Laura Hare
February, 2011
Supper Club
See the published version of this article on jacksonville.com : Supper club.
Couples often develop close friendships with people they meet at work, church or even in their neighborhoods. However, for one group of couples, those relationships began with an idea posed on a Food Network television show.
The idea? To join a supper club in which members could share their love of food on a regular basis. The show’s hosts recommended looking online at the Cooking Light website for local clubs.
When Amy Miller of St. Augustine didn’t see a nearby club to join, she decided to take the initiative and leave a post asking if others would be interested in forming one. Miller wasn’t the only woman watching the Food Network show that day, and she was surprised when her initial post had several enthusiastic responses.
“It was meant to be,” Miller said. “We had our first 'get to know you' meeting at the Starbucks by the Avenues [Mall] and things took off from there!”
Five years, several weddings, seven babies and a couple of grease fires later, the club is still going strong. It now consists of five couples from different parts of Jacksonville, St. Augustine and Maclenny. The group has gained and lost members along the way, but the couples have remained a tight-knit community.
“They have been with me through so much – dating, planning for a wedding, and two pregnancies. We would not have any event without including them,” said club member Dee Naccarato, of Jacksonville’s Southside. “They are the ones I call when I need advice or just want to have fun. I feel so fortunate that I responded to the post.”
Not only has this club been a place where relationships have grown and deepened, it has also been a place where the members could experiment with new cuisines and improve their culinary skills. Unlike many supper clubs where individuals show up with pre-prepared dishes, the members of this club take turns hosting the monthly meetings. The host will decide on the menu and purchase the food so that when everyone arrives, they prepare the meal as a group.
“We've rolled sushi, made pasta, made homemade sausages, and tried lots of cuisines and dishes that we normally would never attempt on our own,” Miller said.
However, the experimentation has not been without its flops along the way. Lisa Sterling of Mandarin, who joined the original group along with her husband, said that some of their favorite stories now are the things that didn’t work out for one reason or another. There have been the dishes such as beer soup and garlic cookies that the group “would say were disastrous.”
There have also been the husband-induced antics or mishaps such as the jalapeno popper disaster that resulted in chemical burns on Naccarato’s hands. “You have to be tough to be in our cooking club!”
Though the addition of children over the years has put more demands on the club members’ time, it has also helped them realize just how important the relationships they’ve developed through their dining have been.
“Before children, we used to hang out a lot more, even when we didn’t have our monthly meal. Now these monthly get-togethers are like a lifeline,” Sterling said. “I treasure the time we get to spend together.”
For people interested in starting or joining a supper club, these members suggested looking everywhere for people to join. Ask friends if they’d be interested, approach other parents from your child’s school, or look on websites like cookingclub.com or the Cooking Light website where they found each other.
And according to Sterling, the improved culinary skills may not be the only thing you gain along the way.
“You don’t have to know how to cook. You just have to be willing to get together, try new things, and share the experience. The food is an added benefit, but the friends and fellowship are really the important part.”
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Laura Hare
January 24, 2011
A1A Coastal Byway
It’s not hard to figure out why the 72-mile segment of State Road A1A extending from the Volusia-Flagler county line to the Duval-St. John’s county line is known as a scenic and historic coastal byway. The drive takes travelers to several state parks, historic St. Augustine, freshwater marsh land and coastal dune habitats. Numerous plant and animal species can be seen along the road, providing opportunity to quite literally stop and smell the flowers.
However, don’t be fooled by the beautiful surroundings. There’s a war going on out there.
Much like the never-ending battle that weeds wage against your home gardens and flower beds, the natural landscape of Florida’s A1A is being attacked by pests seeking to take over. These invasive species can wreak havoc on the plants and animals that are native to the area.
“I don’t think it is a stretch to say that every public land manager in the state is dealing with the issue and many have aggressive programs just trying to eradicate invasives from conservation lands,” said Emily Montgomery, a researcher at the Guana Tolomato Matanzas National Estuarine Research Reserve.
In fact, according to the Nature Conservancy, Florida is second only to Hawaii as the most heavily impacted state in the US when it comes to invasive species. Brazilian Peppers spread like wildfire, strangling native plants and surrounding fauna. Australian Pines contribute to further erosion in the dune system and can entrap sea turtles trying to nest. And all the dead Red Bay trees along the roadside? Blame that on the Red Bay Ambrosia Beetle, which spreads a deadly disease called Laurel Wilt.
These are just a few examples of the serious problems the environment along A1A is facing, and conservationists feel it is vital that the public become aware of the issue.
“To ever hope to control many of the invasive species that we deal with, everyone has a very important part to play,” Montgomery said. “It is critical to be able to work across traditional land boundaries.”
For most of us, this can be as simple as looking at what we decide to plant outside our own homes. Knowing the difference between a native plant and an invasive species sitting at your local nursery starts with education. That is exactly what people like Sallie O’Hara, Program Administrator for Friends of A1A Scenic and Historical Coastal Byway, hopes to provide. Friends of A1A will soon be awarded a grant to continue educating the public on best practices for native landscaping and O’Hara said that there are a number of ways that the public can gain awareness of the issue and participate in what’s being done to address it.
