The Big Easy – Going More and More Organic

Posted on 21. May, 2013 by Howard Salus in Eco Tourism, Education, featured, Florida News

Linda Novit, ENV Magazine

New Orleans, even more dear to us now, since Katrina. But the places on high ground, such as the French Quarter, and the famed (mainly through Ann Rice),Garden District were not affected, apart from the loss of business and power outage.

Besides going to party down in the French Quarter, you can lay back and relax in the Garden District, which also has fine restaurants, access to street cars, even if they’re not called Desire, A 24 hour Tavern called The St. Charles Tavern, ask for Jay, he’ll tell you stories, a very knowledgeable man. There’s also “The Green Fork” a totally organic bistro, started 5 years ago. It had it rough for a while, but has prospered the last two years, as the people of New Orleans go more and more organic.

Then there are the wonderful (at least I think it’s the best way to travel) B&Bs. I picked one called the Fairchild House  (located at 1518 Prytania St – www.fairchildhouse.com)   run by Brazilian New Orleanians Beatriz Aprigliano-Ziegler and her mother Rita. They started their business 21 years ago, and they love it. As they lovingly call it “Faulty Towers” The breakfast array is wonderful and Kosher, which means they don’t mix meat with dairy (comes from the Jewish “Thou shalt  not eat the calf in it’s mother’s milk)

And when you’re in the mood, it’s only about ten minutes to the French Quarter, with all it’s excitement, and what I most appreciate, live music everywhere!!! I even found a hidden historic treasure, teaching me more about the city. I found the “Tango Bar”, the only one left since the 30’s. At that time, tango was the thing, and there were 30-40 tango bars. Although music on Bourbon Street is entertaining, along with all the shops, and you can barter at their Farmers Market. Near the Farmer’s Market, lies Frenchman Street, where the avante garde jazz is happening There’s also, on one corner of the French Quarter,  Louis Armstrong Park, beautiful, and nice to spend time in.

In between the French Quarter and the Garden District lay a huge Museum dedicated to WWII. I entered and felt chills. How could they change the Swastika, which used to be a symbol for peace, into the face

 Beatriz of Fairchild Gardens

of evil and horror!! Yes, someone in my family died in the camps.

Anyway, right next door, was the Contemporary Art Museum, which this week featured Teen Art.

And now to the food! I went back to a restaurant where I’d dined last year, and had fond memories of, the Pier 424 Seafood Market, on Bourbon Street, a special restaurant, the locals had guided me to last year. I then had some scrumptious Filled Portobello mushrooms. At the time I and another table were the only diners. But word travels fast, now it was packed!!

For my first course, besides the introductory drink, a chocolate martini, to die for! I am a chocoholic, , so from their wine list, which even educates you about wines, I chose one that went well with chocolate. Really good! I had oysters, that tasted so good, you’d think they had just brought them up from the beach and shucked ‘ em. They were so good I almost turned gay !!! To follow was a gigantic catfish that was so tender , it just fell off your fork, into your mouth, along with them I ha

At Pier 424 with Carlos and Paul  

some fried button mushrooms, mushroom freak as I am. Then, the Grande finale! I really felt like a VIP when I was served cheesecake with berries. Wow, so we splurge a little now and then. Many thanks to Paul, server extraordinaire, Manager Karl, and Morgan in marketing. We love you madly!  I’ll be back to the gym next week.

 Louis Armstrong Park                                                                  Café du Monde          

Contemporary Art Museum                                                                             French Quarter   

                                                               Breakfast buffet at Fairchild

Artists display their work outside Café du Monde 

Our heartfelt thanks to Christine and the others at New Orleans Conventions and Tourism bureau!!!

Join in Now – Tropical Cornucopia Tours

Posted on 10. Dec, 2012 by Howard Salus in Eco Tourism, Education, Environment, Everglades, featured, Florida News, Green Events

Redland Tropical Gardens “Seeds” Community-Based Tourism in South Dade

Homestead, Fl-On Wednesday, November 15, 2012, at 6:00 PM, the first community-based tourism workforce educational program awarded “Certificates of Completion” signed by both Redland Tropical Gardens and partner Miami-Dade College Homestead’s School of Continuing Education and Professional Development during a reception hosted by Mr. Mark Bell owner of Hotel Redland to seed South Dade, as a natural and cultural heritage tourism destination.  These uniquely educated tour guides were trained in nature based tourism covering agriculture in our most diverse Redland ( our cultivated area) as well as both national parks (our wilderness with their unique ecosystems), while being polished to Host International Visitors through cooperation of the Greater Miami Host Committee.

