There is an old song that says, “I was country, when country wasn’t cool.”  Something similar could be said about Jodi John in terms of where she lives and where she works. 

Members of

We arrived at METRO Coffee & Wine on a Monday night at about 7:30.  The place was crowded.  Most of the indoor café tables were filled and so were the leather love seats, leather chairs, and bar stools.  There were a few tables open on the patio.  A man was playing acoustic guitar quietly in the corner. 

The place seems like a gathering spot in a bigger southern city—maybe Austin or

I grew up in the country, at least partly. This was due to my mother’s single parent status, at a time when a woman could be paid as little as a dollar an hour. That economic reality led to my living sometimes with my grandparents on rd. 10 Brown Rd. in Knoxville, Tenn.

Their house, until I was in the eighth g ...

Economics was too boring.

And I couldn’t study English without reading Chaucer and Milton.

So I decided to major in urban studies. Sure, it was useless — what liberal-arts major isn’t? — but urban studies was actually pretty interesting. Mostly, it involved studying cities and analyzing what made them tick, why some succeeded where others failed. It proved to be a perfect springboard to my professional development as a busboy.

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I first came to Laurel Park in 1989 where I rented the little gray cottage at 1901 Hawkins court from George Famiglio. I was a single parent suffering from “empty nest” syndrome. The cottage had a fence so I got a pretty puppy I named Taurus. I spent a lot of time in the yard with my dog.  To fill empty hours I tried to teach myself to paint with acrylics. When I was a small child in Texas I walked to the library every week to check out books. One I loved the most was a book on how to draw horses.

& ...

Have you noticed the cooler breezes filling the streets and lanes over the past few weeks? Here we go... all together now… let’s give a long sigh of relief… for Summer seems to be almost over and Autumn’s here.

Those breezes have brought with them the opening of windows at night here in Laurel Park. And with that come the sounds of the Blue Jays and the Mockingbirds in the mornings, the calls of the evening screech owls, and the all-too- frequent reminders that it’s really a jungle out there! Now at night we can hear the sounds of marauding raccoons and the occasional possum foraging through our back gardens and compost heaps. In my own yard, I see the evidence in the mornings o ...

Within the borders of Laurel Park reside many talented artists. Numerous sculptors, painters, musicians, architects and textile designers have moved into the area over the last few years, and the neighborhood is becoming more attractive to new artists all the time.

Actually, Laurel Park has always been home to people in the arts. One Laurel Park artist who long-time Sarasota residents will surely remember is Arlie Gray. Arlie, his wife Gladys, and their two children moved to &l ...

Imagine an urban neighborhood where cows roam in open field, school children dash barefoot through grass taller than themselves, and the sweet smell of guava jelly floats in the air.  You would be creating a picture of our neighborhood in the early 1920’s, a picture that is vivid in Charles Early’s memory.

Early, now a Sarasota taxation and estate planning attorney, lived first in a house on