book - News - The Coastal Star2024-03-28T22:09:50Zhttps://thecoastalstar.com/profiles/blogs/feed/tag/bookHealth & Harmony: A Touch Better — Ocean Ridge woman practices, teaches and writes about noninvasive body therapieshttps://thecoastalstar.com/profiles/blogs/health-harmony-a-touch-better-ocean-ridge-woman-practices-teaches2020-03-03T22:30:00.000Z2020-03-03T22:30:00.000ZMary Kate Leminghttps://thecoastalstar.com/members/MaryKateLeming769<div><p style="text-align:center;"><em><a href="{{#staticFileLink}}7960930899,original{{/staticFileLink}}" target="_blank"><img src="{{#staticFileLink}}7960930899,original{{/staticFileLink}}" class="align-center" alt="7960930899?profile=original" /></a><a href="{{#staticFileLink}}7960930899,original{{/staticFileLink}}" target="_blank"></a>Mya Breman uses craniosacral therapy to relieve tension and pain. Breman (right) calls it ‘body psychology.’ <b>Photos provided</b></em></p>
<p></p>
<p><strong>By Joyce Reingold</strong></p>
<p></p>
<p><a href="{{#staticFileLink}}7960931464,original{{/staticFileLink}}" target="_blank"><img src="{{#staticFileLink}}7960931464,original{{/staticFileLink}}" class="align-left" alt="7960931464?profile=original" /></a>In her serene, sun-splashed patch of paradise in the Ocean Ridge Yacht Club, Gayle “Mya” Breman found both roots and wings.</p>
<p>When she first arrived at the townhouse in the late 1980s, she was working in radio and TV but yearning for a more meaningful career. Little did she know that the path to her life’s work was waiting just outside the front door. </p>
<p>“When I moved in here 32 years ago, the Merrells — Allen and Elizabeth — were the first people in this complex,” says Breman, best known to family and friends as Mya. “They’re the people who funded and created and started the Upledger Institute. </p>
<p>“My background was working at CBS and NBC for years. So, they needed a marketing director. And they kept at me and kept at me, because we really became best friends. And finally, I went and met Dr. John and I was the marketing director for four and a half years.”</p>
<p><a href="{{#staticFileLink}}7960931078,original{{/staticFileLink}}" target="_blank"><img src="{{#staticFileLink}}7960931078,original{{/staticFileLink}}" class="align-left align-right" alt="7960931078?profile=original" /></a>Dr. John Edwin Upledger, a doctor of osteopathy and professor of biomechanics at the College of Osteopathic Medicine at Michigan State University, co-founded what is now the Upledger Institute International in Palm Beach Gardens in 1985. Upledger, who died in 2012, is best known for developing craniosacral therapy, a gentle form of bodywork intended to release tension and relieve pain and dysfunction.</p>
<p>“Using a gentle, noninvasive touch generally no greater than 5 grams—about the weight of a nickel—practitioners release restrictions in the soft tissues that surround the central nervous system,” the institute explains. Clients receive CST treatments for conditions that include migraines, neck and back pain, TMJ, chronic fatigue, scoliosis and central nervous system disorders. Sessions last from 45 minutes to an hour, during which clients remain fully clothed. While she was marketing director, Breman trained in CST and became certified in therapeutic massage and bodywork so she could offer demonstrations at conventions and meetings. After a satisfying stint in the role, Breman had another job opportunity and told Upledger she would be leaving. </p>
<p>He had other ideas, pointing her toward the second floor, encouraging her to immerse herself in the institute’s intensive program.</p>
<p>“You don’t say no to Dr. John,” she says, smiling broadly. “And you know, he just changed my life.” </p>
<p>With Upledger as her mentor, she earned a master’s degree in social work and became a licensed clinical social worker. She’s a diplomate in CST, the top level of certification available.</p>
<p>She’s traveled the world — from Pennsylvania’s Amish country to Australia — practicing and teaching noninvasive body therapies. She developed her own signature practice called “body psychology,” blending her singular combination of skills to address psychological and physical pain. She’s studying for a Ph.D. And now, she is a freshly minted author.</p>
<p>She and Susan Vaughan Kratz are co-authors of <i>A Touch Better: Two Therapists’ Journeys and the Lessons They Learned From Dr. John E. Upledger About CranioSacral Therapy</i>. </p>
<p>“It took about five years to really get this thing done,” Breman says of the 253-page book. “My passion was to keep Dr. John Upledger alive … his legacy, his passion, his teachings and the things we did there.”</p>
<p>Just as Upledger mentored Breman, Breman mentored Kratz.</p>
<p><a href="{{#staticFileLink}}7960931852,original{{/staticFileLink}}" target="_blank"><img src="{{#staticFileLink}}7960931852,original{{/staticFileLink}}" class="align-left" alt="7960931852?profile=original" /></a>“I think I represent the next generation of therapists learning the work from the sages,” says Kratz, a CST diplomate and occupational therapist with a clinic in Waukesha, Wisconsin. “After practicing this method for 20 years now, I’m as passionate about it and the results it promises as I was when I first learned craniosacral therapy. Together, Mya and I wanted to assemble parts of the story of Dr. Upledger’s work that had not been told, and yet include compelling scientific evidence that is demanded of practitioners in this day and age.”</p>
<p>The authors devote the book’s last chapter to scientific research into CST. One example is a study published in the May 2016 edition of <i>The Clinical Journal of Pain</i>, which concluded: “CST was shown to be specifically effective and safe in reducing neck pain intensity and may improve the functional disability and the quality of life up to three months after the intervention.” </p>
<p>The researchers suggested further study to allow for “rigorous methodological designs and long-term follow ups.” </p>
<p>The practice attracts its share of skeptics, but Kratz and Breman welcome the scrutiny. “Scientific research increases the exposure and acceptance of this very valuable treatment,” they write. “In order to reduce the ‘voodoo’ perception of therapeutic touch and mobilizing tissues and fluids, we need to validate the work.”</p>
<p>CST adherents need no further convincing. Louise, a 50-year-old Palm Beach resident, says she found relief in CST after a car accident left her feeling like she had “shaken baby syndrome.”</p>
<p>“The major benefits included reduction of pain and greater mobility. It is amazing what a good craniosacral therapist can do in a very gentle noninvasive way,” says Louise, who prefers to remain anonymous. “I have continued with my craniosacral therapist. What I have learned is, when injuries and issues are addressed quickly, they tend to be resolved quickly.” </p>
<p>Sitting in her airy Ocean Ridge living room, a stone’s throw from where neighbors pointed her in surprising new directions, Breman talks about the work she’s done with children on the autism spectrum, a young man with schizophrenia, a client with Alzheimer’s. “It’s my joy to help them,” she says of the work — which is, after all, her “soul purpose.”</p>
<p><i>A Touch Better</i> is available on the International Alliance of Healthcare Educators website, <a href="http://www.iahe.com">www.iahe.com</a>, for $26.95. To learn more about the Upledger Institute International or CST, visit <a href="http://www.upledger.com">www.upledger.com</a>.</p>
<p></p>
<p><i>Joyce Reingold writes about health and healthy living. Send column ideas to joyce.reingold@yahoo.com.</i></p></div>Finding Faith: Chabad assembling inspiring stories about ‘Women of Valor’https://thecoastalstar.com/profiles/blogs/finding-faith-chabad-assembling-inspiring-stories-about-women-of-2019-04-30T18:38:39.000Z2019-04-30T18:38:39.000ZMary Kate Leminghttps://thecoastalstar.com/members/MaryKateLeming769<div><p class="p1" style="text-align:center;"><a href="{{#staticFileLink}}7960859452,original{{/staticFileLink}}" target="_blank"><img src="{{#staticFileLink}}7960859452,original{{/staticFileLink}}" class="align-center" alt="7960859452?profile=original" /></a><em>Rabbi Ruvi New of the Boca Beach Chabad speaks at the inaugural Women of Valor brunch in January. New invited women to share stories of courage and commitment for the Chabad’s book, due to be published early next year. <b>Photo provided</b></em></p>
<p class="p1" style="text-align:center;"></p>
<p class="p1"><strong>By Janis Fontaine</strong></p>
<p class="p1">Mother’s Day is May 12, but Rabbi Ruvi New, director and spiritual leader of Boca Beach Chabad, hasn’t needed a holiday to think about the mothers and wives, sisters and sisters-in-law, in his congregation.</p>
<p class="p3"><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span> New says he’s seen “a coming together” that has put women’s issues front and center. Amid the #MeToo and #TimesUp movements, people seem to be listening, he said.</p>
<p class="p3">Now the rabbi wants to provide a platform to present the stories he’s heard about the quiet courage and unbreakable commitment, the strength, resolve and stamina, of Jewish women. He realized that those stories were being lost.</p>
<p class="p3">So he found a solution.</p>
<p class="p3">In January 2020, Boca Beach Chabad will publish <i>Women of Valor: Sharing Stories, Celebrating Lives</i>, a coffee-table style book of pictorial retellings of personal stories about women who represent the best of humanity.</p>
<p class="p3">“These stories need to be disseminated,” New said, “now, before they are lost.”</p>
<p class="p3">There are few restrictions on the stories you can submit. You can write your own story or someone else’s. The subject can be living or dead, famous or unknown. They can even be reluctant, like Sibyl Silver.</p>
<p class="p3">Silver, who lives in Boca Raton, was asked by New to include her story. Silver is no egotist. But when you shift the focus to something she does want to talk about — the Torah — she comes alive.</p>
<p class="p3">On a trip to Budapest, Silver and her husband, Robert, learned that 113 Torahs taken from the Hungarian Jewish community during World War II were decaying in a sloppy pile in the dank basement of the Lenin Scientific Library in Gorky.</p>
<p class="p3">Silver, a fixer and a rescuer, set upon a mission to rescue the Torahs, but then her husband died. Eventually Silver moved forward and started the Jewish Heritage Foundation to pay for the scrolls’ restoration and return to the community.</p>
<p class="p3">The rabbi told her that publishing her story would help her rescue more Judaica, so she agreed. Returning these precious heirlooms to their rightful owners is very important to her.</p>
<p class="p3">“The way I looked at it, rescuing the Judaica confiscated during the Holocaust gave meaning to the lives of those who didn’t survive, and returning it to the families was the best good deed I could ever do,” she says, insisting again that it’s about the act, not the actor.</p>
<p class="p3">Author and lecturer Lieba Rudolph wrote her own story and she signed on to edit the book, using her skills as a writer and researcher <a href="{{#staticFileLink}}7960859262,original{{/staticFileLink}}" target="_blank"><img src="{{#staticFileLink}}7960859262,original{{/staticFileLink}}" class="align-left" alt="7960859262?profile=original" /></a>to flesh out the stories and polish them to a high shine.</p>
<p class="p3">“Women have a wisdom that has to be heard,” she said from her home in Pittsburgh.</p>
<p class="p3">They don’t have to save lives or donate a million dollars, she said.</p>
<p class="p3">“Every bit of good a person does helps accumulate good in the world.”</p>
<p class="p3"><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span> New thinks memorializing a woman you love would make an appropriate and meaningful Mother’s Day tribute, and he’d like to publish 100 stories in the book.</p>
<p class="p3">The rabbi says the response has been positive and widespread, with inquiries from around the world and from people who want to copy the idea.</p>
<p class="p3">“I hope it will be emulated,” New said. “Research shows that children who know about their parents’ lives, their struggles and their achievements, feel closer and more connected to their families.”</p>
<p class="p3">The full-color hardback book should be available early next year, New said. Submissions are being accepted now.</p>
<p class="p3">“These stories can be a legacy,” New said. “We want to create a repository where these stories can be preserved and passed on.”</p>
<p class="p3">Rudolph stresses that all women are worthy.</p>
<p class="p3">“Every woman has a story,” she said. “Every good deed, every kind word, even a positive thought tips the scales. Good accumulates.”</p>
<p class="p3">You can call New with questions at 394-9770 or email him at rabbi@chabadbocabeaches.com. For more information or to submit a story (there is a fee), visit BocaBeachChabad.org or womenofvalor.life.</p>
<p class="p4"></p>
<p class="p5"><i>Janis Fontaine writes about people of faith, their congregations, causes and community events. Contact her at janisfontaine@outlook.com.</i></p></div>Books: Memoir rings true todayhttps://thecoastalstar.com/profiles/blogs/books-memoir-rings-true-today2018-11-27T22:30:00.000Z2018-11-27T22:30:00.000ZMary Kate Leminghttps://thecoastalstar.com/members/MaryKateLeming769<div><p class="p1"><a href="{{#staticFileLink}}7960818261,original{{/staticFileLink}}" target="_blank"><img src="{{#staticFileLink}}7960818261,original{{/staticFileLink}}" class="align-center" alt="7960818261?profile=original" /></a></p>
<p class="p1" style="text-align:center;"><b><i>Return of the Swallows</i></b>, by Dorothea Praschma. Amazon; 280 pp., $15.99</p>
<p class="p2"></p>
<p class="p3"><span class="s1"><b>By Steve Pike</b></span></p>
<p class="p4"></p>
<p class="p5">Dorothea Praschma’s granite boulder gravestone in South Africa’s Transvaal reads: “She Gave a Dog a Bone.’’</p>
<p class="p5">Through memoirs that span 1935 to 1947, Dorothy, Countess Praschma, gives readers much more than a bone. The memoirs, compiled by her daughter, Ilona Praschma Balfour, vividly tell the tale of an aristocratic family at war with the Nazis, Russians and sometimes each other during the most pivotal time in 20th-century history.</p>
<p class="p5">“This is her book,’’ said Balfour, of<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span> Hypoluxo Island.</p>
<p class="p5">The story of Dorothy Ferreira, a South African peasant who in 1930 married German aristocrat Englebert, Count Praschma, is as sweeping as any James Michener novel. From castles in what is now the Czech Republic, to European boarding schools, Soviet labor camps and Portuguese East Africa, <i>Return of the Swallows</i> is filled with a cast of real-life characters led by the indomitable wife (widowed in 1941) and mother caught in the madness of war and between two disparate cultures.</p>
<p class="p5">“People who knew her loved her and admired her. My mother was always a strong person who was always looking out for us,’’ said Ilona, who has been married to journalist Malcolm Balfour for 50 years.</p>
<p class="p5">Ilona Balfour worked off and on for several years to compile her mother’s memoirs into a self-published book that, except for prologue and epilogue, are Countess Dorothy’s own words. The countess died in 1981. </p>
<p class="p5">“It’s not great literature,’’ Balfour said, “but it’s an intriguing story of an interesting time.’’</p>
