Two Sarasota Bartenders Make MC’s Saturday Night
My new favorite bar in Sarasota is at Bijou Cafe.
Bartender at Bijou whipped up my fave cocktail.
Interested in knowing what I was doing last Saturday night? Read today’s Sense and the City column (Sarasota Herald-Tribune TICKET section, always way in the back pages!) or click here to read it online.
John Russo aka the "singing bartender" at Sam Snead's
No books for you! MC’s booksigning canceled!
Remember that Seinfeld episode with the Soup Nazi!
Well, anyway, no books for you! My book signing for tonight at Bookstore1 Main (in Sarasota) was canceled by the shop. They accidentally overbooked authors for tomorrow night’s signing event … so MC is out! But they were super apologetic about and have invited me back for September sometime.
Sorry to anyone who may have thought about coming out!!
Dusk on a Sunday Evening
Sunday night. Sitting outside in the heat — beginning to abate somewhat. The heat that is. Me? I’m not abating at all. Waiting? Maybe. For something I’m not sure.
In the meantime, I have squirrels squirreling around. Coming closer for nuts. Closer, then rushing away. Closer, then running. Isn’t that the way life is. The way we all are?
Bromeliads are blooming. And I feel good. The heat. The singular beauty in front of me. The rodents at my feet. Boomer is at the window, licking his chops and wondering why I’m fraternizing with the enemy.
Friday night were the Perseids. I was watching around 4 a.m., from inside this time. Prone on my couch, the cool leather giving a reprieve to my skin. Looking out the tall windows toward the sky. The moon, on the other side of the horizon from when I saw it around 11 pm, subdued by the clouds but still illuminating … everything: my car in the drive, the shrubs, glinting off the bird bath.
Meteors flashing across a Sturgeon Moon sky.
I couldn’t see a one. But I knew they were there. Flying by on their way to somewhere. Whipping by in all their immediacy. Their urgency.
Make a wish. Quick. All the more reason if you can’t see them.
Signing Sideways
I’ll be signing copies of my book of collected newspaper columns — Sideways in Sarasota, on Tuesday night (August 16) from 6 to 8 pm at Bookstore 1, 1359 Main Street, Sarasota.
If you don’t have a copy of my book and want one — swing on by! If you have one but want to just drop by and say hello and browse this great new Sarasota bookstore — that’s great too.
Is Gulf Coast Community Foundation forgetting where it came from?
Wherever you fall on the issue of the Gulf Coast Foundation dropping Venice from its name — Eric Ernst’s colum in today’s Sarasota Herald Tribune is superbly written. You can read it here: Charity, remember: Venice is in your blood.
Bitten by the blues
Bluestar -- a well-known blues band in Sarasota
Anyway, at the bar, I ran into Laura Daniel Gale — the visionary behind Black Diamond Burlesque. She and I both were wearing necklaces with lots of keys on necklaces around our necks. Mine happened to be handcuff keys, but um, wait, that’s a whole other story.
Bradenton bluesman R.J. Howson sat in with Blustar for a set or two.
Where you won’t see me tomorrow night!
I’m doing a book-signing on August 16th at Bookstore 1 on Main Street in Sarasota, 6-8 pm I think.
But the bookstore inadvertently listed me in the paper and on their website as doing the signing on August 2nd!
So, just in CASE you were planning to swing by the bookstore to meet me or pick up a signed copy of Sideways in Sarasota tomorrow night … I won’t be there until the 16th! 
Betting on firefighters the safest bet you’ll make tomorrow night in Osprey!
Too gorgeous!
Lots of brave (and beautiful!) women are out there fighting fires, too!
Tribute to Pelican Press, Readers and a few words from Matt Walsh
For 40 years, the weekly Pelican Press newspaper has been a must-read for year-round key residents, tourists, and snowbirds alike. At its core, it was a Siesta Key paper, but with its robust reporting on city and county goings-on, it certainly enjoyed a sizable following off the island as well.
Week in, week out, with a small crew and probably an even smaller budget, the editors and office staff cranked out spot-on investigative pieces and local government reporting from a cadre of shoe-leather reporters like the inimitable Bob Ardren, Jack Gurney, and Stan Zimmerman to name a few. Strong editorial pages, witty cartoons, book reviews, and freelance contributions from arts, social, wine, and film columnists, all lent a sophisticated note to this weekly paper that managed, at the same time, to create a bond with its readers by celebrating the natural beauty of the key and featuring stories on local people, businesses, and churches – right down to including occasional photographs and reports of the elusive family of bobcats that had taken up residence on the island.
The paper always had its share of politically and socially conservative readers and advertisers, but for many, perhaps most, the Pelican Press was a welcome reflection of open-minded perspective. Its letters to the editor section, which often filled an entire page, was always lively with well-informed and cogent debate from readers on both sides of the political aisle.
To the surprise of many, over the past month, the Pelican Press was sold off by its owner – the Milwaukee-based publishing company that had owned it since 1998 after acquiring the paper from founder John Davidson. Nearly all of the full-time and freelance contributors – including erstwhile editor Anne Johnson who nurtured the paper and its content contributors to scores of Florida Press Awards over her 30-some-odd-year career there – have lost their jobs and columns as a result of the change in ownership. The new publisher, the Sarasota-based Observer Group, has promised a shift in editorial direction to reflect the philosophy of its existing stable of newspapers, which embrace the “principles of individual freedom and capitalism and Austrian economics, and the founding principles of the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution.”
