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Gallery: Pensacola Beach oil

In Gulf coast oil spill coverage, News, Photos on June 6, 2010 at 10:08 am

A team of about 20 volunteers arrived this afternoon to help clean up Pensacola Beach near the Fort Pickens gate. It was the largest response team PNJ crews had seen today. They are part of BP's Deepwater Horizons emergency response group. They weren't allowed to give information to media, but provided a number to BP's joint information center. Representatives at that number could not comment. (Mike Greear / mgreear@pnj.com)

The above photograph was originally published by the Pensacola News Journal for the story “Oil spill: Tar balls found at Pensacola, Navarre beaches,” which I also contributed some reporting to.

(Mike Greear / mgreear@pnj.com)

(Mike Greear / mgreear@pnj.com)

(Mike Greear / mgreear@pnj.com)

(Mike Greear / mgreear@pnj.com)

Boom is ready in the Fort Pickens area, near the Pensacola Pass.

Bags of material used to line beaches to catch oil lies ready at the Fort Pickens area of Pensacola Beach.

The above photographs were taken by me on June 4, 2010 as I was assisting reporter Kim Blair with coverage of the Gulf Coast oil spill, and were published by the Pensacola News Journal in an online gallery.

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Navarre Beach Pier opens

In Gulf coast oil spill coverage, Local News, News, Photos on June 6, 2010 at 9:25 am

Excited children from Navarre help Santa Rosa County commissioners cut the ribbon at the opening of the new Navarre Beach Pier. The new pier replaces the one that was closed following Hurricane Ivan in 2004. (Mike Greear/mgreear@pnj.com)

Hundreds of people flocked to Navarre Beach on Saturday to help open the new and improved Navarre Beach Pier.

The ribbon-cutting ceremony for the opening of the $8.6 million pier was preceded by a speech from state Sen. Don Gaetz, R-Niceville, who said the pier is a symbol of Santa Rosa County’s resilience during a time of disaster. The previous pier was damaged by Hurricane Ivan in 2004 and Hurricane Dennis the next year.

“The comeback for Northwest Florida starts today with this pier,” Gaetz said. Santa Rosa County commissioners also spoke at the event.

For the local fishing community, the new pier has been a dream for nearly six years.

“We’ve been anticipating this forever,” said Tony White, 54, of Navarre.

White caught the first fish of the morning, a 40-pound redfish.

“It’s a good way to start,” he said.

The opening of the pier comes as oil and tar balls from the April 20 Gulf spill have begun washing ashore. Some fishing enthusiasts hope the pier provides a silver lining to that dark cloud.

“It’s ironic,” said Masami Lewis, 41, about the timing of the pier’s opening. “But you make the best of the worst situation.”

Some anglers said they prefer the Navarre pier over the fishing pier on Pensacola Beach, in part because it extends farther into the Gulf, where larger fish swim.

The new pier boasts an octagonal end with a wider surface area, as well as breakaway wood panels to prevent damage to the main structure during a storm.

“They did a good job,” said Milton resident Jerry Couey, 50, who has been fishing in Navarre since the first pier was opened. “It will be here for many years.”

Originally published by the Pensacola News Journal.

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PHS, war veterans honored at cemetery

In Local News, News on June 6, 2010 at 9:20 am

The Friends of St. John’s Historic Cemetery on Saturday paid tribute to the former football players and World War II veterans who attended Pensacola High School.

“Let it be known that we are celebrating all veterans and all Pensacolians who served,” Dr. Jack Fleming said to a crowd of about 50 people gathered underneath a tent in the center of the cemetery grounds at Belmont and G streets in Pensacola. The event was the cemetery’s 10th Annual Commemoration Day.

The event featured an address by Fleming, co-founder of the organization, as well as a recital of the high school’s alma mater by the Tiger Rooters, an a cappella group, and a look back at Tigers football by Richard Fountain, the author of an upcoming book about the history of the school’s football team.

“We are here and free to assemble today because of their — and so many others’ — sacrifice.” Fountain said.

