CRUISELINES, COASTLINES, AND COINCIDENCES

Every once in a while, a local news story sneaks up on you and lands a little closer to home than expected. This one did exactly that.

According to several local reports, a Seattle-based company is considering building a brand-new cruise port right here in Manatee County that's large enough to accommodate the massive cruise ships that can’t fit under the Sunshine Skyway Bridge. Tampa already handles the smaller vessels, but this proposed port would be designed for the real giants of the cruise industry.

What makes this especially surreal for me is that I book cruise vacations for a living. Day after day, I sit at my desk at home, working from dual monitors, helping people plan trips aboard these very ships. Until now, those ships have existed mostly as itineraries, deck plans, and booking confirmations on a screen. Suddenly, there’s a real possibility they could be docking on Rattlesnake Key, just a few miles from where I live.

Developers are pitching the project as a major economic win for the area. They’re talking about thousands of new jobs, along with the ripple effects—new restaurants, motels, and tourism dollars brought in by waves of cruise passengers passing through. It’s an appealing vision, especially in a region that’s always balancing growth with opportunity.

At the same time, environmental groups are already raising red flags. Concerns about water quality, impacts on wildlife, and the loss of one of the county’s last largely undeveloped areas are front and center in the debate. It’s the familiar Florida dilemma: progress versus preservation, prosperity versus protection.

If the project does move forward, construction wouldn’t begin for at least five years, so nothing is imminent. Still, the idea lingers. There’s something undeniably strange about realizing that the massive cruise lines I help book every day—from the quiet of my home office—might soon be sailing up and down the coastline less than ten miles away.

For now, it’s just a proposal. But it’s also a reminder of how tightly interconnected our work, our communities, and our environment really are, and how sometimes, the abstract suddenly becomes very real

WHEN FAITH MEETS THE VAST UNKNOWN

My perception of "God", if you will, is a recognition of a higher power or supreme consciousness that exists far beyond the limits of our understanding. This divine presence is so vast, so unfathomable in its nature and scope, that attempting to fully comprehend it is like asking a single-celled organism to understand the passage of time or the nature of abstract thought. Just as such a creature lacks the faculties to grasp those concepts, we too are inherently limited in our ability to perceive or define the true essence of the divine.

TAMPA BAY'S NEW MUST-SEE PLAYER

I’ve been a diehard St. Louis Cardinals fan for as long as I can remember. But after moving to the Tampa Bay area 11 years ago, I found myself catching more and more Rays games partly out of convenience, but also because this team has become seriously fun to watch. And this season? It’s something special. The Rays have unleashed Chandler Simpson, a 24-year-old rookie who might just be the fastest player in all of Major League Baseball. I’m not exaggerating; this guy flies.

In just 55 games, he’s already stolen 27 bases, and every time he gets on, whether it’s a walk, a bloop single, or whatever. You get the feeling he’s about to turn it into a double or a triple with his wheels alone. He’s got that electric, edge-of-your-seat energy that reminds me of Lou Brock, Vince Coleman, and Rickey Henderson, guys who made speed an art form. In an era dominated by home runs and strikeouts, Simpson is reviving a part of the game that many thought was gone. If he stays healthy, I truly believe we’re watching the rise of baseball’s next great star.

THE MYTH OF THE MISSING WHEEL

For a long time, it’s been widely assumed in the West that pre-Columbian civilizations were somehow intellectually inferior because they never developed the wheel. However, archaeological discoveries in Mexico tell a different story. Wheeled ceramic toys, some dating back centuries before European contact, clearly show that the concept of the wheel was known and understood.

These artifacts challenge the narrative that ancient American cultures were unaware of this fundamental innovation. So why wasn’t the wheel used for transportation? Scholars suggest the answer may lie in environmental factors, such as the absence of large draft animals and the rugged geography of much of the area. These findings serve as a reminder that technological progress isn’t always a universal path—and that assumptions about cultural advancement need to be reconsidered.

THE BREAKING POINT

I'm nearly beyond words in trying to describe the extent of my utter revulsion toward the U.S. government's unwavering, bipartisan support for Israel's brutal and genocidal campaign against the Palestinian people. Both Biden and Trump, along with the vast majority of Congress, those who blindly serve the interests of AIPAC, are complicit in this unrelenting atrocity. I view them as nothing less than corrupt war criminals, responsible for the continued suffering of countless innocent lives.

I haven’t always felt this way. My disillusionment with Washington didn’t arrive overnight; it crept in slowly, like a crack in a windshield, small and ignorable at first, until it spread beyond repair. I once held many elected officials in high esteem. Back in the 1990s, while working as a broadcast journalist, I considered it a mark of professional pride whenever I had the rare opportunity to interview a member of Congress or a U.S. Senator. There was still, then, a sense of honor in the idea of public service.

But that sense of respect has eroded, first gradually, then completely. The lies that led us into the Iraq War marked the beginning of that descent. As the years unfolded, scandal after scandal, indifference after inaction, my faith in American leadership thinned to a thread. And now, with the horrors unfolding in Gaza, that thread has finally snapped.

The breaking point came when Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, widely regarded as the driving force behind Israel’s ongoing campaign of ethnic cleansing, was welcomed to a nationally televised joint session of Congress. There, he was met not with protest or scrutiny, but with thunderous, repeated standing ovations. Applause echoed through the chamber, not for peace, not for diplomacy, but for genocide.

For me, it was the clearest signal yet that those who govern us no longer speak for human decency, let alone for me.

THE REEL THING

Back during my childhood daze in the mid-1960s, I had a gadget that felt like it came straight from the future: a portable Panasonic reel-to-reel tape recorder. To my young mind, it was the ultimate in cool. It wasn't close to state of the art, but it could capture and playback sound, a feat that I found utterly captivating.

Kids from my suburban St. Louis County neighborhood would drop by, and we'd transform my bedroom into a broadcast booth and do our best to simulate the legendary Cardinal play-by-play announcers at the time, Harry Caray and Jack Buck. With the help of a walkie-talkie's fuzzy static for a cheering crowd-noise generator, we recorded imaginary games from our imaginary broadcast booth.

I’m not sure what ever happened to that little recorder. It probably wound up getting tossed along with my baseball card collection when I left home to attend college. But the memories? Those remain. They’ve lasted far longer than any reel of magnetic tape ever could.

OUTRAGE MISPLACED

If one relied solely on the corporate, mainstream media for their news, they might come to believe that the only story worth following is the leak of military plans to a journalist. With pundits on cable news and attention-hungry politicians stoking endless outrage, it's easy to get swept up in the frenzy.

But I’d wager that for 99 percent of Americans beyond the political bubble, this story barely makes a ripple. What's truly disheartening, though, is the complete absence of outrage over what these leaked plans actually reveal: the further escalation of an unwinnable war against the already devastated, poverty-stricken nation of Yemen.