Gulf Coast Life

Tuesday’s elections and ballot counting has run rather smoothly in Florida compared to states like Pennsylvania that remain in the national spotlight with the presidential race between Donald Trump and Democratic challenger Joe Biden still too close to call.

Black Spartacus is a thorough and enthralling history of Toussaint Louverture, the one-time enslaved man who led the successful slave revolt in Haiti, while A Place at the Table is a middle-grade book that teels the unlikely friendship between two 6th-graders from very different backgrounds.

The Sarasota Dolphin Research Program is the longest-running study of a wild dolphin population anywhere in the world. Since 1970 more than 52,400 dolphin group sightings have yielded more than 158,000 identifications of more than 5,600 individually distinctive dolphins in and around Sarasota Bay.

Drunken brawls, coercion, and lace curtains. Believe it or not, how regular people vote was not something the founding fathers thought much about, or planned for. Americans went from casting votes at drunken parties in the town square to private booths behind a drawn curtain.

Naples-based award-winning photographer Michelle Tricca is embarking on a bold project titled, “The Face of Immokalee,” aimed at capturing the soul of the Immokalee community: Its people.

Beginning Thursday, October 29 at 8:00 a.m. a weeklong virus simulation will begin at Florida Gulf Coast University that uses smartphones and Bluetooth wireless technology.

Back in early June when protests in response to the killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police officers were rapidly spreading and growing across the country we assembled a panel comprised of members of southwest Florida’s Black community to talk about what was happening. While protests have mostly stopped, efforts continue to try and address systemic racism and police violence. And, with the election just a week away with these issues in many ways central on the ballot, both nationally and locally, we have invited them back to talk about what’s happened since the summer and where things stand today.

The new documentary “Love Wins Over Hate” features a series of honest and thought-provoking interviews with former white supremacists, and others who held extreme views but have since renounced them. It attempts to get to the heart of why people hate, and sometimes take on extremist ideologies like white supremacy. And what it takes to escape that world, and in some cases go on to work to help others escape. We talk with its producer and director, Susan Polis Schutz.

The centennial of women having the right to vote couldn’t have landed in a more pivotal year. The 2020 General Election is one of the most intensely polarized in recent memory, and that has pundits, pollsters, and politicians looking to generalize voting blocks — like female voters — in an attempt to solicit their vote, or to guess which way the group may swing.

Englewood resident Sue Zipay played for the Rockford Peaches in 1953 and ‘54 as part of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League. That was the team featured in the 1992 film A League of Their Own. Now, she is hoping to help instigate the creation of a girls baseball league here in Southwest Florida. And she dreams of a future that includes professional women’s baseball in the U.S.