<p class="p5">A story that rings true even today.</p></div>Delray Beach: Librarian plans to deliver more books to Kenyahttps://thecoastalstar.com/profiles/blogs/delray-beach-librarian-plans-to-deliver-more-books-to-kenya2018-10-03T15:45:05.000Z2018-10-03T15:45:05.000ZThe Coastal Starhttps://thecoastalstar.com/members/TheCoastalStar<div><p style="text-align:center;"><a href="{{#staticFileLink}}7960813289,original{{/staticFileLink}}"><img width="600" src="{{#staticFileLink}}7960813289,original{{/staticFileLink}}" class="align-center" alt="7960813289?profile=original" /></a><em>Delray Beach librarian Isabella Rowan (pink shirt) is surrounded by children holding books they received in the Kenya Library Project. Rowan already has books for next year’s trip. <strong>Photo provided</strong></em></p>
<p><strong>By Lucy Lazarony</strong></p>
<p>Delray Beach librarian Isabella Rowan has returned from Africa, but she’s already planning to return.<br /> When she went to Kenya in June she helped deliver 15,000 library books to 15 schools as a volunteer with Project Humanity, a nonprofit out of Key West. <br /> The books were part of 60,000 delivered to Africa by a nonprofit called the African Library Project.<br /> Next summer she’s going back to Kenya with books to open a sister library in Kendu Bay, a small coastal town on Lake Victoria. <br /> It will be the town’s first library and will be housed in a local school. <br /> “The main reason I selected Kendu Bay was because it basically was the only community that applied for a community/public library,” Rowan says. “Because I am a public adult services librarian, I really wanted a community library. Once that detail was out of the way, the more I learned about Kendu Bay and its history, the more I liked and respected the community. Though not the booming port city and center of commerce it once was, it has always been a town, since the earliest settlers came, known for its religious tolerance and for its inhabitants of various backgrounds living peaceably together.”<br /> The Kenya Library Project is an initiative of the Delray Beach Public Library. Organizers are looking to collect 1,000 to 1,500 new or gently used books for the Kendu Bay library. <br /> People may support the Kenya Library Project through cash and Amazon gift card donations. And they can purchase books from the Kenya Library Project wish list on Amazon Smile.<br /> “That’s the biggest and best way you can support this project is buy a book for us,” says Rowan, who is educational programs and volunteer manager at the Delray Beach library. “We have 275 books on shelves in my office right now.”<br /> Rowan called her time in Kenya “amazing and nonstop” and said students were grateful for the visitors and books.<br /> “It was a wonderful, beautiful experience, schoolchildren singing and dancing to welcome us,” Rowan says.<br /> The schoolchildren in Kenya speak three languages — their tribal language, Swahili and English — and they were eager to practice English.<br /> “The girls were so excited to practice reading English with me,” Rowan says. “It was awesome.”<br /> Rowan can’t wait to return to Kendu Bay next summer. “I fell in love with Kendu Bay. I’m in love with this project,” she says. “For me personally, it’s going to be a lifelong mission.”</p></div>Paws Up for Pets: Service dogs inspire Boynton Beach sisters’ book about their Princehttps://thecoastalstar.com/profiles/blogs/paws-up-for-pets-service-dogs-inspire-boynton-beach-sisters-book-2018-08-28T18:55:03.000Z2018-08-28T18:55:03.000ZMary Kate Leminghttps://thecoastalstar.com/members/MaryKateLeming769<div><p class="p1" style="text-align:center;"><a href="{{#staticFileLink}}7960808061,original{{/staticFileLink}}"><img width="750" src="{{#staticFileLink}}7960808061,original{{/staticFileLink}}" class="align-center" alt="7960808061?profile=original" /></a><em>Sophie and Sabrina Ginsburg with Bailey (left) and Prince, who left service dog training after he developed Addison’s disease. <b>Photo provided</b></em></p>
<p class="p1"><strong>By Arden Moore</strong></p>
<p class="p1">Meet the tail-wagging, always happy Prince, who reigns as a prince among pups. And credit sisters Sophie and Sabrina Ginsburg of Boynton Beach for chronicling the actions and antics of their special dog in a real page-turning, inspiring book.</p>
<p class="p3">They assembled 14 stories about Prince and put them in a 146-page book called <i>Dear Mr. Albert … It’s Me, Prince!</i> that is fast becoming a go-to book for elementary classrooms and beyond. It is the first book collaboration by Sophie, 17, and Sabrina, 19.</p>
<p class="p3">“All of these are real stories about real things that have happened to Prince,” says Sophie, a senior at Somerset Academy Canyons High School in Boynton Beach.</p>
<p class="p3">Adds Sabrina, a sophomore at the University of Miami, “My sister and I began writing down stories about Prince and one day we said, we have so many stories we might as well write a book. Everything in the book is a real story and every character is a real character.”</p>
<p class="p3">The characters include Suzy the squirrel — Prince’s “girlfriend” as depicted with playful illustrations by Elena Jacobson in the book.</p>
<p class="p3">“Every day in our backyard, Prince would bark at the same squirrel and one day, he picked up the squirrel in his mouth and carried her around,” recalls Sophie. “Prince didn’t hurt the squirrel at all — he just wanted to play.”</p>
<p class="p3">The book, aimed at children ages 9 to 12, is told through Prince’s point of view in a series of letters he writes to his service dog trainer, a former prison inmate named Eddie Albert. The Dogs 4 Disabled Veterans runs a service dog program with screened inmates like Albert at Martin Correctional Institution. The mission of this Pompano Beach-based nonprofit is to pair rehabilitated, rescue dogs with military veterans with disabilities.</p>
<p class="p3">Prince was making steady progress toward his service dog certification, but then developed Addison’s disease, a hormonal condition in which the body does not produce enough adrenal gland hormones to combat stress.</p>
<p class="p3">Suddenly, Prince found himself as a service dog dropout in need of a Plan B. The Ginsburg family learned about this special King Charles cavalier spaniel-poodle mix and were approved to adopt him a few years ago.</p>
<p class="p3">“Prince is a big sweetheart, a cuddle buddy and a jock who likes to play ball,” Sabrina says. “Once he became sick with Addison’s disease and was taken out of the program, he never got to see Mr. Albert, so that is what prompted the idea for our book title.</p>
<p class="p3">“The whole book is written in a letter style that chronicles Prince’s travels, how we take care of his Addison’s disease and the need for service dogs for disabled veterans.”</p>
<p class="p3">The book also documents the introductions between Prince and the family’s resident dog, Bailey, a Maltipoo (Maltese-poodle mix). At two years older, Bailey immediately let Prince know that he would be top dog in the household.</p>
<p class="p3">“Bailey is smaller than Prince, but he has an ego much bigger than Prince,” laughs Sophie. “Prince views him as his older brother and now they love each other and snuggle together at night.”</p>
<p class="p3">The sisters are winning over elementary schoolteachers, and some are including this book as a learning tool after the sisters gave presentations and read portions of the book to students. One of their stops this year included Freedom Shores Elementary in Boynton Beach, which the sisters both attended.</p>
<p class="p3">“We hope students use our book to learn about disabilities and about veterans,” says Sabrina. “And, we have key words at the bottom of each page with definitions. We want young readers to also learn about living with pets.”</p>
<p class="p3">Sabrina and Sophie have big aspirations. Sabrina is a pre-medicine major with sights on becoming an astronaut/physician, performing medical research in space. Sophie is<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span> interested in medicine as well as law.</p>
<p class="p3">But in between their academic pursuits, the Ginsburg sisters have not ruled out collaborating on a second Prince book.</p>
<p class="p3">“We have a lot more stories about Prince to share and he is as funny as ever,” says Sabrina.</p>
<p class="p3">And Sophie’s message to children and teenagers?</p>
<p class="p3">“It doesn’t matter what age you are, you can write a book if you put your mind to it. You can make a difference.” </p>
<p class="p1"><span class="s1"><b><a href="{{#staticFileLink}}7960808699,original{{/staticFileLink}}"><img width="750" src="{{#staticFileLink}}7960808699,original{{/staticFileLink}}" class="align-center" alt="7960808699?profile=original" /></a></b></span></p>
<p class="p1" style="text-align:center;"><span class="s1"><b>How to buy book</b></span></p>
<p class="p2" style="text-align:center;"><i>Dear Mr. Albert … It’s Me, Prince!</i> is available in paperback and Kindle versions on Amazon.com at $6.99. Net proceeds will be donated to the Dogs 4 Disabled Veterans (dogs4disabledveterans.org) to cover training costs for service dogs. Learn more at princethedog.com.</p>
<p class="p4"></p>
<p class="p5"><i>Arden Moore, founder of FourLeggedLife.com, is an animal behavior consultant, editor, author, professional speaker and master certified pet first-aid instructor.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span> Learn more by visiting<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span> <a href="http://www.ardenmoore.com">www.ardenmoore.com</a>.</i></p></div>Books: Alzheimer’s-afflicted spy still has a few tricks up his sleevehttps://thecoastalstar.com/profiles/blogs/books-alzheimer-s-afflicted-spy-still-has-a-few-tricks-up-his-sle2018-05-02T00:00:00.000Z2018-05-02T00:00:00.000ZMary Kate Leminghttps://thecoastalstar.com/members/MaryKateLeming769<div><p style="text-align:center;"><span><b><i>Memory Road</i> By Dick Schmidt. Landslide Publishing, 294 pp., $15.95</b></span></p>
<p></p>
<p><span><b>By Steve Pike</b></span></p>
<p>A lot of movies and TV shows are inspired by books. But for his second book, Boca Raton author Richard Schmidt has flipped the script, so to speak. Schmidt’s hero in <i>Memory Road</i>, Stewart Masterson, was inspired by the Saul Berenson character in the popular TV series <i>Homeland</i>.</p>
<p>In the show, Berenson is fired by the CIA; in Schmidt’s book, Masterson is a retired CIA senior agent in the beginning stages of Alzheimer’s disease.</p>
<p>“While I was watching the show, I wondered what (the CIA) would do with Saul. They can’t just let him run around loose because of all he knows,’’ said Schmidt, whose first book, <i>The Boy and The Dolphin</i>, was published in 2016. “I thought, what happens if he got Alzheimer’s? Then he would be a real problem.’’</p>
<p>That’s where <i>Memory Road</i> begins, as directors of various U.S. intelligence agencies try to figure out what to do with Masterson, whom they consider a clear and present danger. “We don’t know who he might be talking to,’’ one director says.</p>
<p><a href="{{#staticFileLink}}7960789099,original{{/staticFileLink}}"><img src="{{#staticFileLink}}7960789099,original{{/staticFileLink}}" width="202" class="align-left" alt="7960789099?profile=original" /></a>Their solution is to clandestinely obtain guardianship of Masterson and stash him in an assisted living facility in Pompano Beach where he can be supervised day and night.</p>
<p>But Masterson escapes the facility and steals a Mercedes — and thus the adventure begins on the back roads of U.S. Highway 1 from Pompano Beach to Silver Spring, Md.</p>
<p>Published by Schmidt’s Boca Raton-based Landslide Publishing, <i>Memory Road</i> is a fast-paced thriller with well-written characters who are easy to root for and root against. The book’s main rooting interest, of course, is Masterson, whom Schmidt created as a simple man who did his duty and wanted to retire in peace with his daughter and grandchildren.</p>
<p>The Alzheimer’s and the government’s threats to him and his loved ones, however, make him use every bit of training to reach the inevitable standoff with his former bosses.</p>
<p>Schmidt studied the organizational charts of the different U.S. intelligence agencies to gain a better understanding and help the book’s structure. He and his son, David, a playwright in Manhattan, also took the exact route along U.S. Highway 1 that Masterson uses.</p>
<p>“One thing we learned was that Masterson probably could not have made that trip,’’ said Schmidt, CEO of Schmidt Companies Inc. in Boca Raton. “It’s hard to get on U.S. 1 and stay there. The roads aren’t marked very well when you get into some of the cities. We were armed with Google Maps and GPS and still got lost.’’</p>
<p>Does Masterson triumph over the bad guys? You’ll have to read <i>Memory Road</i> to find out. For Schmidt, <i>Memory Road</i> isn’t about good versus evil as much as it is about how much one’s life is worth — even if that life is stricken with Alzheimer’s.</p>
<p>“When I read books about Alzheimer’s, they were all about the things that were taken away from people who suffer from the disease,’’ Schmidt said. “It just kind of made me write a book about someone’s abilities, and I think that’s what sets this book apart.</p>
<p>“I tried to put a positive spin on someone with Alzheimer’s and at same time show that people who are afflicted with Alzheimer’s are still human beings and have the same needs as those around them.’’</p></div>Along the Coast: Literary Coalition’s annual reading campaign underwayhttps://thecoastalstar.com/profiles/blogs/along-the-coast-literary-coalition-s-annual-reading-campaign-unde2017-10-31T18:30:00.000Z2017-10-31T18:30:00.000ZMary Kate Leminghttps://thecoastalstar.com/members/MaryKateLeming769<div><p> <a href="{{#staticFileLink}}7960760458,original{{/staticFileLink}}"><img src="{{#staticFileLink}}7960760458,original{{/staticFileLink}}" class="align-left" width="182" alt="7960760458?profile=original" /></a></p>
<p>Time to pull out the reading glasses. The Literacy Coalition of Palm Beach County’s ninth annual “one book, one community” reading campaign is underway and runs through early December. <br /> The aim of the campaign, called “Read Together Palm Beach County,” is to get adults to read the same book at the same time and to discuss the book.<br /> The program entices those who like to read, but don’t do it often, to get reading again.<br /> This year’s book is Fredrik Backman’s A Man Called Ove (pronounced Oh-Veh), a story of unexpected friendships and a reminder that life is sweeter when shared.<br /> The Literacy Coalition and Read Together are hosting more than 30 events at various venues, including libraries, restaurants, theaters and museums. For details, see <a href="http://www.literacypbc.org/event/read-together-2017">www.literacypbc.org/event/read-together-2017</a>.<br /> The book can be purchased for $10 at The Literacy Coalition of Palm Beach County, 3651 Quantum Blvd., Boynton Beach, and at Starbucks stores.<br /> <em>— Staff report</em></p></div>Books: Tender Flower of Heaven celebrates poetryhttps://thecoastalstar.com/profiles/blogs/books-tender-flower-of-heaven-celebrates-poetry2017-05-03T13:51:43.000Z2017-05-03T13:51:43.000ZMary Kate Leminghttps://thecoastalstar.com/members/MaryKateLeming769<div><p style="text-align:left;"><strong>By Steve Pike</strong><br /> <br />You know that feeling you get when you hear a song on the radio that brings back a memory? It’s as if you’re transported back to that moment in time — to the sights, sounds and smells of another lifetime.<br /> Ann Purcell transports you back to those times in her life not with song, but with poetry. Purcell’s new book, Tender Flower of Heaven, is a collection of 130 poems she has written over the past 30 years from places ranging from Switzerland and Holland to Heavenly Mountain, N.C., and Livingston Manor, N.Y. <br /> Purcell, who splits her time between Delray Beach and Livingston Manor, has been a teacher of Transcendental Meditation since 1973. Each poem in Tender Flower of Heaven was inspired by her teacher, the legendary Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. <br /> Purcell originally published Tender Flower of Heaven in 2006 basically for family and friends. The second edition was published to a larger audience this past December. <br /> The poems, Purcell said, “certainly bring back a sense of place. I can’t say that with all of them, but with some of them, for sure.’’<br /> One in particular is called Am I the Poet? Written in 1989, it’s one of Purcell’s first attempts at poetry, as well as one of her most revealing.<br /> “It expresses my creative processes,’’ Purcell said. “I often refer to this poem when I’m talking about creativity.’’<br /> “Silence stirred, an impulse heard<br /> “Beyond all meter, beyond all word …”<br /> “I wrote it in Switzerland,’’ Purcell said. “But I get the feeling I didn’t write it; I just watched it being written by itself, as though I was a vessel.<br /> “Every now and then, when writing poems, it just flows so effortlessly you think, ‘Where did that come from?’ Other poems haven’t always appeared so effortlessly. This poem expresses that effortless experience.’’<br /> And in each poem, Purcell takes you on an experience worth reading.</p>