One of the most compelling aspects of the Pelican Press has always been its relationship with its readers, and this editorial shift, along with the loss of well-liked editors, staff, and reporters, has caused a fair degree of teeth-gnashing among longstanding and loyal readers. Because I wrote the “Reality Chick” column for that paper several years ago, I’ve lately been hearing from many of those readers who, very fond of the “old” Pelican Press, find these new circumstances to be an unwelcome changing of the guard.
Matt Walsh, CEO of the Observer Group which has purchased the Pelican Press, also editor and co-publisher of the Observer papers I believe, commented this morning on Stan Zimmerman’s recent guest blog post, and responded point by point to many readers’ complaints about the transition of ownership (read his full comments by clicking here). Mr. Walsh says that his newspaper group has “the desire, will and determination to continue building on the Pelican Press’ original roots and respected past.”
The heartening takeaway from all this sturm und drang is that it is thrilling to hear that so many people in our community — readers, writers, editors, newspaper owners — still care so passionately about content and editorial perspectives and opinions — and are still so personally invested in reading and publishing newspapers.
The challenge then for those of us in the business of researching, writing, reporting, opining about and publishing the news of the day — especially in light of the News of the World debacle – is to diligently strive to earn our readers’ loyalty anew, each and every day, by delivering news unfettered by bias or advertisers’ influence, opinion that is diverse, a platform for earnest debate, and the rigorous application of truth, accuracy and fairness to the printed word.
And the challenge for those of us in the personal business of reading is to strive equally diligently to be as fair in our reading as we want our newspapers to be in their reporting. And, while one may not like what one reads on every op/ed page of every newspaper, I think Voltaire said it best: “I detest what you write, but I would give my life to make it possible for you to continue to write.” — Voltaire, letter to M. le Riche, February 6, 1770
Pelican Press Sign-Off from Stan Zimmerman (guest commentary)
M.C.,
I want to thank you and your readers for your outpouring of concern about the fate of the Pelican Press and its stable of writers. An entire chorus of voices was silenced with one swoop of the axe. Only time will tell if this storied community newspaper will retain the affection of its readership of 40 years. Or maintain its journalistic excellence – its awards from the Florida Press Association literally cover the walls. If there was a huge award for excellence in every conceivable category (even agricultural writing!) the Pelican would qualify several times over.
Rachel Hackney is the only survivor, she’s staying on as the Managing Editor, and I know she carries a heavy weight of local expectations on her shoulders. But her scope of action now is limited, and she should not carry the brunt of reader disappointment. So many times she’s said to me, “That’s a great story. We’ll make room for it.” Or “We need that in the paper. We’ll extend the deadline to get it in.” Those decisions are no longer hers. She’s a pro with all that implies.
As editors at the Pelican, Anne Johnson, and then Rachel Hackney, maintained a tradition of “bound volumes” – keeping every Pelican from Volume One, Number One, intact in huge books. Row upon row upon row of them, the first drafts of Siesta Key’s history, from 1971 to now. My very first newspaper story is in there, datelined Dec.16, 1982, a financial story: “County debts could quadruple by 1984 if bond issues okayed.” (They were, and they did and then some over the next quarter-century). And it’s all there between the covers.
It is passé in this electronic age to keep “bound volumes,” and I’m sure Matt Walsh will eschew this tradition. But it was this same tradition that kept the paper going through ups and downs, through pay cuts and staff reductions, because we were standing in a long line of distinguished and talented people who believed our readers had a right to know. And to know in detail.
I wish Matt and his Observer Group good luck and good fortune is a struggling industry. Dead-tree journalism could soon be an anachronism, and I’ve said so in front of both Walsh and the SHT”s executive editor Mike Connelly at a chamber round-table. All we can offer is trust, and I hope the new Pelican will maintain the paper’s 40-year pact with its readers for fairness, accuracy and honesty.
This “pelican” was lucky enough to find a new “nest” at SarasotaPatch.com, a “hyper-local” news site similarly dedicated. Its editor and I won an award from the Florida Press Association earlier this month for our investigative journalism at the Pelican. To my other friends and colleagues at the Pelican, I send my support and appreciation for their accomplishments as fellow “ink-stained wretches.” It is no sin to reach for the stars.
I send a special bouquet to Anne Johnson, who isn’t exactly the founding editor of the Pelican but certainly is the woman who crafted, molded and created the paper we knew and loved. She too was lopped off, after 38 years, without even a good-bye to the two generations of readers she slaved for.
That’s my only real regret – and it would have been such a touch of class, such a handoff – Matt’s refusal to allow the old Pelican hands to say goodbye and welcome the new hands. It was, for staff, the ultimate hostile takeover. “Mine now, you’re gone.” The old Pelican gave you the opportunity to say goodbye when the previous corporate owners canned you for writing truth-to-power. You know well, M.C., how that catharsis eased the pain for you and readers alike.
I guess this is really my “goodbye.” I wish it could reach all my readers, but M.C.’s circle will have to do.
We tried very hard – every one of us pelicans – to do the best we knew how to do. Because we knew the standards were high, the expectations higher. And we did our best on deadline every week to capture the importance, the essence, the heart of what we thought Siesta Key wanted to know.
Goodbye, Pelican Press. Hello, Pelican Press.
Stan Zimmerman
