Tonight, the program’s host, Joe Hendricks, is interviewing Democratic State Attorney General candidate Dan Gelber, who will share his views on the state challenging the federal health care bill, his thoughts on an Arizona-style immigration bill and tell us what separates him from Republican candidate Pam Bondi.

During the second half of show Democratic County Commission candidate Mark Hawkins who is challenging incumbent Republican County Commissioner Nora Patterson will be talking about job creation and the use of local labor, the county’s role in economic development, the county budget, the spring baseball fiasco and more.

Hendricks is doing very interesting stuff on his Local Matters program — lots of local folks talking about local matters that matter. I think his show takes calls as well from the listening audience — check it out and call in with your questions for these political folks to the studio line at 941.355.4540.

My desire to transition is based on a lot of ideals — I don’t want to waste my time in always running out someplace in search of sustenance; I want to save money; I want to reduce my impact on my Earth by reducing my reliance on packaging and my use of fossil fuels expended in the going-after of things like early-morning coffee or mid-day smoothies; and I want to have more control over what ingredients are actually going into my body.

While my efforts might seem tortoise-like, my energy is increasing to rabbit-like levels.

My new breakfasts at home have dramatically curtailed my intake of sugars and my day starts off quietly and contentedly. I don’t have that mid-morning energy crash anymore, either.

So, next up was the desire to reduce — actually eliminate — my near-daily mid-day smoothie from Whole Foods. At slightly over $5 per smoothie, several times a week, I was throwing tons of cash out the door each year. And, it totally made me feel ashamed every time, after slurping to the bottom of my plastic cup, using my plastic straw, I’d toss out the plastic to pollute my Earth (even though I recycled them when I could). Also, just thinking about the fossil fuels expended for my fruit-filled lunch felt like extreme folly, especially when I think about the men and women fighting wars over this kind of stuff. Not to mention the time waste — even when I coincided my smoothie stop with other errands, there’s the parking, the standing in line, the waiting, the paying.

Just craziness to live like this. Consumerism at its worst. Laziness at its best.

So, my Mom gave me her blender. I looked up a couple of recipes; bought the ingredients and voila — am making homemade smoothies every day for lunch.

Minimized packaging; gas reduced to about one trip a week to the grocery; time saved is wicked great, and I’m in control of the ingredients that go into my body. Next, I might try buying all the ingredients only from the Farmer’s Market so that I’m buying local and eliminating the use of fossil fuels even more.

I’m guessing the yearly savings is well over a thousand dollars when you factor everything in. And, I feel, again, more calm, sane, responsible, and smart.

YUM!

Encore, which was established in 1989, serves as a kind of extension of the friendships that are established in the Sarasota Newcomers Club. Anyone who’s completed three years of membership in the Newcomers club, or who has lived in the local area for five years — whether or not they’ve ever belonged to Newcomers, is eligible for membership in Encore.

The meetings are only open to members, to learn more, you might want to check out this link.

And, if you’re interested in booking me to speak to your group or organization or school, or whatevah — check this link out to learn a bit more. Or see where I’ve spoken in the past by going here.

The you you were when belly-laughing was something that happened often. When seeing someone you cared about made you feel excited rather than obligated. When just being outside in the sun or in a coffee shop reading left you with the undeniable buzz of being alive.

A time when you thought and felt, hell, you knew, the whole world was at your feet. Your whole life was in front of you, figuratively or literally.

The first lesson I received — and then promptly ignored — in how not to live my life, how not to be who I was, came when I was dating my future husband. We’d been out to dinner at the Chart House in Boston. When we left, it was raining. I grabbed his hand and tried to pull him a few feet away from the restaurant door toward the edge of the wharf that looked across the water to Logan Airport.

I wanted to dance with him in the rain. I wanted to turn my head up to the night sky and feel the drops falling from the heavens. I wanted to shake my limbs and act goofy and maybe take a waltzy/schmaltzy turn around the brick area that looked like a dance floor to my eyes. I wanted to laugh and have him kiss me in the pouring rain. I wanted to press my body next to his. I wanted to get soaked to the skin and shiver all the way home and then warm our bodies the best way two humans can.

He wouldn’t come with me.

I hesitated for a moment, let go of his hand, and then went to the water’s edge by myself. I stood just for a moment, in the rain, and stared at Logan, stared down into the water. I didn’t dance. After a moment, I heard him call, “Let’s go.” I turned and walked back to him; we caught a cab, I think, and went home.

