This Christmas story happens to be true. It begins on a late December day in upstate New York in 1971. Although it was almost forty-two years ago, the images are as fresh in my mind as if they happened just yesterday.

I was a young man then, two years out of college with a wife and two sons, Johnny, almost two, and Justin, barely a month old. My life was full of endless possibilities and uncertainties. However, I was still at that age, twenty-two, where I considered myself immortal. The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune –failure and tragedy – could not touch me or my family.… Read More

St. Petersburg is comprised of lots of people who care for their fellow neighbors, especially those who are over-challenged in some ways. This article highlights numerous efforts to try to ‘green’ areas that have been described as food deserts. This article will describe, in somewhat chronological order, large, small, short, and long projects that are helping to teach people how to grow healthy, nutritious foods. The article will also spotlight some of St. Petersburg neighbors who are making these good things happen.

Kip Curtis, Ph.D.

Kip was raised on a sustainable, organic farm in southeast Massachusetts. He hated it! He chose a path of academia and followed his desire to study and teach history.… Read More

“On this International Day, let us promise to make peace not just a priority, but a passion. Let us pledge to do more, wherever we are in whatever way we can, to make every day a day of peace.” — United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon

On Saturday afternoon, September 21, 2013, the acoustics of the magnificent hall of The Palladium Theater at St. Petersburg College will reverberate with pulsating rhythms, vibrant messages, and melodious voices emanating from some of the Tampa Bay area’s most talented groups and individuals. They will assemble at a musical concert in harmonic support of the call by the United Nations General Assembly to collectively celebrate globally and locally the reality of peace.… Read More

Imagine visiting a foreign country, not knowing a word of its language. Imagine meeting the people – ignorant of their customs and culture – and a feeling of incongruity sets in. Drive their cars on the other side of the road using the other hand to shift gears, and you are likely to be regarded as an unskilled driver. Gazes linger on you just a little longer than what is comfortable. You want to communicate, but you simply speak another language. You do things your way. Among us is a community of children and adults who communicate differently from many, but are blessed with their own talents and skills, dreams, ambitions, and potential.… Read More

We all have images of New York Fashion Week, with the glamour, glitz, press and endless poses of men and women looking rather serious in their conglomerations of color and pattern. I don’t know about you, but I have often (more times than I’d like to admit) imagined myself in those scenarios, dripping with duds that say “admire me” and have photographers stumble over themselves to snap the perfect shot of me adjusting my ankle strap. Did you even know we have a fashion scene here, let alone our very own Fashion Week? We sure do, and boy is it amping up for the sixth year of being a central pulse for our local fashionistas to gather.… Read More

You may or may not have noticed the new symbol we are using in our tagline on the cover:  good people, good places and good things happening. It’s the infinity symbol, and it’s about time I shared the significance of this symbol with our readers, so its meaning – as it pertains to the Northeast Journal – may be spread far and wide.

The infinity symbol represents, well, infinity! But what about infinity? For me and for its relevance to the Northeast Journal, the visual symbol and the message it sends is “what goes around, comes around.” On every page, we reveal to our readers the good work that people do on a daily basis, whether they know they are doing it or not.… Read More

What was St. Pete like before the automobile? It was a city of horses and wagons, of course. One of our earliest settlers, David Watt, left an account of traveling from what is now Gulfport to the St. Pete area: “…they jogged along slowly behind the sleepy old horse for mile after mile through the unbroken forest, without seeing a clearing or a house… He notices that the soil was all sand – nothing but sand everywhere. The horse went along over the road silently, his hoofs making no noise, and the wheels rolled silently too in the loose material, except when they bumped over a palmetto or a tree root.… Read More

Florida ranks above the national average of the percent of children between the ages of 10-17 who are overweight or obese. Nationally, one out of three children or adolescence are overweight or obese, with numbers continuing to grow. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that childhood obesity has more than doubled in children, and tripled among adults in the past 30 years. This epidemic has made obesity the number one public health issue in America, ranking over drugs and alcohol. To fight this battle, a local family may start from a root… a plant root that is. One local garden uses the love of a family to grow more than just food.… Read More

There is much to love about our beautiful city: Stretches of waterfront green space. Renowned museums and local farmers’ market. Historic hotels, beaches and baseball. A downtown that seems to grow more vibrant each day.

But this idyllic sketch of the Sunshine City may be masking the complete picture. Too often overlooked are the deeply rooted issues of social justice on the Southside of St. Petersburg.

Perhaps the most striking evidence of injustice lingers in the hallways of our public schools, where 70% of African American males are expected to drop out before graduating high school. This harrowing statistic puts Pinellas County on the national map, neck-and-neck with cities like Chicago and Milwaukee.… Read More