<p style="text-align:left;"></p>
<p style="text-align:center;"><em>Tender Flower of Heaven</em>, by Ann Purcell; available at<br />http://EnlightenmentFor<br />Everyone.com/tender-flower-of-heaven, 205 pp., $8.99</p></div>Meet Your Neighbor: Maria Nhambuhttps://thecoastalstar.com/profiles/blogs/meet-your-neighbor-maria-nhambu2017-01-04T17:26:15.000Z2017-01-04T17:26:15.000ZThe Coastal Starhttps://thecoastalstar.com/members/TheCoastalStar<div><p style="text-align:center;"><a href="{{#staticFileLink}}7960703101,original{{/staticFileLink}}"><img width="500" src="{{#staticFileLink}}7960703101,original{{/staticFileLink}}" class="align-center" alt="7960703101?profile=original" /></a><em>Maria Nhambu holds her book, 'Africa’s Child,' at her coastal Delray Beach condo.</em></p>
<p style="text-align:center;"><em>The book is the first of a planned three-part memoir.</em></p>
<p style="text-align:center;"><strong>Tim Stepien/The Coastal Star</strong></p>
<p style="text-align:center;"></p>
<p style="text-align:left;"> Her name is Maria Nhambu but she prefers to be called Nhambu. <br /> It is a name that tells you much about this woman, an orphan in Tanzania who escaped a life void of love and affection and later thrived as an educator in, of all places, Minnesota. <br /> The name also tells you about a role she played during the greatest part of her 73 years, that of informal ambassador helping people in the United States understand more about Africa and those in Africa learn more about America. <br /> Nhambu, in the language of the East African tribe the little girl known for many years only as Mary was born into, translates into one who gets people together. <br /> “My whole life, that’s what I’ve been doing,” she said. “Then many years later, I found out that was my name.” <br /> Nhambu’s extraordinary tale of being left at an orphanage for mixed-raced African children when she was just 3 days old, and of later using education to lead her to an accomplished life in the U.S., is chronicled in her book, <em>Africa’s Child</em>. It is the first and, so far only, published book of a three-part memoir that reads like a script for a Hollywood movie. <br /> Her earliest years were marked by bullying and physical abuse at the hands of older girls in the orphanage, which was in an isolated and desolate mountain region that Nhambu describes as at the end of the world. <br /> “It’s a miracle I’m still alive,” she says. <br /> Thoughtful and insightful even as a child, Nhambu realized that if she were ever going to leave the orphanage she would need an education.<br /> “I was alone in the world,” she says. “I made the decision that nobody wanted me, so I needed to want me.” <br /> As Nhambu got older, the nuns who ran the orphanage sent her to a boarding school 200 miles away, and eventually she was chosen to go to the first secondary school in the area which was run by nuns from the Maryknoll Sisters of New York.<br /> There she met a 23-year-old English teacher named Catherine, who took her under her wing. After her year volunteering in Africa, the teacher headed back to Minnesota — and brought Nhambu with her.<br /> “I was petrified, but I trusted her,” Nhambu says. “You realize you’re leaving the only place on Earth that you know.”<br /> For a few years Nhambu lived with Catherine’s family while going to college on a full scholarship and majoring in French. <br /> “It was the happiest time of my life,” Nhambu says. <br /> She landed a job teaching and made a career in education. Eventually, she put down roots in Minnesota, where she got married and started a family. She still has a home there, where she spends summers.<br /> While teaching, Nhambu also started a fitness program, Aerobics With Soul, which ties back to her African roots. <br /> “I used dances I knew as a child and modified them so I could teach Americans,” she said. <br /> Today, Nhambu lives near the ocean in Delray Beach surrounded by her 700-piece collection of African art.<br /> When she’s in the United States, Nhambu says she is an ambassador for Africa, helping Americans understand more about that continent and its culture. <br /> “I talk about what is good about Africa and what it has to offer,” she says. <br /> During trips to Africa, she says, she shares similar stories about America with Africans. <br /> “I stress the similarities,” she says. <strong><br /></strong><em>— Rich Pollack</em><strong><br /><em> </em><br /> Q.</strong> Where did you grow up and go to school? How do you think that has influenced you?<strong><br /> A.</strong> I grew up in Tanzania, East Africa. It has influenced everything about me — how I think, how I see and interpret the world and life.<strong><br /><br /> Q.</strong> What professions have you worked in? What professional accomplishments are you most proud of?<strong><br /> A.</strong> I have been a French and Swahili teacher and created Aerobics With Soul, a fitness program using African dance and music.<strong><br /> <br /> Q.</strong> What advice do you have for a young person selecting a career today? <strong><br /> A.</strong> Find your dream. When you find it, don’t follow it, chase it!<strong><br /> <br /> Q.</strong> How did you choose to make your home in Delray Beach?<strong><br /> A.</strong> My former husband moved his business here and I came with him.<strong><br /> <br /> Q.</strong> What is your favorite part about living in Delray Beach? <strong><br /> A.</strong> The beach, the weather, the community and friends I’ve made.<strong><br /> <br /> Q.</strong> What music do you listen to when you need inspiration? When you want to relax? <strong><br /> A.</strong> African music, solo piano and New Age music.<strong><br /><br /> Q.</strong> Do you have a favorite quote that inspires your decisions? <strong><br /> A.</strong> “It is what it is, but it will become what you make it.”<strong><br /> <br /> Q.</strong> Have you had mentors in your life? Individuals who have inspired your life decisions?<strong><br /> A.</strong> Yes. Teachers in Tanzania and in America. Both my friends and enemies have taught me meaningful and helpful lessons about life. <strong><br /> <br /> Q.</strong> If your life story were made into a movie, who would you want to play you?<strong><br /> A.</strong> Halle Berry.<strong><br /> <br /> Q.</strong> Who/what makes you laugh?<strong><br /> A.</strong> Dancing makes me laugh. Children make me laugh and AFV (<em>America’s Funniest Home Videos</em>).</p></div>Chairmen of the Boardhttps://thecoastalstar.com/profiles/blogs/chairmen-of-the-board2016-11-30T18:00:00.000Z2016-11-30T18:00:00.000ZMary Kate Leminghttps://thecoastalstar.com/members/MaryKateLeming769<div><p style="text-align:center;"><em><span style="font-family:arial, helvetica, sans-serif;" class="font-size-2"><a href="{{#staticFileLink}}7960692674,original{{/staticFileLink}}"><img src="{{#staticFileLink}}7960692674,original{{/staticFileLink}}" class="align-center" width="600" alt="7960692674?profile=original" /></a><a href="{{#staticFileLink}}7960692854,original{{/staticFileLink}}"><img src="{{#staticFileLink}}7960692854,original{{/staticFileLink}}" class="align-center" width="600" alt="7960692854?profile=original" /></a><a href="{{#staticFileLink}}7960692497,original{{/staticFileLink}}"><img src="{{#staticFileLink}}7960692497,original{{/staticFileLink}}" class="align-center" width="600" alt="7960692497?profile=original" /></a>Tony Arruza (top. <strong>Photo by Thom Smith/The Coastal Star</strong>) took this photo of mullet leaping as a shark approaches. Ron Heavyside (below) shaped the surfboard. <strong>Photos by Tony Arruza</strong></span></em></p>
<p style="text-align:center;"></p>
<p style="text-align:center;"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;" class="font-size-6">15 legendary surf masters create boards</span> <br /> <span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;" class="font-size-6">with photographer’s images from the sea</span></p>
<p style="text-align:center;"></p>
<p style="text-align:left;"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;" class="font-size-6"><span style="font-family:arial, helvetica, sans-serif;" class="font-size-2"><strong>By Thom Smith</strong></span></span></p>
<p style="text-align:left;"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;" class="font-size-6"><br /> <span style="font-family:arial, helvetica, sans-serif;" class="font-size-2">What a life!</span><br /> <span style="font-family:arial, helvetica, sans-serif;" class="font-size-2">Tony Arruza loves to surf, lives to surf. And once in a while, he works … as a photographer … as long as the work doesn’t pull him too far from the water. For five years he’s been engaged in a project that melds his passion and his profession into a unique expression.</span> <br /> <span style="font-family:arial, helvetica, sans-serif;" class="font-size-2">A five-year labor of love, “15x15” is 15 surfboards, shaped by 15 legendary board makers, each adorned with one of Arruza’s photographs. They are functional art that could hang over a mantel or crank into a fast-breaking left at Reef Road.</span><br /> <span style="font-family:arial, helvetica, sans-serif;" class="font-size-2">The collection is on display through Jan. 21 at the Cultural Council of Palm Beach County gallery in Lake Worth.</span> <br /> <span style="font-family:arial, helvetica, sans-serif;" class="font-size-2">In addition to the boards, Arruza, 63, has mounted four dozen photos of the board makers at work, the original photographic prints, two of the laminate images that give each board its personality and a hardcover book ($30, autographed) that details the production of all 15 boards.</span><br /> <span style="font-family:arial, helvetica, sans-serif;" class="font-size-2">As a child, Arruza was always around the water, fishing and diving with his father, an engineer, in their native Cuba. In the wake of the revolution, the family headed for Miami, then the Glades sugar industry and finally West Palm Beach.</span> <br /> <span style="font-family:arial, helvetica, sans-serif;" class="font-size-2">In the mid-’60s, as the surfing craze was hitting the East Coast, he rode his first wave at Lake Worth Beach. For his 13th birthday, his dad gave him a board — a 9-foot, 6-inch Surfboard House, custom made in Miami.</span> <br /> <span style="font-family:arial, helvetica, sans-serif;" class="font-size-2">By today’s standards, it was a barge; for Arruza it was enlightenment.</span><br /> <span style="font-family:arial, helvetica, sans-serif;" class="font-size-2">“I was reading surfing magazines like they were the Bible,” Arruza recalled of articles that documented not just surfing, but the writers’ travels. “I thought: I want to do this one day.”</span><br /> <span style="font-family:arial, helvetica, sans-serif;" class="font-size-2">He did travel, to local breaks and “up the coast” to spots like Shark Pit and Canaveral Pier, as much as a kid could while still in high school. Settling in at Palm Beach Junior College (now Palm Beach State), he developed — surprise, surprise — an interest in marine biology.</span> <br /> <span style="font-family:arial, helvetica, sans-serif;" class="font-size-2">Where to go? University of Miami? Too expensive. Scripps in San Diego? Too far. Woods Hole in Massachusetts? Too cold.</span><br /> <span style="font-family:arial, helvetica, sans-serif;" class="font-size-2">“Puerto Rico was close enough that I could talk my parents into it,” Arruza admitted. “I really didn’t care about the school, I just wanted to surf, but I convinced them to let me start school there. I got to meet people, got to know all the surf spots.”</span> <br /> <span style="font-family:arial, helvetica, sans-serif;" class="font-size-2">As luck would have it, his father had another gift for Tony — a Nikonos amphibious camera. Today cameras like this one sit as memorabilia in curio cases or unsold in thrift stores, but his was revolutionary.</span><br /> <span style="font-family:arial, helvetica, sans-serif;" class="font-size-2">“I’d shot some small stuff in high school,” he said. “But because the camera was meant to be in the water and I surfed, I started shooting surfing with it. I came back from Puerto Rico with some great photos, did some slide shows and people urged me to shoot more and submit pictures to the surfing magazines.”</span><br /> <span style="font-family:arial, helvetica, sans-serif;" class="font-size-2">One surfing photo even won first prize in a Kodak-sponsored photo contest.</span> <br /> <span style="font-family:arial, helvetica, sans-serif;" class="font-size-2">Because few photographers had discovered Puerto Rico, Arruza’s photos began to show up in surfing magazines. After earning his degree at Florida Atlantic University, he returned to Puerto Rico and began shooting in earnest.</span> <br /> <span style="font-family:arial, helvetica, sans-serif;" class="font-size-2">“I was getting published, getting known, making money, and it became easy to get travel assignments, too,” he said, recalling an inspirational trip in 1978 to shoot a surfing contest in Peru.</span> <br /> <span style="font-family:arial, helvetica, sans-serif;" class="font-size-2">“That was an eye-opener. It showed me a culture and a way of living that I had never experienced or knew about — the Peruvian-Inca culture.</span> <br /> <span style="font-family:arial, helvetica, sans-serif;" class="font-size-2">“Machu Picchu wasn’t like it is now. Then it was rough going, a long climb. Today I think there’s even a hotel there. That whole new world really opened my eyes and made me want to travel even more.</span><br /> <span style="font-family:arial, helvetica, sans-serif;" class="font-size-2">“My dreams as a kid were coming true,” he said. “I was living the life. I wasn’t living luxuriously, staying in fancy hotels, but I didn’t care.</span> <br /> <span style="font-family:arial, helvetica, sans-serif;" class="font-size-2">“The surfing world was so small that if you met somebody and told them you were going somewhere, they would put you in touch with a friend there who would pick you up at the airport, let you sleep on their couch, take you surfing, show you the ropes. Everywhere you went there was always someone who knew somebody somewhere else. It always worked out. It was pretty simple, pretty easy.”</span><br /> <span style="font-family:arial, helvetica, sans-serif;" class="font-size-2">Some of Arruza’s most influential shots, however, were shot at home. His 1989 Surfing magazine pictorial of a screaming swell put Palm Beach’s Reef Road on the surfing map.</span><br /> <span style="font-family:arial, helvetica, sans-serif;" class="font-size-2">Thanks to the Internet, however, the lifestyle has changed dramatically. Diehard surfers check surf reports on the Web, book cross-country flights to Palm Beach, catch the break and fly home the same day — hit and run.