He read the list of Tigers who served in World War II and described what the players did after high school, including those who died for their country.

“I think it’s fitting to honor those who gave away all of their tomorrows for our today.”

In addition to the 66 Tigers buried in St. John’s, the cemetery contains the graves of about six of the 30 men who graduated from PHS and died during World War II.

Starting in 1905, the Tigers are the oldest high school football team in the state.

There are 66 football players buried in the cemetery, including Lucius Bell, who scored the first touchdown in state history.

Fountain’s book, “Florida’s Oldest Football Team, a History of Pensacola High Football,” will feature a history of the team, including the recent state championship.

“Pensacola High School has a long tradition of glory, and it’s returning,” said Cliff Early, who attended the ceremony. He was the announcer at the school’s football games during the 2009 season.

Some attendees of the event were so moved by the hour-long ceremony they decided they’d like to help maintain the cemetery.

“Since my whole family’s buried here, there’s no sense in my not doing it,” said Sean Ward, whose son is in the International Baccalaureate program at Pensacola High School.

Originally published by the Pensacola News Journal.

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Day spotlights cemetery’s PHS athletes, veterans

In Local News, News on May 27, 2010 at 10:48 am

Athletes and World War II veterans from Pensacola High School’s “greatest generation” will be honored at St. John’s Historic Cemetery on Saturday.

The observance will take place during the 10th annual Commemoration Day, an event that honors notable PHS alumni buried in the cemetery.

Local historian Richard Fountain will be the guest speaker. He will focus on the history of the high school’s football team, the Tigers.

Fountain, a former PHS football player, is the author of an upcoming book, “Florida’s Oldest Football Team: A History of Pensacola Football,” tracing the history of the team.

The cemetery houses the graves of about six of the 30 men who graduated from Pensacola High and went on to lose their lives in World War II. Many of those men had also played football for the high school.

They joined the many historic Pensacolians buried at St. John’s, including Frank D. Sanders, whom Sanders Beach is named after, and J. Harris Pierpont, whose father composed “Jingle Bells.”

Members of the public have long enjoyed the cemetery as a valuable historic landmark.

“I do a walk-through of these old sites,” said Alan Janssen, 61, from Pensacola. “It really brings a person down to earth versus the business of a day.”

The high school is nearly as historic as the cemetery.

The PHS football program began in 1906, and is the oldest program in the state of Florida. Last year, the team won the state championship in its division. Fountain’s book will detail the history of the team from its inception.

The Commemoration Day ceremony was initiated by the Friends of St. John’s Historic Cemetery, a nonprofit organization that helps to maintain the cemetery.

“Each one of these stones represents a very interesting story,” said Jack Fleming, co-founder of the Friends of St. John’s Historic Cemetery.

Previous Commemoration Day events have honored members of the law enforcement, education and medical professions. The organization also has an annual All Saints Day festival on the cemetery grounds.

In addition to the two events, members of the Friends of St. John’s Historic Cemetery have volunteered their time for various maintenance projects, including planting new vegetation, installing a new well and irrigation system, and helping in the aftermath of Hurricane Ivan.

Fleming, who practiced cardiology in Pensacola for 42 years and helped start the coronary care units at the area’s hospitals, co-founded the organization 10 years ago with Ted Nickinson. The group was started with the goal of providing the cemetery with upkeep and care.

The group hopes to preserve the historic location so it can be passed on to future generations who will be tasked with caring for it.

“It will be an ongoing problem for future generations,” Fleming said. “They can either let it fall into disrepair or they can keep it up as a historic jewel of Pensacola.”

Originally published by the Pensacola News Journal.

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Community focuses on gardening

In Local News, News on May 25, 2010 at 10:43 am

Community activists will unveil a new community garden today off North Davis Highway with a neighborhood cookout event.

The garden took root after some Pensacola Bay Area residents were inspired by first lady Michelle Obama’s White House garden.

The garden is a joint effort between civil rights advocacy group Movement for Change and the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Resources and Conservation Service department in Milton.