I knew then, really, in my heart, that I was putting a piece of myself by the wayside. A vital part of me. The part that will be 70 and still want to dance in the rain. Even if I catch my death of cold and die as a result. And there are some people who never want to dance in the rain. Nothing wrong with either approach to life.

But you have to know who you are and not let the person that you are fall or get pushed to the wayside. My husband didn’t push my rain-dancing self to the side — I did. And it was the first in a long line of mistakes I would make in my desire to create and sustain a relationship with him.

I still am struggling with this whole concept — the concept of being wild at heart and and yet still creating a life that offers more than just eking out a living, taking photos of three cats, and spending holidays alone.

Is it possible to be married and still maintain that wildness? Is it possible to find a partner who will not be bothered by my desire to traipse off to Italy alone? Is it possible to have a relationship in which love and sex and passion and romance and being your own, independent person, does not get sucked into the desert of familial obligations, trash that needs to be taken out, questions about what we’ll have for dinner, what television show to watch, and arguments about what time to go to bed and who’s going to pay what bill?

Is it possible to be in love and not let that romantic, goofy part of you that dances crazily in the rain be sacrificed to your partner’s practical — and quite sane — desire in wanting to get home dry and without the sniffles?

Well, all I can say is that my readers are MUCH more polite than I (sheesh I hope that’s the right use of I!). Because several of them wrote to me OFF the blog — to my email address — to point out my own very poor grammar when I wrote “the server greeted my guest and I.”

Yikes!

And they’re absolutely correct. I actually do know this rule of grammar, but it got past me when I was writing — but I’m sure I also make the mistake more often than I’d like. Here’s how one reader explained proper usage: “The server ‘greeted my guest and me’ is correct, but “my guest and I” is not. You wouldn’t say, “greeted I and my guest.” In this case you are the object of the greeting and the pronoun has to be in the objective case.”

I do wonder if this reader is or was a former teacher — she explained it so well! But truly, several readers wrote to me outside of the blog and I was struck by how sweet they all were — none of them wanted to post a blog comment pointing out my error. I think they were all too polite (not like yours truly!).

I really appreciate it when readers catch any kind of mistake I make — or when they disagree — it all helps me become a better writer. (I hope!).

If anyone else out there, besides me, is grammatically challenged from time to time — here’s an online quick check site: http://www.drgrammar.org/faqs/

And, big thanks — from me, myself, and I — to those of you who set me straight, grammatically-speaking!

I realize our community has a broad concern – to help the many folks in our town who are struggling without jobs. I believe my community wants to do right – by creating situations where more jobs might be created and more money might be spent and more economic stability and growth might be achieved. But I do not agree with the means.

Do we really want to make our economic beds with businesses that will only do business with us if we grease their palms with rebates and incentives? Is this really the standard for attracting business to which we aspire as a community? Isn’t there a better way to build our economy beyond cozying up to fickle businesses and industries whose modus operandi is to pull up stakes and move whenever and wherever someone dangles a fresh, new, bigger carrot?

I’m worried, like so many others, about my community’s future, but rather than using taxpayers’ dollars to entice out-of-towners or larger businesses, I would have preferred to support a measure that gave local leaders powers and access to incentives that rewarded and protected and helped the thousands of Mom & Pop or long-time businesses that have invested years of their lives and their profits right back into this community. I would have preferred a whole lot of money being spent, for example, to prevent Winn-Dixie from pulling up stakes in one of our most under-served, under-employed, and under-the-poverty-line sections of town.

People are saying incentives, kick-backs, call them what you will are “just the way business is done now” – it’s the trend across the country, they say.

That may be … but a few years ago, the trend was flipping homes and giving out mortgages to people who couldn’t afford it – all in the name of economic development, making money, and enjoying the good life. We are living the nightmare of what jumping on those bandwagons has cost us.

And besides, character is the same for an individual as it is for a community.

Can you imagine a teacher offering to give part of her salary back to a school supervisor if he hired her? Can you imagine being new in town and telling your local grocer that you will continue to shop at her store only if she promises to give you free apples and strawberries for the next ten years, even if it means your long-time neighbors might have to pay higher prices for such produce? Can you imagine a prominent Sarasota lawyer stealing a client away from a Desoto County attorney by offering kick-backs on attorney fees? Now, consider all this being done with taxpayer dollars.

