Friday, October 30, 2009

“Features: Book Reviews: Paradise Lost by Janice Coupe - Cedar Key News” plus 2 more

“Features: Book Reviews: Paradise Lost by Janice Coupe - Cedar Key News” plus 2 more

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Features: Book Reviews: Paradise Lost by Janice Coupe - Cedar Key News

Posted: 30 Oct 2009 04:20 AM PDT


Janice Coupe, former resident of Cedar Key, restaurateur and librarian has penned her memoirs reflecting a period of change and heightened controversy in the island city. She looks back on a time when Cedar Key still held fast to its deep roots though the tight hold was beginning to slacken. Newcomers were arriving, old-timers were passing on and the town`s physical makeup began to slowly change. It was unsettling. Something was in the air.

One of the most painful history-changing events in the Cedar Keys was the Net Ban debacle. An entire town and community`s way of life was under the gun. Ms. Coupe brings us back to that time of raw frustration, anger and loss and we are reminded of the funeral-like pall that enveloped the little fishing village.

There is plenty of "tell-it-like-it-is" in Paradise Lost and there`s no hiding behind palm trees from the reaction to those who were determined to put a different face on the landscape. Progress and development arrived with all of its rule-twisting, un-neighborly like conduct, and plenty of money.


Thru hard work and determination Ms. Coupe established The Heron Restaurant a difficult and daunting task indeed, as she explains. Not only did she have a forever-long day at her highly rated restaurant, she also had to deal with the ghost who came to call at unexpected times. Ms. Coupe published a cookbook entitled "Sixty Miles From a Lemon" whose title suggests her many challenges. Janice Coupe played a central role in the monumental planning and finally the opening of the new Cedar Key Library.


Cedar Key definitely changed and most people would probably say not for the better, but perhaps warm memories linger with the lady who called Cedar Key home for a while. Her reminiscences of good friends and good food, sunsets, wildlife (especially her raccoons), moonlight on the water and the absolute beauty of her surroundings makes one feel all was not lost.

-Linda Dale


This is an enjoyable book; especially so for a self-published one. It is well written, well edited, and professionally executed from its general format to its picture inclusions; far better than one might expect, even from a former English teacher. My kudos.


Mrs. Coupe, for those unaware, was a very important and productive person here on Cedar Key. She came years ago and "fit right in." Her husband served for a time as family physician to the residents. During her tenure she opened and operated THE HERON, likely the most famous restaurant ever in "Island City." People drove from miles around to enjoy the fare. The cook book she later wrote about it - Sixty Miles from a Lemon - is a treasure, especially since she includes her best recipes, which encompass tips and detailed instructions for the preparation of some extraordinary meals. That and some interesting Cedar Key history, aside from that pertaining to the restaurant.


Subsequently she served as the librarian for our dismally small and under-stocked facility. As such she became the principal mover and shaker behind the new library, now the pride and joy of the island, and quite a remarkable one for a community of only a thousand souls.


Her writing style is modest but eloquent, with Micheneresque echoes from time to time. Her descriptions of this remote, underdeveloped area (when it was such) are illuminating, giving the reader a definite sense of just how it used to be here in paradise. Tales of wildlife, "flapping fish" (but none of the "the girls I knew") and the pleasant if sometimes destructive weather, including the tribulations of post-hurricane cleanup. It is a revealing paean to survival of this small, sturdy community.

She includes a few anecdotes about people on the island, and a number of descriptions of its now vanished employment opportunities, recently as a result of the banning of commercial fishing, though clear-cutting the cedars and exhausting the oyster beds didn`t help much in earlier times. As well she gives a nod to the clam farming which now replaces fishing. She appropriately relates, rather scathingly, how honest, hard working people were driven out, the better to serve "sport fishing" for the masses, and shares her unhappiness over the shift to a recreational/vacation atmosphere with its residential building and commercial tourist activities. Unfortunately, this is what is left for Cedar Key.


There are a few caveats which I have mentioned to her as regards this commentary. While it is her memoir, and she is entitled to include that which she chooses, in my opinion she might have lightened up a little on several of her diatribes about her troubles in several circumstances. In place she might have included more cameos of the many interesting characters in the community. And she might have shortened up on the details of the library construction.


Further, she indicates that "paradise [is] lost," with which I would take certain issue. The world is changing. Cedar Key, while changing with it, is being altered at a much slower pace. (Visit Sarasota or Naples . . . even Gainesville if you doubt.) Most of us newcomers enjoy it here for the same reasons she did, if a few decades late. It is still a place of quiet enjoyment for many, and especially when compared to cities from which most of us came, as did she long years ago. We too are offended by the newly constructed monstrosity which replaced our lovely old dock. It is seldom visited by locals. We too are a little upset by some of the tacky construction of new homes. We too are bothered by the noise of motorcycles roaring about town.


Yet to vindicate oneself it is necessary to look about for beauty and reality, not seek out the lameness of turmoil and discord. Cedar Key is sought after as a place of refuge from much of the too busy modern world. Sunrises and sunsets are still magnificent; ocean breezes are still pleasant; charm, sociability and cordiality still abound. Island City, while certainly different than it was 30 years ago, is still glorious in the opinion of most of us. Paradise may well be changed, but it has not been lost.