Web sites, such as www.floridayards.org, educate visitors on the benefits of Florida-friendly landscapes, which are low maintenance and better for the environment. Friends of A1A hold workshops regularly to educate the public on the impact and removal of invasive species, and there are a number of initiatives under way in St. Johns, Flagler and Duval counties in which volunteers can work alongside environmental staff to remove and replace invasive species in the area.
“When the eco system is unbalanced by invasives, the effect hits the dependent populations-plant and animals,” O’Hara said.
As residents of Florida or visitors to the A1A Scenic and Historic Coastal Byway, we too are part of that population. In order to preserve the beauty and history that the byway has to offer, it is up to us to do what we can to help out, one non-invasive species at a time.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Laura Hare
June 16, 2010
Annie Lytle School
See the published version of this article in the October 2010 issue of the Resident Community News.
Imagine a building with brick exterior and a neo-classical portico supported by colossal, white Doric columns in the heart of Jacksonville where artists could live and work, developing masterpieces in the shadow of the trees of Riverside Park. Or perhaps a music venue, movie studio, or high-end lofts within walking distance of Five-Points and the Riverside Art’s Market.
These are just a sample of the dreams and ideas that have been tossed around for use of the old Annie Lytle School building, now shadowed only by the Interstate 95 overpass that comes within spitting distance of the school’s roof. The school, one of the first built in Jacksonville’s history, is at once a magnificent reminder of Jacksonville’s past and an eyesore, dilapidated and tormented by vandals that relentlessly find their way into the abandoned building, leaving their mark at every turn.
Doug Milne, an attorney for Foundation Holding IV which, up until March, owned the building for almost 30 years, is no stranger to the vandalism that has occurred over generations. “I can’t tell you how many coats of white paint and scaffolds have covered those magnificent columns. You wouldn’t believe what these people will do. Bring in trucks to pull down doors. Use chainsaws and sledgehammers.”
Over the years, Foundation Holding IV spent thousands trying to secure the building from vandals looking for something to destroy, school kids looking for a ghostly Friday-night thrill, and vagrants looking for a place to stay. Milne indicated this is one of the main reasons the building was sold in a tax deed sale earlier this year. “We always felt so responsible about wanting to keep it looking presentable, but it got to be so enormously expensive and heart breaking and back breaking. It was a no-win proposition,” he said.
While the sale of the building may release Foundation Holding IV from any further obligation to spend money or time on repairs and protection of the school, they have retained ownership of the surrounding land, allowing them to remain a key player in any future development projects that come along.
According to records from the Duval County Property Appraiser’s Office, the building and surrounding land were a single assessment until being split for tax year 2008. This resulted in the building being sold for taxes due to Tarpon IV, LLC, a company known for buying properties in similar situations with the hopes of selling them to a prospective developer.
Unfortunately, finding a developer for the Annie Lytle School has been a problem that has plagued the property for years. Not that a number of people haven’t tried to make things work. It’s just been difficult to find an investor that has the motivation and foresight for development and can also make the numbers work, according to Lisa Sheppard of the Jacksonville Historic Preservation Commission. Despite efforts to tap into grant money and tax credits, including a move to designate the building as a historic landmark in 2000 in hopes of utilizing incentives for historic preservation, nearly all prospective developers have walked away because of lack of funding for their projects.
The recent change of ownership of the school building without the surrounding land presents yet another sticky situation a developer would have to wade through in an attempt to start a project at the site. Jim Lima, land records division chief for the Duval County Property Appraiser’s Office, points to Florida Statute 704.01 for guidance in dealing with this unusual situation. The statute indicates that right-of-way access to the school would be presumed to have been granted so that the owners of the building could not be denied physical access to their property by the owners of the surrounding land.
Despite the existence of Florida Statute 704.01, Sheppard sees an obvious problem for any attempts to develop the area into something usable. “I would think it would be difficult to figure out a project that would work without having some agreement with the land owner around it. If they couldn’t come to some agreement with the land owner, there is no way to provide parking or anything else. I would be concerned about this situation undermining the ability of having a rehab. project come in.”
Rehab of the building has not been the only idea proposed for the school. Attempts to demolish the building in order to make way for new construction have also met opposition from historic preservationists and activists that want the building preserved and put to positive use. One such activist, Tim Kinnear, who through the use of a hold-harmless agreement with both Foundation Holding IV and Tarpon IV, LLC, puts time and effort into organizing volunteers to help clean and repair the property.
“Annie Lytle represents a piece of not only our architectural history, but a tool of the past, of education. This building needs all the support it can get. For decades Jacksonville’s city management has had little regard for historic preservation compared to other U.S. cities. It’s deplorable. We have razed our history almost past the point of no return. We need to retain and preserve the relatively few pieces we have remaining,” Kinnear said.
Despite the years of neglect and endless obstacles that seem to pop up at every turn for those who seek to rehab and develop the school, supporters continue to voice their concern and remain optimistic about the future of the building. Paul Bremer, an Annie Lytle School supporter and neighbor, points to several recent developments as signs that make him “more hopeful than ever of saving the school.” One of those developments being the change in ownership of the school, the other being that it can now be reconnected to Riverside Park and the surrounding neighborhoods.