</span> <br /> <span style="font-family:arial, helvetica, sans-serif;" class="font-size-2">Arruza still prefers immersion and hopes it rubs off on his son Aidan, 21, who also surfs, enjoys underwater photography and, surprise, is studying marine biology.</span> <br /> <span style="font-family:arial, helvetica, sans-serif;" class="font-size-2">But while Tony doesn’t like the change, he adapted. Any surfer can mount a GoPro waterproof camera to his or her board and email the product to a magazine; Arruza long ago expanded his client base to the likes of Boeing, Coca-Cola, Exxon, National Geographic, Procter & Gamble and Royal Caribbean.</span><br /> <span style="font-family:arial, helvetica, sans-serif;" class="font-size-2">For one recent assignment he shot a 95-year-old Canadian Indian who crocheted 120 blankets and sweaters for patients at the veterans hospital for the Knights of Columbus.</span><br /> <span style="font-family:arial, helvetica, sans-serif;" class="font-size-2">No matter the assignment, it always comes down to people, which is what inspired Arruza to attempt “15x15.”</span><br /> <span style="font-family:arial, helvetica, sans-serif;" class="font-size-2">In 2010, for a local art show, Arruza commissioned his first art board. Pipeline, decked with an Arruza photograph of Hawaii’s Banzai Pipeline, was shaped by Steve Firogenis, who’s made Firo boards in West Palm Beach for more than 30 years.</span> <br /> <span style="font-family:arial, helvetica, sans-serif;" class="font-size-2">The gallery patrons loved it, as did Ron Heavyside at Nomad Surf Shop in the County Pocket near Briny Breezes.</span><br /> <span style="font-family:arial, helvetica, sans-serif;" class="font-size-2">Canadian by birth, Heavyside arrived in Delray Beach in 1962 after a spell in California. He quickly discovered surfing and soon after realized he could make some money fixing boards. A surf shop in Delray Beach hired him at half minimum wage, “about 75 cents an hour and that was fine with me,” he said.</span> <br /> <span style="font-family:arial, helvetica, sans-serif;" class="font-size-2">Heavyside’s father ran a TV repair shop on A1A. After considerable cajoling, he let Ron stake out a 12-by-6 space to sell baggies, T-shirts, wax and the boards he shaped. Today Nomad is a labyrinth of nooks and crannies covering more than 5,000 square feet.</span><br /> <span style="font-family:arial, helvetica, sans-serif;" class="font-size-2">After shaping thousands of boards during half a century, Ron now leaves that task to others, but when Arruza made his pitch he plugged in the old planer.</span> <br /> <span style="font-family:arial, helvetica, sans-serif;" class="font-size-2">“We were one of the first in the project,” Heavyside said. “Tony was still trying to see how well it would work. It didn’t take long to shape it, maybe a couple of hours. I think it turned out pretty good.”</span><br /> <span style="font-family:arial, helvetica, sans-serif;" class="font-size-2">Heavyside’s 6-foot “fish” shape, appropriately named Mullet Chase, features an above- and below-the-surface shot of schooling, jumping mullet.</span> <br /> <span style="font-family:arial, helvetica, sans-serif;" class="font-size-2">“A shark is right underneath me when I’m taking this,” Arruza says with a laugh. “I have a picture of the shark, too!”</span> <br /> <span style="font-family:arial, helvetica, sans-serif;" class="font-size-2">Arruza realized he had something more than surfboards with photos on them, but only after he saw the third board by Rick Carroll in Cocoa — “the workmanship that went into it and the aesthetics that came out” — did he realize he had something really special.</span><br /> <span style="font-family:arial, helvetica, sans-serif;" class="font-size-2">“At that point, the number 15 popped into mind,” he said. “I don’t know why but it sounded right — 15 boards by 15 different shapers. The whole thing took off on its own. The shapers I used, the places I went, none of it was written down. It progressed organically. I wanted to make each board differently. I made sure each shaper had a different style. Each board had a different look.”</span><br /> <span style="font-family:arial, helvetica, sans-serif;" class="font-size-2">Still winging it, Arruza departed from the water themes for board No. 4 with a red hibiscus, and changed the guts on the fifth by using balsa instead of foam. Then he broadened the scope with shapers from Puerto Rico and Cape Hatteras, New England, California, Hawaii and for No. 15, the finale, Australian legend Bob McTavish.</span> <br /> <span style="font-family:arial, helvetica, sans-serif;" class="font-size-2">“Word was getting out,” Arruza said. “People were coming to me, and it wasn’t just shapers. Photographers from around the world were asking how are you doing this, what material are you printing on, how did you shoot this?</span><br /> <span style="font-family:arial, helvetica, sans-serif;" class="font-size-2">“I had to turn down several people. I just couldn’t do any more. Fifteen was enough.”</span><br /> <span style="font-family:arial, helvetica, sans-serif;" class="font-size-2">What happens next? Arruza still prefers to let nature and art take their respective courses. Perhaps art galleries or organizations similar to the Cultural Council will propose exhibitions.</span><br /> <span style="font-family:arial, helvetica, sans-serif;" class="font-size-2">Surfing trade shows could beckon. The exhibit could travel to some of the dozen surfing museums around the globe. </span><br /> <span style="font-family:arial, helvetica, sans-serif;" class="font-size-2">If a collector — art, surf-fan or both — offered to buy all 15, he’d consider selling.</span> <br /> <span style="font-family:arial, helvetica, sans-serif;" class="font-size-2">But if not … well, the project is complete, Arruza has more photos to shoot and more waves to ride.</span> <br /> <br /></span></p>
<p style="text-align:center;"><span style="font-family:georgia, palatino;" class="font-size-6"><span style="font-family:arial, helvetica, sans-serif;" class="font-size-2"><strong>If You Go</strong><br /> What: 15 x 15: 15 Surfboards by 15 Shapers, by Tony Arruza, through Jan. 21 at the Cultural Council of Palm Beach County, 601 Lake Ave., Lake Worth. <br /> Phone: 471-2901<br /> Admission: Free<br /> Email: info@palmbeachculture.com <br /> Books available for purchase at $30 each plus tax.</span></span></p></div>Radio: Pioneer family scion writes history of radio roots in Floridahttps://thecoastalstar.com/profiles/blogs/radio-pioneer-family-scion-writes-history-of-radio-roots-in-flori2016-11-01T23:00:00.000Z2016-11-01T23:00:00.000ZMary Kate Leminghttps://thecoastalstar.com/members/MaryKateLeming769<div><p><em><a href="{{#staticFileLink}}7960688660,original{{/staticFileLink}}"><img src="{{#staticFileLink}}7960688660,original{{/staticFileLink}}" class="align-center" width="600" alt="7960688660?profile=original" /></a>Donn Colee Jr. at the original studios of Lake Worth’s ‘All-Girl’ radio station WLIZ, now transmitter site for WWRF, ‘Radio Fiesta.’ <strong>Thom Smith/The Coastal Star<br /></strong></em></p>
<p></p>
<p><strong>By Thom Smith</strong><br /> <br /> Long before Florida became a state, the Colee family was setting the stage. They farmed land along the St. Johns River south of Jacksonville and operated carriages on the streets of St. Augustine, a stagecoach line over to the St. Johns River and a ferry service across it. They were postmasters, bankers, engineers, railroaders and real estate speculators. <br /> A notch in the St. Johns still carries the name Colee Cove. In Fort Lauderdale, Colee Hammock on the New River is now a city park. <br /> Eventually the Colees found their way into broadcasting. In the mid-’40s, high school friends Donn Colee Sr. and Mike Gannon landed part-time jobs as announcers at WFOY in St. Augustine. They loved the work, but college lay ahead. Gannon became a history professor at the University of Florida; Colee returned to broadcasting, working at Central Florida radio stations, then opening WLOF-TV in Orlando. In 1963 he bought WHEW in West Palm Beach (now WPOM), and three years later opened an advertising and public relations business. In ’68 he sold the station; in ’89 he sold the agency and retired. He and wife Shirley live in Palm Beach Gardens. <br /> Seven generations removed from St. Augustine, Donn Colee Jr. followed his dad into broadcasting, starting as a rock ’n’ roll DJ in Orlando, and after a Navy hitch ventured into advertising and public relations. Young Colee eventually landed at WPEC-Channel 12 in West Palm Beach — in marketing, community relations, programming and eventually as station manager from 2002 to 2007. <br /> <a href="{{#staticFileLink}}7960689096,original{{/staticFileLink}}"><img src="{{#staticFileLink}}7960689096,original{{/staticFileLink}}" class="align-left" width="120" alt="7960689096?profile=original" /></a>He’s out of the business now, but the ties still bind. Taking the advice of his dad and Gannon, he went to work on a history of Florida broadcasting. Towers in the Sand was released last month, and at more than 700 pages, it offers a fascinating anecdotal journey of the history of Florida broadcasting from the land boom of the Roaring ’20s to the present. <br /> Colee recounts some of the notable personalities now in the national spotlight who first attracted attention in Florida: Katie Couric, Roy Firestone, Red Barber, Steve Kroft and Brian Norcross. <br /> But villains can offset heroes and Florida has had its share. Radio took a near fatal hit in Miami Beach in 1959 when the second annual Radio Programming Seminar and Pop Music Disc Jockey Convention attracted 2,500 jocks gorging at a trough stocked by the record companies. Under such headlines as “Booze, Broads and Bribes,” newspapers reported wild sex parties on private yachts, fleets of Cadillac convertibles, side trips to Cuba and, worst of all, $600,000 ($5 million in current cash) was lavished on the DJs.<br /> To assorted members of Congress and law enforcement officials who saw rock ’n’ roll as a scourge, the weekend of “payola” broke the camel’s back. Six months later, the House Oversight Committee began hearings. <br /> Though not one was from Florida, 335 disc jockeys admitted taking payola. The biggest fish were Dick Clark and Alan Freed. Clark was clever. He classified his bounty as “consulting fees,” and was even lauded by some government officials. Freed pleaded guilty to two minor charges; but then the IRS went after him. Before he could pay the $38,000 in back taxes, he died a broken man. <br /> <br /> <em>Towers in the Sand is available in print ($29.95 plus $5 shipping) and digitally ($8.95) at <a href="http://www.towersinthesand.com">www.towersinthesand.com</a>.</em></p></div>Books: Palm Beach philanthropy scene is ripe for juicy murder mysteryhttps://thecoastalstar.com/profiles/blogs/books-palm-beach-philanthropy-scene-is-ripe-for-juicy-murder-myst2016-11-01T23:00:00.000Z2016-11-01T23:00:00.000ZMary Kate Leminghttps://thecoastalstar.com/members/MaryKateLeming769<div><p><em>Charity Bashed,</em> <br /> <em>By Sharon Geltner</em><br /> <em>PoloPublishing, 210 pp., $15.95</em><br /> <br /> <strong>By Steve Pike</strong><br /> <br /> The old adage that writers write what they know about has never held more true than with Sharon Geltner. The Boca Raton resident has spent the past several years raising money for Palm Beach charities, meaning that nobody is more qualified than Geltner to chronicle the lifestyles of the island’s rich and famous.<br /> <a href="{{#staticFileLink}}7960674674,original{{/staticFileLink}}"><img src="{{#staticFileLink}}7960674674,original{{/staticFileLink}}" class="align-left" width="72" alt="7960674674?profile=original" /></a>In her first published book, <em>Charity Bashed</em>, Geltner, a former <em>Boca Raton News</em> reporter, spins a terrific tale of murder, blackmail, selfishness and selflessness that it seems can only happen in Palm Beach “who do you know?’’ circles.<br /> Geltner begins <em>Charity Bashed</em> with these words: “My tiara’s too tight.’’ That’s enough to get anyone interested from Palm Beach to Newport.<br /> While <em>Charity Bashed</em> is a work of fiction, many of the characters and situations she describes undoubtedly are based on Geltner’s years of dealings with the good and bad parts of the philanthropic worlds of Washington, D.C., and Palm Beach. <br /> And as good as the story is — it will keep you turning each of the 210 pages — it’s Geltner’s reporter’s eye and ear for details that give the story of murdered millionaire Vincent Paul Louis depth and reality.<br /> “I’ve seen how important philanthropy is to this economy and this entire society,’’ said Geltner, who is president of Froogle PR, which specializes in digital media. “But I really never knew about the social standing that goes along with it. It’s a whole industry. I think that people in Palm Beach County don’t even realize it to this day unless they are part of it.’’<br /> Geltner’s life in the nonprofit world began in Washington, D.C., where she spent her days as a freelance magazine writer and her evenings involved as a volunteer for organizations such as the Washington Independent Writers and the National Writers Union, as well as the charity initiatives of the National Press Club.<br /> Back in South Florida, Geltner covered the philanthropic world as a general assignment reporter at the <em>Boca News</em> and later worked inside the nonprofit industry where “it was even sillier, and crazier and more fun than I had imagined. That’s when I started getting interested in it in a big way.’’<br /> That big way included a book manuscript, a Washington-based thriller, Geltner called it, for which she couldn’t find a publisher. Not deterred, Geltner turned her sights (and words) on the manuscript that would become Charity Bashed, based on her experiences and observations in the nonprofit worlds of Washington. D.C., and Palm Beach.<br /> “After that I got another agent, so it took a lot of editing and polishing,’’ Geltner said. “At that time, mystery writing was strongly recommended by agents. I wanted to write about what I know, but I also wanted to put a mystery in there. That was my motivation.’’<br /> For those who get the sense of déjà vu when they see the <em>Charity Bashed</em> title, it’s probably because the story was first published for Kindle in 2010. It wasn’t published in paperback until this past September.<br /> “There’s much more interest in the book now that it’s tangible,’’ Geltner said. <br /> “I didn’t want to be the kind of author who has thousands of books in her garage, but the price (to publish) has gone down so much that you can order a few dozen or a few hundred at a time and you don’t break the bank. So I’m really having a lot of fun with it.’’<br /> And readers will have fun with <em>Charity Bashed</em>.</p></div>Grass River Garden Club: Ocean Club, Ocean Ridge — Feb. 23https://thecoastalstar.com/profiles/blogs/grass-river-garden-club-ocean-club-ocean-ridge-feb-232016-03-02T14:41:10.000Z2016-03-02T14:41:10.000ZChris Felkerhttps://thecoastalstar.com/members/ChrisFelker<div><p style="text-align:center;"><a href="{{#staticFileLink}}7960634677,original{{/staticFileLink}}"><img class="align-center" src="{{#staticFileLink}}7960634677,original{{/staticFileLink}}" width="320" alt="7960634677?profile=original" /></a><em>Author Bettie Bearden Pardee spoke about her book,</em> Living Newport<em>,</em></p>
<p style="text-align:center;"><em>and the impressive historic preservation and garden lushness of that famous Rhode Island enclave.</em></p>
<p style="text-align:center;"><em>Photo: (l-r) club member Cecile McCaull, Pardee and Grass River President Holly Breeden.</em></p>