-Dick Martens

Paradise Lost: a memoir
Janice Coupe
ISBN 9781880732175
Available at Curmudgeonalia

Sixty Miles From a Lemon
Available at the Cedar Key Historical Society

Daniel Gross - Newsweek

Posted: 30 Oct 2009 02:54 AM PDT

Daniel Gross is one of the most widely read financial and economic writers working today. He is a senior editor at Newsweek, where he writes the "Contrary Indicator" column. He writes the twice-weekly "Moneybox" column for Slate, which also appears on Newsweek.com.
 
Before joining Newsweek in the spring of 2007, Mr. Gross wrote the "Economic View" column in the New York Times, was a contributing writer to New York, and contributed regularly to magazines such as Fortune and Wired. From 1998-2007, Gross served as the editor of STERNBusiness, a semi-annual academic magazine on economics and management published by the New York University Stern School of Business.

A native of East Lansing, Michigan, Mr. Gross graduated from Cornell University in 1989, with degrees in government and history, and holds an A.M. in American history from Harvard University (1991). He worked as a reporter at The New Republic and Bloomberg News, and has contributed hundreds of features, news articles, book reviews and opinion pieces to over 60 magazines and newspapers. Areas of expertise include: economic and tax policy, the links between business and politics, the rise of the investor class, the culture of Wall Street, and business history.
 
He is the author of four books: "Forbes Greatest Business Stories of All Time" (Wiley, 1996), which was a New York Times Business bestseller and a finalist for the Financial Times "Lex" award, given to the best business history book of 1996. Translations have been published in Spanish, German, Czech, Polish, Portuguese, Bulgarian, Chinese, Turkish, and Japanese; "Bull Run: Wall Street, the Democrats, and the New Politics of Personal Finance" (PublicAffairs, 2000); "The Generations of Corning: The Life and Times of an American Company," co-authored with Davis Dyer, (Oxford University Press, 20010; and "Pop! Why Bubbles Are Great for the Economy," (HarperCollins, May 2007).
 
Mr. Gross appears frequently in the media. A regular guest on CNBC, MSNBC, and National Public Radio, he has also appeared on CNN, Fox News Channel, The Newshour with Jim Lehrer, Bloomberg Television, C-SPAN, BBC, and Reuters TV, and on more than 50 radio programs and talk shows.
 
Mr. Gross lives in Westport, Conn., with his wife and two children.

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Obama: 600 Million Dollars Later Is the Question Still Above Your Pay ... - Reality Check

Posted: 29 Oct 2009 09:18 PM PDT

It took six weeks for Barack Obama to admit he was a bit flippant about his answer about when human life actually begins. Now only days away from the general election has his answer changed at all?

 

Obviously it is not a question Barack Obama likes to deal with and no one can force him to do so but that says nothing about the fact that upwards of 150 million Americans still believe the question is critical.

 

Obama has spent 600 million dollars of his party's campaign chest for a job that pays $400,000 annually with a $50,000 expense account attached. A few CEOs and top execs may get more than the president but none of them had to spend 600 million to get the job.

 

All totaled if Obama wins it will cost America $6,450,000 to get him into the oval office and keep him there for one year. Some of us think that should be enough expenditure and pay to ask and expect an answer to the aforementioned query. Yes, it is within Sen. Obama's pay grade.

 

The question was made to go away in most of the debates or it was downplayed. But does this question actually go anywhere. It should go directly to the conscience of every American who has two ears and a brain and of course; a heart.

 

Recently Mexican actor and producer Eduardo Verastegui released a video and a message on the internet that is perhaps the most candid and horror filled view of the results of an actual abortion. The video is followed by Verastegui's impassioned plea for Americans to consider what it is they are doing. He is not reticent to use terms like holocaust in his argument.

 

Can we actually say that something that is law has created a holocaust? It was a law in Germany to slaughter every Jew that could be rounded up across the German nation and all of the lands Hitler had conquered! No one thinks that justified the horror of the holocaust.

 

Since its inception in 1973 Roe v Wade has now surpassed the combined total of the world's three worst genocides in modern history and that in this nation alone. Joseph Stalin 30 million, Hitler 6 million. All remaining combined genocides since total about 5 million deaths.

 

The grand total of genocidal driven deaths for the past two generations world wide then is 41 million people. Roe v Wade has claimed 50,000,000 in this nation alone since 1973. Can anyone regardless of pay grade answer this question? Shouldn't the question be, is there anyone who would dare not to answer this question!

 

Can America waltz off to the polls and never consider this question. Can a nation suspend, or supplant the question with concerns over stock markets, taxes and mortgages. Sadly it seems the answer is yes.

 

Yet, the national answer will eventually be followed by a carefully placed 'no' in the fiber, the economy and the standing of this nation in the world.

 

World renowned preacher Dr. R. G. Lee preached a sermon entitled "Payday Someday" to thousands of audiences around the world. The sermon wasn't based on some high Barthian theological treatise but on a single piece of scripture spoken by the Apostle Paul that applies to an individual or an entire nation. "Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap." (Galatians 6:7)

 

The question of when life begins is not above the pay grade of any American. The question can be deferred but never denied. If it should be set aside for now, one question already answered is that there is a "payday someday."

 

http://www.americanprophet.org is the place for news, articles, movie and book reviews and other insights for life. Rev Bresciani is a columnist for online and print publications and has over two million readers and counting.

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