The garden features a variety of peppers and tomatoes, cucumbers, lettuce, squash, cabbage, okra and herbs such as thyme and rosemary.

Andrew Williams, a USDA soil scientist and one of the originators of the garden, wants the garden to have a long-lasting presence within the community.

“The idea is to hand it off to a dedicated group of people who can handle it from there on in,” Williams said.

About two months ago, Williams, with retired Pensacola lawyer Kim Kirschenfeld, pitched the idea for a community garden to Movement for Change President LeRoy Boyd.

Williams said the project cost $2,000, funded by Three Rivers Resource Conservation. Volunteer hours and other help were provided by Manna Food Bank and other community groups, Williams said.

Boyd said the harvest from the garden will not be formally distributed; neighbors are encouraged to harvest what they need from the garden themselves, Boyd said.

Boyd, an avid gardener himself, said he hopes the garden teaches younger generations the value of eating healthy and growing their own food.

“The children and the community will be the beneficiaries of our efforts and energy,” Boyd said.

Originally published by the Pensacola News Journal.

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Arts fest offers taste of Milton on the river

In Local News, News on May 24, 2010 at 7:36 pm

Hundreds of Santa Rosa County residents converged in downtown Milton on a sunny Saturday to enjoy the 22nd annual Riverwalk Arts Festival.

The festival, which continues until this afternoon, celebrates folk art and local culture. Food and arts and crafts vendors line both sides of Willing Street, along the banks of the Blackwater River.

The centerpiece of the festival was the All County Youth Art Exhibit, a two-room building filled with more than 700 pieces of award-winning art from Santa Rosa County students. The exhibit’s goal is to encourage students to take a greater interest in the arts.

“This kind of stuff makes children perform well,” said Toni New, education chairwoman for the Santa Rosa Arts and Culture Foundation. “When they’re acknowledged, they perform even better. If we don’t do stuff like this, they won’t see a bigger world.”

The long-term goal of the festival is to re-create Milton as a cultural and artistic hub for the county. New, who has been teaching art at Rhodes Elementary School for 22 years, says that while Milton has the potential to earn such a reputation, it may be another 10 years before it happens.

“We have the location and the beauty in Milton, and we have the support. We just have to put it together,” New said.

In addition to the art exhibit, the foundation also is rewarding the literary achievements of Santa Rosa students by publishing their work in this year’s edition of the “Creative Writing Expressions Booklet.”

Several students were honored for their poetry, essays and short stories, including three students who were given cash prizes.

“It’s amazing the talent we have in Santa Rosa County,” said Tim Wyrosdick, the school superintendent. “It’s truly impressive.”

Wyrosdick said that Santa Rosa’s schools have “made a concerted effort” to preserve their art programs in spite of budget cuts.

Other projects from the foundation include downtown Milton’s Dragonfly Gallery, a small venue for local artists to display their work and hold public workshops.

The foundation also is promoting performance art through Moonshine Creek Productions, which it hopes will raise funds for a fine arts center.

Originally published by the Pensacola News Journal.

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AIDS activist urges community effort in fighting disease

In Local News, News on May 16, 2010 at 12:08 pm

Emmy award-winning AIDS activist Rae Lewis-Thornton visited Pensacola on Saturday to speak about her experiences living with the disease.

She urged the audience to become more aware of HIV and AIDS in their community.

“Our education has got to move with the times and with the technology if we are going to do something about this disease,” she said.

Lewis-Thornton, 47, was diagnosed with HIV after donating blood at age 23. By the time she found out, she had been HIV positive for four years. When she learned of the infection, she kept it a secret for years, fearing prejudice and violence.

“It was a cruel and ugly time to be told you had HIV,” Lewis-Thornton, of Chicago, told the packed conference room at the Corinne Jones Community Center at Sanders Beach. “The secret was killing me.”

Rather than continue to hide the illness, she became a motivational speaker to encourage others to protect themselves. She also worked in the media and won an Emmy award for a series of TV news segments about living with AIDS.