<p style="text-align:center;"><strong>Photo provided</strong></p></div>Books: Running is refuge through family hardshipshttps://thecoastalstar.com/profiles/blogs/books-running-is-refuge-through-family-hardships2016-03-02T03:04:27.000Z2016-03-02T03:04:27.000ZMary Kate Leminghttps://thecoastalstar.com/members/MaryKateLeming769<div><p><strong>By Steve Pike </strong><br /><br /><em>“If you can't fly then run, if you can't run then walk, if you can't walk then crawl, but whatever you do you have to keep moving forward.”</em> <br />— Martin Luther King Jr.<br /><br /> True to Dr. King’s words, Lee DiPietro knows only one direction — forward. It’s what’s guided her through more than 30 years of racing — and winning — some of the world’s most grueling events, from marathons to ironman triathlons. <br />Whether it’s running along A1A near her home in Ocean Ridge, along the rugged shoreline in her family’s summer home in Newport, R.I., or doing the ironman race in Hawaii, DiPietro knows only head-on forward motion, even if it means pushing her lean, 6-foot frame against the wind. </p>
<p>And, as DiPietro explains in her book Against the Wind, against the odds. <br />In the 267-page book (her first), published by Skyhorse Publishing, DiPietro details her love of running, but more important, her love of family, and how each helped sustain her through her husband Lee’s battle with cancer and at the same time, her eldest son Tim’s rehabilitation from an off-road vehicle accident that nearly cost him his legs and his life. <br />The book is available on Amazon.com and at Barnes & Noble, as well as at Gulf Stream Pharmacy and the Boynton Beach Postal Center on East Woolbright Road.<br /> <a href="{{#staticFileLink}}7960634690,original{{/staticFileLink}}"><img class="align-left" src="{{#staticFileLink}}7960634690,original{{/staticFileLink}}" width="191" alt="7960634690?profile=original" /></a> Against the Wind is an inspiring story of one woman’s determination to hold herself and her family together during a time — from 2010 through much of 2011 — that threatened to crumble them. DiPietro tells much of the story through emails she sent and received during those tough times. For a first-time author, DiPietro is a terrific storyteller.<br /> “As the emails began to spread and be forwarded to family and friends, people kept writing me back saying I should write a book because (the emails) were so touching and beautiful,’’ said DiPietro, who won the women’s division of the 2008 Palm Beach Marathon at the age of 50. <br />“They thought it would just help people know that you can face so many things and get through it.’’ <br />Most of those people don’t have the same refuge that DiPietro has in her running, but the message, she said, is still the same. <br />“Running is where I go for my strength,’’ DiPietro said. “But whether it’s running, writing or something else, find whatever you can to keep motivating you to put one foot in front of the other. You can find a place to find your inner strength. You can’t look back and ask why something happened. There always is something in your life that you can find, you just have to find it.’<br /> Even if it means running against the wind.</p></div>Books: Author espouses universal enlightenmenthttps://thecoastalstar.com/profiles/blogs/books-author-espouses-universal-enlightenment2016-03-02T02:49:05.000Z2016-03-02T02:49:05.000ZMary Kate Leminghttps://thecoastalstar.com/members/MaryKateLeming769<div><p><strong>By Steve Pike</strong><br /><br /> Ann Purcell remembered the first time she met the maharishi Mahesh Yogi in Seelisberg, Switzerland, in 1974.<br />“I had to walk up eight flights of stairs to get to a meeting room,’’ said Purcell, whose book The Transcendental Meditation Technique and the Journey of Enlightenment was published last May and is available through her website (<a href="http://www.enlightenmentforeveryone.com">www.enlightenmentforeveryone.com</a>) and Amazon.com.<br /> “I had no idea of protocol or anything. I remember myself walking into the room and immediately calming down. I became very quiet. <br />“The maharishi was very concerned about my mother because my father had just passed away. I was only 20 years old and he wanted my mother’s blessing (for her daughter to continue teaching and learning). That made a big impression.’’<br /><a href="{{#staticFileLink}}7960634454,original{{/staticFileLink}}"><img class="align-left" src="{{#staticFileLink}}7960634454,original{{/staticFileLink}}" width="179" alt="7960634454?profile=original" /></a> The maharishi, who died in 2008 at the age of 90, made an impression on millions, from the Beatles and Beach Boys to mere mortals and their journeys to enlightenment through transcendental meditation. It’s what the maharishi called, “the glory of the nature of the self.’’<br /> Purcell’s book, published by Green Dragon Press of Lake Worth, chronicles her journey from growing up in Delray Beach to her introduction to TM as a freshman at Alvescot College in Oxford, England, to becoming a full-time teacher of transcendental meditation since 1973. <br />“It’s actually the most practical state of living,’’ Purcell said of TM. “It’s not just something to enjoy, but a state where people can accomplish the maximum in life.’’<br /> Purcell, who splits her time between Delray Beach and Livingston Manor, N.Y., has taught TM around the world. She also has worked on curricula and course development for universities and continuing education programs. She has a bachelor’s and a master’s of the science of creative intelligence from Maharishi European Research University in Seelisberg, and a PhD in supreme political science from Maharishi University of World Peace, Vlodrop, Netherlands.<br /> The book is Purcell’s second attempt to write about (and defend) the world and benefits of TM. <br />Purcell originally tried to publish it two years ago under the title Let Your Soul Sing: Enlightenment is for Everyone, but the publisher suggested including transcendental meditation in the title. The decision paid off, as it received a Books for Better Living Silver Award from IndependentPublisher.com in 2015.<br /> Purcell refers to the book as “timeless’’ in its message to get across her points that enlightenment is a “possibility for everyone’’ and should be the most “natural state’’ that everyone can achieve. <br /> Like transcendental meditation itself, Purcell’s book may not be for everyone, but it’s a good glimpse into a world that most people don’t understand.</p></div>Books: Delray native shares ‘Village by the Sea’https://thecoastalstar.com/profiles/blogs/books-delray-native-shares-village-by-the-sea2015-12-30T16:21:14.000Z2015-12-30T16:21:14.000ZMary Kate Leminghttps://thecoastalstar.com/members/MaryKateLeming769<div><p>By Steve Pike<br /><br />New directions and construction mask some of it now, but there was a time — not that long ago — when Delray Beach truly was a Village by the Sea. Sandy Simon knows all about that. Simon, whose grandfather immigrated to Delray Beach from Lebanon in 1912, probably knows more about Delray Beach past (and present) than any other living resident — and it shows in his new book, Delray Beach: The Renaissance of a Village by the Sea.</p>
<p><a href="{{#staticFileLink}}7960619689,original{{/staticFileLink}}"><img class="align-center" src="{{#staticFileLink}}7960619689,original{{/staticFileLink}}" width="589" alt="7960619689?profile=original" /></a><br />The book is filled with pictures, stories and names that date back as far as 1894 when David Swinton and William Linton arrived from Michigan on land they purchased sight unseen. That 160-acre tract of land — a quarter of a section bounded by what is now the Intracoastal Waterway and as far north and south of Northeast and Southeast Fourth streets, and once owned by railroad magnate Henry Flagler — became the foundation for Delray Beach. The price? Five dollars per acre. <br />Simon, who was reared in Delray Beach and developed Atlantic Plaza and several luxury neighborhoods in Delray Beach, takes readers on a journey — through words and pictures — that includes the city’s founding, the Great Depression when Delray Beach billed itself as “Ocean City,’’ the important roles of African-Americans in the city’s development, the emergence (between 1988 and 2014) of East Atlantic Avenue as a South Florida entertainment mecca, to today’s controversial proposed development of iPic theater.<br /> Simon sometimes gets a little bit too “inside baseball,’’ in regard to the workings of agencies such as the Community Redevelopment Agency and Downtown Development Authority, but those are the worlds he lived in for decades. For those interested in such matters, the book is an excellent history of those agencies and how they have shaped the city. <br />Simon also includes a copy of the Greater Delray Beach “Visions 2000’’ Assembly Policy Statement as well as a copy of the city’s official “All-America City’’ Award entry in 1993. <br />Moreover, the book is a great history of what Simon identifies as the three assets that set Delray Beach apart from its South Florida neighbors. Those are the city’s two miles of clean, accessible beaches; Atlantic Avenue; and a citizen’s sense of ownership that dates back to the city’s earliest days as a farming community.<br />“I can’t find another town on the Eastern Seaboard that was settled by people who owned their own land,’’ Simon said. “Boca Raton and West Palm Beach (were settled) by tenant workers; Lake Worth was owned by a developer who gave you an acre of land to the west if you bought a lot. It’s just not the same. <br />“The DNA of a small village and a sense of ownership sets Delray Beach as unique. And that DNA continues, because everybody who comes to Delray Beach wants it to stay the same as the day they arrived.’’ <br /><br /><em>The book is available for $29.99 at Hand’s Office & Art Supply Store in Delray Beach and through Simon’s website (<a href="http://www.sandysimon.com">www.sandysimon.com</a>). He will be presenting the book on Jan. 21 at 2 p.m. at the Delray Beach Public Library.</em></p></div>Farm Animal Activist Gene Baur To Promote New Vegan Cookbook in Boca Ratonhttps://thecoastalstar.com/profiles/blogs/farm-animal-activist-gene-baur-to-promote-new-vegan-cookbook-in-b2015-05-05T20:00:00.000Z2015-05-05T20:00:00.000ZMary Kate Leminghttps://thecoastalstar.com/members/MaryKateLeming769<div><p><strong>By Teresa Bono</strong></p>
<p> </p>
<p>When you’ve done as many good deeds as Farm Sanctuary President, Gene Baur, you’re bound to get a good karmic return. So when the Dietary Council Association 2015 report endorsed a plant-based diet for better health and a greener planet six weeks before the release of Baur’s cookbook “Living The Farm Sanctuary Life”, vegans across the country rejoiced on social media. </p>
<p><a href="{{#staticFileLink}}7960569859,original{{/staticFileLink}}"><img class="align-left" src="{{#staticFileLink}}7960569859,original{{/staticFileLink}}" width="587" alt="7960569859?profile=original" /></a>Getting the feds endorsement was the big kahuna and in a matter of hours, Baur’s book climbed the Amazon charts, securing the top spot in the Animal Rights category and getting as high as number 11 overall following his interview on <em>The Daily Show with Jon Stewart</em>. A month later, it’s still thriving. Not too shabby considering there’s nearly 10 million available titles.</p>
<p>Despite being a little late to class, government researchers were unequivocal in their recommendations. A plant-based diet will dramatically reduce the incidence of obesity, diabetes and chronic disease and create a much smaller carbon footprint. </p>
<p>To this Baur adds a few mind-blowing details like the fact that animal agriculture requires more than half the water used in this country, and that it contributes more to climate change than the entire transportation industry. Even health care costs could be reduced by as much as 70% if people shifted away from meat and toward fruits, vegetables, beans, grains, nuts and seeds. </p>
<p>But what about the animals whose horrific existences are hidden from the general population, even made light of with misleading photos of animals frolicking in green pastures? What about the diabolical realities of factory farming where cows, pigs, chickens, ducks, turkeys, goats and sheep live lives of unspeakable brutality crammed in pens and pumped with hormones, separated from their young and then slaughtered without an ounce of compassion?</p>
<p>Gene Baur calls these animals his friends and they’re his immediate and primary concern. For those lucky farm animals who miraculously escape execution and find their way to Farm Sanctuary, love always awaits. They’re pampered by Baur and his staff, allowed to roll in the mud, run through the fields, make human and animal friends and get belly rubs. They go from being identified by the number branded on their skin or tagged on their wing or ear to an actual name. And now they even have their photo in a hot-selling vegan cookbook.</p>
<p>Baur’s mainstream credentials are impressive; Ironman triathlete, Ivy League grad, bestselling author, but what makes him truly extraordinary is the impact he’s had on legislation that directly affects how farm animals are treated. He’s testified at the local, state and federal levels and has been instrumental in the passage of animal protection ordinances banning veal crates, gestation crates, battery cages and the sale of foie gras in multiple states. He’s been featured on ABC, NBC and CNN for his expertise and called “The Conscience of the Food Movement” by Time Magazine. </p>
<p>And his cookbook, which features recipes from the best vegan restaurants in the country, is pretty great too.</p>
<p> </p>
<p><em>Gene Baur will be at Darbsters Restaurant, 6299 North Federal Highway, Boca Raton, Florida on Tuesday, May 12. Tickets are $50 and include a seminar by Baur, a vegan buffet and an opportunity to purchase his book. </em></p>
