For most of the year, Old Northeast resident Margaret Ann Burtchaell is hard at work in her commercial kitchen on 4th Street, where she and her team are busy creating everything from specialty cookies to gourmet comfort food. 

But in the summer, her kitchen is in a villa in Italy, where she teaches cooking classes to guests enjoying a week-long vacation in the Sabine hills just outside of Rome. The villa is part of a 150-acre estate that includes orchards full of cherry, fig, orange and lemon trees, olive groves, and rosemary bushes.

“It was one of those unexpected blessings in life that come along,” says Burtchaell.… Read More

Though he’s an anthropologist rather than an archaeologist, Bryan T. Shuler is an adventurer, scholar, professor, musician, pilot, and all-around fascinating guy – much like Indiana Jones, except that Shuler is the real deal. Sometimes, when he is on one of his adventures, he even wears a hat that looks suspiciously like the iconic fedora.

Shuler’s life reads like an adventure novel, with wild tales from his globe-trotting escapades: getting charged by a bull elephant as a Fulbright Scholar in Ghana; being surrounded by whales as the onboard anthropologist for the National Geographic Explorer during a six-week expedition off the coast of Africa; hiking in the Yung Frau region in the Swiss Alps; he still recalls “the breathtaking view and thrill of crossing a glacier in a crevice.”… Read More

Seeing the St. Petersburg Shuffleboard Club trophy wall on Netflix feels like a glitch in the Matrix. Cindy Smith-Maglione, a Redington Beach resident and the former vice president of merchandising for Abercrombie & Fitch, gave an interview under the iconic white-and-green shuffleboard club sign in White Hot: The Rise & Fall of Abercrombie & Fitch on Netflix. It’s not just any documentary – it was one of the top shows on the streaming service.

Staff members at St.… Read More

St. Petersburg was once known largely for its senior population, but that demographic did not begin to develop until about 1950. Between 1930 and 1940, the proportion of those 65 and older ranged from 10% to 15%, although this was still substantially higher than the total US population. In 1960, the percent of those 65 years and older was 28%, and peaked at 31% in 1970. As of 2019, the percentage was a fraction over 20%, still above the national average around 17%.

St. Petersburg has a long history of its senior population supporting the city, and the city offering a helping hand to seniors who need it.… Read More