Lewis-Thornton’s keynote address was a highlight of the first Women’s Health and Empowerment Conference. The daylong conference was organized by the Sistas Organizing for Service initiative.

Erica Douglas, who organized the event, said Lewis-Thornton’s message helped dispel stereotypes about the disease.

“She really wants to let people know that this disease does not have a face, and that it doesn’t matter who you are … it can (still) affect you,” Douglas said.

Members of the audience added that Lewis-Thornton spoke from the heart, and that her address succeeded in raising awareness of HIV and AIDS.

“I think we can all learn from her,” said Olga Stewart, 61, who works with AIDS cases at Sacred Heart Hospital. “It’s best to learn from her experience than your own.”

The Florida Department of Health said there are 2,657 people living in Northwest Florida who have been diagnosed with HIV/AIDS. Another 600 to 700 people are suspected of having the disease but have not been diagnosed.

Originally published by the Pensacola News Journal.

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Local fishermen enlist boats to aid spill cleanup

In Gulf coast oil spill coverage, News on May 16, 2010 at 11:58 am

Nearly 300 fishing boats from Louisiana to the Pensacola area have been enlisted by BP America Inc. to aid in the cleanup efforts for the Gulf of Mexico oil spill.

The oil company’s Vessels of Opportunity program hopes to recruit many more to help contain the disaster.

The boats have been enlisted to deploy oil boom, take cleanup crews to and from sites and assist in wildlife recovery if the oil makes landfall along the Panhandle.

“I’m still hoping the ‘if’ is really big and it doesn’t get here,” said Lucia Bustamante, external affairs director for BP America Inc.

Vessels in the program are given 12-hour shifts once they are activated. Participants will be paid in 24-hour increments.

A boat that is 30 feet or smaller will earn $1,200 for every 24-hour period it works. Boats between 30 feet and 45 feet earn $1,500. Those between 45 feet and 65 feet earn $2,000. Boats larger than 65 feet earn $3,000.

Though many boats have signed on, many of the crews have yet to be deployed.

“We’re sitting in limbo,” said Paul Redman, president of the Pensacola Charter Boat Association. “I think that’s what everybody’s doing right now.”

Redman enrolled his 36-foot fishing boat, the “Snapper Trapper,” in the program last Saturday, but has not been activated to join the other vessels working in the Gulf.

BP began the program three weeks ago in Louisiana and has since moved east along the Gulf. The Pensacola recruitment started two weeks ago. The program has also expanded to Destin, Apalachicola and Panama City, and is looking to establish venues in other Florida cities.

On Friday afternoon, the plume of oil was 120 miles from Pensacola.

BP has created staging areas at Pensacola Naval Air Station and in Panama City with 13,000 people ready to respond.

Originally published by the Pensacola News Journal.

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Lying Fox attacks watchdog

In Columns and Editorials on May 16, 2010 at 11:55 am

Last Monday, the watchdog web site Wikileaks, a place built like Wikipedia where people from all over the internet can anonymously post classified information, released a video of a U.S. Army Apache helicopter gunning down unarmed Iraqis in 2007, including two journalists that worked for Reuters.

The video raised necessary questions about the Army’s rules of engagement. It also vindicated the families of the journalists who lost their fathers/husbands in that horrible miscalculation. Four days later, Fox News, ever the avatars of dissent, released a report saying that Wikileaks might have distorted the video or taken it out of context.

According to Fox’s report, a military spokesperson asserted that the full complexity of the combat operations that occurred that day were not adequately captured in the 17 minute video.

Fox also said that it’s likely that a few of the men that were fired upon in the beginning of the video were carrying weapons, although that cannot be clearly ascertained in the video. For instance, when one of the Reuters employees was walking around with his camera out, the Apache crew identified it as an AK-47.

While reading Fox’s report online, I definitely got the sense that I should be coming away from it with mistrust towards Wikileaks, and that I should doubt the video as some kind of hoax or liberal stunt to smear our military.

I’m wondering if the article was directed at people who hadn’t watched the video yet, and were waiting for Fox’s take on the tragic accident before they themselves came to a conclusion on it.