But for me, this vote came down to a very simple question: When did what essentially amounts to kick-backs in business become the accepted norm? And, in Sarasota, this community which we all talk so much about treasuring for its pristine beauty, unspoiled beaches, and for its extraordinary commitment to the higher pursuits of culture, arts, and the intellect – shouldn’t we aspire to better?

I say yes. And that’s why I voted no.

I’ve never believed in paying somebody off, bribing somebody, or giving something to someone to encourage them to do business with me personally, and I don’t believe in doing it as a city or as a county. Really, bottom line, if it wouldn’t be okay behavior for you personally, or for yourself professionally, then why is this kind of behavior okay when a government does it?

I’ve read all the arguments for voting yes, but the bottom lines are this: a) I think it’s bad business to pay someone off to do business with you; and b) this vote requires a huge faith in the decisions reached by our local leaders — because they’ll be the ones deciding which businesses get the tax breaks. I’m already stunned by how poorly I feel our local leaders analyze, discuss, evaluate, and work through decisions that involve millions and millions of dollars. I don’t feel their track record warrants the faith in them they’re asking us to have. And here’s why:

In 2004, the City of Sarasota gave land and about $1.7 million to cover impact fees for the Whole Foods Market downtown to serve people who are well-off enough to buy ready-made dinners and organic produce and the like. In the meantime, our same city leaders have let Winn-Dixie’s much-needed grocery in an under-served, under-employed, and under-the-poverty-line section of town just walk away without a bit of effort, to the best of my knowledge, to stop that from happening. Look at the neighborhoods around these two stores, look at the people who live in them, and then you do the math. Where are the incentives to keep Winn-Dixie?

Several City Commissioners — in the name of economic development — were ready to sign away the much-used, and not a dime-subsidized Sarasota Municipal Auditorium to Ringling College for ONE DOLLAR A YEAR.

Do I need to remind readers about the roughly $5 million — FIVE MILLION DOLLARS, FOLKS — our city and county commissioners spent in pursuit of the Red Sox — for a “deal” that was never anywhere near real?

Do we need to revisit the nearly $800,000 the city commissioners gave away to the New York Times-owned Sarasota Herald-Tribune to help it offset the costs of building new offices on Main Street, at a time when we all knew that newspapers were already economic dinosaurs and when the NYT Regional Newspaper group had already gone on record saying the company’s goal was to build downtown to be “as close to the center of the community as we can manage”? Sarasota leaders gave away 800 large to convince a business to do what it was already planning to do? For a business that has probably laid off more workers in the past few years than it currently even has on staff? Is that really what constitutes “economic development” or “community redevelopment” or “job creation”?

Winslow LifeRaft – makes rafts for Boeing – was recently lured from Desoto County to Sarasota County with $650,00 in incentives from our local leaders. The President of Winslow said that, in addition to the $650k, the proposed property tax breaks — the ones that haven’t even been voted on yet — were a key reason Winslow is coming to Sarasota. This company has no loyalty to a community – it was in Osprey before uprooting and going to Desoto because of the incentives offered by that county– that was in 1999 I think. So now their 10-year incentives are dried up and so they come to Sarasota for another decade of living off the backs of the mom and pop businesses here and then, dollars to doughnuts, they’ll be off and running again to whatever county is offering up the highest incentives then.

Insurer Universal North America has had its US headquarters in Sarasota since 2003 and they by all accounts love having their roots here, and were looking to consolidate. So our county leaders threw $210k in cash incentives to encourage the company to consolidate its complete headquarters and facilities here. Yes, the company plans to add about 80 jobs but only 20 of those will be hired locally. Folks, the company was planning to CONSOLIDATE — IT HAD GONE ON RECORD SAYING IT LOVED HAVING ITS ROOTS HERE — it was probably coming here anyway. But we gave them a half-mil.

Even if they were on the fence, we all have to ask ourselves: Do we really want to make our economic beds with businesses that will only do business with us if we bribe them with rebates and incentives? Is this really the standard for attracting business to which we aspire as a community?

Isn’t there a better way to build our economy than by cozying up to fickle businesses and industries whose modus operandi is to pull up stakes and move whenever and wherever someone dangles a fresh, new, bigger carrot.

