News

Ah, April. Chamber of Commerce weather, fledgling screech owls in the yard and lingering twilights to enjoy with our neighbors — before the auto transports and seasonal residents bolt for the summer.
By now, most of them have returned to their northe

Let’s talk about suicide. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, there is one death by suicide every 12 minutes in the United States. Every 12 minutes, someone’s pain is so severe they can’t fathom any other way out of it and ev

$378 million to keep a city above water. $45 million for renovations along A1A. $25 million to keep sand on the beach. These are a few of the dramatic numbers we’ve seen discussed in our coastal area recently.
The cost of updating our aging infrastr

When the windows are open at my Ocean Ridge home, I hear the cars roll by on State Road A1A. Bicyclist friends shout our names as a wake-up call early on Saturday mornings as they ride by. On our morning walks we wave to friends heading out for work

Sure, I use a digital calendar to track meetings and schedules and deadlines.
Call me old-fashioned, but I also hang a paper calendar on the wall in my kitchen. It has pretty photographs, and I can write notes in the empty squares, clip appointment

The coming holidays have me contemplating the meaning of a gift.
In searching for a definition, I turned to Merriam-Webster (of course).
The dictionary’s first description calls a gift “a notable capacity, talent, or endowment.”
I take this to mea

By Mary Kate Leming

Ten years. Who’d a thunk it? Not me, that’s for sure. I was convinced print would be so crippled by digital that we’d get only five years out of our startup publication at most.

Wow, was I wrong.

I knew there was a serious risk of

If you are just returning from your summer in cooler climes, welcome back.

There are a few things you should know as you return:

We’ve had massive amounts of seaweed wash up on our beaches most of the summer. No one is sure where it’s coming from, bu

We enter journalism contests with mixed emotions. There’s something about journalists judging journalists that feels somewhat self-serving, and writing about these winnings feels unnecessarily boastful. Still, the staff at The Coastal Star are almost

I’ve watched one tide turn since we started this newspaper almost 10 years ago: Where there once was a reluctance to utter the words “sea level rise” from the dais, the phrase now is part of the municipal vernacular during discussions on building reg

We lock our doors when there’s only one person in the office. We lock them when we’re working at night.
There’ve been times when we’ve asked local law enforcement to keep an eye on our office and our employees. We’ve been screamed at on the telephon

Slimming down for summer. Those of us who grew up in northern climates are quite familiar with the annual spring diet to prepare for swimsuit season. Of course, in Florida every season is swimsuit season. So here there’s no escaping the inevitable sq

Mom loved animals. The first time I ever saw her cry was when the kitten she’d saved with every-three-hour eyedropper feedings was hit by a car as he strutted home from a week of tomcatting around the neighborhood.
I was a teenager.
One of the last t

Now that Easter has passed, winter visitors are beginning their journeys back to northern homes. As they prepare to leave, other visitors are getting ready to come. These visitors are just off shore and in an amorous mood. Soon, sea turtles will be c

It’s election season. Learn about your candidates and be sure to vote.
I wish it were that simple. It never is. This year the battles are already heating up and the mud of misinformation is getting thick. As a result, I’d like to clarify a few things

Every season in Briny Breezes there is rumbling from a handful of residents who still believe they were somehow cheated out of their “million” dollars because of the failed Ocean Land sales deal in 2007-2008. Ten years later there are still residents

It’s a new dawn
It’s a new day
It’s a new life
For me
And I’m feeling good
I’m feeling good

•

The often-recorded song Feeling Good is in my iTunes mix as 2018 begins.
Nina Simone’s 1965 version charted decades later when heard in a Volvo commercia

When The Coastal Star started publishing back in 2008, the downtowns of Boca Raton, Delray Beach and Boynton Beach were hopping on the weekends and holidays, but pretty quiet the rest of the time. Atlantic Crossing in Delray Beach was still being pro

    There is water in the streets. It’s there when it rains hard, when tropical weather blows through, when the highest tides of the year align with phases of the moon and when Lake Okeechobee water is diverted into canals and drained into the ocean.

    In between the National Hurricane Center’s every-three-hour updates, I grew anxious thinking what it would mean for our area to have the eye wall of a Category 4 or 5 Hurricane Irma blow directly up the I-95 corridor.
    “If the eye passes east