ARTIST SPOTLIGHT: BREAST CANCER SURVIVOR TRANSFORMS HER LIFE & FINDS SUCCESS IN THE KEYS

Written by Upper Keys Mortgage Syndicated User on August 20, 2021. Posted in Arts, The Weekly Interview, Upper Keys Florida Mortgage, Upper Keys Mortgage.

Susi Trottnow says that she divides her life into two parts. And the dividing moment happened 10 years ago, when she and her husband, Rich Trottnow, took a stroll in Islamorada’s Morada Way Arts & Cultural District shortly after moving to the Keys from Lake Tahoe. They passed an open warehouse called Morada Way Clay and went inside. They met the owner, and she asked Susi, “Have you ever played with clay?” “I responded, ‘No, I’ve never done any kind of art,’ Susi told Keys Weekly. “And that’s what started the entire venture. I knew saying ‘yes’ to working in clay was the right answer. Fate...

IN THEIR WORDS: MARATHON’S JOHN BARTUS USES PANDEMIC DOWNTIME TO RECORD ALBUM OF ‘PERSONAL’ SONGS

Written by Upper Keys Mortgage Syndicated User on July 26, 2021. Posted in The Weekly Interview, Upper Keys Florida Mortgage, Upper Keys Mortgage.

Spend any time in the Middle Keys and you’ll hear John Bartus singing and playing guitar — or piano. His “Perpetual Island Tour” has been going for nearly 40 years, starting with bars and restaurants that no longer exist and extending to those rebuilt after Hurricane Irma. But his tour was disrupted, as were so many things, when COVID hit. Venues closed. The only way to get restaurant food was to pick it up and take it home. For a while, you could walk across the Overseas Highway blindfolded and not worry about being hit. No one was going out to hear musicians. So Bartus did...

DEBORAH MITCHELL’S SHOW AT THE STUDIOS BLENDS ART, SCIENCE & ACTIVISM

Written by Upper Keys Mortgage Syndicated User on May 12, 2021. Posted in Arts, Featured, The Weekly Interview, Upper Keys Florida Mortgage, Upper Keys Mortgage.

Florida is one long, downhill slide, at least in an environmental sense. What happens in the Central Florida ranch lands affects Lake Okeechobee, which affects the sod farms south of the lake, which affects the Everglades, which affects Florida Bay, which affects the Keys and its reefs and, in somewhat diminishing amplitudes, the rest of the world. Places overlap and ecosystems blur together. Attempts to discern and define the boundaries of each is the road to madness, or at least the road to seriously befuddling cognitive dissonance. Deborah Mitchell has spent the last few years delving...

PATTI McLAUCHLIN SETTLES INTO THE BIG OFFICE AT KEY WEST’S CITY HALL

Written by Upper Keys Mortgage Syndicated User on May 7, 2021. Posted in The Weekly Interview, Upper Keys Florida Mortgage, Upper Keys Mortgage.

“Women belong in all places where decisions are being made.” The quote by Ruth Bader Ginsburg is one of Patti McLauchlin’s favorites. It hangs above her desk in her new office at Key West’s City Hall, next to a photo of the late Supreme Court justice who not only survived, but conquered a historically man’s world. Plenty of decisions are being made in McLauchlin’s new office these days. The Key West city commission appointed her interim city manager last month, when her predecessor Greg Veliz left to work for Florida Keys Aqueduct Authority. “I can’t say it wouldn’t be nice to be one of the...

20 QUESTIONS WITH KATIE ATKINS, THE JOURNALIST WHO JUMPED INTO POLITICS

Written by Upper Keys Mortgage Syndicated User on April 30, 2021. Posted in 20 Questions, The Weekly Interview, Upper Keys Florida Mortgage, Upper Keys Mortgage.

When a journalist makes the leap into politics, it raises eyebrows among those of us who run in these circles. Kind of like, when a Coke employee moves to Pepsi … when a Red Sox player joins the Yankees … or when a DC character crosses over to Marvel. You get our drift. Well, this is exactly what Katie Atkins did. She majored in journalism at Mercyhurst University in Erie, Pennsylvania, graduating in 2010. From 2013 to 2016, she earned her chops as a reporter at The Post-Journal, close to Buffalo, New York. Atkins was hired, sight unseen, for The Keynoter, a Miami Herald newspaper....

Rare And Endangered: The Florida Panther And Us

Written by Upper Keys Mortgage Syndicated User on April 5, 2021. Posted in Carlton Ward Jr., Endangered Species, Environment, Featured, Florida Panthers, National Geographic, The Weekly Interview, Upper Keys Florida Mortgage, Upper Keys Mortgage, Upper Keys News, Wildlife.

“How America’s most endangered cat could help save Florida.” The headline in National Geographic (NatGeo)’s latest feature on the rare and endangered Florida panther kindles an ambitious hope for the future of the big cats and the humans they’re forced to live with ? us, Floridians. In the April 2021 NatGeo issue, the story unfolds through maps, timelines, words and photos. They follow the path of the panther across the state and through time. It took veteran explorer and photographer Carlton Ward Jr. five years to capture the defining photographic body of work on these elusive, endangered animals....

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