I know I’m a throwback to another era, but tell me, really, does it go down well to know you have to pay someone to do business with you? When did bribing become the norm? And, truly, if it is the norm, do we have to lower ourselves to it?

I say no.

Someone mentions their timing belt blew out on a drive to Orlando. You pass by a car on the side of the road with it’s hood up and a guy standing beside it with his cell phone out, looking hot and late for wherever he was headed. Later, you hear an ad on the radio for a discount on oil changes. Damn, you think. I’m definitely taking the car in on Friday to check out that rattling in the engine. But you don’t.

The weekend arrives. You’re at Publix and your car won’t start. You have to pay to get it towed; you have to call friends for a ride. And your borrowing your Mom’s car for work on Monday.

If we’d only pay attention to the signs we get.

Now, I’m not getting all mystical here, but it’s happened enough times in my life to me — signs quietly trying to wake me up to what needs attention. And, almost without fail, I ignore them. You’d think I’d learn.

Almost two years ago, someone gave me a nine-session yoga gift certificate for Christmas. I still haven’t used it. I think about yoga a lot. I’m drawn to it; it’s on my list of “things to do” — the list that I ignore in favor of things I’m not drawn to, but which seem to pay the bills. I receive a monthly newsletter from a local yoga teacher. Each time, I’m so attracted and interested in the newsletter, I make a mental note to “go next week.” And then, never do. A woman I admire greatly — for her success and for her killer 40-year-old body — mentions that she’s been doing yoga for 20 years. And I think, damn, it’s not too late to start now. And then, I go back to work, and later fall into bed. Yoga undone.

So, it’s no surprise that yesterday, at a doctor’s appointment I almost blew off for, yes, say it with me, WORK, the doctor read me the riot act, told me one aspect of my health was compromised to a “critical level” and that if I didn’t change my ways, my only alternative in four months would likely be surgery.

And, what one treatment did he advise above all else? You guessed it. Yoga.

In particular, the Downward Facing Dog Pose.

And when I asked if I couldn’t do the Back-Sprawled, Paws Akimbo Cat Pose instead, he didn’t even crack a smile.

Boomerang demonstrates the Back-Sprawled, Paws Akimbo Cat Pose.

He just said, “You’re way too young for this [glad I've got him fooled]. This is serious. If you want to avoid surgery, you’ve got to take action now, and every day, for the next four months.” [As if shaking that martini shaker every Friday night for the past 12 months hasn't been "action" enough?]

In my own defense, I have been taking action in the past year — I’d been walking on the beach, and building in some running. Walk. Run. Run. Walk. Then. Cry.

Yup. Crying. LIke a baby. I’d been experiencing some pretty wacked out pain over the past several months and like I always do I figured I’d “run through it” — my mantra for surviving most things in life. But mostly, I cried through the pain all the way off the beach and into my car until the next time I decided to break a sweat. Well, turns out the pain was yet another sign — a sign to stop running and address what was causing the pain in the first place. Of course, I didn’t listen to that sign either.

Was in too big of a hurry to pay attention. To slow down. To listen to my own body crying out in pain. And now here I am months later, with a doctor telling me to slow WAY down or face surgery in the new year.

Yoga is about stillness, in a big way, I think. Even when you’re moving through poses, the quality within, if I”m not mistaken, is one of stillness.

And, I’m never still. I’m practically glued to this chair as a writer and home-based businesswoman — ostensibly still, but I work crazy hours in a kind of frenzied, very hurried attempt to “make something of my life” after a few years spent massively screwing it up. And even when I’m sitting in this chair, even when I’m washing my hair, even when I’m crawling into bed, I’m always racing somewhere in my mind.

So, now, under doctor’s orders, I can’t run, can’t ride my bike, can’t even walk for exercise. But I can do yoga.

Oh, and after a couple of weeks, I can incorporate swimming.

So, despite my affinity for cats, I’m going to get up close and personal with finding my inner (and outer) dog. I’m going to submerge myself in the stillness of yoga and then, later, in the mysterious weightlessness of water.

I’ve already started doing the DFD at home — but if you don’t see a post within a week from me about the yoga class I’m attending (I need a pro’s help!), please hit me over the head with the nearest yoga mat you can find — like the one that’s been bumping around my back seat for two years, ever since I got that Christmas yoga gift certificate that I never used!

So, enough about me. What signs have you been ignoring?