D. K. Christi's article, The Ship and ad for Seminar Nov 12

If you have the chance, please check out www.swspotlight.com for November. The article on The Ship p. A9 was fun to write and the ad on page A13 is an example of a different venue for marketing books.

I've really enjoyed writing for Southwest Spotlight and highly recommend local papers for writing articles. The ad is positively beautiful and also appeared in several other local papers.

Ghost Orchid was published by L & L Dreamspell in 2009. Invitations to talk about my favorite, rare and endangered, exotic and mysterious (is that enough adjectives?) ghost orchid are always welcome. What better venue than a garden center?

I just read it. Nice article. And it did its job, I want to go to Florida now. lol

My family took some driving trips to Florida when I was a kid. I have nice memories of a Holiday Inn on the ocean, in Clearwater, I think. We only stayed there two days because it cost $25/night, a princely sum for my family in 1969. We bought a conch shell in the gift shop, which I kept for decades.

Yes, those were the days. Even the last ten years has filled up all the empty spaces except for the Everglades....and they've done a pretty good job of draining that to the detriment of the world's water tables, Florida and Georgia in particular but I understand there's a "butterfly effect."

I'm sure there's still a Holiday Inn of some sort on the beach in Clearwater unless they sold it to build a hi-rise condo, which is the fate of most of those old beachfront hotels.

We vacationed on Marco Island in 1979 and carried to Michigan a huge suitcase full of shells. In 1980, we moved to Marco Island and gave the shells back to the beach.

Forutnately I live in a funny little place. It's still a small town with the farmworkers and landscape maintenance people and several small, Mexican owned businesses on Old 41 where there's a marvelous park on the river where one can kayak back into old Florida. Across new US41 is Bonita Bay, a multi-mlllion dollar gated community. Five miles down the road is Bonita Beach, a nearly twelve mile strand of sand from inlet to inlet where the dolphins play in the early morning. I live on a one-block street to the river where the street houses range from $130 thousand to $250 thousand and the four on the cul de sac on the river are in the $millions. My street is not gated. The rif raff are free to knock on the door. But no one drives through since the river is at the end.

In winter, the locals don't go to the restaurants and a parking spot at the beach is premium. Traffic and a seat at church require planning ahead. But summers belong to us.

Today the weather is perfect. Absolutely perfect. Going for a beach hike in about an hour when the sun is less overhead.