasotan, Paul
Azinger, in 1980. Over the years, Sarasota’s Bobby Jones Golf Complex attracted
visitors from around the world who come to play the fairways and greens steeped
in golfing history. And even after taking a dip in membership and revenues, it
has been given new life as a smaller course with 27 holes and the surrounding 130
acres given over to green space, bike paths and nature trails. Hurrah!
After Whitfield Estates/SaraBay and Bobby Jones came Bent
Tree, TPC Prestancia, Concession Club and on and on until now we have over 90 golf courses in our area! Some people worry about the future of golf, but to be honest I believe
this game will always have a place in people’s hearts, whether it be for enjoying
nature, exercise or competition…just get out there and enjoy! And if you are looking to buy a home in the Sarasota-Bradenton area that offers golf, let me know and I'll help you find just the right thing!
Top left: animal trough, Top Right: Flag pole & Traffic Light
Bottom: New Five Points Roundabout!
Perhaps you have lived in cities that have roundabouts and you are used to them. For those of us who grew up in Sarasota, for many years, there
were only a few of them – St. Armand’s Circle, Five Points in downtown Sarasota
and and Southgate Circle where Siesta Drive and Tuttle meet up. But now…WOW! It
seems they are popping up everywhere to confuse and confound us with first, the
construction and then…how to navigate them. So I got curious about them and
here’s a little history.
Roundabouts, also known as traffic circles and rotaries, have
been around almost a century, with the first documented one in the U.S. built
in 1905 on the southwest corner of Central Park in New York City and named
after Christopher Columbus. Carmel, California now has more than 125 roundabouts, more
than any other city in the United States. Half of the world's roundabouts are
in France although the United Kingdom has more as a proportion of the road than
any other country. There are no official statistics, but estimates of the total
number of traffic circles in France range from 20,000 to 50,000.
In the United
States — about 18 times bigger and five times more populous than France — the
figure is closer to 5,000. One national study of roundabout trends found about
1,300 of them in Florida, more than any other state in the nation!
Although a seemingly new concept here in Sarasota to assist
traffic flow or cause major mayhem...depending on your point of view...the
roundabout has been a part of the local Sarasota scene since before Henry
Ford’s Model T put the masses on wheels and in hospitals, according to local
historian, Jeff LaHurd. Sarasota, in fact, was among the first communities in
Florida, if not the entire United States, to center an object in the middle of
an intersection and expect pedestrians and their conveyances to circumnavigate
without bodily harm. Around 1887, John Hamilton Gillespie placed a public
trough in the center of Five Points, at the time Sarasota’s busiest
intersection, where Main Street, Pineapple and Mango (today’s Central Avenue)
converged.
That was about 23 years before Sarasota’s
first car to town, and while it did not have to share the roadway, there is no
documentation that a car ever came in contact with a person or a
horse-drawn buggy while circling the intersection. The trough was replaced in
1917 by a flag pole dedicated to Sarasota’s soldiers and sailors who were then
fighting in Europe during World War I. No one argued that automobiles, then
starting to make their presence felt downtown, could not get around it without
running into one another. Along the small base was the simple but prudent
instruction, “Keep To The Right.” Visionary
developer John Ringling also must have been a proponent of traffic circles. His
1925 sales brochure for Ringling Isles featured Harding Place, a roundabout
known today as St. Armand’s Circle.
And as to Five Points downtown, the slim flag pole with the
small base standing like a lonely sentinel in the
middle of the street was
replaced by a more formidable roundabout, the American Legion War Memorial. It,
too, was dedicated to the doughboys of World War I. A traffic light was affixed
to it, topped off with a flag pole. Around the base, in bold letters, “KEEP TO
RIGHT” and “NO LEFT TURN”. Liz’s Dad, artist John Hardy, depicted it in a
two-page spread in the Sarasota Herald Tribune in 1951 as ‘The Hub of a Great Art
Center’ in a wonderful drawing. But in 1954, the State Road Department bestowed
upon it the term “traffic hazard.” And away it went, rolled down to Gulf Stream
Avenue and placed in today’s Rev. J.D. Hamel Park, leaving South Gate Circle
from the 1950s, and St. Armands Circle as the area’s roundabouts. Very
recently, that has all changed.