<p> </p></div>Books: Fictional account parallels 1976 murderhttps://thecoastalstar.com/profiles/blogs/books-fictional-account-parallels-1976-murder2015-04-29T13:45:50.000Z2015-04-29T13:45:50.000ZMary Kate Leminghttps://thecoastalstar.com/members/MaryKateLeming769<div><p><strong><a href="{{#staticFileLink}}7960573053,original{{/staticFileLink}}"><img class="align-left" src="{{#staticFileLink}}7960573053,original{{/staticFileLink}}" width="245" alt="7960573053?profile=original" /></a>By Steve Pike</strong><br /><br />Sometimes fiction makes the best truth.<br />Bob Brink looked up from his plate of fried mushrooms and smiled at the notion.<br />“That’s it in a nutshell,” said Brink, a former reporter for <em>The Palm Beach Post</em> and <em>Palm Beach Illustrated</em> magazine. “Sometimes it’s the only way to tell the story.”<br />Brink has done just that in his book <em>Murder in Palm Beach: The Homicide That Never Died</em>, a fictionalized tale of Mark Herman. He was convicted — wrongfully, by most accounts — in the 1976 murder of Palm Beach oilman Richard Kreusler. <br />Brink combed through nearly 150 newspaper clippings to help him research Murder in Palm Beach, and had several conversations with the reporter who Brink says was blocked by his employing newspaper from revealing the truth about Herman’s innocence.<br />“I was going to do a roundup of the players for the 50th anniversary of Palm Beach Illustrated,” Brink said. “The last person I talked to was the reporter who dropped the bombshell about what he had found out. He knew who the real (killer) was but wouldn’t reveal his sources.”<br />Without the names, of course, there could be no accurate storytelling. Thus, Murder in Palm Beach was born.<br />In the book, published this past January by Pegasus Books, Brink creates the character of Rodger Kriger, who was allegedly killed by Mitt Hecher, a small-time crook. But did Hecher actually pull the trigger on the shotgun that killed Kriger? What underworld figures and even politicians might have been involved? Did a love triangle lead to the murder?<br />Remember, Brink, who lives in Boynton Beach, is writing fiction. But for those who were around at the time of the Kreusler murder and Herman’s trial, the lines between fiction and truth run closely parallel.<br />Brink's fictionalized tale takes readers through some terrific twists and turns en route to a whirlwind finish. In the end, we don’t learn the truth about who killed Kreusler, but Brink said the book should lead readers to realize Herman was innocent.<br />As an epilogue to the real-life case, Herman was released from prison in 1992 after his sentence was commuted by Gov. Lawton Chiles.<br /><em>Murder in Palm Beach</em> has been as high as No. 13 on Amazon’s best-seller list for criminal procedure books and also is available at Barnes & Noble and other online book-selling sites.</p></div>Books: Author takes novel look at historical Anastasiahttps://thecoastalstar.com/profiles/blogs/books-author-takes-novel-look-at-historical-anastasia2015-04-29T13:30:00.000Z2015-04-29T13:30:00.000ZMary Kate Leminghttps://thecoastalstar.com/members/MaryKateLeming769<div><p><strong>By Steve Pike</strong><br /> <br /> <a href="{{#staticFileLink}}7960571672,original{{/staticFileLink}}"><img class="align-left" src="{{#staticFileLink}}7960571672,original{{/staticFileLink}}" width="239" alt="7960571672?profile=original" /></a>It’s always a challenge and risk for an author to write about a well-known historical figure. When that figure is Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaevna, youngest daughter of Russian Czar Nicholas II, the bar is raised even higher.<br /> In his self-published book, <em>Challenging Destiny: The Untold Story of Anastasia</em>, Dr. Mark Jay Gang goes over the bar. A retired psychologist who lives in Boynton Beach, Gang has used his clinical experiences and family history to weave a story that will have readers guessing until the end.<br /> Because the Grand Duchess, along with her entire family, was killed (or believed killed) by the Bolsheviks in 1918, Gang’s story is a fictionalized telling of her survival from the carnage at Yekaterinburg. It spans three continents and a century of love, despair, death and destruction.<br /> <em>Challenging Destiny</em> is Gang’s first book. It was accepted in the Palm Beach County Library System in the local author collection. It also is available at Amazon.<br /> “I’ve always been a history buff,” Gang said. “And over the past 30 years I’ve come in contact with a variety of people who have all kinds of stories. So I’ve become a wealth of information on stories about people.”<br /> Gang developed a love of stories and history at a young age when he listened to his grandmother tell stories of the Mother Homeland. <br /> “My grandmother talked to me about Russia and coming over here on a ship,” Gang said. “As Americans, we’re a melting pot of immigrants. My mother was from Great Britain and my grandmother was from Russia. So there is that influence.<br /> “I’d always wanted to write about Anastasia. She was no ordinary woman.”</p></div>Books: Author makes down time useful with flair for fictionhttps://thecoastalstar.com/profiles/blogs/books-author-makes-down-time-useful-with-flair-for-fiction2015-03-04T02:00:00.000Z2015-03-04T02:00:00.000ZMary Kate Leminghttps://thecoastalstar.com/members/MaryKateLeming769<div><p><strong>By Steve Pike</strong></p>
<p><br /> Talk about killer real estate. Ocean Ridge resident Terry Halfhill’s third self-published novel, The Briny Brotherhood, tells the purely fictional story of living, killing and dying in Briny Breezes as the book’s different characters plot to gain control of the 42-acre oceanfront community.</p>
<p> <a href="{{#staticFileLink}}7960558262,original{{/staticFileLink}}"><img class="align-left" src="{{#staticFileLink}}7960558262,original{{/staticFileLink}}" width="340" alt="7960558262?profile=original" /></a> The Briny Brotherhood isn’t based on the much-publicized 2007 failed $500 million attempt by an investor group to buy Briny Breezes as much as it’s inspired by the plan. That is, the book’s main characters are drawn from the personalities of Halfhill’s fishing buddies, and much of the action takes place at the Gulfstream Texaco station on A1A, just across from the Briny Breezes park office. <br /> Halfhill also weaves other familiar coastal communities’ names and landmarks — including Nomad surf shop, Old Key Lime House, Banana Boat and The Coastal Star — throughout the 325-page novel.<br /> Despite the true-to-life characters and locations, the book’s plot, Halfhill emphasized, is pure fiction.<br /> “There’s nothing true about it,’’ said Halfhill with a slight smile.<br /> In the original attempt to buy Briny Breezes, “Nobody died,’’ Halfhill said. Conversely, in The Briny Brotherhood the first body drops within the book’s first seven pages.<br /> It’s funny how synchronicity works. Halfhill’s brush with death in a 2010 motorcycle accident in Pennsylvania was the impetus for his becoming an author. Actually, Halfhill, who has a doctorate from the University of Tennessee, had for years published research articles in the fields of psychology and business prior to the accident, which nearly cost him his left leg. It was during his recovery that Halfhill decided to enter the world of fiction writing.<br /> In fact, the first draft of Halfhill’s first novel, Copperhead Road, was written from his hospital bed. <br /> “A lot of philosophy in that one,’’ said Halfhill, who still has a steel rod in his left leg. “I think in my state of mind, I was struggling with some of that. I was bored with everything and couldn’t care less.’’<br /> Halfhill’s second novel, The Rally, published in 2012, tells tale of a 17-year-old boy coming of age in the world of bikers in Sturgis, S.D. <br /> The Briny Brotherhood, which was released in early February, was written this past summer.<br /> “Basically I was underemployed last summer and I just started to write,” Halfhill said.<br /> The result is a fast-paced, humorous, slightly profane read that should entertain even those unfamiliar with the coastal communities area.<br /> True to the book’s plot, The Briny Brotherhood currently is available only at the Texaco station.</p></div>Attitude of Gratitude: Inspired by images’ reception, photographer creates bookhttps://thecoastalstar.com/profiles/blogs/attitude-of-gratitude-inspired-by-images-reception-photographer-c2014-10-29T16:23:09.000Z2014-10-29T16:23:09.000ZMary Kate Leminghttps://thecoastalstar.com/members/MaryKateLeming769<div><p style="text-align:center;"><strong><a href="{{#staticFileLink}}7960532655,original{{/staticFileLink}}"><img class="align-center" src="{{#staticFileLink}}7960532655,original{{/staticFileLink}}" width="363" alt="7960532655?profile=original" /></a></strong><em>Kim Weiss captured images of sunrises from the terrace of her Boynton Beach apartment. <strong>Photo provided</strong></em></p>
<p style="text-align:left;"></p>
<p style="text-align:left;"><strong>By Steve Pike</strong></p>
<p style="text-align:center;"><br /><em>“There is never one sunrise the same or one sunset the same.’’ — Carlos Santana </em></p>
<p> Kim Weiss can relate to a guitar legend’s sentiments. So much so, in fact, that she has authored a book called Sunrise Sunset: 52 Weeks of Awe and Gratitude. <br /><a href="{{#staticFileLink}}7960532466,original{{/staticFileLink}}"><img class="align-left" src="{{#staticFileLink}}7960532466,original{{/staticFileLink}}" width="359" alt="7960532466?profile=original" /></a>The book features a collection of orange-hued sunrise and sunset pictures Weiss took from the terrace of her Boynton Beach apartment that overlooks the Boynton Beach marina, Intracoastal Waterway and Atlantic Ocean. Each picture is accompanied by an inspirational passage from people such as daytime TV star Gloria Loring, poet Rodger Kamenetz and sci-fi author J. Gabriel Gates. <br />Weiss, the director of communication of Health Communications Inc., the book’s publisher, debuted Sunrise Sunset on Nov. 1 at Barnes & Noble at University Commons in Boca Raton. She will have another book signing Nov. 16 at Unity Church in Delray Beach and appear at the Miami Book Fair on Nov. 22-23. <br />A portion of the proceeds from the book (shelf price $10.95) will be donated to the Aid to Victims of Domestic Abuse organization in Delray Beach. <br />Weiss didn’t start out to publish a book of her photographs. <br />“I wasn’t taking pictures for a book. I was just taking pictures,’’ she said. The book sprung from the reactions she received from friends and family whom she sent the pictures to via email and through her Facebook page. <br />“The reactions were surprising to me,’’ Weiss said. “People told me they actually used these pictures during meditation in the mornings.’’ <br />Weiss said she originally balked at the idea of publishing a book of the photographs, but eventually decided to use her 20 years of connections in the publishing community to get it done. <br />“I’ve gotten to meet some pretty illustrious characters along the way,’’ she said. <br /><a href="{{#staticFileLink}}7960532689,original{{/staticFileLink}}"><img class="align-right" src="{{#staticFileLink}}7960532689,original{{/staticFileLink}}" width="240" alt="7960532689?profile=original" /></a>Most of the photographs in the book were taken with a Canon PowerShot camera. A few, Weiss said, were taken with her iPhone. Weiss, her editor and art director culled through hundreds of photographs before setting on the 52 that appear in the book. <br />While photography is a hobby for Weiss, music is more a passion. A trained vocalist and musician, Weiss has performed locally and recently wrote the theme song for a women’s conference. <br />“I call myself a ‘creative compulsive,’ ’’ said Weiss, who has lived in South Florida for more than 30 years. “I’m just someone who really appreciates beauty. I was raised by a mother who exposed me to the arts. I was raised more to be a musician. Growing up in New Jersey, close to New York City, I was exposed to a lot. I consider myself lucky in that regard.’’ <br />And in regard to her next book, Weiss wants to stay with the nature theme — maybe. <br />“I also have a pretty nice collection of photos of my cat (Annabelle)’’ she said. “So I’m thinking either clouds or cat. Anything that’s universally loved.’’</p>
<p><a href="{{#staticFileLink}}7960532852,original{{/staticFileLink}}"><img class="align-left" src="{{#staticFileLink}}7960532852,original{{/staticFileLink}}" width="357" alt="7960532852?profile=original" /></a></p>
<p></p>
<p></p>
<p></p>
<p></p>
<p></p>
<p></p>
<p></p>
<p></p>
<p><em>Kim Weiss captured an image of an osprey perched on her terrace. <strong>Photo provided</strong></em></p></div>Along the Coast: Author draws on family life for book topicshttps://thecoastalstar.com/profiles/blogs/along-the-coast-author-draws-on-family-life-for-book-topics2014-07-29T14:32:55.000Z2014-07-29T14:32:55.000ZChris Felkerhttps://thecoastalstar.com/members/ChrisFelker<div><p></p>
<p><a href="{{#staticFileLink}}7960521678,original{{/staticFileLink}}"><img class="align-center" src="{{#staticFileLink}}7960521678,original{{/staticFileLink}}" width="175" alt="7960521678?profile=original" /></a></p>
<p><strong>By Ron Hayes</strong><br /> <br /> In her 2009 memoir, <em>Minor League Mom</em>, Pamela Carey shared the humor she found among the home runs and foul balls after her sons, Tim and Todd, joined a Boston Red Sox farm team back in the 1990s.<br /> Now she’s back with a humorous look at the other end of life’s game.<br /> In <em>Elderly Parents With All Their Marbles: A Survival Guide for the Kids</em>, Carey offers 49 “essential points” for the adult children of aging parents. And again she finds the humor amid the heartbreak.<br /><a href="{{#staticFileLink}}7960522095,original{{/staticFileLink}}"><img class="align-left" src="{{#staticFileLink}}7960522095,original{{/staticFileLink}}" width="270" alt="7960522095?profile=original" /></a> “We brought my parents down here from Greenwich, Conn., when we bought our home in Gulf Stream 20 years ago,” Carey recalled recently. “It wasn’t an easy task, but I truly believe it added 10 years to their lives.”<br /> That’s Rule 1: Bite the bullet — move them closer.<br /> Carey’s parents, Walt and Ev, were in their 80s when they arrived in Leisureville, a retirement community just across the bridge in Boynton Beach.<br /> “That first year, there was a lot of ‘Why did you move us? We can’t drink the water. The A/C bills are so high. We have no friends,’” she said. “But Leisureville provided an instant support group, and my father became a block captain until his early 90s.”<br /> A former high school English teacher who still keeps a daily journal, Carey drew on those daily entries to flavor her rules with smiles.<br /> “My dad would always collect the uneaten food when we went out to eat,” she remembered, “and in addition, he would wrap all the rolls in napkins and put them in his pockets. One day, as we were preparing to leave, all the rolls spilled out.”<br />In time, though, her parents began to fail. Her father died at 90, her mother at 95. As Carey recounts their finals years, months and days, the advice grows more somber, with practical advice about hospitals, nursing homes and, finally, Rule 49: There is no right or wrong way to get through a loss.<br /> Carey’s book concludes with an extensive appendix of “Useful Definitions, Notes, Websites and Phone Numbers,” from AARP to Veterans Affairs.<br /> “I’ve read that there will be a 48 percent increase in the need for caregivers in the next 10 years,” she said, “but only a 1 percent increase in the supply, so the topic is extremely relevant right now.”<br /> For her part, Carey is moving on to a lighter and livelier subject.<br /> “My next book,” she said, “will be about women’s tennis teams and the stress of competing if you’re 55 or older and someone comes out in her 20s in a sports bra and wants to get the match over as soon as possible to go home and get the kids.”</p>
<p><br /><em>Pam Carey’s books are available at amazon.com and barnesandnoble.com. Her blog can be found at minorleaguemom.blogspot.com.</em><br /><br /></p></div>Along the Coast: ‘Surfing Florida’ recounts wave-riding historyhttps://thecoastalstar.com/profiles/blogs/along-the-coast-surfing-florida-recounts-wave-riding-history2014-07-29T14:20:29.000Z2014-07-29T14:20:29.000ZChris Felkerhttps://thecoastalstar.com/members/ChrisFelker<div><p style="text-align:center;"><a href="{{#staticFileLink}}7960516657,original{{/staticFileLink}}"><img class="align-center" src="{{#staticFileLink}}7960516657,original{{/staticFileLink}}" width="207" alt="7960516657?profile=original" /></a><em>Paul Aho (inset below), who grew up</em></p>
<p style="text-align:center;"><em>in Ocean Ridge, wrote the book Surfing Florida.</em></p>
<p style="text-align:center;"><strong>Photos provided</strong></p>
<p style="text-align:center;"></p>
