Tortoises and other slow-moving targets

Posted by Mark Chapman on July 21st, 2010 at 5:13 am

Pos­si­ble Cham­ber of Com­merce bumper sticker: A gopher tor­toise ate our tourist season.

Well, not really. GT’s are not sea­soni­vores (if Palin can refu­di­ate the Eng­lish lan­guage, so can I). But because, at some point, there may have been a cou­ple of gopher tor­toises who might have had bur­rows on the Cham­ber prop­erty, a “good-to-go” per­mit got held up, a law was vio­lated and the build­ing of the Chamber’s new office and vis­i­tors cen­ter is being delayed and will likely not be ready until April or May.

Now, not only are the tor­toises threat­ened, but I am sure they are being roundly cursed in some circles.

***

Real­ity show fans: Tune in Tues­day morn­ings start­ing at 9 a.m. to Char­lotte County’s live stream­ing video of the County Com­mis­sion meet­ing. There’s anger, laugh­ter, decep­tion, snip­ing and lots of frus­tra­tion. There’s a lot of speech-making. Fac­tions form and fall apart. The pub­lic input can get rau­cous, too. It’s all great the­ater, and it’s way bet­ter than those bor­ing Sara­sota Board of County Com­mis­sion­ers meetings.

***

Seems like the knot everyone’s shorts got tied into over the pos­si­bil­ity of oil com­ing to our shore has loos­ened a bit. National focus has waned, too, as more impor­tant sto­ries — you know, like,  like Lind­say Lohan’s incar­cer­a­tion —  have cap­tured the atten­tion of  the broad­cast and cable news types.

Just won­der­ing: What­ever hap­pened to that swine flu pandemic?

***

I was all ready to make some snarky com­ment about the lack of trop­i­cal activ­ity so far despite all the dire pre­dic­tions, but a quick check shows a nasty lit­tle sys­tem between Puerto Rico and the Domini­can Repub­lic that could become a trop­i­cal depres­sion by some­time today (July 21).

My pre­ferred site, http://www.wunderground.com, is sug­gest­ing that Trop­i­cal Storm Bon­nie could be born by some­time Thurs­day, and could even approach South Florida by then. Com­puter mod­els bring it ashore between Miami and Palm Beach and put us right in the mid­dle of the Cone of  Uh-oh. Keep an eye on it. Shouldn’t  be a huge wind storm, and it’s com­ing from the east so storm surge shouldn’t be bad. But, so far, it seems to be a real rain-maker.

UPDATE Thurs­day, 7:24 p.m.: We are now on the north­ern edge of the Cone of Uh-oh, which is now expected to pass south of us late Fri­day night/early Sat­ur­day, en route to the oil spill. The heav­i­est rain is to the north­east, mean­ing we should get wet, but what else is new?

UPDATE Fri­day, 6:52 p.m.: Shoulda stuck with the snark… A lit­tle rain, a lit­tle breeze. Now, if the storm doesn’t die first, it is expected to make land­fall in Louisiana at low tide, mit­i­gat­ing the dam­age it was expected to do. All great news.

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Hard to believe:  If you live in Char­lotte County, school starts in less than three weeks (Aug. 10). If you live in Sara­sota, stand down: You have until Aug. 23.

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