Today, roundabouts are all the rage in Sarasota, in both
senses of the word, keeping the flow of traffic moving safely and more
efficiently -- or not. The roundabouts in the City of Sarasota have been part
of city’s vision to improve connectivity and traffic flow for at least 20 years. That
vision came to life when the traffic lights at Five Points were torn down in
2010 to make way for downtown’s central intersection roundabout. Now, there are
eight completed roundabouts in the city and three under construction. These projects are expected to help alleviate
traffic woes along U.S. 41 in northern Sarasota, while beautifying the area and
boosting business at many of the struggling intersections. The roundabouts, to
be built incrementally, also were designed to encourage more pedestrian
traffic and so we are back to the days of our parents and grandparents...walking around downtown!
For those of us who are NOT used to driving around them, here's a great video about how to navigate roundabouts:
As a consequence of staying safe at home during the COVID-19
pandemic, one of the silver linings for me and for my wife is enjoying the
wildlife in our backyard more than we usually do. I do not consider myself as a
serious birdwatcher (my wife is) but I can certainly say it’s been relaxing to watch a
pair of cardinals raise their two babies, along with the Redwing Blackbird and
Tufted Titmouse’s little ones. We regularly see Redtailed Hawks as well as Osprey
and Cormorants hunting for fish and prey. We have three bird feeders along with suet for
the songbirds We also have two ground feeders filled with cracked corn for our resident
ducks that live around our lake, which include Wood Ducks, Mallards,
Black-bellied Whistling Ducks and Mottled Ducks. We have also had the rare
pleasure of observing Roseate Spoonbills, Wood Storks and Sandhill Cranes along
with gators, otters and three types of turtles! All told, my wife has
identified 42 different birds in our little ‘aviary’ out back.
The only other place
close by for us to see all of this is The Celery Fields. It may seem to be a strange name
for the county-owned preserve and home of the Sarasota Audubon Society’s Nature
Center, so here’s a little history of yet another wonderful place to be outdoors in
my hometown.
The Celery Fields got it name because of the area’s long
history as an agricultural center where winter vegetables and, of course celery, were grown for consumption locally and for shipment nationwide. Area
roads, with names such as “Packinghouse” and “Albritton Avenue” attest to the
neighborhood’s long-standing agricultural heritage. The Celery Fields in east
Sarasota just off Fruitville Road, has been important agriculturally and
ecologically for more than 100 years, with the family of landowner Mrs. Bertha
Palmer farming vegetables, predominantly celery, in the rich muckland from
about 1920 on.
Construction of the Celery Fields began in 1923 and the main
canals were finished by 1926. An experimental farm of 2,000 acres was set up and
although different vegetables were tried, by 1927, it was decided to grow
predominantly celery. Roads were built across the area and ditches served
10-acre tracts and artesian wells served two 10-acre tracts. The fields became
part of a massive flood control project the county participated in to help
quickly move storm water from the Phillipi Creek basin after severe flooding
damaged scores of homes in the area in the aftermath of several heavy rain
events in the early 1990s. The spoil hill was formed by the dredging of the farms,
which were sold off as private units, continued to produce celery.
With the
added water diverted to the fields came more fish and with more fish, more
wading birds, especially avian hunters like Osprey’s and Kingfishers. With
input from local naturalists and other members of the local chapter of the
Audubon Society, shore vegetation like elderberry, saltbush and cord grass was
planted. In 1995, Sarasota County acquired much of the land and the
360-plus-acre site now serves for flood mitigation and lucky for us, as a home
to wildlife, walking and biking trails, birders and The Sarasota Audubon Nature
Center.
We hope The Celery Fields can remain pristine forever for
all the nature lovers out there such as ourselves. Liz and I feel grateful to not
only have it close by, but to have our very own little nature preserve right in
our own backyard. The important thing is to take the time to enjoy it. Stay safe, be well and remember to revel in all the beautiful things around you!