<p style="text-align:left;"><strong>By Willie Howard<br /><br /> </strong> Florida surfers needed someone to chronicle the origins of their relatively young sport and assemble a collection of vintage surfing photographs from the Sunshine State.<br /> Lifelong surfer Paul Aho, an Ocean Ridge native who now serves as dean of an art school in Kentucky, has filled the void with the May publication of Surfing Florida: A Photographic History ($31.95, University Press of Florida).<br /><a href="{{#staticFileLink}}7960516454,original{{/staticFileLink}}"><img class="align-left" src="{{#staticFileLink}}7960516454,original{{/staticFileLink}}" width="277" alt="7960516454?profile=original" /></a> Aho grew up a short walk from the ocean waves on Tropical Drive, where his parents owned Henri’s Motel. He caught the surfing bug in 1965 just as the advent of light fiberglass boards was popularizing the sport. <br /> Not long after Aho started surfing, though, officials in the oceanfront towns of Ocean Ridge and Palm Beach sought to ban wave riding at their beaches. <br /> Now dean of the Paducah School of Art and Design in Kentucky, the author was among a group of teenagers who gathered signatures on a petition to defeat Ocean Ridge’s proposed surfing ban. <br /> The town of Palm Beach’s 1964 surfing ban was not so easily defeated. It was overturned by the Florida Supreme Court four years after the town began enforcing it. <br />Area surfers sold “I Gave to Save Surfing” bumper stickers for $1 to raise money for the legal fight.<br /> Aho’s 264-page book started as a traveling exhibit that opened in 2012 at Florida Atlantic University. <br /> Aho said people laughed when he applied for a Florida Humanities Council grant to produce a surfing history exhibit, but he eventually won the grant.<br /> In addition to showcasing the stars and pioneers of Florida surfing, Surfing Florida demonstrates that Florida’s wave riders held their own in the water and created their own surf culture — complete with music, films and contests — as the sport evolved on the more famous beaches of California, where the waves are generally taller.<br /> “It’s a fallacy to think we don’t get good surf in Florida,” Aho said. “We certainly do.”<br /> The first documented account of surfing in Florida dates back to 1909, when Daytona Beach bicycle shop owner Eugene Johnson read an article about surfing in Hawaii and decided to try his hand riding waves.<br /> Florida wave riding became more popular in the 1930s. A photo in the book shows men standing on a beach holding gigantic surfboards — the first Florida Surfing Championships, held in 1938 at Daytona Beach. <br /> Chapters of Surfing Florida are devoted to different regions of the state. The Palm Beach County and Treasure Coast chapter includes photos of surfers enjoying the waves created by the grounding of the 441-foot Greek freighter Amaryllis, which washed ashore at Singer Island in a 1965 hurricane and stayed there for three years.<br /> Surfing Florida also pays tribute to Florida’s early surfing photographers and many of the state’s first shapers of fiberglass surfboards. <br /> Pioneer board shapers included Ron Heavyside, who learned his trade as a teenager building Caribbean Surfboards at a bicycle shop in Delray Beach. <br />Heavyside also built surfboards in Hawaii before founding the Nomad Surf Shop on North Ocean Boulevard in 1968.<br /> Heavyside still designs surfboards at the landmark surf shop, where he works with sons Ryan and Ronnie, both of whom are avid surfers.<strong><br /></strong></p></div>Book signing event at Gumbo Limbo Nature Centerhttps://thecoastalstar.com/profiles/blogs/book-signing-at-gumbo-limbo-nature-center2013-12-26T12:30:00.000Z2013-12-26T12:30:00.000ZMary Kate Leminghttps://thecoastalstar.com/members/MaryKateLeming769<div><p><a href="{{#staticFileLink}}7960482675,original{{/staticFileLink}}"><img width="750" class="align-full" src="{{#staticFileLink}}7960482675,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="7960482675?profile=original" /></a></p></div>Rosie's Songhttps://thecoastalstar.com/profiles/blogs/rosie-s-song2013-12-13T12:34:21.000Z2013-12-13T12:34:21.000ZMary Kate Leminghttps://thecoastalstar.com/members/MaryKateLeming769<div><p>Join us at Delray Beach Center for the Arts on Sat. 12/14 for a book signing of Rosie's Song along with live music and tons of children's activities!<a href="{{#staticFileLink}}7960475654,original{{/staticFileLink}}"><img class="align-full" src="{{#staticFileLink}}7960475654,original{{/staticFileLink}}" width="480" alt="7960475654?profile=original" /></a></p></div>Rising Water: Author John Englander envisioned the NYC storm disasterhttps://thecoastalstar.com/profiles/blogs/rising-water-author-john-englander-envisioned-the-nyc-storm-disas2013-10-30T18:30:00.000Z2013-10-30T18:30:00.000ZMary Kate Leminghttps://thecoastalstar.com/members/MaryKateLeming769<div><div class="postbody"><div class="xg_user_generated"><p style="text-align:center;"><strong><strong>A <em>Coastal Star</em> Special Report:</strong></strong></p>
<p style="text-align:center;"><strong>Rising Water:</strong> New signs of rising sea levels cause <strong><a href="http://thecoastalstar.ning.com/profiles/blogs/rising-water-new-signs-of-rising-sea-levels-cause-concern">concern</a></strong></p>
<p style="text-align:center;"><strong>Adapting to change:</strong> First the probable, then the practical when it comes to <a href="http://thecoastalstar.ning.com/profiles/blogs/rising-water-first-the-probable-then-the-practical-when-it-comes-">building</a> <strong style="text-align:center;">| Deeper waters:</strong> <a href="http://thecoastalstar.ning.com/profiles/blogs/rising-water-fights-over-sea-rise-just-beginning">Fights</a> over sea rise just beginning | <strong>Maps:</strong> Estimates of local <a href="http://thecoastalstar.ning.com/profiles/blogs/rising-water-area-maps">water rise</a></p>
<p style="text-align:center;"><strong>The psychology of change:</strong> <a href="http://thecoastalstar.ning.com/profiles/blogs/rising-water-the-psychology-of-change">Dialogue</a> beats denial when dealing with upheaval | <strong>Quotes:</strong> What they are <a href="http://thecoastalstar.ning.com/profiles/blogs/rising-water-quotes">saying</a></p>
<p style="text-align:center;"><strong>Sea Level Rise:</strong> A <strong><a href="http://thecoastalstar.ning.com/profiles/blogs/a-lexicon-of-sea-level-rise">lexicon</a></strong></p>
<div style="text-align:center;"><strong>Editor's Note:</strong> <a href="http://thecoastalstar.ning.com/profiles/blogs/editor-s-note-lessons-learned-from-sandy">Lessons learned</a> from Sandy | <strong>Part I</strong>: Hurricane shows just how <a href="http://thecoastalstar.ning.com/profiles/blogs/lessons-learned-from-sandy-sand-becoming-a-precious-commodity">fragile</a> our shores are</div>
</div>
</div>
<p></p>
<p><strong>By Jane Smith</strong><br /> <br /> When John Englander visited Greenland in 2007, the oceanographer looked out along the rocky coast. The idea for his High Tide on Main Street book became clear. He knew he could clearly tell a tale of rising sea level and its catastrophic effects. <br /> “Among all the confusing aspects of climate change, the reality of sea level rise alone might get the public’s attention enough that they recognize what is at stake,” the Boca Raton explorer wrote in his book.<br /> <a href="{{#staticFileLink}}7960470697,original{{/staticFileLink}}"><img class="align-left" src="{{#staticFileLink}}7960470697,original{{/staticFileLink}}" width="306" alt="7960470697?profile=original" /></a> In Greenland, he saw the melting ice sheet and glaciers, along with some members of the International SeaKeepers Society and their scientist guide. He was then CEO of SeaKeepers, comprised of yacht owners who equip their yachts with instruments to record ocean and atmospheric measurements and transmit them via satellite to scientists. <br /> That data, along with a clear writing style, helped him create his book. In it, he attributes sea level rise to five factors: floating sea ice and the melting of the polar ice cap; melting of 170,000 glaciers on land, including those in Glacier National Park; melting ice sheets on Greenland and in West Antarctica; and the expansion of warming sea water. The greatest effects will come from the melting of the ice sheets, he said. <br /> His book was released last fall, one week before Superstorm Sandy struck the Mid-Atlantic states. The devastation to New York City from the storm surge was one of 10 sea level rise scenarios he had described.<br /> “I didn’t feel good about it,” he said. “It was eerie, one of those moments when the hairs on the back of your neck stand up. I didn’t predict it, but it lends credibility to what I described.”<br /> A few days later, he became a media celebrity, starting with the BBC and then agreeing to requests from MSNBC, NPR and others.<br /> The book also caught the attention of the Explorers Club, dedicated to field research and scientific exploration. He had joined as a member in 1984. The next year, he dove under the polar ice cap and planted the club’s flag. In January, the club made him a fellow, recognizing his scientific contribution from High Tide.<br /> This past year has been a whirlwind of presentations to local groups, including the Arthur R. Marshall Foundation’s July sea-level rise symposium in West Palm Beach to the October Subtropical Cities Summit in Fort Lauderdale, and internationally with presentations in Amsterdam and Copenhagen. <br /> He also has a consulting business, the Sea Level Institute, where he advises businesses, governments and communities about the effects of sea level rise.<br /> Englander, 63, tailors his talks to the scientific level of his audience. When he is talking before a community group, he gives simplified explanations. To a group at the New England Aquarium in September, he said, “I see myself as a translator that can take facts and make them understandable.”<br /> One audience member there asked about the effects of sea level rise in Florida — whether it would be from salt-water intrusion into the water table or from the shoreline moving inland. His response: both. <br /> The salt-water intrusion will occur first, he said. Eight inches of sea level rise will introduce salt water into the water table because of the porous limestone rock underneath. That drinking water problem will occur in the next two or three decades, certainly by the 2050, he said. Then the shoreline moving inland will happen in the latter half of the century.<br /> For coastal communities such as Briny Breezes and Highland Beach that see standing water after rainstorms or tidal events, he suggests they assess their vulnerability now. “It will happen more and more often,” he said.<br /> The limestone rock underneath South Florida also makes sea walls unlikely to hold back the surf, he said. But you can elevate the houses or commercial buildings.<br /> Englander just finished updating High Tide. Among the revisions, it will contain an updated chapter on the sources of confusion that includes the recent report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. That report, he thinks, underestimates sea level rise by the end of the century. The update was to be released on the anniversary of Superstorm Sandy.<br /> The good news, he likes to say, compared to other disasters, such as Category 4 hurricanes, is that “we have decades of warning. … What other generation has the opportunity to re-engineer the world?”</p>
<p><a href="{{#staticFileLink}}7960470901,original{{/staticFileLink}}"><img class="align-center" src="{{#staticFileLink}}7960470901,original{{/staticFileLink}}" width="341" alt="7960470901?profile=original" /></a></p></div>Celebrating Our History: Before Lake Worth, there was Jewellhttps://thecoastalstar.com/profiles/blogs/celebrating-our-history-before-lake-worth-there-was-jewell2013-09-04T15:30:00.000Z2013-09-04T15:30:00.000ZMary Kate Leminghttps://thecoastalstar.com/members/MaryKateLeming769<div><p style="text-align:center;"><strong><a href="{{#staticFileLink}}7960461069,original{{/staticFileLink}}"><img class="align-center" src="{{#staticFileLink}}7960461069,original{{/staticFileLink}}" width="700" alt="7960461069?profile=original" /></a></strong><em>Fannie James served as post mistress of the first post office in Lake Worth. <strong>Courtesy of Historical Society of Palm Beach County</strong></em></p>
<p></p>
<p><strong>By Ron Hayes</strong><br /> <br /> On June 15, 1889, a former slave named Fannie James filled out a lengthy form, asking the First Assistant Postmaster General in Washington, D.C., to approve a new post office on the western shore of Lake Worth in Dade County, Fla.<br /> It would serve a community to be called La Paz, she wrote — Spanish for The Peace.<br /> But no, on second thought, Mrs. James decided the community should be called Deer Park. She thought some more and X’d that out, too.<br /> Finally, she settled on Jewell, perhaps because she and her husband, Sam, were called the “black diamonds” by white homesteaders in the area.<br /> In her application, Mrs. James reported the population to be served would number 13.<br /> The post office was approved that September, and for the next 14 years, Mrs. James was its mistress, handling mail and operating a dry-goods shop she and Sam, a carpenter, ran on their 187-acre homestead.<br /> But the name Jewell didn’t last. In 1909, the northern chunk of Dade County became Palm Beach County, and on June 4, 1913, Jewell was incorporated as Lake Worth.<br /> Today, the tiny postal code that began with 13 residents boasts 39,000 citizens, 6.46 square miles, and a hundred years of history.<br /> In January 2012, when the Lake Worth Centennial Foundation gathered to plan the celebrations, a retired financial adviser from Wisconsin volunteered to explore the town’s past.<br /> “And what I found is that the history of the city since incorporation has been pretty well documented,” says Ted Brownstein, 62. “So I decided to write about the people who settled here before we were called Lake Worth.”<br /> <a href="{{#staticFileLink}}7960460880,original{{/staticFileLink}}"><img width="750" class="align-left" src="{{#staticFileLink}}7960460880,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="7960460880?profile=original" /></a>A year and a half later, his research has given us Pioneers of Jewell: A Documentary History of Lake Worth’s Forgotten First Settlement (1885-1910).<br /> The 236-page book is carefully documented, rife with reproductions of legal forms and property records, including Mrs. James’ post office application, and unsparing in its look at race relations.<br /> “What surprised me most was how well-respected the Jameses were during that homesteading period,” says Brownstein, who has a degree in ancient Near Eastern history from the University of Wisconsin. “They were well-liked, and they made a lot of money at that time, selling parcels of their land. They even loaned money back to the bank at interest.”<br /> Brownstein posits three distinct areas of racial history in the area: A homesteading era, when black residents like the Jameses were accepted; the Jim Crow period, from 1910 to 1960, when neighborhoods were segregated, and the modern period, as integration began to triumph.<br /> Brownstein explores the lives of a dozen little-known pioneers, the Jameses’ lives before Jewell, the history of the segregated “Osborne Colored Addition” and Ku Klux Klan activities during the 1920s.<br /> “I want people to come away from the book appreciating that we have a very diverse history, even though we went through a bad segregation period,” he says. “In a sense, we’ve returned to our roots, and the city is proud that Sam and Fannie James were our first citizens.”<br /> Sam James never knew Lake Worth. He died in 1909, age 81.<br /> On May 6, 1915, when Lake Worth was almost 2 years old, Fannie James was driving her horse and buggy north to West Palm Beach. Stopping to chat with a friend passing in the opposite direction, she was struck by a motorcar traveling south. She was 73, and died hours after emergency surgery.<br /> In its next edition, The Lake Worth Herald reported her death. She was, the paper said, a “pioneer of the Lake Worth district and once owner of all the land now embraced within the town limits.”<br /> The story was published on the front page.</p>
<p><br /> <em> Pioneers of Jewell is available for $20 at Lake Worth City Hall, the Lake Worth Public Library and through amazon.com. All proceeds will be donated to the Friends of the Lake Worth Library.</em></p></div>Books: Gulf Stream veteran finds writing inspiration in a flashhttps://thecoastalstar.com/profiles/blogs/books-gulf-stream-veteran-finds-writing-inspiration-in-a-flash2013-05-29T01:30:00.000Z2013-05-29T01:30:00.000ZMary Kate Leminghttps://thecoastalstar.com/members/MaryKateLeming769<div><p style="text-align:center;"><strong><a href="{{#staticFileLink}}7960443895,original{{/staticFileLink}}"><img class="align-center" src="{{#staticFileLink}}7960443895,original{{/staticFileLink}}" width="360" alt="7960443895?profile=original" /></a></strong><em>Ron Standerfer, of Gulf Stream, looks over memorabilia and photos from his days as a fighter pilot for the U.S. Air Force. His adventures — and misadventures — were all fodder for his first novel, The Eagle’s Last Flight. <strong>Tim Stepien/The Coastal Star</strong><br /></em></p>