ENTIRE CLASS

This is Phase One of a two year South Dade Smart Growth/Sustainable Communities Project, established by Redland Tropical Gardens (DBA) a State of Florida nonprofit 501(c)(3) listed as Redland Tropical Gardens & Botanical Foundation, Inc.   These initiatives will serve as a vision to bridge man and nature by connecting yesterday, today and tomorrow (at the same time embrassing multicultural indigenous individuals seeking harmony, economic and social vitality, with long term sustainability).  This project will enhance the quality of life for residents in all CRA areas where poverty rates are a staggering 44% well above the county’s 14% average. While assisting to promote the 2013 City of Homestead Centennial, and 2014 Florida City Centennial while prparing for tourism by green restoration, a plan for a green economic generator.

Please join us by reserving your seats for Redland Tropical Gardens, Tropical Cornucopia Tours, presenting a special “Home for the Holidays Historic Tour” in cooperation with the “Historic Homestead Town Hall Museum” on Saturday, December 15th for $10.00 each. You will meet our charming Certified Tour Guides and spend one hour on a bus tour, where you will receive a booklet celebrating Homesteads Centennial, “Homestead Then and Now”.

On your return to the museum you will be provided with Holiday Refreshments and a walking tour inside the museum guided by Director Ruth Campbell. Tours depart 10:00AM, 11:00AM, 12:00PM, 1:00PM, 2:00PM, 3:00PM, 4:00PM (final tour). Please call Redland Tropical Gardens 305-247-2016 for reservations or pay on line at paypal.com you may view our website, theredland.org

9/20 Green Worker

Posted on 11. Sep, 2012 by Howard Salus in Business, Eco Tourism, Environment, featured, Florida News

Announcing 10/17-19 Conference

Posted on 11. Sep, 2012 by Howard Salus in Eco Tourism, Education, featured, Florida News, Green Business

Florida conference draws on Miami-Dade to cope with climate change

by Mr. Herb Hiller

Writer Herb Hiller directs the Sustainable & Authentic Florida Conference. He is co-author of Season of Innocence, the story of the Munroe family and early Coconut Grove; also originator of the Miami-Bahamas Goombay Festival and the Coconut Grove Farmers Market. He lives in DeLand.

I am thinking about what we might do as nonprofessionals to overcome Florida’s unwillingness to cope with climate change. I ask because I’m at work on a conference that seeks answers to this and to other challenges we face in how we live in Florida. Clearly, subdivisions sprawled into wetlands and water re-charge areas have failed. We need an answer to how we engage more of ourselves in public discourse. Too many youthfully retired adults live in gated subdivisions where the politics of their resident associations rank as more important than engagement with their larger communities.

For more than a half-century, Florida has defined the good life as a house in the suburbs beyond the crime and bad air of cities. Florida tax policies long in place favored the steady in-migration of the wealthy retired, and then of everyone regardless of wealth. Was there ever a course available to people contemplating a Florida move that introduced them to their new state? Certainly, neither developers nor real estate agents have wanted to explain about hurricanes or mosquitoes, about a sub-industry of frauds that target the old in this Florida of limited hospitality where the meaning of community is so largely about excluding others.

In a state where every city and subdivision holds itself out as uniquely privileged by its fun-in-the-sun slogans, Florida’s fragmented paradise divides the state itself. I once asked a Miami bank president if he traveled around the state. He said that he likes to take his grandkids to Orlando. Meanwhile, people who live up Highway 27 north of the Miami-Dade County line or north of the Treasure Coast shun Miami-Dade as loud, vulgar and alien.

Our outlooks are limited. Our good life is largely private. Our civic commitment dims.

How can “stand your ground” laws surprise us? Where do we find some undeniably shared outlook that transcends insularity? Response to climate change should supply our answer, yet state government shuns the issue precisely because coping would disturb our comfort. Deniability constitutes the American freedom to ignore.

The conference that will explore answers is Sustainable & Authentic Florida that takes place October 17-19 in Anna Maria Island. Its leaders are authorities in social history, in the humanities, environment, water science, in the New Urbanism and in building genuine community around America. Teams from four Florida places will make the case that Florida already engages well in placemaking and that Florida placemaking shoehorns us into “climate economies,” which is to say, economies organized around response to climate change.

