All the hullabaloo about the
water releases into the Caloosehatchee River from Lake Okeechobee forty plus
miles south from our home is causing the water to turn brown and harming the
estuaries as well as the tourist business! (The reasoning is so those 35, 000
homes and people there would not get flooded from Lake O’s overflow, which is way beyond
what its capacity has been due to all this rain…Sure the Army Corps of Engineers should step in and
build another dike to shore up the waters, but the funding fell down on the
job… oh yeah, it was a go, but as you would have it the federal government has not done
what they should about the situation. Where have I heard this before?)
An alligator was even seen in
the Gulf of Mexico near the shoreline at the beach in Fort Myers, ordinarily unheard of!
You see, they are mostly
fresh water not salt water reptiles, although, we have had a few down our
saltwater canal here in Port Charlotte, but not recently, without any merging of
fresh and salt water here.
Our Governor Scott came down
to the area to tell the people south of us that he is authorizing 90 million
bucks to make a two and half mile bridge over towards the center southern part
of the state, and that will have the future waters, re-directed, going out to
the Everglades where the water will be filtered naturally and our southwest
friends will not have the brown muddy scary waters harming their local waters
or tourist industry!
Hip, hip, hooray!
But sadly, the hitch is, it
will take three years to build this project… oh well… isn’t that always the
way?
Bureaucracy at its finest!
Meanwhile due to all the
publicity locally and probably nationally that we, Florida, appears to get negatively, our
number one industry, tourist, is taking another nasty hit!
Why couldn’t we keep this one
little dirty secret to ourselves, hmm?
I think sometimes that is why
we have all these issues, telling people what’s going on down here.
So many other states practice the
state of mum-ness or hush, hush-ness!
Even when the tourists arrive
the news covers their expressions of distaste.
One even thought that we had
another oil spill!
DEAR PEOPLE, LISTEN UP! THAT
OIL SPILL OF 2010, NEVER CAME DOWN THIS FAR, BUT THE MEDIA FORGOT TO CLARIFY
THAT AND PEOPLE ASSUMED THAT IT HAD AND AGAIN THE TOURISTS STAYED AWAY!
Our Gulf coast has taken many
hits in these last few years other than natural disasters, and that is why I
truly believe when that woman said that the water looked as if it was another
oil spill someone should have said right away, no it was a chocolate spill and
we know how much you love chocolate! Now, who doesn’t, really!?
She would have spread the
word and the tourist industry would have been back on track…problem solved.
Crazy as it sounds; the water
is perfectly safe to swim in and has been tested. Sure there are algae blooms
down canals, south of here, not here, but the rain and the heat can cause them
too, why we have even had them in our back yard freshwater fish pond and our
fish are fine! The usual cause is runoff from fertilizers and such…sounds bad,
but here we are not allowed to use high nitrogen fertilizers during rainy
season, June 1st- thru- November 30th, every year, you
would think they too had the same rules, if you live on the water you must
respect the law! See not so terrible, really!?
Moving on…
Port Charlotte Florida’s homes have gone
up in value by 40% for some reason!
More so than any other county
in our state!
And the sales of homes here
have gone up too!
Due to no more overstocked
items, the glut has diminished and demand has gone way up for the lower
quantities of choices...
The only thing is… when the
value goes up, so must the taxes…Ben Franklin's quote "but in the world
nothing can be said to be certain except death and taxes.” How prophetic of the
man.
Finally…
Today is a very important
day, it was fifty years ago today that a great human being gave our country the
hope to make significant changes in how we get along with one another, all
people, the honorable Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. with his historic, I have a
dream speech and here it is: http://www.archives.gov/press/exhibits/dream-speech.pdf
It is six pages long, but
worth the read… I was thirteen when he originally spoke those words and
probably not as interested as I should have been, but over the years you grow and you learn and
greatness has a way of shinning through when truth, along with understanding
prevails.
Maturity resounds when one
takes the knowing of others trials and tribulations can make us all stand up
and take notice… I think that two years later is when I did finally did get it when
my parents and I went on the two month trek to see our fine country and every
major city we stayed in or passed through had race riots going on after we had left…talk
about getting that light bulb to go off I do believe that in 1965 was when I finally
started to get why this hatred of people had to stop the emotion in me became volatile too, but in a positive way… and of course when our
sons were small and watched Sesame Street and they too back in the 1970’s
talked about how people were like flowers all of us in different colors and shapes and sizes and
we're all beautiful in our own way!
On that note of my feelings
of this day and other none of my business nosiness sticking it, where it don’t
belong, allow me to be the very first to wish all of you a very happy good
night and ask you to kindly count all your blessings and share those overages
with you know who and we will too!
And next time please be here
or be square, ya hear!