“When the Fuller Warren Bridge and approaches were built a couple of years ago, the approaches were elevated and the Florida Department of Transportation has indicated that they are willing to grant an easement under the approaches from the school to the park. This opens up a lot of new possibilities for the re-use of the building,” Bremer said.
Laura Hare
May 26, 2010
Disability Resource Center
“I really think someone could walk in here and be half-dinosaur,” said Danika Dodd, a sophomore at the University of North Florida, “and we would accommodate them.”
Dodd is one of approximately 700 students currently registered with the university’s Disability Resource Center. The main goals of the DRC are to ensure that all students with disabilities at UNF are given equal access to educational opportunities and to promote self-advocacy and self-determination of the students throughout the university community.
In a school of almost 16,000 students, to have at least 700 of them registered with the DRC is not insignificant. This may be due to the fact that the DRC’s services extend well beyond students with learning disabilities to those with physical and mental disabilities as well.
“There is an amazing number of different stories out there and different situations. I think UNF really does live up to the expectation that they are student-centered because we really try to look at the students as individuals,” said Susan Gregg, the DRC educational programming coordinator.
One DRC student was already familiar to many people on campus when he arrived at the university. JT Townsend suffered a spinal cord injury during a high school football game in 2004 that left him paralyzed from the neck down. Townsend’s physical injuries make him eligible for assistance through the DRC, including such things as the use of a note-taker in class and the use of a scribe to write out his papers or test answers for him.
The DRC will also arrange to have a class moved to a more accessible location if a student with physical disabilities is unable to get to the room in which the class was originally placed. “Not all buildings are so easy to access, although they are becoming more so, especially as we build more and more accessible buildings,” Gregg said.
Some of the most common physical impairments the DRC assists with are hearing disabilities. Debra Lenahen began offering her services in the classroom as an interpreter for the hearing-impaired long before the DRC was around. She has since transitioned into a full-time position with the DRC and believes UNF serves more deaf students than most other state schools in Florida. Lenahen explained that the interpreters are available to help with all classroom activities, as well as extracurricular activities at the university as well. She said as long as appropriate notice was given, accommodations would be provided if a student “wanted to participate in any UNF sponsored event.”
Although the DRC does what it can to assist with physical disabilities as they are made aware of them, Gregg points out that once the classroom accessibility issues are cleared up with physically disabled students, their need for assistance from the office on a regular basis diminishes. “Really, most of the students we’re dealing with on a day-to-day basis have ADHD and/or learning disabilities because they’re doing the testing here,” Gregg said.
It is the availability of extra time and, in some cases, isolation during testing that become invaluable to students such as Danika Dodd. Dodd’s registration with the DRC has given her the option of extra time on tests, as well as isolation during the exam to diminish distractions. She is also given an opportunity to use the computer spell-check system for essays and can ask for a student note-taker in class or record her lectures if necessary. Dodd explained she has not felt the need to utilize the note-taker or record lecture yet, but has benefitted from the extra help with taking tests. For the most part, Dodd does not feel that her situation has caused awkwardness with fellow classmates. However, if for some reason one of them feels her extra time or private room for taking tests is unfair, she has no problem bringing some perspective to the situation, asking if they would “rather have three learning disabilities as a trade-off.”
Dodd also feels that some of the most beneficial aspects of her involvement with the DRC has come from her time spent working at the center’s front desk. Dodd made many visits to other schools’ disability resource programs prior to enrolling at UNF. She felt the positive atmosphere and inviting attitude she saw in the UNF’s DRC staff, such as Susan Gregg and the current director of the program, Kristine Webb, far exceeded what had been demonstrated at other schools. Having the opportunity to work behind the scenes at the program has only furthered this impression. She said it has also helped her to realize just how hard the DRC staff works to accommodate its students and how willing the busy staff members are to make time to help out a student in need.
Dodd feels an indirect benefit she has gained from working at the DRC has been the opportunity to ask the DRC staff about particular professors that teach the classes she will need to take. Dodd, like most students registered at the DRC, receives referrals to a number of other units on campus that offer services to students, such as freshman and sophomore advising through the Academic Center for Excellence. However, in Dodd’s experience, ACE has not done such a good job of taking her disabilities into account and pointing her in the direction of professors that work well with DRC students and staff.
Dodd believes this in one area that the DRC could offer more services. Although the DRC provides every student with letters for his or her professors, explaining the student is registered at the center and what provisions the student is eligible for, Dodd thinks the ability for the center to actually provide some academic advising would be extremely helpful for DRC students when attempting to pick professors and classes. She likens it to the information provided on the popular Web site RateMyProfessors, with a focus on how well the professor works with DRC students.
Above all, however, it was the feeling of support the DRC provided during her transition from high school to college that Dodd focuses on. “I was so nervous and scared and thought I’d be really bad at college,” she said, “the DRC was there to help ease my move when I was feeling unsure of myself.”