Instead of by slogans, placemaking defines us by a commitment to protect nonrenewable natural and cultural resources. Miami Beach knows about this. At the conference, a Beach team headed by MBCDC’s Denis Russ will tell how the resort area turned itself around after Disney captured its family trade. It celebrated its Art Deco heritage and became world famous all over again.

In the political change that followed, Miami-Dade County in 2010 published its Design for a Sustainable Future introduced by the mayoral assertion that “In Miami-Dade, global warming and climate change. . . are local issues to us.”  The Miami Beach Chamber of Commerce established its Sustainable Business Council

The city of DeLand is deepening a partnership with Stetson University focused after 57 years on 2013 resumption of intercollegiate football at a municipal stadium walking close to downtown. The first substantial new downtown housing between downtown and campus is in negotiation. City and college are carefully thinking through how transit oriented development should take place when also in 2014 SunRail service starts three miles west of town.

Coastal Manatee County, where the conference takes place, defines itself by its refusal to turn its beach and small towns into tourism enclaves, instead marketing to visitors who want to share the local way of life.

Wakulla County this year identifiably launched climate marketing when Gov. Scott signed off on $4.5 million for the state’s first environmental institute at the Crawfordville campus of Tallahassee Community College. Coastal Wakulla is 85 percent in public ownership. Although an older population values wilderness for hunting, younger adults value it as nature capital. Gulf Specimen Marine Laboratories ships specimens around the world for research on sustainability. A Green Guide certificate program at TCC has graduated more than 100 students. The region is reorienting its economy toward resource protection.

Prime mover in the Wakulla initiative, filmmaker Robert Seidler, asserts that coastal Wakulla “will become the first Florida place to create a ‘climate economy’ organized around natural resource protection. This will start redefining the good life in Florida where protection instead of consumption already holds sway.”

 For conference details and registration, http://www.sustainableandauthenticflorida.com.

2012 FESTIVALS & EVENTS FOR FLORIDA KEYS INCLUDES ECO-FRIENDLY ESCAPES

Posted on 18. Jul, 2012 by Howard Salus in Eco Tourism, Education, Entertainment, Environment, featured, Florida News

Nancy Powell Radlauer (powellreviews@aol.com)

The fall season in the Florida Keys & Key West is known for warm weather, sunny skies and an array of events to entertain. From pillaging pirates to high-speed powerboats to eco-conscious happenings, the Florida Keys and Key West has an event to interest virtually everyone.

Oct. 4-7, Nov. 8-11: Coral Restoration Workshop. Key Largo. Become a citizen scientist! This hands-on program teaches the importance of coral health and corals’ function in marine ecosystems. Scuba-certified participants go on a working dive at the coral nursery, an orientation dive at some of the completed restoration projects and two dives to plant corals on a new restoration site. www.amoray.com 305-451-3595

Oct. 18-21: Key Largo Pirates Festival. Key Largo. Buccaneers and wenches can enjoy piratical fun including a costume contest, walk the plank event, rum tasting, booty hunt, pirate show, thieves market, underwater poker and more. www.keylargopiratesfest.com 305-394-3736

Oct. 18, Nov. 15, Dec. 20: Morada Way Arts & Cultural District: 3rd Thursday Art Walk. Islamorada. Showcasing fine arts, music and culinary nuances of the Purple Isles, this free cultural celebration features national and local artisans who are showcased in galleries at Morada Way between mile markers (MM) 81 & 82, “culinary art” and live music from 6-10 p.m. www.moradawayarts.org 305-664-9100

Oct. 19-20: Goombay Festival. Key West. Held in Key West’s historic Bahama Village neighborhood, the lively Goombay is known for its island-style food, arts & crafts, nonstop live entertainment and dancing in the streets. www.goombay-keywest.org

Oct. 19–28: 33rd Annual Fantasy Fest. Key West. This outrageous 10-day costuming and masking celebration features flamboyant costume competitions including one for pets, promenades, street fairs and grand parade that stars marching groups, island bands and lavish floats. www.fantasyfest.net 305-296-1817

Oct. 20: Underwater Pumpkin Carving. Key Largo. Divers become underwater artists as they turn pumpkins into Halloween masterpieces beneath the sea in the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary. www.amoray.com 305-451-3595

Nov. 4-11: Key West World Championship Powerboat Races. Key West. High-speed powerboats continue Key West’s longstanding tradition in a challenge described as the Indianapolis 500 of powerboat racing. www.superboat.com 305-296-6166

