I Could Be Wrong.

  With the election right around the corner I have to ask, are there really people that don’t know if who they will vote for or are there people that are deciding if they are going to vote at all? For me it took a long time to vote against a Republican for the very first time. Of course that was about 25 years ago and I still remember it as being an unnatural thing. Why? Because my father was a Republican so like my father, that made me a Republican. I think that is the case in too many voter’s mind, my family was always this and my family was always that so I was going to be the same. Funny thing was when I was growing up there were actual liberal Republicans. They were known as Rockefeller Republics that took a more moderate, too liberal approach to social issues. Those White Christian Nationalist?, why they were Democrats like George Wallace that left the Democratic Party when they felt betrayed by Johnson when he signed the Civil Rights Bill. The Liberal Republican is gone. T...

  I was reading an article from the Seattle Times that the headline read “Their America is vanishing. Like Trump they insist they were cheated”. In my lifetime, what has been the biggest change that has occurred here in America? That could be a discussion that could take hours and hours to find all the answers. What the article pointed out is the shrinking White population in Congressional Districts traditionally held by Republicans. Growing up in a traditional Democratic area and seeing the opposite happen I find it a little hard to grasp. Growing up in Southeastern Wisconsin it was always a Democratic stronghold dominated by Les Aspin. Now it is a Republican stronghold dominated by Paul Ryan and Bryan Steil. I understand a lot of what some of America is going through but in reverse. Southeastern Wisconsin was dominated by manufacturing and a lot of it. General Motors, American Motors, Case, and Modine to name just a few. As manufacturing left our little corner of the state we had...

  Biden is now the thirteenth President in my lifetime. I have seen a lot of change and I remember when that change occurred and what that change accomplished. Today is such a different time in our country where hate seems to be the trump card over everything. When you been around as long as I have you can identify how these changes affected the county. The first president that I remember was Eisenhower, a Republican, and one of the thoughts that sticks out in my mind, and to most, was the press talking about how he practiced his chipping on the White House lawn. What was Eisenhower’s greatest accomplishment that change our lives for generations? The Interstate Highway is what I see it as. That changed how goods and people were able to move around the country, that is still true today. Kennedy, a Democrat, was next and that was the era that brought television into the political elections. The televised debates changed how we viewed our Presidents during the election process. Thou...

  When you watch the news I see that everyone is talking about how the Sanibel Bridge is now open. That is true but that is also not true. Yes the Sanibel Bridge is open for workers and residents but not for the general public so don’t go packing your beach umbrella yet. The long road to recovery has only started. I too am looking forward to pizza at the Island Pizza or breakfast at the Over Easy but that is still some time away. My dog Zoe and I were regulars at Bonita Bills on Fort Myers Beach and still every day she looks at me in the morning like when are we going to go. I am hoping that they rebuild but we will see what comes back and what does not come back. I think Zoe and I will need to find a new place for a while but one problem is that everything along the water has been damaged. The rest of the country has already moved on from Ian but we will not be able to move on for quite some time. We are at the point in the recovery were there doesn’t look like there is very muc...

  A High School Student won a contest to paint a Mural for the Grant, Michigan Public Schools. I looked at the painting that the young women did and it was not what I thought was great art but I didn’t see anything wrong with it. I read further in the article and some people were up in arms because the colors of the shirt on the boy are supposedly the colors of the Trans-pride flag. There is a girl in the painting with all kinds of colors like the colors of the rainbow and I guess people are saying that is representing the gay pride flag. There is suppose to be a demon in the painting but sorry I don’t see that one at all. I will be honest with you when I looked at the picture I saw nothing that made me think of the Trans issue or the Gay issue. All I saw was some work of art that won a contest. Art is something that a lot of people interpret differently than what the artist intended. I know I do all the time. Isn’t that what art is suppose to do? There were people in the crowd tha...

  Ok, I have my ballot so this week I am going to fill them out and send them in. How am I going to vote? Anyone who has been reading knows the things that I won’t vote for but let me tell you about the things that I will vote for. The things that I feel should be important to anyone that truly wants our Republic to succeed for another two hundred and fifty years. The first thing that I believe in is diversity, the very thing that Ron DeSantis is dead set against. Why would I think that diversity is so important? The most important reason is that we all have to live together. No matter what color, nationality or religion we have to know how to live together. The only way that can be accomplished is by understanding the differences between people. In Florida, Governor DeSantis and the Republicans really went after Disney World because of their Diversity Training of their employees. You have to remember that Disney World not only attracts people from all over the country but all ov...