<p><strong>By Ron Hayes</strong><br /> <br /> On the west wall of Ron Standerfer’s sunny Gulf Stream study, you’ll find an impressive collection of music CDs — classical, big band, show tunes, jazz, even some Beatles.<br /> On the east wall, above his desk, you’ll find an array of black-and white-photos, including one of a handsome young man in a flight suit, smiling like he’s just been plucked from the jungles of Laos.<br /> <a href="{{#staticFileLink}}7960444283,original{{/staticFileLink}}"><img class="align-left" src="{{#staticFileLink}}7960444283,original{{/staticFileLink}}" width="180" alt="7960444283?profile=original" /></a>The Eagle’s Last Flight is Standerfer’s first novel.<br /> It’s not about music.<br /> “I played sax and clarinet, but I was a music major dropout from Southern Illinois University when I joined the Air Force at 19,” he says. “By 20, I’d made second lieutenant, but I couldn’t buy a beer in a Texas bar.”<br /> Twenty-seven years later, the college dropout from Belleville, Ill., retired from the Air Force as a full colonel. In between, he’d sweated out the Cold War in F100 fighter jets, flown 232 and a “half’’ combat missions in Southeast Asia, and worked for the Pentagon as a liaison between the Air National Guard and active military.<br /> Along the way, he’d been hit by a nuclear blast at Yucca Flats, Nev. <br /> In 1998, Standerfer and his wife, Marzenna, moved to Manhattan’s Upper West Side. She went to work. He went to a friendly neighborhood bar called Il Violino and sipped his afternoons away with the singers and stagehands from Lincoln Center. They called him “the colonel.” <br /> “I saw myself as another Hemingway, with a comfortable pension,” he says now with a laugh.<br /> One afternoon, weaving home from a long lunch at Il Violino, he found Marzenna waiting.<br /> “You have to get a life,” she told him, “or you’re going to become an alcoholic.”<br /> The next day, he decided that being a writer was cheaper than being an alcoholic, and The Eagle’s Last Flight took off.<br /> “It was thinking about that nuclear test that made the book click for me,” he says.<br /> In 1957, Standerfer was stationed in northern Maine when he was asked to volunteer for a nuclear test in Nevada. The morning was chilly. The nuclear device, capable of a detonation double the bomb dropped on Nagasaki, was on a tower eight miles across the desert. Standerfer stood on a platform with a dosimeter, which measures exposure to radiation, on his chest.<br /> As the final countdown began, he put his hands over his eyes and faced the tower.<br /> “There was a flash of light so bright and blinding the bones of my hands were visible as if by X-ray,” he recalled.<br /> A mushroom cloud rose in the sky, and a shock wave rolled across the desert.<br /> “They collected the dosimeter I was wearing, brushed me off with brooms to remove any radioactive fallout … and sent me back to my squadron.”<br /> Twenty years later, he received a letter from the government reporting that test participants were developing leukemia at two to three times the normal rate.<br /> Standerfer is 78 now, and he doesn’t have leukemia.<br /> “The book describes the dangers of flying, the bailing out, the getting shot down — all that’s me,” he says. “But people were also dying of leukemia, and I don’t happen to have leukemia.”<br /> The Eagle’s Last Flight is a novel, not a memoir. The hero is Skip O’Neill, not Ron Standerfer. But they both “sat nuclear alerts,” waiting in the cockpit of a fighter jet in northern Japan, flying missions in Vietnam and, yes, getting shot down over Laos.<br /> “I spent a year in Vietnam, flying one or two missions a day, supplying close air support, and on April 1, 1969, I got shot down over Laos,” he says.<br /> That’s the “half” of his 232 and a half missions.<br /> “It’s embarrassing,” he says, “but I just got too full of myself, and I got shot down by a little guy on a bicycle with an antiaircraft gun.”<br /> In 2003, Ron and Marzenna Standerfer were perusing The New York Times in search of a summer rental in Florida and came across a place in Gulf Stream. They’ve been at Gulf Stream Manor ever since.<br /> “We just said, ‘This is for us,’ ” he says. “It’s a lovely place, with a lovely atmosphere.”<br /> In 2007, he finished his book, and published a small edition for his military buddies.<br /> “This is pretty good,” they said. “You should promote it on the Web.”<br /> So far, he’s sold perhaps a thousand copies. Standerfer doesn’t expect to become a millionaire, or Ernest Hemingway.<br /> “But here’s what I believe,” he says. “All veterans have two needs: to remember, and to be remembered. My great-grandfather fought with Grant in the Civil War, and I know nothing about it. He was in an Illinois regiment. But for those of us who were there, the Cold War wasn’t so cold, and this is my tiny contribution to the memory.” </p>
<p>For more information, visit <a href="http://www.eagleslastflight.com">www.eagleslastflight.com</a>.</p>
<p style="text-align:center;"><a href="{{#staticFileLink}}7960444696,original{{/staticFileLink}}"><img class="align-center" src="{{#staticFileLink}}7960444696,original{{/staticFileLink}}" width="360" alt="7960444696?profile=original" /></a><em>Standerfer, shown in the cockpit, was shot down over Laos in 1969.</em> <br /> <em><strong>Photo provided</strong></em></p></div>Ocean Ridge: Triathlete’s trials not all on the race coursehttps://thecoastalstar.com/profiles/blogs/ocean-ridge-triathlete-s-trials-not-all-on-the-race-course2013-04-03T20:09:55.000Z2013-04-03T20:09:55.000ZMary Kate Leminghttps://thecoastalstar.com/members/MaryKateLeming769<div><p style="text-align:center;"><a href="{{#staticFileLink}}7960438097,original{{/staticFileLink}}"><img class="align-center" src="{{#staticFileLink}}7960438097,original{{/staticFileLink}}" width="190" alt="7960438097?profile=original" /></a><em>Lee DiPietro has been running since she was a child. She competes in about 25 races per year.</em> <br /><strong><em>Tim Stepien/The Coastal Star</em></strong></p>
<p><strong>By Mary Jane Fine</strong><br /> <br />Lee DiPietro knows how it must look to the uninitiated. Here she is — it’s 7:15 in the morning, a time when many folks in Gulf Stream are still rubbing sleep from their eyes or stirring cream into their coffee — and she’s hot-footing it past their windows, not even breathing hard, occasionally calling out to a security cop, “No, no, I’m not running from anyone, I’m OK.”<br /> DiPietro grins, her past-the-shoulder-length hair still damp from the shower, and says, “They think I’m crazy.”<br /> Crazy, yes, crazy about running. And crazy good at it.<br /> DiPietro is an elite runner. The top American masters woman in the 2005 Boston Marathon. Twice a qualifier for the Olympic trials. A sixth-place finisher in the 1997 Hawaii Ironman, which meant 26.2 miles of running, 112 miles biking and a 2.4-mile swim. <br /> Her personal best marathon time: 2 hours 46 minutes 59 seconds. Just for comparison’s sake, the men’s qualifying time for the 2014 Boston Marathon is 3 hours 5 minutes; for women, it’s 3 hours 35 minutes — and that’s in the 18-to-34 age range. DiPietro turns 55 this month.<br /> “I’ve always been super competitive,” she says. “I’ve always wanted to win. You get that endorphin high and you meet all the challenges and you think, ‘Boy, I made it through that tough spot.’ ”<br /> Florida is its own kind of tough spot. Not for the heat, though. Much of the year, home for DiPietro and her husband, also named Lee, is Ruxton, Md., just north of Baltimore, where summers get plenty hot. Florida’s challenge is its table-top terrain. “No hills, it’s all flat,” DiPietro says, gazing out the window of the Ocean Ridge garden apartment the couple just sold; they’ll move, late this month, into a house nearby. “My legs feel kind of flat because there’s no change in pace.” <br /> Ah, but what’s running without challenges? So, pretty much every day, she’s up and out and, on this Monday morning, just returned from an 11-mile out-and-back through Gulf Stream to the end of Seagate and home again. Sometimes, for variety and “altitude,” she’ll run the old beach road north and over the bridge for what she terms “a little hill work.”<br /> She’s writing a book about running — <em>Against the Wind</em>, she calls it — and her editor, Herta Feely, is pushing her to comb through her past, relive her running highs and lows, dig deep into the inspiration, motivation and, yes, perspiration it takes to do what she’s done and continues to do.<br /> So back to the starting line: She was one of five daughters, the middle one, growing up on Long Island, and schoolwork wasn’t her personal best. “I was always an athlete,” she says. “I think that was my way of getting attention. I stood out. I couldn’t wait to get out on the playground. Lacrosse, field hockey, basketball, running.”<br /> Her parents divorced when she was 8. They both remarried, which meant step-parents and step-grandparents and step-siblings. “I think running was a big outlet for all those years,” she says.<br /> It was an outlet, too, when she was commuting to midtown, two hours in, two hours out, working in sales for the fabric firm Brunschwig & Fils. Back home in Long Island, she shook off her tiredness by running. It was 1985 when she experienced her first race — the last 10 miles of the Boston Marathon — to accompany her sister. “I jumped in right before Heartbreak Hill,” she remembers, “and, omigod, people are cheering for me!”<br /> <a href="{{#staticFileLink}}7960438663,original{{/staticFileLink}}"><img class="align-left" src="{{#staticFileLink}}7960438663,original{{/staticFileLink}}" width="188" alt="7960438663?profile=original" /></a> Right then, the bug bit and it never let go. “In November of ’88, I ran the New York Marathon with my own bib on my stomach,” she says.<br /> Since then, she’s run — she pauses to calculate, gives up — oh, maybe 25 races a year, some of them 5Ks, some marathons. “You want to make sure you set an attainable goal and you can finish it,” she says. “Next time, you push yourself a little harder and you discover things about yourself.”<br /> In 2010, all that pushing got a double-whammy test, spelled out in the subtitle of her book: “An Ironwoman’s Race for Her Family’s Survival.” First, her husband, himself an accomplished triathlete, was diagnosed with cancer, a hamstring sarcoma. Then, the day before his surgery, their phone rang with the news that their then-30-year-old son, Tim, had been in a horrific accident and was being airlifted to the hospital. He’d broken both legs, cut a major artery, might never walk again.<br /> “My running background and discipline,” she says, “that mentality — hitting the wall in a race and pushing past it — got me through.”<br /> That mentality helped get her husband through rounds of chemo and radiation, their son through multiple surgeries. As if to illustrate, the front door opens and the other Lee DiPietro strides in, just back from his morning bike ride. Tim DiPietro visited over the weekend and announced that he’s embarking on a back-country ski trip in Alaska. <br /> On a hall table, there’s a picture of Tim, leg in a cast, leaning on a walker. And a photo of Tim now, all healed and raring to go. And there’s his younger-by-four-years brother, Cryder, the nonrunner of the family, who made his own athletic mark in lacrosse.<br /> So, yes, the good times are punctuated by bad ones, but, for DiPietro, even the bad ones have their purpose. “You can never tell what’s gonna happen on race day,” she says. “But you have these dark moments to think about what went wrong and how to make it better.” </p></div>Ocean Ridge: Book recounts murders that shook townhttps://thecoastalstar.com/profiles/blogs/ocean-ridge-book-recounts-murders-that-shook-town2013-04-03T19:53:35.000Z2013-04-03T19:53:35.000ZMary Kate Leminghttps://thecoastalstar.com/members/MaryKateLeming769<div><p style="text-align:center;"><strong><a href="{{#staticFileLink}}7960436472,original{{/staticFileLink}}"><img class="align-center" src="{{#staticFileLink}}7960436472,original{{/staticFileLink}}" width="179" alt="7960436472?profile=original" /></a></strong><em>Gail Adams Aaskov, author of two books, also is a Realtor, property manager and a town commissioner.</em><br /><strong><em>Jerry Lower/The Coastal Star</em></strong></p>
<p></p>
<p><strong>By Rich Pollack</strong><br /> <br />Gail Adams Aaskov remembers getting the call that Sunday morning in February seven years ago.<br /> On the other end of the phone was Ocean Ridge Town Clerk Karen Hancsak, who was crying as she told Aaskov that a former deputy town clerk and police dispatcher, Serena Gomez and her husband, Joe, a former Ocean Ridge police officer, were both dead. <br /> The two, who had moved to the central Florida town of Eustis, had been shot and killed by a fellow Eustis police officer, who had also killed his wife before pointing his Glock semi-automatic handgun at his head and pulling the trigger. <br /> The triple murder and suicide sent shock waves through Ocean Ridge, especially its law enforcement and town government community. Now it is the subject of a new book Aaskov has written. <br /> Titled Signal 5, the police code for murder, the book gives detailed accounts of what happened that day and what led up to the murder. It also raises a question about what it was that led Cpl. Mike Mount to become so violent that he would kill his wife, his co-worker and his co-worker’s wife.<br /> “I wrote this book to tell the story and, of course, I had some questions about Joe and his relationship with this officer,” Aaskov said. <br /> Aaskov also had several personal reasons for writing the book. <br /> A 20-year resident of Ocean Ridge, Aaskov served on the Town Commission from 1995 to 2004. She returned to commission last year. <br /> During her first stint on the commission, Aaskov got to know Serena and Joe Gomez fairly well. <br /> “Serena was super sweet, she was a real nurturer,” Aaskov said.<br /> In fact, she says, when she first heard that the couple were moving, she tried to get them to change their minds. “We pleaded with them not to go,” she said. <br /> Aaskov said she got involved in writing the book when Serena Gomez’s mother, Debra James, approached her and asked for her help. James was actually in her daughter’s home, hiding in another room, when the shooting took place.<br /> An attorney that James had contacted after the shooting had started the book but couldn’t complete it. <br /> “Serena’s mother gave me page after page of handwritten notes,” Aaskov said. <br /> In the book, Aaskov tells how Mount and his wife, Kimberly, were friends with Serena and Joe Gomez and how just a week before the shooting, Mount and Joe Gomez had gotten into an argument. Mount accused Gomez of flirting with Kimberly, who worked as an administrative clerk in the Police Department. <br /> On the night of the shooting, Aaskov explains in the book, Kim Mount had asked to spend the night with Serena and Joe Gomez, in part because of marital problems she was having with her husband. She brought her two children with her.<br /> James, her then 6-year-old grandson and Kim Mount’s two children escaped from the 6 a.m. gunfire unharmed. Behind them four adults lay dead. <br /> Though many of the questions about the murder are answered in the book, Aaskov leaves one mystery unsolved. <br /> “Why was Michael Mount so jealous that he killed three people?” she wrote. </p>
<p><br /> <em> To get a copy, contact Aaskov at 276-3220 or stop by her office at 5011 N. Ocean Blvd., Ocean Ridge.</em></p></div>