Nov. 10: Key Largo Bridge Run. Key Largo. Enjoy the sunrise where the Atlantic Ocean meets the Gulf of Mexico during the morning race over part of the historic 18-Mile Stretch and Jewfish Creek Bridge at Key Largo, gateway to the Keys. Benefits Key Largo Baptist Church. www.keylargobridgerun.com

Nov. 21 – Dec. 31: Key West “Bight” Before Christmas Holiday Celebration. Key West. The harbor walk along the Historic Seaport at the Key West Bight, stretching from Greene Street to Grinnell Street, will be festively lit from rooftops to the sea for the holiday season. Celebrate with holiday events, browse at unique island shops and galleries, and relax at waterfront restaurants and watering holes. Presented by the Key West Bight Preservation Association. www.keywestchristmas.org 305-304-2633

Nov. 24: Big Pine and the Lower Keys Island Art Festival. Big Pine Key and the Lower Keys. Highlights include live music by local entertainers, food, exhibits and booths featuring locally produced arts and crafts. Traditionally take place on the grounds of the Lower Keys Chamber of Commerce, MM 31 oceanside. www.lowerkeyschamber.com 305-872-2411

Nov. 29 – Dec. 2: Key West Film Fest. Key West. Showcasing films that exhibit excellence in storytelling, the festival’s lineup is to feature screenings and special events hosted at landmark venues throughout Key West, including the Tropic Cinema and San Carlos Institute. The 4-day program includes 25 films from multiple genres and categories as well as social events. www.keywestfilmfestival.com 941-527-9385

Nov. 30 – Dec. 2: Christmas in the Keys. Marathon. Full of food, beverage, vendors, music and entertainment for the entire family, this Middle Keys celebration kicks off the holiday season. 3-day event is headquartered at Hawks Cay Resort, located on Duck Key. 305-289-4901

Nov. 30 – Dec. 2. ART! KEY WEST! Key West. A vibrant 3-day festival and art walk to celebrate all the arts in Key West. The schedule includes visual, performing, literary, film and musical events, performances and exhibitions. Galleries will have extended hours and exhibitions and local restaurants will offer art and culinary pairings. E-mail luckystreetgallery@gmail.com

Dec. 7: Florida Keys Holiday Festival. Islamorada. This extravaganza traditionally begins with a tree-lighting ceremony at Founders Park, MM 87. Other attractions typically include a holiday parade featuring Santa, a 20-ton mountain of snow for mitten-clad munchkins, a holiday gift bazaar and silent auction of ornaments decorated by local artists. www.islamoradachamber.com 305-664-4503

Dec. 8 and 15: Lighted Boat Parades. Key Largo, Middle Keys, Lower Keys and Key West. Decorated and lighted boats will cruise through Keys waters Dec. 8 at Key Largo’s Blackwater Sound and Marathon’s Boot Key Harbor, and Dec. 15 in Key West Harbor and the Lower Keys’ Pine Channel Causeway. Key Largo Holiday Boat Parade: www.keylargoboatparade.com 305-451-4502; Key West Lighted Boat Parade: www.schoonerwharf.com 305-292-3302; Boot Key Harbor Lighted Boat Parade: www.bootkeyharbor.com/christmas_parade.htm; Lower Keys Lighted Holiday Boat Parade: 305-923-5370.

Dec. 31: New Year’s Eve Fireworks on Blackwater Sound. Key Largo. The back bay is the setting for the annual New Year’s Eve fireworks extravaganza hosted by Sundowners, Señor Frijoles, Cactus Jack’s, Gus’ Grille at the Marriott Key Largo Beach Resort and the Caribbean Club, MM 103-104. www.keylargofireworks.com 305-451-4502

Dec. 31: Key West New Year’s Eve Celebrations. Key West. The Southernmost City celebrates with a “conch shell drop” at Sloppy Joe’s Bar, 201 Duval St.; the descent of a super-sized red high-heel shoe carrying drag queen Sushi at the Bourbon St. Pub/New Orleans House complex, 724 Duval St., and the descent of a pirate wench from atop a tall ship’s mast in the island city’s Historic Seaport. 305-296-2388, 305-293-9800 and 305-292-3302, respectively.

For additional events throughout the Keys: www.fla-keys.com/calendarofevents/

Florida Keys visitor information: www.fla-keys.com or 1-800-FLA-KEYS (1-800-352-5397)

Social: facebook.com/floridakeysandkeywest · twitter.com/thefloridakeys · youtube.com/FloridaKeysTV