I’ve watched the video in question, and I can safely say that it is pretty explicit, and would be very difficult to distort or use out of context.

The most alarming part of the video comes after the initial group of men (who may or may not have been carrying weapons) were killed. The Reuters photographer is crawling to safety, and a van full of unarmed civilians arrives to assist him, only to be shredded to pieces by the apache’s guns.

According to Wikileaks, this lead to the deaths of several non-militant Iraqis, and the wounding of a few Iraqi children that were in the van.

I didn’t finish the video with a hatred for the American military, as I’m sure the carnival barkers at Fox would say is the agenda behind Wikileaks’ release of the information. This was obviously a terrible accident, and I’m sure things like this happen more often than we’d like to think.

I’m wondering if Fox’s scrutiny of Wikileaks comes from wanting to direct people’s attention away from the recent discovery that their own hallowed video expose of ACORN that two “citizen journalists” made last year was recently revealed to be a big hoax.

They neglected to check the facts before chastising ACORN over that video and instead of retracting their statements (which would make them look like the terrible journalists that they are) they try to make a different whistleblower look just as bad.

I think that Wikileaks did the right thing by releasing the video, and I’m appalled that Fox is attempting to shame an organization for being a watchdog.

Of course, that raises the whole debate of “who watches the watchmen,” but the answer to that question in every conceivable scenario is a very emphatic “NOT FOX.” They’ve proven themselves to only be liars and frauds.

Originally published by The Voyager for the University of West Florida.

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Intelligent political debate lead on Twitter

In Columns and Editorials on May 16, 2010 at 11:51 am

On Sunday, Congress passed Obama’s health care reform bill, much to the dismay of a bunch of grumpy, well-off jerks in the House that expect me to go broke every time I get sick.

I spent the evening chatting with people on Twitter as the voting process was carried out.

At first I was content to just read the tweets that were coming in from other people as various representatives shared their views on the bill before voting on it, but when certain representatives from the Republican party started losing their cool and turning the procedure into a circus, I felt compelled to start sharing my thoughts.

What bothered me the most was that every time a Republican approached the mic, they had to repeat ad nauseum that the American people have spoken and that they do not want such a bill to pass.

In response to this, I started a chain of tweets denouncing the generalization of a vocal minority of conservative Tea Party activists as representative of the whole of America.

Those people are jerks who yelled racist slurs at Democrats as they made their way into their offices the day before. They don’t speak for me, and they never will.

I spoke for myself when I voted for Obama, along with the majority of the people in this country, and that was a vote for health care reform.

The first response I got to these tweets were from a guy I’ve chatted with before, who was very polite in his disagreement with my views. This resulted in a civil discussion between two people with different viewpoints who were interested in learning from each other and getting a new perspective on the issue.

It was more akin to two sports fans discussing a game in which their teams were squaring off against each other (although I’d hardly consider any political party to be my “team”).

The other response I got was from a guy who immediately started flinging insults at me in a knee-jerk response to my support of the bill. It was ugly and uncalled for.

I didn’t say anything to insult people who weren’t in favor of the bill, so I didn’t think it was necessary to insult me for wanting it to pass, especially since I’m just a random person on Twitter and have no control over whether or not the thing gets passed.

All this did was convince me more that people on the other side are petty, reactionary, or at least take politics way too seriously for their own good. When I explained this to the guy, he apologized and lightened up.

From there we were able to have an intelligent conversation without devolving into childish name-calling. As the night went on, my online political conversations grew more civil as the behavior of certain members of Congress became more and more deplorable.

Perhaps our elected officials could learn a thing or two from my political exchanges on Twitter. There isn’t always a need to turn every debate into a shouting match, to turn every ideological difference into a four-letter word.

In order for this whole government thing to work, we have to be able to accept each others’ differences and work to find a common ground.

This isn’t Fox News where it’s okay to act immature and put on a big scene when talking politics. This is the United States government and people are expecting their lawmakers to act like adults.

Originally published by The Voyager for the University of West Florida.

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