Nourish Your Noggin in Sarasota

Is it possible to nourish your noggin in Sarasota without breaking the bank? The answer is yes. And this week’s Sense and the City column tells you how!

Click here to read my column online — or check it out in today’s Sarasota Herald Tribune.

Connecting Selby Scholars and Sarasota Movers and Shakers

Last week, I had the pleasure of participating in the William G. and Marie Selby Foundation’s 11th annual Selby Scholar Symposium, which pairs mentors from the community with scholars who are currently attending college in Florida and beyond. To read the rest of this Sense and the City column in today’s Sarasota Herald-Tribune, click here: Connecting Selby Scholars and the Sarasota Movers and Shakers.

Tell me, what is it you plan to do?

Tell me, after you read The Summer Day, what you plan to do with your one, wild, precious life, on this winter January day?

The Summer Day by Mary Oliver

Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean-
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down-
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

from New and Selected Poems, 1992
Beacon Press, Boston, MA

Copyright 1992 by Mary Oliver.
All rights reserved.

Top Ten Things to Do in 2012

I’ve got my opinion on what everybody should be doing in 2012 — and it runs the gamut from seeing great Sarasota theatre to getting a massage to registering to vote. Read it online here: MC’s Sense and the City column.

/

Sarasota Student Pays It Forward

You’ve heard of the butterfly effect — the concept that a butterfly fluttering its wings a half a world away can set into motion a series of events that results weeks later in a hurricane off the coast of Florida. But the butterfly effect can also describe happier circumstances of cause and effect. I heard of one such example recently — about a young Sarasota woman, a 2009 graduate of Sarasota High, named Grier Ferguson. Click here to read the full story in my Dec. 20 Sense and the City column

Merry Holidays? Happy Spending! What do you think we should say?

Last Thursday I was reading, as I do each day, the letters to the editor section of the Sarasota Herald-Tribune and came across a Letter to the Editor about whether or not people should say Merry Christmas or Happy Holidays.

Should we be saying Happy Chanukah too? Maybe Season’s Greetings instead? Maybe we should go with Happy Christmas? Or would we be better off saying, “Happy Black Friday Shopping!” ???

You can read the letter to the editor by clicking here (the link should take you directly to the letter I’m talking about but if not, just choose page four!)
http://www.heraldtribune.com/article/20111215/LETTERS/111219785/2163/OPINION?p=4&tc=pg

After you read it, or even without reading it, share your opinion here with a quick blog post!

A Girl’s Guide to Getting the Most of the Holidays

My Sense and the City column in yesterday’s Sarasota Herald-Tribune is all about how girls get ready for — and enjoy — the holidays.

If you missed it in the paper yesterday, you can pick up a copy of TICKET for free in newsstands around the city or just click on the link below!

http://www.ticketsarasota.com/2011-12-14/section/nightlife/sense-and-the-city-a-sucker-for-the-holidays/

The Culture of Cheating

The Sarasota Herald-Tribune ran an op/ed of mine — on the topic of Herman Cain, cheating, and what difference it makes if a liar and a cheater holds office — in today’s newspaper — you can find it on the last page of the A section in print — or just click on the link below to read.

You’re lyin’ cheatin’ ways …. or as I like to call it, Cain’s Complaint (for all you Philip Roth lovers out there).

All Faiths Food Bank MC Readers Drive Update — $2,565 Raised!

Thanks to everyone who took the time to donate to the MC/Ticket All Faiths Food fundraising drive in November. At the end of the Thanksgiving drive, All Faiths had received $2,565 from “Sense and the City” readers. That’s the equivalent of 4,071 meals provided to hungry men, women and children in our community. I can’t thank you enough for participating.

Total raised over the past several years by readers of this blog, my former “Reality Chick” column, and my current Sense and the City column? — $13,879! That’s something over 22,000 — TWENTY-TWO THOUSAND! — meals for people in need.

Bravo, brava and merci mille fois!!!

MC’s Guide to Make It Merry in December!

This week’s Sense and the City column (out in print tomorrow in the Sarasota Herald-Tribune; and in TICKET boxes free on Friday) lists just a few of my picks for alternative ideas for merry-making before year-end.

You can read it online here: MC’s Guide to Making it Merry in December.