  I have now watched all the hearings on the January 6 th attack on our Capitol or as I like to call it “The Insurrection”. I am not a young man. I have lived through the Civil Rights Protests, the Vietnam Protested, Watergate, the Iranian Hostage situation, the Iran Contra Affair, the Impeachment of Bill Clinton and many more scandals here in America. I have never seen anything that is like we have today. Our Country is a mess and the whole world is watching us continue to be a mess. We are a Country at war with our self. How did we get here so quickly? During the Obama Administration we were well respected around the world. Today the world is just shaking their heads wondering what in the hell is happening to America. I am asking the same questions and daily, I search for answers. The easiest answer to say is Donald Trump but I think it is more complicated than that. He is part of the problem though. Donald Trump expects loyalty to him and not the Country. The Pledge of Allegian...

  The cleanup in Ft. Myers is a horrendous undertaking. Just the trees, limbs and branches create high piles of debris that will take months to get rid of it all. I have never seen destruction of this scale in my lifetime. Almost everywhere I look I see building after building of blue tarped roofs. Every roof in our complex of 100 units has roof damaged and we are better off than most. I at least had a home to come back too. Many don’t. We opened our home to friends from Sanibel that may have lost everything. Our next door neighbor has opened their home to people from Sanibel that may have lost everything as well. You see stories on the news of good people helping others which is great to see but it also saddens me because the need is so great. I have gone through my closet looking for clothing that I can donate. I can tell you that sometimes I am fighting back tears when I see all the destruction and I have only seen a fraction of it. Southwest Florida around by Ft. Myers is chang...

  For a State that has had a lot of hurricanes the State of Florida did not seem to be very well prepared for Ian. Some people may say that Ian is a once in a lifetime storm. So was Michael and so was Katrina. These storms are no longer once in a lifetime storms. They are becoming more and more common the fact that that they seemed so unprepared for it should be surprising. Well, I for one am not surprised. Something like 80 percent of Lee County was without power? Why? The simple truth is that they ignored the electrical infrastructure knowing that if a hurricane like Ian struck is would not survive. You could say that the State of Florida gambled and lost. Hey, that sounds a lot like Texas. It is the people of Florida that will now have to pay just like the people of Texas had to pay. Our already high insurance premium rates will go up even more. They are saying that it will take a year to repair a permanent bridge to Sanibel. Was there ever a study done about what they would hav...

  I would say that we have it off better than a lot of people. We have friends that have not been evacuated from Sanibel and won’t be until Tuesday. Most on Sanibel have lost everything. They will probably be coming here because a roof over their head is better than no roof at all. I really understand the suffering that many have experienced at the expense of these terrible storms. Mother Nature is being cooperative for us that have lived through this. No rain for the next week for now. That is good because they are going to start tarping the roofs tomorrow. When you look at the devastation there are areas here that will never be the same. When the rest of the world has moved on to the next crisis we are still going to be in the middle of this one. Our problems are not going to go away anytime soon. Tourism is big in Southwestern Florida and this is the second blow in just the last three years. First we had Covid and the closing of the beaches in Sanibel and Lee Country. There we...

  I have survived Ian so far. I live in Iona which is Southwest of Ft. Myers and as the crow flies, less than ten miles for Sanibel. I evacuated to the Ft Myers Shores area which was not as bad as where my condo is but we still had hurricane force winds for hours. We got back to the condo Thursday morning and the destruction could just make you cry. Our condo survived pretty well. We are going to have to have the whole complex reroofed but the condo was dry inside. Storm surge came into our attached garage but didn’t enter the condo so we were the lucky ones considering the eye wall spent hours over where we live. You would not believe the devastation that is all around us. No power, cell phones go in and out, and trying to use the web for information is hit and miss. Some minutes we can get information and then the next is nothing. I am running a generator so when it is running I can get the local news that is up and broadcasting. I may be in the middle of the disaster but most of...